#and i just ran with it

[flyingwargle]

there are two ends of the table, and adriah is caught in between both.

one end is where he usually frequents, with his english-speaking teammates. they share a common tongue, an understanding of how it feels to live overseas and play for a foreign league. but when they start talking about their spouses and kids, that's when the commonalities stop, because at 28, adriah has only had one relationship that ended because his partner didn’t want to go long-distant.

so, he turns to the other end, where the younger, rowdier players congregate, except there's one problem: they speak japanese, and his own comprehension is similar to watching anime without subs - enough to understand the context, but not enough to respond intelligently.

and then there's inunaki, who sits across from him, alternating between gushing about his fiancée with meian and barnes, and egging hinata and bokuto to drink more. oh, to be bilingual enough to have such finesse over language. if adriah knew he'd play in japan, he would've studied japanese instead of french.

he looks at his phone, then at his glass, beer foam left along the rim. bar nights with the team can either be the most fun all week or the most isolating thing in the world. tonight, it’s the latter.

he stands. inunaki watches him. “bathroom?”

“just need some air.”

“okay.” laughter catches the libero’s attention, and he switches to japanese when he addresses miya. it’s frightening how he can easily code switch. adriah stuffs his hands in his pockets and slinks out of the izakaya.

the sky is dark, stars dimmed. he finds a bench not too far away and sits, phone out. it’s around 4 am back home. all the messages that he last sent to his friends and family were from him. he probably won’t hear back from them until the next morning. his sigh is long, throwing his head back to stare at the clouds.

when he’d gotten word that the black jackals accepted him, his family was overjoyed. they’d known how hard he’d trained to break into overseas teams, and to get accepted into a division 1 team after the first tryout is impressive. management helped him secure an apartment, prepared his papers, welcomed him to osaka. for the first few months, he got by using japanese that he picked up here and there, relied on the team’s bilingual staff, got close to the other players that spoke english. for the others, they managed to find some middle ground using gestures and simple words from both languages. it was fine.

and it still mostly is. some days, it’s easy. some days, it’s hard.

the izakaya door slides open and sounds of drunken salarymen and rowdy customers drift outside. he hears another voice that shouts over them. “adriah!”

he straightens as his newest teammate bounces over. he was immediately jealous of hinata when he first joined, already familiar with bokuto, miya, and sakusa, and he was fluent enough to converse everyone else, even mistakenly speaking in portuguese from time to time. he’s a whirlwind with an unpredictable path.

“hey.” adriah gives him a small smile. “did you need some air, too?”

hinata nods. “can i sit with you?” his accent is heavy, though not as bad as bokuto, who apparently struggles enough with japanese. miya usually acts as his translator, although his kansai accent makes it difficult to understand him at times.

adriah nods, and his teammate sits. for a while, they just stare into the darkness, listen to the train rattle in the distance, watch the lights wink in and out of existence. hinata speaks. “i know how it feels to be left out.”

he stares at him. hinata keeps his eyes forward, arms leaned on his knees. “i didn’t know any portuguese when i went to brazil. i wasn’t good at english either, and i didn’t speak japanese often. some days, it got so confusing that i’d speak japanese instead of english, or portuguese instead of japanese.” his chuckle is soft. “but i was still able to talk with the others, even if i didn’t understand everything.”

hinata straightens, catches his eye, gives him a smile. “if you want to join the conversation, just jump in. the others won’t mind. none of us are very good at english, so we speak japanese, but don’t let it stop you.”

“i think you’re doing fine,” adriah blurts out. “your accent, i mean. it’s good.”

“your japanese is good, too! we can help you learn.” hinata jumps to his feet. “wanna head back in?”

adriah blinks at him. even in the night, he’s still as radiant as the sun. “okay.”

back inside the izakaya they go. many of their teammates’ glasses are refilled, including adriah’s. they sit down, and hinata turns to the others, speaking in english. “bokuto-san! tell us the story again. adriah wants to hear.”

“huh?” the owl-haired wing spiker looks at adriah, surprise in his golden eyes. hinata gives him an encouraging nod. “okay! tsum-tsum, you help translate!”

“ugh, bokkun, what happened to yer daily practice?” miya grumbles, his kansai accent sharpening his vowels.

sakusa rolls his eyes, glancing at adriah. “it’s not an interesting story. just some dumb thing he mistakenly saw on his run.” out of everyone, he knows the most english. apparently, it’s because he spends a lot of time online reading about overseas cleaning products to import.

“i’d like to hear it, anyway,” adriah says, smiling.

and so, bokuto tells the story again, speaking in english, backtracking in japanese, correcting himself when he’s provided a proper translation. adriah helps fill in the blanks, offers alternate vocabulary options, repeats some of the japanese words for himself. it’s a process, but he stitches together the narrative in both languages, and by the end of it, he’s laughing with hinata, while bokuto yells that it isn’t funny.

adriah might not have the finesse to move seamlessly from one end to the next, but he’s confident that no matter which side he ends up at, he’ll be accepted with open arms.

[ambrosethedarling]

That moment when your greatest failure in life comes back to haunt you

hashtag Hamlet Moment

[crop and without text below]

[papiliotao]

qiancore <3

@lilikags

[purplelurkinghini]

BATMAN UNBURIED (2022)

I'm a martyr. Or I will be. But I'm not Christ. Sometimes I think I might be the other one.

[ressaart]

streets of gotham

[viveela]

Such a funny new video enjoyed it lots

[kayawolfhorse]

Discuss

[stil-lindigo]

the fox god.

a comic about a trickster.

--

creative notes:

–

all my other comics

store

[kedreeva]

These little fuckers are round gobies. They are a freshwater goby that's invasive in Michigan, and they're in the nearby lake. They're distinct from the four native species due to their fused pelvic fins (middle pic) and a big black dot at the rear of their front dorsal fin. Though some other gobies have spots on their fins, NO Michigan-native species has a fused pelvic fin. These guys are very aggressive feeders and are very good at outcompeting native gobies.

They're also extremely good at stealing bait off big hooks as people on the docks reel in their lines. In particular, the bastard in the bottom photo stole my bait two days ago, so I caught him and filleted him for Bug.

Today, after acquiring smaller hooks, I went back and got 16 more, and educated several other fishers about their invasive nature. I got two turned over to me by others, and caught 14 more myself.

One man wandered over and asked why I was catching them on purpose. It was too much trouble to explain my feelings about invasive species, so I just told him, one of them stole my bait two days ago. He stopped watching my bobber and boggled at me and goes:

"You're doing this for revenge?"

So now there's some guy in town that thinks I am exacting revenge upon fish kind for a single stolen worm.

[tiresomespaceplant]

thinks about martin blackwood for the 1892938th time

[i-am-a-fish]

I am

• worried

• depressed

• uncomfortable

• upset

• afraid

• uneasy

it does not feel good.

I'm going to drink some water, take a nap, and deal with these things later

[nerdpoe]

The Justice League finds out about the Anti-Ecto Acts, and Batman is the driving force behind condemning them. He even goes so far as to summon popular ghost hero Phantom for advice, given that his son, Red Hood, would absolutely fall under those Acts. Phantom...tells him he's wrong.

Red Hood is 100%, completely and totally alive. Same soul, same body, sort of the same person. Only 'sort of' because people change as they grow, so obviously he isn't going to be the same person he was when he was fifteen.

There's not a trace of ecto in him, or in any of the Bats. None of them are even liminal.

Batman asks if he's sure. If he's really, really sure. Because ghosts run on emotions, and Red Hood came back extremely violent and irrational.

"Well yeah, of course he did," Phantom deadpans, and Batman suddenly feels very, very small under that glare. "He was murdered, unavenged, told that there was no way he was the same person when he came back pissed, and had his words as a victim ignored. I'd get violent too. Look, I gotta go, but thanks for getting the Acts removed."

[crunchchute]

My Sam & Max cosplay I debuted at a local con during the weekend!

[mkstrigidae]

Backgrounds? *puts on sunglasses* I don't know her.

My favorite girl Sansa, here to eat lemon cakes and take names.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

listen I expected literally Nothing from the D&D movie okay, like I can't make it clear enough that I expected the most soulless money grab with a good cgi budget imaginable, I went in having already gone through every stage of grief and landed on acceptance and LISTEN

I fucking CRIED during this dumb RPG movie. it wasn't just "not terrible" it was objectively good with a clever plot and compelling characters and sincere emotional beats. this movie loves D&D so fucking much and it NAILS the "a bunch of goobers try to be cool and accidentally discover The Power Of Friendship And Also Great Violence" classic D&D party vibe. their barbarian's last name is fucking Kilgore and my entire family cried in the theater.

I hope they make twelve of these motherfuckers.