Icon made with this pic crew created by Aloha Sushicore.
Fast Facts
Supers Name: Nightmare
SA Classification: Villain, on Watchlist
Pronouns: They/Them
Age: Just turned 19
Birthday: June 16th
Height: 5′2″
Powers: Can manipulate fear and nightmares; manifest common phobia things as long as someone nearby has a strong fear of that; knows everyone’s biggest fears; can induce sleep paralysis
Favorite Music: Bebop and classical
Favorite Food: Oreos
Bio
Ben’s parents died when they were three, although they never knew how or why. All they know is that when they were a toddler they went to live with their grandmother and older brother, Carter. Ben was super close with their grandma and loved her so much. But regrettably, she wasn’t a very good guardian, as she was often very ill and bedridden, and by the time Ben was eleven she was losing most of her memories to dementia. This meant that Ben was primarily raised by their brother, who was eight years older than them. Carter was... bad news. He is and always had been a manipulative, cruel psychopath. Carter has similar powers to Ben, but his domain is not fear, it is dreams and ‘daydreams,’ which are essentially hallucinations. He’d psychologically torture and terrorize Ben, to put it simply, all while tricking Ben into trusting and believing that he was good. He was also the one who instilled Ben’s phobia of making noise, as he worked from home and didn’t like being disturbed. Even after they’ve been out of Carter’s house for two years, Ben still won’t talk except in very rare circumstances. To Carter, Ben was his property, and he never let them go out, have friends, or attend school. Instead, Ben did online classes. They like to say that pushing them so hard in school is the only thing they are grateful to Carter for, because his insistence on pushing them to their limits meant that, by the time they left him, they had already gotten their associates degree from an online community college program. (It’s in website design and development, in case you were curious. They wanted something they could get a job easily with.)
Online school was also how they met Morty. They were both taking an elective course on Supers law and were paired for a project. The fact that they were both Supers came up, as well as their powers, and when neither was freaked out by the other’s powers, they became close friends. It was Morty who helped Ben eventually run away from Carter when they were seventeen. The two of them lived together for a short while, and it was the best time of Ben’s life. Until Carter had to ruin it. He wasn’t too happy with the idea of Ben leaving, considering he felt like he owned Ben, and when it was clear they weren’t coming back on their own, Carter started hunting them down. Both Ben and Morty went on the run from Carter, though it was incredibly difficult as Carter could find Ben any time they slept through their dreams. Everything was made doubly worse when the Supers Association started chasing Ben too. Because Ben is an empathetic type, whenever they are afraid, other people experience that fear too. When they have panic attacks or flashbacks, which is fairly frequently, there can be serious repercussions on anyone in the surrounding area. The SA decided they were a Villain doing this intentionally, which is the last thing they are doing. Morty eventually left Ben to go back to the SA, to try to convince One Eye that Ben is not a terrorist or Villain and that they deserve amnesty based on the very laws the two had been studying when they met, that work to not-demonize Supers with little control over their powers.
And that’s about where Nightmare at the Lily Pad Inn starts - with Ben on their own running from Carter as Morty tries to fix things with the SA.I’ll hopefully do another post on Morty and Oliver soon, as well as something detailing their relationships together because it’s complicated and i want to make things very clear.
Tag list: @merigreenleaf @albatris @knightedwriter @ageekyreader @shadow-maker @norawritess @simplesamples @mo-is-writing lmk if you want on or off the list at any point!!
SA Classification: They’re not a Super, but they are on the Watchlist
Pronouns: He/She/They, it varies
Age: 30
Birthday: September 29
Height: 5′0″
Favorite Food: strawberries
Favorite Tea: Lavender
Bio
Matty is a normal human, and so they had a pretty normal life. Their grandmother ran a nice bed and breakfast called the Lily Pad Inn, which their mother took over eventually. They grew up there with their sister, Anna, and had a fairly normal childhood. Their parents didn’t get along, though they were both nice, and eventually got divorced in Matty’s sophomore year of high school. After then, things were a lot better. They went off to college where they majored in premed. They worked as an EMT throughout college, but they weren’t a fan, and eventually they realized they didn’t want to do medical school. They wanted to help people, but that wasn’t how they wanted to do it. Instead they went back to the Inn to help their mom out for a few months until she decided to hand it fully over to Matty.
In college, Matty had a boyfriend who was real nice at first. But he turned out to be really awful. Matty however, is a sweetheart and is bad at setting up boundaries if it means he can help people, so they never broke up with the dick. That is, until a year after they graduated, when Matty realized they were pregnant. Then they kicked the douche out. Matty will put up with a lot against himself, but they knew that their boyfriend would hate them having a kid, and was not about to let him hurt their kid. They had their daughter, Jazzy, a few months later when they were 25.
It was right about when Jazzy was born that the Lily Pad Inn became a shelter for Villains. It wasn’t intentional, not really, but a Villain came in one night asking for a room, and Matty gave them one. They didn’t realize the Villain was on the run until the SA showed up demanding that Matty let them get the Villain. Matty said absolutely not, and because of them, that Villain didn’t get arrested. She spread the word that the Inn would keep you safe, and eventually 90% of Matty’s customers were Villains needing a safe place. In the end, they don’t regret it at all, and are much, much happier this way. They’ve found their way of helping people, and they stick with it. The Inn is known all over as a sanctuary for Villains and it’s grown bigger than Matty could ever have expected, and they love it.
In the end, the Inn being a safe haven turned out better than they could have imagined even, because it was how they met their now husband, Blue. Blue was a Villain who came in for safety, and kept coming back, and, well. Shit happened. The two of them got married a year and a half before the story starts. Jazzy is now 5 years old, the Inn is well established, and Matty is so well known for standing down the SA that One Eye is intimidated and leaves the Inn alone. So... yea. Matty is the sweetheart cinnamon roll with a spine of steel who’s willing to show absolutely anyone love, and trust me when i say you don’t want to mess with Matty. And yea!
Tag List: @albatris @mo-is-writing @merigreenleaf @ageekyreader @shadow-maker @knightedwriter
Okay, FINALLY we can get to Oliver’s intro post!! And by finally I mean i finally have some fucking power in my house and time to write. It’s been a time this week guys. So let’s just jump right in!
Fast Facts
Supers Name: Time Master
SA Classification: Rogue Party, on Watchlist.
Pronouns: He/Him
Age: Officially 18, but he can’t remember for certain
Birthday: He celebrates January 12th because that’s the first day he remembers. I’ll explain later.
Height: 6′1″
Powers: Time Elemental so time manipulation; precognition, etc
Favorite Food: Applesauce
Favorite Animal: Dogs.
Bio
Like Morty, Oliver’s got a bit of a memory problem with his childhood. He can’t remember a darn thing about himself prior to when he turned ten (and got his powers technically). He woke up in the SA hospital, and was told his name was Oliver and that he’d been in a car accident that killed his parents. He has no idea if that’s true or not, because One Eye does have a habit of kidnapping Elementals and erasing their memories to make them loyal to the Supers Association, but Oliver also has a habit of not realizing he’s walking into streets. Mind you no one but the other Elementals actually know he’s an Elemental, I explain that more here, but I wouldn’t put it past One Eye to know anything ngl. He’s pretty sure it was One Eye honestly, considering he can see into the past, and his own past... but not the first ten years. He’s not really happy about it, but there’s not much he can do, and he doesn’t particularly care, in all honesty.
Since he had no where to go and was just a kid, Oliver wound up staying with the Supers Association. He went to one of their schools for a while, though the Director in charge of the branch nearest to the school often came to him for predicting the future. He wasn’t particularly a fan of that, but he didn’t know how to say no. The more they asked him for help seeing the future, and the more he had to use his powers in school, the more unstable he got. He started forgetting what time period he was in, forgetting long gaps of time, getting confused about what had already happened, and so on. It wasn’t too bad yet, and they thought he was just forgetful.
But then he collapsed time. Oliver’s a nerd, to put it really simply, and he always has been. He loves history, which is part of why Time chose him, he loves learning, and he’s curious about everything. He was 100% that kid in class who asked so many questions the teacher got annoyed and his favorite words are “well actually...”. And in a Supers school, where cliques are huge and determined by power, he tended to get bullied. His powers weren’t fighting based and he was annoying, so they didn’t like him. When he was thirteen, there was an incident and it scared him enough his powers lashed out, and time collapsed. It was only for a few minutes, he fixed it easily enough, but it terrified the SA when they realized just how powerful he was. If he collapsed time fully, then the world would basically be destroyed because physics doesn’t like that much. So... yea.
The Supers Association, in all their shitty government organization with little to no oversight way, took Oliver to a facility for older Supers who could no longer control their powers. Overall, it was a nice place. He got taken care of, there was a big garden, it was just a retirement home, essentially. Except for the small fact that they drugged him to the point he barely knew his own name. At thirteen. Without any real consent (his legal guardian was the SA as a whole, and as a minor he didn’t have any say in it). Sparky found out about this, because of course he did, and, well, he made a fuss. Stole all Oliver’s case files and plopped them in the lap of a nonprofit legal group that worked to protect Supers rights. They made a case to get him free considering it was completely unlawful, the SA argued that he was dangerous and they were allowed to deal with dangerous Supers as needed, yadda yadda yadda, it goes to the Supreme court and is super televised, and in the end Oliver’s case wound up securing a ton of rights for minor Supers. A lot of the shit the SA had been doing, like the kidnapping Elemental kids and erasing their memories, essentially arresting powerful young Supers without calling it that (they’d put them in facilities that were similar to juvie but called a training thing, not a jail thing even though they weren’t allowed to leave), stuff like that, it was no longer allowed. At all. Young Supers did have rights before hand of course that protected them, but the loopholes were officially closed. It was a HUGE deal, especially for Morty and Ben, though neither of them actually knew Oliver at that point. But Morty was kidnapped and had his mind wiped, and was held essentially hostage by One Eye, and Ben is a powerful Super with scary powers that would definitely have been targeted by the SA earlier. So this was really big. A lot of strong Super kids got released, and soon after the case an oversight committee was created to protect minor Supers. It’s probably the only comprehensive oversight the SA has (and even then, comprehensive is a bit wishy washy) but it’s so much more than previously.
As for Oliver himself, he got released and was no longer being drugged, but the damage had been done. The drugs destabilized his powers, and his confusion increased exponentially. He started losing himself in time, when he’d see, hear, feel, and fully believe he was in some moment in the past, sometimes for hours at a time. He rarely could tell you the date, started living a few minutes behind or a few minutes ahead even when he was present, had a few instances of things from the past showing up in his place... not great. As a compromise with the SA, the court decided to assign him a full time carer, Emory, who made sure he ate, drank water, and didn’t hurt himself. Which he did. A lot. Always on accident, of course, but things happen when you were in your living room and then you’re suddenly experiencing a battlefield. Lots of running and falling because objects that are physically there are not there for him. Not a lot of fun. He also got a service dog who he named Edison, just to help keep him calm and ground him.
Things were pretty okay after that, other than dealing with the whole, getting lost in the time stream thing, until time collapsed again. Again, it wasn’t Oliver’s fault, he got panicked because he saw a Really Bad Future and thought he was trapped there since he doesn’t normally realize that the time he’s seeing isn’t the right one. It was an apocalypse, and in real time bodies suddenly appeared in the streets, buildings collapsed because another building shoved itself into it which tends to break some laws of psychics and all... yea. no one got hurt, just terrified, and he brought it back after about twenty minutes with Edison and Emory’s help. But yet again, the SA was scared, and since it could technically be considered a Villainous attack, since no one could tell if the bodies were from the present time or the past and there was property damage,and technically he was an adult then since he’d just turned eighteen, so technically they were allowed to put him back into a facility all drugged up. Which they did. Again. This time though, he did have an adult who was on his side, and Emory busted him out. Sometimes having temporary amnesia powers and being a retired spy comes in handy for her. ;) She brought him to the Lily Pad Inn for safety until she could get the SA off his ass, which is where his story picks up in the book!!
Sorry that got so long, ugh, but Oliver’s story is complicated and a load of not fun. There’s a lot of not fun in general. Tragic backstories anyone? Every Supers gotta have one! But at the very least, his pain wound up helping a lot of people, and if you ask him, that means it was worth it. Anyways, here’s the tag list: @shadow-maker @merigreenleaf @albatris @ageekyreader @mo-is-writing lmk if you want on or off as always, either for this story or in general!! or the DHU in general there’s a list for that too lolol.
Age: Officially 19, yes we have another complicated age one sorry folks
Birthday: April 4th (it’s actually his adoption day but he celebrates it as his birthday)
Height: 5′9″
Powers: The Death Elemental. Can hear/see ghosts, reanimate corpses, can tell when someone’s going to die soon, gains strength from areas with lots of deaths such as hospitals or battlefields, can kill someone with a look although that takes a lot of concentration, can sense death, freaks everyone out because hes a spoopy boi
Favorite Food: Anything Spicy, but probably Indian food.
Favorite Animal: Does not like animals and is annoyed I asked. If pressed, probably snakes.
Bio
Guess what folks we’ve got another one with memory problems! Yayy!! Though to be fair, One Eye didn’t have to do much here. Morty was adopted (read - bought) by One Eye and brought to America from an orphanage in Siberia when he was six years old, so he probably wouldn’t remember anything anyways. Like Oliver, One Eye grabbed him because he’s an Elemental, and the SA kinda wanted to collect the whole set of them and was not afraid to do whatever it took to reach that goal, hence why so many are in America. They weren’t supposed to be, One Eye just didn’t give them a choice. Anyways, the clever amongst you have probably already noticed that Morty’s last name is the same as Oliver’s, and this is intentional. Just like in the USA we call people who can’t remember their names or unidentified bodies John/Jane Doe’s, in the DHU America, they call them Sam Heart’s (because it’s my world and I can make gender neutrality a thing if i fucking want). Oliver did have a first name that they let him keep, and Morty got named that by One Eye because the man is not creative (guess what he named the fire Elemental? Blaise. Yes I did that intentionally dont at me). But both of them use the Heart last name because they don’t know their own. Just some fun worldbuilding for you.
You might also notice that I said Morty got adopted at six years old already as an Elemental, even though Elementals get chosen at 11-13 years old. I didn’t mess up. Death is a tad different in that it picks it’s Elemental early. The first time they see death, be it an animal or a person, they get their powers. For Morty, there was a home break in, his dad got shot, he got his powers and accidentally killed everyone in a half mile radius, and eventually was found by authorities. There weren’t any records of him, so no one really knew much about him and just guessed his age. Hence the officially 19, and his birthday being the day One Eye swept him up. He does not remember the break in happening, or the orphanage, but he still gets nightmares of flashes from it. Fun!
Once he was with the SA, he was kind of kept prisoner. One Eye sort of raised him (in that he’d check in at certain points and otherwise Morty was left with nannies who hated him because he’s creepy), and he wasn’t allowed to leave the headquarters office. He did online school, which is how he met Ben, learned how to repress his powers because One Eye wouldn’t let him use them since they scared him, and was just generally a very bored, very frustrated, and very done with authority child. One Eye did a lot of fucking with his mind, placing blocks that made him afraid of using his powers, and trust me that DEFINITELY fucked him up a lot. After he meets Sparky in “Sparks Fly” he started to sneak out to meet with the triad more and more, getting in more and more trouble, until he just decided to stay with them when he’s 16. The three of them become even more of his pseudo dads than they already were, and it’s pretty good. He gets along best with Sparky, loves Hall and Scout even if he fights with them a lot, and really relies on them. He never quite got along well with Lucia though, because she was one of the Heroes who babysat him for a while. Even though she was the only one to take him on field trips or who’d turn a blind eye if she knew he was just running to the triad’s place, she was still part of the SA, and damn does this boy have a problem with authority and the SA now. A year or so later, he leaves the triad to help Ben run away, and that’s about where the book picks up so we’re going to stop it there.
And that’s Morty! He’s contrary, angry, hates authority, but is also so sensitive and caring and sweet with Ben and we love our little death boy okay he’s a Good Bean. Anyways here’s the tag list: @mo-is-writing @albatris @shadow-maker @merigreenleaf @ageekyreader @knightedwriter insert usual if you want on or off just let me know you guys get the gist. ;) love you all! Up next i’ll probably do Matty and Blue, and then we’ll be done with the intro posts for Nightmare at the Lily Pad Inn!
I’ve seen quite a few people do this in the past couple weeks so i figure i probably should too considering how stinking long its been. so. hi there! I’m Elliot, and I use they/them pronouns! I’m a college kid majoring in creative writing and anthropology and regret doing both. I have a 9 year old emotional support cat, Van Gogh, who enjoys snoring, getting fur in my mouth, and chewing on my headphones. In addition to writing, I crochet amigurumis, play flight rising, bake like mad, obsess over dragons and stuffed animals, and spend way too much time thinking about superheroes.
I mostly write LGBT+ Young Adult/New Adult fiction, and recently published my first novel, “Sparks Fly.” You can see a tumblr summary of it here. “Sparks Fly” and the majority of my stories take place in the expansive Dark Heart Universe full of not so heroic Super Heroes and Super Villains with questionable but not necessarily bad morals. But I like to dabble all over and have WIPs including a horror duology, a scifi roadtrip story, and about 800 other WIPs that are going nowhere because I’m a pantser and that’s how i roll. Expect to see me name drop some characters or a story, tag it in one ask game, and then never mention it again rather frequently. I apologize in advance. The main stories you will actually see me mentioning a bunch are below the cut.
I technically have a website, and I technically have a twitter, but the former is a mess because I can’t program or remember to regularly blog and the latter i never use because social media scares me. Think there’s like 10 tweets on it and all of them are niche shitposts about my stories so... yea. I do have a Pinterest though, where you can find boards for most of my stories as well as a few of the name dropped once stories. so that’s fun. This intro is a mess.... Anyways, below the cut are some quick summaries of my main WIPs. If you want to learn more about the world that half of these are a part of (the DHU), look through this tag because my only summary series of it is way out of date.
Woodsmoke
A DHU novel. Woodsmoke is a Hero who 100% should not be going to the worst Villain in town, Stardust, for help, but fuck it he doesnt have any other option. In return for helping Woodsmoke save a whole bunch of school kids, Stardust demands Woodsmoke owes him a favor - he has to help Stardust and his gang get rid of the Director of the city’s Supers Association branch. The only probably is, the Director control everything, and Woodsmoke is utterly terrified of him. But, he owes a favor, and he’s even more afraid of what Stardust could do to civilians than he is of what the Director could do to him. When it all goes wrong, maybe its time for him to give up being a Hero and stop being Woodsmoke. Maybe it’s time to just be Vincent again, and finally heal from the damage the SA has done. This is on its fourth draft and still needs about 2 or so more (guessing here), but will hopefully be the next DHU book released (dont quote me on that im winging this)
Nightmare at the Lily Pad Inn
A DHU novel. Ben, who’s technically a Villain but really just can’t control their powers for shit and their powers are like, really scary so its bad, is on the run from their sociopathic asshole brother. They wind up at the Lily Pad Inn, a safe haven for Villains no matter what they’ve done, run by the cinnamon roll sweetheart Matty and their husband, Blue. While there, Ben meets Oliver, another not-technically-bad Super who can’t control his powers, and meets up with Morty, their best friend. Shit happens i guess idk i’ve not written a real summary for this one yet leave me alone. It’s on the first draft and its not even finished and i have no idea what the ending is because im a pantser go away.
Novella Collection
A DHU collection i guess. I’m not quite sure what else to call this because it’s made of three or so different novellas that I intend to fit together into a collection of novellas. The three novellas includes: the Empath, about Charlie who may just be the worlds most powerful empath and his partners who are very not happy with their area’s Director wanting Charlie to do something that could 100% kill him; Hell in High Heels, a historical DHU story about the Terra (Kitty), the Earth Elemental of the time, and Fer-De-Lance (Hattie), the Poison Elemental, and how they get married sorta unwillingly (thanks SA), break a shit ton of stereotypes, and help win World War 2.; and finally Wildfire, about the current day Fire Elemental and the Villain he really shouldn’t be so attracted to but 100% is and them chilling and being gay and idk this one needs a lot of work. All of these novellas have only had 1 draft and are still needing a lot of work.
And now for some not dhu stories...
The Other Beings / The Doll Maker
This is that horror duology I mentioned earlier. The Other Beings follow Nathan. He got sucked into the terrifying world of the Other Beings (well, 5 worlds actually), when he was 7 years old because of a brother he’s never quite forgiven for making him and his pseudo-sister Hazel hunt minor Beings for his whole childhood and fucking Nate up massively. He managed to leave the horror of the Other Beings for all of seven years before he was sucked back in by the Doll Maker, an Other Being with a penchant for turning pretty children and people into ball-jointed dolls. Turns out a horde of Other Beings is coming after him because of his dad which is a Bad and now he’s having to run as a human macguffin and trust me - he’s not happy about it. Only the Other Beings draft 1 has been written because it’s a dark story and with covid i have not have the mental energy to work on it more, but it’s super fun and i adore it. The Doll Maker, the second book, is solely about Doll Maker and his shit.
Paper Stars
Paper Stars is the scifi I mentioned, and just might be one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, even though its only had one draft because it’s hella depressing (literally, the mc River is seriously suicidal) and with all the shit in my life rn i haven’t had the strength to work on it more. but i adore the story. Basically, River’s life has gone to hell since his Grandpa died and the only thing making him hold on is really his alien best friend, Keio. When his depression gets even worse, he finally asks Keio to take him away from Earth and to space to escape his problems. This works, kinda, i mean he falls in love and shit (yes River falls in love with a seal furry alien, please go through the tag its great), but eventually he knows he has to face his problems and get help because this is a realistic story about depression and love doesnt cure all and you cant run from mental illness. It’s great.
That’s kinda all the main stories i mention a lot, all the others are little things i start and stop or that i write a self indulgent first draft but never intend to take it any further. all of these i fully intend to publish one day tho. So... yea. Welcome to my blog, its chaos but we have a good time.
