#this got a little rambly

[the-exiled-comic]

Is it alright if I ask how Springflower is disabled? If you’d prefer not answer or have already said and I missed it that’s okay too! /gen

she has major depression and ptsd from what happened with her mate, Deepwater! :(

Deepwater and another cat Urchintail (Smallstripe, Cloverfall, and Softbriar's mother) had both drowned very unexpectedly in a riptide while hunting on the beach. Crowstar had given her two apprentices, Softbriar and Doveheart, back to back to try to keep her busy and essentially distracted from the incident (this was partially Sandywing's suggestion too). Doveheart was actually apprenticed late so that she could mentor him.

Springflower loves kids and loves mentoring and the busywork did help for a bit, so she didn't object to this at first. During Doveheart's apprenticeship however, Sandywing and Coralclaw really started fighting and she couldn't continue being "numb" to everything that had happened.

[the-one-who-lambs]

This is a super super gentle reminder not to put your favorite authors on a pedestal. We're real people living average lives and not trying to be influencers. We criticize ourselves enough and we don't want to be held to an invisible standard (we start to worry we fail to exceed our own selves) or compared to other writers (we are not competing) or tailor our craft to cater to a wider audience (the right people will find you).

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!

[bluerosefox]

Gray and Graysons

One of the Bats has a secret. Something they never told to the others.

They were so very young but they have memories of a sibling, so small and tiny. They remember the burst of warmth they had in their heart when they held the tiny baby for just a moment.

But they weren’t allowed to keep them, their family couldn’t raise them. Money was tight, just enough for three but not for four, despite their shows always bringing in a crowd it was getting harder and harder for the world to be wowed by them in the new age and their sibling was too small and tiny and needed to be cared in a single place than for them to be on the road. Their lifestyle was not good for his tiny sibling apparently.

They had to watch as their parents gave his sibling away to people in suits, them promising to give his baby brother to a loving family when they find a ‘home’ for him. He watched his parents try to be strong only for his mother to break down once the car left down the road, his father holding her and apologizing, the rest of the circus troupe all silently coming over to give the heartbroken family condolences.

Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson had tears running down his face when he last saw his baby brother.

A brother he got to name before he had to be given away.

Daniel ‘Danny’ Grayson.

-x-x-

Dick never told the others. If anyone dug deep into his past they might find his brother’s birth records maybe, if someone got around to digitizing the paperwork for him but given the fact he was placed in the US childcare systems just a few days after his birth and the fact that Dick was still pretty young they most likely believed he didn’t remember his baby brother now. Not after so many years.

But they were wrong, Dick remembers. And he kept the secret close to his heart and memories.

And the only physical evidence he had was a single picture of him holding his brother, a smile on his tiny face towards their father who had taken the photo of them together. When he had lost his parents, lost most of the things that connected him to them, to his past in the circus that had been his whole life, had been taken from him in Gotham’s ruthless childcare system, he held on tight to the picture in secret. Hid it away from anyone trying to rip it from him, hid it from Bruce when the man took him in days later, hid it from Alfred despite how gentle the butler was towards him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t risk losing his photo at the time, he hadn’t trusted anyone and by the time he did he didn’t have the heart to reveal it.

So yes, the existence of his baby brother Danny was his most guarded and best kept secret.

So that’s why Dick, as Nightwing, nearly died from a heart attack when leaving a Justice League meeting he spotted a familiar face among one of the new engineers working in the Watchtower.

It was like seeing a young version of himself. Only, Dick could see that the young man was more than a copy of him, so much more than a clone. He held many traces of John Grayson but also had a bit more of Mary Grayson than Dick did. Small details that Dick foggely remembers taking note when he had held his baby brother.

“Hey, hurry up with that report Gray!” Shouted the head engineer from down the hall, his hand beckoning the young adult to come over.

“Coming! And boss, I told you Danny is fine!” Danny shouted back before hurriedly leaving a stunned Nightwing.

[wasyago]

the brainrot won

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Do you like sci-fi and indie animation? Check out Monkey Wrench!

[chronicowboy]

we as a collective do Not talk about this line delivery nearly enough and for good fucking reason, i'll kill bradley james for this one line alone. he's just a little boy :'((

[kaleidoscopiccc]

oh you hate musicals? oh so youre allergic to all fun and whimsy then? youre against all joy and giddiness brought in front of you huh? you just hate any and all happiness and silly times dont you?

[liecanthrope]

wait because seriously being an adult therian fucking rips, especially when you start being independent.

dog with a blog? nah. dog with a JOB. i come into work with my tail and my theta delta necklace and the building implodes from my sheer swag. weirdo teenagers love me. also having your own paycheck means you can get whatever gear/treats you want (once bills are paid, of course - bet youve never heard a dog say that!)

living in your own apartment? well the pet limit is 2 but if i include myself im going over the limit. whoops! good thing i love lying to landlords (fuck landlords). living alone (no roomie) is even better bc theres no one to judge you for your animal habits. i can make a huge den in the living room and who is going to stop me?

i even have my own health insurance. bro. imagine being a dog with medicaid. im climbing the walls and howling and barking. i love being a dog filling out government paperwork.

having your own vehicle? THIS DOG CAN DRIVE! if i feel like going to the lake i can just go to the lake! nobody is stopping me! midnight ride with the windows down to howl at the moon? yes please!!

you can literally just go wherever bro. i moved 11 hours from my hometown to the mountains to feel more at home. i lived in the great plains and now i can just go out for a hike in the rockies and howl at the sky.

being an adult therian slaps so fucking hard i cant wait for the youth to grow up and experience the joy of freedom. yes being an adult is incredibly stressful but if youve been stifled living with family, you get a real chance to develop who you truly are. adult therians i love you im rubbing against your neck and mixing our scents. mwah.

[possamble]

What I love about Dungeon Meshi is that it says “eat, or be eaten,” but not as in “survival of the fittest.” “Eat, or be eaten,” because there is no third choice—every day of your life, one or the other will happen. If you choose not to eat, you will be eaten. Eating is a mandatory part of being alive. The failure to acknowledge this makes you weak, guarantees that you will fail—as seen with Shuro, as seen with Thistle.

“Eat, or be eaten,” because “living things take other lives as sustenance, and no one is exempt.” If you eat—if you are a living thing—you will be eaten one day. Whether it's to literally be killed and eaten for your flesh, or decomposed down to the bone—violently or painlessly, quickly or slowly, you will be eaten and turned into sustenance for other living things. A dead body is always consumed as food, and there is no meaningful distinction between the two. The only way to avoid it is to have never been born at all.

“Eat, or be eaten,” because “eating is a privilege of the living.” And isn’t that incredible? To be a living thing is to have the privilege of eating. To have the ability to eat is a boon, an honour, a birthright. It is the unique, universe-given gift and right of all living things. It is synonymous with being alive—to live is to eat. To eat is to be eaten. We are eaten because we eat, we die because we were born, and the privilege of eating is earned through the inevitability of our deaths. The two cannot be separated. 

“Eat, or be eaten,” because “eating is a privilege of the living” and the reason why a mortal man could topple the personification of infinity—it cannot die, therefore it is not alive, yet it chose to eat. But to eat at all is to become a thing that can be eaten—choosing to take means you will have things taken from you in the same manner. The moment that Laios accepted this—after killing his sister with his own hands—was the moment the Winged Lion had already lost.

Dungeon Meshi is far from the first story to say, “memento mori.” But it takes the inevitability of death—a concept too distant and philosophical to grip the average person—and reframes it within the act of eating. Makes it visceral by using a universal part of daily life, a routine that every living thing is intimately familiar with. 

“Remember that you will die,” it says, but furthermore, “remember that your future death is a prerequisite for the food you are able to eat now—remember that other things die so that you can eat, remember that you will die to feed something else, and that there is no other alternative. There is no way to stop this. To take is to have things taken from you. To eat is to be eaten one day. There is nothing kind or cruel about this—it just is, and you must be the one to understand it and bring meaning to your own existence.

In light of all this, why wouldn't you choose to live as deliciously as possible?”

[somnimagus]

My page for @kairizine. It was such a huge honor to be part of this wonderful book with everyone, I had so much fun!

[id in alt!]

[foldingfittedsheets]

You wouldn’t blame a crowbar for an act of destruction, you would blame the wielder. For this reason I can’t be held responsible for what happened to my friend Charlie’s bed. I was merely a tool that force was applied through.

It happened like this: Connor, Charlie, and I decided to have a late night movie viewing at Charlie’s house. We watched The Hogfather and Groundhogs day and we stayed up until 4am. Then we were all too tired to drive home and crashed. I got the bed and the boys took the floor.

Four hours later, Charlie’s parents woke up. They learned that Charlie had people over. They. Were. Furious. Because unbeknownst to us it turned out they had swine flu. Charlie should had been quarantining not bringing people to his plague house. They ordered Charlie to kick us out that very moment.

Charlie came to rouse us. I am… not at my best in the morning hours. Four hours of sleep did not leave my disposition gruntled. Charlie began trying to rouse me to pretty much no avail. He pulled the covers off, shook me, tried to take my pillow, but I was a tiny ball of sleepy vicious rage. When he shook me I’m pretty sure I bit him.

I should be clear, I wasn’t really awake. A baseline function was taking place but no real actual thought. I was piloting on pure instinct and the instinct was: need more sleep. Charlie tried everything while Connor watched in bemusement.

Finally Charlie got the idea that if he physically lifted me out of bed I’d go. He managed to get his hands under my arms and start dragging me off the bed.

Two things happened very quickly. My toes wrapped around the top of the railing to his bed frame, and I went limp everywhere else. Charlie staggered and almost dropped me, because holding a floppy corpse body is much harder than a tensed one, a fact I had learned from many roughhousing attacks by my brother.

He swore and then gamely started trying to drag me backward, thinking it would be easy to dislodge my toes from the bed frame. It was not. I’ve mentioned before that my toes are strong, but Charlie was flabbergasted that their grip on the bed was so strong that he couldn’t drag me away.

I was going on pure stubborn instinct. I did not want to leave the bed. Charlie was fully committed that a 90lb gremlin wasn’t going to beat him in a contest of strength with only her toes. So he pulled. And I held on.

Both of us were shocked when there was a tortured shriek of wood and something in the bed frame cracked. It was loud enough that I actually woke up. The rest of my brain surfaced in confusion to join the lizard brain whose only goal had been not to leave the bed.

I released my toes and took my own weight and Charlie and I stared at the bed.

“You ripped the railing off!”

“Well, no, you ripped the railing off, I was just the tool. If you hadn’t been pulling on me-“

“If you had just let go! What is up with your feet?!”

We griped as I readied myself to leave his plague house, joining his parents in being mad that Charlie hadn’t told us they were sick. I drove home to sleep more.

Over the years of our friendship Charlie still maintained that I broke the bed. I disagreed and think I was only the tool by which he broke the bed. Only you can decide who bears the most sin, the dragger or the dragee.

[symbiotic-slime]

eddie freaking out over his neighbour’s music will always be peak overstimulation rep to me

like this is literally how it feels

[bluerosefox]

The Amazing Adventures of Timothy Drake and Little Baby Man Danny. AKA two feral raccoons loose in Gotham.

Guys.

Something stirred in my head.

Imagine

TINY! (A little bit feral) Tim, whose been taking pics of our Bat and Bird finds... drum roll please.

Little baby man Danny. Who jumped Tim for the Batbruger the kid had for a late night snack (look baby man Danny was hungry, he hadnt eaten in days at that point)

Imagine the chaos those two would get into.

[howlonomy]

Monster Clover, like this is so awesomecool.

They're such a little beast and it is amazing and please i need more, like written text even i just need the juicy lore and emotional moments that are circling in ur brain.

HAT: RETRIEVED!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Get Souped!