#✦ ・ a haunting ⁝ study.

[wildflowercryptid]

the kalosian worms are quickly eating away at my brain, folks.

[pretty-haunted]

💜Art study but make it BG3💜

Astarion and my Tav Aurla based on "The Storm" by Pierre August Cot

[queenofinys]

"and then you look at it, and it looks... otherworldly. this is denis. he just creates this shape. it's not perfect. it's timeless. it reminds me of... do you remember arrival? you know those big alien creatures? that's the shape." — rebecca ferguson in an interview with hollywood insider

[poirott]

A Haunting in Venice + rain

"The rain obviously was very atmospheric and for my taste I would have had thunderclaps all over the place! But Ken [Branagh] was keen not to overdo those tropes. And hopefully we found the sweet spot of having some fun but without overdoing it. But again, it all leads into this: the house has been there longer than the humans that are currently inhabiting it. The weather itself is subsuming the house and the house is sinking. It's rotting, it's leaking, it's groaning. The electrics are dodgy. You have the feeling that anything you touch might be the last thing you ever do. Just to give it that jagged, dangerous feeling of hum, of atmosphere, of the danger that they're cut off from the outside world and reason." - Lucy Donaldson, the editor of A Hauting in Venice (Art of the Cut interview, September 21 2023)

[crystallizsch]

ahahahah have i ever mentioned that i love him

[damianbugs]

(comic references under cut)

a personal and fav hc of mine is that following jason's death, yes, batman shuts down, yes, he becomes colder and destructive — going out every night and staying out for as long as he can because hurting is better than trying and failing to sleep. i don't think he would have done the same as bruce wayne, though.

bruce wayne pulls away from the public. galas and events are either cancelled by the wayne foundations or go ahead without the man in attendance. no one can really blame him, after the death of his sheltered and beloved second son. there are no comments issued by anyone in the family besides what is strictly necessary and after one unavoidable yet invasive investigation¹ to sedate public obsession, bruce wayne does not speak on the matter at all.

he does however say a lot through action.

within a couple months, a long standing project finally gets unveiled with no big event or publicity. the Jason Todd-Wayne Homeless Shelter, right in the centre of Crime Alley. the Jason Todd-Wayne Children's Fund, offering free lunch meals to school children from struggling families. The Jason Project, focusing on reading programmes in prisons and rehabilitation support. donations under the name Jason Todd are publicly given to a multitude of charities.

the public opinion on these actions are split. some find it wonderful if heartbreaking, how a child can be so loved that their parent will do anything to make their legacy leave a mark in time. gotham hasn't seen such abrupt change in — well, ever. bruce wayne is known for charity, of course, but this is different. this is for one person. this is the most expensive form of mourning.

others are a bit unsettled. if all of this could have been done, why not do it before? why use a dead boy's name to do good that will only benefit the living waynes reputations? is this some sort of ego thing? to make himself feel better? to make everyone else feel bad?

bruce doesn't quite know himself.

part of it feels useless, pouring money and time not spent breaking bones (his own and others) into fulfilling dreams jason had once had. the boy had always wanted to help in a way that was more than batman, more than bruce. is it invasive, to assume jason would have been grateful for this, that jason would have agreed? does he have any right to be so presumptuous?

part of it feels necessary. to implicitly tell the world that even before jason todd had publicly died, the city had lost a hero². that losing him is more than just an article for the front page of the daily newsletter. that gotham has lost someone intrinsically important. to make it clear that bruce wayne is only as good as what his children let him be. that they are the ones who can make change, at the end of the day.

most of it is selfish. the Wayne Botanical Gardens opens a new exhibit for the first time in decades named My Son. the Gotham Library dedicates an entire self to Jason Todd-Wayne. the third door in the living quarters of the Wayne Manor is always locked, except for monthly dustings. there is a lesson, locked in a glass case down in a Cave, labeled A Good Soldier.

¹ : Batman: Gotham Knights #45

² : Batman #125

[versatilemess]

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”

— 📚Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer // 🎞 Annihilation, Alex Garland (2018)

Trying to read more fiction and the Autism and Queerness and Transcendent nature of these books truly has me in a chokehold. Like there’s something so liberating in The Weird, the eco and the body horror, the undefinable, The transcendent nature of area x ugh

[hypewinter]

Between all the paperwork that comes with being the new prince of the Infinite Realms, his rouges battles and studying for an upcoming test, Danny is exhausted. So when the Justice League summons him for a favor he is very withdrawn to say the least. He rushes them along, takes care of the bad guy they point him to, then leaves.

It is only about a week later once Clockwork offers to take over some paperwork for him and he eeks out a C- on his English test that he finally gets more than 3 hours of sleep. It is then that it finally hits him. He met THE Justice League. How cool was that? ....... and then he treated them like a bother. Totally not cool. Yeah another visit was probably in order. Maybe he could bring a gift basket too.

[bluesylveon2]

*Trey on a date with Yuu*

Cater, speaking through an earpiece: tell her "You have beautiful eyes."

Trey: I have beautiful eyes

Yuu:.....okay....

Cater: facepalms

[finisnihil]

I'm thinking about Sunday again and how we're shown that Robin is his weak spot over and over and really he probably wouldn't have slipped up if not for the people trying to exploit her death.

In 2.0 we see them hanging out together and the like but we don't see them interact much, Robin very obviously cares for Sunday but Sunday maintains a quiet atmosphere and professional facade and as such one could wonder how much he actually cares about her as his sister.

But then at the end of the quest we see the cracks start to show a bit. Sparkle pretends to be Robin and Sunday becomes enraged. Until then he's pretty subdued in his behavior in the aftermath, but the mockery of his sister's death is too great a slight and when Sparkle offers to pretend to be Robin so nobody gets suspicious, Sunday tells her to stuff it and go away which she does. It's a really telling scene that when Robin is involved his careful mask cracks down the middle and he begins to not think clearly or strategically because later in 2.1 it's noted he went back to accept the offer.

Aventurine notes that Robin's death is an entry point for the IPC to exploit but not for the overall Family, just for Sunday. Sunday is reeling to find control with the other heads pressuring him and the IPC closing in like a pack of hungry vultures. Sunday was always alone except for Robin and they're both pretty aware of the corruption as Sunday is desperately trying to root out the traitor while Robin left and is helping him research Death. Aventurine knows this and he knows Sunday is off balance and prone to overlooking things in his rage and grief that's potent in everything he does after 2.0's quest. Sunday went to Ratio for informatiom because he understands Aventurine's a threat needing to be taken seriously and he needs to handle him quickly and efficiently and that makes him sloppy enough to get duped by the Jade cornerstone.

When Welt and Acheron investigate his office they find all the letters and lists and investigations into the problem but they also find a beloved lightcone of a young Sunday watching his sister preform on a toy stage. Robin is noted as finding this preformance her favorite and most cherished one. Is Sunday clapping to applaud her or is he keeping time for her? Sunday keeps things running himself so she can free to persue her dreams. He does care about Robin, they really only have each other.

Finally... Gallagher. You really see the persona Sunday puts on finally shatter all at once. This is the man who murdered his sister and who's caused him so much trouble and stress. Nobody's around to fool, nobody's around to witness, and you finally see all his pent up rage and grief spill out. That's his mistake, he's so distracted letting out his bottled up feelings Gallagher's able to get him before he can even react.

Small side analysis, Robin's name and signature song come from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name. She's an American Poet who mostly wrote works of Romanticism and Transcendentalism. We haven't see much of Robin but she seems to match Romantacism, a literary movement that focused on emotion and individualism with no regard for logic. Sunday seems to match Transcendentalism, a literary movement that focused on the relationship between humanity, the divine, and nature with little regard for science. The three aspects of Transcendentalism also match Xipe's motif of threes, like their three heads.

[bonefall]

I like both ideas, bc it provides an opportunity for the Dark Forest to evolve in some way; I really like the idea of Curl taking lead and trying to make the Dark Forest cats united (not for any real GOAL, but bc they're still clan cats dammit, and separated in little pockets they'll never be able to grow).

The camp one is kinda obvious- it was a place of horror, but they need a place to stay. She never came too close to the place until she realized that if she wanted to unite the cats into a group, they needed a camp. And Starclan (she hisses at the irony) knows she'll never do it on her own. She enters, and it terrifies her- before she knows it shes backing away and fleeing. Over time though, she makes it further in, stays a bit longer. She finds the dens are still pretty decent, and that her heart feels a lot lighter as she rips down and destroys the cage. She's elated to find hierloom tools in the camp eventually- some are broken, but can be fixed. She purrs as she thinks how happy Darkstripe would be to have some proper cooking tools. This was a place of fear and death, yes, but it doesn't always have to be that way, does it?

The dogs less so but hear me out. At first she is haunted by the dogs, downright terrified- the gnashing of teeth, the frenzied barks. It's not even anything she can think or dwell on; as soon as she hears the howling and barking, she's immediately running away, fleeing as far as her paws take her. She knows she'll never actually die here, but she's still so, so scared. Maybe she comes to the conclusion on her own, or maybe someone else points it out, but eventually she realizes what you mentioned. She saved her CHILD- she should be PROUD, not scared. This is her greatest moment- her death an irrelevant footnote compared to her baby's life. Idk *exactly* how it should go, but she confronts her fear, and manages to 'tame' it. She is no longer afraid, this illusion holds no power over her. Either they fade away and just stop existing without Curl's fear to feed it, maybe they turn docile and harmless, idk. No matter what though, i have a feeling that something like THAT will catch the eye of some DF cats, sorta like a Tiny to Scourge deal. "She got rid of her land mar" into "She destroyed the land mar" to "She KILLED her land mar"- even the first one has to gain her some respect frok the others, and gives her a solid footing to try and get cats together and united.

Ask was sent a while ago, and I've been looking at it since then. It's a really good pitch, and I had things to do, so I just passively chewed it for a while. Both ideas are really good; so I was trying to think of some way to get them together.

I think I've got a good thought now;

I'll make Curlfeather's Land Mar dog related.

But they're not the same dogs that actually attacked her (which, depending on how the arc goes, might ACTUALLY be apparitions from the Dark Forest which Ashfur dragged out for his schemes. Specifically they'd be Brightheart's nightmares.)

Curlfeather's Hounds are blind. They hunt completely through "smell," and they smell her fear

I can keep her Land Mar being quite unique by actually having it follow her. Instead of it being a place she's trapped in, she's haunted by random dog events which will inevitably interrupt any plans she makes.

So she's perpetually close to making the group that she wants, uniting these demons just because it's what she deserves, but she is forced to flee when her hounds find her.

The camp she ends up using doesn't have to be her OWN Land Mar; I have another cat who actually has a 1:1 camp as theirs.

Morningstar, the deposed leader of ThunderClan who refused to allow his cats to fight. His is simply his camp, on the day where Pearstar invented the Right to Challenge and killed him for his position.

Morningstar's also HATED in the Dark Forest, because of his pacifism. Thinking about it, it's actually a great parallel for what I'm planning with Curlfeather!

She has disdain for her father because she sees him as weak. Reedwhisker swearing loyalty to The Kin after being tortured was her catalyst for believing he needed to die; that RiverClan would have a sniveling, careless leader.

So if it's Morningstar she ends up developing a bond with, they can help each other.

Morningstar can make her realize that her terrifying death by the dogs is something she can be proud of. That it isn't something to fear and revile, but a sign that when she was forced to choose between love and ambition, she chose love.

And Curlfeather can see that maybe people like Morningstar, who she'd always seen as weak, have wisdom she'd never considered. Uniting these cats isn't about power or recognition; it's just about helping to make everyone's lives better.

I can even keep the "empty camp" idea. Stepping into Morningstar's gloomy Land Mar, setting a little fire just to help with the mist, and realizing it's not all that bad. There's old tools laying strewn about, the dens are all in working order. We can make a proper home here, if we let it be.

There's probably a cage there because of Ashfur, maybe it's the one that he made the demons toss Rootspring into. Maybe I'll have the demons eventually trick Curlfeather's Sighthounds into Deadfrost's Labyrinth, if Shredtail's still around. He double-died in canon but I wouldn't be too opposed to killing someone else in his stead.

She'll also have to prove herself to the other demons. Most of them are pretty wary of "leader-types" after what happened with Tigerstar. Ironically the closest thing they have to a "leader" is Darkstripe because his soups are so good. If he doesn't like your vibe, you're cut off from the "Social Circle."

I need to make some sort of pun out of Rings of Hell and Social Circle. Social Ring of Hell.

[theonewhereistudy]

I've been lost for a long time because I enrolled for university, and life now feels as if it's on hold since I don't know how my days will be when I start it. Sometimes I'll think too much about other people and how they are managing their lives and how I'm so late in comparison to them; I used to be better in letting these thoughts go away, I guess I'm just very anxious and not managing it properly; I also think a lot about the future and how we are all walking to the non existence and I think that for now there's no mindset that can soothe my soul. 2023 is full of new scenarios in my life, I've always been afraid of change, even tho I've gone through so many changes in life, but I never paid much attention to these transitions, because they weren't violent ones. Life is unpredictable; Change is in every corner waiting, and she never has the same face or touch, maybe I should start to look at her as a friend that is always somewhere else living adventures, and once in a while will show up and bring new winds, good or bad, I never know; but as a friend, I should go through these situations and help her, until she's ready to leave to her adventures again, and I'll wait.

[screebyy]

crow & his centurion buddy in the back of the helm this past week just 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🍿

[papapaper]

I've been on a Hamilton brainrot and I honestly think I'm being haunted by the ghost of Hamilton himself because I've suddenly got the urge to practice cursive writing, write a bunch of essays and letters in a flowery language.

[shake-this-poet-out-of-the-beast]

The next Yiling Patriach

[lionbearfox]

him <3