#burning paper

[mysteamgrids]

Burning Paper

[feeblescholarmyass]

my last day of school was yesterday and I finally finished all of my finals. after a bit or recovery I have plans to put out the highly requested Tighnari fic, the Jing Yuan fic, and the next chapter of Epiphyllum Oxypetalum.

anyways after school me and my baes (@ratty-rat-toot + my wife and our big strong boyfriend)had a bonfire and burned a ton of school work as tradition, specifically all of the Romeo and Juliet work that caused us actual physical and emotional turmoil. it looked pretty freaking cool

[dingledraw]

Just a couple of gurls

[thevoidstaredback]

How To Balance Your Daytime and Nighttime Activities So That You Don't Burn Yourself Out More Than You Already Have

It had been a long few minutes since he'd opened the door and there were a lot of questions running through Dick's head. Most pressing of which was how this kid seems to have information he should not have.

"How did you..?" he asked, but the words wouldn't leave completely. There's so much he wants to know, so much he wants to ask.

"How do I what?" Danny tilted his head like the child he seems to be is.

"How do you know?" Dick knows he sounds weak. There's no hiding that, but there are a lot of implications in what the kid has said so far and none of it is painting a very happy picture for him.

"Oh!" Danny had the audacity to smile, "You want to know how I know you moonlight as a vigilante!" And of course he knows. Dick knows he knows, but he'd held a little bit of hope that the child Danny was mistaken. Danny's smile softened a bit as he explained, "Your hair and voice match up in both jobs almost perfectly. Not to mention your build and how you hold yourself. There's also the matter of your overall vibes, but that's not something living beings can normally pick up on." Excuse him? "Well, not living humans, at least, so no worries on that end!"

"Excuse me?" Dick was fairly sure his heart just stopped beating for a moment there.

"Anyway, I was a hero back home for a while, too. I know what it's like to have to walk the tightrope between maintaining a civilian cover and a hero persona. I know how it feels to have to keep secrets from everyone because anyone who knows will be in danger." he rambled, Though, admittedly, our circumstances are quite different. I was working as a hero all hours of the day as well as going to school. You only have to worry about properly balancing between day and night jobs. Either way, me having more to bounce between just makes me al the more qualified to help you!"

Oh. Oh he did not like that. He didn't like a single thing that just came out of the kid's mouth. Because that's what he is, a kid. "Are you...Are you alright?"

"Not in the slightest," Danny admitted with an even smaller smile. Then, it brightened, not quite to a grin, but to something similar, "But I'm here to make sure you are."

He gets points for being honest, but Dick felt his heart shatter. He knew for a fact that he'd never worked with this kid before. He also knew that the Justice League didn't know about him. If they did, he would've been picked up and dropped with either the Young Justice team or the Titans.

Dick wasn't going to ask why he became a hero because that's not his place. It's more of a 'third mission with the team' kind of questions, anyway. Most of the heroes didn't have many options when they took up the mantle. Asking what Danny can do is a more appropriate question, but he wasn't going to ask that, either.

"Now that that's out of the way," Danny turned a few pages from the table of contents to another one that was topped with 'Why Sleep Scheduling Is Important' in the blue glitter pen that Dick was starting to suspect he favored. "You're not getting enough sleep. Following you around - no one's been able to find me for a while, so don't worry about that - for the last two weeks has given me some really worrisome information on you."

Dick was worrying. He was worrying a lot and even more questions were coming to the forefront of his mind.

"Your dayjob is as an officer on the Bludhaven Police Force, or BPD for short." He was looking over the page he'd turned to very aptly and Dick realized that the kid had notes written on him. "The average hours per week for police across the country is forty hours. Gotham and Bludhaven are the exceptions. As a member of the BPD, you work a solid two days and two hours. Six nights a week, you work as Nightwing from eight in the evening to three in the morning. The last day, you take off, which is good. No deserable pattern, so good on you for that. Regardless, that's seven hour nights and ten hour days, with one day off and one day on call as an officer. Seven hours are now left in your day for personal time, eating, and sleeping. That's not a healthy way to live."

Oh, god, the kid had honest to god notes on him! What the hell!

Danny didn't even skip a beat as he pulled Dick's attention back to him and his binder. "I've drawn up a schedule for you to follow." The back of the page had a meticulously drawn schedule, complete with blocks of time to eat, sleep, work both jobs, travel, personal time, and still have a bit extra left over. It was titled 'Ideal End Result' in green marker. "Drastic changes right away will only affect you negatively, so we're starting off smaller." The next page over had another schedule titled 'Where To Begin'. "I've only pulled one hour from your Nightwing hours because I know important that time is to you and the city. I am, however, going to be having you submit an appeal to your boss to cut back your hours from fifty a week to forty a week. That way, you'll only be working eight hours a day and not ten. You'll still be on call for one day, and you'll have that last day off. Altogether, you'll be going be going from working seventeen hours a day to fourteen hours a day. Nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and eight in the evening to two in the morning. Not including breaks at work or travel time. It opens up a few more hours for you to sleep!"

"You really think the chief is going to pull back my hours?" Dick raised an eyebrow in question.

"He will if he knows what's good for him."

"You know I can arrest you for that threat, right?"

"Yeah, but you won't." And, damn it, he's right.

Although, there was now another thing he had to know. "How to you plan on enforcing this schedule of yours?"

Danny seemed to have been waiting for this. He got a gleam in his eye as he pulled a black folder from his bag, not breaking eye contact with Dick. He placed it on the table and pushed it across. "Congratulations, it's a boy."

Part 1 Part 3

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

made me think of this (a foreigner on the street in the evening of zhongyuan festival in singapore)

[secretsigil]

I just finished this original piece for a contest and I'm really proud of it! The idea was to make her dress look like burning paper or something along those lines. Her expression says it all too, "Nice try but you'll have to do better than that to get rid of me!" and then she sends out pumpkin vines and thorns to ensnare those who were foolish enough to challenge her!

[shartfinz]

dude I have no idea what possessed me

[high-voltage-rat]

I think it's fascinating that the quotes:

"Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species. I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable."

"When you spend every day fighting a war, you to demonize your attackers. To you, they're evil, they're subhuman. Because if they weren't, what would that make you? What I'm trying to say... is I've been afraid to see you for what you really are. You're our brothers. Our sisters. And the things we've done to one another are unforgivable."

"These guys want to use us, take us away from our families, and send us all over the dad-gum galaxy just to test if their agents are ready for the big fight? Well... guess I'm interested in showin' em exactly what a big fight is all about! So I'm not ordering you to go. I ain't even asking. You do what you gotta do, Private."

came from the same series whose standard fare is lines like:

"What in the hell are you two doing?" / "We're being executed by our own men, sir." / "Cut it out."

"I only drink the blood of my enemies, and the occasional strawberry yoohoo."

"You always said I could sleep when I’m dead, Sarge, and guess what? I am dead. This purgatory is about to become purga-snore-y, yawn!"

...and both categories manage to be a poignant statement about the nature of war and what it does to the people in it.

[mournfulroses]

Adrienne Rich, from Poems; “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,”

[sqswisashitposter]

[yashley]

laura & ashley & imogen & fearne in c3e80 or:

[cfffrk]

[thevoidstaredback]

How To Balance Your Daytime and Nighttime Activities So That You Don't Burn Yourself Out More Than You Already Have

In Danny's defense, dying scared the hell out of him. Living in a house of ghost hunters was a bad idea, so he left. It didn't matter that they were family. He was a ghost living in a house of Ghost Hunters whose life's work was the very thing that killed him in the first place. He died turning on the portal his parents had spend nearly thirty years working on with two witnesses to his demise. The natural response was to destroy the portal and leave without telling anyone.

He didn't get to that point, though. The first few months after The Accident had been constant ghost attacks, one after another. Danny had tried t understand what was happening, but between his friends on some level denying his death, the ghosts attacking on sight, and the powers he was developing not getting themselves under control, he was reaching his breaking point.

On top of all of it, the portal destabilized.

No one had been in the lab, thank god, but the ghost portal collapsed in on itself. The running theory his parents had was that the ghost boy had been the one to break it. Danny's running theory was that the constant back and forth and overloaded the system. No new actually knew what had been the thing to turn it on in the first place, so no one could actually prove anything either way. At least, that's what Danny hoped.

Danny knew, in the deep recesses of his mind, what to do to get it working again. He knew what to do to keep it open if he so chose.

It had never been his choice in the first place.

Danny had known it wasn't entirely safe for him when the house started to turn on him, but that had only been solidified when the portal had gone down, Jack and Maddie Fenton doubled down on hunting down the Ghost Boy. He was the only ghost left in Amity Park, so he was the only one the trackers would lock onto.

Six weeks before he turned fifteen, Danny left his home. He didn't tell Jazz or Tucker or Sam, and he most certainly didn't tell his parents. Quietly, he packed his things - only those of which that would be easy to carry - and left. He didn't bring his phone or laptop with him. He thought about leaving his wallet, but figured that'd be useful to him.

The last thing he did before leaving Amity Park was go to the police station and tell them he was leaving willingly. He refused to elaborate as to why. They didn't need to know that. He didn't tell them where he was going, either, just that he was leaving.

It was an accident that he ended up in Bludhaven. Four weeks of traveling had tired him out. His powers only making it worse. He was low on money and food, he'd been sleeping on benches and in alleyways, his clothes were all filthy, he hadn't showered in days- He was ready to collapse.

Bludhaven, from what he understood, had a much smaller homeless population that her mother city Gotham, but it was still a lot of people. Particularly homeless youth. Danny was just another kid in an alley when he'd finally collapsed.

It took three days of sleeping behind a dumpster before anyone noticed him. In that time, he'd only woken up once. Not having eaten in a while, he had no waste to expel, so his body had focused on keeping he rested before allowing him to wake up. That was when he'd realized the actual danger he was in.

He had no idea if human weapons could still work on him or not, and he was not trying to figure that out any time soon. So, before the group of armed guys who'd just come into the alleyway noticed him, Danny let the invisibility wash over him before he flew up and away.

On the rooftops is where he found the city's vigilante. He was dressed in a black suit with blue accents and a black domino mask. His weapon looked like a broken bo staff and was strapped to his back.

Danny was not inclined to meet this man, but he'd never seen another hero in action before! Sure, he knew they existed, but he'd never actually gone looking for any. No one in Amity had, actually. It was a peaceful place. Well, until he opened the portal on himself, but that was hardly his fault.

Sure, he wasn't going to meet him, but maybe following him around wouldn't hurt? As long as he didn't get caught, he should be fine. It was only for the night, anyway. He'd probably never see this man again after this.

At least, that was the plan until he accidentally followed the man home at three in the morning. In his defence, though, he didn't know that it was that early or that Nightwing - as he'd heard a few guys call him - was going home! Regardless, he was going to take this to the grave. He was going to leave Bludhaven come dawn and he was never going to tell anyone the he knows where Nightwing lives.

Again, that was his plan. Danny ended up falling asleep on the rooftop opposite the building Nightwing lived in. He slept through the day, only waking up when rush hour foot and road traffic got too loud to ignore. Just as he was getting ready to leave the rooftop, he spotted movement in Nightwing's apartment.

Now, he couldn't even begin to say what had made him stay, but he did. He sat back down and watched as Nightwing moved around his apartment.

It was messy, messier than he'd have expected, but he wasn't one to judge. What really caught his attention, though, was the uniform Nightwing was wearing. Now that begged the question as to why the hero - vigilante was probably the better term here - fought crime at all hours of the day. Why approach the problem both legally and less legally? Why align yourself both ways?

Danny was always a curious boy when something sparked his interest.

He was swift in his movements as he pulled out the binder of paper and scholork he'd taken with him. Opening up to the first blank page, Danny started to write.

He was a hero, whether people thought of him as such or not. He only ever wanted to help. Maybe he could help this guy. Maybe he'd feel some kind of accomplishment if he managed to help Nightwing.

Step one is to observe.

Part 2 Part 4

Tag List: @flame-343

I need to point out that I have gone off of the original prompt, if that wasn't already obvious. In the og prompt, Danny is an adult. In this one, as I continue my take on it, Danny is a child. I didn't mean for it to happen, but the words don't listen to me, I listen to them.

[linusbenjamin]

And I love you, it's ruining my life I love you, it's ruining my life I touched you for only a fortnight I touched you, but I touched you

[willowser]

on the topic of princely bakugou—

i love the idea of his hand in marriage being the peace offering between your kingdom and his clan, as in he comes to live with you and rule in your castle. and he genuinely wants to do a good job; he's not coming in and tearing down the walls or defiling shrines or anything like that, because that would be the easiest way to lose good graces with his new realm.

the thing that i love the most about this is him being so barbaric, raised in a completely different way from you, taught to value different things and rule a different way—and yet he's sitting with his council (half of which are appointed men that swear loyalty to the realm regardless of who rules, and the other half being men he specifically chose and trusts) dressed in his furs and boots, scars out for all to see, and he's carefully trying to read letters and documents and negotiations, like a civil man would.

and it's not that he's changing anything about himself; he is firmly, to the core, always going to be a wild little barbarian pup—but he's grown enough to know the difference between respect and surrender. to know that he will be nothing without the support of the people, and to lose that after fighting so hard for it would be foolish.

he's very different than you expected, than you were ever taught to expect; your shared bed is too soft for him and he tosses and turns all night and gets up before the sun rises; he cooks, and you've found him fiddling around in the kitchen on more than one occasion; he values your opinion on a multitude of matters, and speaks to you more about politics than your father ever did.

you were told that he'd ravage you in the dirt, dripping sweat and the blood of your people, but—he hasn't laid a hand on you, hardly speaks to you unless it's absolutely necessary. you can almost feel it, though, sitting in his throat when you're across from him at the dinner table, or when he sits at the edge of the bed and looks back at you over his shoulder.

everything he does is so careful, thought out, and you think he might be doing the same with you, too. not barging in or breaking down doors, but waiting, patiently, for you to open up your heart to him.

[canisalbus]

saw your modern au piece where you tagged 'scenthound' and it just made me think about vasco in the original story after machete dies and how he'll never smell and take comfort in whatever unique smell machete had ever again and whoops I made myself sad

O- oh...

To be honest I don't know if Vasco's sense of smell is significantly better than a non-scenthound dog's (I mean maybe a little? Since scenthounds tend to have large nasal cavities and more room for olfactory receptors than a dog with shorter or narrower snout? But it's not really relevant in this context).

The way I see it, dog people's sense of smell is more acute than ours, but not as overpowered as that of an actual dog. Scents are more meaningful to them. For example, when you spend enough time with someone, your scents start to blend together, and smelling like your partner/family is an important part of bonding. I'd imagine that it plays into grieving process too. Even if you held on to the belongings of the deceased, their specific scent will eventually fade away from them as well.

I've talked about how the dogs perceive smells here and here.