#I do like what this implies

[ilikedetectives]

[quadrantadvisor]

Imagine if the GIW started gunning for Jason without the Batfam ever meeting Phantom. Like, Bruce has to figure out on his own that the guys in white suits with Lazarus guns are 1. a legitimate government agency, and 2. are perfectly within their rights to hunt Jason like an animal, because 3. there's secret government legislation that says that since Jason's body processes ectaplasm, he's classified as non-sapient and has no legal protections.

Bruce calling up Clark like

Bruce: I am currently in the process of breaking into a government facility in order to dismantle their operations.

Clark: Okay? Do you need... help?

Bruce: Yes.

Clark: Sure, I'll be right there.

Bruce: Not that kind of help. Oracle is sending you the files now. I'd like you and Ms. Lane to make these people wish they were never born.

Clark: [speed-reading the documents] Oh yeah, can do. This is truly disgusting. If the public is half as outraged as I am, we'll get this sorted as fast as the courts can manage.

So Clark Kent acts as a whistle-blower, the Justice League publicly condems the Anti-Ecto Acts as inhumane, the GIW is disbanded, and Batman gets pardoned for all of those crimes that he technically did by assaulting federal agents. And after all that gets sorted, some white haired kid pops up in the Watchtower like "haha thanks for that I really didn't want a war between Earth and the Infinite Realms" and the League are like "wait what"

[egophiliac]

What do you think of Rook's savanaclaw card? <333

I didn't get him (and I need to save my keys for Silver's birthday, sob) so I looked up his groovy, and I'm not over how incredibly dramatic and epic and cool it looks in direct contrast to the absolutely ridiculous context. just look at that dynamic action and his majestic sparkling tears and keep in mind that this is pretty much right after a bunch of characters have been dance battling for his soul.

and then even the actual moment of the groovy is just like

this is NOT a negative in the slightest, I love it all, this truly was an incredible update in so many ways

[kagoutiss]

stardew 1.6 secret cutscene

[stellaclaw]

boiling hot take but i literally dont give a fuck that mapleshade let the clan believe her kits were birchfaces. her clanmates can be mad but exiling a queen and her kits is fucking deranged i dont care what lie she told. “she deserved what she got” her kids deserved to die because their mom fibbed??😭 her kids deserved to die because their mom did crimes LATER???😭😭 “um but she chose to cross the river” if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around.

[tofixtheshadows]

This is one of my favorite minor details in Dungeon Meshi, firstly because what in the femme fatale, but also because it's one of those little things that raises so many questions about worldbuilding.

The Occam's Razor defense attorney in me says that Ryoko Kui gave Kabru a boot knife because she wanted him to escape from his bonds here. And Kabru is a very competent swordsman, why wouldn't he have a boot knife, sure. He's already got a dagger, he can have this too.

And yet: the implications. Kabru, why do you have that? That is not remotely something that could be easily accessed or used in combat. Nobody is pulling out a pen knife from the heel of their boot during a fight with a monster. It's useless in the dungeon ... unless you're the type of person who isn't just worried about monsters.

I've mentioned this before, but I consider one of Kabru's functions in the narrative as being the character who fully brings the idea of human ecosystems into the story. There's a reason why he's always connected to large groups of people (Toshiro's party, the Canaries). He (along with Mr. Tansu, briefly) introduces the reader to the social and political forces working on the dungeon, showing us that none of this is happening in a monster-filled vacuum. His confrontation with the corpse retrievers, who very nearly kill Kabru's party permanently with their reckless murder-for-money scheme, reminds us that monsters are not the only things that prey on humans. Kabru understands the ways the dungeon causes people to put profit over human lives.

We only get hints of it in the story, but like any gold-rush-style economic boom, it's implied that there is a lot of crime and corruption surrounding the dungeon.

So yeah, it really makes me wonder why Kabru keeps a tiny knife in his boot, meant to be carried on him even in situations where he would otherwise be unarmed. Stored exactly in the place where it's easy to reach, even if, for some reason, your hands are tied behind your back.

[turtleblogatlast]

I love Raph and haven’t said that enough so to be more specific I love that Raph is a soft boy who loves bear plushies, a gross boy who eats an assortment of things that are definitely better left alone, a smart boy who is more than capable of taking down villains through planning and fortitude alike, a strong boy who is dedicated to training his muscles and fighting prowess, a teenage boy who loves his brothers but is more than happy to tease and roughhouse with them, an angry boy who sometimes lets his anger take a hold of him to cover the fear, a gentle boy who is generous with hugs and affirmations to those he loves, a capable boy who takes on more than should ever be expected of a teenager, a good boy who just wants to be a hero and slowly comes to realize the cost of that duty, a good boy who has no reservations about putting himself in the way of harm coming to his family, a good boy who’s a great brother and son and person and deserves only the best the world has to offer.

[writer-room]

Its so funny that Arin and Sora have shown to have significantly better emotional intelligence than any of the ninja from all of the old seasons combined. "You should be taking care of your mental health" and "yeah saving the world is upsetting! no wonder you're having stress dreams" oh my precious children. You are surrounded by a teen dad with massive self-worth issues, the only one of two people who remembers the genie incident and also turned into the sea once, guy who's died like 3+ times and committed genocide under mind control, and a child soldier who's been living the hard knock life since age 2.

I hope to god you two are prepared to witness the most mentally unwell behavior you've seen in your entire teenage lives. You think you've already seen how bad it can get now? Fools. Just wait until you get a mission involving the Departed Realm

[mipexch]

comic about v2 and the goal they'll never fully reach alongside a dissatisfying conclusion. intimate rivalry and all (alternative ending comic. V1 dies instead of V2 during 4-4. V2 is narrating. V1 is dead.)

[sunlit-mess]

hmm bitter luci doodle

[natelia-aldelliz]

Ghost after meeting Soap.

Price : Have you slept?

Ghost : Depends what day it is

Price : Go to bed.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[formosusiniquis]

When Mike Wheeler, red faced and still faintly tear stained, asks him how he knew he liked both Steve doesn’t know how to tell him it was his sister.

Before Nancy Wheeler it had only been boys. Before Nancy Wheeler Steve had been sure he was gay and knew well enough to keep it to himself; dating around enough to earn himself a protective reputation. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Marcus Summers, from the baseball team, during freshman year. Steve had gone to every game, and had been forced to make up excuses about schoolwork and his other commitments when asked why he hadn’t tried out for himself. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Tommy Hagan. The summer between seventh and eighth grade had been very kind to Tommy, he was sunkissed and boy next door sweet, Steve had wanted to hold his hand and count the freckles across the bridge of his nose. 

Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been his first love, a boy who only visited one summer, the year Steve turned ten. His name had changed every time they hung out but he’d favored E’s. Eli, Emmett, Elliott, Eric, Excalibur, Excelsior, and once for about an hour Wayne. His hair brushed his chin in pretty brown curls and his big brown eyes were always bright with excitement. He always got storm off mad when any of the other boys they’d played with that summer said he was acting like a girl, E would run off to the woods and Steve would always follow. E always came up with the best games anyway, he didn’t like playing soccer or HORSE or anything else with rules that couldn’t be bent; he preferred imagination games where they were knights or wizards. He didn’t laugh when Steve said he always liked playing house, but never wanted to be the dad because why would he want to be someone who never wanted to spend any time with his kids. E who, while insisting on being called Samwise all day, was his first kiss.

Cause he knows what Mike wants to hear. He’s seen the way Mike and Will have danced around each other since the last portal closed. He’s heard the things Mike has said to and about Will. He’s heard all about the week that Will was in the Upside Down. He’s heard all about the summer of ‘85. He’s heard all about the final off again that seems to officially mark the end of Mike and El romantically. He knows that Mike wants him to say that he’d never even thought about boys before he met Eddie. That there’s just something special about Eddie that makes him want to give up his lady killing ways. That Eddie was different. That it was okay that he was having these scary new thoughts, maybe Will was just an exception.

And Steve doesn’t know how to have that conversation. When he realized he liked both it was a relief, that maybe he could have something normal and wouldn't have to spend his life lying or hiding. 

But Eddie was different. Eddie was special. Eddie was probably it for Steve which is scary in a different way that he’s not ready to touch yet -- not when it’s only been three months.

There’s never been another girl since Nancy Wheeler, not really

There will never be another boy after Eddie Munson.

So he tries to help, as best he can. It’s easier with Eddie there, not quite dozing against his shoulder -- the kid’s emergencies always seem to come so late at night these days. “When I was ten, there was a boy whose name kept changing who decided prince charming should get to kiss his faithful knight. And when I was sixteen, your sister-”

Mike’s goodwill diminishes quickly as his sister gets introduced to the conversation.

“Stevie,” Eddie says. It’s not an admonishment for bringing up Nancy. It’s awestruck and watery. “You remember that?”

“Of course I remember the first boy I ever loved," that word catches up with him a second later. Remember. 

Cause there's Eddie with his riot of brown curls and his Bambi eyes. Eddie, who has explained why soft feminine words chafe against his skin leaving him itchy and anxious. Eddie, who has an Uncle in Hawkins. Eddie who moved to town the summer before he entered high school with a buzzed head and his mother's last name. Eddie who finally settled into an E he liked best.

"Wheeler, here's a tip from me to you," Eddie says, his advice is always better received than Steve's anyway, "if you have to ask you probably already know."

"Straight people don't really spend much time wondering if they aren't really straight," Steve agrees.

They don't rush Mike out the door, a crisis is a crisis and even in the wake of new discoveries Mike deserves to be heard out. Deserves a chance to cry and rage and feel those emotions someplace safe from his Reaganite father -- just as much as Will deserves to have someone who knows what they want come to him, deserves better than experimentation.

They cross the bridge from late into early by the time Mike sets off. The sun is creeping up over the horizon and Mike looks solid, certain; the dawn hints at the man he is growing up to be. Though every instinct of Steve's begs him to drive the kid home, Eddie's soft hand lingering at his hip holds him fast. They wave instead, encouraging Mike to go home and to bed before he does anything; knowing his front bike tire is already pointed toward the Byers-Hopper place.

"The first boy you ever loved, huh, Stevie?" Eddie teases before the door has even managed to click shut.

"And the last, I'm hoping, if I play my cards right."

"You were always pretty good at that. You were the only person that summer who called me by my name, except Wayne."

"It was your name." He knows that's too simple. Knows how hard Eddie has had it, continues to have it. But that summer it had been that simple, Eddie trying on names like shirts each one fitting until they didn't. "For what it's worth, I like Eddie a lot more than Excalibur."

"Oh fuck off, I was going through a fantasy knight phase. Which I know you remember."

"Right a phase, and how much longer is this fantasy 'phase' going to last?"

They're the kind of tired that makes you feel drunk, when Eddie tackles Steve and sends them both to the floor and to giggles. Eddie might not have been his bi awakening, but Steve is pretty fine with him being his everything else.

[black-and-yellow]

[zarla-s]

I love it when a group of Heavies being silly has a few Medics hanging around healing them, like they're just enjoying their husbands' antics (when they aren't being silly themselves). It's cute!

[patreon]

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 139

So. Dan has somehow found a small child. A practically newly born ghostling who had literally fallen right on top of him. A ghostling who had practically formed right above him, far away from nurseries and instead above him of all ghosts? 

Him, the Sunkiller? The Worldeater? Jordan Vladimir FentonNightingale-Foley-Manson? Son of Space and War? Bringer of the End?? Seriously, what the hell! Ghostlings shouldn’t even be able to form within other ghost’s Lairs, and he knew for a fact this wasn’t his own ghostling seeing as he wasn’t interested in such things. 

So here Dan is, feeling more confused than he ever has with a newborn ghostling clinging to him and sobbing in his arms about wanting his dad. What even is his unlife right now.