There was something encapsulating about the rumble that surrounded him. The endless loop of the same winds, scents, and sounds.
The way the church three blocks away always tolled the bell at 2:15PM daily. The way the desolate schoolhouse still had the bell system going, urging the echoes of students along the day.
The way the streetlights still functioned, the lights signaling nonexistent drivers to move safely. The way the bell tower still tolled every 12 hours, his favorite place to lay and watch it shift and reverberate in his skull.
There was something oddly comforting about the solitude, the isolation. Knowing that each time he opened his eyes, each time he walked those streets, he'd be alone.
There was no threat here. No one he needed to save. No fear of vivisection or chase. No government rallying for the decimation of his people.
It was peaceful in the same vein it was a nightmare. But he chose to ignore the ache in his chest, the loneliness that lapped at the edges of his mind.
Instead, he fell into a routine. Waking up every morning and walking the town. Stopping by each desolate business, spending a few hours at the park, and dusting everything he came across.
Time didn't exist in his little haven. He was sure years trickled by in the outside, even as nothing about himself changed. Nothing about the strange echo of his town changed.
Well, nothing had changed in what felt like years. Until he heard a voice echo over the empty streets.
"HELLO! ANYONE OUT THERE?!"
The sound of a man jolted him from his daze, a mix of fear and excitement flooding his system. He made a point of walking, not using any of his powers in worry of this being a foe.
No one was supposed to find his hideaway. He was supposed to be safe and isolated for the remainder of his existence.
But there he was.
Dressed in worn in pajamas, feet bare, a strange light shining through the battered tanktop. Fear left him rooted in place, stranging at the newcomer from just across the barren road.
"Oh shit, hey, uh... kid?" The strange spoke, weary as he slowly made his way closer. The man glanced around for a moment before settling again, his words coming out more gentle in the presence of a kid. "Is there anyone else around?"
The silence stretched for a long moment, neither saying a word. The strange grew uncomfortable, shifting on his feet.
"I... I'm Danny." Danny finally spoke, his voice soft and hoarse after so long with no one to speak to. It felt foreign to him, like he was breaking an unspoken rule. "It's just me... you're not supposed to be here."
The kingly pig looks taken aback by this statement. "You claim to be 'baiting' our kind?.. A master of it, no less - after all the trust we hsve placed in you?"
- Your relationship with the Hog Society 🐖 is now Unfavourable.
ao3 is not changing anything by the way! some people just want them to change for some reason. my guess is that these people just don't understand how the site works and refuse to actually learn how it works, so they blame the site because it's easier for them that way.
things I won’t let ai take away from human writers
em dash
“not x, not y, but z”
short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice
none of these belong to ai. these are all what human writers have been writing since day one, way before ai was invented. ai was trained to mimic how human writers write — so em dash, not x not y but z and short sentence stacking would never have been used by ai at all if ai hadn’t learned and mimicked them from human writers.
no, you are not “fighting against ai” by accusing every work that has em dash, not x not y but z or short sentence stacking in it as ai-generated, you are helping ai harm the writing community by engaging in witch hunt and scaring human writers away from creating/sharing their works for fear of being wrongly accused of using ai.
speculations, accusations and ai witch hunt harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.
If there was one thing in the world, Dan hated more than those assholes in white, were the assholes in costumes.
It may sound hypocritical coming from an entity that spent his half-dead adolescence as a ghostly vigilante. But that was different.
Completely different.
He didn't have a team to impress and didn't have a set of rules and guidelines. What Dan did was purely for the aim to help people. To protect the ones he loved and his home.
The Justice League? Essentially, fancy billionaires in his eyes. They weren't real heroes, not truly.
The first time he met them had cemented it. He knew he was breaking laws, knew if the police got their hands on him, they'd the book at him.
But the greater good was more important that anything else.
Especially after all the harm he had cause in his original universe, Dan was trying to repent for it. To ease the blood that stained his hands by saving more lives than he had taken.
But when those "heroes" showed up, they had painted him as the villian. Fought him, chased him. They didn't stop to realize that despite Dan's scary appearance, he was there saving innocent souls taken by a secretly evil organization.
Thus starting their strange cat and mouse game.
Dan knew he was on their watchlist and knew they were trying to get more information on him. To contain him until they figured out exactly who he was, what he wanted, and how to stop him if needed.
And Dan would be damned if he let himself be imprisoned once again. Especially when he was actually trying to do good.
If you asked him, Dan would say he became an expert on avoiding the League. Keeping them on their toes and with as little information as possible.
Hell, Dan was pretty sure the only thing they truly knew was how he looked. He wasn't from this universe, this timeline, there was no tracking back his lineage to something other than a dead end.
Dan thought he was safe, finally getting into the groove of things, and started actually feeling good about his life.
Until the other assholes reared their ugly heads.
Dan blamed himself mostly. How could he forget that those raging monsters also existed in this universe?
How could he let himself get so distracted by the costumed assholes that he forgot about his biggest threat?
This is why Dan is where he is now.
Shooting through space as he felt his life force slipping away. This was his one more shot at being partially human again, one attempt to correct all the wrong he did in life.
And he fucked it up.
His hands did the best they could to keep his organs inside as he raced to find safety. Somewhere, he wouldn't be persecuted just for what's in his DNA.
His core guided him to escape into space. It was his safe space, after all, pun intended. The vast emptiness gave him comfort. The stars almost felt like family to him.
Dan knew there was a station the League owned in space. He knew they had a secret base up here. He had needed to learn everything about them, after all.
It's not his fault their defenses sucked against ghostly entities.
He didn't anticipate himself flying straight there. Phasing through the wall and stumbling into the middle of what looked like an important meeting.
He didn't think about what he was doing, even as he mentally cursed himself.
His bloodied, torn form stumbled to the ground as he looked up at the heroes before him. Their shocked, confused, worried, and apprehensive expressions.
Dan should've bitten his tongue off before those fate sealing words stuttered from his dry lips. The fear of going back to the Dan he was before his second chance driving his actions more than he would have liked.
baratheonpilled
amandla
andulkaphoto
2087
theartofmadeline
