#plan the escape

[demigods-posts]

luke fumbling in recruiting percy has to be one of his greatest failures. a beautiful thing the show does regarding luke and percy's relationship is building rapport between them through shared moments like settling into camp, eating meals together, but especially through swordfighting lessons. the swordfighting scene at the beginning of episode 8 not only reveals that percy and luke already share similar beliefs about the fear-based system the gods have cultivated, but it's clear the conversation stays with percy when he fights ares and later calls out zeus on his waning skills as a father and a king. however, luke's plan fell through the moment percy learned that the winged-shoes were meant to drag him to tartarus. not only that, but the shoes nearly killed grover, a friend percy cared for deeply. if nourishing loyalty and trust was the key to ensuring a partnership with percy, then it was luke's faulty planning, arrogance, and impatience that cost him the greatest ally he could ask for.

[dapperrokyuu]

Luka vs. Till is the funniest faceoff tho. Like, what is Till even gonna DO? Purebred pedigree dog vs. stray mystery mutt found in the garbage and literally 50% discounted, FJFJEKFKDKCJEJ-

[shelfperson]

i’m sorry i just keep fucking imagining hannibal’s internet history being searched after season 2 and it’s just church collapses church collapses will graham taddlecrime.com chesapeak ripper taddlecrime.com standard monograph of time of death by insect decay will graham taddlecrime.com church collapses beautiful italian seaside villas for sale

[ride-thedragon]

Oh they will be selling the records for the finale.

[chronurgy]

I think that before Gortash and Durge started working together, they were both very lonely. And part of why their relationship is so intense is that they both see the other as the only person in the world who can handle them. The only other person in the world who could possibly understand them or be on their level, and to some degree, chosen as they are by evil gods, they're not really wrong.

Because as worshipers of dark gods, both Gortash and Durge have very specific paths laid out before them. As a worshiper of bane, gortash needs to become a tyrant - he needs to end up on top of the world. And as they said in the Prayer for Forgiveness, Durge is well aware that Bhaal created them to be the last soul alive.

But both of those things, being on top of the world and being the last soul alive, are very lonely ways to be. And I think both Gortash and Durge have both had periods in their lives where they were very lonely - Gortash in the house of hope (or frankly even before that, his parents hardly seemed loving) and Durge was likely treated more as an instrument than a person in the Bhaal cult. Neither of them want to be alone again, and after meeting the only other person in this world who can possibly be on their level, they seem to immediately set out to find ways to work the other person into their rigidly planned out lives.

Gortash genuinely plans to share power with with Durge, to rule alongside them. He gives you, his co-conspirator, his partner in crime, half the credit for the plans - calling them "our" plans. He's happy to hear you're alive, he's genuinely pleased to see you again, and he's ready pick right back up where you left off. He tests your resolve with the netherstones because he very specifically doesn't want another flunky, he wants an equal. He doesn't want to be alone up there on top of the world, with no one who could ever hope to understand him. He wants Durge right there with him and he's willing to commit a Banite sin (sharing power! the horror!) to get it.

And Durge, well, we saw the Prayer for Forgiveness. Durge plans to kill Gortash on Bhaal's altar, the same place they hope to die. I do think that Durge intended to kill Gortash last, and kill him slow. So that when they kill themselves he'll still be there. So they can die together, hand in bloody hand on that altar. Because being created to be the last soul alive is such a lonely fate, to know that you'll die completely alone, without even someone to hold your hand. And that is Durge's sin, the one small comfort they'd allow themselves - not dying alone, but dying with Gortash, holding his hand, knowing that there was someone there who loved them as they both breathed their last. Imagining dying in a loving embrace instead of alone in a cold world.

It's interesting to see how they both can't escape their gods plans for them (ruling and dying), can't bring themselves to imagine any other ending, but also go on to explicitly sin against their respective gods in the name of their relationship (ruling together, dying together). They're both drowning and they know they can't escape but goddammit they're going to go down together, the only two people in this world who can handle each other, the only two people who matter.

[every-moment-a-different-sound]

Incorrect quotes pt.2

Dead Boy Detectives & The Magnus Archives

[benevolenterrancy]

May your hardened heart be woken By the soft and distant song Of all you left here unspoken All the shards we keep stepping on - Take this body home Take this body home Call the wind, and let her know Take this life outgrown Take this broken soul Call the stars, call them all And take it high, take it far, take it home

[blue-mood-blue]

I have been thinking about the blackening (as one does)…

…and it’s so interesting to me, the penalty Shen Qingqiu is faced with should he not decide to yeet his disciple into hell.

Account termination. Instant death. Sent directly home to his already-long-dead body, and that’s it for the villain of the piece who outright refuses his villainy. The protagonist needs a blackening for the story to continue, and Shen Qingqiu is going to provide it or get written out of the narrative. Either way, Luo Binghe is going to lose him. Either way, this is a turning point.

I wouldn’t claim that this is the intent of the penalty, but it fascinates me that the System has, potentially, backed the plotline into a corner - because Binghe still stands to be blackened even if Shen Qingqiu took the other choice.

Think about what that would look like, to him. He’s at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and everything is going wrong. He’s been outed as a demon, and not just a demon - the top tier of demon, as bad as it gets from the perspective of a righteous cultivator. His beloved teacher, the person who has been kindest to him and opened his home and heart to him, is standing there with his sword in hand, deciding what he’s going to do about what must look, to him, like a horrific betrayal. Binghe is apologizing. Binghe is begging for his life.

Shen Qingqiu hears him. Maybe it shows on his face, or in his voice, that he already knew; maybe there’s no hint at all, but Shen Qingqiu is suddenly talking quickly with an abrupt sense of urgency that Luo Binghe is having a hard time keeping up with. Telling him he’ll be wonderful - telling him he’s the best. Telling him the world will be his, with emotions cracking through that aloof mask that Binghe has never seen on Shizun’s face before, and it’s terrifying for reasons that Binghe cannot identify.

(He will, later. When he has time to think, he’ll realize it sounded like a goodbye.)

And then Shen Qingqiu is bleeding. And then Shen Qingqiu is on the ground. And then Shen Qingqiu is dead. There’s no countdown for Binghe - there’s no System, there’s no warning, there’s no answers.

Luo Binghe is a heavenly demon in the middle of a conference sabotaged by demons. Luo Binghe is alone. His fellow competing disciples are scattered, some dead or injured. The Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak, the second in command of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, maybe the only person he loved and who loved him back, is dead at his feet. No one will believe him if he says it isn’t his fault.

(He can’t believe it isn’t his fault.)

What choice does he have but to run? The last heavenly demon the cultivation world went up against has been sealed under a mountain for years, and one of the people responsible for that is probably looking for Shen Qingqiu already. They’ll be looking for him, too. There isn’t anywhere to hide; there isn’t any time to mourn.

There isn’t even enough time to ask why. Why again.

There is no closure waiting for him, because there is nothing to explain what happened. It just is.

It would be a different kind of blackening, certainly - less intense, probably, less of a warping, desperate thing. But how many times can one person have all the love and safety in their world torn out from under them before it starts to show? Before they just don’t allow things like love and safety to touch them, because that’s the better option?

Interesting to consider that, simply by offering the choices it did, the System rigged the story to guarantee that Luo Binghe would end up in hell (deliberate or not).

Interesting to consider that, even if Shen Qingqiu made what might have seemed like a kinder choice, there was every chance it wouldn’t have been.

[crocrubies]

EDIT: These are available for pre-order now!! Etsy link in my pinned post!

Potential 999 charm designs! Probably doing Ace and Seven next and then VLR

[dcxdpdabbles]

I don’t know if you’ve done something like this before, but I always see Danny as the bigger brother and Damian as the younger brother. What if it was swapped and Damian was the older brother? I feel like there’s so many ways this could go.

Maybe Damian was a really good big brother and loved Danny, but it was seen as a weakness and Danny was taken away from him by Talia or Ra’s? And when he arrives at Gotham, he’s used to being the big brother not the baby brother, and doesn’t know how to react.

Or maybe Damian was a bad older brother and now that he’s a part of the batfam he can see how older brothers are meant to treat their siblings, and regrets his and Danny’s relationship?

Or maybe, he didn’t even know about Danny and feels he’s been replaced as the Demon’s heir. (Especially with Danny’s powers – I feel like Damian would just think that he’d been replaced by a better model)

I hope this makes sense. Idk I just feel there’s so many possibilities.

Ten years old: Damian

Damian bursts and slams the door of his room, fuming. It makes a nasty crack appear on the door frame, which he knows will get him another scold once Pennyworths spots it.

As if that servant has any right to speak to him, let alone reprimand him. Pennyworth seems to be under the impression that his impish wit is appropriate behavior when addressing the masters of the house.

Why does Father tolerate such behavior? Damian will never know. If it were his grandfather or Mother Pennyworth's entire bloodline, it would have been erased for even thinking about it.

Perhaps it is due to Father's modest way of living.

Damian had been shocked to find that his esteemed father, the one he had spent his entire life proving he was worthy to meet, lived in such a tiny manor. Damian was raised in castles upon private islands with an army of servants. He at first thought it was due to Father wanting to live without many earthly possessions, to appreciate the green of the world, and to live honorably.

He had no idea his Father simply couldn't afford the lifestyle Damian grew up in.

If that wasn't bad enough, Father seemed attached to his idiotic and weak adoptive brood. He acted as if they were blood children! What's worse is that he expected Damian to do the same. Then, when Damian treated them like blood siblings and took them as a real threat to his inheritance and tried to eliminate them, his father grew upset with him!

That is not how you treat your brother. Father had sneered at him once he threw Drake over the railing of the cave. He thought the man would have been proud he had been able to catch the smartest one off guard, had been clever enough to lure him to the edge.

Damian had been sent to his room, forbidden from training and going out on patrol while the rest of the brood had gone out. He had been punished like a child.

He throws himself onto his bed, muffling his outrage screams into his pillow—a terrible habit he only allowed himself to partake in when alone.

"Not how you treat a brother," he scoffs, his lips moving in his native tongue but his voice muffled against his pillowcase. Suddenly, a flash of bright blue eyes that used to stare up at him in trusted awe crosses his mind. His scowl deepens as he squishes the image, just as he had tramped on that foolish trust years ago.

Everyone knew that blood siblings were the only competition that needed to be eliminated. He may have allowed himself the passing fancy of caring for his younger brother back in his youth, but Damian had outgrown such attachments.

He had no time for them.

He was disadvantaged in the Wayne household since now he was the youngest and not the eldest. Damian would not allow himself to be dealt with as Dann- as his younger brother had.

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Fourteen years old: Damian

Damian took a deep breath, allowing Gotham's crisp, foggy air to rush into his lungs, bringing peace alongside it. He sat with his legs crossed and his arms resting comfortably upon his knees, palms facing the sun, on top of the large boulder his father had installed inside of Damian's meditational garden.

The meditational garden had been his eleventh birthday present.

Back then, Damian had still been getting used to living with the man, and it had taken only a tiny argument where Damian may have let it slip that even the gardens were wrong and he hated living here.

It hadn't meant anything to Damian, just a show of his lack of control over his emotions, but Father had taken it rather seriously. He felt he needed to help Damian find comfort in his new surroundings.

His father had rearranged the entire west garden to reflect the Chinese-inspired gardens where he used to sit with his mother. The first time Damian saw the revealed landscaped project, he felt his breath hitched at how accurate everything was.

He hadn't known tears had fallen from his eyes until Richard had wiped them off for him.

Damian often found himself retreating to his garden- for it was his. Father had allowed him to fence it off, keeping all his other Waynes Siblings out of Damian's space- whenever life got too complicated at the manor.

He would go. He found that all his life lessons on how to handle blood siblings, killing, and basically everything Damian was got him yelled at and regarded as a monster rather than a prodigy.

He went here when it became apparent that he was not making friends with others his age in or out of the Robin suit. When Drake, Todd, and Richard laugh, they reference stories or experiences foreign to Damian.

He came to this garden the day he realized that his mother loved him, but only under certain conditions. He no longer fit those conditions, so she threw him away.

He had been eleven, then twelve, then thirteen, yet the pain of her betrayal had never lessened. The directionlessness that haunted his ever-waking hour threatened to drown him most days, especially as he found it harder and harder to be content with his peers.

Damian may not fit in places, but he did here in his meditational garden. He felt himself pulled to the large, smooth boulder right by the pavilion, for its shape reminded him of long days past.

Damian had survived all the changes in his life because of this boulder. It was tall, smooth, and a good two heads taller than he, even after hitting a growth spurt on his thirteenth birthday.

He remembers hopping on three nearby rocks to reach the top, just as his younger brother used to do in Mother's garden. Had the boy also used the tallest boulder to escape the dread of his uselessness? Did he, too, used to sit in the same pose, breathing slowly and evenly, attempting to tame the unease that rested underneath his skin?

Had he gone back to Mother's garden if Damian had failed in removing him from the line of succession?

The brief reminder of the boy makes Damian stomach roll.

The reason why he chose this boulder for meditation didn't matter. Damian had made his choice all those years ago. He had not regretted his actions back then.

Now, he had to live with what he had done.

He takes another deep breath, trying to suppress the impish laughter of his younger brother, who used to smile at him like he hung the stars and the moon.

When he breathes out, the laughter turns to screams. The echo of mother's dark laughter and Father's weeps.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nineteen years old: Damian

Damian is hard at work within his WE office. He has been recently placed in charge of the Meta-Youth Outreach community, and he wants to show Tim and Father that he can be trusted with such an important role.

Every day, more Metas were popping up in younger generations. Unlike when Damian was a boy, the kids seemed unafraid to show off their powers. Their peers rallied around them loudly, demanding tolerance just as the generations before them demanded for the LGBT and POC communities.

Of course, not all of them, but enough that Damian felt there was real hope for future metas. It wasn't taboo to carry the gene anymore. That was leaps and bounds ahead when he had been running around as Robin.

He now worked under a new title, Crow, and had passed placed Robin in retirement. Now, the title and role sit in the cave, waiting for someone new to take up its call.

Jason joked that two years was far too long, and Father was due to arrive soon with another blue-eyed, dark-haired child ready to take on the world. Damian can hardly wait. He is ready to train and inspire the new Robin.

Maybe it will even be a meta child. Duke and Jarro were tired of being the only ones with powers in the family.

I might even find the next Robin on this list. Damian thinks with a chuckle, reading over the children's names his program would be housing this coming summer. He designed the camp to help teens learn to control their powers in a safe environment but also let them meet others like them and help them build meaningful relationships.

It was mostly kids who just unlocked their meta genes—most facing a traumatic event, but others waking up one day with the power no longer dormant.

He did not want the kids to feel like they were being sent to a lab to be studied. Damian knew something about being angry, confused about the change, and wanting to help them find their way.

He also had some experience with meta children. After all, his younger brother had been a meta. Damian's mother had convinced him that Danyal's powers made him a better heir and, thus, a bigger threat.

He had befriended his brother to lure him to his death, but he had taken time to help him learn of his ice powers, and for a while, he had made Danyal truly happy.

Damian could never make it up to him, could never wash away the blood on his hands, and even though he had told his family long ago, even though Father had wept, his father and brothers had forgiven him.

Damian is grateful, but he has not forgiven himself.

He hadn't been the one to land the killing blow on Danyal; it had been his mother who took the dark honor. Danyal hadn't looked like the perfect blend of his parents but rather a closer copy of his Father and she hated him for it.

Damian knew he played the most important role in her plan.

He wanted to dedicate his life to bettering the lives of children like Danyal, born with powers in a world that was cruel to his kind. He tried to help create a world where children like him could find resources for help and learn to run around and laugh without a care.

Damian signs on the last acceptance letter—one Danny Fenton, whose parents discovered he became a meta only a few months ago. He wants to come to camp to learn how to use his energy blasts, and he takes a deep breath.

Fifty new children for the Danyal Memorial Movement. Hopefully, he can help them all.

14 years old: Danny

Meanwhile, Danny's adoptive parents know he isn't a meta, as Danny had already told them about Phantom, but Maddie wants to surprise her boy with the meta camp anyway. She knows Danny still looks up to his big brother even after all these years.

The older one did help smuggle him out of the League of Assiasngs the day Ra ordered his death. Talia had loved her sons to the bitter end, and she called upon her two old college friends to raise her youngest in her place.

Jack couldn't agree more with her idea, knowing Danny had followed all the news about Damian. His boy hadn't been able to get closer to his dear elder brother, for doing so would have earned all the hard work his birth mother and elder brother did to get him to safety, but now that Ra and his army have perished, he thinks it's time to reunite the two.

In Talia's memory, they will ensure Danny and Damian meet again.

[winters-secret-star-wars-blog]

Omega: "Want to know a secret? I escaped from this mountain before. Know what else?"

[skeletoninthemelonland]

a glimpse of what their early dynamic looks like

[indistinctchatt3r]

Omega using the straw to make another Lula rather than to make something to escape

[taoofshigeru]

I love the Hobie Brown "palms" thread from Spiderverse 2.

Like, in the one scene Hobie busts the force field, notices Miles was doing something similar to him, and points out it'd be more effective if he used more surface area by touching with palms, not just fingertips. It's a quick line of dialogue in the middle of a rapidly unfolding action scene.

And then when Miles is trapped in a different force field like 8 scenes later, he makes the "palms" gesture and mouths the words. Which is about all he can do without tipping off the rest of the several dozen guys in the room what he's trying to say. And Miles doesn't get it right away, but he does like a few seconds later and you can kinda see his face when it clicks. It's enough to kick off the escape.

This is cool not just because it allows a good bit of detailed hand animation, but also because it's just communicating detail and character in a tight, focused way.

[jelly-fish-wishes]

Felt like putting all of the animation from Luigi’s Escape Plan in one post.

I predict there will be….

4 more? I think. The number may increase.