#not the one true language

[kizzer55555]

DP x DC: The Most Dangerous Card Game

Ok so Danny has essentially claimed earth as his. And he is fully aware that there are constant threats to the planet. Now he can’t stop a threat that originates on earth (that’s something he’ll leave to the Justice league) but he can do something about outside threats. Doing some research on ancient spells, rituals, and artifacts, he cast a world wide barrier on the planet to protect it from hostile threats so they cannot enter. This will prevent another Pariah Dark incident. However, barriers like this come at a price. You see, there are two ways to make a barrier. Either make one powered up by your own energy and power (which would be constantly draining) or set up a barrier with rules. The way magic works is that nothing can be absolutely indestructible. It must have a weakness. The most powerful barriers weren’t the ones reinforced with layer after layer of protective charms and buffed up with power. Those could eventually be destroyed either by being overpowered, wearing them down, or by cutting off the original power source. No, the most powerful barriers were the ones with a deliberate weakness. A barrier indestructible except for one spot. A cage that can only be opened from the outside. Or that can only be passed with a key or by solving a riddle. So Danny chooses this type of barrier and does the necessary ritual and pours in enough power to make it. And he adds his condition for anyone to enter. 

Now the Justice league? Find out about the barrier when Trigon attempts to attack, they were preparing after he threatened what he would do once he got to earth. How he would destroy them. The Justice league tried to take the fight to him first but were utterly destroyed, so they retreated home to tend to their injuries, and fortify earth for one. Last. Stand. Only when Trigon makes his big entrance…he’s stopped.

The Justice league watch in awe as this thin see-through barrier with beautiful green swirls and speckled white lights like stars apears blocking Trigon and his army’s advance. The barrier looks so thin and fragile yet no matter how hard the warlord hits, none of his attacks can get through and neither can he damage said barrier. That’s when Constantine and Zatanna recognizes what this barrier is. Something only a powerful entity could create. For a moment, the league is filled with hope that Trigon can’t get through yet Constantine also explains that it’s not impenetrable. And clearly Trigon knows this too for he calls out a challenge. 

And that’s when, in a flash of light, a tiny glowing teenager appears. He looked absolutly minuscule compared to Trigon and yet practically glowed with power (this isn’t a King Danny AU though).

And that is when the conditions for passing the barrier are revealed. And the Justice realize that the only thing stopping Trigon and his army from decimating earth. The only way he can get through….is by beating this glowing teenager in a card game. 

Not just any card game though. The most convoluted game Sam, Danny, and Tucker invented themselves. It’s like the infinite realms version of magic the gathering, combined with Pokémon, and chess. And Danny is the master. So sit down Trigon and let’s play.

(The most intense card game of the Justice league’s life).

After Danny wins, this happens a few more times with outer word beings and possibly even demons attempting to invade earth, yet none have been able to beat the mysterious teenager in a card game. Constantine might even take a crack at it and try to figure out how to play. He’s really bad though. Every time this happens, the Justice league worry that this might be the time the teenager looses. Yet every time, he wins (even if only barely). 

Meanwhile, Danny, Sam, and Tucker have gotten addicted to the game and play it almost daily. Some teachers might seem them playing the game are are like ‘awww how cute’ not realizing this game is literally saving the world. Jazz is just happy they aren’t spending as much time on their screens playing Doomed.

[katabay]

WOW this has been ROUGH in the Life Events category of things, but. slowly crawling out of that. hopefully

this was the opening scene for a something I started writing after watching the Manben inverview with Nishi Keiko and thinking back to all the classic shoujo manga I stayed up reading back in the day, like damn that's so true Urasawa Naoki

it's partially a love letter to all the greats of the genre that I read, and also to the late night teleseryses that captivated me over the years lmao. it'd be nice to find the time to tackle it properly as a comic, but I'm having fun working on it recreationally :)

✨but since it's recreational, some character info✨

the first character seen is lawrence 'law' valenciano (late 30s), the one with the glasses is cris volante (mid-later 20s). law works at a karinderya, cris is an extremely broke university student.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta / tip jar!

[ryuusea]

💐 / sherliam, flower language

when married to a guy whose mind palace only stores flowers with poison/medicinal value

I recently got a book, “Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to Victorian Language of Flowers” and it was fun applying it here! I imagine Liam knows Sherly doesn’t really bother to remember flower language, so incorporates Sherly’s knowledge of poisons/medicinal herbs for the fun of it!

[writing-dilemmas]

hey girl sorry um, they found out your favorite character is neurodivergent. yeah, the fandom is infantilizing them, ignoring their intelligence, and reducing them to comic relief. yeah there’s nothing we can do about that. I’m so sorry

[miaisabelwinther]

[ryllen]

[mel-loly]

-And yes.. They still understand each other even in different languages :]

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[vaguely-concerned]

I have seen people question whether dios apate minor really needed to happen the way it did. it's the 'this could have been an email' of htn. 'augustine this did not have to be a threesome', I hear people saying. and boy do I have an obnoxious amount of things to say to protest this perfectly sensible assertion so here we go haha

1) yes it absolutely had to be like that. It says so on this piece of paper *hands you a piece of paper that says "because I said so and also it's narratively and thematically Sexy"* in my half-legible handwriting. seeing tamsyn muir describe harrow the ninth as a book about being a kid and realizing your parents probably had sex has given me such validation, I am unstoppable now. (to be serious for a moment, harrow the ninth is essentially a bildungsroman, and the threesome scene does a whole lot of thematic heavy lifting around harrow glimpsing elements of adulthood, relationships, and sexuality she clearly finds at the same time repulsive, bewildering and fascinating, and around opening her and especially our eyes to how much john is just a man with human longings still, under the god stuff. dios apate is crucial plot- and character-wise too -- it's a loadbearing threesome in terms of delivering the clues you need to piece together the mystery plot of the book, which is simply delightful -- but even more so thematically. and then the scene at the end where they confront john gives gideon some of that same opportunity to peek into adulthood and go '...well shit I guess', as a sort of mirror, just without the french kissing that time and more murder. the things magnus and abigail model for the girls about love and adulthood? mercy and augustine are providing the opposite-day batshit insane version of that fhdskjfa, you know, for contrast and spice)

2) listen... it gets lonely out there in deep space with your 'legendary unamorous' brother, two infant pathetic baby kitten sisters who you'll probably have to kill one day when you take another stab at god if they don't manage to get themselves killed along the way on their own, and the two people you've spent the last ten thousand years having separate yet connected married & divorced arcs with and also btw one of them is god... honestly a threesome over the dinner table is probably The most well-adjusted reaction one might hope for under those circumstances

3) on a characterization level I think Augustine is actually doing something incredibly deliberate with it: he's presenting John with yet another chance to admit what he did. which is notable especially since the deal he and mercy agree on as a condition for the threesome to happen at all seems to be that they're going to give the ol' godslaying another game try sooner rather than later. (I get the sense that it's not so much that he disagrees with her ultimate goal so much as that he thinks she's being dangerously indiscreet and hasty going about it, before. “though I think it will be the death of us,” huh.)

notice how he's structuring the whole thing: he's invoking the intimacy and love in their strange little threeway relationship and how long it's been by truly playing along with john's 'we're a happy family really when we're at home! :)' delusion (helped along by lowered inhibitions via enormous amounts of alcohol and what I've previously described as a joint mercy/augustine leyendecker themed thirst trap. ah, a classic). he brings up alecto and what happened to her -- or rather, he is clever enough to make john bring up alecto and how she is totally dead, right?? by seeming to make a careless statement that leads there and then acting contrite about it after. he (helped along by mercy, who I think realizes exactly what he's doing -- this is very much a two-man con) brings up how much they all loved their cavaliers, and wow funny how that's been haunting us for ten thousand years now huh :) wow, a lot of our other lyctor friends slash family sure are super dead in the name of some unknowable greater reason neither of us quite grasp and that you won't fucking tell us, aren't they. these are all the main grievances he and mercy confront john about at the end of the book, but put forth much more subtly and not phrased as an accusation -- he's baring his and mercy's vulnerabilities as bait, essentially. if john had, say, a conscience where his conscience should be instead of a black hole, it probably should have stirred something in him.

(also let me just say... the way augustine just takes a pneumatic drill to the TWO tender spots g1deon seems to have and then has the audacity to be like 'oh dear. did that upset him. ooof my bad *loooong dead-eyed slurp of his wine*' is just sooo... he's such a bitch!!! he's the only person who could ever have held their own in a ten-thousand-year bitch-off with mercy and I love him so much. well even if it wasn't all to get g1deon into murder range for harrow I think he wouldn't enjoy sticking around for the 'getting our tongues on god' part of the evening so maybe it's a kindness, really, and totally not pent-up aggression from the last twenty years or so breaking through)

he is all but shaking john by the lapels begging him to just... come clean about it already, to stop thinking he's still kidding everyone else along with himself. it's clear throughout the book that augustine knows exactly what john is at this point -- and all of the most cynical things he does say about it turn out to be distressingly right. john is always less sentimental than you'd think. john wouldn't forgive mercy, he will abandon in a heartbeat anything that isn’t necessary to him anymore, whether emotionally or in some other way. and still he seems to hold out some desperate absurd hope that the man he wants, the man he thought was there, is in there, somewhere deep deep down, if he just gives him the chance to show himself.

(mercy definitely has her own side of this whole thing, I'm just focusing more on augustine because this evening was like. his idea in the first place and I feel like we can Read Some Things into that fact lol. now that we have both ntn and htn to go from I sort of have this sense that the things augustine wants from john are more... personal? more interpersonal? they both love him equally, but mercy's love seems tinged slightly more towards the religious (augustine accuses her of knowing 'only worship without adoration', which like... also the eight house's entire Vibe lol) -- mercy at the end of that book is totally a person breaking up with GOD, not just with john -- while augustine's vibe is more like a man in the last not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper days of a marriage that sort of felt like it could have been something real and good once but all your illusions about it have since been taken from you and trampled underfoot into the mud and you've had the divorce papers signed and ready in a drawer for over a year now, hell, as it turns out, is other people etc. lmao)

having a threesome over the dinner table with god is one thing, having a threesome over the dinner table centered on the one man and god who has yet again let you down in a way so fundamental it can barely fit into words and who you both still love in a way anyway, miserably, and also just reaffirmed your joint resolution to murder (all under the pretense that it gives your baby sisters the chance to murder your brother of ten thousand years yeah that's why this is happening no other underlying aching emotional motivations here haha)... listen mercy and augustine are simply on a different level, theologically. they've added horny shrimp colours to the religious spectrum. who else does it like them

[cyber-therian]

what do you mean i can’t explain these incredibly vague yet specific thoughts with various yelps and squeaks???

[skogsdotter-draws]

Ok but, regarding TMAGP 27, I can't stop thinking about Jonah writing, after sending Archibald to a certain death, "It is done, and I am surprised to find how little remorse I feel." It reminds me of his statement in MAG 160:

"The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear. (...) It is an awful thing to know about yourself."

I will never get tired of little details about his life being revealed (regardless of the timeline/dimension) because the parallel between his discovery of the supernatural world and the discovery of his own true self and the things he's capable of is so interesting and compelling to me.

Along with the knowledge of the horrors that exist in his world comes the horror of the realization that he might be capable of anything to stop feeling scared and vulnerable, to put himself over everybody else if necessary. Every time curiosity leads him into a new experiment, a new sacrifice in the name of knowledge, he lets go a little bit of himself and his morality. And then, as it happened with Archibald, and as it happened with Barnabas in another world, he feels surprised of how easy it was. Of how he doesn't feel regret or grief, how at most he finds himself thinking that it was all a pity. So it becomes even easier each time, he finds freedom in it, as he also mentions in MAG 160— and one sacrifice after another, it all becomes incredibly simple. There is no fear of losing himself, only the fear of death and pain remains, and only after that process of two hundreds years can one condemn the world for his own sake.

The progressive descent into evil of Jonah Magnus, slowly exposed through statements and letters, will never stop being one of the more interesting parts of this podcast imo.

[lastdivantruther]

don't trust her dazai, she's gonna blackmail you to buy every flavor of ice creams and bully you anytime chuuya is around.

i don't trust my writing to be readable so dialogs under the cut:

Kyouka: Dazai-san, is it true that you're going to die of heartbreak if you have to hide your undying love for big brother any longer?

Dazai, earlier that day: If poor Chuuya hides his undying love for me any longer, I'm afraid he'll die of heartbreak!

Dazai, now: 'Not exactly in those words...'

Kyouka: I don't want you to die. So I decided to help you by acting as your illegitimate child. With this plan big brother will take pity on us and agree to go out with you.

Atsushi, murmuring to himself: Could it work? I mean, I wouldn't fall for it myself ofc, but Chuuya-san seems like a kind person... Would I fall for it?? If Aku had an....

Tsushi and Dazai: 'Isn't that the plot of the TV show from last night?'

Dazai: Kyouka-chan, that's a PERFECT idea!! 🌸

Kunikida, from his desk: No it's fucking not!

[worshipfulmercy]

i have so many thoughts about his gender and how he's kind of textually a woman and/or abinary (read tags if interested)

[blueskittlesart]

I genuinely can’t remember or not if your botw/totk link knows sign language or not…or am I thinking of a different link?

my personal headcanon is that he knows basic sign and uses it when he's completely nonverbal, but that for most of his time as a soldier pre-calamity he limits himself to basic signs that are well-known enough for anyone to understand and not much else (thank you, please, basic combat orders, occasional fingerspelling) and uses them VERY sparingly if at all. I personally believe that the lack of communication he displays pre-calamity goes beyond just physical muteness, and I think that removing the communication block by having him sign freely removes some of the nuance of his relationships with other people pre-calamity, so while i think he CAN sign, i think he only uses it when communication is absolutely necessary.

[dapurinthos]

thinking about native coruscanti deities and the way certain mountains are named, such as sagarmāthā (goddess of the sky) aka qomolangma (holy mother) aka aka everest.

we have the manarai mountains and two names of coruscanti deities in d!canon: matari and voru. matari is too close to manarai to not be deliberate. then there’s onrai the ‘mistress of coruscant/notron’ from l-canon, which fits the -rai ending. also also, there's a history of -ai alternating with -i at the end of words like je'dai(i) <—> jedi.

there’s via, also l!canon, and her constituent parts of ‘the beatific countenance’ and ‘the glorious radiance’, with an origin as a ‘zhell goddess’. scratch that. via might be d!canon now, since there’s a ‘holy mother’ in the vow of silver dawn, which takes place in the neighbouring sector to the kanz sector, where all the vianism was going on, thanks to its export from the core by the argazdans. yeah, it could be based on the 'way' meaning, but it could also be based on vios/βίος (life), which makes more sense.

and whoever the ‘dea’ of the pius dea sect was—why is your latin bad. if you want to be ‘the pious (people) of the goddess’ then why is it singular. if you want to have it be ‘the pious/blessed/good goddess’ it should be pia dea/dea pia because that’s how latin, uh, fucking works.

(ᵕᴗ ᵕ⁎) i will not get het up over languages in star wars. not everyone knows how to properly conjugate latin. the incompetency of others is not my fault nor is it anything i can change. (ᵕᴗ ᵕ⁎) except i am changing it. it’s now the pia deae era you fuckers. you get the genitive ‘of the goddess’ for the nominative plural ‘the pious/devout’.

while we’re on that, i was also looking at the dai bendu monks. checking out the planet of ando and going oh. oh i see what you did there. you took the chinese pronunciation of amdo (anduo) and used it for the main dai bendu planet (thape, their origin, is from an old character name in the star wars drafts so it doesn't actually fit the language pattern). next you’re going to tell me that ‘talid’ is also one of those words. this is like you taking tho yor from tibetan all over again, damn it.

argh it’s tā la’i/ta le, isn’t it. it’s just straight-up the wylie transliteration of dalai, isn’t it.

[ratatatastic]

mama theyre squabbling AGAIN i.e sashas bullying lundy for the nth time and lundy cant defend himself for shit and is trying to be pragmatic about it (x)(x)