# Dcu X Dp 193

And The Finalists Are... Part 1

The 2024 Story Finalists Are Now All Bookmarked And Added To The Collection - Or Permission Requested.

Best Multi-Chapter

A Sky Full Of Stars By Olliecollie

Broken Mirrors And Fragile Things By Evienyx

Dark Matter By Mysterycyclone

Get Off My Lawn, Or I'll Turn The Hose On You By Bergen

Leap Of Faith (Catch Me If You Can) By Erinwantstowrite

Best One-Shot

How To Get Banned From Monaco (Again) By Niniblack

King Of The Interns By Isadancurtisproduction

Moonstruck By Jaworley

One More Time By Bluesweatshirt

The Shoe Shining Business Is Booming By Bergen

Best Drabble

Christmas With You By Badass_Bookworm

Peter Parker Needs A Hug By Happyaspie

They Happen Because Of You By Diamondshard143

Walk To The Parkperseus By Phoenix_Black61

Best Plot Twist

Dark Matter By Mysterycyclone

The Hoax By Happyaspie

Occupational Hazard By Bergen

Delete That Footage By Iron_Spider

Identity Saga By Kitcat992

Best Biodad

All I've Waited For (Where You Belonged) By Jaworley

For We Are Bound By Symmetry By Kingdomfaraway

I Believe I'm Lacking Some Context By Bergen

Men Of Iron By Spdrmain

The Moon And Stars (And Gummy Worms Where They Shouldn’t Be) By Jaworley

Best Worlds Colliding

4.2 And Running In Circles (Don’t Give Up Kid, I’m Here) By Jaworley

Heir Of Stark Industries By Inkinmyheartandonthepage

King Of The Interns By Isadancurtisproduction

Peter Parker Would Like It On Record That He Didn't Know About The Google Doc Robin07

Peter’s Tony By Mswinifredquale

Potluck By Mswinifredquale

Best Hurt/Comfort

If You Find That You Feel Lost, I'll Be Your Ticket Back By Kingdomfaraway

Peter Begins : The Lost Episode By Peterparkersbff

Take All Your Chances While You Can By Theregularwriter

To Be Built Back Up Again By Fotibrit

Tony Stark Is Humandetective_Sarcasm

Best Homeless

Leap Of Faith (Catch Me If You Can) By Erinwantstowrite

Dark Matter By Mysterycyclone

Hierarchy Of Needs By Bergen

Broken Mirrors And Fragile Things By Evienyx

Occupational Hazard By Bergen

Best Adoption

Hierarchy Of Needs By Bergen

Fostering Hope By Happyaspie

7 Times Peter Starts To Realize He Has A Family + The One Time He Knows He Does Jaworley

100 Hours (Community Service Is For The Turtles) By Orphanaccount

But Don't Give Up (Just Hold On Tight) By Olliecollie

Best Fix-It

A Lapse In Memory By Inkinmyheartandonthepage

Broken Mirrors And Fragile Things By Evienyx

The Fifth Stage Of Grief By Bergen

Tis The Damn Season (For A Christmas Miracle) By Peacockgirl

Try, Try Again By Mak5258

Best 5+1

5 Times Peter’s Metabolism Screwed Him Over By For_The_Night

7 Times Peter Starts To Realize He Has A Family + 1 Time He Knows He Does By Jaworley

Make Yourself At Home By Happyaspie

The Iron Dad Protocol By Peacockgirl

What Means The Most By Mswinifredquale

NOTE: Sorry for the split posts. Tumblr wouldn't let us post as one.

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

How fucking annoying is it when you feel so restless with creative energy but you can’t decide what to do with it and when you finally try to create something it comes out shit so you just give up and sit there being all creatively annoyed and jittery.

Am currently obsessed with the idea of annabeth returning to Gotham and becoming a crime boss allied with red hood/like an adviser of sorts to him partly because if she’s the princess of Gotham, she’s running it her way, and partly as revenge against bruce, because if a 7 year old he neglected could kill to survive, he could kill to avenge his son. She’s very strong on the no messing with kids rule for obvious reasons, and she doesn’t see robin as an exception to that because she is not plagued by pit rage. She has a very confusing (to them) relationship to the bats cuz she openly hates Batman, and will taunt him by putting robin in supposed danger, but never actually hurts him and anyone who does hurt him is made to see the error of their ways through somewhat violent means.

She acts mainly as damage control to Jason when it comes to Tim, because he’s her big brother and she’s trying to subtly break the influence of the pit over time. She either stops Jason before titans tower when she learns what he’s planning or goes to confront him there. Then, later, when Damian joins the family, she taunts Bruce about his dead daughter, using details no one else should know, and dramatically reveals herself. (Sadly, I am the only person who can write it the way i want it to be written, and will not ever write it)

Annabeth getting a call from Talia (incredibly alarming to her btw) and seeing Jason doing his vengeance shtick: Maybe I should go back to Gotham and check that he’s okay.

Grover who’s about to set out on his Percy Supervision Mission in Yancy Academy: Please for the love of all the gods be good.

Luke would be fine with letting her go since while he’s a bit weird about her it’s still a sibling-like bond and the idea of 12-year old Annabeth with beefed up Jason standing in front of the world’s worst criminals brings me joy.

Annabeth, walking into Jason’s apartment after six minutes of making sure his neurosis were the same: Damn bitch you live like this? After all my architecture rants too??

Jason: Are you a fucking ghost?

Annabeth: Are you?

Annabeth is very clear about being Annabeth and doing her whole leaving the Wayne name behind forever to Jason who kind of struggles to wrap his head around cute and shy Anna being this terrifyingly smart monstrosity. She makes his plans even more sick and twisted, plays around with the ambiance and the clues and makes sure that it can only be traced back to the Red Hood and not Jason Todd. Which means she tortured Dick psychologically at several points in the middle of other villain fights to see which reactions she can use against Bruce more subtly so that’s fun.

Dick, on his third mental breakdown of the month about Anna: I miss her so much I wish we tried harder to find her!

Annabeth, writing it down from where she’s hiding: Making the cases be increasingly similar to what happened to me has produced results. Find a demigod and recreate case with Bruce to torment his further.

Tim was originally barely a factor to Annabeth because she doesn’t really care for him unlike Jason and Jason’s plans on what to do with him seemed sane enough but after he mentioned that he wanted to get into Titan’s Tower Annabeth arranged for something on the Drake’s end to pull Tim away for a while and convinced Jason to focus on the Joker plan again. Annabeth is extremely against involving anyone who isn’t Bruce, Joker, Alfred and Dick in her plans and only occasionally considers adding Barbara. So when Jason shows clear interest in hurting Tim as a way to get back at Bruce she moves up her whole timeline and has ten different plans running to keep Tim out of the country at first then away from where Jason would be by orchestrating a few YJ fights until Jason tells her to fight Tim herself since he can’t get there in time.

Annabeth: Fight him? By myself?

Jason: Yeah, I believe in you *cuts the call*

Annabeth:…Fuck it, I’ll do a Riddler impression and hope for the best

said impression is completely terrifying and taken out of a saw movie basically and Tim is now wary of ever approaching a truck (which was actually a monster) since it. somehow threw him into a building and shattered three of his ribs. Annabeth continues running interference like this as she tries to keep Jason on task with ‘make Bruce kill the Joker’ scheme.

Eventually she’s called back to Camp after Percy shows up and Annabeth decides she needs someone to keep an eye on Jason and the whole plan thing so she sends Julieta, her godly half-sister, to keep him on track.

Julieta infiltrating Gotham Academy during the last three weeks of classes: This is so stupid.

Jason: I don’t care, tell me his habits and schedule.

Julieta: Do you get off talking to me like that?

Jason:…I’m sorry.

Basically all of TLT happens and Annabeth returns to Gotham immediately after the summer solstice which enrages Luke who speeds up his plans a bit and Percy is saved by the naiads and Annabeth is now double heartbroken and back in a city that encourages her to fester in her rage.

She lets Jason loose on Bruce and the Joker as she kidnapped Tim and uses him to torture Dick and Babs as she uses references to all of Jason’s career as Robin to guide them while taunting that she knows who they are and making another Saw trap. Meanwhile Tim has been given a slice of ambrosia and feels like he’s dying, he’s not but his godly heritage is diluted by four generations so it’s real bad pain.

Annabeth: It’s this or processing my emotions, Timothy, and I’m a Wayne, so down the hatch!

Tim, writhing in agony and shaking as Ares pretends not to notice him for six hours before helping him: Am I on drugs?

Things go down, Jason reveals himself, Bruce in a fit of desperation tries to cut his throat open but Julieta who helped in said Joker kidnapping stabs him thought the arm and Joker who was wisely knocked out by Julieta’s during the jokernapping is rescued by his henchmen while Jason has a mental breakdown and Bruce is dumped in the Batmobile by a truly done Julieta

And that’s all I can think of right now.

Thank you for telling of your idea, it’s actually a lot of fun, and since I was thinking about making a fic dedicated to 13 What-If scenarios in the Annabeth is a Wayne Universe this is definitely going on the list of you want it too.

I KNEWWW IT I KNEW IT I KNEWWWW IT OCTOBER 31ST HERE WE COMEEE!!

Steven’s voice tho… 🥵

Epic the Musical is my latest hyper fixation (if by latest you mean from 2021) and I’ve had the wisdom saga on repeat since it first aired.

I honestly thought God Games would be my favourite from all the snippets we heard, but Little Wolf SHOT up there to first place.

Now, seeing the latest tiktok Jorge released, I think we can anticipate Vengeance Saga coming out fairly soon, (maybe october?) so let me just say that my two favourite songs (that I’ve heard from snippets) are on there and I can’t WAITTT for them to come out.

Dangerous (oh my god Troy I love you) and Charybdis I CANT WAITTT

Thinking about Billy Batson again and about how unconventional he is in his approach to dealing with villains and their scheming and battling them in such a creative but ultimately childlike way that it psychologically befuddles his enemies.

Imagine Mister Mind using a phone to relay his monologue message via calling through it and saying something like-

"Hello Captain, I've been working on another, but better and newer scheme! This time, with my brilliant mind I've devised to kidnap half the citizen's in Fawcett city! And strap them to a beam that can vaporize the OTHER half of the citizens! A trolley problem of sorts! So meet me in the middle of the city and we can—"

"kshhk-- chhkkkk-- ch ch-- sorry, what? Kshhk-- kh kh-- you're breaking- cccchhhkk--"

"What— what are you doing?! The phone lines aren't even damaged!"

"sorry what?? Can't— kkkhhhh-- hear— shhhk shhk-- you!"

"Why, you INSOLENT LITTLE—"

Meanwhile Marvel has already found and rescued the citizens held hostage with the use of his speed, while Mister Mind was just getting distracted by a childish prank, and then Marvel broke the beam thingy and flew to find Mister Mind in the center of the city and put him in a jar again, Mister Mind didn't account for the phone being taken ahold of and carried around as he was monologuing, winning Marvel time to get info and also distract him.

Also also! He could do something similar like use things that aren't typically expected of a "Demi god with ultimate magic powers who looks like he lives in a gym"—

Picture this, Dr. Sivanna in his lab and he is ambushed by The Captain and uses every single thing at his disposal, grabbing ahold of a prototype acid or something he invented and holding the vial and then Marvel grabs it too and now they're wrestling each other but it's so stupid because Marvel literally is powerful enough to rip it out of his hands but instead he does the petty "Gimme! No! Mine! No, Mine!" Thing and then when Sivanna is distracted enough with this pettiness Marvel let's go and Sivanna is defeated by sheer gravity alone because he fell over and spilled the stuff on himself, thus ending up defeated by such silly trickery!

Imagine Marvel doing stuff like this around the League while they're fighting a super race invasion of aliens or something like that and Marvel just outdoes everyone by screaming "PILLOW FIGHT!" and whipping out a pillow out of nowhere and hitting the aliens and they're surprised and are all like "Oh it's nothing lol it's just a soft pillow, how could that harm m—" and it turns out there's magic rocks in the pillow and marvel is just socking it in their faces and laughing like it's a fun sleepover and the other aliens don't understand what the fuck is happening because That's A Pillow, but then they get absolutely destroyed and it's so funny, because Batman is minding his business taking out enemies and then he looks over and his teammate The Captain is piling bodies like a mountain with the use of one pillow and nothing else and there's feathers everywhere and his laughter is just ringing in everyone's ears and the aliens are running screaming stuff like "BROTHERS, RUUUUNNN" and then Marvel just bashes in their heads and he's covered in a little bit of blood and he's laughing and his smile is genuinely cheerful because he never had a sleepover and this is him taking a chance, but to the outside world it looks like he's experiencing bloodlust, but he never killed anyone of them, Batman just stares because the aliens are all running away and he's just so so tired and confused, while Marvel is covered in feathers and his unconscious enemies blood—

Anyway I just think it would be really, REALLY funny to see him do stuff like this

I need people to stop getting so precious about Clark "not letting" Bruce kill the Joker after Jason’s death post-Crisis. Everyone acts like it was like this:

But it was more:

So, we all know the story. Actually. Wait. Maybe we don't. So. The story beneath the cut.

Jason got benched as being Robin because he was not dealing well with his parents' deaths, felt like he was no longer wanted because he was adopted specifically to be Robin (and Bruce is shit at making his kids feel loved a lot of times). Jason discovered the woman who raised him was his step mother, not his bio mother. He goes looking for bio mom. Finds bio mom, she hugs him and tells him she's missed him so much, Bruce contemplates letting Jason live with his family if that would make him happier despite being obviously cut up about the idea of losing Jason. Bio mom is being extorted by the Joker to let him ship out Joker Venom disguised as medical supplies because he can't just steal the supplies and sell them. Bruce has to go stop the shipment of Joker Venom, his portable chopper is too small for two, so Jason is left behind. Jason is told to wait, but The Killing Joke just happened and his bio mom is alone with the Joker (who is insane, capricious and evil), so, obviously he has to save his mother and could not wait. Bio Mom is outside, no guards, Jason says, "Hey, I'm actually Robin, I'm here to save you from the Joker" and she says "Nah, he's actually gone, so I'm fine. But let's go inside so I can grab my things and we can leave." Her things turn out to be a gun to point at Jason after leading him to the Joker. Jason is too stunned to move. The Joker and his goons beat Jason up and then the Joker uses the crowbar to finish beating him to a presumed death. His bio mom at some point couldn't bear to watch it anymore and turns around to smoke a cigarette. Once Joker’s done, bio mom asks what they're going to do about Batman, and the Joker is all "oh. Yeah, lol. Probably was a bad idea to kill his kid. Whoops. My bad." And then ties up the bio mom to kill her and erase any evidence he brutally attacked/killed Jason. The Joker sets a bomb on a timer and leaves. Jason uses the last of his strength to untie his bio mom so she can escape. He can't see well enough to try and disarm the bomb. She tries to get them both out. The door is locked. Jason shields her as the bomb goes off, but she dies just as Batman comes up and tells him the Joker did it, calls Jason a hero, says he deserved a better mother (he did) but does not/is unable to own up to her part in Jason’s death before dying herself. Bruce finds Jason’s body and is fucking devastated.

So after that, Bruce chases the Joker down to the UN because the Joker lucked into being a diplomat for Iran and is now meeting at the UN assembly in New York. Bruce is 100% set on doing a premeditated murder of the Joker for Jason. The US government is aware of this. They hire Superman to grab Batman to try and talk him down because the Joker has diplomatic immunity for past crimes. It does not go well.

"That’s the law, not Justice." Batman is 100% still going to kill the Joker. Everyone knows. Superman knows. Superman says the stupid thing is putting vengeance above the interests of the country, not killing Joker.

Batman sneaks into the Joker’s room, and the Joker (forgetting his earlier desire to not get fucking killed by Batman) is like "oh man, I wish I could have seen your face when you found his body" and further needles Bruce with a "Or are you here to thank me for getting rid of him for you?" Making Bruce triple down on killing the Joker.

"Your confirming it makes what I have to do a lot easier."

Bruce manages to get in to observe the UN meeting as Bruce Wayne. Superman is disguised as a guard. Bruce is seething, watching the Joker, knowing that is the guy who killed Jason.

"I should have terminated his vile existence years ago. But I didn't. I couldn't. His insanity gained him a stay of execution. But no longer. ... Jason’s dead."

They both know the Joker is too stupid and lacks the impulse control needed to not attack the UN and immediately lose his immunity, which is the only thing keeping him alive. Joker releases Joker Venom to kill the delegates. Superman super breathes to inhale all the gas, which he's immune to because he's Superman and then says this as he leaves to go find a place to release the poison gas safely.

"Batman, he's all yours."

Superman basically says "You can kill him now" because he knows Batman’s mind has not changed, and Superman had not once tried to say "killing Joker would be wrong" just that it couldn't happen before the Joker acted in a way that lost him his immunity.

And Bruce does go to do just that. He chases the Joker down, intent to kill, and jumps onto the helicopter the Joker is using to escape. One of the guys fires at Batman. It shoots the pilot, hits the Joker in damn near his heart, if not his heart, and Batman realizes the helicopter is going down and decides to jump and leave the Joker behind. He intends for the Joker to die in the crash.

Okay? Bruce was 100% going to kill the Joker for killing Jason. Superman said "hang on. Let him get enough rope to hang himself first and then you can do it." And then Joker only survived because comic books. And Bruce is unhappy about having to wait. Superman did not try to talk Bruce out of killing the Joker at all ever, or scold him for wanting to kill the Joker. (Don't say he was rescuing the Joker in that last panel. The next panel is Superman fishing Batman, who is shot in the arm, from the harbor, and Batman telling Superman to go find the body. Find the body! And Superman does go to do just that, but is unable to).

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

finally done with the series that's been plaguing my dreams for a month

what the actual fuck. do conspiracy theorists actually think like this??

Clockwork sees how stressed Danny is from trying to be the goodest boy and never do anything remotely bad that could turn him evil and thinks he may have overdone it. At this rate his panic over never doing anything evil is going to force him to emotionally burn out and stop caring. Then he'll turn evil anyway.

So Clocky does something that sounds completely ridiculous in theory. He scoops Danny up and drops him into a universe full of superheros and villains and tells him to "Do whatever you want. There will be no consequences for you." Then he leaves.

And just like that, Danny goes apeshit. He decides to do the one thing he always wanted to do but was too afraid to because he didn't want to be judged, or worse, forced to join his parents.

He becomes a supervillian. Not as Phantom, no. But as Fenton! He goes full super genius mad scientist and terrorizes whatever city he's in. The local superhero is being driven insane as Danny builds death rays, shrink rays, his own modified version of the GAV, ect.

The best part if that the local heros can never catch him for long and when he is caught he always escapes before he is transported to whatever facility they wanted him in. He always ends up back in his home dimension where he goes back to acting normal and no one from either human dimension or the Infinite Realms knows what he's up to (except the stop watch of course)

After a particularly fun day in which Danny highjacks all broadcasting services to teach everyone in the world how to make insulin at home so you didn't have to pay a ridiculous amount for necessary medication, the Justice League was now on his tail.

Danny just laughs, thinking there's no way they'd ever be able to arrest him. Little does he know some guy calling himself Batman is leading the mission and he has no intention of arresting him. Danny, much to his horror, becomes far to familiar with adoption papers. As in he keeps having to set them on fire.