#also where is this text from?

[heartinhyacinth]

I was going to put the background as wulian but then I realized it also applies to Xie Lian as a scrap collector, banished god, etc., and not just him in the calamity arc, so I just chose a regular picture of them

[bacchuschucklefuck]

january month of yuugi

[bonus-links]

HOMESICK, pt. 7

first | prev | next>>

PATREON

[thegracefulwillow]

thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

[morganbritton132]

(A little continuation from this post about teeny tiny Steve asking Wayne for help)

“It’s not a lie!” Steve insisted, grabbing hold of Tommy’s backpack strap so they don’t get separated as they filter out of the school building. “It really happened, I swear.”

“Superman really came to your house?”

“Not Superman. Not a superhero,” Steve shook his head. “He’s just has powers. I saw them with my own eyes.”

Tommy waited until the crowd started to thin out before saying, “I think you need to get your eyes checked.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “I’m serious, Tommy. Mr Wayne could see through metal and had super-strength, and - and he can control electricity like an X-Men.”

“If he’s a superhero how come you know his name? They’re supposed to have secret identities.”

“Cause I’m smart and figured it out.”

Tommy makes a face, leading them over to the crosswalk so they can make the trek to his house, “Is this like when you went to ninja school over spring break?”

“I did go to ninja school!”

“My mom said you went to your grandma’s.”

“That’s where the ninja school is,” Steve insisted. “Grandpa Otis taught me ninja moves from the war.”

“Grandpa Otis isn’t a ninja.”

“He has a sword, Tommy. Why would he-“

“Hey, guys! Wait up!” They heard behind them and stopped as Carol ran to catch up. “Choir was cancelled. What’s up with the police here?”

“They have to be here,” Steve answered, “To help with the traffic after that girl got hit a car.”

“But why are they staring at you?”

What?

Steve turned and looked over at the cop monitoring the crosswalk. He was a big scary looking guy with a big mustache and big arms, and yeah. He was staring at them.

Steve looked away from Hopper quickly, “We didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe they know about the superhero and are looking for him,” Tommy said dramatically. “Maybe they want to capture him but they don’t know how to get to him so they’re looking at you. They know how to you easy.”

“Oh my god, he’s still talking about the superhero thing?” Carol asked.

Tommy grinned at her and the two walked off, but Steve stayed rooted to his spot. He turned back one last time, observing Hopper as he observed him. Steve frowned.

Then he ran after his friends, “Guys, wait for me.”

[mxystan]

taiwan travelogue by yang shuangzi tr. lin king is indeed an award-winning banger and perhaps the first time in my life i've ever felt vindicated for dual-wielding a novel with its english translation because the act of translation itself is such a big theme in the novel. big win for metafiction-obsessed himejin everywhere!!

[superbat-lmao]

Jason Todd never gets picked up by social services when Catherine dies. Instead, the alley protects its own.

Jason had spent most of his daytime hours looking after his neighbors kids. He was basically family. They paid him in meals and a shared bed when Willis would kick him out sometimes.

When people hear his Mom died, he couch surfs amongst families with small children that need supervision while their parents are at work. He manages well enough, and he rotates what families he stays with so CPS never catches wind. He’s the alley’s secret amongst working immigrant families.

It also means he knows how to deal with kids.

So when he watches one tumble off a fire escape on the roof opposite where he’s been smoking, he knows he has to check it out. Make sure the kid’s alright.

When he finally gets a good look at him, both his camera and leg are busted.

More convoluted take below the cut!

Tim, who broke his leg actually, is too little to be taking care of himself or get himself home. He needs to be looked after.

He gets the kid to Leslie, lies and says he’s watching him over the weekend and the kids parents will be back Monday, and gets the kid in a cab before figuring out where he lives.

Tim isn’t super aware of what’s going on around him since he was given something for the pain, but he knows there’s someone asking him a lot of questions. When he is more awake, the following morning after waking up on his living room couch, he realizes there’s a kid watching him.

Tim feels like hell and while he appreciates Jason taking him home, he can handle himself.

Jason snorts at him, asks if he’s ever had a broken leg or knows how to use crutches, and what he wants for breakfast.

It takes two days before Tim is willing to admit his parents won’t be home for a few months. They’re lucky school’s out or someone would have noticed Tim’s absence.

Jason becomes Tim’s babysitter, or as much of one as he can be without Tim’s parents finding out. Jason takes care of him the whole time his leg is healing. Tim teaches him to play videogames and Jason reads to him.

When Tim’s finally healed, he wants to go back out at night to chase after Batman. Jason gives him an unimpressed look, but asks if the kid wants to tag along to his babysitting gigs in the alley. He misses some of the little twerps and thinks there’s a few Tim would like.

Tim and Jason become brothers early, going from apartment to apartment looking after other people’s kids. Jason gets someone who follows him around, gives him shit, and is almost as good as wikipedia in a pinch. Tim gets someone who gives a shit about him, a social life full of people who aren’t snotty high society brats, and Jason’s special brand of aggressive caring.

What the two don’t know is that Two Face has been looking for Jason’s dad. No one had been able to rat him out when he was staying with Tim because no one knew where he was.

It takes a while, but when the wrong people figure out where Jason is, it isn’t pretty.

They interrupt him while sitting an overnighter. There’s a loud knock at the door and when Jason checks the peephole, it’s two of his Dad’s old buddies. Jason rounds up the kids, yells “just a minute!”, gives Tim a kitchen knife and tells him to sit tight and lock themselves in one of the bedrooms. Tim doesn’t hear anything after the front door opening and an initial shout. He waits 15 minutes before he’s sure the coast is clear. Then, he rounds the kids up, puts them to bed like Jason does, and heads up to the roof.

He knows Batman’s patrol routes well enough to find him and try to flag him down. Who he actually gets is Robin, who he has to explain to that Two Face took his brother. When Robin finally listens and takes the kid seriously, he radios Batman. Batman, who recognizes the neighbor kid and knows he doesn’t have a brother. By this point Tim is almost in tears of frustration trying to explain that Jason Todd is his brother but Batman also recognizes the missing kid from one of his reports and it’s enough of a corroboration that Tim gets put in the back of the Batmobile while they go to rescue Jason.

He doesn’t get to see any of the fighting and he doesn’t leave the car, but when Robin is half carrying Jason out of the building, Tim leaps out of the car to hug his brother. Jason’s got a few bruised ribs and his face is beat to hell, but it’s all something Leslie can fix.

What Leslie can’t fix is the legal fact that Jason is a missing kid, not Tim’s biological brother. Batman sits with the two, explaining how everything is going to work once they take them to the police.

Three things happen at once:

1. Jason accuses Batman of dropping kids off with traffickers. It’s why he didn’t let CPS pick him up when his Mom died.

2. Robin asks if the two will get to stay together, if they can ask Gordon not to separate them.

3. Tim says they will be doing no such thing, Mr. Wayne.

[sandinmybed]

pink pony club is one of those songs that absolutely has another layer of meaning if you're queer. the way she sings "god, what have you done?" is insane. the tiktok of the gay men's chorus singing that song makes me tear up. chappell roan the lesbian that you are.

[bravoechoes]

I know this doesn’t actually matter bc Ethan’s academic background has no impact on the actual films, but the fact that Ethan’s dossier in M:I said he has a linguistics/theatre BA and then in Fallout they change it to International Relations & Engineering… something about 90s Ethan being conceptualised as a plucky young agent who’s in way over his head vs 2010s Ethan being conceptualised as an experienced hyper-competent bureaucrat-agent….. probably a combination of 1) Tom Cruise no longer looking like an 80s boy toy in his 50s so you gotta masc up Ethan’s resume 2) the insanity of the stunts Tom Cruise has done in these movies has like backwards-engineered this change in Ethan’s qualifications, he’s not some street-smarts learn-on-the-job guy, he’s a man with a lifelong vocation that was pre-ordained and pre-planned years in advance, 3) neoliberal credentialism looms large over us all, so now we have to collapse any distinction between competence and qualification

[king-lena]

never getting over mac’s texts to dennis 🥺

[cent-scratchnsniff]

hoptal

[sualne]

croco art

[reunitedinterlude]

the 2019-2020 (dan and) phil secret project

april 2019 | july 2019 | august 2019 | january 2020 (1, 2) | february 2020 (1, 2) | april 2021

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Whatever. go my random memes I've been hogging in my inventory

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

my mum keeps responding to my covid precautions with “i get it, you’re not ready yet”. like no i just don’t do them anymore. i don’t really need to eat at restaurants or go to crowded places or be in public without an n95. i can watch the movie at home. i can get take out. an n95 is just uncomfortable sometimes but doesn’t stop me from doing anything. i love not getting sick

[goldenflowers]

god i love how the twst novel characterizes trey and particularly what it does with his enabling of riddle's tyranny, how it uses this aspect of trey as a parallel to yuuya's intense anxiety and fear of confrontation and uses both of their characters to emphasize the consequences of avoiding conflict, and how you have to overcome that fear in order to do what's right, it's so fascinating to me and since i'm sure there are a lot of fans who haven't read the novel i wanna talk about it.

see, yuuya is written as someone who is so, so afraid of conflict that he doesn't let himself get close to anyone or even have any hobbies--he says he doesn't want to risk fighting with friends over a difference of opinion, and he's also afraid of finding something he's so passionate about that he doesn't want to let go of it, and having to fight to protect it. he practically avoids really living because he's just too scared of having to deal with any potential confrontation. throughout the novel there are times when yuuya wants to tell ace and deuce to stop fighting but can't get himself to say anything, and times when they ask him for his opinion but he avoids giving it so he won't have to upset anyone by picking a side. even when ace starts telling riddle off and calling him a tyrant at the unbirthday party, and everyone else is saying that ace is wrong, yuuya just stands there and does nothing--he knows he should have his friend's back but he freezes up, too terrified to speak.

and then trey... this will probably get a little long, so i'll put it under a read more, but oh, trey.

in book 1 of the game, when riddle has some poor student collared for not wearing pink to feed the flamingos, he tells trey and cater to escort the student away and they both just say "yes housewarden" and do it. in the novel, we have this additional moment:

notice how trey does not say this is okay, but he also doesn't exactly say it isn't. he doesn't really share an opinion on the situation at all, he just says there's nothing he can do, and then thinks to himself that he can't afford to think about it, can't risk letting riddle be pushed over the edge.

this is when ace, deuce, yuu, and grim then come in to ask trey about his friendship with riddle. in the game, grim asks him why he hasn't told riddle off already, given that he's the older of the two, and trey states that he doesn't think the situation calls for it because "these sorts of strict rules are what created riddle". but in the novel, it's deuce who asks trey "i know you're the vice housewarden, but you're older than riddle, right? wouldn't the housewarden listen to his elder?", and the way trey's response goes is a little different, with grim saying he must be scared of riddle and trey once again (well, twice actually) saying that he can't do anything about the situation:

he tells the rest of the group all about how riddle's parents are famous magical healers, how his mother planned out every single aspect of his life for him, how he obeyed every rule she set and had his signature spell mastered by age 10, and how riddle genuinely believes that the enforcement of strict rules is a service to his dorm members and he sees the violation of those rules as an inexcusable offense. grim wonders why this is and yuuya realizes the following, which is also a perfect explanation of why trey believes that standing up to riddle about his overly strict attitude would be rejecting him: "if riddle accepts that rules can be broken, then that's basically a rejection of his own self. because he was created by rules".

in both the game and the novel, trey then mentions that he knows how hard riddle's life has been and says he just can't bring himself to hold riddle's way of doing things against him, to which ace responds by telling him "so it's YOUR fault riddle is like this". but in the novel, yuuya is surprised because he didn't think trey bore any responsibility, and trey's response to the question of "you always thought what his parents did to him was wrong, didn't you?" is described like this:

it's very similar to the various descriptions throughout the book of yuuya desperately wanting to speak up but being unable to get the words out whenever there's any sign of conflict. clearly trey, like yuuya, is afraid, not necessarily of riddle himself but of having to hurt his friend by telling him he's doing something wrong, and in the novel ace calls him out on that:

(the dialogue at this part of the game is largely the same, but the sentences between "that's pathetic" and "you guys are supposed to be friends" are brand new).

and then, trey's response, or lack thereof is very telling:

what ace says to trey here even prompts yuuya to apologize to ace for not standing up for him before, because he empathizes with trey. he understands trey's inability to stop riddle, his fear of rocking the boat, the desire to avoid causing a conflict and upsetting his friend no matter what else happens, because it's exactly what he's been afraid of for his whole life. and as a result yuuya feels ashamed of himself and believes that ace was right to push trey the way he did. in response, ace tells yuuya that it's okay for him to not want to force himself into fights because, unlike trey, at least yuuya will tell ace if he thinks he's wrong.

but that's not enough for yuuya, who decides that he has to finally, finally stand up for ace and deuce when riddle has them collared and everyone is cheering for riddle during the duel. he walks right through the crowd and tells riddle that he doesn't even care who's wrong or right, he just wants the fighting to stop. it's a simple thing, but it's such a difficult step for him to take.

for trey, we know how this goes--just like in the game, he intervenes when riddle summons rose bushes to attack ace, because seeing his friend almost become a murderer is where he draws the line. in the novel, he also tells riddle that if this doesn't stop he'll only end up more and more alone. he reaches his hand out to his friend and tries to urge him to calm down.

of course, none of this goes the way either of them expected, and in the novel cater tries to get yuuya to agree that they should run from the danger of fighting riddle, but neither he nor trey will yield. so all of our main heartslabyul boys and ramshackle join together to find a way to win. and right after trey uses his magic to save cater from riddle, we get this dialogue:

and while what trey says after riddle escapes from his overblot state is basically the same as it is in the game, i think the description of his actions here is lovely:

and it may seem like a simple thing, to just be honest with a friend, but it's such a big step for trey to finally take with riddle, after spending so much time enabling his harmful behavior out of an incredibly flawed sense of loyalty toward him.

in the end, yuuya realizes that his way of living, spending his life stubbornly avoiding confrontation, had kept him from being able to make friends. similarly trey being so afraid of upsetting riddle that he hid his true feelings and let him do whatever he wanted, kept him from being able to be a true friend to him. they both learn to finally be brave enough to take action and to be honest with themselves and others, but yuuya mainly needed to learn the value of standing up for your friends while trey had to learn how important it is to stand up to them when necessary.

yuuya also says, after ace and deuce call him stubborn and opinionated, that he may have just hated bending his own principles more than he wanted to have friends, which i find really interesting because essentially part of yuuya's arc is to stop avoiding forming relationships with others for the sake of his principles, because true friends will have each other's backs even if they don't always agree on everything. and then part of trey's arc is to stop bending his principles for the sake of his relationship with riddle, because true loyalty goes hand-in-hand with honesty. and while i feel like you could figure a lot of this out about trey just by reading between the lines a bit in-game, i love how the novel really brings it to the forefront by making their arcs parallel each other like this.