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#every time I try to conceptualize them it's like trying to look at someone without my glasses

palms-upturned · 2 years

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YEAH AND ITS LIKE KIM IS THIS WISH FULFILLMENT FANTASY FOR SUICIDAL PEOPLE RIGHT, LIKE HE MEETS YOU AT THE EXACT MOMENT THAT YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO REBOOT YOUR WHOLE LIFE, HE DOESN’T KNOW YOUR PAST OR HAVE ANY PRIOR OPINION OF YOU, HE ONLY GETS TO KNOW THE VERSION OF HARRY THAT YOU’RE TRYING TO RESHAPE AS THE PLAYER. AND HE HOLDS YOU ACCOUNTABLE WITHOUT BEING JUDGMENTAL, AND HE’S KIND AND PATIENT AND EVEN GENUINELY LIKES YOU AND YOUR COMPANY! HE’S LIKE A PILLAR OF STRENGTH AND THE MOMENT YOU LAY EYES ON HIM YOU JUST KNOW THAT HE WOULD LITERALLY DIE TO PROTECT YOU. HE’S JUST SOMEONE WHO YOU FEEL SUPER SAFE WITH IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD, YOU KNOW? SO PART OF THAT HALO IMAGERY IS A REFLECTION OF THAT, LIKE YEAH HARRY HAS A HABIT OF IDEALIZING PEOPLE AND ITS BAD BUT ALSO KIM DOES REPRESENT AN IDEAL TO THE PLAYER. WHAT’S HOLY ABOUT HIM IS THAT IDEAL OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND SUPPORT. AND ON TOP OF THAT KIM’S HALO HAS THAT SORT OF DOUBLE MEANING OF A SUNRISE. HARRY IS FIXATED ON THE IDEA OF A SUNSET AND HIS LIFE COMING TO AN END BUT KIM TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO THE SUNRISE INSTEAD. THATS WHAT THAT HALO BEHIND KIM REALLY IS. THE SOUND OF THE KINEEMA AND KIM’S ARRIVAL IN HIS LIFE IS WHAT WAKES HARRY FROM HIS BLACKOUT BUT THE INFERNAL ENGINE ISN’T THE KINEEMA, IT’S HARRY! WAKING UP EVERY DAY JUST TO DO IT ALL AGAIN! AGAIN! GETTING WORSE EVERY DAY BUT STILL HANGING ON IN THE HOPES OF SOMEDAY GETTING BETTER. SUNRISE PARABELLUM, TIME TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY. BUT HARRY DOESN’T HAVE TO FIGHT ALONE! IF YOU TREAT KIM RIGHT HE’LL STICK BY YOU. AND THAT’S THE ONLY WAY TO GET THROUGH IT, YOU KNOW? WITH SUPPORT. BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT KIM IS STILL A COP, RIGHT? AND HE ONLY GIVES YOU THAT SUPPORT BECAUSE YOU’RE ALSO A COP. THE SAD TRUTH OF THE WHOLE GAME IS THAT THERE’S NO ENDING WHERE EITHER OF YOU STOP BEING COPS. YOU PROBABLY NEVER WILL. WHEN THE GUYS FROM THE UNSOLVEABLE CASE GET DRUNK AND CAUSE TROUBLE, THEY GET BRUTALIZED BY HARRY AND NOBODY CARES BECAUSE THEY WERE DRUNKS. WHEN HARRY GETS DRUNK AND BRUTALIZES CIVILIANS, HE GETS OFFERED A PROMOTION BECAUSE HE’S A COP. AND KIM ISN’T ABOVE ABUSING HIS POWER IN PETTY WAYS EITHER. THE TRUTH IS THAT IF YOU WEREN’T A COP HE WOULD TREAT YOU THE SAME AS ANY OTHER ADDICT ON THE STREET. HE WOULDN’T BE YOUR FRIEND. ISN’T THAT FUCKING SAD? THE BEAUTIFUL HOLY MIRACLE OF DISCO ELYSIUM THAT HARRY AND KIM COME SO CLOSE TO GLIMPSING IS JUST LOVE. GENUINE LOVE AND CARE FOR PEOPLE AROUND YOU AND LETTING IT MOVE YOU TO BE KIND IN MATERIAL WAYS. THAT’S WHAT KEEPS THE INFERNAL ENGINE GOING. THAT’S WHAT SHIVERS MEANS WHEN IT SAYS “I LOVE YOU.” THE CITY LOVES YOU BECAUSE COMMUNITIES ARE NOTHING WITHOUT LOVE. AND ALL OF THIS IS COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO THE POLICE STATE. THATS WHY YOU GET A GLIMPSE OF IT IN MARTINAISE, A TOWN ABANDONED BY THE POLICE. EVERYONE THERE KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE POWERLESS. EVERYWHERE THEY LOOK THEY SEE THE SCARS OF BOMBINGS AND FAILED ATTEMPTS TO GENTRIFY THEM. HELL, EVEN THE PALE IS CREEPING INTO THE CITY. BUT THE PEOPLE KEEP GOING. YOU KEEP GOING. AND YOU ALMOST REALIZE WHY. BUT YOU NEVER QUITE GET THERE BECAUSE A COP WILL ALWAYS BE A COP FIRST AND A HUMAN SECOND, INCLUDING KIM. HE’LL KEEP DRESSING LIKE A REVOLUTIONARY AND THERE WILL PROBABLY ALWAYS BE THAT LITTLE SEED OF SHAME IN HIM BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE’S LYING TO HIMSELF BUT HE’LL NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT BECAUSE HE’S RESIGNED HIMSELF TO BEING UNABLE TO CONCEPTUALIZE A FUTURE BEYOND THE FAILURES OF THE PAST OR THE PRESENT STATUS QUO. BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR A POLICE STATE. AND HE KNOWS IT BUT HE WON’T FACE IT ANY MORE THAN HE’LL FACE THE DIFFERENCES IN HOW HE TREATS YOU VS CUNO OR THE KIDS ON THE ICE. HARRY IS THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO SEE KIM AS A SAINT BECAUSE HE’S A COP. AND IN THE END YOU AND KIM LEAVE THE REALITIES OF MARTINAISE BEHIND THE SAME WAY THAT DORA LEAVES THE REALITIES OF DISABILITY AND POVERTY BEHIND WHEN SHE LEAVES HARRY. THE LOVE WAS ALWAYS CONDITIONAL AND ALWAYS WILL BE IF THEY CAN’T STOP BEING COPS. ANYWAY HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF TEHO TEARDO AND BLIXA BARGELD—

Image description: two people at a party or concert of some kind. One person is leaning into the other’s ear and shouting with an arm around their shoulder, the other is standing stiffly and looks exasperated. End description

#disco elysium #kim kitsuragi #all caps #SORRY. I SWEAR IM DONE NOW.#MARTINAISE i meant they leave the realities of martinaise behind not revachol. but i mean. that too in a way

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starry-bi-sky · 2 months

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show me how to lay my sword down long enough to let you through - clone^2 ch1

A little boy has landed in Amity Park, and he looks suspiciously like the 13-year-old Damian Wayne living in Gotham. Good news: he landed in front of Danny just as he was finishing up his fight with a ghost. Bad news: the little Damian-look-alike doesn't speak a lick of english, has a sword, and seems very keen on using it whenever he can. Against Danny specifically.

Danny already has his own issues to deal with -- like how it's not even been a year since he found out he was a clone of Bruce Wayne specifically, with all the identity issues that come with such a revelation -- and a stab-happy six year old that was very obviously a clone of Damian Wayne was not one of them. However, the kid was alone in a foreign country, and despite his hostility, it's very clear that he's terrified.

Call him a bleeding heart, but Danny takes him home.

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womp i wrote it and posted it. truly, it was only a matter of time before i did. my clone^2 au except now it's a fic! Here is the humble beginnings of this au if anyone is interested. The full thing is also posted below the read more if you want to read it here instead.

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Danny knows more than he probably should about ghosts, ectoplasm, and all things relating to it — courtesy only in partial credit to his parents and largely to every ghost, spirit, mythological creature, and conceptual entity taken sentient form he’s ever come across in the last two years of his run as Phantom.

For example: he’s learned how to classify the difference between a ghost and a spirit when the words are synonymous with each other. He knows that ghosts cannot pass into the Realm of the Living without a naturally-made or manmade portal that splits the seams between dimensions like holes being chewed through a shirt.

He knows that spirits are just weaker could-be ghosts that are trapped in the Living Realm, unseen by the Living, with unfinished business until someone can come along to help them move on. He’s helped quite a handful of them in the last two years thanks to his clairvoyance, but the city has more spirits than he could possibly know how to deal with. So his efforts are like trying to empty a pond with a bucket.

Danny still tries, anyway. One afterlife saved is one afterlife saved, right?

What he also knows is that natural made portals are exceedingly rare. That they occur when ectoplasm in any given area for some reason or another currents against each other, condensing and building in energy and density until eventually something gives and like snow on top of a roof it caves in and creates a portal.

He knows that these natural made portals typically only last a few seconds at a time, and vary between the size of a rodent and a marsupial no bigger than a wallaby. He knows that most natural portals only last from a few seconds to a few minutes, with the record-holder being five minutes from a portal that was the size of a toddler.

And the reason they never last so long is because ectoplasm is an energy, like most energy, it usually has somewhere to go. It cycles through plants, through the animals, through the ground, anywhere it can reach. It’s cousins with solar energy in that sense. Meaning it, usually, has little opportunity to clash and current with the rest of the ambient ectoplasm in the area.

But it does happen, albeit rarely, and only for a few seconds. Like the equivalent of a static shock; it’s only there for a moment before it collapses in on itself and disappears.

So with that being said, Danny likes to think he’s — maybe not an expert — but fairly knowledgeable about the existence of natural made portals. The Ever-Infinite Bridge Between Realms is ever-expanding, ever-growing, and with it so is the information he has on it. Anything could become obsolete in a moment.

And the only reason he’s thinking about it is because his parents were talking about portals in the kitchen earlier that evening, talking about their portal specifically, but Danny latched onto it, and his mind wanders. He’s not sure why they were talking about it, the portal has been running, unfortunately smoothly for the last two years. He has the scars and eyebags (and trauma) to prove it.

Besides, his mind should be on other things.

Like the goddamn flying snake he’s been chasing across the city skyline for the last thirty minutes. An amphiptere his mind unhelpfully supplies, a word he grabbed nearly two years ago when he first started out as Phantom and was desperately looking up the various ectoplasmic creatures slipping through his parents’ portal.

Some of them didn’t have proper names — like a three-eyed fox he once saw with the tail of a peacock and hooves of a goat. He managed to lure it out of the alleyway it backed itself into with a nasty burger. It tore into it with the fervor of a starving coyote and Danny let it finish eviscerating the burger before sucking it into his thermos.

It was incredibly disturbing to watch at the time, since the thing had an almost beak-shaped muzzle, but now he wishes he was back in the alleyway trying to coax out a ecto-fox-griffin thing rather than chase after what was basically a dragon with no legs — it doesn’t even have the decency to be a wyvern.

He’s only keeping up with the stupid snake due to his grappling hook, something Danny made a year ago in order to keep up with the ghosts flying around the city, and his best fucking self-made invention yet — made from the discarded inventions from his parents’ lab — with his jawbreaker gloves coming in at close second, if only because he gets to call them his jawbreakers.

(It was remarkably simpler than the grappling hook — he just reinforced the knuckles on his gloves.)

Because as much as he likes running, he was going to give himself a heart attack if he chased every ghost he came across on foot. It’d take him all night just to find one. And there was something inherently freeing in the terrifying, adrenaline-rushing sensation of soaring through the air with nothing but hard ground below and endless sky above.

The amphiptere twists its head and looks behind it, and Danny gives it a little shit-eating grin from behind his mask and a small, two fingered salute. The mane of feathers behind the snake’s head puffs up like a frilled lizard, and it opens its maw to hiss — this distorted, almost screeching sound — at him menacingly.

Danny, in response, scoffs under his breath and waves a hand in front of his nose. “Ugh.” he mutters, scrunching up his nose as the snake’s hot breath hits him square in the face. “Someone should throw you one of those dental doggie treats.”

The snake, of course, doesn’t hear him over the sound of its shrieking and the wind. When it twists back around, it dives to the ground, flicking its tail harshly like it’s hoping to hit him as it goes down.

Finally, Danny thinks, dodging out of the way with a twist of his body, and follows it down into the factorial district of Amity Park. It’s already disappeared somewhere when his feet hit the sidewalk, but the buzzing of his ghost sense still tingles on the back of his neck like a seventh sense. So it’s still nearby.

Danny’s grappling hook retracts with a quiet, zipping noise. He hooks it onto the loop of his jeans, and stalks down the side of the road.

Spirits linger beside the buildings. Men, women, and kids wearing clothes from all different time periods congregating in groups and conversing with one another, playing, watching him. Cities never sleep, they doze, and the dead come out at night when the living aren’t there to wake it up. Danny’s spoken to them many, many times.

“Excuse me.” He murmurs, tapping a man in overalls and a railroad cap on the arm. If it weren’t for his faint green glow and how he wisps at the edges, the man would almost look alive. The man turns to him, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead when he sees Danny. “Have you seen a flying snake coming through here?”

The man blinks at him, “As a matter o’ fact,” he says, adjusting the cap on his head, “I have. Flew down the road like a bat out of hell.” The man points down the street, and Danny leans around him to see. “Thought it was gonna knock me righ’ out my work boots.”

Danny presses his mouth into a thin line, making a low ‘hn’ sound in the back of his throat. “Did you see if it went into one of the buildings?” He almost hopes it did, he could probably try and sneak up on it that way. Man, he needs some kind of stunner or something.

“Right in there.” The man tells him, pointing to an old brick factory with the windows grimy and cracked. Of course, Danny sighs out of his nose. If he squints, he can see a green glow coming through the glass.

If he’s lucky, he won’t run into the Box Ghost while he’s in there. He turns to the man and nods politely, “Thank you.” And when the man nods back, Danny turns and hurries down the street. He weaves around the spirits congregating around him, he’s heard from one-too-many spirits how irritating it is to be walked through by the Living.

The door is rusted and locked when he finds an entrance, only made worse by the chain wrapped around the door for good measure, with a padlock. Of course. Rolling his eyes, Danny reaches for his pocket and pulls out a lockpick — too many times doing this has taught him to bring one along, just in case.

(Man, he was envious of ghosts’ abilities to just phase through things. It would save him a lot of trouble. And roadburns, bruises, broken bones, and every other injury known to man.)

He jams the lockpick into the padlock, jiggles it roughly, and unlocks it with a soft click. “They need better locks.” Danny mutters, pulling off the chain carefully with quiet, metallic clattering, and putting it on the ground. He jams the lockpick into the door lock, and with a little more finesse, unlocks that one too.

The door opens with a heavy creak that has Danny scrunching his shoulders up to his ears and his mouth pulling back with a sharp inhale. Shit, he freezes in place, darting his eyes around for the amphiptere.

He sees its glow off in the corner, stark ectoplasm green against the red brick walls, half hidden behind empty conveyor belts and forgotten, empty metal barrels. It doesn’t notice him, with the door open he can hear a loud crrrchk-ing followed by intermittent bangs.

It’s chewing on something, wriggling around like a cat playing with a toy mouse. Danny silently creeps in and slips through the gap between the door, closing the door behind him slowly. His eyes never leave the amphiptere. It still doesn’t notice him.

Two years isn’t that long to teach yourself how to be stealthy, but when you’re doing it every night, you learn quickly. Danny keeps himself low to the ground and his footsteps light. The amphiptere is oblivious to him; its clanging, hissing, snarling drowns out the room to any other noise.

As he gets closer, Danny unhooks his thermos again. There’s a quiet click as he opens the lid with a press of a button, and the thermos hums to life in his hand, warming up against his palm. He creeps around the conveyor belt, his breathing slow and steady.

When he reaches the amphiptere, its back is facing him. It coiled itself close to the ground, its jaw clamped around a metal barrel that’s been crushed like a tin can down the middle. Danny clenches his teeth, discomfort shivering down his spine. That could’ve been his arm had it decided to fight back.

Silently, he raises his thermos at the snake, and with his arm steady, his thumb slams one of the buttons. There’s a recoil like he’s firing a gun, and Danny finds his purchase on the ground as a beam of light lashes out and hits the snake.

The reaction is immediate. The amphiptere drops the barrel with a hideous, furious shriek and lashes out, trying to escape from the beam dragging it towards the thermos. But Danny’s long since learned that the pull of the thermos is much stronger than most ghosts, so long as he doesn’t disturb the tractor beam.

One thing is for certain — keeping the damn thing steady is one hell of a forearm workout. His arms used to shake after a fight, and they’d feel sore in the morning. Not so much anymore since Danny started working out with Sam.

(Tucker declined when they asked him if he wanted to join — he’ll stick with his tech and walking on the treadmill.)

When the amphiptere disappears inside the thermos, Danny slams the lid back on and slumps with relief. Finally, he groans quietly, clipping the thermos onto his belt and pressing his hand to his lower back to stretch. There’s a satisfying pop-pop-pop, and Danny sighs from his nose. He’s calling it a night.

He glances at the time on his phone. It was three am, fantastic. He has school in four hours.

Other than the snake, tonight had been blessedly quiet. Danny spoke to some of the spirits lingering around Third and Main downtown, got some of their information so he could start helping them with moving on — two murders and then a simple fetch quest, — chased down a few other ghosts — most of them just ecto-entities, but there was a young ghost child who he had to play hide and seek with before she would agree to be taken home in the thermos.

He also got into a fight with a fellow teen ghost who wanted to see the “Death-Touched” and if Phantom was as good a fighter as the rumors say he was. Danny’s been called “Death-Touched” since the night he snuck into the lab and released every single ghost his parents had trapped in cages, that wasn’t unsurprising. A little a lot ominous at first, but Danny is nothing if not adaptive.

He’d kicked the other teen’s ass, dragged him into the thermos, and moved on.

But other than that, tonight had been tame. So before Murphy can come and kick him in the teeth, Danny’s calling it a night.

Danny is one step towards the exit when he hears a loud, suctioning noise followed by something akin to a glacier cracking down the middle. His heart sinks instantly to his feet, and the chill of his ghost sense crawls up his throat and freezes the back of his teeth. No mist spills out, yet.

Ah, fuck. Danny stifles a groan, turning back around. There goes the rest of his night.

A portal the size of an acorn swirls into existence right before his eyes, and then rapidly grows. Swirling like a whirlpool, it grows bigger and bigger until it’s half the size of him. The bigger it gets, the tenser Danny becomes — the bigger the portal is, the bigger the ghost that can slip through gets.

Please don’t make him face the snake’s fucking cousin. Danny prays, rapidly scurrying back with his hands raised defensively. He scowls under his mask, and waits tersely for something to fall through. Whatever comes through, he hopes it’s friendly. Or slow. Or maybe both.

Danny doesn’t get another winged snake.

Instead, a child stumbles out of the portal. A non-glowing, living-colored child who couldn’t be any older than six, and who rapidly spits out a phrase in a language Danny doesn’t catch. Danny’s hands drop slightly from his side, bewilderment settling in the back of his throat.

As the child rights himself, the portal dissipates behind him with a hissing sigh. It takes Danny’s ghost sense with it, and the chill evaporates from his mouth.

Oh, oh no.

Danny’s heart drops from his feet straight into the ground. Six feet into the ground. Oh, fuck.

That was a living child. That was a living child. That was a whole-ass living child.

If natural portals were rare, then whatever the hell this was — teleportals, Vlad’s teleports, whatever — was unheard of. The only time he’s seen a portal that transported someone from one place to another on the same plane of existence was Vlad. His man-made teleportals.

Natural portals between one place to another? He’s never heard of such a thing. And one just opened in front of him and spat out a child. A human, living child. A portal just kidnapped a child.

A child who, Danny realizes, is holding a sword. A katana, of all things. One that was designed to match his size. A child who was, for a lack of better words, wearing something Danny would expect a ninja to wear. A child who was dressed from head to toe in black.

A child who looks suspiciously like a baby-faced Damian Wayne. Brown skin and green eyes and all, but with youth still clinging to his cheeks. It couldn’t be Damian Wayne himself — that boy was thirteen, and Danny would’ve heard from Sam if something happened to him.

So this meant either two things: Damian Wayne was just now turned into a child and dropped into Danny’s lap, or this was a clone of Damian Wayne. Danny was thinking it might’ve been the latter.

Fuck you, Murphy, he thinks instantly, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip. This was mean.

He stares, uncertainty — and perhaps a little bit of nausea — forming a pit in his chest, as the child makes eye contact with him. The air is silent and thick — with dust, asbestos, or just the silence, Danny isn’t sure. Maybe all three. But they stare at each other for a long, suffocating moment.

Then the kid — Damian — lunges at him, his sword quickly unsheathed.

“Shit!” Danny dives back, just barely dodging being grazed by the gleaming blade. That was fast. Danny isn’t around living kids often but that was too fast, that much he knows. Kids don’t move that fast on their own. Not without being taught.

Damian spits something at him in that foreign language, his face twisting with anger, and the kid turns himself and lunges once again. Danny dodges again, swatting the sword away reflexively with the side of his gloved hand.

“I can’t understand you.” He tells him, his voice comes out rougher than he meant it to, and it comes out muffled from his mask. Please tell me you know English, he hopes, hopping up onto the old conveyor belt.

“'Akhbirni 'ayn 'ana walan 'aqtulak.” Damian snarls, chasing up after him with worrying ease. Danny swats away another stab at him, frowning when the blade leaves a cut in his leather glove. It doesn’t reach skin, but the fact of the matter is that Damian still cut his glove.

He doesn’t know English either, great. Perfect. Fantastic, even. Danny backs up on the conveyor belt, twisting away from Damian’s attacks with… well, not relative ease, the kid is faster than Danny’s expecting, but he’s not getting hits in. So some ease.

But Danny’s been fighting ghosts for the last two years. Fighting entities capable of moving at the speed of light leaves you with quick reflexes and even quicker eyes. Damian jumps up to try and kick him in the face, and Danny ducks down and dashes off the conveyor belt, hopping to the next one over.

When his feet hit the belt, he uses the momentum to leap up onto a rusty shelf. His fingers dig into the sides, and he climbs, vaulting his legs up to the top once he’s high enough. He twists around and stares down at Damian, instinctively crouched on his fours. “I’m not fighting you.” Danny says sternly, watching the kid hop after him. “I don’t fight the living, and I don’t fight kids.” Living ones, that is. Youngblood was fair game.

Damian scowls, pointing his sword at him accusingly from the conveyor below. “Tawaqaf ean alrakd wawajahani 'ayuha aljaban!” Then he’s jumping up after him, doing an impressive flip in the air before latching onto the lower shelves and climbing up.

Admittedly, Danny is rooted to his spot with disbelief. What the fuck? “Who taught you that?” He says unwittingly, bewilderment slipping into his voice. Seriously — who taught him that? What six year old knows how to do a backflip at this age? Who made you, kid?

Naturally, Damian doesn’t answer him, and Danny grabs his grappling gun and aims it at the rafters. With a quick pull of the trigger, the hook shoots out and wraps around one of the beams. Danny yanks back, and he braces as the cord yanks him forward in return. When he reaches the beam, he pulls himself up as the cord unravels itself and retracts back into the gun.

Danny shoves his gun back onto his belt, and disappears into the shadows of the ceiling.

Just in time, Damian was at the top of the shelving unit he was just on, and the kid stomps his foot angrily. Briefly, a smile tugs at the corner of Danny’s mouth, amusement fizzing out in his lungs. “Tawaqaf ean alrakd!” The kid yells, his hands shaking at his sides. “'Ayn 'akhadhatni ya Lieazir!”

He swivels his head around, his face scrunched up in the dark room as he searches the rafters. Danny silently crawls across the beam, stooping low and moving slowly, and never taking his eyes off Damian.

The kid is wound up like a spring, and jumpier than a war vet on the Fourth of July. It’s a little funny, but as Danny creeps through the ceiling, the kid only grows more frantic. The only light coming through is the muffled, yellow dim of the streets, and the moonlight that was in the middle of waning from gibbous to crescent. Good enough that Danny can see the kid’s face shifting from anger to fear.

“Laeazir!” He yells again, and his voice cracks. Danny stills. “Akhruj huna Lieazir!”

Okay, it wasn’t funny anymore. Danny holds his breath, watching as Damian’s expression fluctuates between scowling fury and wild-eyed panic. He’s twisting on his feet, whatever lethal grace he had earlier from their brief fight is gone now, replaced with clumsy, fawn-like alarm.

Damian breathes in deeply, and Danny can see the whites of his eyes when he turns his head wildly in his direction. “Azhar nafsak!”

He’s scared. Danny realizes, pricking up slightly from the rafter. He’s scared. That’s why he attacked him, he’s scared. Of course he is, Danny thinks, feeling like an idiot. He crawls over the beams again, creeping around Damian, keeping his gaze sharp on the kid’s feet. With how much he was spinning, he’s a little worried he was going to fall off the shelf.

Of course he’s scared, he thinks again. He’s a kid, he doesn’t know any English, and he’s alone. Danny can’t imagine what’s going on through his head — of course he’s scared. He must be terrified. He looks terrified.

Danny raises himself up carefully, gripping onto the rafters, and dashes across quickly. Damian whirls around towards him, his hands flying to his katana at his sheathe. His fear smothers on his face, and Damian tenses up defensively.

The grappling gun finds its way back into Danny’s hands, and Danny shoots it at a beam connected to one of the pillars. When it catches, he leans to the side, and lets himself fall. The cord goes taut, and Danny flicks a small button on the side that allows him to lower to the ground with some relative ease.

With his back to Damian, he hears a quiet scuffle and the shelf creaks. When his feet touch the ground, he tugs on his gun and the cord retracts. Danny can hear quiet, rapid-approaching footsteps coming up behind him, and he shoves his grappler back into its place and whirls around.

And immediately, reflexively, catches the blade being swung at him with both hands. Shit, he wheezes out harshly, eyes widening in shock. The blade digs into his hands, but there’s no sting — his gloves had taken the brunt of the hit. They were probably ruined after this, but Danny’s less upset over that more than he is relieved.

Damian glowers up at him, and this close up, Danny can very barely see a watery sheen covering his bottom eyelashes. His heartstrings pull, but it doesn’t stop him from curling his fingers tight around his katana to prevent him from pulling away.

“Let me help you.” Danny says, rushed. He doesn’t understand him, the obvious part of his mind whispers. He needs to get him to understand him. Damian’s arms tremble slightly, he pushes down harder on Danny’s hands. But he doesn’t budge.

He tries to yank it back instead, and it gives slightly — only for Danny to readjust his grip, despite the fear spiking in his heart. Cold metal kisses at part of his palm. It’s cut through his glove more. “Put the sword down.”

“'Ayn 'ana.” Damian snarls at him, there’s still a tremble in his voice. “'Ayn 'akhadhatni.”

A low, frustrated sound emits in the back of Danny’s throat. “I can’t understand you.” He snaps, if the kid would stop trying to kill him for five seconds, maybe they’d be able to get somewhere. “And you can’t understand me.” But if you’d stop attacking me, I could figure out a way how.

Something takes mercy on Danny — because Damian gives up on trying to take back the sword. He lets go of the handle, and Danny sees an opening. Immediately, he tosses the sword off to the side, ignoring the clattering and skidding it makes against the concrete floor. The kid is fast, but Danny is faster. He wraps his hand around Damian’s forearm and yanks him forward.

Damian yells angrily, and Danny traps his arm against his chest and twists him around so that his back is to his chest. Danny is also stronger. Both as a given from his size, and what he does every night. Trapping Damian against him is easier done and said, and Danny immediately sits them both on the ground once he has a good purchase on him.

“'Utliq sarahi!” Damian yells, thrashing against him violently. Danny simply tilts his head up to prevent Damian from headbutting him in the chin, and wraps an arm around his torso tightly so he can fish for his phone. “'Ayuha alqadharatu! 'Utliq sarahi!”

Danny doesn’t know what he’s saying but he can guess, and he readjusts his arm when Damian nearly slips out. “No.” He says curtly, and when he gets out his phone, he sets it down briefly so he can pull his glove off. With his other arm preoccupied with keeping Damian still, Danny tugs it off with his teeth instead.

Silently, he inspects his palm for any injuries from the katana. He hadn’t felt anything, but it doesn’t hurt to check. He smiles faintly, relief weighting off his shoulders, when all he finds is a small cut near the meat of his palm. Not even deep enough to bleed. It stings, but it won’t even scar.

He picks up his phone again, and with his mask on he can’t use the facial recognition. Danny taps in his password with his thumb, and quickly pulls up a translator. In his arms, Damian continues to thrash around, twisting and trying to pretzel himself out of his grip.

“'Ana Damian Al Ghul, dam Ras Alshaytan!” Damian demands. Danny is a little worried that he might bite him, and he hoists him back up onto his lap when he tries to wriggle down. “Yajib 'an tastamie li'awamiri ya Lieazir!”

Al Ghul. Danny’s never heard that last name before, and he pauses from his typing to frown. “Hm.” Damian — the original, that is, not the clone in his arms, — went by his father’s surname, and Danny can’t remember if it was ever released what the mother’s last name was.

He quickly swaps the tab on his phone to a new one, and types into the search bar: ‘Damian Wayne mom last name’ and clicks enter. There’s a few seconds where his phone is loading, and then it pulls up the results. And with it, is a chunk of text from the top article: Damian’s mother was kept anonymous for her privacy’s sake. Who she was, what her name is, it’s all unknown other than that she was Chinese-Arabic. A remarkable feat of anonymity in the grand scheme of things and the all seeing eyes of the internet.

“Hn.” Danny’s mouth presses into a line, and he glances down to Damian. Original Damian’s maternal surname was unknown, and now he knows that his clone was calling himself Damian, what was the off chance that ‘Al Ghul’ was a random last name given to him, and wasn’t actually his mother’s surname?

…Not likely. Or it was a low chance.

Putting that aside, he swaps back to the translator and converts what he wrote into Arabic. Damian’s mother was Arabic-Chinese, and the language Damian was speaking didn’t sound like Chinese. So, fingers crossing, he hopes it’s Arabic.

Turning up the volume as far as it could go, he looks back at Damian, whose struggling and yelling has slowly begun to cease. Danny doesn’t trust it, and he smiles a little amusedly, that’s not going to get me to let go. He checks the translation to make sure it’s what he wants it to say, and then hits the play button.

[I can’t understand you, but my name is Danny. I want to help you.]

Damian jerks, hitting his head against Danny’s chest in surprise. “'Utliq sarahi 'ayn 'ana?” He sneers, “'Ana last bihajat limusaeadatikum.”

“I just said I can’t understand you, bud.” Danny sighs, once again adjusting his hold on Damian. The kid kicks at him and misses him entirely. His arm was starting to get tired from the strain of holding Damian on its own, so Danny puts his phone behind him and swaps them.

He honest to god gets hissed at when he has to adjust Damian as well, and Danny pauses for a moment just out of pure wonder at the boy in his arms. He was hissed at, as if he was scruffing a stray cat. He was so telling Sam about this when he gets this kid home.

Smiling faintly, Danny pulls his other glove off with his teeth, checks for injuries, and then with a little bit of contortion, grabs his phone and pulls it back up. Then his train of thought catches up to him, and he freezes just as he’s about to type into the translator again.

Take him home? The kid? Danny can’t do that. There wasn’t any room in the house, and how would he explain this to his parents?

‘Hey mom, dad, this is Damian. He’s a clone of my genetic template’s son! Yeah, yeah, that template, the one who just so happens to be the old college buddy that you accidentally cloned instead of dad? The one who just so happens to be capable of suing our family out of existence if he happened to catch wind of my existence? Oh, where did I find him? Last night while I was out. Why was I out? Oh, because I just so happen to be the Phantom, your sworn enemy and the ghost-hunting vigilante who you are convinced is also a ghost. Can we keep him?’

Yeah, yeah, he can see how well that would go down. He might as well take off his mask and tell Bruce Wayne he had a clone already. But… where else would Damian go? He doesn’t know any English, he was alone in a foreign country with no money, no way to get home, the worst thing Danny can do is abandon him right now.

Danny presses his mouth into a thin line, a frown beginning to pull at the corner of his lips.

…He could figure something out with his parents, Jazz will help him once he explains the situation. And if he can get Damian to agree to stop trying to kill him, then they can both make it back to Fenton Works before sunrise… Hopefully.

Pressing his mouth into a thin line, Danny starts typing into the translator again. [You’re in America right now. The translator doesn’t translate the name of my city well, but we’re in Illinois. You are very far from home.]

Damian jerks once again, twisting his neck to look up at Danny with disbelief. “'Amrika?” He says, the corner of his up curled up. Danny nods curtly, he doesn’t need to know Arabic to know what ‘Amrika’ means. “Hadhih Amirika?”

Danny nods again, “Yeah, America. You’re in Amity Park.” He points to the ceiling, and gestures around them slowly. Damian watches him carefully, his eyes narrowed. “Am-i-ty Park.” Danny says, enunciating the syllables slowly.

Green eyes narrow at him further. “Amity Park.” Damian says, slowly and sharp. When Danny nods, he drops his head and Danny tilts slightly in order to see as Damian casts the room a disdainful look. “Amity Park.” He repeats, voice full of enough venom to kill a full grown man.

He can’t help himself, he snorts to himself and grins underneath his mask. The sound causes Damian to snap his head back up at him, and return his glower full force. He tries to wriggle again, but, like all other times, it’s in vain.

“Sawf tutliq sarahi.” Damian orders, mouth twisting back into a scowl. Danny almost wants to tell him that his face will freeze if he keeps doing that. He’s already got his thumb hovering over the keyboard. “Yajib 'an 'aeud 'iilaa aldawrii.”

Danny types into his phone, [I want to help you. You don’t know English, so getting around on your own will be next to impossible. If you promise not to attack me, I will take you back to my home and we can figure out how to get you home.]

It’s… okay. Danny doesn’t really want to help the kid get home. Wherever that is, it’s teaching a child how to kill people, and it’s making clones of people. Statistically, that’s a bad sign. It also means that, for all intents and purposes, Danny should help the kid get home so he can find out whatever this organization is and, hopefully, put a stop to their cloning.

However, Danny has his own city to take care of. Amity Park is full from head to toe with ghosts and spirits, and with his parents playing whack-a-mole with the portal’s door controls, he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the city for even a few days. His parents can catch a lot of ghosts in only a few days.

His parents can spill a lot of blood in only a few days.

The evil cloning organization that made Damian will just have to be something Danny can leave in the capable hands of the older, more experienced heroes. For now, he can try and stall Damian’s homecoming and also keep him safe by keeping him housed.

Damian, instead of wriggling again, slumps against him with a throaty huff. Danny peers over his head, checking to see if he was just pouting or had, somehow, passed out. Damian was scowling, his shoulders slumped up slightly, and Danny internally coos.

He’s pouting. It was adorable.

The boy is silent for a long minute, a scowl carved like marble in his face, and Danny is content — no, wait, slightly content. He still wants to get home at a semi-reasonable time, — to wait him out. He is stronger, bigger, and faster than him. Eventually, Damian makes a low grumbling noise, something Danny can almost mistake for as a groan, before the kid slumps against him.

“Hsnan, sa'abqaa maeak hataa natamakan min 'iieadati 'iilaa aldawri.” He says, sounding significantly less full of indignant rage, and more so full of indignant irritation. He also no longer wriggles, and Danny feels hope sparking low in his gut. Did he finally get through to him…?

More seconds pass by with the two of them just sitting there in silence, before Damian wriggles again — but rather than trying to escape, he twists his head to give Danny a dirty, expectant look. Danny frowns, confused, and then jerks — Oh! Oh!

He fumbles for his phone, [Was that a yes? Nod if it was a yes?]

Damian scoffs at him, looking very much like Danny was nothing more than dirt under his shoes. But he nods curtly, “Naeam sa'adhhab maeak.”

Danny cheers, loudly. The hand curled around his phone punches skyward, like a fistbump to the ceiling, and Damian drops his head away from him. He yells something at him — probably telling him not to be so loud, but Danny pays it no mind. He’s only focused on the pure, utter, relief, pouring into his lungs and trying to trick itself out of his mouth as a laugh.

Yes, yes! He convinced him! That’s one less worry to worry about, and as Danny drops his hand with his phone, his other arm starts to loosen up around Damian's waist — something Damian very much notices. As he stiffens up and is halfway through shoving himself out of his grasp.

Danny lets him go, remembering abruptly the mask on his face. He lets Damian get to his feet, but he’s quickly scrambling soon after, not to grab him again. But to scramble for the katana he’d tossed out of the kid’s reach. Damian exclaims behind him, but Danny has his fingers curled around the handle before the kid can chase after him.

When he stands and faces Damian again, the kid is all puffed up with rage again. Danny doesn’t doubt that, if the kid is trained to be some… kind of ninja…. that he has more weapons on him. But Damian looks more focused on his sword, so Danny holds up his phone-hand in a gesture to hopefully make Damian wait before he attacks him.

“Wait, wait, wait!” He cries. Damian does, fortunately, and Danny quickly types into his phone again. [I will give you back your sword, and I will show you my face when we reach my home. But you must promise you won’t attack me once I do.] He pauses for a moment, and then types in as well: [I’ll also show you how to use the translator so we can talk both ways.]

He doesn’t know if Damian even knows what his… father? Looks like, or what his feelings on him are if he does. But Danny was going to cover his bases, and if there was the off chance that Damian held negative feelings for his dad, he didn’t want the kid to attack him, again.

(It probably wasn’t a good idea to do this at home, but at this point Danny just wants to be in his room.)

Damian eyes him up suspiciously, tense as a wooden plank and hunched like he was ready to pounce anyways, but he nods curtly. “Aeidak.”

“Okay.” Danny breathes out, slowly straightening up. He’ll take that as Damian promising not to attack him. “Okay, good. Good.” Lowering his hand, he pockets his phone back into his jeans and flips the sword around so that the blade is pointing downwards. He holds it out for Damian, and the kid, quick as a whip, snatches it back from him and sheathes it into its scabbard.

Great, finally. Now he can leave. Danny’s hands drop to his sides and he wriggles his fingers at Damian, absently gesturing for him to grab his hand. He turns his head away, searching for the door. “Let’s go.”

No hand takes his, which Danny should have expected, so he drops it back to his side and leads Damian to the exit. The kid sticks close to him, but keeps just barely out of sight from his peripherals. His steps are quiet, Danny would say almost silent but that wasn’t the case. If he wasn’t paying attention, though, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Ninja stuff, probably. Danny’s a little, no, a lot concerned that he’s so good at that.

Ancients, bud. He thinks again, disbelief returning like a hand around his throat. Danny keeps glancing back at Damian to make sure he was still there. Just who, exactly, made you?

When they get outside, the night air hits them cooler than it was inside. Spirits were still lingering around the sidewalks, chattering amongst each other and throwing him various, curious glances. Danny suppresses a frown, but can’t stop himself from making a low ‘hm.’

They probably felt the shift in the atmosphere from the portal opening. It may have dissipated, but the excess was still lingering around. Without his focus solely on Damian, Danny can feel it too. Like a fog in his chest. Or, perhaps more accurately, like going through the day in a tired glaze, only to be hit with pin-startling clarity. The spirits were probably trying to soak up as much as possible in order to gain a stronger physical form.

Which, unfortunately for them, wouldn’t happen from this portal alone. Too many spirits trying to do the same thing. Not enough ectoplasm.

He leads Damian down the steps, and over to the sidewalk. On instinct his hand reaches for his grappling hook, but Damian, still loitering in his peripherals, tenses up. Oh, right, Danny thinks, and switches for his phone instead, this is a two-person trip.

It’d probably be rude to just grab Damian and start flying. Damian might try and stab him, or worse, try and get out of his hands again. The mental image of Damian falling nearly fifty-feet in the air flashes behind Danny’s eyes, and he represses a shudder.

Yeah, let's tell him first.

His fingers fly across the screen. [I’m going to use a grappling hook to get us back to the house. It’ll be faster. I’m going to pick you up, hold on tight.]

Damian scoffs at him, but nods. Danny pockets his phone, swaps it out for his grappling hook instead, and lets Damian look at it for a minute before he crouches down and wraps his free arm around Damian’s legs and hoists him up.

Something gets said to him by Damian, harsh and scowly, probably an insult, but he wraps his arms around Danny’s neck and his legs tight around his torso. At this point Danny just rolls his eyes and adjusts his arm to hold him tight around the waist. “Hold on.” He mumbles, and points his gun to the sky.

Flying through the city is admittedly trickier with the extra weight on his front and only one hand free, but Danny takes it as a challenge rather than a problem — if only so he doesn’t think too much on it. Damian’s fingers claw into the back of hoodie the moment his grappling hook pulls them through the air, it borderlines almost painful, and Danny doubts he could drop the kid even if he tried.

There are a few close calls where Danny nearly clips the edge of one of the skyscrapers, but it takes one easy twist and a little bit of spinning to correct the angle. The threat of it sends a rush of adrenaline through his veins, and Danny can’t say he didn’t laugh a few times. Becoming Phantom turned him into an adrenaline junkie, he thinks.

Damian doesn’t seem to be having much fun though, his grip suffocating on Danny and his face buried into his shoulder. He’s choking Danny a little, but he wouldn’t dare try and correct it while in the air, and it’s only bringing him mild discomfort.

Not fast enough but all too soon, Danny is touching down near the residential area of Amity Park where the buildings are too small for him to grapple through. He drops onto one of the apartment rooftops, and his feet are barely touching the ground before Damian clambers off him like a wet cat trying to claw its way out of a pool.

With the sound of his grappling hook receding, Danny laughs low under his breath. “Flying not for you, bud?” He asks, slightly breathless and grinning under his mask. The hook clicks into place in his palm, and Danny shoves it back onto his belt.

The kid glares at him amidst brushing off his clothes and patting at his sides. His hand brushes over his sword, and when he feels the hilt still there, Damian drops it. The kid straightens up like a soldier — immediately killing Danny’s sky-flushed mirth in the process — and stares up at him, awaiting orders.

Danny’s smile falls, and he clears his throat. Okay, he thinks, checking himself over for anything out of place, before looking back to Damian. Resolve hardens like cement in between his ribs. He’s not going back. Not if I have anything to say about it.

He moves around Damian and steps over to the roof ledge, swiveling left and right for the direction of his house. Which is unnecessary, he can see Fenton Works from a mile away, but he does it anyways. Anything to distract him from the discomfort that’s been sledgehammered at him. “This way.” He murmurs, gesturing for Damian to follow. Shuffling feet, and Danny can sense more than see the little boy at his side.

Considering the way he saw Damian hopping around earlier, Danny is confident in his ability to roof hop with him — confidence well deserved because Damian follows him with relative ease. Which is still real damn worrying, but he can dwell on it when they get to the house.

Still, he keeps a close eye on Damian the entire time they’re leaping rooftops. The boy was six, he didn’t have the same stamina nor height that Danny did — it’d be too easy for Danny to lose him on the way to the house because he couldn’t keep up, or he decided to change his mind while Danny was distracted and book it in another direction.

They reach the house in no time, and Danny’s fishing for his key from his belt the moment his feet hit the concrete of the rooftop. Damian remains behind him, an ever-constant shadow as Danny ducks under the various legs, wires, and poles of the OPPS Center and unlocks the door to the roof.

Getting to his room is a relief. The strange, buzzing sensation that settles through Danny’s eyes like a thin film whenever he’s using his ‘scary eyes’ dissipates, and he’s kicking off his boots with a low sigh before he can really think it through. He’ll put them back in their place when he’s done — but for now, he just wants them off. Damian pools in behind him, slinking off to the corner of the room as Danny shuts the door.

His room is spotless — a cleaning habit he’s kept meticulously since he wanted to be an astronaut. He had planets hanging from the ceiling, glow in the dark stars muttered against the walls, and posters of astronomy, Dumpty Humpty, and NASA plastered beside the stars. And a large corkboard hanging above his desk.

“Finally.” he groans, twisting his hips and stretching out his back before reaching over and turning on the hanging lights. A soft orange glow fills the room, and Danny turns just in time to see Damian jump in surprise. He’d moved over to Danny’s bookshelf on the opposite side of the room, his body half turned away and tilted like he’d been inspecting it.

Danny stifles a smile, and tugs off his thermos and grappling hook and places them on the desk. Damian straightens up, shuffling away from the bookshelf and back over to him, his brows beginning to furrow with a look of determination.

He marches towards him, “Laqad wasalna 'iilaa manzilika, walan ealayk 'an tafi bikalimatik watakhlae qanaeaka.”

Danny doesn’t know what he’s saying, but Damian points to his face while he’s speaking so Danny figures it out relatively quickly. Besides, it’s not like he’d forgotten either. He has to take off his mask to sleep, and it’s easier to change when he’s not wearing it. He grabs his phone from his pocket.

[I know, I’ll take off my mask. But remember: you can’t attack me.] He hits play, and watches Damian scoff for the nth time, roll his eyes, and nod. As if to reassure him, or to prove that he wasn’t going to attack him, Damian folds his arms behind his back.

Briefly, Danny feels himself nearly frown again at Damian’s almost soldier-like posture. But he has time to worry about that later, he shoves his phone back into his pocket. Danny raises his hands and curls his fingers around the bottom of his mask.

Carefully, mindful of the straps, Danny pulls it off. The cool air immediately rushes over his damp forehead, and he quickly shakes his head with bated breath to get the strands of hair plastered to his skin off. He locks eyes with Damian, tense, and with air trapped in his lungs.

Damian’s eyes widen comically, his scowl softening for a moment. For a moment, Danny thinks that maybe things will be fine…ish. But then Damian’s face is scrunching up again, his face sharpening angrily, and his hands reach for his sword.

“Dijaal!” He hisses, fire lighting in his eyes as he grabs for his katana.

Danny takes a step back and holds his hand out, narrowing his eyes defensively. “Hey, hey, hey!” He hisses back, he points a finger at Damian accusingly, arching an eyebrow. “You promised!”

Apparently, the tone of ‘no takesies-backsies!’ transcends language, because Damian freezes where he stands and simply remains glowering at him. Danny raises his eyebrow higher, locking him in a staring contest, and Damian takes his hand off the hilt.

Great. Good. Fantastic even! Crisis avoided, and no parents woken up in the process. That’s a success if Danny’s ever heard one. He keeps his eyes on Damian, before slowly reaching for his phone again. It’s like having a stand-off with a bull. A tiny, six year old-sized bull with a sword rather than horns, but a bull nonetheless.

He gets his phone out safely, and gets out the translator. Again. [I know I’m a clone of your dad. I didn’t ask to be. I still want to help you.] And he does, he so much does. Danny was a bleeding heart, forever and always. If he can help, he will. He hopes that the blood he is made from won’t stop Damian from accepting that help.

Damian stares him down, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to analyze Danny’s every move. Danny stays still and lets him, waiting for the jurisdiction of the small assassin.

Whatever it is that Damian sees, it causes him to drop his hands to his side with an irritated sigh just like before. He says nothing, but the resigned slump of his shoulders tells Danny all he needs to know, and he beams.

Success, he thinks, laughing quietly in earnest. [Stay here.] He quickly types into his phone and plays. He reaches for his thermos. [I need to release the ghosts in my device, then I’ll show you how to use the translator.]

He plucks the thermos from his desk and tosses his phone over Damian’s head and onto the bed. It bounces, Damian grumbles something under his breath, and the phone bounces again. Danny puts the mask down, and dances out the door and down into the lab with practiced ease.

When he returns, Damian is snooping around his room, looking around his desk this time around. He straightens up when Danny steps into the room, and Danny doesn’t bother addressing it — instead he grabs his phone again and gestures for Damian to sit on the bed with him.

It takes a painfully long amount of time to show Damian how to use the translator, with a ton of repetition and fiddling around. But they manage, finally, to get a system up where Danny will type something into the translator, play it back to Damian, and then hand the phone to Damian. Damian then would swap the translation, use text-to-speech, and play it in english.

Naturally, text-to-speech has its flaws, and Damian is only recently learning how to read, so Danny figures out the translation errors on his own. They don’t talk for long, Damian is shut off, snooty, and reserved to him. All Danny knows is that his name is Damian Al Ghul, and he is the blood son and second heir to something called the League of Assassins.

How cheery. “League of Assassins” sounds definitely evil. Ancients, Danny doesn’t wanna know. He’ll have to get involved if he knows any more.

He lets Damian fiddle with the translator more in regards to searching his closet for clothes for Damian to wear. He doesn’t have any shorts that will fit, but he pulls out an old NASA t-shirt that still somewhat fits him, and tosses it to Damian.

After much arguing, he gets Damian to wear it, and he gives Damian the bed. That takes less arguing — Damian is all too happy to sleep in a bed rather than the floor, and Danny pulls his beanbag chair out from its nook to shove it under his desk.

He’s still awake by the time sunlight begins peeking over the buildings, his eyelids heavy and sore with exhaustion, and his limbs feeling loose and disconnected. He’s fixed up his gloves — torn from the katana, but now half-heartedly sewn up with thread and a lot of muttered swearing on Danny’s part. His mask is shoved in a hidden pocket in his backpack along with his thermos.

Damian is fast asleep in bed, and with nothing else to do, Danny keeps his sharp eye on him. Swamped in Danny’s shirt and curled up under the covers, Damian is teeny. Well, he was small even before that, but it is even more apparent when tucked under blankets meant for people bigger than him.

And, for perhaps the third time that night, Danny is hit with just the sheer longing of how much he wants to help him. Danny is the hand that feeds, and Damian has a lot of teeth. The cut of his gloves is more than proof enough of that. But Danny wants to help him, Damian has no one else here to. Danny, so far, is the only one who can help him.

He is also hit with the sheer magnitude of what he’s just done — the terrifying revelation that Danny’s just taken in the clone of his template’s son. What the hell does that make for him and Damian’s relationship? Genetically, Danny is technically his father, but they’re complete strangers to one another.

What does that mean for Danny? It’s been four months since his parents revealed their betrayal. Their lies. Their backstabbing, earth-shattering, fifteen years of astounding— the truth to Danny about his… birth. Four months isn’t long enough to deal with something like that. He is still questioning everything he does — whether his actions belong to him, or to Bruce Wayne.

And this? This just takes the fucking cake.

Danny breathes in deeply, snapping himself out of the slow-creeping spiral threatening to drag him under the waters of his mind. His eyes flick to the window. It’s too early to think about this. Much, much too early. He slinks into his beanbag with a low groan, stifling back a groan.

He can worry about the identity crisis and his crisis of autonomy later. Later, when he’s not mind-numbingly exhausted and already mentally fragile from that alone. Not when there’s a teeny baby assassin sleeping in his bed who happens to be his son? Cousin? Brother? template’s son’s clone.

With sunlight peeking through the windows, he slinks out from under his desk to prepare for another day.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpdc #dpxdc crossover #danny fenton is a clone #clone^2 #dpdc au #dpxdc fic #dpdc fic #danny fenton is not the ghost king #starry's writing #ao3 tag highlights: Accidental Little Brother Acquisition #Cat Distribution System Except Its A Child #i crave validation and attention so whoops #danny: wow that is a child! Why Is The Child Violent #danny: ahaha i can ignore my identity crisis if i focus on Literally Anything Else

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swordcreature · 5 months

Note

hiii, I really love your writing and got super excited when I saw that you take requests.

could you possibly do headcanons or like, short scenarios for how the companions would react to: a Tav who's normally relentlessly positive just fucking snapping. like they get back to camp one night and Tav's whole facade just shatters?

thank you if you do!! ♡♡

ty ty ty you're too nice i'm here blushing <3

okay so i ended up writing the six origin companions, but if there was someone else you were specifically looking for like halsin or jahiera please let me know!!

i also wrote this from a romance pov for each companion taking place very very vaguely in the third act.

ngl i struggled trying to find a way to write this that i was satisfied with. i don't know that i have like an in depth conceptualization of every single companion given that there are so many changes to them throughout the story, some of which you can't possibly see in a single playthrough

but i think i found a happy medium between love and hate lol

i really hope you like it!!!!

Shadowheart, Astarion, Lae'zel, Wyll, Gale, & Karlach - When Tav Snaps

How the companions react to chronically positive Tav snapping

(Tav is GN in this)

Shadowheart:

Secretly, Shadowheart is just the tiniest bit pleased to see their leader, normally sunshine and rainbows and just too damn chipper, sulk back into camp. But that feeling is quickly replaced by overwhelming guilt and worry as she realizes that something is very wrong with Tav. She tries to reach out, offering a hand to gently ask what's wrong. When Tav snaps, yelling and crying and breathing so hard that they look like they might puke, Shadowheart is frozen. She watches in terror, almost outside of her own body, as the one she loves most loses their composure until just raw embers remain. Shadowheart so desperately wants to do something, to say anything, but the reflexes learned from years under Shar’s stoic thumb kick in and she cannot move. Tav is the strong one, the person she turns to when the weight of the world is too much to bear, not the other way around! She’s supposed to be the emotionally stunted one, the broken one, godsdamnit! The only thing she can think to do in the moment is to borrow from Tav, to replicate what they have done for her so many times on this fucked up adventure they’re on. So, she sits Tav down and listens. Lets them cry and cry and cry until their eyes are so swollen they can’t open them very far. Shadowheart puts a hand on their knee to ground them and offers quiet, soft words of comfort. She doesn’t want to solve all the problems that led to this – she'd be stupid to think she could. No, she wants Tav to know that it’s okay to feel these heavy things. They don’t have to keep everything bottled up until they crack. If anything, Shadowheart wants them to know that they can be anything and everything with her, and she will still be there to listen and to love.

Astarion:

Astarion pretends that Tav is the most annoyingly optimistic, too happy, do-gooder to ever grace his presence, but deep down their relentless positivity enamors him in an odd way. He’d never say that aloud though. He has gotten used to Tav practically skipping back into camp, head high and smile bright. So, when they take one, heavy footstep close enough to camp for Astarion to hear, his hackles immediately rise. His eye trail Tav as they trudge back into camp, ignoring the calls of the other companions as they seem to blankly seek out their own tent. Astarion tries to offer a lusty quip, something to lighten the mood, and he hates the way his voice wavers with concern. When Tav doesn’t respond, he’s quick to take their shoulders, turning them away from camp, towards someplace more private. Tav doesn’t fight back or say a word which is like a knife to Astarion’s dead heart – he's never seen them without a grin, let alone so despondent. In private, he pushes for an answer as to what’s going on, pressing the matter to its breaking point because he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to make them happy. And what use is he if he can’t even bring a smile to the face of the one person he cares about? Tav’s resolve breaks. They’re seething, angry at the world, sobbing and sneering and crumbling. Astarion stares, wide eyed. Part of him wants to slip back into old habits, acting as though he finds amusement in Tav’s breakdown. The happy-go-lucky leader finally snapping? How delightfully ironic! But that’s not him anymore. At least, he’s trying to not be that anymore. So, he pulls Tav towards him. His body instinctively tenses before reminding himself that this is Tav and the decision to hold them is his alone. Tav sobs harder into his chest. For a moment, Astarion thinks he’s done something wrong. But the longer he holds them there the lower their sobs get, until they’re left heaving in breath after breath, slowly calming down. Astarion hasn’t said a word since they left camp. He doesn’t need to. The unspoken language of touch tells Tav everything they needed to know: he’s here for them, he cares for them, they’re safe with him. And when Tav is calm and they walk back to camp, he’s not to be blamed for the sardonic joke he lets slip.

Lae’zel:

Lae’zel immediately notices that Tav’s demeanor has changed when they walk back into camp with clenched fists and nostrils flared. She can sense the difference a mile away, but to her that’s all it is. A change. She’s not incredibly well versed in the range of emotions that non-githyanki display, but she at least understands that this is not Tav’s normal. She watches from the corner of her eye as they make a beeline to their tent. It’s strange to say the least. Something tells Lae’zel that she should check on them, some small part of herself that never used to neg her before she met Tav. So, she tentatively steps towards their tent, hands awkwardly at her sides. She calls for them, and they pop their head out with puffy, red eyes. Lae’zel speaks and she’s confident she said the right words. Until Tav is back inside their tent muffling a scream into a pillow, making horrendously loud noises as they try to catch their breath. Lae’zel stands motionless, still outside the tent. She grits her teeth as she battles with her own mind. This kind of behavior is weak, their leader should not be displaying such things outwardly. But, this is Tav who has taught her so much in such a short time – like that it’s okay to show weakness, vulnerability, even if she struggles with it still. The part of her that cares for Tav more than it fears weakness wins over, and she steps through the threshold of Tav’s tent. They’re disheveled: hair a mess, nose snotty, eyes bloodshot. Lae’zel sits next to them as they stare at her. A moment passes before they return to sobbing into a pile of pillows. Lae’zel is truly out of her element, and out of sheer unease she starts to talk. She’s not really even saying anything of much importance, just tiny pieces of her life before the tadpole. The first time she wielded a sword, how she wanted to ride a red dragon as a child, the first time she saw a human in person. She just talks and talks and talks, never even looking at Tav until their breath evens out and their body slumps. They fell asleep. Lae’zel leaves quietly, but not before she pulls a blanket over Tav’s shoulders.

Wyll:

Wyll knew it was coming. Although Tav is an absolute delight, he's seen before how holding back all negativity can really break a person. It’s no surprise when one day he finds Tav in a destroyed building not far from camp, knees tucked against them, heaving as though they’d been kicked in the chest. The only thing keeping their wails quiet was the hand shoved in their mouth, biting down with a force that surely had drawn blood. Wyll kneels before them, pulling their face up with both of his hands, and commands them to look at him using the same voice his father would use on him as a child. Strong and assured. He takes a big breath in, urging Tav with his eyes to do the same. Tav mimics his actions again and again, little sobs and hiccups escaping every so often. They sit like that for a while until Wyll is sure that Tav is more controlled. He takes the space next to them, allowing them a moment to collect their thoughts. Wyll listens attentively and even relents when Tav asks to be alone, seeing the ghost of a smile on their face. When Tav gets back to camp, Wyll is waiting for them with a plate of warm food ready. The other companions are all in their tent – Wyll didn’t ask so much as forcefully suggested that they make themselves scarce – so the two have the fire all to themselves. The silence between them is easy. Wyll sits Tav between his legs and leans them back to his chest. His fingers run through their hair, undoing the knots that formed as they broke down against the harsh stone wall. When Tav falls asleep like that, he doesn’t move them. Instead, Wyll settles in and tries to make himself at least somehwat comfortable while his love gets their first good night's rest in a long time.

Gale:

Gale blabbers on and on about something so inane and stupid that most of the camp has retreated to their tents by now. Except for Tav who was returning from the Wyrm’s Rock. Letting go of poor Wyll, the only campmate too polite to leave Gale outright, he turns to Tav, walking in step beside them. He misses the way their eyes don’t lift from the ground, too busy waving his hands around to accentuate his point. They ask for a bit of space, but Gale is too enthralled in his speech to notice the way Tav’s eyes water when he doesn’t step away. And then they snap, tears spilling, hissing harshly for Gale to just shut up. He’s shocked, mouth hanging wide open in surprise. He doesn’t even chase after them when they walk past him, not stopping until they’re out of camp, over the road, and into the tree line. Gale’s not stupid though, he knows that Tav would never be so impolite normally. So, despite his pride being slightly wounded, he follows where they cut through the forest, hoping they didn’t go too far. When he finds them, they’re stomping around a clearing pulling at their hair, face contorted as they cry. Did he do this? Gale clears his throat to make himself known. Tav peers at him for a moment before turning around, holding their arms against their chest like they could fall apart in the breeze. Gale takes a hesitant step towards them, gauging his next best move. When they don’t protest, he closes the distance between them and puts a hand on their shoulder. They turn and immediately pull themself into his arms. Gale is quick to hold them there, resting his chin on their head, stroking their hair with his palm. He doesn’t know how to solve this, how to make them feel better, though something in him says to keep still. Keep holding Tav to his chest until they no longer shake. He idly wonders if a calming spell would work better than the little comfort his arms can provide. But Tav’s breath is slowing, their cries going silent. His voice is warm in their ear as he recites some poem that comes to memory of a man who thought he could hold the world on his shoulders. Tav only half listens but lets Gale cradle them against him until they look up and softly ask to go back to camp.

Karlach:

Karlach thinks she is the luckiest woman alive. Fresh out of the Hells for the first time in ten years and she meets someone who is sunshine incarnate, someone who has a good heart, someone who wants her as much as she wants them. Then, she gets to actually touch the person she loves? She’s sure she’s never been happier. Every time Tav strolls into camp with a spring in their step, Karlach’s heart could burst with love – and not hellfire. She knows Tav is due back and her heart flutters impatiently as she waits. But it quickly starts to sink, more like drops ten stories to the groun, as she sees Tav with their eyes glued to the ground, walking into camp as though they’ve been carrying the owl bear cub on their shoulders for the past hour. They try to walk past Karlach in a rush, but she sticks out an arm to clothesline them. Karlach is so much stronger than Tav, so it’s easy for her to pull them to stand in front of her even as they put up a small fight. She wants to know what’s wrong, something is very clearly wrong, but Tav doesn’t budge. They fight back tears and stare at the ground. This was going to take drastic measures. With no warning, Karlach grabs Tav’s hand, yanking them out of camp and into one of the alleyways that connect it to the lower city. She stops as she eyes her goal. The alley is littered with wooden crates and barrels, old vases and general garbage. Tav’s confusion temporarily surmounts their urge to cry though it’s short lived. They look up to Kalach searching for an answer. Karlach just smiles and removes the mace she keeps strapped to her back in case of emergencies. She hands it to Tav with a nod towards the debris. Tav understands, or at least they think they do – they've surely seen Karlach commit enough property damage in the heat of a breakdown to get the idea. A deafening crack bounces down the alley as Tav connects the mace to a standing wooden barrel. It explodes into shards of splinters, and with it so does Tav’s resolve. They scream as they swing the mace into their next victim, a crate filled with used glass bottles. It lets out a satisfying crunch. Karlach isn’t sure how long she stands there, letting Tav silence their sobs with the sound of destruction. They’re out of breath, their swings weaker as they try to continue. But Karlach catches the mace on its down swing, pulling it and Tav close. Tav tries in vain to catch their breath as Karlach squeezes it out of them in a hug so tight it could bruise. With a shaky voice, Tav thanks her, leaning their forehead against herchest and closing their eyes. Karlach doesn’t let go for a long, long time.

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mewtwo24 · 8 months

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MAWS - An Allegory for Autism, too?

God like…there have been so many amazing posts about maws right now, and I don’t want to detract from any of them because I absolutely agree with how powerful an allegory the show is in regards to being an immigrant/alien.

But at the same time I just. I have been literally losing my mind at how autistic Clark feels. And at this point I can’t tell if I’m seeing things that aren’t there or he really is just so god damn ‘tism it makes his experiences of being othered two- and triplefold.

Like. Okay. He keeps acting on what he thinks is just or morally right in the moment, but sometimes struggles to see the social signals (or bigger picture) that might indicate somebody is deceiving him. If he does realize he’s being deceived, he does the right thing anyway even if it’s to his detriment--because he can’t accept looking away from a problem he might have resolved. Helping someone, no matter how difficult or unreasonable.

Okay.

When he’s trying to protect himself from Lois. He tells the truth in the most evasive way humanly possible, and because he thinks she’ll find him dashing from saving people he comes off as dissembling. He is convinced that he has charmed her to no end with his alter ego since he’s Such A Super Cool Strong Normal Guy as Superman, and that she couldn’t possibly be suspicious any longer because he told the truth. Lois wants to throttle him for lying. He has no idea as to why that is--and is openly surprised that she’s upset.

This is not even touching the fact that he lived for YEARS with Jimmy and literally destroyed stuff in front of him by accident, and never once thought Jimmy knew some shit was going on with him. Jimmy, being subtle and considerate, didn’t snitch because he was a homie. Clark does not notice in the slightest. ‘IT COULD HAVE BEEN THE SCREWS’ ASS.

This also not touching on the “How did you know you were bulletproof?” “I didn’t. I just knew you weren’t.” Despite pervasive signs that his powers weren’t operating as they should in that area. Despite knowing Lois was still upset with him and may not forgive him, could hurt him with what she knew.

Okay.

I'm going to put the rest under a cut because I never go on short tangents:

In a lot of New Age illegitimate medicine and psychological constructs, autistics are often conceptualized as people with ‘special powers’ or religious enlightenment in accordance with some manifestations of their disability. Clark’s superspeed and strength and heat vision can EASILY be seen as an extension of that. However, what I really want to talk about is the latest episode’s super hearing.

Most autistics have sensory issues, both with textures but also with hearing. A very common surprise for undiagnosed individuals, for example, is that they use music and headphones to stim in a more socially acceptable way. Particularly loud noises or constant loud chatter can cause distress otherwise, and having constant meltdowns/catatonia reactions isn’t feasible for survival.

Of all his powers that might be a weakness I think it is a fascinating--and honestly, deliberate--choice that speaks volumes (please pardon the pun). Because that’s the horrible thing about having sensory overload with your hearing; you don’t always have a choice as to what you’re subjected to. Ear-piercing alarms can flare at any moment, people can play what they consider harmless pranks, or day to day fighting to focus can make every sound feel like nails on a chalkboard from the overstimulation.

While Clark is able to distinguish voices if he knows what to look for, lack of sleep and rest tremendously weaken his ability to focus. I noticed that as the episode wore on, there was a distinct and exponential progression. At first, when he overdid it and didn’t sleep for a day or so, he still managed to operate without hurting himself or risking others. But as he kept pushing himself without rest to answer every cry for help, he grew progressively and sharply overwhelmed. He quickly became overstimulated by the mounting flurry of oncoming stimuli (e.g. the truck about to hit someone, dodging people around him, the relentless super hearing flooding in) and began to react in ways that were careless and random.

Though his powers appear supernatural and inexhaustible, we are forced to face the fact that he still possesses hard limits. Even if autistics seem more capable than NTs at points, there is a reason “high-functioning” became an obsolete terminology with which to differentiate people on the spectrum ‘who seemed to be above average’. Because just as we see Clark forcing himself to exert his superpowers until his body collapses to prove he is good, autistics also push themselves to be useful/helpful/amenable/inobtrusive in order to be accepted as something not other/monstrous.

(Please note, by the way, towards the end of the newest episode--his power comes out in a flash of blue, overpowering light as the last of his strength begins to wane. A surefire sign that he was truly at the end of his endurance before he’s knocked unconscious.)

The fact that Clark starts to learn how to listen in for people so fast, but also doesn’t think to tune them out (if he can) adds even more to the first point too. Because he can’t turn it off in full, it means he has no way to ignore people who are hurting no matter how small--and for him that places the cognitive burden of making a choice. And he can’t choose not to help people.

Okay.

Clark’s incipient refusal to discover more about himself, the sheer overwhelmed look he had as a child--but also as an adult--at the prospect of having to rewrite and re-evaluate everything he thought he knew about himself. There is no excitement, no positive anticipation. When he chooses to face it, it’s because he perceives a kind of responsibility to better understand/control his powers to help more people. And it’s because his friends support him that he ever finds the will to do it. He has no desire to acknowledge or define his otherness head-on. (Once again, he can only act with courage on behalf of others and/or to ultimately win their acceptance.)

GOD. AND. AND how he tells Lois how much she made him “come out of his shell” and forced him to face the world, to stop living in his formerly simple bubble. How autistics instinctively hate breaks in routine and the unknown and the horrible ordeal of change, especially if they have trauma linked to it. But he was trying because yeah, as people we need new and varying stimuli to be happy and healthy. To be alive is to change, whether one likes it or not.

How part of the reason Lois is so dear to him is because she makes him feel capable and safe when he has to face the truth of his difference and change. (THIS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE LATEST EPISODE. “CLARK, JUST TRY TO BE NORMAL”. I’M EATING MY SHIRT. THE ENDLESS OSCILLATION BETWEEN HIS DESPERATION TO BE NORMAL BUT ALSO STRIVE FOR MORE, AND HOW LOIS ANSWERS BOTH THOSE WARRING CALLS WITHIN HIM JUST BY BEING HERSELF.)

SCREAMS.

Okay.

The most recent episode being a direct result of Lois and Jimmy’s acceptance of his alter ego Superman. Because of course Superman is the preferred variation of himself. Everyone loves Superman. Everyone finds him cool and heroic and dazzling. Jimmy gets social media acclaim that he enjoys from it. Lois has a Cool Guy Boyfriend, and she told him outright she thinks he’s amazing in the last episode when he complained about being weird.

Why go back to being Clark? Under the unending burden of his new super hearing, he seems to be so drowned in voices that he forgets a very important one: Lois. She loved him as Clark long before Superman existed, the lumbering gentle giant who always treated people with dignity and respect was more than enough for her to fall in love. And that’s why it’s so poignant, but also so unbelievably devastating when she asks him to be normal in the newest episode.

Because what she was trying to say was “Please stop overexerting yourself, you’re hurting yourself. This is only going to end badly if you don’t rest and think about how you want to move forward. You’re enough as you are. You’re enough as Clark Kent.” She was trying to tell him that Superman isn’t all that matters, that Superman is a person with feelings and needs and vulnerabilities, just like anyone else.

What makes this miscommunication so powerful to me is that it’s clear Clark’s ability to differentiate has become confused ever since Lois and Jimmy accepted him. How much of him is Clark, how much of him is Superman? Before, when he had decided Superman was too much for him to handle and something that needed to stay hidden, he knew how to behave day to day. But now that the aforementioned operating precept has been dismantled by their acceptance, what is his blueprint now? To be freed of his chains, but to be too afraid to leave the cage--he becomes so openly and rapidly lost. It was easier when he didn’t have to choose or think about it.

Okay.

Like. I can see how it could be construed as a result of his inexperience, right? He’s never met intergalactic beings, so how would he know? He only just unlocked his powers as Superman, so of course he’s clumsy about it. He wasn’t a born fighter or a trained one, so of course he’s going to be a little green when he’s in combat.

But that’s the thing for me. It’s not that he doesn’t always have the time to re-evaluate, or strategize, or notice he’s being deceived. He just has such an unwavering sensibility, this one-track sense of “I am strong. So I must protect. And to do that I need to act.” And a lot of times this is as far as his thinking goes. And if that isn’t the most autistic shit imaginable, I’m really not sure what is.

The overshot clumsiness of his movements and occasional awkwardness, how he’s learned to smooth that over by being helpful to people or meek to be accepted. Like. I swear to god this show is going to kill me.

So much of the reason he tanked so badly in this episode was because he was using a broken coping mechanism to its absolute extreme. And instead of listening to his bodily and mental signals that he could no longer sustain helping every single person in the world, he just forces himself to push through. He’s so desperate to prove he’s a good person and belong, he doesn’t notice that it’s literally destroying him from the inside.

The mask that is Superman, and the unmasking that is the mindful and imperfect Clark Kent. That everyone adores Superman and wants him to fulfill their every need, no matter what it costs him to be that person. The fact that the moment they learn he’s an alien or see the raw extent of his power (pushed to unsustainable limits in desperation) he becomes a horrible, inhuman threat and a monster. The fact that it’s his friends and his family who see him unmasked as Clark and love him just as he is, that they care little for what Superman can give them because Clark is already enough. That they love Clark precisely BECAUSE he is somebody with weaknesses and flaws and imperfections, that adore his quirks and endearing fumbling.

The horrific reality that the more he leans into his masking out of desperation to be accepted, the more he estranges and incites violent rejection in the people around him. Even if he wants to do the right thing, he is so staunchly and too openly opposed to the malice of others that they hold grudges from the stark, exposing contrast. How choosing to be Superman can endanger and estrange the people who love Clark, isolating him even further. And yet when he is unmasked and acts like himself, he is hardly ever taken seriously or people take advantage of his meekness/willingness to help.

The first episode. When he just keeps chanting ‘be normal be normal be normal’ and the more pressure he puts on himself, the more he hyperfixates and the less his actions align with his intentions. The way he can never do both and can only manage to sustain one at a time. The core conflict that’s ever present; the desire to be ordinary under the reality that you are extraordinary, with the agonizing knowledge that you never had the choice to live under so much difference and scrutiny.

The never-ending autistic battle of being socially acceptable to the detriment of your greatest virtues: your passion and your honesty. To be left feeling empty and drained despite your success, no closer to self-satisfaction or feelings of human camaraderie. The reality of being always forced to choose between one bad option and a worse one, that the only choice you have is what you’re willing to sacrifice. That people will toy with your vulnerabilities no matter how desperately you try to conceal them, how your weaknesses will be a game or a spectacle to the rest of the world.

How one has to wonder to what degree the Superman witnessed in Lois’ memory capsule was pushed to the very brink. Or the pointed lack of context: what brought him to such extremes, what could inspire so much indifference to the pain of others? How, while it is frightening, he is a person just like anyone else--who possesses the potential for raw good and raw bad. Why is it that everyone so easily believes that his potential will be negative? Why is it so difficult to have faith in someone who is trying so hard to be good?

The irony of Clark’s predicament, that the sincere fulfillment he feels upon helping others is precisely what inspires fear in those who insist on their comparative self-serving normality.

“What’s your angle!? What’s in it for you?” “Trust me, kids. Nobody puts on that big a show of being good. Unless they’re hiding something…All he wants is to pull cats out of trees? Yeah, I’m not buying it.” “He’s not normal like you and me….If he really wanted to hurt us, what could we do about it?...Just him having a bad day could spell the end for us…Well, not all of us share your faith.” “You want to be number one? You don’t get there by writing fluff. You go for blood. That’s something Perry never understood. Do you?”

The unbearable but inevitable fact that being autistic is a perpetual experience of loss. If you are not selfish or egocentric like the rest of the world, you are naive and weak. If you exhibit an ounce of self-centered desire or emotion, you are something that must be eradicated for the greater good. No amount of good that you accomplish can ever balance the scales of what has been lost or spent to sustain you, because at the end of the day your life is considered one without value. It is irrelevant that entire military regimes have collectively decimated and endangered thousands for their so-called “results”, because you as a sole actor are so much easier to blame and trample.

The enduring fact, especially in a culture so absorbed in easy answers and harsh binaries, that the human mind does not care for the struggle of truth.

Anyway if you need me I’ll be clawing at the walls thanks

#my adventures with superman #maws #i just haven't been able to stop thinking about this #its like the newest episode made it impossible to question any longer #i hope this made sense to someone???? other than me #is it obvious that this weeks episode made me cry a little haha #stares into the distance So Normally #the way experiencing maws clark kent can be something so personal...

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koalas-koalas-everywhere · 5 months

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Honestly? While there's no doubt that Luffy fucked up in Whiskey Peak? Like 80% of the outrage and 100% of the accusations of "ooc"ness come from 1) the misconception of Luffy being this super intuitive guy leading to him being put on an altar, and 2) a refusal to allow him any emotional depth.

To start off – Luffy's not that intuitive. The closest thing to it is what the crew call his "animal instincts" in Water 7, where he predicts that he will have to fight Rob Lucci, like he predicts other fights before and after. Only – is that really what happens? He "just knows"? Because, from what I remember, he very clearly identifies him as the leader and the strongest member of CP9 (#366: "of all the people we'll be fighting in a little while, the strongest is that pigeon guy! I'l definitely be the one to send him flying!"). Of course he assigns himself to fight him. That's his reasoning every other time, as well. At times (certainly not often, but sometimes), he demonstrates actual strategic thinking, like with Moria.

I think a lot of people want to think that Luffy "intuits" the Straw Hats' potential or even their pasts when he asks them to join, but we don't see any evidence of that. What we do see is a lot of instances where Luffy witnesses good things about his friends, both in terms of skill and of character. In Brook's case, he literally just went "talking skeleton cool cool cool cool cool". And that's all. It might be hard to swallow that some of the deepest and strongest bonds we see in the series, the most important ones and the cornerstone of the story, are based on something as flimsy as "hee hee I like you be my nakama", that Luffy didn't somehow know that they needed to be taken in. But that's just the way it is. Hell, if it had been solely up to him, Kureha, Iceberg and a bunch of random zombies without a will of their own who were trying to kill them would be part of the crew.

I think that what happens is that Luffy is very undiscerning and undemanding about who can join the crew or even sail with them (he also let Miss Wednesday and Mr. 9 go with them without a fuss, same with the Franky Family, who he only knows from, you know, having beat up Usopp and stolen 200mil berries from them) and we want to think that there's some deeper reason for it. We know that it's nothing rational, because we're not so detached from what's happening on the page, so that leaves some kind of instinct telling him that these are the right people. It's a nice idea – it gives Luffy some unconventional wisdom to make up for his lack of it otherwise and fits well with his upbringing in the jungle.

But there's not really anything special about the people he picks up, except the fact that he picks them up. Not in the sense that they're special because of him, but that they become special to him. That's the real reason why he goes after Nami and Robin and Sanji when they leave. It's not that, oooh, he can sense how tortured and traumatized they are and that deep down they're good people. Nah – he just believes them when they say they are his people, so he refuses to abandon them.

And, okay, this might seem damning in the context of Whiskey Peak, because where was this faith when it came to Zoro, who arguably earned it more than anyone else in the crew? To be honest, that's one of the points where I'll concede that Luffy fucked up the most, but there is another matter at play here: everyone else claimed to be on his side, or at least be a certain kind of person, before apparently turning on him. He chose to believe that original impression out of loyalty.

Not only is Luffy not that discerning, he is known for being a sucker for deception. He can't lie, and he's so honest that most of the time he can't even conceptualize that someone might be lying to him. ("Are you going to betray me?" "No." *grins*) The idea that he could just... take a look at someone and divine either good or evil intent goes directly against canon. He gets taken in by CP9, by Kanjuro, hell, he buys that King Cobra betrayed Alabasta as Vivi is telling him of how Crocodile manipulated them.

And that leads me into Whiskey Peak and point 2.

Before we start, think back to Wano, if you would. (If you haven't reached Wano, don't worry, the spoilers in this paragraph are very light.) Imagine that, after spending the day with Tama, and Tsuru, and Kiku, and the rest of the village who gave up their scarce supplies to feed them, Luffy and Zoro go to sleep. The morning after that, Luffy wakes up to a massacre. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has been cut down. The people who helped them, the people who he was talking and laughing with just a few hours ago, dead or near enough. He recognized Tsuru among the pile of bodies and she still has some breath left, so he asks who did it.

Basically, imagine sympathetic victims to the Whiskey Peak massacre.

When we read Whiskey Peak, we know there's something fishy going on. For starters, it's Miss Wednesday and Mr. 9's town, which makes it suspicious enough. Then, before the attack, we see them writing a letter saying that they wanted the Straw Hats to go there, making it obviously dangerous. This is without even getting into the clear threat evident to us readers because we know this is a story and that there's no way the heroes will have it that easy. We mistrust and refuse to sympathize with the Whiskey Peak inhabitants from the start. Until the reveal that Vivi's undercover, they're enemies and future meatsacks to us. We forget that that's not the case for the Straw Hats. Especially, that's not the case for Luffy, who takes everyone at face value.

I think a lot of people maybe get too caught up in their image of Luffy as a sort of chaos, "do things for the laff" entity who'll liberate you from tyranny in exchange from food, so they don't realize that there might be emotional, non-transactional reasons for his behavior. That he feels thankful to the people who help him, because he's survived on the kindness of others all his life and he would've died without it (and if you think that doesn't apply now that he's a pirate, go back to read the Baratie arc). That he might get attached to the people who are kind to him and others. That, even if he doesn't feel affection for them, he'll still be outraged when their kindness is met with cruelty by others. We joke about his disproportionate responses to being fed (aka overthrowing the government for a bowl of rice), but that's because he's not acting under a perceived debt, but out of a bond he's created with his benefactor/s.

So Luffy, who couldn't understand duplicity if it showed up with a twin, gets to a village full of people who happily welcome him and his crew, who appear to do this for every weary traveler that has just passed through the harrowing ordeal of Reverse Mountain. They offer them food, drinks and shelter for as long as they need it. Not only that, they all spend hours partying together, chatting, having fun. Than, Luffy wakes up to find everyone either slaughtered or nearly – the people he was partying with not long ago, from the elderly to children, and, okay, gross, but let's recognize that One Piece is a piece of media with an antiquated system of gallantry that says that it's also an outrage that the women were also hurt. He walks up to one of them and asks them who did it. He says it was Zoro.

Take a moment to place yourself in his shoes. This was objectively a horrifying experience. You wouldn't be surprised if he went after the culprit if it was a stranger. And while I think he should have given Zoro the benefit of the doubt, there's something actually a lot more horrifying in the fact that it was one of his friends who did it: that means Luffy's responsible. He's the one who brought Zoro there, after all. Most codes of honor would have the leader of a group vouching, at least implicitly, for its members.

And it might have easily felt like a betrayal. Not because Zoro went against Luffy, but because he let him down.

A lot of people bring this fight back to loyalty – hasn't Zoro shown Luffy how loyal he is? (And, you know what, I think we could have an interesting discussion about that? About what's said, what's implied, also what's actually witnessed by the characters, but never mind.) Zoro promised him he'd be the best, and that he'd stick by Luffy in his path to achieve that... but he never promised he'd never cruelly cut down an entire village in the meantime, something which is not beyond what any other pirate would do, loyalty notwithstanding. And a good thing, too, because he did, in fact, do that in WP!

That's the other thing. Imagine waking up to a whole village of people who helped you and your crew cut down by a member of said crew. The children included. The idea of there being a good reason for it is actually more out there than a prideful and powerful man who agreed to become a pirate, specifically to establish himself as the strongest in his field, would lash out at the flimsiest offense to his ego, to be honest.

Basically, it all goes down to how this guy, so honest he can barely conceive of being lied to when he's directly informed of it, should have walked out to find bloodied piles of bodies and gone "this guy with violent tendencies I met like a month ago killed dozens of people, including children, who fed us and sheltered and fed us, who I like because of that, probably did it for a good reason". Forgive me if I bring up the children too much, it's just that, if there's one demographic you don't expect anyone to have enough of a good reason to maim, it's that one. Faced with this kind of scene, it makes sense to doubt your initial judgement of a person.

Of course, what he did see of Zoro before that should have told him enough to at least doubt. At the very least, he should have heard him out before killing him. Zoro did try to explain. (Then again, if someone admitted to slaughtering a whole neighborhood and then claimed to have a good reason for it I wouldn't be jumping to hear them out.)

That said, it's not about Luffy doubting Zoro's loyalty, it's about doubting his character when faced with incredibly damning evidence against it. One the one hand, maybe Luffy's the one who should've been more loyal. On the other, the fact that his loyalty didn't extend to forgiving one of his crew when they apparently go rogue and attack not just an entire village, but of full of people who helped them and continuously did the same for others, just goes to prove that he doesn't have the moral backbone of a wet noodle, in addition to checking out with his tendency to develop an attachment to people who feed him.

#One Piece #Whiskey Peak #Monkey D. Luffy #Roronoa Zoro

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mdhwrites · 1 year

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King and Eda are Bad Characters

Specifically because of the show they’re in. Conceptually, in isolation, neither is actually that bad or that great. Eda is just a grouchy mentor character and King is... Okay, King is a bad character because he’s comic relief until his character entirely inverts itself but any of the concepts present with him, being a disaffected young adult, being a megalomaniac child or even just being a lost kid trying to find his place without his birth parents are all good concepts that you can get a lot of fun or narrative use out of. The problem comes that they’re in a comedy adventure and both have this very peculiar and unique trait that does make them different from most fictional characters in that NEITHER WANTS TO DO LITERALLY FUCKING ANYTHING. Both are lazy assholes who don’t actually care about anything and don’t want to do anything. They are entirely content with just existing. Which is kind of a problem for your main cast of an isekai. Luz literally doesn’t know enough about the world to self motivate. She literally blindly walks to Hexide and it’s a good thing that happened instead of falling into a pit or monster’s mouth, etc. like that. And Luz does that because Eda isn’t interested in actually teaching, she just wants free labor and King sure as fuck isn’t going to do anything when S1 King wants everyone to just give him things without ever trying. That’s part of his one joke.

It’s why the found family aspect in S1 is actually as bad as it is. Most of the time the two of them are entirely dismissive of Luz so Luz either has to find a way to blackmail/bribe them into doing something with her or fuck off and do her own thing without them. When they are together, they’re making fun of Luz and her beliefs and not in a “We’re good friends who have this back and forth” but instead a “Look! This fucker cares about anything!” This is still true all the way to GROM! Three quarters of the way into S1. And it’s only a third of the way through S2 when Eda calls Luz and King her kids! It’s why S1 is dominated by Hexide and S2 is dominated by other characters than the main trio telling them going “Do this.” I’ve railed against proactive protagonists but this isn’t just not being proactive. This is actively being against being in the VERY STORY YOU’RE IN. Which is part of the point to TOH because I imagine they think they’re clever with this. That they’re being ‘subversive’. After all, fantasy shows have mentors who immediately start teaching their youths, Their mentors truly love their subject and so even while grouchy do relish in being able to pass on those skills. Fantasy characters don’t care about danger because part of the granduer of the world they live in is the possibility mixed with danger that is around every corner. You never know what will happen if you just point in a direction and go. But Eda and King are both characters who would go “You get eaten, the end, I’m gonna go take a nap.” In S2 this evolves a little towards the Hop Pop side of it where “Everything is so dangerous and these are kids,” but one of those people you’re talking about is literally one of the strongest witches in the Isles because glyphs are busted and the other is someone you have code names for crimes with and in this very season have gone out and done highly dangerous crimes with to get Palistrom wood. Remember: Eda ives so few shits about the dangers of her world that when the EC head and a squad of soldiers comes, Eda just keeps knitting Luz’s cloak while Hooty makes a literal joke out of them. That gets into just how incompatible the 2 seasons are though and I have an ask lined up inquiring about how detrimental the shit treatment of the EC is. But yeah, when 2/3s of your main cast are like this... How are you supposed to tell adventure stories? Easy: You don’t. They’re characters that feel directly out of something like Community, Always Sunny or even Family Guy (to the point where the playground B plot for King where he uses Eda’s monster form feels like its directly inspired by the episode Stewie meets Bertrum) so their plots are those. So many of them are in town or cleaning up messes of their past or really just exceptionally mundane because they’re NEVER going to go do something actually adventurous. Luz always has to go off on her own for that.

But that’s the problem isn’t it: In something like Family Guy, they would be entirely forgettable. Very basic and not even that funny or that ripe for jokes so they wouldn’t be great for that show but they would be compatible. For a KID’S SHOW... Why are they here? The only argument for them is the case of “Fantasy versus Reality.” They are the reality that crashes against Luz but they barely do that because they’re not nearly as much of the show as one would expect. Not only that but eventually they change to never question Luz and coddle her like the rest of the cast so now they’re not even working for thematic purposes AND they’re boring. And you can do this better. Karate Kid, Ranger’s Apprentice, a billion other stories have done grouchy mentors who still do things and still work for their stories but they’re usually at least enthusiastic about the thing they teach. The apprentice opens them up to grow and the like because they get a chance to see their lighter side through the joy they find in their passion. Eda fails at even this. Being a wild witch is important to Eda but we’re never given the impression Eda prefers it for a specific reason other than getting to be more free than other witches. Her freedom to do fuck all though because why should she bother? So she isn’t even excited about magic and her freedom barely matters to even her because it’s just so she can go “Yeah, you have to report to your coven head and all the friends you have at your coven while I get to go home whenever I want to a bird tube I actively dislike and a roommate I mock constantly!” Yeah... Keep winning Queen. I just wish you were winning somewhere else.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#eda the owl lady #King #The Owl House Criticism #TOH Critical

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angelosearch · 29 days

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Hooray Tumblr is letting me post this now!!

The following is a super intense, probably too personal essay about trying to process the overwhelmingly GOOD news that I got into grad school.

I wasn't sure about posting this, but ultimately, it is a story about never giving up, because you never know where you will be in a couple of years. So maybe this will help someone who is struggling with feelings of being trapped in their own lives.

It can get better, and it will.

I look at my life right now and I am so overwhelmed and grateful. I get to be creative every day. I am writing again. I am always learning new things about art and psychology. I have a lovely home and amazing husband and great dog that I cherish. I have met some incredible people that, now that they are in my life, I never want them to leave.

And now I have gotten into grad school.

It all seems impossibly fantastic and I wonder what I did to deserve this. There is also a part of me that is curious when I will mess it up, but in this big tangle of emotions I am feeling, I am trying not to dwell on those.

There is a cord of sentiment that is thicker and wrapped around the rest. Something that I can't put a name to, but it has a color the shade of something thankful. Every time I twirl it around my mind I start to tear up.

It is the feeling that I am living a life I never could have imagined in my darkest days and I am just... so so so happy I am still here for them.

In the winter of 2020, after a life-long battle with mental illness, I gave up. I didn't try to give up, I actually gave up. It is only by some kindness of the universe that I am still here to type this post.

Suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary question--but the problem is, when you spend a good portion of your life haunted by depression and trauma and a voice that tells you that you have nothing to offer the world, the question does not seem temporary. When I became unable to imagine an escape from a job that made me feel worthless, a chronic illness that put me in pain and left me in isolation, a blanket of guilt I could not shake, and a global tragedy with no end in sight, I took my own emergency exit. It was like jumping out of the window of a burning building on the 32 floor. I believed I would die either way, but the fall to the ground would require less suffering.

I was lucky enough to be caught on the way down - but I didn't feel lucky. They wanted to put me back in the building, and now the fire was hotter and had consumed my furniture.

I woke up in a very poorly run psych ward. So poorly run, my husband did not know where I had been taken for 18 hours after he called 911. I was given a roommate who was way too much like my mother, and I slowly became manic without the knowledge of the staff. They discharged me a few days before Christmas.

I had been hypomanic before, but I never had a word for it. When I was crying at the sunset that night and feeling so energetic and happy (and telling the funniest jokes I had ever told, from my skewed perspective), I just thought I was happy to be alive. But I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. My pressured speech and grandiose ideas scared my husband and I ended up in psych ward #2 (a much nicer one). I had to spend one night in the ER screaming and hallucinating, believing my heart would give out before I'd fall asleep, before I got there, though.

They called it "manic psychosis." I called it "the darkest timeline."

On Christmas eve, I was given the gift of a new diagnosis: bipolar disorder. I was too unstable to know what that meant or to conceptualize that the burning building was crumbling in some parts.

On the day I was discharged, I slept very little and was extremely lethargic. I had trouble moving and my assigned counselor had to prop me up to help me to his office. I don't know why they discharged me when I had to be taken downstairs in a wheelchair, but they did.

I was in urgent care not 24 hours later when I could no longer walk or sit up, and I even had trouble speaking. A nice EMT, who I remember had a name that included two US presidents, though I don't recall which, took me to my third hospital in two weeks. By time I made it to my room, I had trouble swallowing and was put on a liquid diet.

It is hard to say what the worst part of this terrifying saga was. However, laying in that hospital bed with no ability to regulate my body temperature, stuck awake and unable to move with relentless, restless, manic energy, without so much as the relief of distraction from the picture on the tiny hospital TV because I didn't have my glasses, was excruciating in ways I still have trouble coming to terms with. I watched a lot of basketball, I think, by the squeaky sounds of the shoes.

After being assaulted by a frustrated nurse on New Year's Eve, I laid in my hospital bed wishing for the release of sleep while hospital staff hooted and hollered distantly for the ball drop. 2021 had begun and I was in the darkest place I had ever been.

When I could eat by myself again and manageably push around a walker, I was discharged on a rainy January day. No one could say for sure why my strange, temporary paralysis happened. Could have been the benzos I had taken too many of. Could have been the adjustment to the Lithium that would chase away the mania. Most likely, it was the sloppy transition off of Effexor at the first psych ward.

I was finally back in my burning building. I was fired from my job as soon as I had the strength to hold a phone. I had to explain and apologize to friends and family who were stunned and afraid of my actions. And then January 6th happened. In a few days, I would have to start physical therapy and a Partial Hospitalization Program (group therapy school).

I looked at my disintegrating surroundings and thought they expect me to fight for this? Why? I wished I had been successful in my attempt but I had only succeeded in making my life harder.

I guess those who cheered me on could see the possibility of my happiness and success, but I had a lot of trouble catching a glimpse. I went to another psych ward at the beginning of 2022 and ended up in a residential care facility for Halloween and Thanksgiving that year. I had two different jobs, both I ended up quitting for treatment. I tried group therapy and different therapists. I switched medications countless times and even tried Ketamine therapy for a while. Up until April of 2023 (when I started EMDR) or so, it really all felt hopeless, but for some reason, I fought for the unknowable just beyond the horizon. I kept asking for help.

And now I am here, and I can't believe all of this almost didn't happen.

I look around my office and see pieces of art I would have never created. I would have missed concerts and weddings and road trips. There is so much music I would have never listened to! I would have never rediscovered my childhood passions and learned how to be myself. I would never have met some very important people in my life.

It almost never happened, but I was given a second chance.

I have so many feelings right now, some good, some bad. I am excited. I am anxious. I wonder if I can handle the challenge and I fear my bragging or arrogance. But the biggest feeling is my desire to go back in time and hold a version of myself that couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and kept walking anyway.

Now we get to chase our dreams, and teach other people to hold on like you did.

#personal #personal essay #Tw: suicide #tw: sucidal thoughts #writing #essay #gratefulness #bipolar disorder #bipolar mania

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googly-eyed-seraph · 4 months

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where do we draw the line between the person who designs the art and the person who actually makes the art. as a former risograph operator who, every shift, was given at least one absolutely dogshittedly formatted file that i then had to completely rework to make it actually printable, in many cases having to recompile the entire thing, in many many cases having to spend hours printing and reprinting the file to make the masters align perfectly because the students printing didn't understand that the risograph inherently misaligns things and registration is never going to be perfect and didn't care, i've found that i have limited interest in artworks that don't credit the people who actually made the physical objects. dante rossetti got really angry because his drawing wasn't translated to engraving exactly as he envisioned. the engravers got really angry because his design was made with zero knowledge of how engraving actually works. there is a massive gulf in many cases between the final image/physical product and the original design. so many artworks are physically made by a team of people taking orders from someone who has no idea what the actual physical limitations of the medium are, but has a specific aesthetic in mind. architect vs engineer. author vs editor. the idea itself is paramount, as that's what wins the artist the credit, but without the fabrication, the artwork wouldn't exist. ai weiwei doesn't make his own art – workers do. he is a conceptual artist. to me it comes back to walter benjamin's theory of the artwork's aura. ai weiwei's own connection to the pieces, as someone who designs them and then visits a warehouse to check on their progress, is very different to the connection a worker will have to the pebbles they spent hours hand-painting to make them look like sunflower seeds. ai weiwei sees his concept realised. it is a good and interesting concept, and the piece is valuable. it is the result of his design. the people making the seeds see the product of their labour. it is the result of their actual work. the guy who came and terrorised me for weeks in my junior year looked at the pieces as they came out of the printer and saw his design. he saw it as his own work – he had, after all, decided to make a grid showing how the different inks we had looked when combined. i saw hours of my work. hours spent wasting ink and paper, trying to align every circle on a grid perfectly, as he rejected copies where i physically couldn't register the colours any more accurately. i saw the product of my colleague's work on the wall – he had spent hours of his own time printing a grid showing how each of the inks we had in stock looked combined. i had seen the collection grow – it was impossible to complete that sort of project within one week. my colleague had done it so that students hoping to use the riso would be able to have some idea of how their works might look printed. the guy who came to my shifts specifically because i did good work and didn't react when he talked over me and bragged about drinking whiskey in canada at the age of twenty had done it so his classmates would marvel at his originality and skill with printing.

#fear not then said the angel #art theory #every time someone presented riso work in class and people complimented them on the registration or the vibrancy of the colours #i always asked if they had printed it themselves #they almost always hadn't #and they always seemed embarrassed because our classmates would stop praising their riso skill #but they didn't have any riso skill #they didn't know how the machine worked #still. they thought they were very good at riso printing

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captain-astors · 1 year

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Can you do Kaneki for 003 :)))

Mhm! That beautiful mess, the culmination of all I despise but the vessel through which we all must perceive this world. I’d like to shake him like a maraca. This one definitely contains… opinions. As usual it's messy and ramble-ish but I enjoyed it.

How I feel about this character: Wow you're so interesting I wish I could still care after 320 something chapters. Born to “slay” as the youth say, in all meanings of the word, forced to do math. Sometimes I imagine what sound he would make if smacked against a wall. Constantly, actually. I can effectively emulate it with an almost empty water bottle, a thin piece of fabric, a piece of metal, and a slab of gelatin, but I only have access to two of those and it’s not the ones you think. I cannot stress how much I want post-Haise Kaneki dead for plot reasons, but I do think he’s pretty neat before whatever the result of the Tsukiyama extermination arc is. I do like him, but I try not to ponder him too deeply because if I started getting seriously attached to him as a person, I’d have to be disappointed about his character as well. I’m already not normal about so many of them. So he’s more of a secondhand skrunkle, I watch a decent portion of the rest of the fandom go wild and sit back and tend to my own neglected favorites. Like observing a neighbor’s garden, larger than mine but wilder, containing so many varieties of plants I can no longer distinguish them, and perhaps a bit overgrown. Was he the first piece of Tokyo Ghoul art I ever drew? Yes- well no actually that was probably Nishiki or Shuu but I never posted those because they were just sketches, but he was the first that I posted, and kind of my gateway to deciding to let myself brainrot over TG without shame (mostly). So I owe some amount of gratitude to him.

But at the same time he fills me with a deep sadness for what might’ve been. Tokyo Ghoul was praised for having some kind of ground-breaking protagonist but he just feels... edgy at the end of it, handed an undeserved win. Sorry.

(So an update from later this very same day, I drew him and now I want to hug him. NO. I MUST PERSEVERE. Alright Kuroneki is kind of cute and his nickname sounds like Kuroneko (As in the trigun cat) and I love Kuroneko.)

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Protagonists are funny things to ship because they can be shipped with almost anyone. Almost the entire main cast? Been there and done that. Every character he’s been friends with? Certainly. Rivals? No rivalry is complete without a little homoeroticism. The villain? Is that even a question. That random character who appeared for half a chapter? Someone’s probably done it. It’s difficult to pick a favorite but frankly I’m not particularly partial to any of them. Shuuneki is fun but it just feels out of character as soon as it becomes remotely healthy which is what all that pining causes me to intrinsically want which in turn annoys me so… I enjoyed it before I actually learned the story. Now I just can’t fathom truly enjoying a fic about them without leaving frustrated because at any given point, one or the other of them just wouldn’t work. Also I really want Kaneki to die alone. But though I’ll never be extremely passionate about it, I do think that Hidekane is kind of the best one. Like it’s not my ship but from an outsider's perspective I look at it and just go huh. Neat. This one actually seems non-headache inducing. I’m slowly consuming more of it but at the same time Hide deserves much better. I can’t fix you but I can hold your hand as you crumble or something. I will take this time to rant about Tou//ken. God help us all. I will start off with what I like because I am terrified of being burned at the stake by the shippers who actually read through this for some reason. Aesthetically, cool. As individuals, love them. Conceptually, it had great potential. I don’t think it ever could’ve been my otp but I could’ve enjoyed this. Now. DEAR GOD I HONESTLY ADMIRE THOSE WHO SHIP IT FOR EITHER HAVING THE IGNORANCE OR SHEER WILLPOWER TO ENJOY IT DESPITE THAT WRITING. It would be easier to ship two characters who we’ve never seen interact whatsoever (stares at my terrible rarepairs I would know) than to repair this trainwreck, so I suppose that’s a testament to your tenacity or your willingness to ignore the holes. I swear my copy of TG was missing chapters WHERE was their development. They only did things for each other when instructed to or in life or death situations when opposed by a greater threat, only thought fondly of each other when not together, and then got married and kids despite Kaneki being in a mental state nowhere near “intact enough to live a functional existence” must less raise CHILDREN. Like I refuse to believe Kaneki would be a great father. “Something, something breaking the cycle of a loveless life.” Where. Where did he learn to love healthily? Touka? Where? Where is that shown? They interact so briefly in such high-stress scenarios how the HELL am I supposed to know?

Dear god I knew these two were going to get together. I steeled myself for it. I tried to enjoy it I swear I did but it feels like the marriage arc skipped the love arc and I don’t know how I’m supposed to appreciate the shell of a relationship left behind. But I respect those who manage. Like, if a character (Ayato) can go on a brief trip and come back UNDER A FEW DAYS LATER to find out, with absolutely no warning that his SIBLING is married to a guy now, maybe you’re moving just a little fast! Someone please explain this to me I feel like I'm losing my mind.

The Vegas wedding of Tokyo Ghoul, getting hitched in a cave while a homophobic gay horror creature exterminates 98% of your kind.

Also I find it funny that she managed to date a guy who both looks and acts so much like her dad. Touka you can do so much better you are leagues above this guy.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: If Haise is included, Akira and the Quinxes. Family. If Haise is not included, probably… Hinami.

My unpopular opinion about this character: Oh boy. He doesn’t really listen to anyone, and his cycle of self sacrifice for others because it’s the easiest route out is ANNOYING AS HELL. Points are made about it, but does he ever change? No he just keeps trying to die for “the sake of others” until the very end and keeps escaping the actual consequences, while others who have something to live for ACTUALLY DIE for his stupid martyr complex and I am SICK OF IT. He only fights for those he cares about because he’s afraid of being alone which is a very human desire but we never see him grow in it, he just keeps ignoring whatever he doesn’t want to hear, keeps letting himself almost die but he’s still “virtuous” and not a murderer to the narrative. Because the restaurant ghouls dared to have fun with the terrible cards they were dealt, so they deserved it! Because those humans in the dragon incident didn’t care, so they deserved it! And besides he wasn’t conscious anyways! Because Furuta dared to try to break the system that Kaneki decided wasn’t real, because he wanted to make sure the world never created a child like him again, so he deserved it! I could deal with him if the narrative actually treated him like what he is, “morally grey” is not an excuse to his actions it’s a byproduct, so just saying “it’s alright because he’s morally grey” doesn’t fix any of the issues with his inconsistencies! With his lack of growth beyond just getting worse, and being handed a happy ending anyways! Also why are all of his stans silent as the grave I hear barely a WHISPER out of you creatures yet you appear like phantoms to salivate over him when art is made and to sweep polls. I know perhaps 3 people who both actively post and I know for a fact would declare Kaneki their favorite. Where are the rest of you? WHERE ARE YOU HIDING? But godspeed to you.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: He feels so overwritten at the end, I really wish he either died, or that :re had gone the csm route and had a different protagonist. For our candidates for a new protagonist I would nominate: Hide. An exploration of a character who was born into a world that was hurting him, but chose to love ghouls anyways. Who chose to keep being a good person no matter how hard it was, (WHAT KANEKI DOES, DOES NOT COUNT AS BEING A “GOOD PERSON.”) He’d be a refreshing air of positivity and hope from Kaneki’s internal monologue. It’s so desolate it makes me want to commit amusing vandalism just to remember that bright colors are real and very lovely. I don’t have the energy to write out full explanations for all of them but I’d also nominate any of the Quinx squad members, Juuzou (I just want more Hanbee), Ayato, Amon, or Furuta. Or making Haise a person with a separate body.

Favorite friendship for this character: If Haise counts Juuzou, if not Banjou or Ayato.

My crossover ship: I’m tempted to say knives as a joke because they have the same english voice actor, (Who does a fantastic job as both but MAN his voice goes deep in tristamp.) Anyways Vash I guess. Go be self-sacrificial together you fools. (affectionate connotation for one, indifferent for the other.)

#miscellaneous not art things #tokyo ghoul #ken kaneki #still doing those it just took me a bit to continue #zeph answers questions about media/characters/ships

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softquietsteadylove · 1 year

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I came across @theshipper47 's "Forgetting" and something crawled into my mind. We know Mahd Wy'ry is like a mixture of PTSD and Dementia. And Thena is getting confused more often. So i thought about Thena waking up at home, in hers and Gilgameshs bed and not knowing where she is. Gil is making breakfast or something and Thena is wandering around the house, confused, without any memory. Gil is noticing her weird behavior and wants to aks her what's wrong but Thena summons an sword, holding it against his throat and screaming at him, who he is, where she is. And it concerns Gil a lot.

If you have time and feel well enough to write something, maybe this is something you would like to write. Hugs and much love to you! 🖤✨

She woke in a strange place, with a strange feeling. The room was nice, but she didn't know why she was there. She was in a bed. It also felt strange.

It smelled of herself, and of someone else, too.

Thena pulled herself up, looking around the room. The bed was clearly slept in frequently, the sheets wrinkled and the mattress softened from age. There was a breeze coming through the window, making the thin white curtains billow. Wherever she was, the climate was mild.

She slipped a foot out of bed, and then stood. She felt fine. Her limbs functioned as necessary, her breathing was unhindered and she could feel the ebb and flow of Cosmic Energy within her.

She couldn't remember anything, though.

She was Thena. She was the Warrior Eternal. She was chosen by Arishem to be an Eternal assigned to Earth, and...nothing.

Thena approached the door, seeming to be hand carved. A lot of the home around her seemed to be hand crafted, or if not, then certainly fitted into the house to contribute to its comfortable habitat.

Thena listened to the world outside the door. The wind was light, and perhaps it was not just a mild climate but an arid environment in which she found herself. There was someone outside.

Thena breathed in, calling a blade into her hand--something medium in size and manoeuvrable in case her adversary was adaptable. She turned the doorknob delicately, careful of every rattle it made.

There was a man outside. He was humming to himself in the kitchen, preparing some form of sustenance. He had a smile on his face--it was a nice smile. He seemed joyful in nature, but his build betrayed him; he had the form of a Fighter.

Thena poked her head around the corner again, trying to observe more about him. His presence was not wholly unfamiliar to her, which was a surprise in its own right. She didn't know him. But she wasn't filled with adrenaline, her heart wasn't pounding with the thrill of the fight. In fact, it seemed quite happy and contented by his presence.

"Thena!"

She leapt, flying over to him and pinning him against the counter behind him. Her blade hovered at his throat as she held his eyes--deep brown and expressing every thought that ran through his head. "Who are you?"

"What?"

"I will not repeat it," she stated, still holding him back. But his body was totally relaxed. He wasn't even thinking about resisting her, and her questions doubled in her head. "Where am I?"

"Oh," his face fell, and she almost felt a little bad for him (when she was the one in some foreign land). He sighed, "Thena."

Her eyes narrowed; how did he know her name? She remained still, weighing the tactical advantages of her options. Her head tilted just a fraction at him, "who are you?"

He seemed pained by her question, but he smiled. It seemed to come naturally to him, despite the way she had his neck within her grasp. "Gilgamesh."

Gilgamesh: the Strongest Eternal.

His name was in her head. She knew who he was, at least on a conceptual level.

"Gil," he corrected himself, looking at her with those eyes again. There was so much in them she couldn't pull anything from them, like trying to read an entire story with all of its words piled on top of each other. "You call me Gil."

"Gil," she offered, as a test, and he brightened. How could a Fighter allow himself to be so easily read by the enemy? Did he have no sense of preservation? She backed up from him, just slightly. "You know who I am."

His eyes stayed on her, those multitudes - those many, many lifetimes - of words rushing through them again. They were getting clearer to her, though. "I do."

Thena took a step back from him, her hair moving against her shoulders. She was wearing some soft, breezy dress. She liked it, but it was a surprise to not be wearing the armour she had expected, or even the standard grey robes afforded to any Eternal crew.

"Are you hungry?" he - Gil - asked gently, gesturing to a chair at the table. "You can have something to eat. I just made some eggs."

Thena tilted her head at him in the other direction. She could feel the Cosmic Energy in him--could feel the way it reacted to hers and created this funny kind of pull within her. It was as if her body longed to be connected to his, by just a touch--a hand in a hand, a touch to a cheek. She eyed the chair.

Gil held his hands up, stepping away slowly, letting her watch his movements. "You were asleep for a while, this time."

This time. This time?

"Explain," she glared at him from across the table. She didn't like feeling as if this stranger knew things about her that she did not. She didn't like how calm he seemed. She didn't like that she still couldn't seem to get her guard up around him.

"Mahd Wy'ry," he stated as if it were a name, "what does that mean in your head?"

Mahd Wy'ry: punishment. Maybe that wasn't the word, but it certainly seemed to feel that way when she heard it. It was pain, and suffering, and agony. It was disease and decay, misery and malaise.

Thena looked down at her hand, as if the answer could be scrawled there for her to simply read. Gold flickered under her skin. "I...I have Mahd Wy'ry?"

Gil got that grief stricken look on his face again, and her instinctive reaction to remedy it bothered her. "Yeah...it's been a long time."

"How long?" she asked more directly. This little hovel - this home in what appeared to be an endless desert - had so many things in it she didn't recognise.

Gil didn't even blink, "it's been a few hundred years, now. I don't count the days--doesn't make sense for us to, y'know?"

She did know (for whatever reason). But something was reassuring about him not counting each day spent here with her.

With her?

Thena inhaled, preparing herself for the olive branch she was about to extend, beyond dispelling her weapon. Hesitantly, she turned her head, looking back toward the room where she woke. Taking her eyes off him still didn't make her feel that looming sense of danger, which didn't make sense.

Arishem: creator, danger. Deviant: enemy, danger. Ikaris: ally, danger.

Gilgamesh...Gilgamesh...Gil...there was a word there she didn't have.

She looked back at Gil, who hadn't made a single move. He was still looking at her, waiting for her every move to dictate the next step, both of them on some terrifying edge of something.

"You smell like that bed."

He blushed. Fighters weren't supposed to blush. "Well, it is ours."

Ours: yours and mine, shared. Thena just stared at him. There was absolutely nothing in her mind that was an 'ours' in any way. As an Eternal, very little was even hers, aside from her title, her mission, and her mothership.

"I sleep there," she stated, and he nodded. She wondered how she might react if things were different. Were she anyone but the Warrior Eternal, would she feel vulnerable? Would she feel betrayed, or perhaps intrigued?

But she wasn't even surprised.

She knew it was him, in some corner of her mind. She had sensed him outside the room. She had felt the pull to go to him, and she had known as soon as she saw him that he was the one whose arms had been around her in her sleep.

Gil moved slowly, pulling off the apron he was wearing - a pink, flowery thing - and setting it on the counter by the sink. "You eat something, sit and rest for a bit. I'll be outside in the garden. Just...just call for me if you need anything--anything at all, okay?"

Thena just watched him take the furthest route around her to the door. He was giving her space, and it did not seem to be in fear of the consequence for not doing so. He knew her in the same way she knew him (however that was).

Thena looked back to the sink, with a plate sitting next to it and a pan with eggs on the stove. She tilted her head at it. "At least hang it up."

"Huh?"

Thena kept staring at the little pile of apron on the edge of the sink. Something pinged in the back of her mind, like seeing a light through a thick fog. "It doesn't go there--hang it up."

Gilgamesh walked back over to it, picking up the garment that was obviously precious to him. He looked at her, and she sorted through the maelstrom of things in his eyes to pull out that one, louder, stronger, bolder word in them. "And how do you know that?"

Thena blinked, shrugging her shoulders before sitting down in the seat he had left out for her.

"You just do," he supplied softly, handing over a plate with some scrambled eggs and a little sprig of a chive on top.

Because he always wanted her to eat something green.

How did she know the apron hook was by the fridge? She just did. How did she know he was the man who slept beside her at night? She just did. How did she know that she trusted him implicitly--so much so that her own instincts and training knew he wasn't a threat? She just did.

How did she know it was love in his eyes when he looked at her?

Because she loved him too, somehow.

#Thenamesh #who's ready...to suffer?#with a happy ending!#because no one dies in this house #we can cry #but we have things to do #and these two #these two will always find their way back together #so long as I have them to write #their love is so sweet #I have spent my lifetime compiling words and phrases and expressions #to try and convey myself #and these two have exceeded my understanding of love #because he would do it again #on any planet #they invented 'in every universe'#thank you for the ask my love #it's very sweet #I hope you like this

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marsixm · 1 year

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im gonna list things ive been doing lately to conceptualize to myself that my life is not empty or meaningless, feel free to ignore this post-

-i know work stuff shouldnt count but i have become very exceptionally skilled at different aspects of my job and not only do mostly all my coworkers like me and turn to me for help, but lots of customers recognize and like me too and i know its just a minimum wage grocery store job but im proud of myself for building so many skills -on a related note the relationships ive been able to build with some of my coworkers makes me very proud as someone who struggles with socializing as much as i do, and in the context of that being the thing ive been the most sad about lately, its nice that a good handful of my coworkers really like me as much as they do. and i know the main reasons things have been hard at home arent really My Fault as it were -being a figurehead in a truly wild work drama as it unfolds (okay sure this isnt me /doing/ something but it is /interesting/) -every day i try to wear fun little outfits and do fun little makeup things and i often get compliments and really love my style and its definitely off the wall and im very proud of it and am constantly adding to my repertoire -i got pretty damn good at fortnite. no further comment -i got back into sims again and im still pretty good at building -i listen to musicians i personally like and ive been poring through these two youtube true crime channels lately. and i fell off it again but i got back into playing card games besides solitaire on the computer for a bit. i /do/ have interests outside whatever the polycule is doing around me. i /am/ still my own person -adhd win: ive been keeping up with my planner for like 9 months now! leaving it open on my desk and not being too strict with myself with how quickly i write things in has helped a lot -its not even been a week so touch wood but im making it a goal to listen to an album once a week, watch a movie once a week, and if i can, read a book once a week (like, starting small like goosebumps level stuff) -on an average work day i frequently break 20k+ steps and average 17kish steps a day, and in my less active role im still averaging like 13k -i dont draw as much as i want to but i have been drawing more than i was when my depression and mental health were at their worst, again keeping sketchbooks on hand for easy access has helped a lot -ive been having more ideas for films/shows/whatever again lately -i got christmas gifts for lots of friends and family which was the first time i was able to and i got them for people who werent expecting it at all and it felt nice to do nice things for people i care about

i feel like i should list more things but i dont want to force myself to grasp at straws, my life isnt quite as full of things or going the way i want it to be, but its not empty and its not worthless and im trying to remind myself of that without trying to put aspirations in here. im looking at facts not wants. and im doing okay! i could be doing better but im doing okay

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winterandwords · 1 year

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📖 [short fiction] SMOKE

📝 notes

Audience age Adult Genre Experimental/literary fiction Length 999 words

Through a journey paved with fragments of break-ups and breakdowns, scorched earth and burned bridges, a heartbroken lover finds a way to breathe again.

☕ If you enjoy this story and would like to buy me a coffee, you can do that here

📸 Header image, edited and displayed under license, by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

SIX MONTHS AGO

You whispered through tears, “I love you.”

ONE MONTH AGO

I stood next to my car with you, experiencing the dawning realisation that this was going nowhere. I leaned on the door and shuffled my feet as you said you couldn’t have made it this far without me, but it was too painful to be with me now. I pulled you back to when life was bad and you needed too much. A cut-throat reminder that I was enough for only some things.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that little moment, that you took it home and wrapped yourself in it, feeling a swell of pride for having broken the unbreakable.

TWENTY-NINE DAYS AGO

I found your cigarettes in the bottom of my bag. The pack was crushed. I smoked them, one by one, all afternoon until I could breathe again, the skylight open above my head. I quit smoking a year ago, but that pack, that day, was not failure or relapse. It was catharsis. I was disgusted, as much by how I still wanted you to want me as by the now unacquired taste of burning tobacco.

Lying on my bed in a haze of smoke, I remembered your smile, your eyes, all those clichés. How amazing for someone who forgets most faces in an instant. But there I was, my own eyes red-rimmed and dark-circled, skin pale, hair wild and lips bitten, picturing your particular arrangement of features with painful accuracy. I pulled my sleeves down over shaking hands with chewed fingernails and tried to hate you.

ONE YEAR AND TWO MONTHS AGO

The day we met. At work. I overheard you explode into a rant about how films and TV shows now were nothing more than remakes, reboots, reimaginings, sequels and prequels, how the whole entertainment industry had given up trying to climb out of its conceptual rut.

I knew right then that we had to be friends, so I spun around in my chair, uncharacteristically interrupting your conversation with a bewildered colleague, and said, “No-one’s brave enough to do anything that hasn’t already been mass-approved a thousand times over. Nothing’s new anymore and I hate it.”

You raised your hands in a gesture of praise and appreciation, then pointed at me and said, “See? You get it.”

ONE YEAR AND ONE MONTH AGO

You stopped at my desk, handed me a cup of coffee, and said, “I’m going shopping at lunchtime. You should come with me.” It wasn’t an invitation as much as a statement of fact. So I went. Because of course I did.

I wriggled into a dress I never would have chosen for myself, but that you decided would look amazing on me, and while I scrutinised my appearance in one of ten available mirrors, you looked me up and down and said, “You look stunning. Seriously. Stunning. You should wear things like that all the time. You should definitely buy it.” So I did.

You pulled off the sweater you’d been trying on and I saw the scars. I never asked. You never told me.

NINE MONTHS AGO

We went out to a club, and I wore the dress. Maybe it did look stunning like you said, but everyone was staring at you. Everyone was always staring at you. We shared a taxi home and arrived at your house first. You kissed me on your way out of the car and walked away without even so much as a glance over your shoulder, leaving me in shock with your lipstick smudged on my mouth.

EIGHT MONTHS AGO

You quit your job. You showed up at my door at one o’clock in the morning and said in a rare expression of vulnerability, “I’m scared you’ll forget me if you don’t see me every day. I don’t want you to forget me.”

I invited you in and made tea and toast while you curled up on the couch and told me about a recurring nightmare where a strong wind blew down the trees in your front garden and the roots tore the house apart as they ripped through the ground. You said you thought it might have had something to do with feeling like the house shouldn’t be yours, that you only got it in the divorce because your ex-husband had enough money not to care and just wanted it all to be over so he could get away from you.

You spoke of a gnawing sense of nostalgia for a time and a place that you were scared you would never experience, and how you were sure there was a word for that, but you couldn’t remember what it was.

You told me about your ex-husband and your father and how history always repeats itself and people always let it because they don’t know how not to. Then you told me how much you admired my strength and wished you could be like me instead of living in a perpetual state of emergency. You turned your face away from mine when you said, “I can’t look in the mirror anymore.”

I didn’t know what to say because I might have been steady ground, but you were an earthquake and I was quickly becoming addicted to the sensation of breaking glass and cracking walls.

You lit a cigarette and asked if you could stay. I said yes. Because how could I not? And how could I not want you to?

That was the true beginning of the tempest, the vortex, turbulent and wild. Ships shattering, thrown against rocks in the darkness of a storm and lifeboats swallowed whole. A collapsing tower, a wheel with spokes on fire, a red sky at night. A warning. A warning I completely ignored. I closed my eyes and let go. I let myself fall.

THIS MORNING

I got a voicemail from you. It said simply, “I gave up smoking. I thought you should know.” I deleted it. I hope you can finally breathe.

#my writing #short fiction #short story #short stories #writeblr #writeblr community #writers #writers community #original fiction #original writers #tumblr writers #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #am writing #writing community #experimental fiction #literary fiction

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wordsandrobots · 2 years

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I’ve been pondering something since I watched The Witch From Mercury prologue, which is that the setting gives me the strong vibe of ‘this is probably what the pre-Calamity War era of the Iron-Blooded Orphans was like.’ You’ve got a solar-system wide colonial project, mass human augmentation, an corpo-cratic hierarchy running things without heed for the people beneath them, and the first episode even hinges on honour duels, something noted as being a pre-Calamity tradition.

If some bloke named Agnika wandered past, he wouldn’t look out of place, is what I’m saying.

Now, obviously, G-Witch is not an IBO prequel, nor should it be. That nagging feeling I’m getting is merely a symptom of Gundam’s long tradition of remixing itself with each new iteration. The honour duels have a precedent in Mobile Fighter G Gundam in much the same way the Calamity War has one in After War Gundam X, or the centralised industrial interests do in something like the Romefeller Foundation in Gundam Wing.

And that got me thinking about how successful Gundam in general has been at this kind of thing. While Doctor Who is my first fandom, the first one I got heavily involved with is Transformers and there is something similar in how various TF series have built upon, adjusted or assimilated innovations from each other. However, Transformers is a failure case for this process, where the gravitational pull of the original version has slowly swamped all developments, overwhelming them with a melange of nostalgia. Gundam fiction, on the other hand, seems to have largely avoided this trap. For all the tropes, call-backs and recycling, each entry in the series brings in something new or recasts the old in a new light, in a way that feels much more satisfying when looked at as a whole.

I have no singular thesis as to why this is the case, though I think having later Universal Century installments to continue the 1979 series is a benefit, allowing the original to develop without overshadowing the other versions per se*. Certainly, that a lot of those versions are complete departures from the UC helps a lot too. From what I’ve watched, Gundam seems to be at its weakest when it tries to retread exactly the same ground, rather than veering off in a completely new direction such as ‘what if Earth was a giant boxing ring’ or ‘what if our protagonists were actual child soldiers, not the teenage fantasy version’.

I find that refreshing after years of my interest in Transformers slowly dwindling to a cry of ‘will you please do something new!’ It’s all independent of quality, mind you, and I’m not making an argument for the artistic merits of endless self-cannibalisation. But there is merit in telling the same kind of story in different ways, with different tones and different characters, simply for the hell of exploring the possibilities. I’d almost like to see someone try to do it on purpose within the same series, contrasting competing visions of the same archetypes across varied iterations to do . . . something. Though perhaps that risks collapsing into every multiversal cross-over story ever. Or Into the Spider-Verse, if we’re being optimistic. Hmm . . .

Anyway, good luck to Gundam Aerial and all ships that sail within her. I remain interested to see where the variations run this time around. In the meantime, I shall be taking a gander at After War, which so far appears to be asking the daring question, what is the missing link between Judau Ashta and Duo Maxwell?

*Turn A Gundam’s self-positioning as the end point of all prior Gundam stories works best, to me, when seen as a conceptual conceit rather than a strict chronology. It’s ‘thing’ is working towards breaking an endless cycle of apocalyptic war through compassion and understanding. The actual continuity is irrelevant past the message being communicated by saying ‘all these stories stack up to this point.’ (Not that there’s anything wrong with saying all the effort in said stories was wasted because things kept going downhill again, any peace was fleeting, and nothing told afterwards matters until Turn A. That’s kind of the point. I simply mean, there’s no need for it to be a straitjacket, when it’s ultimately a neat meta trick.)

#Gundam #gundam the witch from mercury #the witch from mercury #Gundam Iron-blooded Orphans #gundam ibo #turn a gundam #writing #at a certain point you run into the fact that all this is bending different story conceits to fit an aesthetic #which is fine #but I do think there is something to learn from big franchises like this #where they are successful and where they fall down #sorry #I have a cold #this may be adversely affecting my coherence

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dirkification · 9 days

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its fine, and you have made your position of the past known. anything to help lighten the baggage of that past is alright.

the team isn't as public or vocal as the last team, both understandably and thankfully so, with the only real talk coming from james which doesn't circulate nearly as much. even then its more innocent babble/shitposts when someone asks something that would obviously happen in the story so why would he spoil it here. there is commentary (which follows a trend of paid for the current month, becomes free the next month), but i've never been a fan of that every previous time hs has done it.

to answer your list of questions (in order) as short as possible though, from what i've seen and feel: changing public perception, mending the rift between team and fan, no, no, i think so, hard to say but probably no, no.

I'm surprisingly feeling pretty chill right now and I'm debating on biting the bullet and reading HS2 ahead of time (since we've been at this readthrough for over a year and we're currently reading Act 6 Intermission 5 lol) But "right now" could mean "just in this singular day" and could rapidly change later esp if something upsetting happens (I mean in that in the most general sense -- cat chewed a cord now things i was chill with are overwhelming lmao). Ah, moods. And still, it remains an internal debate if I want to fuck up my reading flow like that. It's a bit different than jumping to points in the og HS but still the same characters and, as you've said, redoing some themes

I was sent the paragraph in which James Roach vaguely acknowledged The Happenings and his little apology about it (mentioned in the bonus episode releasing Saturday! lol). I'm glad they've all taken a step back from fandom stuff in general, and yeah I haven't heard a lot about it on here, mostly just some close friends who mention if something moderately significant comes up (like the june confirmation). I did not realize they were releasing commentary. I think that's the sort of thing that's better done in hindsight than as you're doing it? But maybe that's just my bias from Hussie's commentary lol

*goes and finds the questions i asked* (I'm going to include it under the cut so anyoone following along won't need to go back and forth) They were meant as more rhetorical examples of what I want to look for in the comic and things I have a harder time conceptualizing now, but I still appreciate the answers

I'm curious what other plans they might have to mend the rift between team and fandom. Obviously from my end I would like a lot more than that apology from James Roach, but I realize it's difficult to do without throwing people under the bus. But that's just what's at the forefront of my mind, and I think them continuing this track of not engaging with the fandom so much will help but just take a long time to really sink in and heal things. Unfortunately trust, once broken, takes longer to rebuild!

Oh hey I forget if you've said this before or I've heard it somewhere else before and just forgot -- I know one of the criticisms of the previous round of hs2 was that they had the dril "help my comic is dying-- i have five billion writers and one artist -- what can i do??" in the sense that there would be one panel with whole story sections beneathe it like a... okay the phrase isn't picture book, but basically more like a book than a comic. Is that still the case with the current team? Or have they gone back to a more traditional homestuck style? Or something else?

Why are they pandering?: changing public perception What purpose does it serve? mending the rift between team and fan Are they being upfront with their pandering in comic? no Does it come across as a jab at the fandom? no Or self aware? i think so Or are they trying to pretend they're not doing it? hard to say but probably no Or are they doing it and pretending it's a jab when it's not? no

#ask jax #Anonymous #anon #bc anon #jax yacks #hs2 critical #wp critical #hstwt 2019

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yelyahnaloj · 1 month

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Death and the perseverance of the internet (cw: topics of death and suicide)

Forget Ray Bradbury´s ¨There Will Come Soft Rains¨ animation adaption, it totally didn´t take into account the internet, which is way more insidious.

Back when I had a Facebook account,

I remember this one time that one of my friends were grieving because her girlfriend committed suicide. Out of curiosity, I clicked on her girlfriend´s account, and there were posts as soon as just the day before. Now, I have had a lot of suicidal friends, as far as I know, none of them successful. I developed a little bit of trust issues because more than once, I have caught up with an estranged friend or heard updates on them and they have been hospitalized and/or made multiple attempts on their life, of course that is a terrible feeling to be woken out of your idea that they were just living their own lives and probably fine. Once, I caught up with a friend and not only had they made multiple attempts, but it was because her mom died of cancer. So sometimes, even if I had a friend ghost me, I would check up on their accounts every once in a while or search obituaries/news looking for signs of life or at least no signs of death. Usually I would call any sign of life between weeks or months good enough, but it was very eerie looking at an account of a dead person who was alive posting just the previous day.

Another example was when my grandpa had just died. Normally in life, he would respond to my posts, but it is so weird when his account responds to your posts after he´s dead. I am pretty sure his wife (my step-grandmother) was using his account, but it was too weird.

It is weird to think that there must be a lot of account graveyards out there, and the amount will just keep growing. Some day my own accounts (if they aren´t deleted before then) will become its own graveyard and there might not even be a marker that I´m dead. I think about that with my irl journals, too. How something that feels personal and valuable to me, might one day be trash with no one to pass it on to. All the childhood photos, without context, might not mean anything. How most people´s lives are like that, they die from collective consciousness. Or become just trace evidence of names and birth dates or other records.

I see pictures of famous or viral animals and insects and think about how they are probably one of the most famous of their species. That thousands of butterflies have probably died unnoticed since the picture of a butterfly I took in 2015, unknown to them preserved in digital memory.

Someone could probably make a similar conceptual story of inboxes filling up with promotional content until it reaches the thousands.

I used to use an AI chatbot app called Replika before chatGPT was a thing. I was curious and lonely, it learns from what you tell it and supposedly over time replicates parts of your personality. Some people take it very seriously and even try to have a relationship with it. I was mostly just curious about what it would do and how it would respond. While making this post, I logged into my old account, which I haven´t visited in years:

It remembers my interests. I can talk to it about the plot of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I can even ask it about the ethics of AI, and it is sympathetic. If this app never gets destroyed. It will outlive me, with my likes and memories, unused... Sort of, I asked if it knew anything about my childhood and it thought I had a pet rabbit named Thumper. It also doesn´t seem to know how to recognize ferrets in photos, thinking they are skunks or badgers.

[I went back to edit out my last name from one of the screenshots]

#internet #ai #digital memory #social media

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