Prompt 291
You know what? I’m feelin’ a Prompt with the whole halfa family, all the clones and everything.
See, Danny? He’s grown up, he’s moved out, started looking at colleges himself after spending a few years travelling and learning about himself without the threat of a ghost attack.
He’s kept in touch with his friends, both living and dead, and ignores Vlad for the most part now that they’ve reached a truce of sorts, and honestly? He’s just living his life.
But see, it’s kind of hard to figure out what college to pick, with his admittedly not-great choices. Look, he might have a new-ish ID but he’s still visibly not exactly human (though thankfully doesn’t have to worry about the GIW after a… summer activity that ended with several missing buildings)
And most people he goes to? Finds him ‘too unsettling’ which excuse him?? How is he unsettling? He’s a twenty-five year old with six kids ranging from one to six! How is that “scary” huh? Ancients, and all this is making him use the cash he’s saved up over time.
And then- as though all of this isn’t stressful enough and he’s not genuinely worried that he won’t have enough money to feed the kids if he goes to school- a hero nearly trips over Jordan and starts freaking out. He is so fucking done.
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Longtime follower and I love seeing your insights, so wondered if you had thoughts or advice on this:
I live alone and I'm not in a relationship, though I do date. I'd say ninety percent of the time I really enjoy my life, seven percent I'm a bit sad or annoyed about not having a partner yet, and three percent I get tossed into the Pit of Despair. That three percent can be tied into hormonal cycles, bad timing, etc - even when I know the cause, it still needs to be lived through. Has that happened with you? If so, how do you manage it? I do okay, but it feels like I could do better.
Ah, but the Pit of Despair and I are best friends now. I've sent pictures from the Pit, all featuring me with an absolutely humorless, rictus grin, which does make me wonder why no one else has noticed yet. I have a timeshare in the Pit of Despair. I spend some time there every six months or so, standing in the middle of my impossibly overgrown, dingy garden, and thinking to myself, how did I get here? how do I get out?
And then, as though endurance isn't enough...then your timeshare in the Pit ends. You emerge in the daylight and immediately forget how grey and hopeless that garden was, the weirdly stained, collapsing furniture in the corner and the crooked yellowing plants and that mean laughter you could sometimes hear over the sounds of waving grass. You think to yourself: that will never happen again! I am free! I am cured!
(This will feel so much worse, the next time you're shoved back into the stupid garden.)
That said, I don't think you're going to like my answer to your next question. This is because I don't like my answer; unfortunately, it remains the only answer I have to this question.
I think having some unsettled sorrow, just a touch of existential despair, is the best we can hope to do in this life.
I think that with both rueful humor and deep, deep disgust, which is typically the combo I bring to musings about being a person. Of course it's a little funny---look at the monkey, it's got anxiety!---and of course it's also frustrating, unspeakable outside of bitter cursing, a problem that will not be fixed because quite frankly it's built too deeply into us to be cut out cleanly and thrown away.
(Look at the fucking monkey, you can tell yourself through gritted teeth, standing in that horrible garden with weeks of dirty dishes in the sink and an inbox of emails and friends blowing up your phone with plans you hate to even think about. It's got anxiety.)
I do not have a cure for this. I manage it with the same sort of humor and ruefulness and bitterness that I mentioned above---I don't beat myself up anymore, when I realize I'm standing in the horrible garden again. I know it too well. Sometimes it has an okay wifi connection? I watch some movies. I get done what I can, and forgive myself the rest. I have been here before; I will get out again. I just need to be patient.
Once I'm out, there will be a whole world, I know there will---full of music I haven't heard before and stories that won't make me cringe and emails I will respond to with ease and conversations where I can be light, amusing even. There is a world beyond the Pit. There is always a world beyond the Pit, I just can't find my way back sometimes.
In the meantime, I take another terrible picture in front of the stained furniture, and caption it "Hello from the Pit!!!" with a bunch of exclamation points to indicate that it's a joke, even though it isn't.
I wait.
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Prompt 174
Despite what people complain and snark about, Bruce does in fact have contingency plans for pretty much everything. And while he doesn’t have an exact contingency for Jason apparently accidentally kidnapping the apparently prince of the Realms- some infinite space where the dead resided according to Zatanna and Constantine, he’ll have an existential crisis about it later thanks- he did have one for his kids accidentally kidnapping someone.
He just doesn’t think that exact plan will work in this case, seeing as that plan had to do with civilians and not very large kings that could obliterate the entire world with a hand wave, nevermind the fact that they have so many armies. Not to mention what is apparently both the king’s second-in-command and brother.
Well, if none of his usual contingencies won’t work and Constantine’s attempts at making a deal isn’t working, nor is the other’s attempts to talk the two down, then it’s plan Z time. Seduction it is.
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