#writing out of context

[call-me-mother-darling]

Prompt from tessah.journal on tiktok

My response:

You were supposed to be my dad.

[cherrypuptinzy]

Ignore how JARRING my grammar is when I outline chapters, but almost done chapter 4 of "Like Butterscotch"...if anyone wants to take a look at the blueprints, go ahead and read away 😋👍

[the-ellia-west]

5 more out of context Quotes from my writing

The two adults glanced at each other with a look one could only describe as a look of ‘I’ve never talked to a child in my life how do we get him to calm down?’

He took out a knife. - “Don’t you dare!” - He slowly lowered the knife.

"What? Holy shit That's a lot of blood. Nevermind, I get it."

“Well, I suppose I’ll let you two love birds cry together in peace, although getting her to show emotion is a miracle. I think I need your autograph!”

"He's not worth anything! Just look at him!"

(Learn more about the series this is from in my profile if interested)

[darkandstormydolls]

So I finished act two of my play and I need you guys to know that there is a very emotional and important line in act two scene three and, out of context, it’s John shouting “I am not a loaf of bread!”

[bookishnewt]

Making story notes for 3rd Life and my God the out of context weirdness has spread. Nearly facepalmed after typing out 'Ren strips'. I know the full context for the scene but that part of the sentence got real weird for one second.

[raynewolferune]

Batmobile Conversations as Heard by a Fast-food Drive Thru Cashier

Batman: "No."

Red Robin: "But what if -"

Batman: "No."

Red Robin: "But I could -"

Batman: "No."

Red Robin: "What if I -"

Robin: "Cease this Neanderthal behavior at once! You cannot be a Red if you are dressed entirely in Green!"

~*~*~

Red Hood: "You're not my fucking father!"

Batman: "The paperwork says otherwise."

Red Hood: "Fucking where, Bitch! I'll burn them!"

Batman: "You'd still be grounded and for even longer if you did."

~*~*~

Batman: "Please tell me you have a Signal action figure now?"

Drive Thru Cashier: "I'm afraid Riddler high jacked the truck they were supposed to be on. We haven't got any in yet."

Batmn: *long heavy sigh* " Of course he did."

~*~*~

Red Hood, driving the batmobile for some reason: "I need 10,000 of one of literally anything you carry other than the Night Wings. I literally don't carry what it is."

Signal: "And one order of Robin Nuggets."

Red Hood: "And one order of Robin Nuggets. We Are Robin limited edition version if you have it."

~*~*~

Nightwing, driving the batmobile for some reason: "I need 6 orders of Night Wings, please."

Red Robin: "There are only two of us? And I don't want Night Wings?"

Nightwing: "Nah, that just cause Hood's trying to steal my lead. I'll get you anything you want other than the Caped Crusader Sandwhich though."

~*~*~

Batman: "No, you may not borrow the Batmobile."

Robin: "It's a right of passage!"

Batman: "You are too young to have earned that right yet."

Spoiler: "Ha! He called you a baby!"

~*~*~

Spoiler, driving the batmobile for some reason: "Do you guys have any glitter?"

Drive Thru Cashier: "Ma'am, this is a fast food restaurant."

Spoiler:

Spoiler: "How many packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise can you legally give me?"

Drive Thru Cashier:

Drive Thru Cashier after checking with the manager: "50 packets of each."

Spoiler: "I'll take them!"

~*~*~

Robin, driving the batmobile clearly without permission: "I require 2 Robin Meals. One vegan."

Superboy the 2nd: "Oh! I want a Red Hood toy!"

Robin: "What?! Absolutely not! We will take the current Robin toy! A Nightwing if that's not available!"

Superboy the 2nd: "NOOO! I WANT RED HOOD!"

Red Hood, apparently in the back seat of the batmobile: "Dear God. MAKE IT 4 ROBIN MEALS, PLEASE, ANS GIVE THEM BOTH WHAT THEY WANT SO THEY SHUT UP."

Superboy the 2nd happily: "As long as I get my Red Hood."

Robin grumbling: "Ridiculous. Stop acting so thirsty for it."

Red Hood: *strangled, choking noises*

Superboy the 2nd: *mortified squeal* "ROBIN! That is NOT what that MEANS!"

[sunnibits]

S2 Arthur Lester: you know, I realize it might seem a little silly to wear a tie in the middle of a boiling hot alien torture desert in a different dimension, but it makes me feel more professional and put-together so I’d like to wear it :)

S6 Arthur Lester:

[ajastu]

sibling bonding ritual 👍

Leandra's ghost disapproves

[nebrasska-alasska]

The normies just don't get it what can I say

[starry-bi-sky]

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[call-me-mother-darling]

Being a writer is weird because what do you mean I just fixed the plot hole but I’m barely conscious. Like why do I have answers to my problems when I’m seconds away from being fully asleep.

[starry-songs-canvas]

Take Care of Him

The boy, who had Damian’s face, couldn’t be more different than Dick’s (alive?) baby brother.

Aside from his Snow White hair, he smiled and laughed freely, making puns on top of his embarrassing story about his supposed twin brother.  

(“Clones don’t have childhood memories right?  So if I have an embarrassing story or two, that’ll give you a way to check that I’m not a clone AND give you ammunition for teasing!”)

“—And that’s how his face—and his pride—was forever wounded by Sparta the warrior cat!”  Danny finished his story with a flourish, cracking up immediately after.

“Huh, and to think he left it at “training”, obviously he didn’t think anyone would let the cat out of the bag.”  Dick said, laughing even as he eyed the lookalike.

Danny snorted.  “Yeah, I doubt he thought anything as Cat-astropic as that would happen.”

They sat in silence for a moment, overlooking the buildings below, with the Dalv. Co. Labs smoking in the distance and the breeze blowing past the two, yet only seeming to affect Nightwing and not the phantom beside him.

“Is he safe?  Is he happy?” Danny murmurs as he looks up at the stars, looking every bit the forlorn ghost he claimed to be.

“…We keep each other safe.  And I’d say once he got past the stabbing faze, he’s pretty happy in Gotham.”

“But I’m sure it’d make him happy to see you again.”  Dick thought back to the comments the vampire-ghost they’d fought earlier.  It didn’t sound exactly, “happy” or “safe” for Danny.  Or anyone else involved.

Danny shook his head.  “Nah.  He’s… moved on.  And with how crazy my after-life is?  I’m already dealing with ghosts, ghost-hunters, and my—err—that frootloop from earlier.  I do not need to add furries and murder-ninjas to the mix.”

Danny sighed as he floated into a standing position.  “Speaking of which, if you could just, maybe not tell him you saw me?  Better to let dead dogs lie.”

Danny’s piercing Lazarus green eyes looked at Dick and he saw the exact same expression B had on whenever he “had to do it alone”.

“Just, take care of him, Kay?  Or I’ll haunt you to the ends of the universe!”  He said, throwing up a peace sign as he turned invisible.

Dick snorted, “Yeah, sure kid.”

Dick got up and started off toward the bat-plane.  He had a brother to interrogate, and another brother/clone of his brother to find.

[mail-me-a-snail]

TRUE BLU iv.

They would've known me. Wouldn't that have been enough? You tell me.

in which we find sniper crossing enemy lines ‧₊˚ ⋅ if you saw this this morning, no you didn't. in other words, the tumblr scheduling system has harmed me once more. anyway happy reading and as always, comments are much appreciated!!

[stump-not-found]

hrgh rambled on vc about theraprism bill for hours and i woulda kept doing it . will tuck it safely under the read more

institutes are banal in their cruelty . agency is a complicated subject . bill is a cornered rat who's always been a cornered rat . what does he look like in a scenario where he's back at square one ?

i think he'd lock tf in honestly . tbob wasn't a bad attempt . like the book was a mess of him oversharing, but he managed to get something out the door that wasn't meant to . high security facility for tyrants and he still slipped something thru the cracks -- that's interesting ! i wanna play in that space which takes into account bill cipher is competent and more than willing to rip his fate out of the jaws of whatever sick punchline the universe is setting up for him

i think bill cipher can have his moments of patheticness . he's fun to put in the blender for a lil bit i also enjoy a bill cipher jamba juice from time to time

i just also think he got where he was in life for a reason . he's charismatic . he's funny . people genuinely like him, a natural born cult leader . he's extremely smart, and knowledgeable . he's willing to do a lotta shit most people wouldn't which already puts him ahead of the game

i think the thing that's the most fun about bill being in the theraprism is when you acknowledge he's a person . he's been put in a place where he no longer has any agency . his entire life has been chasing any scrap of agency he can get, and never feeling like he's got it . i love that thread, because this wouldn't be anything new for him -- bill's never had agency as far as he's concerned . always clawing his way for the right to exist

he's a cornered rat, he's always been a cornered rat, and he's gotten pretty god damn good at clawing his way back to the top . i think it's fun being able to explore what that looks like, how that power struggle would function in a place where he is pretty well and truly powerless

then if you throw ford into the mix, now he's got a wedge . and it's fun playing with bill trying to reconcile the ways he wants to use ford as leverage, with the reality that ford is his weakness . that doesn't change just because bill beefed it big time . the fact he won't acknowledge that just about dooms him to it, and that's awesome . i love cycles man. keep pretending that love did not undo you in a mind-bogglingly brief amount of time, i'm clapping and cheering about it yippeeeeee

ohhh it's just so fun . take my man and have him lock tf in . i wanna see him clawing at those walls and being a genuine threat to the system, while coming to terms with the fact that reincarnation is just about inevitable

it's such a weird fucking situation . you can talk so much about personhood, and agency, and how he took those things from others, but like . dude you still deserve to be a person . you still deserve to be treated well . so did all the people you hurt . theraprism presents such a good pressure chamber to have a narrative exploring how someone like bill reconciles those facts, if ever

rooting for you man . i think your success is more narratively interesting than failure

oh goddd and don't get me started on the meta implications of reincarnation as a narrative representation of how so frequently "character redemption" equals the death of the original character, replacing them with someone completely different, usually "good" and "domestic" hhhhhhh

turn him into a moth . turn him into a human . at the end of the day his personality has been so twisted and warped it's not even the same person anyways

my tuoyyyyys

[pokemonblack3white3]

I'm back with more transfem Ingo (aka Myrtle)

[gothamite-rambler]

Wonder Woman's phone rang loudly, interrupting the Justice League meeting she was attending. She yelped, playing hot potato with her phone at first, then slid it over to Batman.

Wonder Woman: Answer it.

Batman: Just let it go to voicemail.

Wonder Woman: She'll call back! She will keep calling until my phone battery sleeps or I turn the phone off. Answer it!

Batman waited for the ringing to stop. When it did, he was about to tell Wonder Woman he told her so, but Hippolyta called not even five seconds later.

Batman: Huh, I wasn’t right about that. Is this your mother?

Wonder Woman (speedily saying): Yes, she's obsessed with throwing a proper American Amazon baby shower, and I can't take her persistent calls! Tell her I’m not here!

Batman waited for the ringtone to stop, timing the next call.

Superman: Bruce—

Green Arrow: Nope, he has to prove a point.

After ten seconds passed, Wonder Woman's phone rang for the third time.

Batman: Anyone want to attempt talking to her before I do?

Flash: Not it.

Superman: Nope.

Green Arrow: No.

Both Green Lanterns: We're good.

Martian Manhunter: I can feel her anger through the phone.

Hawkgirl turned to Hawkman, who bobbed his head to the ringtone.

Hawkgirl: What is an American Amazon baby shower supposed to look like?

Hawkman shrugged.

Batman: She is a persistent woman. I admire that.

Wonder Woman: Answ— Ew! Answer the phone and tell her I am not here!

Batman answered the phone and was greeted by Hippolyta's regal voice. He remained calm as the others listened in.

Batman (talking to the woman): Yes, hello, Queen… this is Batman. Your daughter? You want to talk to her? She’s in the same room with me… Yeah, glaring at me… Yeah… Oh, you needed to talk to her about the baby shower she refuses to invite me to?

Wonder Woman glared at Batman while he kept talking to her mother. Batman calmly flipped the middle finger to the pregnant Amazon princess. The other Justice League members couldn’t hold back their laughter as the Dark Knight defied the Amazon warrior's request.

Batman: I can give her the phone… Yeah... No, trust me I get it. I have about five kids, I get how difficult they can be… Yeah, you get it. Alright, it was a pleasure talking to you too, Queen. Diana, phone for you!

Wonder Woman went over, snatching the phone away, and smacked Batman on the back of the head before heading into the hallway to talk to her mother about the baby shower.

Superman: She’s going to get you back for that.

Batman: Worth it.