#sort of normal

[esmeraldablazingsky]

honestly i have to kinda disagree with that post thats like “being knightcore doesnt mean pro monarchy just swear ur undying loyalty to ur bff or ur crush or smth”

no. thats not what makes it sexy. either grapple with your beloved master’s role as a symbol of the state or choose to ignore it entirely and remain their loyal hound to whatever end, uncaring of the structures of power which you serve. become naught but a blade, the burden of your choices left to settle in the hand that wields you. it’s not about being besties forever it’s about OWNERSHIP and DUBIOUS MORALITY and FRANKLY QUESTIONABLE POWER DIFFERENTIALS

[nature-played-a-trick-on-me]

Read an article about someone going into an archive to read donated journals for a journalism project -> oh that's neat -> they're all obsessive journals that ruin the writer's mental health -> :0

[sinkfood]

did you know there aren't any god-like powers of indigestion

[lazylittledragon]

they just got to have a sleepover and nothing bad ever happened at all

[heshmmity]

idk guys. malevolent shitpost drop. i cant keep it to myself anymore and i give in. honestly i already changed my john design idk? four times?? and still not sure if i like it or not but!!! ill show it later ig :p

[ethosiab]

I see a lot of designs out there in which tango has red tinted glasses/goggles (mine included) but I don't think enough of us acknowledge how much that would affect his vision

[fee-phy-fo-fum]

Take a bow, when everything's done.

the fun thing about handwriting words instead of using font is that you can do the emotion thing easier. the unfun thing is inconsistent size and also not straight and also writing neatly is so troublesome.

[batsandbirdbrains]

I posted a few angsty ideas today so let’s have a silly one before bed

The one where everyone is confused by Batman and Robin’s utility belts

So like yj season 1 team & setting. I just cannot get this ridiculous idea out of my head where they keep having weirder and weirder shit in their utility belts but act completely unfazed. No one else can make any sense of it.

“Wait, do you keep kryptonite in your utility belt?” Conner asks Robin one day during training. Robin had whipped it out to win a spar. Conner is a cross between dazed and completely scandalized.

“Duh.”

“How much?”

“Normal amount.”

Conner is gaping at him, but Robin has already moved on to the next phase of their training.

Then a few weeks later, a few members of the Justice League are fixing up some equipment in Mount Justice when Robin appears next to Batman’s side, digging through his belt. He grunts, not wanting to move his focus from the tool he’s using.

“I need an eraser to throw at Wally’s head.”

Batman hums. Robin holds a bat-shaped eraser up victoriously, it’s the kind you stick on the end of a pencil, and then he races out of the room.

“You keep erasers in your belt?” Flash asks.

“Of course.”

Robin comes back in, startling Flash who hadn’t even seen him, and digs out another eraser. This one is also bat-shaped, but red. He leaves again.

“How many do you have in there?”

“Normal amount.”

They’re quiet for a moment, just the hum of the power tools, until Flash looks back at him.

“Can I have one?”

“No.”

Forty-five seconds later, something bounces off the side of Flash’s head. He looks down and sees a yellow bat-shaped eraser next to his foot. Robin’s laugh can be heard echoing from around the door.

A few days later, Batman and Robin are standing staring at each other in the mission room. They both have their arms crossed. Neither is saying a word. Everyone else is holding their breath, unsure of what’s happening.

Batman holds his hands out. Robin doesn’t react.

Batman flicks his fingers, as if saying “give it here.” Robin frowns.

Batman does it again. Slower.

Robin stares at him.

Robin groans and flings his head back dramatically, then shoves a hand in one of his belt pouches and deposits a lizard in Batman’s waiting palm. The lizard blinks.

“What the fuck, dude,” Wally asks. He can’t even laugh, he’s so confused.

Batman’s palm remains open between them. Robin frowns more dramatically.

Then puts another lizard in Batman’s hand.

Dick can’t see it, but he can feel the way Bruce’s left eyebrow raises under the cowl.

He puts a third lizard in Batman’s hand.

“I was gonna put them in an enclosure!”

“No.”

“Did you just - was that - how many lizards did you have in your belt?” Wally asks, tripping over the words.

“Normal amount,” Robin says, pouting.

“No more lizards,” is all Batman says before turning back to the mission board. Robin looks like he wants to stomp his foot and is barely holding back the urge to throw a fit.

Wally just wants to know where he found the lizards in he first place.

A couple weeks after that, Batman walks by a frustrated looking Robin who just finished a rough training simulation. Batman pulls a blue lollipop out from his utility belt and hands it to Robin.

Robin looks at it. Then looks at Batman. Then pouts at him.

Batman takes off the wrapper and holds it back out. Robin takes it.

“There’s lollipops in there too?” Green Arrow, who was walking with him to go discuss an upcoming mission, asks.

“Along with gummy worms. Sour and normal.”

“How much candy do you have in there?”

“Normal amount.”

Green Arrow shakes his head a couple times, then hurries after Batman when he sees he fell a few paces behind.

Is it a game Bruce and Dick have? Are they trying to get someone to snap? Or are they both just funky little guys who keep odd shit in their utility belts? The world may never know.

[quadrantadvisor]

Even after learning their secret identities, the hero community always insisted that there was something inhuman about the bats. No one doubted that their intensive training had a lot to do with it, but it never quite explained how they could evade a Kryptonian's super senses, how they could melt into shadows, how they could function so long with little food, little rest, little oxygen if need be. Most people dismissed their uneasy feelings, but there was something strange about the bats, something uncanny, something that made them different from the arrows and other vanilla human members. And, slowly enough that no one really noticed, it was getting stronger.

Until one day, during a diplomatic meeting with the ruler of the Infinite Realms, when High King Phantom turned to Batman and his brood and literally brightened. "Oh! I didn't know you had liminal members!"

Or: through a variety of factors (proximity to death, their own death/near death experiences, exposure to the Lazarus Pits, the favor of Lady Gotham, immersion in Gotham's own cursed ambient ectoplasm, being a close knit group who continued to expose eachother, etc.) the batfamily have been becoming liminal/ecto-contaminated without noticing. The powers they're developing have been subtle, and align with the skills they expect to have, so no one brought it up when they started being able to hold their breath beyond human limitations, or got so sneaky that they literally seemed invisible, or had a lucky miss when they expected a bullet to go right through them. And they always exuded an unsettling aura of fear, so no one else thought anything was out of the ordinary either. By the time they meet Danny, Gotham counts as one of the most fiercely defended ghost haunts on the planet, with so many territorial liminals patrolling the streets.

[nctrlips]

mark fixing his mask and then THE GRIN WHEN HE PULLS IT DOWN????

[catgirljaneway]

I deeply dislike the voyager fandom trope where Kathryn is everyone's mom and Chakotay is the dad. (I love found family, I hate "nuclearized" found family) That woman is NOT everyone's mother. She is however Harry's mother. Which is even funnier because from what we know, Harry seems to have a perfectly healthy and good relationship with his actual mom. He did NOT need to be adopted by an insane middle-aged woman but BOOM now he's got mommy issues and it's literally his boss.

[clumsypuppy]

these two are so interesting to me

characters belong to @canisalbus

[madamemiz]

sad: falling out of a hyperfixation

tragic: watching your beloved friends and mutuals fall out of the hyperfixation while you're still in it

[ohheyidothat]

Oh I *like* this article, it gives sources for SEVENTEEN recorded cases of endometriosis in cis men! Absolutely fascinating. Look at this data!!!!

Absolutely FASCINATING ramifications for the fluidity of sexual characteristics and development!!! I knew there were a couple recorded cases, but this article links to 17 cases!!

[skyenish]

Jamil doodles for warmup (it’s 2 am)

[pennylaneforthoughts]

It's just so narratively crunchy that Spite writes poetry as his chosen form of self expression. Especially given that he clearly struggles to communicate with the people around him, the fact that he writes poetry in the scant moments he has command of Lucanis's hands really cements other textual indicators that Spite is frustrated by his difficulty with communicating. Over and over again he asks to talk to Rook, to be heard, but when he does get the chance to talk, he isn't understood, which must be unbelievably frustrating for the poor guy. So he practices! In writing! And that writing gives such a neat look into Spite's mind and how he conceptualizes himself and his situation. So I'm gonna dust off my English degree and yell about his poetry.

1.

a PEACE

cut from the ALL

golden stranded weaves

PROTECTION CAGE

keep them OUT

keep me IN

As with all poetry, there's a lot of room to interpretation, and I think that's especially intentional for Spite's worldview as a spirit. He's from the Fade, which operates on perception and emotion instead of concrete immutabilities like the material world. That being said, I think this first poem is Spite trying to process and talk about a.) his own violent summoning from the Fade and b.) Lucanis's mental Ossuary.

Spite was ripped from the Fade against his will, a piece of a larger infinity cut and captured. Likewise, Lucanis creates the Ossuary in his mind as a (poor) coping mechanism for dealing with what happened. Spite recognizes this as an attempt to create peace in emotional turmoil.

The golden stranded weaves evoke the imagery used in the narration explaining how the dagger cuts through the Veil. It's visually represented as gold geometric lines separating the Fade from the material world, which may be a hint to how spirits see the Veil: a barrier made of gold strands that has also stranded Spite from the world he knew. Given that Lucanis's mind Ossuary is also a part of the Fade, this same barrier applies here as well, stranding him and Spite from the freedom they seek.

The Veil and the mental Ossuary therefore function as what Spite calls a "protection cage," designed both to keep its occupants safe and keep them contained. Arguably, Spite could also be talking about the magic that keeps him bonded to Lucanis, magic that is likely similar in nature to how the Veil works given that blood magic is what sustains both. Protecting Spite and Lucanis from being hurt further by the Venatori but also keeping Spite from going home. He's stuck in Lucanis whether he likes it or not. This is further complicated by the mental Ossuary, which Lucanis has unconsciously constructed to keep the people he loves out of harm's way (protecting them) while also keeping Spite trapped.

This is Spite's first cry for help. He recognizes that he is trapped in multiple ways: he is forced to share a body that aggressively does not want to share with him, and the part of the Fade that Lucanis is connected to mentally is also a prison, one that does not respond like Spite would normally expect the Fade to respond. Lucanis mentions in Sea of Blood that "The Fade does whatever a spirit wants. Real walls and chains, not so much," but Spite tells Rook in Inner Demons that he can't touch the locks in Lucanis's mind despite it technically being a part of the Fade. My personal theory is it has something to do with the blood magic that bound them together in the first place, but regardless of why, it's understandably extremely frustrating for Spite to feel trapped both in the material world and the Fade, neither of which respond to him as he expects. To Spite, it must feel like the very laws of physics have stopped working as they should.

2.

scentsing the BEYOND

rememburnings from before

when one was infinity

not a small shade

not a SHARP hooked claw

in a gut

takemeouttakemeoutletmeout

riiiiip

Here we get to see how Spite has been learning to use language to artistically express complex abstract ideas, which speaks to him having mature, adult intelligence, given that abstract thought is a marker of higher-order cognition. In this poem, Spite is no longer simply describing his situation as he is in the first poem, he is self-reflecting and forming his own identity.

It's clear in this first line and in several points throughout the game that Spite's favorite sense is smell, possibly because it is a sense that he can unintrusively access and therefore isn't barred by Lucanis. So he is not just sensing, he is specifically "scentsing" what he calls "the BEYOND," likely the Fade, referencing his ability to pull things from it (especially considering that the little icon on an accessible spot says "a sense of something").

But he's not just talking about the Fade as a place, he's reminiscing of the Fade as a time. But the portmanteau he uses here, "rememburnings" suggests an attempt to explain the emotion he associates with this remembrance. The memory is painful. It burns. It hurts him. He remembers being a part of the Fade, being part of "infinity," and now he is only a "small shade" of what he once was.

But that's not all. He's also demonstrating that he understands how Lucanis perceives him, sees that he is hurting Lucanis. He knows that he was force-fed to Lucanis (quite literally according to his banter with Bellara where he says it happened when "They fed me something. Like he was a parasite in uncooked meat."), which explains why Spite conceptualizes himself as being a foreign, damaging object "in a gut." And, importantly, he doesn't take satisfaction from that. The tone he is using here suggests grief and desperation, especially the "takemeouttakemeoutletmeout." He wants to be free, yes, but he also wants to stop being an object of pain. And yet the last line suggests that Spite knows that separation would also be painful. It would be another ripping, because he is a claw now. As much as he is trapped by Lucanis, he is embedded in him as well, and extraction would tear them both apart.

3.

toes wiggle

when he drinks the brew

a small shade

and a wounded spirit

sitting

there is STILL

we are still

there is an INFINITE

there is a SHELTER

there is a STORM outside the center

UGH Spite your MIND!!! This poem makes me want to cry fr. It's so much more concrete than the other two, showing how he's becoming more familiar and comfortable with Lucanis's body and the material world. The tone is gentle, like a relieved sigh, with none of the urgency and desperation of the others. This is the first time we see Spite describe a physical sense other than smell. He notes that Lucanis wiggles his toes when he drinks his favorite coffee, suggesting that this is something Spite feels as an occupant of the same body, though he likes to manifest himself as separate. It confirms that he feels what Lucanis feels through shared senses, though has his own interpretations of sensory input.

Spite still conceptualizes himself as a "small shade," but no longer is he a "SHARP hooked claw." He is still hurt, still affected by what he and Lucanis went through, but he now sees Lucanis as more than the body he's trapped in. He sees Lucanis as a fellow "wounded spirit," hurting and healing in the same way that he is. They are sitting together, feeling together, and they have found stillness. They've finally made peace.

While he may no longer be a part of the Fade as he once was, Spite has found that being and living with Lucanis is another "INFINITE" that he gets to experience. He is safe, sheltered in their bond. It's no longer a cage. It's just protection now. And while Spite can feel the absolute mess that's going on with the world and the Fade and everything they're dealing with, he is centered now with Lucanis, which makes it all manageable.

All this leads me to believe that after Inner Demons and their little coffee date with Rook, Spite and Lucanis are at a point in their relationship where Lucanis is much more accommodating of Spite and where Spite is able to explore and experience the material world with a certain level of patience. He no longer feels like he has to bully Lucanis into letting him pilot because he understands physical space now and can experience things alongside Lucanis as he experiences them. Lucanis is more confident letting Spite speak through him because he's no longer worried Spite will wrest complete control from him and/or do something to hurt them. As Lucanis says in the final romance scene, they're no longer afraid. Lucanis now trusts Spite's reports about what happened and how much time has passed while he was asleep, which suggests that Spite has earned that trust.

At this point, the line between demon of Spite and spirit of Determination seems extremely blurry at best, and it really makes me wonder if gaining a physical body through means other than normal possession allows spirits to develop more complex cognition and emotional versatility beyond just their purpose.