#help i did it again...

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[tomboxed]

knight to k6

[chiptrillino-art]

(ID in ALT text) ArtTrade with the very sweet @die-auster ! thank you for sparking back my obsession with this blue guy here!

Please check out their amazing works here! 1 . 2 . 3.

[hinamie]

happy gojoday to all who celebrate

[blueboyluca]

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know those eyes.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[critterbitter]

Language divides and building bridges.

Elesa’s feeling homesick. Emmet, bless his heart, tries to help by infodumping while Ingo frantically runs off to find water (crying is a very dehydrating experience).

((Would you look at that! The kids are picking up kantonese and galarian from each other!))

BONUS:

Heh. Callback.

Want to see more? Here’s the masterpost for submas!

[ministarfruit]

yuri month day 28: please be mine ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

[chloesimaginationthings]

I think your interpretation of Cassidy is one of my favourites.

I love her so much.

I’M GLAD I love drawing Cassidy!!

[shroomerr]

Finally, my design for Mysterion!! this boy gave me so much heartache in the process of making this but its ok its all worth it for him <3

I also couldn't choose between the version with hair or without hair, so here's the one without under the cut (+ my initial drafts for his design):

[verridaiya]

—Dream Blooms

"I've seen you there, before."

This fic was born from watching Sylus's Abyssal Blossom card and watching my heart break into a million pieces. It hurt, but then I realized you know who hasn't been hurt by it? Sylus.

Based on the prevailing theory/my headcannons that the Abyssal Blossom card was just a dream, brought on by MC's yearning for a normal, quiet life after the events of Beyond Cloudfall chapter 7.

Synopsis: Sylus invites himself over to take care of you while you're sick. You tell him about a pleasant dream of yours and proceed to break his heart. (Or, you dream of something you've dreamt before, and Sylus hears about it for the first time.)

Contains: Spoilers for Sylus's Beyond Cloudfall myth and the Abyssal Blossom card, Sylus x MC/reader, gender neutral MC/reader, angst/hurt (the comfort will come later), current timeline Sylus & MC

Word Count: 1.7k

start | Part 2 >

“I had a strange dream again.”

“Another one, sweetheart?”

Sylus’s voice is a soft murmur above you. You open your blurry eyes to a darkened room and a pleasantly warm body under you, wrapped around you. Your head feels as hazy as the moonlight filtering in from the cloudy night sky through the window. Half-awake and half asleep, you can still feel the sensations of your dream like phantom memories. You hum an affirmation, shaking off the vestiges of a medicine-induced sleepiness.

You’re not quite sure how you found yourself in this position: sprawled out on your couch, nestled between a warm blanket and an even warmer Sylus, breathing in the scent of him through your admittedly stuffy nose. The last thing you remember was you laying collapsed on your bed, trying to convince yourself that you’re not sick, you’re just tired from a long week at the Hunter’s Association, and to muster up the energy to find something to eat. And then, suddenly, there was Sylus, filling your doorway as he had filled every part of your life, your thoughts, and now your dreams.

You’ve been having more of those recently, ever since you absorbed the power of another Aether Core almost a year ago. Reality intertwining with illusions, the people in your life woven intricately into a tapestry of dreams. Fragments of memories, glimpses of things that could never be, or never was. Flashing scales underneath glistening waves. Zayne, in a flowing robe you’ve never seen on him before, but looked so right on him. A silent forest, illuminated by starlight. You would wake up yearning for something just out of reach, hands outstretched to capture the essence of something that slips, incorporeal, through your fingers.

This dream was gentle, though. And this time, your hands didn’t need to reach far to grasp the heart of your dreams.

“You were in it this time, Sylus.”

“Oh?” he says, sounding intrigued. “Do tell, kitten.”

You hear him place something on the coffee table—his phone, probably—his attention shifting solely to you. He carefully moves to his side, extricating himself from under you, a large hand propping his head up so he can fully face you.

The soft moonlight illuminates on his face, throwing it into relief. Silvery hair threaded with shadow, a pale complexion half shrouded in darkness, eyes like banked hearths warming you with its glow. Through the haze of your fever, you can almost envision what you saw in your dream. You lift a hand pat his soft hair, as if searching for something that wasn’t there, before trailing your fingers down the side of his face.

“You had something on your head.” No, not exactly on his head. You can’t quite remember. The you in the dream was certain that the something was more a part of him than anything else. You frown slightly. The more you strain to remember the details of it, the more awake you became, and the more it danced out of your grasp. “Something sharp and twisting. Rough. It was beautiful, though. You were beautiful.”

Sylus stares at you with wide eyes you couldn’t decipher in your current state. There’s a spark of something foreign in his eyes.

“And?” he urges on, his deep voice uncharacteristically eager to your ears. He reaches to grab the hand that was holding his face, pressing it gently to him. His thumb rubs against the back of it in small soothing motions. “Can you tell me more about this dream of yours, kitten?”

You grasp at the cotton inside your head, stuffy from sleep and sickness. It takes so much effort, to tease apart the strands and find the wisps of fading dreams. It doesn’t help that you were also fighting off the drowsiness. You try, though, to give him what he’s asking for, as he always does for you.

“We were standing in a lovely field of flowers. They were breathtaking, Sylus. Such a vivid, dazzling red. There was a black spire in the distance, I think.” The spire had stood tucked away in the backdrop of rolling hills, but it was a small detail your mind was stuck on for some reason.

Thinking about that spire again, your mind can almost conjure a clear image of your dream. A lingering feeling of déjà vu washes over you, settling heavy on your chest. You’ve dreamt this before; you feel this with every bone in your body as an unshakeable fact. You’ve seen this obsidian spire before, this sprawling flower field. You know with startling certainty that you’ve had this exact dream before. But when you try to recall when, the feeling dissipates and leaves behind only a phantom sensation and an absence in your memory you cannot comprehend.

Sylus watches as you shake away the remnants of déjà vu. Your brow furrows. You’ve come to be accustomed to his intense stares through the months you’ve known him, but this one was… strange. It was as if he was trying to look deep into the fabric of your soul, even without the use of the Aether Core in his eye. His face remains a blank and indecipherable mask, leaving you with no indication of what he’s thinking of. You wanted to know what was going on in that unfathomable mind of his.

Longing. Trepidation. Yearning, a yearning that aches and makes you want to answer its call. You become distantly aware of emotions trickling into you that weren’t your own. You didn’t realize you were resonating with Sylus until he severed it, the hand holding yours shifting to catch your wrist instead. He leans down to brush his soft lips against it before letting your hand rest gently on your stomach.

“How about you recover from your fever first before you use your evol, sweetie.” He laughs softly, the red-gold brilliance of your evols intertwined fading from your hands.

“Oh, sorry.”

His presence in your mind and by your side was so natural that you weren’t even aware of when you began resonating with him. It seemed like your body responded to your desires even while your mind lagged behind. That brief glimpse into him enabled you to decipher that emotion in his eyes, though you struggle to make sense of it.

It was hope.

“Never apologize to me. What else do you remember?” he asks quietly, before you can puzzle over it further.

You close your eyes, willing the memories of the fleeing dream forward. The golden light of a setting sun. The crisp cold of mountainous air. The feeling of being the only two creatures in the world. And, inexplicably, the feeling of home.

“We were up in the air flying, somehow, before we landed in that blossoming valley. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I felt like I was in a whole other world. When I turned around to look at you, I saw you sitting there amongst the flowers. Red, like shining rubies. Red like-�� you pause, the words at the tip of your tongue. A silhouette appears in your mind’s eye, before it sinks back into the void.

“Red, like rich wine,” you finish, though you know that’s not what you had wanted to say.

When he said nothing, you continued on. “I decorated you with those flowers. We were so carefree, unworried and relaxed. It was just us, no one else, in the valley that was our playground. I think I was teasing you, or maybe you were teasing me. You said something about seeing the other side of things, something taunting. We ended up play-fighting, rolling around and sending petals up in the air.”

You smile, the warmth of the dream enveloping you.

“It felt so real.” You wanted it to be real, this lovely lush field and this gorgeous, monstrous Sylus.

Monstrous?

Startled out of your reverie, you blink open your eyes. No, there is nothing monstrous about Sylus. Not anymore, not since those first few nights that you’ve met him so long ago. Shaking your head slightly to dispel the thought, you turn your head to glance at him, realizing he hasn’t spoken in a while.

His eyes are closed, brows furrowed and drawn tightly together. You’ve seen this expression on his face before, briefly, when he struggles to heal a particularly nasty wound. His body is so tense when you reach out to him, muscles taut and rigid beneath your fingers. You’re not quite sure he’s even breathing.

“Sylus?”

At your prompting, Sylus sucks in a breath through his teeth and exhales. He opens his eyes and your breath catches. Rich garnet eyes glow in the darkness, twin wine-dark seas drowning in sorrow, regret. Agony.

It is so at odds to the sweetness of your recounted dream that alarm shot through you, temporarily driving away the sleepiness. Seeing the pain in his eyes unsettled you; it didn’t belong on his face at all. Your sluggish brain tries to make sense of what you could have said to have garnered this reaction. Did you say something wrong? Your chest tightens at the thought of hurting him with your words, somehow. You begin to prop yourself up.

Sylus stops you with one gentle hand, pushing you to lay back down. He silently regards you, the silence between you stretching into something delicate.

There are so many things you want to say, to ask and to comfort. Sylus was never one to let his emotions show as openly as they are right now. You want to ask what was wrong, take back your silly little story if all it gave him was pain, even if you didn’t understand why.

But through the jumble of your fever, all that came out of your tired mouth was, “It was just a dream, Sylus.”

He quietly watches you for a few breaths longer. Slowly, he lifts a hand to gently caresses your cheek, holding you as if you were something as fragile as a memory. Leaning down, he brushes his lips against your forehead, soft as a butterfly’s wings, as the petals of a phantom flower.

“You’re right,” he says, with a grief you cannot fathom.

“It was just a dream, sweetheart.” His voice is barely a whisper. “It can be nothing more than a dream.”

[bluerosefox]

Waiting... Waiting...

So... This was inspired by listening to EPIC (FREAKING LOVE ALL THE ALBUMS, SO GOOD) and by @noxcheshire post of Tim being Odysseus reincarnated and Danny (maybe also reincarnated) being his Penelope (Here) so I had to turn it into a Dead Tired idea.

The song The Challenge is the main one here. (Cause I LOVE that song... along with Would You Fall In Love With Me Again)

So WHAT IF Danny IS the reincarnated Penelope, after becoming the Ghost King Danny's memories of his past life as Penelope returns and remembers how before dying/ or being reincarnated both Penelope and Odysseus promised to find each other in their new lives, no matter who they are, what new form they take, they will find each other.

So Danny/Penelope, just like before waits for their Odysseus to return to them, but also tries to find him in their new life (CW is laughing whenever Danny asks for hints and gets a 'In due time, just wait' answer, ugh Danny wants to smack CW for that)

However just like in his previous life with being in a high position of power, Danny is being pressured to marry/take a spouse (now its not just men/males though so its a huge headache, I head canon Ghosts don't care much for gender preference) mostly by the dang eyeballs that Danny is still trying to find a way to get rid of without upsetting the Infinite Realms delicate (but slowly healing) balance even if Danny wanted nothing more than to punch all of the suitors out.

So Danny decides to play the long game again.

And waits for their Odysseus return.

Danny's wait is over when they suddenly feel the Realms shift one day, as if welcoming someone familiar home, and the same feeling Danny had when he had been Penelope and saw the storm that was sign of Odysseus coming home, Danny decides its time to bring out The Challenge once again. (CW gifted Danny a few things from his past as Penelope as a coronation gift, like Odysseus's bow (now enchanted to be unbreakable), a painting of when he was Penelope, with Telemchus, and Odysseus, and the Marriage Bed/Olive Tree, AND the Palace Odysseus made that Danny takes to being in over being at Pariah's Keep)

-x-x-

Meanwhile

Tim Drake, aka Red Robin, always had strange dreams as a child.

War, Death, Monsters, Gods, Goddesses.

His dreams were more like nightmares, haunting him and he sometimes woke up in cold sweat.

He hated storms. Hated being in the water for to long. Hated how he felt both tense but also at home when around Greek heroes, as if he was afraid to 'disrespect' them (Cassie was the only one he didn't feel that way around, mostly cause they had been somewhat friends before their heroing since their parents knew each other) but also knew how to appease them should he insult them. He also had a strange hatred for the CoO with a burning passion because he felt like they were mocking real Owls.

The worst part of nightmares that always pop up are of what feels like should be his home is being invaded by unwanted guests (they aren't guests), how they are angry over trying to string a bow and shot an arrow through axes, of the terrible terrible things he hear them saying they were going to do to his loved ones (two names that keep getting muted out).

How it ends in bloodshed with echoing of begging, pleading, mercy, and screams.

However in those nightmares at the end. He also finds himself looking for something in them.

Or rather he always found someone waiting for him at the end of the nightmares. Calling him by the wrong name but it sounds just right coming from them.

The dream always ends with the person asking 'How long has it been?' and before he can answer he wakes up.

So yeah Tim has horrifying nightmares/dreams he could never explain.

And the urge to find someone. To go home to them.

It isn't until he and his friends from Young Justice are hit by a spell from Klarion (who may or may not had a visit from a certain chaos encouraging Time Keeper) and sent to a place called the Infinite Realms in the middle of their fight, that Tim is hit hard with déjà vu when he spots a certain Palace in the distance and overhears some of the 'people?' (they glow and float and some don't even look human?! where are they?) talk about how the 'King' has issued a new 'Challenge' for his 'suitors'.

A Challenge involving a bow, and axes.

And Tim, feels like he knows this all too well and needs to do it.

[starry-bi-sky]

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[wishfulsketching]

Well, I tried to doodle the team. And Thor and [insert any goa'uld here, they're all just wormies]

Drawing actors is scary

[cyellolemon]

Mairuma fanarts again, had to draw Kalego's fluffy familiar form because he's everything to me <333 + trying to figure out how to draw this trio