#at least this way I can just leave

[bet-on-me-13]

Bank Security Guard Danny AU

So, the People of Gotham are extremely desensitized to Rouge Attacks at this point. It got to the point that whenever a person gets a job at the Bank, they have a whole 1 Hour Training Video on how to deal with a Rouge Attack right.

So, when they hire a New Security Guard from a lesser known Security Company, they don't even bother showing him the Training Video. They assume that he'll either Die or Drop them within a Week.

Danny, for the record, did not know how bad the Rouge problem truly was. All he knew was that some random guy in a Ski Mask had just walked into the bank like he owned the place and started showing off a Gun telling everybody to get on the ground.

Danny did the sensible thing and Knocked him the Fuck Out.

Then, the same thing happened the very next day, but this time it was an entire group of people. Danny had them dealt with before the first person had gotten to the floor.

Then the same thing happened the Same Day!

By the end of the week he had become a Legend among the Citizens of Gotham. There was only a single Bank in all of Gotham that had avoided being robbed for a Whole Week, and it was all because of this one Security Guard who was freakishly good at his Job.

By the end of the Month, most criminals don't even bother trying that Bank anymore. It got worse when he got loaned out as Security for another Bank, and the same thing happened again.

Eventually, he ends up rotating shifts in Every Bank in Gotham, and it becomes a Game for the Criminals to see if the Bank they try to Rob is the one Danny is in that night. And they can't even reasonably predict his next location, since he always moves around at Random!

No matter what Bank he is in, he always manages to beat the Crooks trying to Rob the Bank.

Then it gets weird. Due to a scheduling Mix Up, Danny ends up being scheduled for 2 different Banks on the same day, each across the city from the other.

One Bank reports that Danny stopped a gang from Robbing them at 6:00 PM, which really confuses the other Bank because Danny did the same thing in their Bank at the same time. Security Footage proves it, Danny was somehow in 2 places at once.

They decide not to confront him about it, but they do test a theory. They intentionally hire him at multiple different Banks at the same time for a week. He shows up to work every time without fail.

By now they have basically confirmed that he must be a Meta, but they don't really care anyways. Now he can protect multiple Banks at once with his usual perfect Efficiency, and he'll be payed accordingly as well. The Banks get protected well, and he gets payed Extreme Overtime by the Banks, everybody wins!

Well...except for the Crime Bosses of Gotham.

Before this, it was a Game for them to try and beat Danny. They didn't really care since a single Uber Competent Security Guard was still perfectly fine for business, sure they would fail a Job once in a while if they ran into him, but he could only be in 1 place at a time. It wasn't a Huge Loss.

But now it was too much. They needed to take care of him.

Assassination Attempts didn't work. He was just as competent Off the job as he was On it, so they could never get to him.

They tried attacking his Bosses, but then they hired themselves to protect...themselves. It was hard to kill his Bosses when he was constantly Bodyguarding all of them at once.

Attempts to get to him through his Family were...let's not talk about that...

It continued on like this for a while.

...

Soooo...I don't know how to end this one.

Go ahead and put your own spin on this Prompt! The basic idea is that Danny is using his Duplication Power to get to every shift on Time, and he is really annoying the Local Crime Bosses.

What do you think?

[politemagic]

everyone say congratulations to the first time homeowners!

edit: i may or may not have been inspired to write some headcanons based on this, if you're interested

[romansmartini]

have you ever seen two people more married in your entire life. please

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[beesorcery]

hello it's part 3 of 3 for my cool fun graphic design adventure!! part 1 and part 2 got too long. to recap i am recreating this t-shirt design but with the magic 8 ball songs instead of city names:

here is the current draft, updated through 3/27 (pittsburgh) (!!!!)

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

me mere seconds from being discharged from hospital: I am so excited to finally go home!

my body dead fainting on the spot for absolutely no discernible reason: bitch you thought

yeah anyway guess who's stuck under observation for another few hours 🙃

[pcktknife]

On a Genshin Poll from a while ago, you said that you could talk about Xinyan way more and it would be nice hear those thoughts! Xinyan is one of favorite Genshin characters (her design is so cool) so if you don't mind talking about her more, I'd love to hear it!

oh i didnt mean xinyan specifically in general i like talking about design (critiquing.nitpicking.praising.etc) so it really extends to most any of the characters. but you asked about xinyan so ill talk about xinyan. design wise shes very nice to look at for. her colors are all so warm with one of my favorite palettes (black/red/white). shes on the simple side compared to alot of other characters and i think its nice makes her alot easier to draw. pretty easy design to remember. for me anyway (big sleeves/braids.big collar. big hair.spikes) i dont really need to give specific reasons tbh her design is just really good. one of the pyro characters ever

[kindan-no-kanojo]

Types Bingo💓

Found this fun bingo here, feel free to snatch it! I'll tag @mino-diabolik @bluebird-dolly-bride @fruit-of-infidelity @viper-brothers @lucidesunderstander @hanakohanabe and anyone interested 👀✨

No pressure of course! But ngl I'm very curious KSKDK Took me so long to gather 25 things Scarlett likes on other people (some resemble her, some complement her) so I'm pretty sure the full completion of this bingo might result on instant marriage LOL tho we don't need to aim that high (?) Adding a few notes in the tags if you do hers!

[beif0ngs]

if this ain’t me on the day One Piece inevitably ends...  

[alonetogether]

i did not want to be That Guy but literally if i keep seeing that the only tags ppl leave on that peterick bunk cuddling art is about petes ass i swear i WILL start biting people like i know it’s meant for fun and trust me it was funny to me to begin with too but having smth like that said over and over. without any sort of like further. compliment or excitement at least after is just disheartening at this point

[hecksupremechips]

God every day I think about Akane’s breakdown in door 3 because there really is no correct way to interpret that and every possibility makes me crazy. Like she sees this fucked up corpse whom Junpei (and the player, depending on how they play) believes is their friend Snake, but she knows that it’s Guy X. It’s a man she very intentionally put in the game for this very purpose, so that he could die horrifically and be displayed for everyone to see. And she has a full mental breakdown over being trapped in this room with the corpse, being trapped by Junpei, to the point where she rips out her hair and starts bleeding from how much she bangs on the door screaming to get out. And fuck, there’s so many possibilities like

Akane could be feeling genuine terror over the sight of the body, and with that remorse. She made this happen, she wanted this to happen, and now she’s forced to quite literally watch the damage she’s caused unfold. She can detach herself from his murder easily in other timelines where she doesn’t have to look at it, and she can sleep easy knowing that her hands are technically clean because she didn’t do the literal killing. But she can’t do that here, and she has to face the fact that not only did she happily cause this death, she failed her mission. She isn’t going to survive, and now this man is dead for nothing and everything is her fault

On the other hand, her entire breakdown could be completely fabricated in order to keep playing the role of the damsel in distress who is so innocent that the very sight of blood drives her to insanity. The interesting part about this is that if she could fake such a horrific breakdown, just how much of her personality a facade? We know she wants revenge, for everyone from Cradle to feel even an ounce of the pain she and so many others went through, but we don’t get to see the extent of how much she feels this way. We never hear directly from Akane about her feelings on any of the original organizers, just her note about her desire to punish them. She hates them, but does she see their deaths as a necessary evil, or does she feel joy and satisfaction at watching them go? It’s absolutely horrifying not knowing, not being able to see her true feelings, not knowing just how real or fake she is, the extent of her madness. Perhaps she doesn’t even know that herself

IN OTHER WORDS, it’s fucked

[the-city-kitty]

I wanna give Leo and Big Mama a similar relationship to Mikey and Draxum except he’s not actively trying to redeem her and he wants nothing more than for her to go away but this spider lady is willing to murder for him now and Leo’s just like “please don’t”

[thelivingautomaton]

alright, since the Remedy brainworms got me I've been replaying Control, got to the AWE expansion last night and picking up on all the echoes/foreshadowing for Alan Wake 2 is making me go utterly bonkers, but like. has anyone picked up on or talked about how in all of Alan's Hotline messages to Jesse, when he's writing about her POV, he exclusively calls her 'Faden'

like, maybe it didn't poke my brain the first time I played it since he does the same thing when talking about Hartman, but coming from AW2 it's pretty jarring as a stylistic oddity...almost like there's a reason (in-universe and/or out-of-universe) that he doesn't call her 'Jesse'...almost like there's only one Faden in his story...

and given how in AW2 we also get some (quasi-) clarification regarding the limits of Alan's ability to "make stuff up" vs alter and rewrite "real-world" events that he sees in clairvoyant flashes...given the Night Springs screenplay pages you can find in AWE that parallels the FBC and the events of Control (i.e. a Director and a Scientist opening a portal to another dimension, finding an eldritch Entity, the Director trying to take its power for himself and then getting taken over before shooting himself)...given how literally all of the "dreams" Dylan tells Jesse about are descriptions/viewings of stuff that takes place on one level of reality or another ("I was the director and you were an intern"; "we were in a game, and it was a fucking boring game but you couldn't stop playing it"; Mister Door, and "a world with a writer writing about a cop, and another world where the writer was real"; a "musical" about Jesse), except, seemingly, the dream about "Jesse Dylan Faden"...

guys. are you picking up what I'm putting down here. guys. GUYS

[a-s-levynn]

"Even if the sky cracks in mourning / And the heavens just won't open up for me" A Series of Small Offerings - II/12 - day20

[monty-glasses-roxy]

I think it would be kinda funny if Roxy, with no attractions to run and not a lot else to do during the day, keeps getting really bored and showing up in the atrium with random shit that was discontinued years ago.

Like I dunno shows up driving a little train thing that used to drive people around all the different areas of the Plex or something and uses it to get people into areas they don't have a pass for as she runs over the staffbots that take your party passes. Starts her own robot wars thing on the main stage with a bunch of shitty remote controlled toys she found in the basement and taped a bunch of plastic cutlery to for weapons. Rallies a bunch of kids to call Freddy over and the second he pokes his head over the third floor balcony railing she fucking shoots him right in the face with a ball gun.

She does this kind of thing after hours too of course, but sometimes it's just a really slow day and she feels like the manager isn't mad at her enough yet lmao

[transmascutena]

rgu is not actually very hard to understand, but i do get why it's gotten that reputation. there are certainly things about it that are difficult to wrap your head around, like if you focus a lot on specific symbols. but the emotional core of the story, a narrative about abuse, should be pretty clear to anyone who watches it.