pondering my lorb

We Are All Pondering His Orbs

Prompt 266

Back on my Danny & Ras frienemies/rivals/maybe-lovers-nobody-can-tell-their-signals-are-very-mixed train. 

See, Danny has gone through time a lot. Often. It comes with being Clockwork’s charge-son-thing and honestly he finds it fun. And several times he’s used this time travelling to get some training in. Enter Ras, stage left, also a teen at the time and also learning swordsmanship from the same person. 

And they… utterly despise each other. They would kill the other for an apple slice, if the other one would die! But also, only they can kill the other, as it is obviously their right! 

And well, they keep running into each other. It has been a hundred years, surely the other would die by now? But of course their rival would live through utter spite. Probably to spite them specifically. 

The amount of times they have ended up sparring- trying to kill each other or not- the moment they see the other is actually ridiculous. But time is also passing. And… Danny understands, not having another to talk about things people are forgetting, or have already forgotten. 

How they ended up actually talking without a murder attempt was a long story that included a demon, a dragon, a pair of fae, some bandits, and a lot of alcohol, but it happened. And then it happens again. And again, and now it’s just kind of normal to share a drink after their spars, talking about things that no longer exist, and things they miss. 

Sure Danny can go back in time again, but he knows better than to do it willy nilly. He’s matured, he’s been an adult for a hundred years now, he knows there’s consequences for messing with time, even with Clockwork’s blessings. 

The first time they got married was technically for an undercover assassination. Well, Ras was there to assassinate someone, Danny was there to grab an artifact that should Not be in the realm of the living. And they got divorced after, it was fine. 

They just, also got married again when they met a few years later, for another job. And… okay, so maybe they have gotten married over a dozen times now and only divorced like half of those times. Half of those were for the bit or while drunk! 

And even if technically they’re married or shared a bed, it’s not like they're exclusive! As Ras’ daughters’ existences attest to (adopted in one case or not). They don’t exactly have a label for their relationship, despite others asking for one or trying to put a name to it themselves. 

Now Danny knows Ras isn’t exactly a good dude, or at least on the side of ‘good’ as he’s a literal assassin. But he also knows that good? Bad? Rather relative. He had gotten labeled as a villain when he was just trying to help all that time ago after all, and really who was he to tell someone else how to live their life? 

Which brings him to now, where he’s run into his old frienemy-rival and his youngest daughter. Who has a braindead teenager and a small toddler. Which is fine, really- but also, Talia dear, why are you using a brain dead teenager to guard your three year old son? 

…

Okay, Talia dear, Ras (Derogatory), why are you using your brain dead son and grandson to guard your younger son and grandson? Do you not have the Pits, which you were soo proud about Ras? Yes, he will spar with you, but for Realms’ sake, heal, what’s his name? Ah yes, go heal Jason and he’ll actually stick around for a few years, deal? Good. 

happiness today and tomorrow (ID in alt)

Pac: Oh, Nenê... How cute... 🥺💕

After dying to an atomic creeper in a cave and stressing over potentially losing all his items, Pac returns home to set his spawn and receives a sweet surprise:

His cat falls asleep on top of him and purrs when he goes to bed :')

Inspired by your last ask! What are the best French books you’ve read that have no English translation yet? I read Play Boy and Qui a tué mon père (really loved the latter) last year and it feels so fun to read something that other Americans can’t access yet

I'm too nervous to make any list of the Best XYZ Books because I don't want to raise your expectations too high! But okay, here's my No English Translation-themed list of books I've enjoyed in recent years. I tried to make it eclectic in terms of genre as I don't know what you prefer :)

Biographies

• Le dernier inventeur, Héloïse Guay de Bellissen: I just love prehistory and unusual narrators so I enjoyed this one; it's about the kids who discovered the cave of Lascaux, and some of the narration is written from the perspective of the cave <3 I posted a little excerpt here (in English).

• Ces femmes du Grand Siècle, Juliette Benzoni: Just a fun collection of portraits of notable noblewomen during the reign of Louis XIV, I really liked it. For people who like the 17th century. I think it was Emil Cioran who said his favourite historical periods were the Stone Age and the 17th century but tragically the age of salons led to the Reign of Terror and Prehistory led to History.

• La Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure Hillerin: I've mentioned this one before, it's about the fascinating Belle Époque French socialite who was (among other things) the inspiration for Proust's Duchess of Guermantes. I initially picked it up because I will read anything that's even vaguely about Proust but it was also a nice aperçu of the Belle Époque which I didn't know much about.

• Nous les filles, Marie Rouanet: I've also recommended this one before but it's such a sweet little viennoiserie of a book. The author talks about her 1950s childhood in a town in the South of France in the most detailed, colourful, earnest way—she mentions everything, describes all the daft little games children invent like she wants ageless aliens to grasp the concept of human childhood, it's great.

I'll add Trésors d'enfance by Christian SIgnol and La Maison by Madeleine Chapsal which are slightly less great but also sweet short nostalgic books about childhood that I enjoyed.

Fantasy

• Mers mortes, Aurélie Wellenstein: I read this one last year and I found the characters a bit underwhelming / underexplored but I always enjoy SFF books that do interesting things with oceans (like Solaris with its sentient ocean-planet), so I liked the atmosphere here, with the characters trying to navigate a ghost ship in ghost seas...

• Janua Vera, Jean-Philippe Jaworski: Not much to say about it other than they're short stories set in a mediaeval fantasy world and no part of this description is usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this read!

Essays / literary criticism / philosophy

• Eloge du temps perdu, Frank Lanot: I thought this was going to be about idleness, as the title suggests, and I love books about idleness. But it's actually a collection of short essays about (French) literature and some of them made me appreciate new things about authors and books I thought I knew by heart, so I enjoyed it

• Le Pont flottant des rêves, Corinne Atlan: Poetic musings about translation <3 that's all

• Sisyphe est une femme, Geneviève Brisac: Reflections about the works of female writers (Natalia Ginzburg, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, etc) that systematically made me want to go read the author in question, even when I'd already read & disliked said author. That's how you know it's good literary criticism

Let's add L'Esprit de solitude by Jacqueline Kelen which as the title suggests, ponders the notion of solitude, and Le Roman du monde by Henri Peña-Ruiz which was so lovely to read in terms of literary style I don't even care what it was about (it's philosophy of foundational myths & stories) (probably difficult to read if you're not fully fluent in French though)

Did not fit in the above categories:

• Entre deux mondes by Olivier Norek—it's been translated in half a dozen languages, I was surprised to find no English translation! It's a crime novel and a pretty bleak read on account of the setting (the Calais migrant camp) but I'd recommend it

• Saga, Tonino Benacquista: Also seems to have been translated in a whole bunch of languages but not English? :( I read it ages ago but I remember it as a really fun read. It's a group of loser screenwriters who get hired to write a TV series, their budget is 15 francs and a stale croissant and it's going to air at 4am so they can do whatever they want seeing as no one will watch it. So they start writing this intentionally ridiculous unhinged show, and of course it acquires Devoted Fans

Books that I didn't think existed in English translation but they do! but you can still read them in French if you want

• Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood, Michaël Ferrier: What it says on the tin! It's a short and well-written account of the author's childhood in Chad just before the civil war. I read it a few days ago and it was a good read, but then again I just love bittersweet stories of childhood

• On the Line, Joseph Ponthus: A short diary-like account of the author's assembly line work in a fish factory. I liked the contrast between the robotic aspect of the job and the poetic nature of the text; how the author used free verse / repetition / scansion to give a very immediate sense of the monotony and rhythm of his work (I don't know if it's good in English)

• The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis: The memoir of a gay man growing up in a poor industrial town in Northern France—pretty brutal but really good

• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran: Yet another memoir sorry, I love people's lives! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight as a child, and was in the Resistance during WWII despite being blind. It's a great story, both for the historical aspects and for the descriptions of how the author experiences his blindness

• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception, Emmanuel Carrère: an account of the Jean-Claude Romand case—a French man who murdered his whole family to avoid being discovered as a fraud, after spending his entire adult life pretending to be a doctor working at the WHO and fooling everyone he knew. Just morbidly fascinating, if you like true crime stuff

You know I think you guys might be on to something when you call Sam woman coded cause - genuinely - how do you, as writers of a show, be so misogynistic as to not include any female characters asides from damsels and hookups (specifically referring to the early seasons), and yet need so desperately to have a outlet for macho masculine patriarchy power dynamics that you have an adult male character experience misogyny?? How do you mess up that badly??

It's like, although they thought that putting female characters in the narrative other than to exist as sexy distressed lamps wouldn't appeal to the true blooded 2000s American audience. But yet it was completely necessary for there to be a bottom rung in the masculinity pyramid because - well how else can we as a society function!!

Anyway, ik reading too far into things is my special talent, and in most circumstances all of this stuff is just a joke in the show but wow they really had Dean poking fun of any of Sam's characteristics that don't fit into this Hyper True Blooded American Masculinity ideology as a butt of jokes for 15 years. The fact that he has longer hair, that he cares about his hair, that he's tidy, that he likes salads and isn't a big meat eater, that he's sympathetic, that he's a bitch. And of course these are just silly little jabs that Dean makes in sibling-like fashion but like wow 15 years. Damn.

And of course it's not only this that leads to the rather odd interpretation of a woman-coded Sam, but also the way he is treated directly by the narrative. Like, for example, being the family's possession, rather than an equal member. Dean has seen it as his job to look out for his little brother since he pulled him from the fire and the wellbeing of this infant was thrown onto his shoulders at age 4, and this has created a lot of ricocheting effects on both of them. This isn't to say that Dean doesn't love, care, respect, and value Sam, but it does mean that sometimes he treats him like a possession rather than a person. He makes a lot of crazy decisions in the show that he justifies as being for Sam's own good, even if it goes directly against Sam's wishes. After Sam leaves a note to Dean telling him he's going out for a bit to handle a case, Dean weasels his way in, not trusting him to handle it due to the mental issues Sam is facing at the time, and kills Amy, despite Sam begging him not to. Even though Dean knows Sam would never consent to an angle possessing him, he tricks him into it anyway. He does these things, and many others because he believes that he is acting in Sam's best interests, totally disregarding the fact that Sam has capacity to make judgements and handle the consequences himself, even going so far as to oppose what he directly knows or Sam tells him he wants.

Then of course there is the fact that the fear integral to his character - a loss of autonomy (bodily autonomy, but also autonomy to make his own decisions about his future, to be good, to be pure and faithful), is an explicitly feminine one. Then there is the strong subtext in his story of SA themes, I think in s4 a demon even refers to Sam as a 'whore' or that he's 'whoring it up' (with respect to Ruby), and the interesting prevalent idea of Sam questioning or going against the ideals/ideology of the masculine figure head (which would be Dean I guess) and getting punished for it. Sam suggests that maybe they take a more humanitarian approach with the cow blood drinking vampires in s2 and Dean punches him, Sam tries to get him to talk about their Dad and Dean punches him, Sam tries to get him to talk about Lisa and Ben and Dean punches him, Sam gets caught simply using his abilities and Dean punches him - twice. I think you get the picture.

Anyway. This post comes off as rather critical of Dean, which wasn't really my intention. It's more sort of a broader criticism of the rampant sexism that had its part in shaping the show - being one to come out of the early 2000s. Ideas such as this - you could really go on for hours as its fascinating how ideological frameworks are presented certain ways in media - and the way masculine and feminine social dynamics, to list only one, is presented in supernatural is definitely a can of worms.

But what if we’re all, “There HAS to be other life in the universe because otherwise it’s such a waste of space,” and then it turns out God is like, “It’s not wasted, I made it all for you. I am not constrained by time and space and I wanted to give you a glimpse of my Glory and fill your skies with endless wonder.”

more of Mae's adventures in Castle Dracula

aka: Maedhros used Punch! It's super effective!

ok but speaking from experience as someone who's had first kisses w a crush. y'all KNOW ed was getting his plan in place thinking abt that kiss the whole time, playing over every tiny detail while he robbed a guy for a dinghy. motherfucker probably got all fluttery and giggly thinking abt the little noise stede made. probably couldn't stop smiling when he thought abt the way stede's jaw fit perfectly in his hand. probably sat down to take a minute when he remembered how stede's eyes took a moment to flutter back open. probably got DIZZY thinking abt stede's crooked smile and the way he'd whispered, "you make stede happy"

rolling up to the dock with his bag of stuff already planning how he's gonna kiss stede again, kiss him properly, as soon as they're safely away. maybe thinking he won't be able to wait, that he'll kiss him again as soon as he sees him because his heart literally feels like it's going to burst out of his chest he's so, so happy

the subtitler understood the assignment

I feel weird giving out unprompted permission statements because I'm making a big assumption that anyone's going to want to use my work. That said I also know people do like to build on other people's art and can't always work up the nerve to ask, so: Anyone is free to use this design if they want to for any reason- I don't own this character anyway. (Although I am hopeful that you do not, you know, monetize it, because i cant do that and if you do that its not fair ;_; ) Feel free to remix, improve, use as basic inspiration, etc. I would appreciate a tag/mention if you use it so I can see what you did!

This design has evolved a little since I first started drawing it, and I will see people reblogging the original design notes and think 'oh no! those are out of date and I don't have new/accurate ones!'

Reblogging the old one is still an honor- and the first take on a design just sometimes has a different appeal because it's less refined and more chaotic (especially with a character that should be chaotic), so I suspect some people will just prefer the older drawings & they'll still get shared, which is great! But I felt as if the project was a little bit incomplete without an update, since I think I've reached the point where if you see that old post & then come to my blog and look at my current content, there's a noticeable difference.

Also I kind of like making design notes.

If anyone's wondering why things changed, the answer's really simple- 90% of it is just the result of him settling into having more consistent anatomy and facial structure so that I can keep him looking accurate across different angles and poses. If you look at the old drawings you may notice that Gollum has an inconsistently shaped squishy head. That's fine for a concept post but doesn't work as well for maintaining him across different comic panels or in an animatic, at least not the way I work.

In the same vein, while my art is still & will always be heavily stylized, I started giving him more structured semi-sorta-realistic anatomy so that he wouldn't look entirely out of place next to less bizarre-looking characters such as Aragorn. (I feel that's also helpful in nudging Gollum into the uncanny valley where he ought to be, rather than leaving him so abstractified that there's a risk you won't see anything wrong with him having noodle arms.) He also acquired the new-style 'garbage bag' outfit because I found a reference in LOTR to his arms and legs being bare/exposed (it's in one of my favorite passages, the 'an eagle would think Gollum was dead if it came by right now' passage in The Two Towers):

Not even an eagle poised against the sun would have marked the hobbits sitting there, under the weight of doom, silent, not moving, shrouded in their thin grey cloaks. For a moment he might have paused to consider Gollum, a tiny figure sprawling on the ground: there perhaps lay the famished skeleton of some child of Men, its ragged garment still clinging to it, its long arms and legs almost bone-white and bone-thin: no flesh worth a peck.

wondering about Frank and insects but specifically about how it looks like the WH insects are highly stylized, so does Frank even know anything about real butteflies/insects?

& if he saw a real one, would he recognize it? are all of the species names he applies to the WH bugs real, or are they all made up like "Vibrant Eyespot" or "Fluttering Heartwing"?

and then there's the question - does the neighborhood have some of the more 'undesirable' bugs like moths, worms, roaches, spiders? does it have bugs outside of the generic groups of beetles and butterflies? like are there mantids? leafbugs? dragonflies? weevils? or are those too specific/complex/not-cute for the Playfellow Workshop to have included?

and then there's the question of what are the bugs? props? puppets? are they alive or do the neighbors just perceive them as such? Do they even exist outside of art, storybooks, and animated segments? I highly doubt they're alive like the neighbors are, since in the gif of Frank's head spinning, the framed butterflies' wings are moving. which is kind of horrifying if you think about it for more than a second.

just... the critters Frank loves so so so much being a complete fabrication... every piece of knowledge he prides himself on / delights in knowing being utterly Untrue... oof

Alternate Times of Shadow duos from some other Once upon a time!

do you think carpenter has had any time to think about how faulkner killed the maybe-sort-of-uncle(ish) who brought her back to her faith? do you think carpenter, of all the people in this podcast, misses mason the most? not....a lot, because of....well, reasons too numerous to name, but once she's had the chance to breathe and sleep and eat a couple half-burnt pancakes, do you think she realizes that literally no one else alive remembers when she was eighteen and carried a knife just in case; when she was twenty-two and high on the thrill of being in same room as the gulfwalker; when she was twenty-six and went to him, begged him, and he didn't ask why her new partner needed to be reassigned, just pursed his lips and reassigned him. they never even really talked about their lives outside of the parish. he tried to manipulate her, propel her to higher heights, but she wriggled out of those attempts; disappeared into the wilderness for months on end. she once tried to ask if he had---a wife, a child? family of any kind?---and in retaliation, he sent her to the other end of the peninsula for six months, chasing a lead that might have been entirely made up. probably by him.

mason was selfish and power-hungry, and definitely using her, and carpenter knew that---she knew it deep down from the start, and then later with a kind of weary acceptance. she knew. but he knew her too, and until she got assigned to a recent convert with just a little bit (a lot bit) of hunger and madness in his eyes....mason was the only one who did.

Meat Marionette #11?

Thinkin about the rogues in this Au, and like, the difference between their relationship with the bats vs this Au. 

 For example, Selina. I’ll admit I take a bit of inspiration from the 2022 movie and mix it with comic depictions along with the different cartoons, which honestly isn’t too different from each other by too much. Now, I don’t think that Catwoman would flirt with this version of Batman, what with his body being a meat puppet that is visibly not human and off putting. There’s also the fact that she would have been an early-ish rogue of his, at least in order of encounters. Which means that she probably encounters the Bat for the first time while Bruce was still getting used to said gifted body, which in turn was probably terrifying. So there’s still a cat and mouse game happening, but it’s more akin to Selina doing her darn best to avoid the Bat no matter what, because to her it isn’t above trying to kill. It’s like seeing a lion where you figure you’re safe at this distance, until it starts moving and you realize that you are definitely not far enough away. 

 Another rogue that I am thinking of is Harvey and Two-Face (Which DC, give Two-Face a proper name :/ he’s his own dude even if they share a body). Harvey was best friends with Bruce, hell they were practically high-school sweethearts in some cases! And Bruce still visits him in Arkham, canonically still talks and interacts with both his friend and TF. Now if anyone is going to notice the changes to Bruce, it’s going to be Harvey. He’s going to be the first to notice how Bruce’s movements are now dangerous and downright predatory, with too much grace even for a dancer or martial artist. There’s something familiar about that movement, and Harvey isn’t an idiot, TF isn’t one either. They know there’s something wrong with Bruce even if he insists he’s fine. In canon Harvey straight up broke down and cried when he found out Bruce was Batman, so I’m wondering what their reaction to this version of the bat would be…

 There’s also rogues like the Riddler and the Joker who are downright obsessed with Batman, but would they still be with this one? I could see Joker slowly becoming obsessed as the creatures continue to thwart him over and over again, but I’m still rotating Riddler. 

 But y’know who would definitely be obsessed with the batclan?

Scarecrow. The man is obsessed with studying fear, with the effects it has and how to cause it. So the bats, who bring terror wherever they go, with something about them continuously tingling at the back of ones’ more instinctive mind that this is something to fear? He would be utterly enthralled, he’d need to know more, he’d need to know Everything. Especially if his fear toxin doesn’t work right on them. After all, how would a gas effect something without lungs? How can you inject something that doesn’t have blood, that’s not quite alive, not in the way that we as humans understand? How can you cause fear of something that has stared into the Tunnels’ heart and lived? Or something like that lol. 

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AU is a combo of my cryptid batfam and @phoenixcatch7 's Possessed Doll au, go check them out, they're amazing

between kaycee's avatar constantly wearing the ring and her ebay user being leshys_gurl i have a fierce desire to know if these are intentionally pointing towards leshy and kaycee have feelings for each other yet i would rather explode in the kiln than email the dev a shipping inquiry so here im just sitting here