#not sure how to tag their son

[moon-mirage]

A day at the beach

(Annie and her son post-Mockingjay)

[chiropteracupola]

c. 1540 CE: a young man from Chalco, and his dragon.

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

something about how both wei wuxian and jin guangyao repeatedly say they ‘didn’t have a choice’ in their actions. in both cases, it’s not literal impossibility, instead determined by their mindsets and personal conduct…. but while for wei wuxian that means he can’t do something immoral, even if it means losing all his social power, for jin guangyao it means he can’t do anything to lose his social power, even if it means doing something immoral. the other option is still there, but it’s never one they’d pick.

something about how they’re trying to walk the same path but in opposite directions: wei wuxian willingly left the nice, broad road in favour of upholding morals and debts, while jin guangyao is trying to claw onto it and stay there by any means necessary. in both cases, being parted from it so easily is only possible because this nice, broad road — full of people whose social power is unconditional, given at birth, independent of their actions — was never truly theirs to begin with. but despite how it is possible to be forced off due to nothing, as we see with wang lingjiao, the positions of both these characters were ultimately due to actions they took.

(about how no matter the similarity of the paths, no matter the narrowness of the choices, the direction you take is still up to you.)

[idk-bruh-20]

Irondad fic ideas #154

CW: this one's pretty gruesome. read at your own risk 

Peter is a young child who's been kidnapped. His parents and/or his aunt and uncle were killed and he was taken. Along with a bunch of other little kids, he's been held captive and experimented on.

When the Avengers suddenly bust the kidnapping operation, the kidnappers try at the last second to destroy their research. They gas the small room where the kids are being held.

It's Iron Man who ends up blasting through. What he finds is horrifying. All but one of the children are dead.

The one who's left is just sitting among the bodies, crying, shocked, terrified. Iron Man carries him out of there, then once they're safe from the gas Tony steps out of the suit to comfort the kid while he's given oxygen.

Little 5-year-old Peter Parker imprints on his savior hard.

He just went through an unimaginable amount of trauma, then Iron Man burst through like an avenging angel. This is the first time he's ever felt protected in his memory. Tony holds the crying kid, and the kid can tolerate no one else near him.

This becomes a slight problem when they get back to base. But Tony can't find it in him to let SHIELD take the kid away, let them strip him of this one tiny bit of comfort. He keeps seeing all those other kids when he closes his eyes.

This one needs him right now. And if "right now" eventually becomes "this is my son," well. Who could've predicted that.

[cconfusedkat]

BISHOP FAMILY BEACH EPISODE 🎉🎉🎉 ft Lamb and Narinder bringing along Aym & Baal 🕺🕺

It's still summertime so. They deserve some beach time and engaging with eachother like a normal family would!! Letting them be happy!!

[yamanoskk]

The real mastermind, the unpredictable subordinate, and the 'spies'

My fanarts of the new casts in Touhou 19!

Overall, I do enjoy the game! Really adore all of the new casts, the new music are cool and the story is interesting! Really nice to see more of the old casts come back in here too!

[brother-emperors]

ANTONY: if Caesar doesn't set Sextius Baculus up in a house worthy of Lucullus for all that he did, I'll kill him myself.

so the fun thing about the Caesarians is that there is. weird stuff happening in there. a lot of focus seems to go towards non Caesarian dissent, specifically with the conspiracy of Cassius and Brutus, but there's like. stuff going on in Caesar's own camp that's very Intriguing.

There's a couple places where you can see some clear points that would be grounds for a conspiratorial falling out between Caesar and Trebonius, but from the way that Trebonius tries to seduce Antony over to conspiracy, I wonder if there was a secret third thing that was going on since Antony turned him down but. didn't snitch intriguing!

anyway, all of this is to say that this means I get to invent some shit. like, I'm drawing comics which is already invention, but this is one where I get to really start throwing stuff into the narrative soup because it has to set up three different character arcs (Trebonius, and then Antony twice)

(in theory, this would be explained in the story itself if I did the entirety of the Gallic Wars out as a comic. which I have not done because I do not want to draw horses. I wanted to fuck around with some panel layouts and not draw a single horse, so now I will provide the context and revisit this in the future)

Antony's comment about Trebonius running himself into a grave has to do with the Caesar's Gallic Wars have a lot of men doing a whole lot for Caesar that has me going. hey. hey guys. uh.

specifically, Sextius Baculus:

The War for Gaul, Julius Caesar (trans James J. O'Donnell)

and the closing comment from Antony is playing on several things: romans claiming gods on their family tree (see: Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome, T.P. Wiseman for more on this) and then divinization arc of Caesar and Octavian. Antony himself will later be taking part the same kind of god-association that has prompted his disdain in this scene

At any rate, when Antony made his entry into Ephesus, women arrayed like Bacchanals, and men and boys like Satyrs and Pans, led the way before him, and the city was full of ivy and thyrsus-wands and harps and pipes and flutes, the people hailing him as Dionysus Giver of Joy and Beneficent. For he was such, undoubtedly, to some; but to the greater part he was Dionysus Carnivorous and Savage.

Plutarch, Antony 24

and the second layer of thematic fun: Antony's later relationship with his soldiers is something similar to what Caesar had with his here, but ultimately: decayed. Antony's love affair with his military makes his failure to lead well at the end a worse betrayal. at some point I'll talk about Antony's Tormentous Military Nightmare and cite some academic sources, but Linda Bamber's description of the final tragedy of Antony and his men lives in my head rent free

Cleopatra and Antony, Linda Bamber

where's the fun in doing identity focused tragedy if you don't become unrecognizable to yourself later on! isn't that right mark antony

ko-fi⭐ bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

[dukeofthomas]

Do you see my vision

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[necrotic-nephilim]

I’m gonna be honest I didn’t realize the new 52 messed with Kon that much till I read your post and now I can’t get over the potential. I’m a Tim/Kon girly at heart so I would devour anything you write exploring the 52 vs typical Kon. Also Time being in a clone sandwich is 👌.

the new-52 messed Kon up SO bad it's ridiculous. like, to the point i would personally argue he's a completely unrelated character to pre-Flashpoint/Rebirth Kon. his personality, his suit, his origin, all different. the only real similarities are the name and powerset. and even New-52!Kon's powers are slightly different from pre-Flashpoint!Kon. New-52!Kon is a clone of a future version of Jon Lane Kent, cloned by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to provide genetic material to Jon Lane Kent, whose body was not handling being half human/half Kryptonian well, it was a whole thing. New-52!Kon is also where we get the infamous "Kon-El means 'abomination of the house of El' and Kara basically named him a slur in Kryptonian culture" tidbit, because that is the only time that's canon. (originally Kon-El was a name gifted by Clark to accept Kon as his family way back in the 90s) he also never went by Conner Kent. New-52!Kon just straight up didn't have any real human identity or connections, outside of being very close to Tim and some Titans.

the very TLDR of Kon's history is: during post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint, a clone called Superboy is created by CADMUS. at first, he's considered to be a clone of a dude named Paul Westfield and is not Kryptonian whatsoever, he was simply made to look like Superman and only has Tactile Telekinesis as a power. then, it was made canon that actually he was a clone of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent, but Lex hid this fact and slowly, Kon developed more Kryptonian powers. he's given the name Kon-El by Clark, and is taken in by the Kents, getting the name Conner Kent. then Flashpoint happens, we get the New-52, and we're given the above version of Kon-El, who is a clone of Jon Lane Kent, created by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. who has mostly very strong telekinesis powers and some Kryptonian powers. he's with the Titans for a bit, then at the end of the New-52, he kills some aliens and feels bad about it so he decides to fuck off and is never seen again, it's presumed he's dead but never confirmed. then Rebirth happens and DC makes Jon Kent the current Superboy, we get Supersons and all that, and it's assumed that no version of Kon-El exists. just at all. he's not around whatsoever, Jon is our only Superboy. *but* in 2019, we get a new Young Justice run and the pre-Flashpoint Kon-El is back, and we're given the explanation of: Kon got accidentally teleported to this alternate realm called Gemworld and then Flashpoint happened, and since that was a Crisis Event that changed the timeline, the poor lad got *erased* from the timeline, causing most people to *not fucking remember him* and for him to remember a timeline that no longer exists. some of the Young Justice team vaguely remember him, Ma and Pa Kent remember him, but notably, Clark *does not remember him*. it's not an issue of "Clark ignored Kon in favor of Jon" it's an issue of "Kon was erased from the timeline and didn't exist for years bc he was stuck in Gemworld and Clark just doesn't remember Kon or Kon's timeline" which to me, is far more tragic but i digress. since then, Kon has been back and is present in most significant Superfamily runs, with his own recent mini-series, Superboy: Man of Tomorrow. (which was very good btw)

so basically: the New-52 fucked Kon up so bad they wrote him out of comics for years and then brought back the pre-Flashpoint version, but never *explicitly* killed the New-52 version off. so hypothetically, it's possible that there are currently two characters existing in the DC universe named Kon-El who have been Superboy. and like i said above, one of New-52!Kon's only real significant relationships was with Tim, it was the only thing the New-52 managed to get right about Superboy, his closeness to Tim. they have a *lot* of moments that read incredibly queer. and ofc, it's just outright confirmed in Dark Crisis: Young Justice that Tim had a crush on pre-Flashpoint!Kon at some point. so while comics are intent on pretending New-52!Kon doesn't exist, i am intent on putting Tim in a clone sandwich.

because i do think it's fun to play with Tim having genuine feelings and potentially a relationship with both of them. and the fucked up nature of him not fully *remembering* his relationship with pre-Flashpoint!Kon (which is a canon thing, in YJ(2019) Tim has vague memories of Kon he's struggling to piece together and understand why he cares about this guy he doesn't recognize so much) and how frustrating that is for Tim. he knows he loves Kon, but it's all foggy besides that. and so it's even *more* fucked up if Tim dated New-52!Kon before he got emo and ran off into the unknown. obviously in canon no one has told current Kon about New-52!Kon bc comics are doing the good ol' tried and true of "sweep that shit under the rug" but for fanfic, i think it's fun to ask the question of: would anyone *tell* Kon? especially Tim? who now remembers dating both versions of them? would he admit to Kon that briefly, he had another Kon? how would Tim cope with that and move on? personality wise, they could not be more different. they dress and act and look different. they're not the same person, but there's certainly a questionable factor of Tim's dating history including two Kon-Els.

the idea i've had for a while is Tim slowly starting to date pre-Flashpoint!Kon again. it feels familiar and like home. and Tim has grieved and accepted that wherever New-52!Kon is, he doesn't want to come home, he didn't love TIm enough to stay and try. so Tim takes the Kon he has, and genuinely has a happy relationship. like for once, life is good and things almost make sense for Tim. but then, of course, New-52!Kon comes back. he decides he wants to try again and he finds Tim. only to find well. he's been replaced. and technically, he's been replaced with the *original* that he didn't even know *existed*. and if being a clone is bad enough, that just makes it a hundred times worse. because imagine knowing you're actually the second Kon-El your boyfriend who you never *technically* broke up with fell in love with. that's gotta give you some kind of complex.

so i think it's fun if both Kons try to step back and let the other Kon date Tim. both of them have reasons to feel like the "replacement" or "fake" Kon, and it makes them incredibly awkward with each other. do they count as the same person? bc they definitely don't *feel* like the same person to each other, but with weird timeline stuff, who can really say. them settling on an awkward throuple that's really meant to be Tim just dating them both but somehow they end up dating each other too is so fun for me. they both feel like imposters to the Superboy name but are so deeply in love with Tim Drake, it's the one thing truly connecting them. and then of course, Tim feels bad in that somehow, he's betraying both of them for having feelings for the other. but they make it work, with a lot of awkward angst and miscommunication. i just think it'd be fun. very difficult to write to get all the weird timeline nuances down in a way that's understandable in a fanfic (bc you can't just. infodump like i did on this post) but doable. also difficult to tag, because even though i argue these are two different characters, i'm pretty sure Ao3 groups them under the same character tag. so it'd be difficult to convey it's not *really* as selfcest-y as it would imply. comics, man. DC will never acknowledge New-52!Kon again, and he's admittedly a terrible adaptation of Kon-El, but. i think he was sort of neat in his own right and i'd *love* for DC to just inexplicably bring him back and make the current Kon deal with the consequences of all that. and them make Tim kiss them both. obviously.

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Fanfic idea: Nocturna, after disappearing during the crisis, wakes up to find herself in the current universe, where she spots the Red Hood, and can't help but compare him to the blood night sky she last saw, and oddly, the young Robin whom she had tried to adopt

[boilingrain]

There’s something silly to me about Bluestar x Yellowfang

It’s just “yeah Firestar’s moms should date”

Old women with tragic backstories and the very orange boy they separately adopted

[littleseasalt]

insaneduo breathe if you agree

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Day 1: Beginning/End

The Empire of Samadhi AU

Pt. 1 (you are here) | Pt. 2 |

(This is day 1 of the Monkie Destiny Challenge Prompt Month October 2023)

Wordcount: 2k

Summary: Red Son is the son of an old empire, Mei is the daughter of a new one. Red Son, consumed by fire, was put into an induced stasis sleep to stop the world from burning until his family can find a way to safely remove the fire. They find a way but he never wakes up. Hundreds of years later he awakes to discover his power resides within another as she stares at him with wide eyes on fire. 

When Red Son met the heir to the Dragon Empire of the Western Sea, it was the beginning of the end. 

Red Son remembered the smell of fire melting flesh, more horrid than anything he’d experienced before. He remembered burning his mothers and his fathers hands. He remembered laughing. He remembered screaming. 

Red Son was born a prince and he was born with fire. 

Like him, his power had been small to begin with. His Father’s Empire was a warring one. It was how it came to be. He was a Warlord who became an Emperor and his wife, Red Son’s mother was the princess of a distant empire that he failed to conquer, partially due to Red Son’s mother herself. Red Son was their son, the heir to the throne and future emperor. 

“You must be strong,” his father told him after every tale of conquest. “For when you rule, there will be those who oppose your authority. You must take it. They can do nothing to you if you are more powerful than those that seek to destroy you.” 

It had never been Red Son’s intention to be consumed by his quest for power. It had begun like any other learning did, with scrolls and lectures and teachings and teachers. The flame alight inside him grew brighter and brighter with every meditation, every new technique and lesson learned. It grew in heat and size until he could feel it down to his fingers, heat coursing through him and roaring. He sought more and more, at the beginning, dragging himself forward by sheer force of will until there was a shift and his fire suddenly pushed him forward, propelling him into greatness, into conquest, into the raging inferno of power.

A power that grew too quickly and soon consumed him and everyone around him as well. Until his parents voices were muffled and faces were blurred by heat and flame and he heard nothing but the tearing chants of flame; consume, consume, consume. 

Voices muffled, his laughter loud as their chains melted before they could touch him. Fire could not be contained, it was everything. They could not put it out. 

They could not put it out, but they could lock it away, and him with it. 

“I swear to you,” his father said. “I will return for you.” 

His hands were the last thing Red Son felt before he ceased to exist. 

When he awoke, he knew something was wrong. 

He was cold.  

Never in his life had he felt cold. Never in his life had he existed without a burning in his chest and a warmth in his core. But he awoke and his chest was gaping and empty. But his mind was clear. Clearer than it had been in a long time. The settled feeling of his fire within him was absent. Gone. He could tell it wasn’t inside him any longer. But he could feel its presence nearby. 

Warmth hovered just close enough to brush his skin. He heard the crackling of flame. 

His eyes snapped open. 

Wide fire filled eyes stared back. 

Whoever it was in front of him was engulfed in flame. 

“Help,” she choked out.  

“What have you done?” was the first thing out of his mouth. His voice sounded raspy, dry, the words rusty and unfamiliar. 

The cave behind her was on fire. Everything, absolutely everything, was engulfed in flame. The roaring fire filled his vision and licked at his clothes and over his skin. None of it stuck to him, none of it could burn. The flames still knew him. They wrapped around him and he heard their recognition, their greeting, their call. 

He looked at the soul in front of him, engulfed in his flame and he recognized a part of himself inside it that was causing the flames to stick to her skin.  

He grabbed her face and reached out with his will to hers, grabbing hold of his fire inside her and reigning it in, wrapping it in a net of his mind and will and pushing it down. 

It was easier than he remembered. Something had changed. 

…He had changed. 

She made a choking noise, eyes wide and tears evaporating before they had a chance to run down her cheeks. 

“Breath, you fool,” Red Son said. 

She gasped. 

The fire around them died, the flames fluttering away to nothing, and without another word the woman lost consciousness falling into him. 

Red Son was left with an unconscious person in his arms, the smell of ash and stone surrounding him, and the blackened cavern empty aside from the two of them. 

His mouth was dry. 

He coughed a few times before bothering to exit his small Red-Son-shaped hole carved out in the stone. There were spells carved into the stone around it, likely what had sealed him in. 

He managed to drag them both out of the cave. With one arm around her waist and the other around her wrist ensuring the arm slung over his shoulders wouldn’t slip he staggered forward. His legs felt unreliable, unused, unsteady. His body shook and he found himself ravenously hungry. He reached the surface and found nothing but ashes. 

It was a level of devastation that challenged anything he’d ever done. Everything was burnt, there was nothing but a wide expanse of blackened dirt in sight. No trees, no hills, no people as far as the eye could see. The sun was clouded out by smoke, sky appearing orange and making it hard to tell the time. The horizon was lit with a distant ember of what he was sure had to be a raging fire if he could see it from such a distance away. He gripped the woman’s wrist tightly. 

“What,” he hissed out, “happened here.” 

Silence and smouldering ashes were all that met his ears. 

Mei woke up feeling as though there had been a fire in her throat. Scratchy dry and aching. Every part of her felt like she’d sat in front of a fire for too long and been cooked part-way. It was a nice feeling when she spent time with her great-great-great-a-thousand-times-great-great Grandfather… but right now it was a reminder of what had happened to make her feel so. 

Fire. 

She could still feel it, burning in her chest. The rings floated above her head, slowly circling, almost threatening in their movement. Their power was clear and heavy, weighing down and nearly vibrating with the barely contained inferno. 

The inferno that destroyed her home. 

She watched her tears evaporate into mist that floated up above her and faded away into nothing. 

For a moment, she wished the flames had consumed her too. 

“Oh, wonderful, you’re awake,” came a voice dripping with a disgusting sarcasm. 

Mei jolted upright, the rings catching fire above her with her alarm. Panic shot through her and she reached up to try and put them out. 

“Don’t touch those, idiot. You’ll just make it worse.” 

Her head snapped to look at him. 

And there he stood. 

The Demon of Samadhi, his hair redder than a summer sunset, his eyes sharper than flint and steel, his arms crossed over his chest, and a sour expression on his face. Mei had thought she had dreamed it up, stumbling to the caverns she used to explore as a child, drawn by curiosity she’d thought at the time, but now knew was something different, with ashes and smoke trailing behind her rock melting under her feet until she’d drawn close and the spells surrounding his tomb had melted too and his face had come into view. Aside from his hair and clothes from another era, he looked like a normal person. 

“You should be dead,” he said, like he was disappointed she wasn’t. 

 The flame in her flickered with her annoyance. 

“And you should be quiet,” she snapped back.

“Insolent-” He looked like he was a moment away from bursting into flame, seething at her, but there was none of the fabled fire flickering in his eyes, they remained cold and empty. “Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to-?” 

“Listen, buddy,” Mei interrupted him. He made a sound close to a squawk and she ignored him. “It's been a long day, okay? So if you could just tell me where we are before I barbecue you, that would be great.” 

He scoffed again. “Your threats are meaningless, girl. That’s my fire you have there. It can’t hurt me, I made it.” 

She glanced up at the rings. Then back down at him. 

“You know,” she said. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.” 

The offence on his face almost made her laugh. 

“Were it not for the fact you are the current vessel for my fire, I would kill you here and now.” 

“Yeah,” Mei said, “good luck with that buddy.” She groaned as she pushed herself to her feet and stood up, stretching. The rings flickered. She glanced at them. “Why don’t you just take your fire back and I’ll be on my way, huh?” 

He was silent.

She looked at him. 

He tsked, looking away sharply. “I already tried that, peasant.” 

Mei blinked. “What do you mean you already tried?” 

“While you were sleeping I attempted to pull it from you. My will alone is not enough to remove it from its current vessel. It’s stubborn.” 

Mei barked out a laugh. “The big and powerful Demon of Samadhi can’t take his own fire back?” 

“What nonsense-?” He bristled. “I don’t know how but it seems attached to you. I don’t know how you managed to fasten it to you so thoroughly in so little time, but I assure you, I will find a way to take it back.” 

“Yeah, sure, whatever, guy,” Mei said, glancing around them. They weren’t in the cavern anymore. They were out in the open and there was… 

Nothing. 

Something big seemed to lodge in Mei’s chest. 

There was nothing but ashes. 

In the distance there was a glow of fire. 

“I have to stop it.” She wasn’t sure when she had started hyperventilating, but now she was gasping, staggering forward towards the fire. It seemed to get brighter.

“Stop that,” hissed the Demon of Samdhi, grabbing her wrist. “You’re making it worse-” 

His hand around her wrist burned. 

Rings surrounding her, triggered by a spell, a dormant fire lighting inside her and consuming everything, people screaming Mei screaming. 

She gasped and ripped her hand away. 

The Demon of Samadhi took a step back, arm raised almost defensively. He stared at her, slightly more cautious now. 

“How long have you had my fire…?” 

She blinked. “I…” 

“How long have you had it?” he asked again--demanded. 

“I don’t know,” she stammered. “Not long? A few days?” 

“No, I'm not asking when it was triggered,” he grabbed the front of her shirt and dragged her closer to snarl at her, “I’m asking how long you've had it.” 

Mei could only stare at him for a moment, too caught off guard to break his wrist for grabbing her. 

Abruptly the Demon of Samadhi released her shirt and started pacing back and forth. He ran his hand through his hair. He looked… unsettled. Furious. 

“One of my ancestors had it before me,” Mei said slowly. “I think I inherited it-” 

His head whipped around to look at her. “Your ancestor?” His eyes were wide, angry. 

…Afraid. 

“You…” Mei suddenly realized that if the myths were true… the Demon of Samadhi would have no idea how long he’d been sealed away.

He glowered at her. “I what?”  

“I should introduce myself,” said Mei, straightening up. “I am Lóng Xiǎo Jiāo , First Princess of the Dragon Empire of the West Sea, descendant of Áo Liè of the Dragon Clan who sealed away the Demon of Samdhi’s fire, placing a piece of it inside of himself, like, I dunno, a couple hundred years ago? It was passed down, unknown to his family, until it came to me. 

“And you,” she finished, "are the Demon of Samadhi.” 

The Demon of Samdhi stared at her. “What.” 

“You got anything to eat?” Mei asked.

next

Prompt list

[masterrainb0w]

Dungeons and Daddies is a loose dnd podcast about generational trauma, and how some families are better at breaking the cycle then others.