#and it surprisingly didn't when i read heartless's backstory

[hood-ex]

Hi, Emily! Sorry to bother you with this but what are your thoughts on Nightwing's new villain Heartless? Like, do you like him, despise him, think he's interesting or... something...? I confess I haven't read the new series of baby boy Dick but I've seen pictures of this dudebro and I'm????? kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda intrigued but not as much as I could?????

I'm kind of indifferent towards him.

He was brought out of his nonverbal state after witnessing Dick's parents fall to their deaths. He reveled in their deaths, and because of that, he kind of has an obsession with the demise of Dick's family. Er maybe not an obsession but... their deaths filled him with life. Using his inherited money, he intentionally had parts of his body amputated and replaced to make him more like a cyborg. Now he goes around ripping people's hearts out of their chests because he loves the thrill of the hunt as well as the fear from his victims.

The fact that he was there the night that Dick's parents died is kind of annoying because there have already been quite a few people/rogues who happened to see the Flying Graysons perform. But eh. It is what it is.

I think TT dropped the ball a bit by introducing Heartless and showcasing him as a menace that needed to be stopped immediately, but then he put Heartless on the back burner and had Dick put all of his attention on stopping Blockbuster instead. Now I know Blockbuster had to be involved at some point in order for Heartless to rip out his massive heart, but by shifting the focus to Dick and Blockbuster so early on, TT took away all the tension and sense of urgency that could've been built up between Dick and Heartless.

Dick's lack of urgency in taking down Heartless made Heartless seem like less of a priority, and therefore, less of a threat. That idea was reinforced when Dick realized that Heartless had ripped out Blockbuster's heart, but instead of putting all his attention into going after Heartless, he went to go babysit a mobster and have sex with Babs.

Later, Heartless broke into a prison and sicced all the prisoners on Bludhaven. Did Dick end up going after him after Heartless fled? Nope. A whole new storyline involving another villain started up instead.

So, yeah, Heartless could be more interesting if he didn't keep popping up just long enough for Dick to be like, "Oh damn!! That heart stealing dude!" and then having Dick forget about him 10 seconds later.

#honestly don't think they should've shoved heartless's backstory into the annual issue. they should've put it in a regular issue #i personally think it's the best thing tt has written in his run so far #and that's probably mostly because dick isn't involved in it other than in flashbacks #so i don't have to suffer through tt's bad characterization of him and can instead focus on learning about a new character #but also. i've mentioned that tt's dialogue really grinds my gears #and it surprisingly didn't when i read heartless's backstory #which goes to show me that tt is better at writing OCs than he is at writing established characters. which like... same lmao. #Shelton Lyle #Heartless #anon

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Happy STS!

So I'm reading the second half of the Undeserved ebook, and I noticed it jumps forward in time to when Damien and Merridy are already together, which confused me a bit until I realized that the part skipped over is Glass Shards, which is a whole separate book (and which I understand you actually wrote first!)

So my question is with stories that jump around in time, how do you decide what to include where, especially when making ebooks?

Hello :D

Glass Shards I wrote in 2016, way before I knew about, or would have been brave enough to call it whump. I was just a frustrated lil baby ace, whose best plan to get two chars to talk to each other was obviously to cut someone's arm off.

When I started writing Undeserved for a monthly prompt challenge, I had no idea it would become this... big. I just looked at the prompts, found they matched what I had of Damien's backstory so far, and wanted to give it a try. And then I couldn't stop! Almost all chapters of Undeserved/Fancy Boots have been written for some kind of prompt challenge, from monthly ones to bthb.

It's not usually how I'd write a book. There's too many povs, with some being super rare (Valadan). There's chapters written twice, in different povs. There's all this unnecessary torture 😆 But eh, I decided to wrap it all up without removing anything. Like, now it existed, and someone might like it, right?

As ebook only, I would probably have kept it separate; Undeserved and "Fancy Boots" have both around 45k words, which is a nice novella length, and I do consider them the prequel and sequel to GS. But I also wanted to print them, and that means cover, back and front, fonts, blurb, chapter headers. And - no. Didn't wanna do that twice, so I put them together, and I couldn't be bothered to do the ebook differently, especially since I also offer a PDF.

Quite honestly, putting them up like that for free (it's not free for me! :) surprisingly internet things cost money!) is thankless already. In making it convenient to read, I do not have a platform to get likes, comments or even a fucking view counter, so all I can do is make it for myself.

For me it made the most sense, due to recurring characters, style and the red line of the rebels flashbacks, so I did what I wanted. Same reason I put the sunrise interlude in - because I wanted to :p Were this a published book, I'd mark it more clearly inside the book as prequel and sequel to another, but pretty much the only place to even find them is my blog.

Because it was already written (though in German), the Glass Shards outline was decided from the moment I started putting it up in English. Over the year of writing it, I did a bunch of prompt fills and stuff for additional short pieces, most of which sadly won't make it in. Again, there isn't much to decide there, they were never part of the outline, and while i might be stubborn enough to replace one of the unspecified nightmares with Heartless, I'm quite happy with the pacing of GS.

In that scope, it's unlikely it will ever happen again. Thorns and Jasmine and Twisted Thorns have some overlap, but I mostly consider the Tumblr stuff self-written fanfic 🤣 I would need a hell of a downtime to even think about putting it in epub format.

Everything else currently written or planned is self-sufficient. There's always a chance I'll write a bonus chapter or two that will remain Tumblr-only, but I am quite done with challenges for now.

#salad-ask #clairelsonao3 #sts ask