Please, please tell me something about Untitled 1!
(By which I mean, of course, please share something you’re excited about)
excited about this Hob realization in 70s SF AU:
Hob grows quiet and starts unpicking a seam on his jacket, so he fishes out his cigarettes and offers the box. Hob takes one gratefully. “Thanks, man.”
---
“Anyways. Probably for the better. Doubt he wanted a queer or a poet for a son. Only other way I’ve really taken after him is smoking. Started two years after he died, same brand I remembered seeing in his truck. Lucky Strikes, like you. It’s where he had to smoke. Mom wouldn’t let him do it inside. Calls it a nasty habit.” Hob snorts. “’Least she used better words when she found out I was gay. I think she secretly hopes I’ll quit both. Send her a postcard one of these days: ‘Hi ma, San Francisco is great. I’m all finished with smoking and men. Still a poet, sad to say, but I don’t associate with the hippies here. Doesn’t the Golden Gate Bridge look lovely in this photo? Send my love to everyone.’”
Dream laughs. Hob beams, nudges his shoulder into him. “So. What about yours?”
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“Why not?” He fumbles out a cigarette, lights it. He’ll play Dream’s mystery man for him. “C’mon, huh?” He takes a shaky drag. “Why not? Why don’t you take something from me, then, and we’ll call it even?”
Dream stares unblinking at him for a moment and then sets his beer down on the table with a sudden clatter. Shit, maybe he’ll deck me, he thinks, if I’m lucky.
Instead, Dream reaches out and pulls the cigarette from his lips and puts it between his own. Hob sways forward after it. Dream takes a long drag and tilts his head back to blow the smoke past Hob. His throat is pale. Like the fucking moon. His eyes haven’t left Hob’s. Sharp wet seaglass. Fuck, fuck, fuck, thinks Hob. Dream stubs out the cigarette and leans forward. He never smokes. He always has cigarettes, and he never smokes. His voice is rough from it. “Like that?”
In which we feel the weight of our history and bear the burdens of our responsibilities.
This took… way too long… here’s the background only version w all the little Easter eggs and such.
Some progress images! From layout to finish.
This is my most ambitious piece to date…maybe my last fanart for a while haha 😞😞
Some lore thoughts going into this illustration — feel free to ignore:
I was thinking this takes place in S2 in the Zianna Ro’Meave rescue arc, where Garroth returns to O’Khasis after many years to rescue his mother…He comes across their oldest (historically, the first in Ru’aun) cathedral and finds it in a wrecked and pillaged state.
The pious folk have pretty much abandoned the cathedral following Zane’s disappearance for 15 years and the Tu’la invasion was the nail on the coffin. The cathedral is completely barren of life except for the few intact stained glass windows that recount the history of the Divine Warriors.
Around this time it’s revealed that Garroth is the current holder of Esmund’s relic— is he anxious? Lost? Jumpstarting his quarter-life existential crisis?
I hope that everything here in this illustration captures my vision and conveys it to you. This is pretty much a love letter MCD HAHAHAHA
Every day i read a post where people write that “Bruce Wayne has an adoption problem” or that Danny is adoption bait on the first second of seeing him, not even knowing if he has a want of vengeance and a sad backstory and parallels to Bruce, and every day I want to softly cry in a corner.
[A drawing of Nicky, Joe, Quynh, and Andy from The Old Guard. They are all in profile, walking in a straight line facing the sun. They are dressed in medieval clothing and armour, and each carry their own weapons and bags. Nicky has his sword, a crossbow, a quiver of bolts, a dagger at his belt and another strapped to his ankle. Joe is holding his sword, a bag, and a coin purse. Quynh's bow is over her back, and her quiver is at her hip. Two daggers are strapped to her belt, one of them matching Nicky's. Andy is holding her axe, two bags, and a dagger. They each have serene expressions and closed eyes, as if they're not in a hurry. In the background, the seasons change from winter to spring, summer, fall. There is an old tree behind them, and its branches change with the seasons.]
May your hardened heart be woken
By the soft and distant song
Of all you left here unspoken
All the shards we keep stepping on
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Take this body home
Take this body home
Call the wind, and let her know
Take this life outgrown
Take this broken soul
Call the stars, call them all
And take it high, take it far, take it home
Tim was four days into a sleep deficit so he felt that to say that this predicament was his fault was a bit of a reach.
For it to be his fault he would have had to cognizant of the last 16 hours.
All he wanted to do was take a power nap in the nearest closest durring the Waynetech gala but nooo Bruce had to be taken hostage by the Joker.
So he did what he thought would work best and shoved uncle Clark into the nearest emergency bat storage and told him to suit up.
Maybe he looked a bit more confused than normal but they didn’t need a reporter they needed Batman!
That being said wasn’t uncle Clark supposed to be off-world?
Oh no.
———————
Jack honestly had no clue what was happening for the last six months so when he was told to be Batman he merely just shrugged as the frankly exhausted teen left him to his own.
With his son turning out to be part ghost to the government hunting down his said son and having to move shop halfway across the continent.
This might as well happen.
Grinning like a kid on Christmas, Jack plopped on the finishing touch.
“Oh Danno is not going to believe this!”
Raising a cloaked arm with a flourish Jack struck a pose.
“Alrighty Jack enough messing around! Time to save the party, Fenton style!
Shifting his feet, Jack took a deep breath before smoothing his face the best he could. After all, couldn’t have a smiling Batman! Before walking out the room and taking running leap through the wall to the streets of Gotham before grappling to the nearest building.
His sus-o-meter isn't up to 100%, but if he's being real, it never is. The downside of being into conspiracy theories was that you were only partially sure which one was more skewed than the other. One day he could be convinced Batman is more cryptid than man, and then he'd stumble on some fascinating witness accounts that make him rethink the Vampire hypothesis.
This time, however, he's fairly sure this sort of freaky shit only happens to people in those cookie-cutter horror movies.
… Except this particular ghost might be of midwestern decent, or something, because they sucked at properly haunting.
Example number one:
It was rare that Bernard had dishes piled up. He lived alone, and occasionally Tim would come to his apartment; with a couple of games, some takeout boxes, and a movie later, there would be way more things to clean up than a whole weekend on his own.
The last time Tim came over, Bernard didn't bother cleaning up for the night, and then the trash just…. Disappeared.
Not like 'a burglar broke in for some weird fetish reason, and my trash is now gone' gone, but more 'the trash is in bags, the dishes are clean, and I swear the air smells fresher' gone.
That was strike one.
He brushed it off because Tim had been there. It was unlikely he just went on a stress cleaning spree at Bernard's place but… Well, Bernard's caught him doing way weirder shit. It's fine.
(it's not fine. You just didn't move things around on someone else's turf.
"…Clean up?" Tim echoed back from the phone, sounding as confused as Bernard felt the following morning. "I-- no, of course not!" and then hurriedly continued to reassure Bernard he'd never do that. Because Tim was nice like that, even after Bernard low-key accused him of giving him the Gotham equivalent of pissing in someone else's yard.
So, that was strike one in the back of his hindbrain that something was up.)
Strike two and three came together.
See, in Gotham's economy, sometimes your employer doesn't have your paycheck the week it should be. Who cares if you need to pay rent through or your landlord will double your rent? Neither your boss nor the landlord in question, obviously. So what he usually did was have a nest egg the size of his rent just in case.
But this month Bernard had splurged a little too much, so he was short. It was nothing big, he was just five bucks short.
The issue was, that his landlord was paranoid and was already breathing down his neck for not paying the next month's rent the day before the new month started. Like clockwork, his landlord put a warning under his door, ready to evict him the same day the month started if Bernard didn't have the rent in cash the next morning.
He knew the eviction notice was at the door, but chose to ignore it because it didn't matter, he'd get those five one way or another by the end of the day.
By the time he came back, two things were out of place. The first was the eviction notice on his table. Again, no one moved someone else's shit around.
Strike three happened while counting his nest egg, and would you look at that! He had more money than he'd counted. Nothing ridiculous, just… He had those five bucks now.
All these little things were easy to miss, or misremember, but Bernard was not most people. But the catch here was… All these things were good things. Sort of.
So not only was this happening when he wasn't around, but they were happening to his… Advantage? He'd even call it good fortune if one was willing to ignore the lack of privacy… And maybe he would have, if this wasn't Gotham. Privacy was a mix between a luxury and a currency. Sometimes a kindness.
In some ways maybe it would have been an effective scare tactic, to mess someone's shit up, but this was not the way he'd personally go about it if he wanted someone to leave the building.
So here Bernard was, staring again at the dishes he had placed as bait, because he wasn't an idiot and tempting a ghost into anything remotely violent was stupid. The dishes were cleaned.
He squinted at the ceiling, then at the rest of his apartment, trying to gauge whether trying to make first contact was going to get him more haunted, killed, or turn him into a Saturday morning cartoon.
Finally, he picked up a cup. Not a glass cup, because why would he give the ghost any ammunition, but a couple of fairly clear plastic cups, a marker, two sticky notes, and filled both cups with tap water decently enough so a mild tremble would be noticeable.
The first sticky note said "Yes", and the second, predictably, said "No."
"So." Bernard sat in front of the cups, feeling halfway like a dumbass for doing this in the first place, and halfway like he's about to do the worst decision of his life because it might just work. "You from out of town, or are you just really shitty at this?"
I've been binging Batman Beyond recently (Terry ily so much) and thought about how- bc of the JLU twist which I think isn't even canon to the comics BB verse but shhh bare with me- he'd technically be Damian's half brother??? Which is just so ridiculously soap opera to me. I need them to interact in a silly time travel adventure so bad you don't even understand (ID in alt)
Pac: Take care of Ramon, take care of Richas, ok? See you on the other side, big boy.
Fit: [Laughs] Take it easy, big boy. Take it easy, big boy. Actually, nononono– You can't just say "big boy" and then just expect me to not drag you outta here. [Fit tries to lasso Pac] You're coming with me.
Pac: No, I need to leave!
Fit: You're coming with me. You are not dying today! You are not dying today!
Pac: I need to leave, Fit! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!
Ironmouse: Are you guys like, having sexy time?
Fit: There's homosexual activity going on Mouse, don't worry about us, ok?
Ironmouse: You guys, we don't have time to be gay right now.
[ Full Transcript ↓ ]
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Pac: I'm just here to say goodbye to you, Fit.
Fit: Goodbye? We're not– we're gonna be fine, we're going to get out of here, don't worry.
Aypierre: Yeah, don't worry!
Pac: I know, but like– I will sleep until the end, you know? I will pass through this moment sleeping, man. I won't be able to be awake for the moment.
Fit: [Laughs] You know, it's– I mean, if that's how you wanna go, but– I mean, that- I mean, isn't that bed kind of like.... I don't know, it's–
Pac: No no, I will be staying on the sofa, you know, I will be staying on the sofa.
Fit: Oh the sofa. Ok, that's a nice sofa! Yeah, that is a pretty nice sofa.
Pac: Yeah, it's a nice sofa right? No, yeah– I'm going to stay on the sofa, you know? So, since I will be going Fit... [Pac starts tossing Fit all his items]
Aypierre: [Not paying attention to their conversation] Is that bigger cell? I don't think it's a bigger- biggest one.
Fit: Oh... Thank you Pac, thank you.
Pac: Everything you need to survive, ok?
Fit: Wow.
Aypierre: Wow.
Pac: And if you need this one also, maybe, who knows? [Throws him more items]
Fit: Ohhh, well hey– just take this to remember me by, ok? [Tosses him a photo of himself – the same one Aypierre was carrying all day yesterday]
Pac: [Laughs] Ok, I will sleep holding the picture you know, like this. You know, I will dream about you, Fit. And I hope this is gonna be good dreams. I see you in the other side. Good luck, my friend.
Fit: The other side... Yeah, you know, yeah, we– we– you know? It's been an honor, Pac. It's been an honor, you know?
Pac: Yeah, for me too, you know? Take care of Ramon, take care of Richas, ok?
Fit: Ok.
Pac: See you on the other side, big boy.
Fit: I will sing your praise– Oh yeah, hey– [Laughs] Take it easy, big boy. Take it easy, big boy. Actually, nononono– You can't just say "big boy" and then just expect me to not drag you outta here. You're coming with me.
Pac: No, I need to leave!
Fit: You're coming with me. You are not dying today! You are not dying today!
Pac: I need to leave, Fit! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!
Fit: Sorry, there's–
Pac: I'm sorry!
Ironmouse: Are you guys like, having sexy time?
Fit: There's homosexual activity going on Mouse, don't worry about us, ok?
Ironmouse: You guys, you guys– we don't have time to be gay right now, come on. There's no time.
Pac: No, there's no time! Oh, goodbye Fit...
Fit: Ok, c'mon, no no no, come on, we got this we got this!