#one of them is the one from my childhood

[inkskinned]

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

[beybuniki]

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

[puppyeared]

Callbacks to older episodes

[zeraphiimm]

pony drawlings

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[redhoodie1723]

esteban ocon being considered really tall when he's shorter than my dad, brothers, and a lot of my male friends is so funny to me

part 2 part 3

[starry-bi-sky]

childhood friends danny and jason miscellaneous thoughts: because why not, i'm reworking ch2 because it no longer fits with the remaster of chapter 1 so i've been thinking of them, and i love talking about them. which you should totally go read the remaster because its 26k words and im very proud of it and it barely got any attention.

First off Ellie vapes. Mostly because I think its real fucking funny. The first time Danny finds out about it he gets all up in arms about it. Ellie at first thinks its because she's smoking -- which, helloooo pot meet kettle, Danny has been smoking for a lot longer than she has.

And then he throws a curveball at her and says he's upset specifically because its vaping. Like no, no. Dammit, if you're gonna fuck up your lungs you gotta do it properly, none of this cotton-candy flavored nonsense.

He plays it up for laughs and it's largely non-serious 'i can't believe you're using a vape', if only to hide the fact that he is genuinely displeased with his little sister smoking. Self-destructive behaviors and bad habits are his thing, thank you very much.

But, well, he knows he'd be a hypocrite if he told her he didn't like that she was smoking. He's aware its bad for him, but habits are hard to break and he's not particularly keen to break this one in particular.

Danny bullies her relentlessly about it whenever she vapes in front of him. Like don't be a loser, Elle, carry a carton of cigs and a lighter in your back pocket like the rest of us degenerates.

[more under the cut]

Secondly: Danny's piercings? He got the first lobe piercings as a lost bet from Sam in junior year, and they did it in her room with a needle, a small bottle of blood blossom extract, and an apple. He broke out in hives for a week after thanks to the blood blossom, but it prevented the hole from healing up :)

He got the rest done professionally at a piercing place in the Ghost Zone. He asked Johnny where to find it. Sam and Johnny (and Kitty) nearly convinced him into getting snakebites. He got an eyebrow piercing instead.

Danny's undercut is also self-done, he did it because Technus shot at him with an ectoblast and it missed hitting him, but set his hair on fire. Danny got it out pretty quickly, but it left his hair lopsided and obviously looking like it got burned by something. He went to Sam for help after the fight. He liked the way it looks so he's kept it that way since.

-

Vlad brought up Jason once(1) in a taunt during a fight, and this was after Jason disappeared from the ghost zone, and Danny very. very nearly killed him on the spot. He hasn't done it since.

Which leads into the other thing: Grief Triggers! As I call them. All Banshees have them in this au.

While all banshees are, in general, in a permanent state of grief, Grief Triggers are a specific emotional response that can cause them to spiral into a state of intense, sometimes debilitating sorrow, and most of the time causes them to start wailing.

Banshees know what their Grief Triggers are and in general tend to try and build up a form of resistance against it so that, if something occurs that happens to trigger said grief, they can at least either get away from other ghosts to let loose or have enough control over themselves that it'll take more work to send them spiraling.

As expected, Jason is Danny's grief trigger. He's built up a pretty good resistance to it so that hey, talking about him and his death is easier than when Danny was fourteen. But a little more prodding and it will trigger, especially depending on who brings him up and how. (See: Vlad)

Grief Triggers also manifest relatively the same; with the induction of an intense state of grief and sorrow, but how a banshee acts on it can sometimes vary. Again, it depends on who triggers it and how. Some of them can get,,, violent, depending on how it happens.

Rath, this au's 'Dan', is a case of a banshee being put into the grief state caused by grief triggers and... never really leaving it. Which they usually do on their own, or with help depending on the severity of it.

At the time it happened Danny was going through the worst week of his life a second time: his best friend's ghost disappeared, then his family and friends all died right in front of him, and then he was stuck with someone who wasn't helping him through that grief.

He was already in the grieving state when Vlad tore out his ghost half. As a result, Vlad only made it worse. With that fury thrown into the mix, Vlad ended up getting torn apart and nobody else was close enough with nor could they get close enough to Rath to help him come down from the wailing state.

So Rath ended up getting stuck in a perpetual negative feedback loop of absolute misery, and well... drove himself insane. The rest of the world became collateral as a result.

-

the difference between Danny and Jason lies in the fact that Jason died, while Danny is dead.

-

I'm having more thoughts on the CFAU/TMWS universe banshees, actually.

Banshees are either born in the ghost zone from ectoplasm and are ecto-entities and work as banshees as how we know of them, or they're human spirits that died mourning someone and that grief was so intense that it turned them into a banshee. They're a little more rare.

These banshees typically mourn only one person, or sometimes they follow their Realm-born counterparts and choose a family to mourn for. Typically their own.

Ember is not a banshee; human spirit banshees are always mourning another person. However, her abilities emulate certain qualities of banshees: like the beautiful singing. But in comparison to an actual banshee, Ember's voice pales.

Does this mean Danny has the better singing voice? Yeah. Ember is incensed by this.

-

If canon Danny and CFAU/TMWS Danny met, I think canon Danny would be kinda unsettled or off put by CFAU.

CFAU Danny still has some pretty core Danny traits, at least I like to think so -- his general drive to help people just out of compassion for them (even if it manifests differently at first due to trauma), his wit and humor, his fear of failing to protect his loved ones, all of those resonate with canon Danny.

However, canon Danny, as far as I can remember and as far as his wiki goes, rarely gets extremely angry or emotional. He gets irritated and he gets annoyed but him getting mad I don't think happens super often. CFAU Danny is the angrier one between Jason and Danny. It's one of the things I consider a division point between him and canon Danny as it's a result of him growing up in Crime Alley. Canon Danny is canonically shy and meek prior to becoming Phantom, CFAU Danny couldn't be -- he'd be dead already.

CFAU Danny's anger would off put canon Danny, in my opinion. His anger, his smoking, and for lack of a better term, his bloodlust would unsettle him.

Like, for example, say CFAU Danny gets transported to a canon (or canon-adjacent) Danny's universe. He's staying with canon for a little bit as they brainstorm how to get him back home, and CFAU Danny goes to school with canon if only so that he's not stuck in the house all day.

Whether they try and pass CFAU Danny off as canon's cousin or if the town already knows that he's another version of Danny, it doesn't matter. Because insert Dash.

Dash who, in CFAU Danny's world, has since learned not to fuck around with Danny or the other kids because Danny has long since asserted that he will beat his ass if he does. 'Fucking around' always predates the 'finding out', and Danny is happy to act as consequence.

(As my father told me (paraphrased) when I was a small child and full of uncontrollable anger: "there's gonna be a day where you're gonna hit someone, and they're gonna hit you back")

And canon Dash, who is used to canon Danny who kinda just takes it because it means that he won't target other people, would see CFAU Danny. He'd notice the resemblance between him and canon, immediately try and go "oh new target!", and try and bully him the same way he does to canon. And Danny "I am the consequences of your actions" CFAU Fenton, instantly throws hands.

Just, CFAU Danny is kind but he's also Gotham-raised and full of bite; he's meaner than canon is. He's more ruthless too, especially in his ghost fights. The ease of which he slips into violence would, imo, discomfort canon. CFAU and Canon would eventually get along though, they're not so different that they'd be in constant clash of each other.

(Canon Danny and Danyal Al Ghul however,,, thats another post LMAO)

[introspectivememories]

[lunarharp]

more phoenix wright situations

[wlw-cryptid]

[canisalbus]

When Machete became a cardinal, did his parents ever recognize him?

Machete's home village was on the other side of Italy (and separated by the sea no less) and it was small, relatively rural and remote. It's very unlikely many news about Holy See's happenings made their way there. I don't think his parents had any reason to expect to ever hear about him again, he seemed to be somewhat of a lost cause when they dropped him off.

[naturecalls111]

I think I love Sanji so extra much because he’d acknowledge my ‘girl-ness’ in a way that I feel like has not ever been acknowledged in a way I wanted it to be wails

The chivalry intended not with hopeful reciprocation but with admiration. WAILS.

[scintillyyy]

actually i am going to say that you do have to consider that tim's childhood spent in a variety of sports and activities and exposure to various different sports (gymnastics probably, given whole wanting to be like dick...aikido probably...tennis...probably football at least for a couple years, his dad is jack after all. i'm gonna assume he did little league for a bit, that would track for his upbringing. soccer maybe.) is actually pretty important in giving him a fairly strong starting base prior to him becoming robin as far as good proprioception, strength, good hand/foot-eye coordination, balance, motor control, joint stability, less likely to have a history of injuries or overuse of certain muscle groups due to specialization, etc.

[13eyond13]

love it when a character that's hard to read intuitively for you has like a dedicated fandom interpreter who can just glance at their blank face in a panel and then give you a 3k word essay on their innermost thoughts & desires & fears and neatly tie it back into the themes & whatnot as if it's the most obvious thing in the world

[emilianadarling]

Imperial High Prince Skywalker and Darth Amidala

Another early draft of cover art that caro and I have been working on since we finished posting ‘warrior’. <3 These two are only one part of the final cover, so I wanted to share a higher-quality version.

(Sidenote: I’m absolutely in love with the way Phil Noto draws these two. For reference, here are links to both originals.) 

[essektheylyss]

Ten Books to Know Me

@aboxthecolourofheartache reblogged her version of this from ages ago but she'd tagged whoever saw it and it sounds very fun and difficult so let's do it!

Tris's Book by Tamora Pierce - I had a habit as a kid of always picking up the second book in a series, so this was the first of Tamora Pierce's books I read. Emelan had an effect on me on a microcosmic level, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, the protag of a whole world of mine is named Tris now, in homage to Trisana Chandler, so. the particulate is still kicking around in my brain.

Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud - Another childhood FAVE. This series as a whole started fucking with what I understood a book to be. Also the ending of it has a vice grip on me to this day, and it is probably why so much of my writing is very vibey and favors ambiguous endings.

Cyrano de Bergerac - This was the first assigned reading I had in high school that I utterly LOVED. I love this play so much, I love the tragedy, I love the quiet sorrow. This was also the first proper tragedy that I remember really loving.

The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan - This is a book of poetry and short stories by a Yale creative writing student who was killed in a car crash very soon after graduating, compiled by her professor after her death. I read it repeatedly in college; it is really quite lovely.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane - Apologies to Box who wanted reading recommendations, but she is who introduced me to this book if I remember correctly, and I have spent the two years since I read it habitually picking up Macfarlane's writing without even realizing it. Absolutely phenomenal writing.

Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway - @ professor Haraway I know you are a semi-retired scholar and also in the most expensive college town on earth but are you looking for research assistants cuz uh

The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing - I actually read both Staying with the Trouble and this book on the same weekend in the start of 2021. I compromised on not including Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, which I felt was very cliche of me, by including this book, which had as much of an effect. Read those three and Pantheologies by Mary-Jane Rubenstein and you will have some semblance of an idea of what the spiritual portion of my brain looks like. In the interest of not writing the same blurb four times I left the latter two off but know they make up a little microcosm of 'you could make a religion out of this' for me.

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natskukawa - A Japanese novel about a cat who appears to a teenager after the death of his grandfather, a bookseller. I read it when I was very frustrated with trying to read contemporary fiction and it was a bright spot among that. (I am still very frustrated with the state of contemporary fiction and this book remains a light.)

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer - Okay I read this one most recently out of this list (over the summer) but it had been on my list for a long time and it really does live up to the hype because it is just so luminous in every sense.

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer - I had to put this one last simply because HOLY HELL. Rewired my brain. This is the goal I aspire to, this is the dream I dream, this is the highest peak among the mountain range of writing aspirations that I climb. If I can one day write anything even akin to the Southern Reach trilogy I will be ready to die, but that is an utterly unachievable goal so God's just gonna have to let me live forever, I guess.