#even in media that I love to death

[starry-bi-sky]

Unpleasant Revelations - DPxDC Ficlet Idea for the Stillborn Au

"Have you met my youngest, Damian, Mr. Masters?"

Its only from twenty years of long, hard experience and practice that Vlad doesn't increase the room temperature from 'borderline uncomfortably cool' to 'unbearably hot' the moment Bruce Wayne pulls his youngest and "only" biological son out in front of him.

He puts only in quotations because twelve year old Damian Wayne looks scarily, uncannily like one Daniel Brown. Jack and Maddie's foster son, second victim of their foolishness, and only other halfa in existence. Second only to him.

It's nauseating how similar they look. From the scowl and terrible glare on the young boy's face, to his brown skin -- which was only a few shades lighter than Daniel's, the shape of his nose, and even the strange winged edge of his eyebrow. Something that Vlad has long since come to find endearing on the child he considered a son of his own. The only difference was that Damian had dark, sharp green eyes.

Daniel's eyes were blue. The same glacier shade as his father's, who stood behind Damian with a proud, oafish smile on his visage.

It was infuriating how similar they look. Vlad might not have rapidly swung the room temperature from one extreme to the other, but he can't stop himself from letting the fury burning within his core from slipping out and raising the temperature up a few degrees.

Because it really only meant one thing.

Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were related.

Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were brothers.

Standing in front of him, it was clear as day. He can already picture a phantom image of Daniel standing beside Damian, the same scowl written on his face, the same glare carved into his eyes. The only difference being the dark, exhausted circles beneath them that seemed to be permanently painted onto his skin. The only thing missing being the permanent loneliness and vigilance permeating his being like a scar.

This, if revealed, would be enough to ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation. Or, at the very least, darken it quite a bit. The great philanthropist Bruce Wayne with another secret blood child? One related to his youngest? One that had been put into foster care? Seemingly thrown away?

It would be a firestorm.

One that Vlad is not keen on starting.

It would ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation, yes. But it would hurt Daniel in the process -- the harassment he would face alone might just be enough to break that fragile child completely. That was just not something he could allow. Or, even worse, bring him into his biological father's care and custody -- something Vlad was even less willing to allow.

It's not out of kindness to Wayne that Vlad will keep mum about this.

His grip on his champagne flute tightens, just a bit. He's still aware enough of the world around him to not let it shatter in his hands. His plastered, pleasant smile tightens around the corners, and he forces his focus to slide from Damian to Wayne.

"The resemblance is uncanny, Mister Wayne." He says, slanting his smile to the side slyly. Although he's not talking about the resemblance between Wayne and his son. Rage simmers beneath his skin, burning coal and embers in the core of his chest, nestled between his lungs, as he meets the man's eyes.

Wayne swaggles his head proudly, his ditzy smile widening as he squeezes his son's shoulder affectionately. Bastard, Vlad wants to spit.

He breathes in through his nose, and exhales out through his mouth. The champagne in his hand cools, and stops its unusual bubbling.

The Damian boy scoffs under his breath, his mouth still coiled upward into a scowl. With the revelation of his blood relation to Daniel evident, Vlad's not sure if he should find it endearing or not.

He is not Daniel, so he decides that it's just simply irritating. He decides to ignore it.

"And you said he was your only biological son?" He asks, voice lilting and head tilting. He knows its a suspicious question at worst, insulting at best. But considering Wayne's past proclivities, he can hardly call it an unexpected question.

Damian puffs in great offense, face twisting angrily. It reminds him of Daniel when Vlad insisted that he was wrong about something or other, and for a moment his heart swells, fond.

But this is not his child, and so the feeling quickly crashes and burns, simmering back into rage. This was not Daniel -- this was his replacement. A replacement that Wayne was free to keep.

Wayne chuckles, idiotically, as if he'd said some funny joke. Vlad's other hand, the one gripping his cane -- something he's required ever since he was dispatched from the hospital all those lonely years ago -- tightens instead. He grinds his teeth -- him and Jack Fenton would get along like a house on fire, he hates it.

"I can understand why you'd ask that, Mister Masters," Wayne says, squeezing Damian's shoulder again, "but yes, Damian is my only biological son. Although that doesn't mean I don't love my other children any less."

Bastard.

For all his posturing and flouncing about caring for his city and his children, Vlad never would have thought the Prince of Gotham capable of abandoning one of them.

But, well.

They all have their dark secrets.

And what one man throws away, another man picks up. If Bruce Wayne didn't want the treasure child that was Daniel Brown, then Vlad Masters was more than happy to take him instead.

"I see."

[nataliesscatorccio]

YELLOWJACKETS

[yuripira4e]

I think it’s been long enough to admit that I hated s2 of ofmd and the only thing it did was make me ship stizzy and go rewatch black sails

[ingravinoveritas]

So last night was the GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, and it has come to light that the winner of the award for Outstanding Comedy Series was...Ted Lasso.

Now, I know next to nothing about Ted Lasso, but from what I have heard about it, there is no part of me that would hear "Ted Lasso" and automatically think of it as a queer show...

And when I look at this list of nominees, I see at least three other shows that would have been excellent winners--especially Good Omens 2 and OFMD, both of which are arguably overtly, loudly queer (albeit in entirely different ways).

Both contained extraordinary performances from their lead actors. Both showed us relationships that we came to care so deeply about and feel represented by, which is particularly notable by the lack of representation that has traditionally existed for those relationships. And both have forever changed the lives of their cast members, who seem to have found themselves in ways they never expected as a result of being in these shows.

So I'm going to need someone to throw out some citations/references or just explain to me like I'm 5 why TL won this award over everything else, because the math is very not mathing here...

[mxwhore]

finally had a task repetitive enough to dissociate and listen to people be british. figure attached is me during the experience

[collieii]

i'm sure it's been said but i do love how trimax handles wolfwoods death. i've seen so many stories that have characters die and they just go away after. i'm really used to stories where the other characters aren't allowed to grieve, the story keeps going and it feels like the other characters aren't really affected or get over it really easily. but in trimax wolfwoods death is so important. we see other characters grieving him. vash protecting the orphanage, expanding his power when he really shouldn't, because it was wolfwood's home, even though wolfwood is already gone. he gets an actual burial. vash and livio eating their way through the grief, which is more comedic but still shows us how important he was to the two of them, sets up how in many ways they're fighting in his memory.

even after he's gone he's still present in the story in such a strong way. we can see how he's affected the other characters, even when they don't explicitly mention him it's obvious that they're thinking about him. what he did when he was alive, and his death itself, are so important to the story even after he's not there. not just in a really abstract "this is someone we lost" way (though there are a lot of times his death and sacrifice motivate vash and livio to fight harder!) he's present in the finale in a material way to livio, who uses his serums to help fight against elendira, which ofc also ties into the way wolfwoods choice to ally with vash and fight against knives gave livio strength to do the same. wolfwood showed him that there are things worth fighting for, things worth protecting. that your body is a weapon, but you can choose what to do with it, use it for something meaningful.

and the way vash kills legato in order to save livio? vash outright says that he did it to protect what wolfwood fought for, sacrificed his life for. it's tied to the ongoing arc between vash and wolfwood, their conflict over the necessity of killing others. wolfwood pushed vash into having an understanding of his views when he was alive, demonstrating the necessity of that violence. simultaneously, vash inspired wolfwood to follow his path, a kinder one. vash remembers what wolfwood said to him, and his death gives those words added poignancy. wolfwood well and truly sacrificed everything to protect what he loved and fight for what he believed in. how can vash let that go to waste? he sacrifices something just as meaningful to himself, and he pulls the trigger. it brings him closer to wolfwood in a way he never was before. he understands now, fundamentally, what motivates people, motivated wolfwood, to act as he did when he took lives. there are so many other ways wolfwood is present in the story after his death i can't talk about all of them but it makes me so crazy

[valentronic]

“The real game will begin momentarily… Stay tuned :)”

Costas Mandylor as The Warden in Death Count(2022)

[euryvices]

"oh they changed this" "oh they changed that" CAN EVERYONE JUST STOP HATING ON REMAKES? like i get you're so cool for liking this thing that was super awesome before the "big media" took it over, but it's still part of the same franchise, has the same characters AND IS BRINGING JOY TO NEW WATCHERS and you somehow feel immense hate? can you chill? there are people who HAVEN'T seen this thing before and they LIKE it and all art is DIFFERENT stop acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum JUST BECAUSE YOUR VERSION IS DIFFERENT!!!!

[ace-with--a-mace]

houses head wilsons heart crushed me wtf doctors...

[carefulfears]

thinking about how sarah connor was a girl who worked in a diner and wanted to go to a late movie because her date ditched her and kissed her pet lizard on the mouth. in a deleted scene from the first film, she tells her time-traveling warrior that when this is all over, she wants to take him to disneyland. buy him a hot dog. "i want it to be over for you." when we see her again, 10 years later, she's strapped to a psych ward bed. she's screaming of the end times, how everyone is already dead, there is no future. she's snapping at her kid until he cries, because he wanted to help her.

[oldmanffucker]

hello ive gone thru the gloaming tag. i see u have watched n i raise my previous query if ur so inclined 👁️

(previous query was about how I, as a grief specialist, feel abt in the gloaming)

ok i wrote out an outline as i was watching it and haven't had the spoons to do more with it but here's that:

Mourning rituals - letting danny have a say, but also the bag pipes - a connection to the grandfather, to danny, and to his dad, who could remember and offer them for the funeral. To be a part of the creation of the service.  “No lilies” “In the language of flowers, the Lily has long held the symbolic meaning of fertility, purity, and remembrance. They are a time-honored inclusion in memorial arrangements and are considered spiritually symbolic of the circle of life. Individual types of lily flowers and the respective colors of the petals may hold additional meanings.”

Father - head and dissonant griever. He grows tomatoes not because he likes them but bcause his wife does. He tends his tomatoes, covering them in the winter, tending to them gently throughout the year. Silently, lovingly. “I think he grows them for you”  Realizes that his father does love in his own, quiet, unassuming way. Must be an earth sign.

“I dont see that much love, I dont even see that much connection.” “sticking it out, doing it together. Endurance.” [later, I miss paul… i guess he didn’t have enough endurance as it were.] 

other moments of quiet care: “Come and see what I’ve done with your room,” “I seem to remember lamb’s his favorite” making him the reception dinner. “she’s one of the museum’s most valbuable assets,” we see him pruning the tomato plants and collecting the tomatoes in a basket to show off to his wife. He comes in after danny goes to sleep “did he talk to you?” “So you’ll talk to him about it?” “just tell carla and i give her the specifics of ti” “well i turned out all the lights” making things easier for her “tell me about your book” Dad sees she looks stressed while making dinner and takes action, trying to bring her to the places she mentioned. Gets up to try to catch danny when he needs to get up for his broncho treatment. We dont see the ramp getting installed, but i would assume that the dad put it there. “I thought I’d make it more homey in here” - he brings in his trophies, Trying to talk about what he’s interested in - tennis - but seems to be one step behind him on everything. The picture of him and Gary, the tennis, the trophy, the lamb. It’s not until the bag pipes at the end that he can seem to get it right. “I’ve got some donuts hidden in my desk,” him trying to let his son in, connecting, being more human.

Initially we see him dealing with the degenerating health of his son by constantly exercising - reminding himself that he is healthy, likely due to discomfort of being confronted with death. But also perhaps as a continuing bond to the danny he remembers.

Deep discomfort with not just death, but the visible death undertaken by his son. Adding the death he has a precarious relationship with to the already precarious relationship with his son, making undertaking a new relationship with his son may feel extra fraught or dangerous. “I dont think he likes being around me very much. He doesn’t know me. He doesnt have a clue as to who i am.”

Not everyone is built to be a hands on supporter in the intimate moments of dying. We see the dad cant engage until the son is gone. "Tell me what else my son liked," suggesting the bagpipes

Mother - was good with being understanding right out the gate - the embodiment of how to approach a dying loved one - she’s a masterclass in embracing that the death is real, and not speaking around that truth (while also never belaboring the point). “I have to write a will.” she says nothing “thank you.” “for what?” “For not saying there’s plenty of time for that or some similar hooey.” is his mom simply not saying that there’s still time to write a will. It’s her simply nodding and saying okay when Danny says he wants to write a will.

“What else do you remember?” I loved this as an example of starting a conversation in a way that communicates desire to listen, safety in reminiscing. Treating him as a person.

We see there’s a yarn swift in the background in the living room, meaning that she is liekly an avid fiber artist with yarn, and I bet she made that hat for Danny! What a labor of love.

Hardly leaves the house, is attached to danny at the hip, afraid that he’ll die if she leaves.

Sister - we don't see a lot from her, but we do see shame about AIDS in that she doesn’t ever bring her husband or son around to visit Danny. This indicated that, though it’s not shown, her grief is and will be disenfranchised, at least insofar as she is able to express it with her husband. She may be reticent to bring it up with family, or she may allow herself to express her grief with her family and not with her husband. She also suggests that mom’s over-attentions made him gay.

The movie is not only about grief, but about what a good death can look like. 

(Of course within that is the inescapable politics of what constitutes a good death, who gets a good death, and the privileges of affording a good death, so I will mention that here, but will focus mostly on what it is about the death that makes it a so called good death. )

His family takes him in to receive hospice care, sets up a hospital bed, has a safe and not overstimulating space to experience the end of his time and catch up with his family and have a part in planning his funeral, speak his truth, have in in home nurse keeping him as comfortable as possible.

When Danny first comes home, they are continuing to treat him with, at least a hearty performance of, normalcy, though his dad’s just shakes his hand when he comes in, and his sister pats his back as she leaves and when his meds come out the all scatter.

This is not a story about breaking the hard news of illness or dying to anybody. This isn’t a movie about the dying man scrabbling to make it to the solid ground of acceptance from some deep valley below. He’s at acceptance already.

Nurse, very straightforward. Honest, gentle. Letting Mom help with the medical stuff, feel connected to a new process in his life. 

"It’s amazing what vast sorrows can do to open up to the most essential action of loving out loud" Showing how this time of confrontation of the uncomfortable facts of death are opening the family up to saying all that they neglected to say in the intervening years.

“I think youre anything but average”

“How much do you really know about the range of my personal experience, mom?”

Mom goes from changing the subject when she has to talk about herself and the things she likes, saying there's nothing interesting about her, to explaining that there are little nuances to the things she likes about movies. to talking about the little things easily, even talking about sex scenes - things usually not talked about in “polite company”

“I think maybe we should change the subject.” “Well then maybe we shouldn’t.”

“What’s your favorite holiday?”

Talking about Paul “Don’t ask don’t tell?” “I’ve always accepted you." "I think you have, you just haven’t always…participated.”

('the 4 thanksgivings before we broke up' aaa awugh)

“I felt excluded, danny was always your favorite." "Why didnt you ever say anything." "Because we don't talk about those things.”

“Did you love? Were you loved in return?” “Yes.”

Obviously the gloaming in this time between life and death, the dusk of his life.

Of the gloaming: “Everything seems to move more slowly,” 

"You thought I said it was gloomy" “I always thought it hurt you somehow that the day was over, but you said it was a beautiful time because for a few moments the purple light made the whole world look like the Scottish highlands on a summer night.” (full quote from the original short story) - the dusk of life may seem gloomy because it's the end of a life, but in this story, it's a beautiful time because the mother and son come back together like comets.

(I am quite obsessed with the way Alice Elliot Dark used knitting as metaphor ESPECIALLY when she described Danny's death. It was so so beautiful.)

[scottstiles]

i just need to know like. why and what is the reason and wherefore are we just deciding to kill off perfectly fine and capable and young middle aged characters with their entire fucking half a life ahead of them when they FINALLY step back from the life that should have killed them but didn’t like WHY CAN’T THEY JUST RETIRE AND TAKE THEIR KIDS FISHING AND HAVE BIRTHDAY PARTIES AND A WIFEHUSBAND TO KISS IN THE MORNING AND MAYBE SOME PIE FOR SUPPER ONCE IN AWHILE ITS NOT THAT DEEP

I SAID DONT PUT YOUR FUCKING SHIP ON THIS POST ISTG

[graciousdragon]

ok i finally finished watching the fnaf musical dark remains deep dive/stream archive and oh my god. absurdly long script with more on the way. crazy stunts. vanny and glitchtrap have much bigger roles. alexandria is back for a flashback sequence. one of the new actors is nonbinary. new cg5 footage?? mike is back?!? MIKE IS FUCKING BACK YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HYPE I AM HE'S LITERALLY MY FAVORITE CHARACTER

dark remains will literally be peak >:D

[menstits]

Still thinking about the anon from yesterday and the more i think about it the more mad i get like you're insane for calling kaeya mid i hope you blow up. Bitching in the tags ft arguments my smart sexy boyfriend brought up yesterday while we were talking about this so credit where credit is due

[tangledinourstrings]

weird how all the fnaf fangame devs ppl love to make fun of are the ones that arent killing themselves by pumping out 50000000+ games a second. maybe you guys can actually treat fangame developers like human fucking beings and not crucify them everytime they cancel a project because you think theyre disposable and that you can interact with their creation any way you fucking want even if it violates their boundaries just because its out there on the internet. like i swear yall are so quick to tear apart other peoples work because of your unnecessarily high standards of what a fangame should be even though the original fnaf wasnt even all that impressive by today's standards. none of you have any respect for any of the creators in this community and the ones you do have parasocial respect for are the bigoted ones that get outed for grooming kids and use their platform to send their fans after other people.

[nomairuins]

like sry i was literally an autistic child whos Biggest special interest was hp for Years. and then i found out abt her being a terf and i realized how much shitty ideology Literally was in the books (all the shit with that journalist and like. the names of the characters of color being ... that. and the house elves. And the shit eith lupin. And) and it soured the entire thing 4 me. i have genuinely no sympathy 4 ppl who r like wahhh but i have autismmmmm andd umm i liked harry potter when i was a kid so you cant take it from me >< like damn if u cant survive on this planet without your racist transphobic childrens books Maybe you should just die.