#real low lives

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt #76

OK but what if Danny could stay in a game after the power was turned off in a game console, like the game needs to be left in but you could unplug it and everything. Que Danny getting hurt badly after the GIW caught him so he decides to mail himself to Bruce Wayne who is his biological father after his mom had a one night stand at a gala years ago.

Bruce is cautious after getting a game system in the mail. He takes it down to analyze in the bat computer, but when the console is plugged in a brilliant light shines and a kid about the age of 14 with awful wounds appears from the system. A quick DNA test shows that this child is his and a fling he had 15 years ago. He had another son and someone or something hurt him and Bruce wasn’t able to protect him. He’s here now though.

Damian finds out he has an older brother, he feels weird that he’s not the only blood son anymore but he also never had a blood sibling before and is a little curious. He decides to give his new brother the benefit of the doubt and if he ever meets the ones who put his brother through this he’d murder everyone of them.

[x-gon-give-it]

Headcanon, theory, prediction, whatever you want to call it,

but I think the reason that the universe Miquel hijacked collapsed, and not Miles, despite them both being “anomalies” is because Miquel was trying to change someone else’s story, as opposed to Miles who inspires other people to change their own stories.

Like, Miquel tried to force himself into a universe that wasn’t his. He took the place of his counterpart and pretended to be him, he was playing a part that wasn’t meant for him, he was changing a story that wasn’t his. And the universe rejected that.

Whereas Miles inspires people to change their own stories. His universe didn’t collapse because that’s HIS universe. It’s HIS story to tell, and sure the plot changed along the way, but he’s still telling it.

The same with 42-Miles. His story was drastically changed because he wasn’t bitten by that spider, but his universe isn’t collapsing because he’s the one still telling the story. He’s still shaping his own future.

And like how Miles inspired Peter B to have Mayday at all. Without Miles, Peter wouldn’t have gone back to his and he wouldn’t have had Mayday. But his universe isn’t collapsing because that’s a decision PETER made. No one forced him to make up with MJ and have Mayday. But Miles gave him faith and inspired him to go back and give life another try. (Don’t even get me started how Peter would have literally DIED if not for Miles. He was going to stay in Miles dimension. He was fully ready to deteriorate. He literally would have died if not for Miles saying “NO BITCH YOU GOTTA GO HOME” much less inspiring him to have Mayday, I’m just saying I’m just saying.)

And the thing is I don’t think Miquel realizes that. He’s so caught up in his grief and anger that he’s completely consumed with following canon and my never disrupting ANYTHING. He doesn’t realize that that universe collapsed because he tried to change someone ELSES story. He tried to become someone else to live their story. He didn’t try to make his own and that’s not how it works.

Idk just thinking thots tonight, And ATSV is always at the top of my brain

[lunarharp]

Very important conferences.

[badolmen]

hey you guys know that even if the people inside that submersible are rich billionaires, dying in that metal tube at the bottom of the ocean is a horrific way to die right. like. yeah stupid choices were made by the people in there signing off on a waiver that says the sub is not approved by anyone and they could die. but it’s the fault of OceanGate for knowingly putting people into a Home Depot DIY sub rigged up with an Xbox controller all to make a profit on people’s curiosity.

[starry-bi-sky]

Hi uhh I really love your Damian and Danny siblings short. I wonder if uhh will you add a more connected story.

Also how did the mirage happen and is it only Bruce and Damian who saw it?

thank you! And honestly I might add a more connected story (i posted a miscellaneous post about the danny from that post because I was still thinking about him). The more I think about it though, yeah probably? I'd like to explore that reunion between Danny and Damian at some point. Plus Danny's experience in Amity Park and his growth from there.

The post was meant to be more of a prompt for other people to take inspiration from and add their own ideas onto, so the mirage was something I kept purposely vague so that people could come up with their own theories about it. But for my take on it? Magic user in Gotham that they got in a fight with. It was a physically visual mirage so anyone who was in the room could've seen it, and it was capable of being picked up on the cameras in their mask/cowls (which i hear is a thing sometimes) so it can be replayed back in the cave.

[gummy-worms-in-my-brain]

this has audio!!

is this the kind of stuff people come here to see

[phoenixmetaphor]

Day 4 - Real-life Captain America

[6blackfilin9]

i realised that either i publish this already or i’m just forever stuck with this thing

[silverskye13]

Etho stumbled onto the beach, tired, sore, hungry, and one moment of weakness away from calling Tango and begging for mercy. Sure, the whole exile thing had been his idea. Sure, it had all gone downhill at approximately the same intervals he thought it would. And sure, he'd feel really, really stupid for making Tango help him dig himself into this hole only to whine to be dug out again, but who could blame him? Life in exile was hard.

Everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong, he couldn't get a moment of peace with all the half-panicked villagers milling around, and his gear was half busted. There were raids too. Death after death to vexes and evokers lost in the caverns. Dragging himself through mud and water and gravel just to trudge back up to the villager bell and have no clue where the final raiders were. Ravagers pitching him off the cliff at every other turn...

Etho sighed dramatically and sprawled out in the sand, letting himself sink body and soul into self pity and misery. His communicator was a brick in his pocket, taunting him with its presence. It stuck to his thigh with the uncomfortable, matted grasp of wet fabric. He was well and truly soaked after his last climb through the caverns, and his clothes clung to him like a second skin, salted with sweat and blotted with blood from cuts and scrapes. A crossbow bolt, broken at the shaft, pinned his belt against his chainmail. The tip of the bolt pricked him uncomfortably, worrying the bruise that had formed around its impact; though it was rendered nonlethal by the stubborn mail he was wearing, it still hurt. Laying in the sand like he was, he was just adding more grit to the mix, more minor inconveniences to add straws of weight to the almost-broken back of his resistance. More to scrub and clean and dwell on later, while he contemplated giving up.

The sky above was cloudless and brimming with stars.

Etho watched the tiny points of light flicker, and mapped the planets that didn't. His single player world was up there somewhere. So were all the other Hermitcrafts he'd been to - and those he hadn't. It was weird knowing he could chart his presence in the universe with points of light. There had been a long time, before so many worlds formed and fought into being, that he had charted his existence by thoughts and impulses and idle curiosity. Ethoslab - void first, player afterthought. He couldn't really pinpoint the moment he chose physicality, he only knew that he had, and had yet to un-choose it.

There was so much more of him. He was so much bigger than this little peninsula of shoreline. So much bigger than pesky ravagers, peskier villagers. He could give up and just recede back up there into the stars, bid farewell to Season 9. He'd started late anyway. Imposed a barrier he had too much trouble crossing. No one would blame him if he simply unspooled himself into the aether and rested for a while. For a season. Maybe two. The hermits were understanding like that. It was one of the things that made them mortal - the ability to empathize and understand.

Not that Etho couldn't do either of those things. It just took effort, like climbing uphill through a water stream. Like running from waves of vex summoned by a hidden evoker. He thought maybe his exile would help with that: the effort to pretend to be mortal. The effort to understand things the way they did, relate the way they did. To enjoy their company the way they enjoyed his.

No one would blame him if he decided he was too tired. They couldn't. It wasn't in their nature.

Etho blinked up at his stars, his universe, the pieces of him he'd left behind places where he tried his hardest to be player first, void second. He should make a decision. He should reach into his pocket and call Tango. Or he should drag himself to his feet and soldier on.

Or he could just sleep on the beach here. Sure he'd wake up cold and sandy, but hey, the sound of the waves was nice. It was a steady rhythm, the water muttering incomprehensible secrets to the sand and shells. He timed his breathing with the rolling surf, watched the sky, and tried to live in a single moment. His skin itched where it touched the sand. His scalp crawled where the water in his hair dried. He closed his eyes and sighed, bearing his discomforts as best he could.

He didn't fall asleep. He was lulled to the edge of it, maybe. His breath evened out. His thoughts spun towards nonexistence. His body was weighted with the feeling of sinking through the ground, through his subconscious into comfortable oblivion. Then, with every rush of the waves, wakefulness returned for him like a stray dog - meandering and lazy, but brutally persistent.

He was dragged awake alongside the presence of... something. He couldn't place it at first, so hazy in his exhaustion that he measured it as his own wakefulness at first. As he sat up in the sand though, he found whatever it was out there was distinct from himself. It was a great unspooling of something, a system of thought and presence in the water. The horizon was alight with it, a pale pseudo-sunrise that pulsed like heat rays off the surface of the water. Its consciousness brushed his, extended as he had been, and he felt the edges of something vast, fathomless, deep and drowning. It was cold in that crushing way the depth of the ocean is cold, a sunless dark smothered by water and distance, alight only by the predatory longing to feed. It was sharp-toothed, patient as a mountain in the breath before an avalanche, and when it brushed by him, it grinned.

The waves arced higher, roared, raced and crashed. White sea foam curled up the beach towards him, electrified by the thought and will that compelled it. Brightly colored fish, tinged silver-grey by the night, darted from them, roiling the water in great pulses and ripples. Entire schools of them fled the water, leaping into the sky as though driven by some great predator, backlit by that yellow phosphorescence in the deep that Etho recognized as eyes. Dozens of gazes trained in his direction, their lights spilling together. The sea boiled. The thing was nearing the shore. As it approached, it made itself familiar. Dark depths of frigid presence condensed and warmed themselves. Bright eyes winked out one after another until only two remained, unsettlingly bright, but human in their proportion. The crashing waves soothed, returning to a gentle rolling against the shore, and with each beat forward, they pulled this thing, now a him, towards dry land. 

xB crawled out of the water with all the clumsy effort and strength of the first amphibians sniffing for shore in the times before history. His clothes were soaked. His hair was streaked with sand and kelp. His hands were planted firmly in his pockets. If not for all the sea water, and the hint of scales and gills like lace around his throat, he could have just strolled out of a building in the shopping district.

"Hullo," xB said anticlimactically, grinning with teeth that looked as though they couldn't decide how human they should be. They were situated in simple, straight rows, but the gums were too pale, and the white bone too sharp. 

"Hey xB," Etho squinted his eyes, the closest to a smile he had to get with the mask on. It saved him the effort of trying to figure out how to arrange his face for human interaction. "Out fishing?"

xB chuckled, tilting his head to the side to let some trapped water out of his ear. It was just a few more indistinguishable drops to add to the damp ring of sand around his feet. "Maybe. You out star gazing?"

"I'm in exile."

"Ah. I see. So that’s why you’re so far out here,” xB shook his head, scattering water and sand from his hair. If the action was meant to dry him at all, it didn’t help. He sat down beside Etho, and the smell of salt and fish misted off of him in waves. “Should I leave?”

“I feel like you’re not going to,” Etho chuckled, laying back in the sand. He crossed his arms behind his head and gazed up at the sky, re-charting points of light he’d already mapped a thousand times in his head. “What brings you all the way out here?”

“I needed a vacation,” xB sighed and stretched, and bones that hadn’t existed a few minutes ago popped and cracked along his spine. “I love all those guys dearly, really I do, but they’re all so…” He trailed off, trying to find the right words. Finally he settled on, “... human.”

Etho nodded.

“They move too fast, and they work too big,” xB explained, as though he had to. “There’s so much emotionality going on there. I needed to just be…” he gestured vaguely to the ocean, conveying some other indescribable thing he was having trouble putting into words, “... you know. For a little while.”

“I get it,” Etho hummed, blinking skyward. He and xB were a lot alike, all things considered. The deep ocean and its half-life sentience, and the void and its time-damned knowingness, felt similar from time to time. To sensitive hands, both ice and liquid nitrogen felt cold. There were generous differences between the two things, but cold wasn’t one of them. “Well, don’t stop on my account.”

“I’m stopping on my account,” xB chuckled, even though there wasn’t much to laugh at. “I don’t wanna get lost in it, yanno? Ya’ll wouldn’t see me for the rest of the season.”

Etho nodded wordlessly. 

“Unless,” xB said slowly, smirking down at him with bright eyes, “that was a really subtle way of telling me to shove off.”

Etho feigned hurt, placing a hand over his chest and raising his eyebrows, “xB! I would never--”

“Oh I see right through you, spaceman,” xB laughed. “Putting the hermit in hermitcraft out here. I see how it is.”

xB didn’t move to stand, but then again, that was the nature of the ocean. The surf didn’t leave the cliff because it wanted some alone time. It dug in and chipped away, until it had all the bones of the earth powdered to sand. So xB didn’t leave, and Etho didn’t try to make him. The void was more of a watcher than an actor anyway, and he could outlast xB’s patience. That wasn’t a sea-void metaphor, that was just them.

“I’m guessing you’re out here for the same reasons I am, then?” xB pressed on, heedless of Etho’s silence. “It takes some adjustment, but the exile’s a little extreme. I prefer full immersion myself.”

“I thought about not joining,” Etho hummed, finding a planet to fix his eyes on. It was a vaguely reddish light in the sky. “I’m joining late as it is.”

“Better late than never?” xB remarked, testing the waters with him, trying to figure out what he needed to hear. Or maybe he was just trying to make conversation. It was an odd little language barrier between them - two strange consciousnesses, one of void one of sea, conversing through the only experience they shared, pretending to be human. It was a language neither of them were the best at, but they tried regardless. 

“It's hard, xB," Etho told him, like he needed the reminder. "My body is awkward, I hate pain, and you're right, they're all so much all the time. I'm nothing. So much of me is just distant points of light and quiet moments."

"You're an airhead," xB concluded for him inelegantly. 

Etho chuckled, "Only sometimes."

"Fill it with redstone then. You're good at that."

"Redstone burns," Etho told him. "I'm not ready to burn yet. I can barely do noise."

"Aren't stars loud?" xB asked him. "I feel like giant burning balls of gas are probably loud."

"Is the bottom of the ocean loud?"

xB tilted his head thoughtfully, like the question had never really occurred to him. "Define loud?"

"Human loud. Like noise."

"The bottom of the ocean probably just sounds like your eardrums bursting, then."

"The void is quiet until you touch something."

xB wrinkled his nose, "But you're always touching something."

"There's not enough something in the void to touch."

"Should be full of water."

"Water is rare."

xB hissed unpleasantly, a disgusted sound that he wasn't quite human enough to make normal. It sounded too much like the charge before a guardian strike. "Water is life."

"Life is rare, and we'd make some mortal philosophers cringe."

The two of them chuckled, because they were talking nonsense - two immortal things pretending they knew mortal concepts like life and rarity. It was funny; pleasantly distracting. It was a distraction that only lasted until they were silent. 

Etho looked up at the sky and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, xB.”

The sound of the ocean filled the silence between them, calm and steady without xB stirring it up. Etho could imagine it was xB’s heartbeat, constant and droning, an unstoppable rhythm. Etho didn’t have a heartbeat. The vibrations of the universe were random and distant, and many of them weren’t even his to claim. They were worlds and broadcasts, and advanced communicators sending data and coding across lightyears of distance. 

Etho allowed himself a moment to think, really, he was quite lonely. Even sitting beside someone he should have every reason to relate to. And if he had trouble even seeing bits of himself in xB, well, there really wasn’t much hope for him this season, was there? It was a gloomy thought, but it wasn’t a new one. Yes… maybe rest was his best option after all. Like starting a new day, just a few years from now. What was time, really, to someone made of timelessness? The hermits would understand.

“You ever stop and think how cool it is,” xB spoke slowly, gazing up at the sky, picking his words with the same care that astronomers identified planets, “that we live in a universe where, in its two darkest, most desperate places, there are stars?”

Etho sat up slowly, peering out at the ocean. He could see the stars in the sky reflected in smears of light on the water. He got the distinct feeling, though, that they weren’t what xB was talking about. "You mean starfish?"

xB nodded, smirking, like he was aware it was a bit ridiculous. "The deepest oceans I've ever swam, there have always been starfish. Like deep, deep down, where the water's so heavy it sits on your chest like it hates you. They crawl around down there, tenacious little guys. Almost as tenacious as stars making themselves in nebulas, and burning up and making worlds, and burning those up too."

Etho smiled, "Are you giving me a pep-talk, xB?"

"Oh definitely not. It's only a pep-talk if I walk enigmatically into the ocean afterwards," xB stood and stretched, loose sand falling from his clothes and dusting the top of Etho's head. "I'll see you in a few days then, when your exile is over?"

He asked it like it was a real question. Like he didn't already know the answer. Etho shrugged, "Maybe."

xB graced him with one more chuckle, followed by a lazy salute, "Good luck, Etho."

xB walked into the water, shedding his humanity with every step. It seemed less like he disappeared into the water and more like he diffused into it, a collection of thoughts and ideas that colored the surface like spilled oil before melting into the tide and vanishing. Etho watched the place he vanished, watched the breaking of dawn start to lighten the sky on the farthest horizon. One star, then two, then three disappeared into the sunlight. Etho sighed, stood, stretched out his back and felt every pop and ache in his spine as he did so.

"Tenacious as the stars, huh?" Etho asked the ocean in front of him.

He got back to work. 

[buckttommy]

Need the 911 cast to be on that same level of psychosis that j2 was on like they actually absorbed their characters' consciousnesses into their inner chakras and became nothing more than mere vessels for the ghosts of the addict and the bisexual. why do i want this for them???? well because i think it would be funny.. thanks

[pigeonwit]

sonic prime is off the shits. alternate universe tails is an anarchist hacker driven by social anxiety and an obsession with sonics destruction that in any other media would border on homoerotic. alternate universe knuckles is an evil pirate who runs a party boat side-hustle to cope with his PTSD. eggman's teenage self is a cunty emo gamerboy. sonic is suicidal. they even have shadow sometimes.

[tswwwit]

Isn't Bill like... Rich rich... Like multi universal rich, if so-

1. Why does he live in dippers shabby apartment/house most of the time

2. Does he help with bills (heh) and financial problems?

3. Imagine reincar!dip being a broke college student that's barely hanging by a thread, and is getting kicked out of his apartment next month, and he's like "man, should I get a sugar daddy or something, where would I even find one, it's not like they appear out of thin air after I turn 18" Sighs and blows out the candle on his 18th birthday candle and Bill literally materializes out of thin air in front of dipper

4. Does he sometimes buy random/weird shit online to annoy dipper with (ex: comically large spoon, those robot dogs/cats, etc)

To invade his personal space and living situation! Generally to be a nosy little pest. Bill prefers to bother his mortal in the limited time he's around rather than hang out in the ol' humdrum of his place, and the run-down shabby hangouts Dipper ends up in are charming in their own Very Dipper kind of way!

Sure does! If he remembers that other bills exist. Not something he has to think about most of the time. Plus, Dipper has an independent streak that's against being too dependent on his husband most of the time, so on occasion he might object to Bill forking out the dough - but he'll suck it up in a bad situation.

A Most Excellent Scenario!

Yes, definitely, absolutely. Novelty is always a plus! It's also neat to buy 'gifts' for Dipper, that are like. Those chocolate bullets where one of them has a habenero center, only this set is all peppers.

[overbearingstruggles]

LA 10/11/23

[r0semultiverse]

holy shit, Bungo Stray Dogs multiverse real 👀

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

k i thiiiiink i'm gonna close my inbox for a Bit bc there is... so much in there... and more gets buried with each new ask & i Want to get to them all! but there are ninety-five (95!) asks in that box rn. and i know from experience that if i don't take care of it that number will build to ungodly levels, and then it'll get so overwhelming i won't be able to get myself to answer Any <3