Krang Infection 26

Quick little sketch of an opossum-type demon that I thought up. Basically they're the demon world's raccoons and opossums in that they mostly eat other demons' leftovers but will eat literally anything.

Bart bart barrrrttt5 bart bartttt bart 🏃‍♂️💨

Sometimes I think the batfam forgets they’re not biologically related (and that’s because my dad was adopted but he’d talk about his adoptive family’s health history, traits and be like ‘yea be on the look out for that. It runs in the family’ like SIR)

Anyway here we go with the post

Tim: [is a short king]

Old gala lady: “aw look at you! Bit on the small side for 17, don’t you think?”

Bruce: “not necessarily, the doctor sai-“

Lady: [pinching Tim’s cheeks] “don’t worry about it, love. You’ll grow up into a fine young man just like your father”

Bruce: “oh, um-“

Tim: [looks hopeful]

Bruce: “yes he will”

Dick: [filling out paperwork for superhero things] “hey Bruce, does diabetes runs in the family?”

Bruce: “uh, not sure. I don’t think so”

Dick: “ok great, what about…heart problems?”

Bruce: [thinks for a moment] “I think my grandfather had a heart attack in his mid fifties, hold on I have records”

They proceeded to spend 20 minutes looking at medical records and histories

Bruce: “wait”

Dick: “what?”

Bruce: “we’re idiots, you’re adopted Dick”

Dick: “… dammit, so what’s my families medical history!”

Jason: [talking with some friends] “yea and I have my dads curly hair, he also started going grey kinda early so that’s probably why I have this white streak”

Roy: “oh nice! Same thing with my red hair. Was your dad tall too?”

Jason: “he is pretty tall, 6’2” I believe. Built like a brick wall too, also a stubborn asshole”

Artemis: “you must be spitting image of him, I wish we could meet him”

Jason: “what? You’ve met Bruce”

Roy: “… aren’t you adopted?”

Ooh my sweet baby Blue

I was worried I’d never see you again

💛

not currently relevant rant but i wanna clear out my drafts

the Lamba Squad hate is UNJUSTIFIED and quite frankly fills me with a rage I am unable to express very eloquently.

Emma needs opposition to her ideals for the story to continue and I have seen many essays from people smarter than me on how this could’ve been accomplished despite the rushed ending, but I still love this story and wouldn’t change anything that we got.

Some people dislike that Barbra and Cislo specifically were almost “dumbed down” to make Norman feel smarter but I don’t think that’s the case at all

in fact i love how childish and immature they are because it shows the difference in how Norman and the others handled trauma.

Norman saw his inner child as weak, not able to do what needed to be done, and an obstacle to overcome to become Minerva, the person he needed to become to change the world.

however Barbra and Cislo are unapologetically child-like compared to other characters and they are entirely justified in BEING CHILDREN.

It’s almost like they are so childishly happy and silly and bashful in spite of everything that’s been done to them because they still see being a child that survived as something to be proud of. Norman wants to seem like an adult because all his life adults have had power over him (see isabella, peter, ect.) even Minerva who had the power to help them was an adult. No matter how you look at it Norman saw being the child he was as a bad thing which is exactly why I love that Emma and Ray use that acceptance to get through to him.

i love that the theme is it’s okay to be a kid which is why Barbra and Cislo are almost static characters but they still fulfill their role so well in the story.

For those new to AO3

Authors can see your bookmarks as a default. You have to mark them as private if you don't want authors to see them. There is an argument that bookmarks are a reader's space, but if you don't want authors to see what you are saying, make the bookmark private.

There is no algorithm on AO3. Seriously. It does not exist. Sorting by kudos, comments, length, etc. is the closest thing you will get. It is very much a curate your experience situation. Embrace it because you never know what gems you'll find if you give less popular fics a chance.

Depending on who you ask, kudos are not a good metric to judge a fic on anymore. As to if they ever were is, again, depending on who you ask. There is a spider/web crawler (we call it the kudos bot) who gives a bunch of guest kudos to fics. We cannot summon it and we cannot remove the kudos. At best, we can set our fics to private. So, if you see a fic with way more kudos than views, that's why. Many of us do not want these kudos, but we have to live with them.

Concrit (constructive criticism) is divisive because this is a hobby for many people. There is a culture on AO3 for concrit to be opt-in instead of opt-out, but not everyone subscribes to that. If you do not see an author's note saying concrit is OK, you can ask if it's OK. If they don't say anything, take it as a 'no'. If the author is cool with concrit, great. Concrit away.

Asking for updates is also divisive. Some people want/need that encouragement and some don't. Leaving a polite 'can't wait for the next chapter' is totally fine. If you ask for an update and the author asks you not to, please respect their wishes. You don't know what else is going on behind that screen. We all use fic for our own reasons and it's impossible to tell if that was someone's project to forget about things that they don't want to deal with.

There is a difference between A/B and A&B. A/B is for shipping and A&B is for non-shipping relationships (such as platonic and familial relationships or bullying or work situations). Please tag accordingly and please do not accuse people of writing shippy fic when they tagged it A&B.

Comment totals on AO3 count author responses. It doesn't make a distinction between a response and a new comment thread. Comment thread counts are in the author's stats page only available to them. Authors are not inflating their comment counts by responding to get more views. They are just trying to interact with people who support them.

Not all authors respond to comments. For many older fans, this can be due to years of harassment in fandom, witnessing friends being harassed, not having time, etc. etc. Their reasons are their own and it does not mean you are a bad person or said something wrong if they don't respond to you nor does it say anything about them. Authors do not owe you interaction just as you do not owe them comments. It's your prerogative if you only want to leave comments on fics where the author answers back, but it does not mean the author isn't grateful or doesn't care. You do not know what else is going on.

You cannot take a kudos back. Seriously. It's permanent. If that means you want to wait until a fic is finished to leave a kudos, that's totally fine. To authors, if you see a bunch of comments and views, but few kudos, this is probably the reason. It does not mean your fic is bad; it just means readers are holding kudos back until the fic is finished, which is perfectly legitimate.

Please read author's notes at the beginning and end of chapter updates. This is where authors are The Most Likely to tell you if there has been a change in their update schedule, if they made changes to previous chapters, explained a certain choice they made, etc. Same with checking the tags thoroughly before reading a fic. Most authors take tagging and warning/updating readers very seriously and the spaces they can do it in are the author's notes and the tags.

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There is a hard limit of 75 tags on fics, so not all characters that appear in a fic are likely to be tagged. For many of us, we only tag major players, major ships/&-relationships, and background relationships as a courtesy and save the rest of our tags for known triggers and making it easier for people to find our fics by tagging the tropes we use and certain parts of the content (such as 'AU where A loses their voice').

If you hate a character or a ship or a certain trope or have certain triggers, there is nothing wrong with asking a fandom friend for recommendations. If anything, we probably should bring back fic rec lists and you could be doing an amazing service for fandom if you start making one based on your preferences. Don't rely purely on other platforms to lead you to amazing fics; you never know how that person is finding fics and they could be missing out on some really amazing ones.

AO3 currently does not have a messaging system and many users prefer it that way. I am not positive what the future holds, but if any author wants you to get in contact, they will probably leave other socials in their notes or on their profile. They might even tell you to contact them in a comment response. You can absolutely respond to them on other social media platforms and talk fics or art or fandom. The AO3 lack of messaging is a comfort for many people because of previous experiences regarding harassment and, for some, that's the closest thing to a social media that they have. Some fandoms are more than 40 years old and not all of it has been positive for everyone.

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Lastly, please enjoy your time on AO3. It is an archive that dedicates itself to preserving fandom works, whether we agree with those works or not.

Sometimes you've gotta take received wisdom in tabletop RPG design and do the exact opposite on purpose, just to see what happens. I've got a vaguely superhero-adjacent RPG I'm working on right now that flips the whole "the player characters' actions should never result in an NPC's death unless that was their explicit intention" thing turnways and makes it literally impossible to engage in physical coercion of any kind toward another person without some non-zero likelihood of accidentally killing the target in the process, and let me tell you, it's resulted in some fun "okay, how are we going to do this" conversations.

i would be soooooo powerful if i wasn't so deeply afraid of people and places and also things