Dei/ktbl

"[...] LTC Briggs hates doing it, Major Blade refuses to because the worry is media will also try to latch onto her personal life,” and Rivera levels him with those brown eyes, her perfectly maintained eyebrows narrowing ever so slightly, “so somehow it's ended up on *my* plate to deal with.”

TGIF I guess? It's been A Week and I'm feeling overwhelmed and trying to hammer out some projects so I can feel like I'm making progress. It's hard. Pitched a story, revisions on an original novel, working on a couple long (fan)fics, some original shorts and a novella... Brain is goo. Needs rest.

CageBlade Recs List While I write a bunch of CageBlade myself, I also like reading it. And in these low-Sonya times, there’s… not been a lot of it, so I want to shine a light on some of the fics that I enjoy, both ol...

I posted this on Tumblr a bit ago but I'll drop it here too for any of my Mortal Kombat folks looking for a little more CageBlade content. We have a Sonya drought right now and here's a little rec list I did up for the Sonya Blade / Johnny Cage shippers out there. www.tumblr.com/dei2dei/7361...

Kitana

Fan Art of actress Adeline Rudolph as Kitana from the Mortal Kombat series, who will be portraying her in the upcoming film. Enjoy!

I'm always up for having conversations with people about writing (on the r/ff discord or otherwise) and connecting, but it's all about expectations... Not everything translates well from one writing environment to another (fanfic/commercial/tradpub, for example). And not everyone wants to hear it.

A tumblr ask from izukuleeyoung to drchucktingle, asking "How do you feel about Tingleverse fanfiction? Forgive me if I never actually saw your stance on it!"; the response from Chuck Tingle is "buckaroo you can write fanfiction about anything you want. including the tingleverse. honestly bury your gays is basically tingleverse fanfiction that just happens to be written by the actual author fanfiction proves love".

This made me chuckle, and yes: fanfiction *is* love.

I do appreciate her attempt to figure out lore that would do it, and then also a Geras-specific fatality where you vacuum up his sand form, then walk around with a "Bag of Geras", so I'm consoling myself with images of Johnny Cage hitting Geras with the bag, doing the "Stop hitting yourself!" bit.

One of my kids this morning tried to rationalize how I can have Frost as a kameo in MK1 & how the Invasions char I'm fighting can ALSO have Frost. "Can't it just say 'if user has Frost, then swap?" and tried to make it work with the basic coding they know and it's... bless, kiddo, NRS doesn't care.

Cianciolo said it was a one-off which annoys me. Here's a link to the blue bird app where Gail has Story Time about the situation; it's a funny read IMO! twitter.com/GailSimone/s...

I would also *kill* for Kombat Pony.

I still wish we'd gotten the Gail Simone overseen run*s*. She was going to be overseeing several titles and it would have been *great*, but... whatever happened happened and it never got off the ground. I still regret that never happening. I would have loved to see the stories we got.

Nice post from @matociquala.bsky.social on substack about fallow time today; halfway into NaNo I'm feeling it. I'm actively taking time each day to NOT write, to just let content wash over me, take walks, revitalize a little. Burnout and exhaustion are real and the pressure to Maintain is high.

Had someone drop into my DMs asking if I did writing (fanfic) comms. I generally don't, but if someone has an idea I'll hear it out in case it really intrigues me. I know very few who do comms: legal issues are #1, and #2, most authors I know have their own ideas and projects & not enough time.

This month's NaNo progress (mostly on Legacies, some of Trigonometry, and some bits and bobs in other projects):

Legacies in Memory and Dust C10 is almost done, coming in at over 6k... almost 70k in the Scriv file, and nearly half done. Why did I have to go "romance plus political thriller" angle on this?

(answer: because I can't leave well enough alone, and Mortal Kombat is fucking perfect for it)

Here's a Reptile from Mortal Kombat
(For the Greentober/Inktober thing)

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sorry, I meant to say:

M O R T A L K O M B A T ! ! !

*Voice echoes*

Okay, after three years of faffing around... Finally Trigonometry is ready!

Some post-Mortal Kombat X Sonya Blade, Johnny Cage, and Takahashi Kenshi have always been hot messes that work best together. Life split them up - and now is bringing them back together.

archiveofourown.org/works/51273868

AO3 comment reading: I disappeared because I devoured this fic from here and couldn't stop, but am back on a reread. So yeah, I loved this. A lot! Let me break some bits down...

I needed this. Because, quite literally wondering if I should just give up on the words, I got an essay from a reader in the form of a comment. It started here and kept going.

Comments are love. And that comment may come in clutch and be just what an author needs to keep going.

Dying Light: Monsters, We. Blood from Stone, starts today!

In it, Kyle Crane is one long night away from burning Villedor to ash, while Aiden clings to his humanity, and Zofia, locked away in yet another cage, fights to forget hers.

Read it on Ao3:
archiveofourown.org/works/38372809

I may be joining the Our Flag Means Death fandom after the addition of Zheng Yi Sao & Archie & Mary & Anne. OFMD just had to give me awesome lady pirates.

An interstitial post-S2E3 moment from ZYS's perspective, left betrayed and adrift in more ways than one.

archiveofourown.org/works/50895196

This is gorgeous.

AO3 comment snippet which reads: Hey hey! *fangirling* *Big hugs* I'm trying to leave you comments on everything so you know just how much I love and appreciate your work, and yesss girl, printing and petting this is the least of what it deserves. There needs to be a fanfic hof just so this can be inducted. It's super special.

Comments like this are why I write. This is regarding _Between the Ridiculous and the Sublime_, a 137k Mortal Kombat Legends fic where Sonya Blade gets some of the post-traumatic stress disorder therapy and relationship navigation time, she so desperately needs.

archiveofourown.org/works/33814750

we're regressing on sexism issues and Igbt issues Replying to [redacted] Sex positivity is good, actually. Replying NOT WITH FICTIONAL CHARACTERS Replying Why? Replying: Because they don't have agency Replying When two charactets have sex in a story, do you consider that sexual coercion? Because they are being forced by the writer? Replying to unironically yes. unless you are writing something based on your own personal experience and your fictional character is a fictionalised version of yourself, then yes I see it that way.

FICTIONAL SEX IS COERCIVE BECAUSE CHARACTERS ARE FORCED INTO IT BY AUTHORS I AM SCREAMING

I always joke about being Fandom Mom and an enabler, and I have just been told

"now i'm just imagining you yelling encouragement like a significantly nicer version of gordon ramsey "

NOW GET IN THERE! WRITE WORDS! PUNCTUATION CAN COME LATER! CAN'T EDIT A BLANK PAGE!

I've decided to start keeping my fanworks mildly separated from the not-fanwork writing I do, so I'll chat here, drop my AO3 links, etc.

I write mostly Mortal Kombat, sometimes Overwatch, and I'm being seduced by Baldur's Gate 3. Absolute enabler.

Find me on AO3: archiveofourown.org/users/ktbl