Written Works (DC Comics) (Patreon)

Money. It was genuinely shocking how many things were gatekept by the number of zeroes that were in your bank account. There were the big and obvious things -- like you had to be at least a multimillionaire to own a multimillion-dollar yacht. Or to afford one of those super-science doodads that 300+ IQ mega geniuses cooked up in their labs to throw down with the Justice League as step one of a multi-layered plan for world domination. A plan that always got stopped at step one.

But, on the poorer side of things, money was a constant concern. Five hundred dollars wasn’t a lot to have, but it was a lot to pay. Little expenses that added up -- utility bills, insurance for things that ranged from your car to your house to your health to your life. Not to mention food and entertainment. Each a small expense when you looked at it in a vacuum, but when you took a step back, you realized that of the thirty thousand dollars you earned a year, half of it was spent just maintaining your life. The other half went to the government for taxes. Which left you with a pitiful amount going towards savings and you were one unforeseen expense away from being destitute.

Like, for example, your potato of a PC finally giving out.

“No. No, no, no, no,” I groaned, desperately trying to turn the PC back on by holding the power button. The monitor flashed, as if it were starting to boot up, and then there was a pop and the scent of something burning before the monitor went black, and all I saw was my horrified expression looking back. Black hair, green eyes, and sort of handsome when I wasn’t looking to heaven for strength. Or money. I’d accept either at this point. “Why now?!” I sighed, dragging my hands down my face.

My PC dying had been a foregone conclusion. The thing made the computers in high school look bleeding edge. I had played with fire and got burned -- I went out with my last paycheck, confident that my PC would hold out a little longer because it already managed to cling to life for a month, which left me with not even half the amount I needed for a quality replacement. I could go cheap, but that might as well be throwing money away because I needed something with higher specs. Piecemeal it with upgrades over time?

Grabbing a notepad, I did a little math -- Rent, villain insurance, and bills cost me around three thousand a month. Rent was on the lower end because the inner city was where superhero fights happened. The villain insurance being one of my biggest expenses, even if I hadn’t used it yet. But, as a citizen of Star City, and America at large, I knew that the moment I dropped the policy, some supervillain would throw my apartment into the sun or something. My job as a delivery boy netted me around two thousand a month, with seven hundred bucks in tips.

Meaning, as it was, I didn’t make enough money a month.

And that was why God created the gig economy. Or capitalism did. I get them mixed up sometimes.

“I… can write something on my phone,” I said, getting up to where I tossed my phone. My apartment was pretty decent for what it was -- a glorified studio apartment. My bed was tucked in a corner, standing on the cheapest frame I had managed to find. Half of my furniture came from stuff I found lying on the side of the road, the things that other people were getting rid of. Grabbing the covers, I flipped them up and ended sending my phone flying against the wall where it promptly slid between the bed and the wall.

I hissed, my heart lurching in my chest. If I cracked my screen, I was going to cry- “Oh,” I muttered, looking under my bed for my phone and finding something else entirely. A typewriter. I forgot that I had that, honestly. Picked it up from a bargain bin because it looked cool, but I never actually had any use for it. Grabbing it, and my thankfully intact phone, I blew off the dust and gave it an inspecting look. A couple of button pushes proved that it still had some ink…

“I can use this,” I decided, taking a look at my phone and pulling up my inbox. As someone living below the poverty line, I found side hustles to bring in a little money here and there to keep my head above water. Helping someone move in or out, mowing a lawn, handing out fliers, but the one I found the most success with, however, was with writing.

I was no Mark Twain or J.R.R. Tolkien. Honestly, I liked to think I was somewhere between mediocre and decent -- though I was probably a lot closer to the former than the latter. But, people were willing to pay money for someone to write out something that they wanted to see. And by that, I meant masturbate to. I didn’t know the real statistics, but the one that sounded right to me was 99.999% of all commissions on the internet were for porn.

For one reason or another, I generally had a few commissions on the backburner, meaning that I usually had a bit of leeway with what I wrote. I hadn’t given in to the furries just yet, even if the pay was tempting. I was putting the finishing touches on a commission before my computer gave out, and I could finish it on my phone. If I wanted to get a decent computer, I needed a new one to start. Or, honestly, a couple-

As if summoned, I got another email. Tapping it, I gave it a quick glance over-

Cringe.

I had absolutely no right to throw any stones. Some of the things I had written to put food on the table left me feeling unclean by the time I put down the last period. However, some things were a lot easier to write than others. Some dude wanted two makebelieve characters fucking each other's brains out? Sure, whatever. That guy wanted them fucking in a particular way? That costs extra. I genuinely didn’t care one way or another, even if there were things that I would prefer to write or not write.

Superhero fanfiction was one of those things that just felt kind of gross to me. Superman might be a larger-than-life figure, but he was a real guy. I could turn on the TV right now, and he’d probably be saving a kitten from a tree or something. Wonder Woman, Batman, the Flash, the Green Lanterns, etc -- they were all real people. Sure, they might wear masks and their underwear on the wrong side, but they were people. Making fanfiction about them was like making fanfiction between two celebrities -- it was just weird.

“Double my rate, huh?” I muttered soullessly and I typed out the message, asking for specifics before I agreed to anything. The commission wasn’t anything out there, at least. Actually, it was fairly run of the mill -- the commissioner wanted their self-insert to develop a power, become a sidekick, then bang in the Hall of Heroes. Black Canary. Well, at least he had taste, I guess.

The commissioner -- HERO42069696969 -- replied quickly, listing out the specifics. And expressing a willingness for more longform content. Five chapters of five thousand words apiece, or twenty-five thousand words total. He sealed the deal with the words every starving artist wanted to hear.

‘I’ll pay half up front.’

“I’m pretty sure this makes me a whore,” I ventured, accepting the commission. It felt dirty, but I needed that computer. And when the commission was done, I’d even have a little spending money. It was worth it, I knew, lugging the typewriter over to my desk. It’d just cost me my immortal soul and my pride, but I’m pretty sure I lost all claim to them when I started writing smut despite being a sixteen-year-old virgin. “Well… twenty bucks is twenty bucks.”

Taking a seat, I got comfortable with typing on the thing, hearing a click and a clack as the slider slowly moved to the side. Then, when it reached the end of the nonexistent margin, it slid back in place. Neat. All of the style of a typewriter with none of the inconvenience. All that was left was to grab some printer paper and get to work. Which, sadly, had to come after a little bit of back and forth, but the commissioner was pretty easy to work with in that regard. They only cared about the arc that led to their SI banging Black Canary, everything else was up to me.

The moment that the first half of the commission money hit my bank account, I fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter and I went to work.

“Edgelord McGee broods in his bedroom, hating life, alone, and hating that he was alone,” I more or less summarized my thoughts on the guidelines for the ‘OC.’ Dark, brooding, a true Gray!Dark!Badass!So-and-So, a real ‘I’m fourteen and this is deep' type. It was pretty common, when it came right down to it -- tropes were tropes for damn good reasons, and a tragic backstory could be mistaken for a personality. Which made it a pretty familiar wheelhouse, if nothing else.

The opening page was simple. A loner who was running into an unfortunate bout of bad luck, which forced him outside of his comfort zone. And yes, I’m projecting. A quick snapshot of his values and immediate concerns to help get an immediate feel for his character with a little bit of flair to inject some personality into an otherwise dull internal monologue since you can’t have a loner be introduced actually speaking to someone. Well, other than himself.

“Unlikely circumstances that shouldn’t strain the reader's SOD too much -- even edgelords need milk for cereal. A little bit of social interaction to drop some hints about his dark and tragic past…,” I continued, my room being filled with the sound of clicks and clacks- Ah, crap. I forgot to add a little bit of description about his room. I could probably throw in an offhand mention and some vague descriptors -- decent place, bed in corner… yeah, that works.

What followed was a series of events that more or less lined up with what the public knew about heroes. Basically, they all had some kind of catalyst. Flash had gone on record that he had been hit with a wave of energy from a particle accelerator when one blew up in Central City. There had been plenty more examples to prove that it wasn’t a one-off. The Metagene. A little piece of DNA that was waiting for something to activate it, turning an otherwise average Joe into someone extraordinary.

I wasn’t looking to reinvent the wheel. Again - tropes were tropes for damn good reasons. The OC went out, finding himself in a dangerous situation. A sense of purpose filling his chest as he just can’t stand idly by, like all the normy bystanders, and for his heroism, he is rewarded with awesome powers. Could go pure wish fulfillment, but it was an easy opportunity.

“Black Canary comes bursting into the scene, rescuing the dumbass, and spotting his potential,” I continued. What would be a decent power to give the OC? The commissioner hadn’t specified. Hm… might be better to float an idea to him, letting him see it in action, and see how he feels. How about…?

With a pleased smile, I made my decision and got to writing.

…

The average page, with how I structured paragraphs, tended to cover around five hundred words. Sometimes a little more or a little less. Within a few hours, I had a neat little stack of pages next to the typewriter and with a little more flourish than necessary, I set the last one down on the pile. My fingers ached a little bit, and cringe or not, I had been feeling the muse. Now, I just had to photocopy the pages over into a digital format and make the edits.

Which I needed a computer to do.

Fuck me.

Swallowing a sigh, I pushed myself out of my seat, my spine popping like a machine gun. Oh, that felt great. I’m sure future me, when I was ninety, would absolutely hate me for it but that was his problem, not mine. Grabbing the stack of papers and shoving them in a folder, I looked up where I could transfer them to a thumb drive and found an office supply store a few blocks down the way.

Shrugging on some shoes that I left by the door, I headed out and locked the door behind me. A short ride down the elevator, I stepped onto the streets of Star City -- my hometown. Well, mostly. Spent the early years on the outskirts of the city itself, but pretty much as soon as I was able to, I moved into the inner city. The beating heart of Star City.

Which is why you had to be alert. Star City wasn’t Gotham -- Thank God -- or Metropolis. Star City didn’t have any villains that could straight up level a city block by punching it hard enough. What it did have was a charcuterie board of supervillains that treated collateral damage as a challenge to get a high score. There were a few times that shadowy organizations and the supervillains that led them nearly leveled the city, only for it to be pulled from the brink by Green Arrow, Black Canary, and their trusty sidekick Speedy.

So, keeping an eye out for trouble just made sense. Pay a little attention to avoid becoming a statistic.

And, despite my griping, the trip to the office supply store was rather unremarkable. The streets were bustling with bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the sidewalks were filled with pedestrians -- all of which were eager to get home after a long day's work. The sun was starting to make its descent to the horizon, and while Star City was one of the safer cities in America, there was no point in tempting fate.

A bell rang out as the door opened, greeting me along with the scent of ink. A number of photocopiers lined the wall with a few computers and work tables scattered about. The place was empty, except for a guy behind a desk, who turned around- “Alex?” I greeted him, blinking in surprise as his dark red eyebrows shot up.

“Will?” Alex greeted me in return, lazily spinning in a chair in an attempt to stave off boredom. “What are you doing here?”

I held up the manilla folder, “What are you doing here? You work here?” I asked him, surprised to see him here. Alex was a friend from school -- Star City Public Highschool. Go Archers. If I had to describe him in a single word… the word stoner came to mind. When he wasn’t smoking weed, he was selling it. I’m pretty sure he was the plug for everyone at school, which made it weird that he had an actual job. Especially taking the graveyard shift at an office supply store.

“Money laundering,” Alex said with exactly zero shame, slowing his spins and coming to a stop. “My uncle owns this place. So, I give him some cash to inflate my pay a bit, so I can actually claim my earnings from my side gig. That, and I work some hours. Tax evasion is how they got Al Capone, you know?” He said, leaning forward, his dark blue eyes drifting to the envelope with faint interest.

I wasn’t aware that Alex made enough that the IRS would care. “Huh. I figured you were the garden variety dealer,” I admitted, heading to one of the photocopiers and started scanning. “Didn’t know I was dealing with the second coming of Pablo Escobar,” I remarked. Alex was the plug for everyone at school when it came to weed -- myself included. So, it was a little weird to run into your drug dealer in a casual setting. I wouldn’t call us friends or anything, but we were at least friendly.

“Learn from the mistakes of the greats, I say,” Alex said with a lazy smile, propping his head up with a hand as he watched me scan the pages. “Speaking of great, you heading to the party this weekend?” He asked, and based on the ‘The’, I guessed I was supposed to already know what he meant. He must have noticed my clueless expression because he elaborated, “Thea Queen’s birthday. She’s invited half the city. Rented out a stadium for this weekend.”

As far as rich people went, the Queen family was pretty alright. They used to be a bunch of shitlords on par with that Bruce Wayne guy in Gotham, well before he discovered the wonders of charity tax write-offs -- the only times they were in the news, it was for one of them going in or out of rehab or getting in a drunken brawl. Nowadays, though, more often than not they were in the news for donating to charities or sponsoring public works. But, every once and a while… you were reminded that there was money, and then there was money.

“This weekend?” I muttered, feeling a pang in my chest. “Hm. Maybe,” I hedged. It wasn’t like I would busy for the entire day, but I’m not sure I would be in the mood-

“Ah, is it the anniversary? For your parent's deaths?” Alex ventured and I just… paused.

“Bro,” I blurted, slowly turning to him, my expression one of pure astonishment as I felt… I don’t even know. Stunlocked, almost. “What the fuck?” I followed it up, my jaw ajar as I struggled to process what he just said.

Who in their right mind casually brought up the deaths of someone's parents? That blew past lacking basic tact and left it behind miles ago. Like… that was weird, right? Normal people didn’t go mentioning offhand about how someone was an orphan. The interaction suddenly felt uncanny as Alex looked a little put out at my astonishment, like somehow I was in the wrong for what I felt was a pretty justifiable reaction. I wasn’t even mad. Or, maybe I was a little, but I was more completely caught off guard by the unnaturalness of how he brought it up.

“I mean, it is, isn’t it? Since they were murdered,” He continued and the shock was starting to wear off and was replaced with a cold anger.

“Bro,” I repeated, this time my tone was much sharper, carrying an edge of anger. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, making me clench my jaw. The anger still simmered in my chest -- he wasn’t wrong, and it wasn’t like it was a secret. My parents were dead. Murdered.

And I had no answers.

No idea who did it. No idea why. I didn’t know if they were involved in something or if they were collateral damage by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a glaring mystery that I had no way of gaining answers, and after about five years, the case had officially gone cold and I knew that I wasn’t likely to get any.

“I was only asking, man,” Alex defended as I turned to the computer, logging on to a word doc and copying the files to it. All the while, I silently fumed. “I mean, they’re your parents. I’m pretty sure they’d-”

“How about you shut up about my parents, yeah?” I snapped, shooting him a dark look. What was with him? His eyes carried a red twinge, telling me that he was at least a little high, but that wasn’t an excuse. You could at least exhibit some level of self-control and not run your mouth like that. “Don’t tell me what they would want for me. Don’t talk about them at all.” I continued, a warning in my voice.

I was a scrawny thing, partly because I pretty much grew a foot in the past year alone. But, I knew how to scrap if I needed to, and I wasn’t above smacking the words right out of his mouth.

If nothing else, Alex seemed to realize that he was pissing me off enough that I’d find a new plug as a matter of principle. “Right, sorry. My bad. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he offered as a weak apology that I was less than inclined to accept. “How about I wave whatever you’re supposed to pay for the computer?” He offered, and that…

“... thanks,” I decided to accept that for what it was. A peace offering. Grabbing the thumb drive, I pocketed it. The word doc had cloud share, so I would be able to access the drafts on my phone. It would be an absolute pain, but I could do the edits on my phone. I could even start doing it here, on a computer, but the entire vibe was off. Alex came at me with some serious out-of-left-field shit, and I wanted to get gone.

Offering a halfhearted wave over my shoulder, I started to head towards the exit, only to pause when I noticed something odd across the street through a window. A scattering of people. That got warning bells ringing as I stepped forward to get a look at what exactly was going on. Looking left, I saw a car that was acting pretty crazy, weaving in and out of traffic. A criminal? I wasn’t that worried about it until someone leaned out of the window and started firing at the car behind them, one that was giving chase.

The pops of gunfire echoed out in the air as I crouched down, trying to make myself a smaller target while keeping an eye on the developing situation. Scenes like these weren’t uncommon, when it came down to it. There was rising tension between some gangs as Brick, the head of the mafia that had a pretty tight stranglehold on Star City’s underbelly, was incarcerated. Blood in the water, but the cops and Green Arrow seemed to have it on lock.

So, I wasn’t exactly worried. And because I wasn’t worried, a thought that should have been me diving for cover was instead something far more casual.

‘Huh. It’s like the chapter,’ I noted dully, watching as the two vehicles rapidly approached, the car giving chase and started to shoot back. That wasn’t really a shocker, when it came down to it -- both the shoot out, and the similarities. Write what you know, and all that jazz. ‘If a bullet hits the back tire, the car will-’

A bullet struck the back tire of the lead car, making it swerve where it sideswiped a car on the road and the driver lost all control over it. The cherry red vehicle went up into the air, and… oh. That’s getting pretty close, huh?

“G-Get down!” I exclaimed as I dove for cover, my hands going over my head as everything around me became pure noise. The awful gut wrenching sound of twisting metal, the harsh sound of glass shattering, the dull sound of brick and mortar and drywall being shattered -- all if it happened all at once, and it was overwhelming. I felt bits of rubble rain down on me, a layer of dust coating my lungs as my heart pounded and I struggled to breathe.

I wasn’t the only one. The only sound in the building seemed to be the cracking of glass and some coughing as everyone recovered from the abrupt entrance. I think I recovered first, managing to push myself into a sitting position, and I realized that the car had just about taken me out. If I hadn’t ducked down, I’d be under it right now. I swallowed thickly, and my lizard brain took over -- the cold primal part of your brain that was developed over thousands of years when our ancestors realized they were in danger.

Time didn’t so much slow down as my thoughts sped up. The manilla folder was crushed in my white-knuckled grip, the words fresh in my mind. The Protagonist goes out, and a random car chase ends with a car smashing into the bodega that he was in, with the gangsters that gave chase pulling up and…

The lizard brain took control. Impossibility didn’t matter. Disbelief didn’t either. All that mattered was an ice-cold certainty that I was in danger and that if I didn’t make the right moves, then I was going to die.

Twice was a coincidence.

Exactly as I had written down, the gangsters opened fire into the building and the only thing that I could hear was the deafening sounds of gunfire. The bullets tore through the front of the building, where I had been sitting before I began to crawl away on my hands and knees as fast as I possibly could. And, despite the surge of adrenaline in my system, I couldn’t help but note that things were different.

In the chapter, it was a bodega -- a little mom and pop shop that the OC had grown up buying from, as a way to show personal loyalty in the character. The car had taken the OC out, half burying him under it and the rubble, dying slowly from the blood seeping from him. The panicked screaming from the old couple had inspired him into action, the trauma triggering his metagene. So, I might have missed my shot there, I thought to myself.

Yet, three times was a pattern.

A bat laid on the ground, where it had fallen out of the car during the wreck. Polished wood that was now coated in a layer of dust that was still in the air. In the story, it had been a pipe. Same difference, I suppose.

This was the part of the story where the OC stands up and is brave. Where he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was hero material. That he was cut from the same cloth as Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Black Canary. That the universe had been right to reward his moralistic integrity with superpowers. He would pick up that bat, he would stand tall, and he would save the day even if he generally had no idea what he was doing, and he would succeed because his heart was in the right place and in fiction, that’s all you needed to pull out a win.

Fuck.

That.

Ignoring the bat entirely, I scrambled for a corner that I could hide in and I found it under a desk and flanked by some photocopiers. Laying on the ground, I tucked myself into a ball, cowering as I waited for the shooting to stop. The gangsters in the car managed to get out -- guns were shockingly inaccurate or their aim was truly atrocious -- and started to shoot back. They took cover where they could, one of them hopping over the help desk where Alex would have been.

The cork wood didn’t do a lot to stop bullets, and the gangster found that out the hard way when he tried to hide behind it. He went down, shouting out in pain and I heard it despite my hands covering my ears.

I lived in a world of extremes. On one side of the spectrum, you had Superman. The guy was beyond strong, and quite frankly, if he ever had the mind to, he could probably take over the planet single-handedly. I wouldn’t even be against it, because the man had proven that he was as morally righteous as Jesus of Nazareth. On the other side, you had people like the Joker, who didn’t even need powers to be one of the most prolific mass murderers in history. He tried to poison the water supply in Gotham at least a dozen times, he firebombed orphanages and kicked every puppy he could find.

I, on the other hand, was normal. I wasn’t righteous. I wasn’t immoral. I wasn’t particularly ambitious. I wasn’t cruel.

I was just a dude.

The gangsters traded fire for a terrible long second and I flinched every time a bullet came anywhere near me. One punched through the photocopier to my right, another was directly overhead, one skimmed a table leg -- with every bullet, my heart leapt to my throat as I waited for the end of the chapter to manifest. Things were very different, but-

I heard it. The shrill shriek that anyone in Star City knew by heart. The sound of Black Canary screaming. Through my squinted eyes, I saw the gangsters reacting, their hands covering their ears and for the briefest of seconds, they were distracted.

In that moment, Black Canary entered the scene. A mane of blonde hair, a black corset and leggings with a half-biker jacket. With combat boots that went up to her knees, she lashed out with a foot, catching one gangster in the collarbone, snapping it like a twig before she leapt off of him. She almost seemed to defy gravity, she moved so gracefully, landing in a low crouch to sweep the leg out from another gangster before delivering a powerful elbow to his chin.

By that time, the last remaining gangster managed to recover, turning his gun to her and I watched in awe as Black Canary dodged bullets, which peppered in the space where she had been. In a second, she closed the distance between them, knocking the gun from his hand before delivering a jaw-shattering upper knee to the bottom of his chin.

That should have been the end of the fight then and there. I had been kneed in the face. It hurt. I imagined getting kneed in the face by Black Canary would hurt a whole lot more. Instead, the gangster lashed out with a wild haymaker, catching her in the side with a blind swing meant to drive her away, and it knocked her clear across the room and she landed in a heap, skidding on busted tables and glass. She simply rolled to her feet, both of us realizing what the casual display of power meant.

The gangster was superhuman.

“You bitch!” He yelled, his voice slurred ever so slightly, telling me that the knee had at least hurt him. He lumbered forward as Black Canary flipped to her feet, the scrapes doing little to slow her down, and I knew enough to see that she was favoring a side. The thought that came shouldn’t have come -- in the end, I had seen videos of her taking down way bigger game than some guy that was a little bit stronger and more durable than normal. She was a member of the Justice League.

The Justice League. The heroes that saved the world again and again and again, and they always came home at the end of it. The handful of individuals that had proven they could be trusted with the responsibility of the entire world.

However, I watched those videos from the safety of a screen, in my room, where they were just another neat event that popped up online. Almost like they were clips from a TV show rather than a real life and death event. And that’s what changed things for me.

If Black Canary died here, then I would die. My lizard brain told me so. I felt it in my bones.

It wasn’t bravery that had me crawling out of my hidey hole. It wasn’t courage that made me inch my way toward the bat while the two titans fought. Black Canary was like a dancer, evading the blows while delivering her own, but the more she fought, the clearer it became that her side was bothering her. To me and the gangster. The only life I was concerned about saving was my own as I shakily rose to my feet, gripping the baseball bat with white knuckles and a gnawing pit of fear in my gut.

I felt the bat hum under my grip, and that didn’t make any sense. I missed the trigger event for the MC to develop the power I gave him. But, that didn’t matter. Because there hadn’t been a superhuman among the gangsters I wrote either. Later, when my circulatory system wasn’t three parts adrenaline, I could analyze that.

For now, I simply raised the bat and grit my teeth. Black Canary took notice of me, her dark blue eyes meeting mine and widening ever so slightly. Wordlessly, she understood what I planned and simply shifted one way, putting the gangsters back towards me. Summoning all of my strength, I took a swing.

In the chapter, the gangsters had more or less been reduced to a fine mist upon impact. Not because of super strength, but because of the power that was imbued into the bat itself. Vague energy bullshit, essentially. Something that I could do basically whatever I wanted with without being too concerned about the hard limits of what it could or couldn’t do. Perfect for a short story.

That didn’t happen.

I swung with all of my strength, feeling the impact rattle my bones, and all I got for my efforts was a dull grunt when the bat struck the gangster’s head at the side. Didn’t even manage to knock him out. Meaning something was going on there, but I was a little too busy shitting my pants to worry about that.

Black Canary didn’t seem to have any expectation that I would manage to knock him out. She pounced on the distraction instead, launching into a flurry of blows -- thigh, ribs, then chin before she spun in the air before he had even realized the first blow had landed, dropped her heel to his temple, and slammed him into the floor with enough force I felt it through my feet. The gangster certainly felt it, because he didn’t get up.

Shakily, I met Black Canary’s gaze, and I found her sending me a reassuring smile. “You did good, kid,” she offered in a soothing voice. “Everything is going to be okay.”

And the fool that I was…

I believed her.

…

I’ve been playing some Alan Wake II, and it proved to be inspiring. I wouldn’t call this an actual crossover -- there is no Dark Place, none of the characters will show up, but the power itself is very much inspired by Alan Wake. And for those that aren’t familiar with it, it is essentially a low form of reality warping that is channeled through written works. Hence the name.

The power is a little complicated, so I’ll elaborate a bit -- The general principle behind how the power functions is plausibility. The MC can write events into the world, such as car chase, but he cannot outright fabricate something from nothing, such an old couple that he's known since a wee boy or a pipe. Generally speaking, the power will try to tweak things so the possible events are still hit -- the pipe becoming a baseball bat since it was in the car. But, if things are too outside of the wheelhouse, then they don't happen.

For example, he can’t write a nonexistent race of aliens abducting him, exposing him to a nonexistent form of radiation, and twist his DNA in ways that he doesn’t understand to give him incredible superpowers. What he could do, however, is write about an existing race of aliens abducting him, exposing him to something like nuclear radiation, and instead of it killing him, he doesn’t die and opens the door for beneficial mutations. In that case, what happened with Alex will happen -- the event 'Mentioning tragic backstory' will get passed on to someone that generally fits the bill provided that it makes sense. Like, the Reach aren't going to cross the galaxy to pick up a random human, but they would if they're already on earth and looking to abduct some kids. Likewise, if Alex didn't work at the shop, and it was some random guy, the event wouldn't have fired because the guy wouldn't know about Will's parents.

The key component of the power is something that wouldn’t strain a reader’s suspension of disbelief. To explain further -- he can’t give Superman a weakness at the drop of a hat, so something like this wouldn’t work:

Chapter 1 -- Superman has developed a new weakness to 5G signals.

As both a reader and a writer, that is outright absurd. It’s not plausible and it breaks SOD. However, with the proper build up, it can become plausible even if it’s still not good writing.

Chapter 1 -- Superman is exposed to a shit ton of kryptonite.

Chapter 2 -- Superman notes that his DNA was damaged due to Luthor doing something.

Chapter 3 -- Superman notices that he’s always kinda not feeling well and becomes sensitive when people are talking on their phones.

Chapter 4 -- Superman flies by a 5G tower and dies.

Still objectively stupid, but it follows and builds on a sequence of events. It’s nudging reality down a path rather than outright inventing one. I’ll answer if anyone has further questions about the power, but for the story itself, it’s going to be my first real return to DC in over a year.

The overarching plot is William Wake, our protagonist, being dragged into the world of heroes and villains as he explores the limits of his powers. A focus on the struggle of bending reality for the sake of a happy ending and controlling it to make sure it happens. And a mystery of who murdered his parents and why. Overall, I am feeling a more heroically inclined MC who has his struggles with darkness and corruption at the power he has.

The universe is a hodgepodge of DC -- Young Justice will serve as the base for the world, with Teen Titans and general DC making substitutions or providing filler. I’m not really sure what it would be in terms of length, but I think it would be a longterm story because there are a number of ideas I’d like to play around with.

If you have any other questions, then please let me know!