#mirror problem

[taxidermymuskrat]

Mirror entity

You are halfway down a dead-end hallway, looking into a mirror at the very end. The air around you stills, and a haunting figure appears behind you in the mirror at the other end of the hallway. When you turn around to look back the way you came, it is nowhere to be seen. Nothing but an empty hallway. You turn to face the mirror again. The figure is still there, watching you with cold, unblinking eyes. You barely breathe. You have never encountered this entity before; you do not know its rules. You can only guess at what it is, what it wants. All you Know for certain is the chills that run down your spine, the intense feeling of wrongness as you take in its hellish, horrid features.

The entity begins to move towards you in the mirror. You feel its malevolent energy reverberating through the narrow hallway. A lighting glance back—empty hallway. In the mirror, it closes in fast. One thought burns in your mind—run. Every fiber of your being screams in unison:

YOU MUST MOVE, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND.

[kensatou]

(✿◕‿◕) die (ꈍ ꒳ ꈍ✿)

[blanc-ci]

In a galaxy far far away and not unlike our own… crazyyyyy diabolical mirror spirk yuri is happening

and also some Jim on Jim love, I think something is wrong with those two. mentally.

(comm for @jelliedlimes !!)

[drowningbpdbodies]

“How are you?” I should be in a straight jacket but unfortunately for the both of us I’m here

[cinnamini-mon]

✨️🐬🌊 glass dolphin figurines 🌊🐬✨️

[ahhrenata]

Steve tries to stay quiet while he gets ready for work, but Eddie hears him. He keeps his eyes closed and just listens- to Steve grumbling to himself when his hair doesn’t sit quite right, who starts to hum and whisper some catchy song. Eddie turns his sleepy gaze onto Steve as he shuffles around their room- watching quietly as he slips on his clothes, his shoes, a simple chain with Eddie’s ring around his neck. A warm, affectionate smile breaks across his face. Before he leaves, Steve glances at what he expects to be a sleeping Eddie, but instead, he’s met with a rasped, ‘Hey.’ Eddie sits himself up, stretches his arm across Steve’s side of the bed, and reaches, fingers wiggling. Steve crosses the room to cradle his face.

Their foreheads press, noses bump, and Steve brushes his fingers across scars and dimples.

He breathes a quiet,

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’

Eddie huffs a tired laugh,

‘You know I never mind.’

Because, yeah.

Every morning Steve tries to stay quiet while he gets ready for work, but Eddie always hears him.

( another one from the poll | WIP )

[metanarrates]

thinking once again about how kim namwoon is happy in the underworld and thanks kim dokja for sending him there because it's better than his previous life. like genuinely, actually thanks him, in the sincere and oblivious way only a kid could. thanks him for sending him to this place where he's fed regularly and there's no school and the work isn't too hard and he gets to build a cool robot. what if you just thought hell was a pretty cool place because you weren't used to anything that was genuinely pleasant and you just don't notice the absence of anybody caring about you because you've never had that to begin with. what if, in a world of killers, the actual crime you've been found guilty of is not attempted murder, but the crime of being too unsightly for god to care for you.

[i-ate-the-rats]

just think about it.

[confessions-into-the-void]

I just want to not hate myself

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

who do you think in the animorphs ended up still being the least close to each other? because obviously a lot of them are best friends, jake and marco, cassie and rachel, tobias and ax, and some of them are dating etc but which pairing do you think never really developed/got closer? or do you think by the end of the series they were all as close to each other as they could be?

To me, the two that stand out as being the least close, and staying that way, are Rachel and Ax. They mention discomfort with each other as early as #5, and Rachel's narration in #7 specifies that she's glad Ax is fighting with them but isn't sure if he's their friend. As late as #51, Ax considers Rachel a potential threat to the Animorphs' cause and goes out of his way to avoid trusting her.

In MM3 and in #37, Rachel's pretty snappish with Ax as she tries to lead the team, because she senses (correctly) that he doesn't respect her as leader nearly as much as he does Jake. In #18, Rachel is the harshest toward Ax about his decision to support the andalites over his own team, and in #46 Ax mentions being worried about Rachel more than any other Animorph.

Part of why I find their friction fascinating: it originates in their being so alike. They're the ones eager for battle at the start of the war, Ax because he's been raised on tales of Elfangor's glory and Rachel because she's champing at the bit of being feminine without being small or weak. They get their hands dirtiest throughout, from together killing the random Hessians in MM3 to advocating for wiping out the nartec in #36. It all culminates when Rachel makes the most brutal kill (Tom) and Ax makes the single largest (the Pool ship) during the final battle. Rachel sees her own darkness reflected back when she looks at Ax, and Ax sees his in Rachel. They're a dangerous combination, hijacking airplanes and boiling noncombatants alive to get their way. And they both need Tobias around to keep them sane.

[oh-my-grayson]

An Unnecessary Analysis on Dick Grayson and the Themes of Replacement in His Story

Been re-reading some of the N52 comics (specifically the Batman Vol 1 and 2 TPs and the Night of the Owls collection), and I was reminded that the fear of replacement is such a large recurring theme for the characters more oftenly associated with Batman. Whether it be the characters themselves feeling that fear of replacement or others feeling that fear in relation to the characters, it's reappears so frequently that it's hard not to begin seeing it in everything.

The most commonly referenced examples are, of course, the Robin boys and their very tragic stories. Dick being replaced by Jason when he's fired by Bruce (in the more commonly accepted canon), then Jason being replaced by Tim when he's killed by the Joker, and then Tim being replaced by Damian when Bruce is lost in time and Dick takes over as Batman and needs to give Damian an outlet.

I've talked each of those instances to death already, both on this blog and to my offline friends when they decide to humor me, but a moment that I want to focus on now is one that came up specifically in the N52 comics.

Because Dick's origin at the circus is, in and of itself, a story about replacement.

Vols 1 and 2 follow the Court of Owls making a move on Gotham and those in charge of the city (alongside a few infamous individuals who lack actual control but impact the city itself through other, less savory, means), and in them we learn that Dick's great grandfather, William Cobb, is a Talon, and that Haly's Circus is, and has been for a very long time, a means of scouting and training new Talons for the Court.

Furthermore, in one of the stories featured in the Night of the Owls collection, we're introduced to Alton Carver, a Talon recruited from the circus as a young boy who served the Court for an unusually long stretch of time, but who'd progressively become less and less efficient. When he's told by a member of the Court that they're thinking of retiring him, that they've found his replacement (that key word again), he goes to the circus to see for himself the child that the Court's talking about. This child winds up being Dick Grayson, but what Alton has to say about him is this: "I needed to see him. The one who would take my place. No one had to tell me who he was. I could see it. And I could feel it. It was him. And for the first time in decades... I felt fear."

Emphasis on that fear he says he feels. He knows he's being replaced, and he's looking at the boy that will take his place and seeing exactly why the Court has chosen him to do so.

In the end, this is all just to say that the themes of replacement and the fear of being replaced are concepts that are seemingly ingrained into the story of Batman and its characters, but specifically the character of Dick Grayson.

His legacy is intertwined in unwilling replacement after unwilling replacement, so much so that he's most often referenced as being the first to be replaced in regards to the role of Robin, but he, himself, was originally destined to be the replacement of another man who could no longer service his designated purpose— a man who was no longer wanted.

The story of Robin, beginning with Dick, mirrors the story of the Talons and how the Court replaces them when they can no longer do their job with the required efficiency, and we see this in the same line of thinking in the various Robins as each of them are eventually made to drop the mantle and see it picked up by another, younger boy. Whether it's true or not, the Robins each felt that they could no longer do their job to the standards they were being held to and developed insecurities centered around those feelings of inadequacy when comparing themselves to their replacements.

(For the record, it isn't true, there are all very valid reasons for each boy evolving beyond Robin, and the entire family is just incapable of communicating with one another so the feelings of inadequacy are perpetuated and the real reasons— fear of loss, death and grief, and simply out-growing the lessons and security the role of Robin offers— are never explained which breeds further insecurity and resentment towards themselves and their respective replacements, or those that facilitated the replacing).

I think this also is ironic, or maybe just interesting, when put into relation to the fact that Dick was being groomed to be a Talon like his many predecessors before him, but when Dick is told this by Cobb, he responds by stating he doesn't believe in destiny. Despite the fact that he is the first in a cycle that mirrors the way the Court works, thus, in same way, fulfilling that destiny even if it isn't as a Talon.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my very rushed analysis, I'll see myself out now.

[aftgsucks]

I completely understand the gut instinct to make Andrew Howl and Neil Sophie, especially if you’ve only seen the movie, however if either of them is an enigmatic wizard with four different identities whose evading taxes and actively being hunted down for his heart ITS OBVIOUSLY NEIL, cmon

[wintvies]

wait.. i'm lowkey goated..

[jewreallythinkthat]

Something I really don't understand is this obsession the anti-Israel crowd (in the West) have with death and martyrdom. All they care about is dying, and often killing for their cause; I see nothing about building a better future that isn't based on the murder of 9 million Israelis.

It's easy to die for a cause. The challenge is living to make a better tomorrow.

[medicalunprofessional]

never change, man !

[ai-manre]

GRRM really said fuck subtlety I'm here to write soulmates when he wrote Jon and Dany huh