Writing References: Character Development

TIL that a recent study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend, an additional 40 hours to become a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a close friend.

via reddit.com

Amity Park is different

Amity Park has a local superhero.

He's great. He works hard to protect his town. That said, Amity's local hero is a teenager. The people he relies on to help and support him are teenagers. The town's superhero defense is a handful of kids figuring things out on their own.

They do good, but sometimes the people of Amity have to be prepared to lend a hand or hold their own for a bit. That's just how life is under these conditions. Communities come together and support each other. It's fine. People adapt. Life goes on. They're really doing quite well.

A class from Amity Park visits a museum in Gotham on a field trip. They get caught in an unfortunately timed Scarecrow attack.

Scarecrow should have known better than to activate the fight or flight responses of a group of Amity Parkers.

The gas canister drops and discharges. The field trip group explodes into action.

A pair of Football players quickly overturns a table and use it as a shield as they charge the goons with the most firepower. Cheerleaders toss each other into the air for aerial attacks. Nerds turn objects from a nearby Janitor closet into a surprisingly effective trebuchet with astounding speed. One girl utilizes impressive martial arts skills.

A boy with Black hair and blue eyes flits about the battlefield pilfering and disassembling weapons with a shocking degree of efficiency as a Goth girl follows him around and bludgeon anyone who attempts to make a grab for him with a stand that had been holding up a rope barrier, and a boy in a beret lays down cover fire by launching pencils out of a makeshift bow formed from a binder and rubber bands with a startling degree of accuracy.

The teacher flits around pulling kids out of the path of attacks they hadn't seen, stowing any injured behind cover, and giving foes solid thwack on the noggin when the opportunity arises. He actually ends up knocking out Scarecrow himself.

The statement "We're not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with us," is repeated several times by different people.

When the Bats or police arrive, they have to carefully pull the feildtrip group off of the unfortunate rogues.

It takes a while to get the antidotes administered, but they do eventually manage. The class remains in defensive formation the whole time.

When the kids finally calm down enough to give statements, they mostly just say that Scarecrow gets what he gets for deliberately activating Amity Parkers' fight or flight responses. After the antidotes take effect, the class seems unfazed and goes about their business as soon as the authorities allow.

Some other visitors to the museum upload videos of the event online with titles like "the one class that was prepared for a field trip to Gotham" and "What kind of place is Amity Park, and why haven't I heard of it before?"

It doesn't take long for people to edit the videos to set the fight to music. Popular song choices include Ballroom Blitz, Bring 'em Out by Hawk Nelson, and the "we like to party" song from the six flags commercial.

Now the Bats are investigating Amity Park (and why they haven't heard of it before).

arranged marriage daminette but instead of being lovey dovey they're just chill about it but they never tell anyone

like one day mari goes "oh my husband likes this shade of green" and adrien's like "ur husband??? you're married??" and mari doesn't even bat an eyelash, "yeah i got kidnapped by assassins and was forced into a magical blood-bound marriage contract with their heir. we meet like a few times a year to clobber each other with swords and sewing needles. pretty fun."

meanwhile, the batfam can't figure out if damian's joking about his wife or not because there is no way he made it all up just to mess with them

also dami would just randomly go "i miss my wife"

"YOUR WHAT-"

i always forget how much of a hell getting up in the morning during the cold months is until im trying to get dressed taking frost damage like ough augh ugha oagh uagh

Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.

Feral McGee™

It starts with the Joker. 

His goons picked up Tim Drake. Not specifically because it was Tim Drake, he just so happened to be in the Joker’s neighborhood, and we'll, he can't pass up that opportunity now can he? 

Except Tim Drake is watching, along with the rest of Gotham, at the Batcomputer. He’s nursing a broken foot and has been put on monitor duty until he's cleared for field work again. 

The guy looks enough like him, though. Black hair, blue eyes, and bags under his eyes for days. He's also got the same lean sort of build like he does. 

It happens like this. 

The Joker is doing his monologue thing where he explains whatever twisted game he's come up with this time. He takes up the majority of the screen, so nobody can see Not-Tim behind him, not until the big reveal. Then he covers the screen again, getting up close and personal, before stepping back. In those quick few seconds, Not-Tim is no longer sitting there tied to the chair. 

Someone off camera lets the Joker know, and he whirls around, confused as the rest of Gotham. 

And then Not-Tim comes in with the steel chair. 

Or, well, a crowbar, but the reference holds up. 

He takes out one of Joker’s knees before punching him in the face. The Joker drops like a bag of stones, out cold. 

Then he looks towards the camera. 

“Hey there. I'm not really sure where I am, but also if he was after Tim Drake, he got the wrong guy. I'm not him, I'm just some dude. Anyway, I'll just-yep-” he carefully steps over the unconscious Joker, gives the camera a little wave, and then leaves. 

Batman and Nightwing enter shortly after, with the Joker and his goons out cold and tied up. The knots were complicated enough where, in the end, the police resorted to cutting the ties off of them so they could be properly cuffed and taken to Arkham. 

“A constrictor knot,” Batman tells Nightwing as they watch the villain be taken away. “Often used by sailors to temporarily tie things together to keep something in a bag, or to hold something to glue it back together.”

“Huh,” Nightwing says, scratching the back of his head. “Go figure.”

—

The next time it happens, it’s the Riddler. 

He’s laughing, giving his riddles to the Bats and recording himself to all of Gotham while his victim, one of the Wayne brats, hangs over a vat of something. From a distance, he looks like Tim Drake, or maybe a lankier Dick Grayson. And he’s not the only victim, they’re all scattered across the city, but he thought an important figure such as a Wayne should be under the Riddler’s direct supervision while he enacts his schemes. 

While the Riddler cackles and plots and waves his cane around, in the background all of Gotham can see the figure escape. Several Gothamites recognize him as the kid from before, who clocked the Joker. They all watch with bated breath as he sort of wiggles his way out of the ropes holding him up. Once he’s free, he climbs the rope and gets himself down safely. 

Gotham holds their breath as the kid casually walks up to the Riddler, who’s mid-rant. He politely taps him on the shoulder, and as the Riddler is turning around, the kid clocks him just as brutally as he had the Joker. He’s down with one punch. 

They think he’s going to say another sort of awkward goodbye, but instead he pats the Riddler down until he finds a piece of paper tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. 

“Right,” the kid says, looking at the list. There’s a lot more static overlay now, and several wonder if it’s damage to the cameras. “Uh, the Clocktower, the Docks, and-” he squints at the page for a moment-”Mama Nacaroni’s? What the fuck is that? Anyway, uh. See you later, I guess. Oh! And we’re at the Gotham Arena. Have fun with him, I guess.”

The kid tosses the paper off to the side before the camera cuts to black. 

Just like last time, everyone is out cold and tied up. The Riddler himself is sporting a pretty bad shiner, but well deserved nonetheless. 

“Stop it,” Red Hood tells him. Batman just looks at him, and though Hood can’t see the top half of his face, he can tell that his eyebrow is raised. “You know exactly what I mean, B. Put the adoption papers away.”

“Hn.”

—

After that, it sorta becomes a game. The rogues of Gotham are no longer after a Wayne, or after anybody who holds any kind of social status like usual. They’re all going after this one kid, all determined to be the one to hold him. And each one is televised. 

Mr. Freeze freezes him in a block of ice, but due to the cameras glitching out, nobody can really see how he got free. They do, however, see the kid suplex Mr. Freeze. It should seem impossible, given his lanky figure, but he evidently has more muscle than he’s originally let on. 

Two-Face gets a hold of him, using chains and some power-dampening cuffs just on the off-chance that he’s a meta. They all watch as the kid leans down, pulls a bobby pin out of his hair, and picks the locks on his cuffs. One punch, and Two-Face is down. 

Gothamites are going wild for the kid. They’ve dubbed him Feral McGee™ (an online poll, of course), because every time he goes in for the punch he gets this feral look in his eyes. Also, just the fact that he casually goes up to these rogues and takes them out with all the casualness of doing something incredibly mundane? Incredible. The Gothamites are eating it up. However, despite the video evidence, nobody has been able to properly identify the kid. They know he has black hair and bright eyes, but any time he gets near a camera, it’s like there’s this weird, sort of warped quality the camera takes on. It doesn’t usually calm down until the fight is done-as one sided as they usually are-before he awkwardly skedaddles away.  

He gets kidnapped by the Penguin, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (though that was more just a friendly chat than anything), Mad Hatter, and the Riddler again. 

And then the Joker escapes. 

It’s no surprise as to who he’s going to go after. 

Due to one too many careless goons, they manage to find their way to the Joker’s hideout pretty quickly. This time, it’s all Bats on deck, and they all hide away in the rafters as Feral McGee™ is hung over a vat of acid. His whole body is tied up, hardly a single inch of exposed skin to be seen except for the neck up. 

They watch the goons, they watch the Joker, and they watch Feral McGee™. 

The Joker is monologuing, practically begging the bats to come find him before the timer runs out. When it does, the kid gets dumped into the vat of acid. 

Despite these stakes, the kid seems to be only mildly annoyed. 

“Fuck this, I have homework I still need to finish,” they hear him say. 

They all watch, amazed and confused, as the kid starts gnawing through the ropes. Human teeth shouldn’t be able to do that so easily, but one bit after the other, and soon enough the kid’s got himself freed enough to just climb up the rest of the rope. When he’s at the top of the crane holding him up, Batman lets down a rope and pulls the kid up and out of danger. 

“Oh, cool, you’re all here,” the kid says casually, as if meeting the entire Bat Clan is just a normal Tuesday. And then he pulls out a notepad and pen and hands it to Red Hood. 

“Can I get an autograph? You’re dope as fuck, dude.”

Red Hood has to look away and hide his face in his arms for a few moments to not give away their location with his laughter before signing. And then, one by one, the others do as well. They pass along the kid’s notebook with shit-eating grins and barely contained snickers despite the fact that the Joker is still right below them. Even Batman signs it, after his children don’t stop hounding him about it. 

In their distraction, they didn’t see the kid sneak away. He’s far away from them now, nearly right over the Joker. Danny waits, though, until the Joker has turned around as the timer almost runs out. They watch as he snickers at Joker’s flabbergasted look. The Joker comically looks back and forth and under objects the kid obviously isn’t under. However, before he can do or say anything else, the kid drops from the rafters and right on top of the Joker. He crumples to the ground, unconscious. The kid, however, just brushes the dust off of himself. Despite the fall he took, there isn’t a scratch on him. 

When the bats join him, they give his notepad back to him, barely able to contain their laughter at the absurdity of it all. The kid, too, joins in the camaraderie, laughing and joking along with them as Batman secures the Joker. 

“Okay, okay, but I gotta ask, dude,” Red Hood says at one point, looking at the kid. “How do you keep getting kidnapped?”

The kid just shrugs. “I get distracted easily. And I’m sleep deprived, so you know. Social awareness is kind of at an all time low right now.”

“Why are you sleep deprived?” Nightwing asks, barely hidden concern in his voice. 

 “Finals are kinda kicking my ass right now. Especially this dumb English homework I have. You guys wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Oh, lucky for you,” Red Hood says, wrapping an arm around the kid’s shoulders as he walks them out of the warehouse, “I happen to know a lot about English. So, it is Shakespeare?”

“Yeah, Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

As they walk off, Batman calmly watches, though the rest of the bats can see his jaw twitching. Nightwing comes up behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. 

“If you don’t adopt him, I will.”

“Hn.”

oh. wow.

write a story about how you became the world’s most powerfull person… by accident.

Little Katsuki being the worst and I mean the WORST at trying to express his feelings for little Izuku and as a result, he ends up making the poor green kid cry and run away from him every single time.

Then Masaru and Mitsuki pick him up from school and the blond boy is tearing up, but at the same time frustrated and angry until his father asks what's going on.

"Deku doesn't like me!"

After asking more about the other kid, the Bakugos realize it's that sweet boy with green curls whose mother is one of the kindest people on earth.

"You mean little Izuku!" Masaru says with a smile. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll make friends with him in no time!"

"I WANT HIM TO BE MY BOYFRIEND!"

"That's my brat!" Mitsuki starts laughing, prompting Katsuki to get angrier until Masaru intervenes.

"Maybe you should tell him how you feel."

"I DID! HE DOESN'T LIKE MY LETTERS!"

"Let me see those, brat."

Katsuki gives them the pieces of paper that have the most ominous, weird messages that a little kid can come up with. All of them written in red ink.

I'll take your heart, Deku.

I'll make your heart explode, nerd.

You won't be able to escape from me.

Masaru remains silent for a couple of minutes while Mitsuki ends up on the floor dying of laughter.

Little explosions are coming from Katsuki's hands and he's about to start yelling, but Masaru stops them both in time.

He then promises to help his son with the letters.

After reading a cute letter, Izuku agrees to be Katsuki's boyfriend, although none of them know exactly what that means, but they hold hands all the time now.

Katsuki even thanks his father after that and Masaru almost cries out of happiness.

[ HOSPITAL ]

Now. You might be wondering why on earth my first thought was that I was a reincarnate rather than—well rather than something normal like coming out of a coma or being miraculously saved at a hospital. 

(Miraculously—heh. You’ll get that joke soon enough). 

But let’s review the facts, shall we? 

Firstly, I got stabbed and bled out. I felt myself die. It was horrible, and agonizing, and quite frankly horrifying, but there’s no mistaking that sensation. Nothing else would compare, and I knew that I’d carry that feeling for the rest of my life. (Would that be the appropriate term, if the way I was alive counted for anything? The rest of my existence, maybe?)

Secondly, I woke up somewhere cold and unfamiliar. Not in an ambulance, not in a hospital bed, but rather with the strangest bone-deep conviction that I was somewhere warm and all-encompassing and suddenly wasn’t. This confused me the most, because­­—as I said—there was no possible way for me to have survived in any normal sense. It would take a miracle and a half, and evidently that hadn’t come up if the way I was carried around in the arms of strangers as though I weighed nothing had anything to say about this absurd situation.

And thirdly. This was the most damning part of it all: the last words I’d heard before I’d fallen asleep.

“Félicitations, c'est une fille!”

With my limited high-school French, even I could understand this.

Congratulations—it’s a girl!

So, with all these clues, with everything adding up the way it did, is it even a mystery that my first thought was reincarnation?

***

When I wake up from my impromptu nap, it’s to warmth. Cosy, pleasant warmth, the kind that makes you want to burrow further under your covers and maybe kick your feet due to the sheer contentment you feel, and drift lazily to sleep.

I was set on doing that—determined, even, to push away all thoughts of the sheer magnitude of this situation, and the absurdity of it—but my stomach decides that it’s going to rebel and make me aware of the fact that I was starving. The sensation is overwhelming, my tiny body wracked with hunger that felt devastating, and I do the only thing that this tiny body is capable of doing. I scream. I cry.

This is vastly different from my last outburst. That was the confused, panicked wail of an adult-turned-baby, and with the confusion and overstimulation and bright lights and cold and the smell of hospital disinfectant and being wet and slimy and being slapped on my rear­—

Yeah, there was nothing left for me to do except scream; no recourse available apart from distress that was devastating in its intensity.

This cry of mine is instinctual. It’s what this body decides to do, and before I’m even aware of it, I’m doing it again. Louder, even, as though my mouth and lungs have remembered what to do and are compensating for the initial delay. My limbs are trapped in fabric, and before I can panic at that, I’m lifted. Cradled.

My eyes are closed, squinted, and I’m sure that even if I could open them, I wouldn’t be able to see anything. But my ears don’t have that problem, and I can hear a soft voice murmuring in that same musical language—which I can now tentatively identify as French­—and I can hear the snap of something, a strap loosening and then—

Oh.

Oh.

Warmth. A new kind of warmth. It’s sweet, and rich, and flows down my throat like I’m starving. (As an aside, this was my first taste of food in this new life, no matter the source. No wonder I felt euphoric, almost drunk on finally filling my stomach, when this tiny body had never even felt so much as a hunger pang before).

I don’t think; I just act, latching onto the offered source of food and drinking as though my life depends on it. It’s humiliating. It’s weird. It’s something that I adamantly don’t want to think about, my mind shying away from exactly where I’m greedily guzzling from.

The voice above me hums softly. It’s a lullaby I don’t recognise, and it sounds soothing. My eyelids droop, a deep satisfied sleepiness creeping in again. This body betrays me by falling asleep, and honestly? I don’t fight it. I don’t want to think about what happened. I don’t want to process all that’s happened. Not now. Not yet. 

I sleep.

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***

FIND THE REST HERE:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64262899/chapters/164948017#workskin

Ending 2

Everyone: Happy birthday, Tim!!

Tim: what?? Holy shit i forgot it was my birthday!

Jason: yup and you’re 18 so you know what that means

Dick: jason no

Jason: i got you a pack of cigarettes for your birthday gift!

Tim: uhh, thanks but… i don’t really plan on taking up that habit

Jason: wow golly gee. That’s a real shame right there. Huh guess i have no choice but to enjoy these myself. Welp it’s the thought that counts right timbo

Tim: yeahh, thanks Jason…

Steph: anyyyway, i got a cake, your favorite!

Dick: no, gifts first!

Damian: indeed. Opening presents should be top priority.

Duke: I’m hungry and there are a lot of presents so I vote cake!

Cass: …cake would be… nice

Alfred: might we let master Tim decide? It is his special day after all

Bruce: Tim, cake or gifts first?

Tim: cake!!!

[Rolls out cake]

Tim: wow Alfred it looks great! But… and I’m not complaining it’s just… it says I’m 17

Alfred: ? Indeed you are master Tim

Tim: uhh, this is my 18th birthday. We already established that

Damian: -tt- what are you on about, Drake? Just blow out the candles

Tim: but… [sees the banner above that now reads happy “17th birthday” instead of “18th” birthday]

Tim: but… but…

Dick: r u feeling okay, Tim?

Tim: jason u know I’m 18 now right? You literally just tried to give me cigarettes for my birthday?

Dick: jason you did what??

Jason: i didn’t I swear! I got him a pair of socks, white and plain like him. Although thanks, Replacement, now i know what you want for next year i guess

Steph: tim… you’re 17…

Tim: no I’m not! Here I’ll get my drivers license… [looks at license]

Tim: but this says I was born in… no i was born a year earlier than this! Guys something is really wrong!

Duke: dude ur really starting to freak us out

Bruce: tim… i assure you that today is your 17th birthday

Tim: … today is my 17th birthday? Is… that can’t be… is today really my 17th?

Dick: yeah and congrats on turning 17, Tim! You’re finally a dancing queen!!

Duke: just think next year you’ll be an adult!

Tim: ha… yeah… next year… it’s just… i feel like I’ve heard that before

Tim: ha, must be tired. Oh well! [Blows out candles] happy 17th birthday for me, I guess