Have I read this prompt somewhere or was this a fever dream from my bored mind.
What if, now hear me out.
What if we bring up Dana Winters-Drake (whose confirmed to at least be alive in the DC verse but no one knows where she actually is)
What if instead of when she had a mental breakdown and getting committed to an Bludhaven clinc she wandered away before anyone noticed and by the time Tim or anyone did notice a lot of stuff started happening at once in both Gotham and Bludhaven (Steph dying, The Bludhaven crisis, etc etc)
Tim still tries to find her though but even with best resources it was like she just disappeared into the wilderness and the stress of trying to handle more and more problems get worse.
So when out of the blue, a couple of years later, he gets a call from an unknown number. On his private, only for friends and family, phone and when he answers he meet with a young girls voice on the other end.
A very young, maybe six or seven, girl who informs him about his apparently half-brother Danny Drake-Fenton. And how she loves Danny so, so, so much but knows her home is dangerous for him to be in.
Tim is stunned and before he could question her, she says Danny is Dana and Jack's baby and that her parents had adopted him years ago and put Dana's stuff that the hospital had away for him to look at when he was older but she just had to fight off their lunch from eating her brother and she knows he needs a better place to live and so she snooped around and found Dana's diary and that she had to unscramble the nonsense Dana wrote and found Tim's number with the words 'tell him about his brother Danny' hidden in it. And-
But before she could keep rambling she hears Danny screaming "JAZZY THE MILK WENT BAD AGAIN AND HISSED AT ME!"
Tim is left with silence after hearing Jazz yell to Danny to lock the fridge and step out of the kitchen as she gets the bat.
Look, this rainfrog is called Breviceps bagginsi, so I don't have a lot of choice, now do I?
[src]
Also, I would go with them to the end. Into the very fires of Mordor.
Low Fantasy
Phyllomedusine hylids have a certain weird clown marionette vibe to them. Just look at these Pithecopus rohdei.
[src]
Lovecraftian
The male Rhinoderma darwinii raises his tadpoles in his vocal sac.
Sci-Fi
Gephyromantis pseudoasper sometimes wear handsome stripes—very Space Age™
But more importantly, their calls evoke a battle with laser-blasters.
I filmed this calling male in 2017 at an obscene hour of the morning.
Horror
Trichobatrachus robustus, aka the Hairy Frog, has flanks and thighs covered in weird, hair-like outgrowths that increase oxygen exchange over its skin, and BREAKS ITS FINGERS TO STAB YOU WITH CLAWS MADE OF BONE
[src]
Romance
Breviceps males physically glue themselves to the back-ends of females, and if that's not romance, I don't know what is.
[src]
Comedy
Nyctimantis arapapa are probably amongst the funniest-looking frogs out there.
[src]
Adult
The 'poly' in Polypedates may be a double entendre
[src]
Crime and Mystery
Calyptocephalella gayi is a Galaxy Brain frog.
[src]
Speculative
Myobatrachus gouldii is basically what would happen if you decided to try to build a turtle, but you only had frog pieces in the kit.
going on a heavy restriction of the use of my phone because its ruining my life and genuinely not letting me do things that i want to do consistently bc they feel too hard. i wont live my best life and evolve if i check my phone first thing in the morning if i dont let myself be in silence for the most part of the day and have my hands free if instead of journaling before sleep i go on tumblr and ruin my sleep schedule due to procrastination of that and so and so. like yeah i get things done but i dont like the pacing and the fact that even an hour of my day is being wasted on this stupid device in a mindless way i really want to put my whole attention into this ive already been asking myself a lot of the times what is it that i wanna do so ive been using my phone way less compared to previous years but i need to be more concentrated more focused and serious about it its genuinely a problem like what sense does it make to want to do something and then do it half assed and lazily. feel/think -> action -> result i will put my heart into things because its what i deserve to give to myself
Joel - I want this man to win so badly, but I think he'll def get top four (plz don't fuck this up for me joel)
Etho - I also want him to win, but hes def top 3 and will have to fight cleo or bdubs or joel for first place
Cleo - genuine contender for first place, honestly girl deserves it, no further comment
Bdubs - bro either will lay down his life for etho or die by his blade, but I swear I'll go insane if he kills etho
Scott - since its the curse break season, he's not going to be top 3 (somehow) but still doing good
Gem - I love her and it'd be so cool for her to win her first game (esp after causing half the servers deaths), but I think she'll be 6th, probably betrayed
Impulse - I haven't seen much of him this season, but I hear he deserves a win, having been high placed a bunch
Scar - he is public enemy number one, so I just hope he lives longer than grian because that man has been PINING so hard (or mby killed by grian but hey optimism)
Grian - i NEED him dead before cleo and etho for curse break reasons. Mans needs to die before his allies for once
Tango - havent seen much of him, bros just been queering it up at the heart foundation from what I know, solid 10
Skizz - skizz has been bottom 3 too much, this is his redemption he's got this
Pearl - we need scarlet witch red life joel team up they'd be so damaging. She's been going pretty great this season, left the tower and all, so I just don't want her to die alone
Bigb - literally he's been so strange I honestly don't know. He might just throw a curve ball and win it. I would not put it past him. The backrooms will claim anyone who tries to mess with him
Martyn - ohohohoh I want this man FAILED he needs to fail a task and die because whats more poetic than the punishment
Mumbo - (already out, wanted him to do better but honestly didn't expect much hes not great at surviving)
I have officially started painting the walls in the living room.
well, I've mixed/adjusted the paint and painted some swatches and put up masking tape and all that stuff. I'll be painting tomorrow. I'm so excited (to get started, but mostly that I'll finally be all done with evvvverything*)
*until I think of the next thing I want to do, and the next one after that, and -
Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.
I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.
Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?
How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"
And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.
So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.
So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.
And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.
-
And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.
Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.
And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.
So you sail away in a boat together.
And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.
But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.
But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.
You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.
And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-
-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.
You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.
-
And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.
It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.
And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.
6:08am — Hour 12
In the seconds it takes for her to wake up as she groggily reaches for her phone to hit snooze she’s able to forget about what it is that kept her up almost the entire night. It’s a fleeting moment that’s gone once she stretches her arm toward him, ready to kiss him good morning as she’s met with the cold space of his untouched side of the bed.
The extra five minutes of sleep no longer needed as the reminder of Tim not coming home promptly wakes her up. Before she finally gave into a few hours of sleep, her last thought and hope had been that maybe she’d wake up to him soundly sleeping by her side. That the anxiety that had chipped away at her most of the night had been for nothing, that she simply exaggerated because she was still on edge over everything that had happened in the last few weeks; that the panic over him leaving without an explanation was simply the boiling point of the stress she’d been carrying mixed with some miscommunication from his end. She wanted it to be a simple answer but when is life ever simple?
She reaches for her phone again, her hand swiping at the empty nightstand as she realizes that she never placed it back. It causes her to jolt up in a frenzy as she searches for it on top of the covers knowing she must have fallen asleep while holding it. When she doesn't find it over the sheets, she slides her hands under and pats around in search for it. A breath gets caught in her throat as her hand finally wraps around it, hoping that there’s a new notification with his name on it as she brings it toward her while already knowing the answer.
Nothing.
It’s disappointing despite knowing better. She knows that if he had called at any point throughout the night, she would have heard it, she would have answered. Just like she knows it would have been a call not a text because if the growing desperation in the messages she left him wasn’t obvious enough, he knows her well enough to know that after twelve hours of no communication the only thing that could calm her enough would be to hear his voice.
If not on his phone then he would have borrowed someone’s. He would have found a way to keep his promise, to call when he could but he didn’t. Why?
got my grades back for my courses last semester and most of it was to be expected, mostly A's, maybe an A-, etc. but i honestly can't get over the fact that my independent study (the buddy cole documentary) was for some reason given a B. like sure getting a B isn't bad per se, I usually get at least one B every semester and i honestly don't really care about what my exact gpa is as long as i can graduate, but come on. this school put me through months of psychological torment over this project and didn't even have the nerve to give me a B+??? i'm still coping with the self-doubt they forced on me and this bullshit is not helping!!