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#I hope he ends up okay
radio-ghost-cooks · 7 months
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utau/vocaloid I want to see used more often
I've found that the male/masculine voicebanks are often under-appreciated, and I really love the sound of a lot of them!! my favorites:
Matsudappoiyo (utau)
VY2 (vocaloid)
all of the Zola Project (vocaloids; Yuu, Kyo, and Wil)
Dex (vocaloid)
I'm gonna include Fukase and Oliver here bc as popular as they're becoming, I still feel like they're underutilized (vocaloids)
Longya (vocaloid, CHN voicebank)
Yukone Ruko's masc voicebank!!! people use their fem one a lot but i'd love to see some really skilled masc tuning too!! (utau)
im also gonna include Gakupo bc I feel like he was big in the 00's-10's but I don't see him much anymore (vocaloid)
shuu mawarine (utau)
KYE (utau)
i understand that some of the vocaloids fell out of favor after their voicebanks were never updated, but in some cases it couldn't be helped (like in Gakupo's case; GACKT literally can't sing atm, he developed a serious case of dysphonia about a year ago and several other autoimmunity issues. I feel bad for him :[ )
if anyone has song recommendations for either og songs or covers let me know!!!!
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willowser · 1 month
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touya is halfway through his workday, grease up to his elbows, little jumpsuit half undone down to his waist, when iguchi comes in to tell him "someone's askin' for you out here".
he's not sure who it could be, but there's no telling, so he just decides to take a smoke break and wander out of the automotive garage, maybe imagining one of siblings out on the pavement.
but the minute he sees you, he stops. nearly drops his cigarette on a rough, "oh shit."
it's been a while since he's seen you, a year or two, and the packet of paper in your hand can only mean one, bullshit thing.
"nah, nah, nah, i ain't signing any papers," is how he greets you, shaking his head the minute you start up the path with a big, determined frown. touya doesn't run, but he sure twists on his heel and starts back up the path, too, as you start calling out his name.
practically all of his coworkers are watching when he comes back into view, not bothering to hide how nosy they're being. their audience makes you falter just a tad and touya clings onto it; anything to stop you.
"never a good sign when your wife comes to find you at work."
there's a long silence, from everyone. when he looks back at you—at your manilla folder and carefully stapled documents, your petition for divorce—your eyes are heavy and wet, almost the same way they were when the two of you stood in a courtroom, lying about your age in order to pledge until death do you part.
almost. now they're just sad.
from somewhere in the garage, toga calls out a bewildered, "you have a wife?" that makes him feel a way he can't understand, both amused and devastated all at once.
your wedding ring isn't on your finger, but if he stares long enough, he can maybe see the difference in color of your skin, a former tan-line that's begun to fade.
he sold his for stuff he shouldn't have been buying, stuff that ruined him and you and your marriage, a long time ago.
but touya only smiles, and calls back, "yeah, i do."
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seventh-district · 16 days
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Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 4 - Nuthin' but Boothill Edition
[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]
#boothill#honkai star rail#hsr#hsr incorrect quotes#hsr memes#honkai star rail memes#hsr meme#honkai star rail meme#hsr textpost#hsr boothill#boothill hsr#hsr spoilers#hsr 2.2 spoilers#hmmm... don't think it's worth tagging the others in the 9th image. this ain't about them#still unsure abt how to do the alt text for these kinda posts properly but hopefully i'm improving#anyways. don't think i've ever seen heard and typed "cowboy' so many times in one day as i have while making this good lord#i did a bit of digging around and haven't Seen any of these done yet so. here's hoping that's the case!#i'm only ~3/4 of the way through the 2.2 main quest but the need to make these compelled me to put these out Now#i can already tell u that there Will be more of these for Boothill tho bc i'm crazy abt him. probably enough to make another dedicated post#but i'm gonna wait until i'm fully caught up on the plot (and will probably spoil myself for more of his character lore after that as well)#speaking of. i'm gonna go eat mac n' cheese and stay up too late playing through the rest of the main quest#i'm loving it so far. many thoughts head full abt it all but in a good way. hoping for more Boothill moments as we approach the end#he's def not the main character here but he is to Me okay. he is to me. i'm scarfing down every crumb he drops#i'm also suffering from Aventurine withdrawals out here. Argenti mentioning him was Interesting but i need More. Where Is He.#also. was Argenti intentionally not voiced or was it a game issue?? the hell was that. threw me off so hard when i couldn't hear him speak#anyways i'm getting off topic and wasting precious gaming time so i'll be takin' my leave now
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skitskatdacat63 · 8 months
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For Dru (@fortheloveofaussiegrit), thank you for completely and utterly brainrotting me with this moment 🙏
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shakingparadigm · 15 days
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what is the theory that ivan manipulated the event where till and mizi met the wagyein?
It's not a theory, actually! It's confirmed that Ivan orchestrated the whole event. The true reason as to why however is still unknown. The information provides more context to this scene, though:
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During the earlier times of ALNST the most rational explanation for this scene was that Till ran after a flower crown (presumably Mizi's) and Ivan followed him in out of curiosity. Now we know that Ivan was conveniently just standing there because he was waiting.
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Side note, I find it heartbreaking (and maybe a little funny, sorry) that Till most likely didn't notice Ivan in this scene. That's just like him, isn't it. Always too busy running after Mizi while Ivan trails behind, an ever-present shadow.
I'm not sure how Ivan manipulated the circumstances for both of them to end up there, but it is confirmed that everything was intentional. What strikes me most is how they describe this particular scene:
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I can't copy down what they said word-for-word (Patreon info), but they described Ivan watching "creepily" as Till and Mizi are faced with danger. We know that Ivan was familiar with the Cerberus wagyein beforehand, enough to touch its teeth and even to rest himself inside its maw. To Ivan, the wagyein is not dangerous, but to Till and Mizi, it could be. Ivan prepared the wagyein, led them there, and watched "creepily" from afar as Till fell on his knees, seemingly injured.
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The closest I can get to making sense of Ivan's "scheme" is that he wanted to see how other children would react in a dangerous situation. Ivan's always been an observer, after all, and he's learned to survive by copying the more "normal" behaviors of his peers. This situation occured when Ivan was still young and had not yet developed his more charming mask, so perhaps he staged this encounter to study a situational response, to learn and mimic the emotion of fear. And what better subjects for the experiment than two of the most expressive and reactive humans of their batch? It helps that he was already fixated on Till beforehand, too. I think Ivan became irreversibly obssessed after this incident, especially since it's framed as a turning point in Ivan's life, comparing Till to the stars.
This is just my attempt at an interpretation, though. It could very well be for another reason. He most likely chose Till and Mizi specifically for personal reasons, not just for reaction. I'm still not sure on the purpose behind the whole thing.
The team wanted to capture Ivan's "dark emotions" through the shot of his stalking, which could relate to his more sinister intentions. His gaze can be read in a few different ways, though. Curiosity, interest, fear, etc. Maybe that's why they decided to redraw the shot in ROUND 6.
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I think this better sells the feeling they were trying to convey.
#ivan u fucked up little guy.#also okay i just wanna clear this up#i know i make a lot of posts about ivans darker side and his more problematic traits#but this isn't me trying to villainize him or reduce him down to “toxic yaoi”#I HOPE YOU GUYS KNOW ALL MY TOXIC YAOI POSTS ARE LIGHTHEARTED.#i just want to clarify that ivan was always intended to be a darker and complicated character. even since his debut in round 3#the way i refer to ivan (“twisted” “creepy” “obssessive” etc) are literally the direct words used by q and v themselves to describe him#but despite that id like to emphasize that i don't see ivan as a villain or a completely bad person. hes complicated#there is no normalcy in this world they are living in. none of the characters know what being truly normal is#this isn't me condoning his actions#but it has to be acknowledged that alnst is fucked up in nature. we can't expect perfect relationships from people who are born to die#plus ivan has a lot more layers past the “dark” parts. he's constantly battling himself and his desires#especially at the end of round 6 where he performs a myriad of conflicting actions (kiss strangle peck smile)#thanks to the r6 production notes we now know that ivan was going through a rapid internal conflict#“sure and unsure at the same time”#there is sooo much to ivan. his low self-esteem. his desire and possessiveness despite knowing till will never love him#his VEHEMENT insistence that till will never love him vs his desperate persistence in trying anyway#uh i need to shut up i think#anyways sorry. just wanted to clarify my thoughts on him in case people think im. yk.#in short. hes a fucked up little freak and he fascinates me. this poor tragic child. i love him.#SORRY I GOT CARRIED AWAY#alnst#alien stage#alien stage ivan#alnst ivan#asks
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chirpsythismorning · 1 month
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Fun fact: In the original pitch for Stranger Things, El had a little brother.
After being rejected by almost 20 studios for the Montauk pilot, the Duffers were finally green-lit by Netflix. It was at this time that they began casting and then writing the first season officially, which included reworking a lot of that first episode.
This led to the removal of the brother reference, and with it, removing any sort of arc El could have had about her apparent brother.
But the thing about this moment, is that it might not have been scrapped entirely...
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Going into the final season, no one can explain why or how El recognized Will back in 1x02. And while there are plenty of things on the show that are left unexplained, with a small portion likely left that way with the intention to uncover it later, what sets this moment apart from the rest is that there are very few possibilities here.
Because for starters, the story presents El's ability to see people in the void in s1 as requiring either a picture of that person for reference, or having met that person before.
But when El see's this picture of Will, she's never met him before. Or maybe she has, but we wouldn't know because they never showed us. They could have just not done this scene at all, given that it's clearly a copy/paste/edit of something scrapped from the pitch. Or they could have even still included it, but explained it.
One explanation could be that the lab had shown El a picture of Will before, similar to what they did with the Russian agent they wanted to spy on. But then that begs to question, why would the lab show El a picture of Will? Why would they want to see what he was doing? That alone is incriminating in and of itself, implying that Will is more connected to the lab than we realize.
The only other, and frankly most likely explanation, would be that El stumbled across Will at some point on her journey between escaping the lab and Will going missing. This is actually something that happens in The Other Side comic, which explores all the things Will may have experienced during his time in the Upside Down.
Though it’s worth noting the comics aren’t technically canon, and I highly doubt they would outright spoil everything in relation to Will’s time there, years before it was intended to be revealed. But still, let's humor this for a moment given that I do think Will's time in the UD is going to be very relevant in s5, which means it's highly likely they will finally address how exactly El saw him.
Basically, in the comic, Will see’s El walking through the woods, almost apparition like, glowing as she passes by, while also sporting the Benny’s burgers shirt. This means they would have crossed passed within a short span of time, between when El escaped Benny’s when the agents arrived, but before she was found by the boys.
Though it’s worth noting that we’re seeing this all from Will’s perspective. This means from the UD, Will was capable of seeing El on the other side, despite them being on different sides. And not only that, but she also looks back at him.
What confuses me about this, is that it doesn’t make sense for El to be in the woods, only to randomly decide to pop in to the void for a moment. She was trying to escape the lab and everything that came with it. I doubt she had any desire to lurk back there for some reason, not until someone encouraged her to. Not to mention, it would make no sense for her to go there and see Will if she wasn't even looking for him in the first place. And so this would mean Will and El could see each other, with Will being in the UD, and El being on the other side.
While it does seem pretty far off, given that you would think Will and El wouldn't be able to see each other from different sides, it is true in the story that El not only recognizes Will, but knows that he is in danger. She mentions that he is hiding specifically.
Which means she has likely seen him within the last 24 hours regardless.
This, in combination with Will being able to respond to El in the void at the end of the season in Castle Byers, when no one else outside of Terry and flayed-Billy have been able to, seems to imply that there is indeed something special about Will that makes him capable of communicating with El from the UD. Not only that, but El also seems to have an ability to be in this constant knowing state of how Will is doing, without even checking again to confirm. She's just certain of it. And she seems terrified about it.
Going forward, El never uses a picture of Will to find him. She never did. And more often than not, they don’t show us what she see’s either, not until the very end. And that’s the moment they reveal that he was able to communicate with her.
Again, there was really no reason to have El recognize Will. If anything it complicates things. But the fact that they chose to introduce this concept, with a scene from the original pitch that was related to El’s younger brother, with her pointing at his name cryptically, startling Benny, only to revamp it and have El not say anything at all while pointing at the picture of Will, startling Mike… It just really makes you stop and think.
Which brings me to the other aspect of this that might have people doubting, which is that El’s brother was originally younger than her.
We know Will is not younger than El, so how could this apply to him?
Well, it might be helpful to consider that in the original script, El was actually 10 years old, while the boys were always 12. Meaning that for some reason, they decided to age her up to the age of the boys, aka the same age as Will…
Ever since @erikiara80 shared this brother discovery with me, I have been sort of reeling. It then led to other little discoveries of changes they made between Montauk and Stranger Things.
It’s important to understand that the Montauk bible and the original script precedes what we ended up with in the final product, with it finally changing and evolving months, maybe even a year since that original vision. Even casting occurred before writing started for the first season. We know this because casting announcements were made in June and August of 2015, with writing not starting until August going into early 2016, simultaneously while they were filming.
And believe it or not, what I've discovered is that a lot of the changes they made between their original plans and what we see in the final product, have to do with not only Willel, but also Byler.
If you've read the original script for Montauk, you'll know that Mike's crush on Jennifer Hayes was focused on right from the jump, along with the birthmark on his face being focused on, which was the main cause of the bullying he experienced.
This has actually been talked about recently, and some of the claims people make do fit with what I am genuinely starting to consider here, which is that the initial plan for what makes Mike an outcast shifted.
I think when they completed casting, and started actually deep diving into what they wanted this world to look like, both from a short-term and long-term standpoint, they were presented with some pretty interesting discoveries, arguably already hiding in their initial plans without realizing it.
And this is where it sort of becomes a 'chicken or the egg' situation. Because which one came first? Byler or Willel?
I can't say for certain, because obviously this is all just speculation. But in the case that Willel came first, I think Byler would come very naturally after that.
The Duffers themselves are twins. Then they hire Noah, who is a twin. Then they're thinking and planning for El's past and how her family all fits into this, and they're thinking... wait a damn minute... We could totally Star Wars this bitch!
And then when they think it couldn't get any better, they uncover another layer that they hadn't planned or really considered in their initial plans.
While Will was always going to have sexual identity issues according to the Montauk bible, meaning that the writing process for him likely involved sitting down imagining scenarios that encapsulated this arc for Will from the beginning, they were simultaneously now finding very interesting aspects of Mike's character that made it hard not to at least consider the possiblity that Mike is not exactly straight.
Just think about it. The Byers and Wheelers are basically polar opposites on the spectrum of what a family looks like. While Will's discovery and acceptance of his queerness is interesting to explore because he comes from a low-income, single-mom household, all while having been bullied for years based on his perceived queerness, he also has a mother and brother constantly reinforcing that they will accept him no matter what. They've been sort of hitting us over the head with it for years, and so it wouldn't be very satisfying for his entire arc to merely lead up to something we've known all along. It's pretty much a given at this point.
On the other side of the spectrum, Mike comes from a more upper-middle class family at the end of a cul-de-sac, more aligned with what a nuclear family looks like. Mike's family is also presented as being more conservative, and while Karen does give that very queer-coded speech to Mike in s1 (I'm convinced they only wrote this after deciding to explore queer-coding more heavily with Mike), it also comes with comments from Ted and even still Karen that hint that they are probably not as open-minded and accepting as Will's family is to him. Which means Mike's arc would be a lot more about acceptance around him from his loved ones who we have been led to believe might not be as accepting of his queerness in contrast to Will.
And so as they're putting this story together, and they're being presented with something very interesting. Two similar experiences that play out in different ways because of the characters circumstances.
Will goes missing, and his twin sister with a buzzcut pops up and has the ability to help them find Will.
This leads to several moments where El is being compared to as not only a boy, but Will as well.
Now suddenly, their initial plans to have Mike's arc be about having a girl be interested in him and to hopefully have his first kiss and feel like less of a loser, starts to look a lot like what the experience a queer kid in his position might encounter growing up in the environment that he did.
And if you don't want to take my word for it, just hear the Duffer's themselves hinting at what they initially planned for Mike and the fact that it changed.
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The changes don't stop there.
Believe it or not, 'It was a seven', did not exist in the initial pitch. When the boys went outside bickering over Nancy, they leave right after that.
Another thing that changed from the first script, was Scott Clarke's introduction:
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And so you might be thinking, who cares? What does that have to do with anything?
Well, it's interesting because the line we end up with on the show is arguably one of the most on the nose Twelvegate proofs to date. Mind you, this is from the first episode:
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Why chuck the original version, which was arguably more interesting and fascinating in terms of it hinting at the mysteriousness surrounding this story, only to replace it with him listing off tips about their upcoming test?
Well, I think it's the irony of it all. Here Mr. Clarke is practically telling us where to look to figure stuff out for ourselves what is going on, with all the kids filing out and ignoring him...
I relate to Scott a litttle too much in this shot here, any time I try to drop Willel evidence.
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And the changes go on, as they obviously would.
Things like Terry Ives not even being El's mom, but actually a man who more so aligns with the characterization of Murray.
And one very interesting one I almost overlooked was in Hopper's introduction, where instead of a kids drawing done by who we assume to be Sarah, we actually see a picture on the wall of him and his wife and daughter... Interesting that they decided to switch it something that is a lot less definitive in presenting what Hopper's past looked like...
If you've made it this far, congratulations.
If you still think I'm out of my mind, just remember that El was going to have a brother in the original script, but they scrapped the scene and gave a near identical one to introduce her connection to Will instead 😘
#byler#stranger things#willel twins#twelvegate#montauk#as you can see#i am out of my mind#and i'm okay with that#i've spent the last couple months trying to make a video going over all the willel twin evidence#and i can't decide if it's even possible to do without going over an hour#like there is just so much shit that fits too perfectly into this family being ripped apart by mind control and time shenanigans#i hope to have it done soon#trying to make it less than 20 minutes#but it's probably going to end up being closer to an hour#especially with this stuff from the montauk pitch being added to the mix now#anyways#willel and byler are the curtain behind the curtain#if you are open to one of them#you are bound to stumble across the other#and they don't want that to happen#stay tuned for the inevitable twin imagery to continue in s5 related to willel leading up to the big reveal#bc it's arguably the most consistent thing about this damn show#and tbh this all just makes the queer-coding for mike in s1 a lot more concrete to me#them exploring will's queerness through his dad's expectations for him to do more 'manly' things like play baseball#and jonathan saying he shouldn't like things just bc people telll him he's supposed to#how they connect that narratively with the boys being at a baseball field when mike's being pressured about his supposed feelings for el#with the bullies showing up and literally being homophobic seconds later#the fact that jennifer hayes did in fact exist in the original pilot and was the girl mike had a crush on#only for them to scrap that and just make it about her having a crush on will...#never once introducing this idea of mike liking her...
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wikiangela · 26 days
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tease tidbit tuesday/wip wednesday
tagged by @thewolvesof1998 @theotherbuckley @tizniz @diazsdimples @dangerpronebuddie @spotsandsocks @exhuastedpigeon @underwaterninja13 - tagging y'all back for wip wednesday 💖💖
doing two in one bc it's technically wednesday already idc lol - started a new wip I mentioned before (inspired by this video lol) and rn I'm rewriting what I wrote yesterday bc the past two days words were not wording and I hated everything I wrote, but I think I'm happy with it now haha I hope I'll manage to write it like I want to bc it's sooo good in my head istg haha
(wasn't gonna post until i have more but i need validation before i drive myself crazy over this lol)
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It started as a random idea, more like a throwaway thought, really. Tommy was just checking the weather for the next few days – his hot pilot boyfriend always likes to be prepared – while they were hanging out, and he casually mentioned that “it’s gonna be nice on Saturday, perfect barbecue weather,” which got Buck to mention how they often have family barbecues at Bobby and Athena’s. Somehow, the conversation spiraled, and Buck’s not sure who threw out a more concrete idea, but here they are now, standing side by side in Tommy’s kitchen, preparing food – Buck’s currently slicing veggies for a salad, while Tommy takes care of the meat – for the barbecue where they invited way too many people than Tommy’s backyard can probably fit. It really is nice weather, the sliding door leading from the kitchen to the backyard open and letting in warm sunshine and a soft breeze that makes the air feel cooler. They work in pleasant silence, the only sound is quiet music playing from the speaker, and Buck can’t help a fond smile when he hears his boyfriend hum along, so off-key Buck’s not sure he even knows the song, but it’s still adorable.
The silence is disrupted by the doorbell ringing, and before Tommy can even move, Buck is dropping the knife on the cutting board, wiping his hands, and sprinting towards the door, shouting an “I got it!” over his shoulder. He’s followed by an echo of Tommy’s fondly amused chuckles. So he’s a little excited, sue him – they haven’t had a family day like this in a while, and there was only one he brought Tommy to, all of their schedules not so easy to align. And today his whole family will be here, including their spouses and children, and Tommy invited a couple of his friends and their families, too, and it’ll be just a big, loud, chaotic get-together that he’s hosting with his boyfriend. Buck never hosted one of these before, and he’s really enjoying it so far, and he just wants everyone to have fun.
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no pressure tags: @elvensorceress @thebravebitch @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @watchyourbuck
@eowon @loserdiaz @evanbegins @ladydorian05 @wildlife4life
@diazpatcher @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @weewootruck @loveyouanyway
@spagheddiediaz @rainbow-nerdss @epicbuddieficrecs @pirrusstuff @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove
@nmcggg @rogerzsteven @hippolotamus @bidisasterevankinard @giddyupbuck
@sunshinediaz @honestlydarkprincess @911-on-abc @jesuisici33 @steadfastsaturnsrings
@buddieswhvre @fortheloveofbuddie @your-catfish-friend
@daffi-990 @hoodie-buck @aroeddiediaz
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luck-of-the-drawings · 2 months
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OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever
#jrwi fanart#cw blood#jrwi show#jrwi suckening#arthur bennett#OUHH THIS ONE WAS SITTING IN MY WIPS FOR SO LOOOONGwhen i took it out there was mould on it :sob:#BUT i think i was able to fix it up okay#i keep seeing SO MANY MISTAKES RRAAAHHH BUT YOU DONT SEE THEM RIGHT?? THATS ONLY ME. RIGHT?? EXACTLY.#THE KEY IS TO SAY. AND REPEAT AFTER ME. 'FUUUCK IT WE BALL#so anyway. arthur bennett huh? grizzly says that arthur is reaal fuckin difficult to play. and i SUPER get that. i mean LOOK AT HIM..#grizz often needs a minute to think abt what hes gonna say in a way that matches w that Stoic Personality. which is FAIR but also that#ends up making way for awkward confrontations like: the lady in the parky lot. he took too long to answer and scared her away.& I LOVE THAT#arthur is tragic and sad and cool and stoic but hes ALSO awkward and silly and kinda dumb and short sighted. HE HAS COMPLEXITIES#I LOVE WHEN TTRPG CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SET OF SHORTCOMINGS. ESPECIALLY WHEN U FIND THEM ONLY AS U PLAY THEM.#I COULd go on and on saying the same things w different words abt arthurs intriguing and entertaining character but i shall spare u. for no#ILL ALSO MENTION HOW MUCH I LOVE HIS FLAVOR THO.. I LOVE TALL HOT BOY WHOS ONE W THE DARKNESS.. I REMEMBER WHEN HE FIRST MENTIONED THE#BADLUCK. N I WAS LIKE OOOHH THATS WHY HIS DESIGN IS SO COOL N CHAOTIC N ASYMMETRICAL. HES UNLUCKY!!! i love love love his design so much...#GRaaauruguguraguhhghghgh what else what else is there for me to spew on abt...i think im reachin a limit here..OH MAGNUS. i hope that#we get to know more abt how magnus and arthur met.. like How they became besties... ouuhh... I ALSO WANNA KNOW MORE ABT MARY DAVIS. LIKEHOW#he also apparently spent alotta time in a zone dominated by edward twilight? all he remembers is constant partying? I WANNA KNOW MORE..#i think i got room 4 one more ramble SO. THE ART PIECE.as i said its gone a lil stale BUT. im still very proud o the bits where hes allScar#I WANNA SEE HIM GET SCARYMORE. I like the idea of shadows solidifying to make him strange and eerie.like TEETH n CLAWS n SPINES n YESS#also the SILVER EYES.no1 does silver eyes like the show Claymore. they make em look so striking and eerie...i also like to think that#human arthur had deep beautiful brown eyes.just in my beaitufl heart.i mean look at him..i wanna cook him n eat him.ANYWAY#i think thats all my ramblin for this piece. now i gotta go cancel a single day i had ata hotel bc my work schedule change last minute FUCK#feel free to ramble in my tags aswell tho i read all of them and i chew on thenm and i love them so sos os mcuh
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starry-bi-sky · 8 months
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Childhood Friends Au: Danny's in Gotham Again
when the wool is off your eyes you'll stop counting sheep at night cause you'll eat your fill of them during the daytime
A few weeks after Danny’s visit to Gotham, he buys an apartment in the city. It’s this little thing, a studio apartment on the same street he grew up in. In Crime Alley. When he tells his parents, they protest heavily. They don’t think it's safe. They think he should reconsider. There were plenty of apartments and places to live somewhere else. And what about college? 
Danny doesn’t think he’ll go to college. He isn’t sure what he wants to do, now that being an astronaut is off the table. It’d be a waste of money to go without a goal in mind, he thinks. He says he’ll take a gap year and apply at one of the community colleges funded by the Wayne Corporation, possibly. It just wasn’t in the cards right now. 
“If things get tough,” He says at dinner that night, “then I can talk to the Waynes. I’m friends with the family, remember?” He ended up getting Bruce’s number in his phone again before he left, and in the process got Tim’s as well. They don’t talk much, Danny isn’t sure what to say. But he sends Tim memes whenever he comes across one and thinks he’ll like. Tim sends memes back in return.   
His parents do remember. They remember. They also remember the horrified shriek that echoed through the house when Danny learned of Jason’s passing. They remember running up the stairs and bursting into their son’s room and finding him sobbing into his bed, curled up like a little kid, like he was in pain. He lost his voice that day, stuck between screaming out his grief and sobbing it. 
They’re still not sure if they should let him go. 
In the end, Danny wins them out, and he lets them help him search for an apartment. They take a break from their lab work to help search for cheap furniture to buy. They may have more money than when they were in Gotham, but that frugal part of you never fully goes away. They all agree that they don’t want Danny to be seen carrying in nice-looking furniture when he moves in. 
He ends up with a basic furniture set, all mismatched, and in the warm summer of June, his parents rent out a u-haul and drive him down to Gotham to move in. They meet the landlord when they arrive, a skinny and frail old man with wispy white hair and a wrinkled face. He gives Danny the keys and tells him what apartment number he is, and then he leaves. 
His parents help him move in. They help him carry his heavy furniture up to the second floor, where his apartment is. Danny isn’t sure if he wants them to help. His mom and dad are strong, but they are getting old, closer to their fifties now that their children are grown. His dad’s hair is slowly beginning to thin, and rather than the white eating at the sides of his head, it now streaks through his hair like salt-and-pepper. His mom’s hair is graying out too, and there are more lines in their faces than he remembers there being. 
When he voices his concerns, his mom laughs spiritedly and says that they may be getting old, but they are still as spry as when they were in their twenties. Danny isn’t sure if he believes them or not. He can see his dad struggle a bit when they return to get his bed frame, and they have to take a break before they go back down for the rest of their things. 
Five years ago, his dad could do this without breaking a sweat. It forces a heavy thing in the back of Danny’s throat. (He is less afraid of his own death than he is of his loved ones, and while he has always felt rocky with his parents, he still loves them more than anything else.) 
Danny’s apartment is exactly as he would have expected it to be: shabby and worn through. The entire room smells like stale cigarette smoke and weed, nicotine stains the wall with poorly covered bullet holes, and stains in the carpet that are a color he can’t discern. The fridge has a broken light and when he tries to turn on the gas stove, it click-click-clicks before lighting, fire fwooshing out while the smell of gas fills the air. There’s rat droppings in the cupboards and the closet-like bathroom is just as bad. 
The ghostly part of him can sense the heavy stench of death in the room; people have died in this room. People have died in every room of this building, he thinks. They have died on the streets outside and in the alleys squeezed between them. He can feel it like a heavy fog in the air. 
It is painfully nostalgic, a bittersweet feeling in his chest that he grimaces to. 
When the last box is placed in his apartment, his parents offer to help unpack. They are hesitant to leave and Danny knows it, although he doesn’t know if it’s from empty nest syndrome or because it's Gotham. He thinks it might be both. He is their youngest child finally leaving home to a city known for its danger. 
“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay behind, sweetie?” His mother asks, a frown she tries to hide settled in the creases of her face. She fiddles with her hands, a nervous habit Danny has since noticed when she feels truly unsure and doesn’t need to hide it. Hesitancy looms over her like a heavy cloud. 
His dad jumps in hastily, splaying his hands and smiling painfully wide to hide the glistening in his eyes. “You’re mother’s right! We can help you get everything set up, champ. I could probably do something with that stove of yours to make it faster!” He says, his voice still booming like it always does even if there’s a stumble in his words. 
It makes his heart squeeze, knowing just how much they care. It was hard last summer, telling him that he was the Phantom. Terrifying, actually. They couldn’t comprehend it. He hadn’t felt his heart beat that fast in years when he stood in front of them at the kitchen table and told them he was a halfa, begging them to believe that ghosts weren’t inherently evil. 
His parents were people of science, however, and after much, much shock, they slowly came to terms with it. How could they not? The evidence was right in front of them. Their son was dead-alive, alive-dead. Somewhere stuck in the between. The tears they shed that night could fill a river, moving from the kitchen to the living room as Danny explains how he died. 
(When Danny tells them that he died after a week Jason did, his mom and dad look horrified. His mom covers her mouth when he adds that it was his idea to go inside it, his dad looks ashy pale, gripping his pant legs so tight that his knuckles turn white. There is a conclusion coming to their minds that he can tell they don’t like.) 
(“You’ve always hated our inventions, Danny.” Mom says in a hushed voice, and Danny winces at the wording, sinking into the back of the cushions in shame. He never thought that his parents noticed. Mom quickly grabs his arm, “No, no, there’s nothing to be ashamed of Danny. We were… perhaps too careless with our inventions, too enthusiastic. You had every right to hate the things we made when they had a tendency to… to malfunction.”) 
(Malfunction is a delicate way of putting it, when Danny remembers every time they had to evacuate their old apartment complex because whatever half-baked creation his parents made inevitably blew up into ash and smoke. There were soot marks permanently stained into the ceiling.) 
(Her hand slides down and grabs his, and she cups it in both of her hands, squeezing tightly. He forces himself to look up, and there is a look like her heart breaking when he looks into his mother’s eyes. “You’ve always avoided the lab after we moved, Danny. And you had every right to, so why on Earth did you ever think about going into the portal?”)
(Danny struggles to come up with an adequate answer, a way to verbalize what came over him that day five years ago. The answer is there, hanging in the air like a knot in a noose. He opens his mouth, and then closes it.)
(Finally, with a tongue made of lead, he shrugs lamely and looks away. “I didn’t know there was an on button inside it.” He mumbles, and despite being the truth it feels like a lie. But that is the truth. He didn’t know there was an on button inside it. So he didn’t care what happened.)
(Something dulls in mom’s eyes, like she thought of something else that Danny hadn’t said. Her eyes shimmer, and she squeezes them shut, breathing in so deep that it shakes. And then she pulls him into a hug, a hand burying into his hair and pressing him close. “It must have hurt so much, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”)
(It is something that Danny doesn’t expect her to say, like missing the last step of the stairs. It startles him so much he laughs this short, bark of a thing. He feels his dad press against his back and wrap his big arms around them, his nose pushed into his hair.) 
(Because yeah. Yeah, it did hurt. It hurt more than anything else he’s ever felt before. It had torn him apart and sewn him back together again, only to rinse and repeat. The pain was nothing he ever spoke to Sam or Tucker about, and it was something they never brought up. No, that’s not true. If they ever brought it up, Tucker would call it a zap. As if Danny only experienced a mild static shock. Like it was painless. It’s a pretty lie that Danny lets him and Sam believe.)
(His eyes sting and water immediately wobbles into his vision, coming up with such a force that he doesn’t even need to blink before it spills over. “Yeah.” He forces out, voice unexpectedly rough and cracking. “Yeah, it- it hurt. A lot.”)
He tells them about fighting the Lunch Lady a month later. He tells them about finding Jason. It comes spilling out like a waterfall. “I found him, mom.” He says, holding onto her tight while she keeps him tucked under his chin like a little kid. The secret of Jason being Robin stays hidden under his tongue, it is not his secret to tell. Not his identity to expose. He grips her tighter. “I found him, mom. Right there in the Ghost Zone, and he was my Jason. He wasn’t an echo or a— an imprint of him.”
Mom is silent; quiet and attentive, and so is dad, who rubs his large hands up and down Danny’s spine in an attempt to soothe him. It only works a little. Danny breathes in like a gasp as the urge to cry overcomes him again. He always avoids talking about Jason, his grief is like a never-healing scab that can be picked off at any time. It is ingrained into his core. 
“And then I lost him.” He forces out, a sob layering under his words that he chokes on and swallows. The hand on his back stills, and he can feel mom and dad breathe in like a question. He turns his head and pushes it into mom’s shoulder. “He disappeared, mom. Just— just gone.”
“And he didn’t move on.” He says, voice snarling like teeth biting before his mom can ask, because he knows that’s what she was going to ask. It’s what Sam and Tucker asked when he came to them in tears hours after he found Jason gone. It’s what Jazz said when he finally told her about it. It’s what every one of his ghosts asked when he told them about it and begged for their help. 
Danny grits his teeth and tries not to dig his nails into mom’s clothes as a fresh wave of tears run down his face. “His haunt is still there. If Jason really moved on it would have disappeared with him. That’s how it works. But it’s still in the zone, so Jason’s out there I just don’t know where.” 
(Sam once asks him why Danny didn’t just move on from it a year after Jason’s disappearance. She asked him why he didn’t give it up. Danny nearly saw red, and nearly bit her head off for it. It was incomprehensible to him to just stop looking for Jason, to give up. Not when he was out in the zone somewhere. Because he had to be in the zone.)
(Danny once tried to take Jason through the portal with him, and much like what happened to Kitty, it didn’t work. Jason was too tied to the ghost zone to leave.) 
(Some bonds are just unbreakable, he thinks. Bonds forged through blood and time and trust, and when you’re on the streets of Gotham, you hoard what little trust you have in someone like a dragon with its gold. It is scarcely given and fiercely kept.) 
“I’ve been looking for him.” Danny whispers when talking becomes too hard for him, when it runs the risk of him crying. “When- when I’m not fighting ghosts or, or in school or with my friends, I’ve been looking for him.” He has explored the Ghost Zone in every reach he can. He has met so many people. He’s met the ghosts of aliens from planets in every corner of the galaxy. He has met gods or god-like beings and their disciples. 
He’s met famous scholars and writers (he’s gotten the autographs of all of Jason’s favorite writers). He has found entire cities that have so much life in it that it's been permanently etched into the ghost zone, like a mirror version of itself. 
He’s visited the ghostly vision of Gotham so many times, and he avoids the imprint of Wayne Manor like the plague. There are ghostly newspapers that he reads. There are the ghosts of Martha and Thomas Wayne in many of them. 
Jason’s haunt connects to Wayne Manor, but it is also the street they grew up in. It is a small brick building with a door that leads to Jason’s room. A ghost knows when someone enters their haunt, it alerts them like a doorbell in the back of their mind. A foreign ecto-signature in a place drenched in your own. 
Danny visits it every time he goes into the Ghost Zone. It’s always his first stop. 
He tells his parents all of it. He tells them of the ghosts he’s met, of the places he’s seen. And when he feels brave, he tells them about Rath and the terror that his future self brings him. He keeps some details hidden, the ones that he can afford to keep without muddling up the story. 
(Rath is a tall, spindly thing, like a funhouse mirror version of Danny himself. He has arms that are much too long and legs that are much too tall, with skinny fingers that extend into claws.He wears his suit the same as Danny does, with it partially undone and the sleeves wrapped around his waist.)
(There is a black hole in his chest that is much bigger than Danny’s own. It takes up his chest cavity and drips the same, viscous black liquid as the tears falling from his eyes. Danny never forgets his voice; a scraping, quiet thing like he’s screamed himself hoarse. Rath has a voice like goosebumps, and it haunts Danny like a bump in the night.) 
Danny speaks and speaks and speaks until he can’t think of anything else to speak of. He is tired and sad, and it feels like his heart has been ripped out and rubbed raw again. And yet, he also feels so much better. Like a long heavy weight has been taken off his chest. 
Yeah, last summer was hard. His parents walked on eggshells around him, and they forced themselves to unlearn their bias of ghosts. It was more than Danny could have ever dreamed of, and when they felt ready for it, they asked him more about the ghost zone.
He smiles sadly at his dad, “I think fixing the stove can be a priority another time, dad.” He says, watching him wilt and his smile fall. Jack Fenton was always so good at making himself look like a kicked puppy. “I can handle unpacking by myself, I promise.” 
His parents still look so unsure, like they want to argue. Danny watches his mom purse her lips tightly, confliction running across her face like a datastream. She takes dad’s hand, squeezing their fingers together despite the droop in her shoulders. 
“Oh, alright then, I suppose.” She relents, her hand placing on Jack’s arm. “I guess we could go, we’re just going to miss you so much, Danny.” 
Tears seem to have won over his dad, and Jack Fenton sniffs back before he can cry properly. “Our little boy, all grown up.” He says, voice wobbling. It makes Danny laugh, and it makes his heart pang. His smile grows impossibly wider and so much fonder. “You’ve become such a kind, wonderful young man, Danno. We’re so proud of you.” 
Danny laughs again, and it cracks. “You’re gonna make me cry, dad.” (He feels a welling of guilt in his gut that he ignores — he doesn’t feel like a kind man. He doesn’t feel like a good one either. Not with what he plans to do.) 
His father holds out his arms in hopefulness, “One last hug for your old man before we head out?” He asks, mustering up a smile on his face. 
Danny barrels into him, nearly knocking his dad over with an oomph. He’s as tall as him now, but he still feels little in his bear hugs. With arms wrapping around his middle, Danny hugs his father tight and breathes him in one last time. 
“Careful there, Danno.” He laughs, patting Danny’s back roughly. “You’ll break my ribs with that ghostly strength of yours!” But he holds on just as tight.
Out of spite, Danny bends back and lifts him off his feet, laughing when Jack tenses up and nearly scrambles out of surprise. His mom laughs with him, stepping back to give them room for the few seconds that dad is in the air. 
When it’s his mom’s turn, Danny has to hunch to hug her. Something bittersweet to him as she plants a kiss on his forehead and says that he’ll always be her baby. “Even if you do have that horrid smoking habit.” She adds on with a disapproving eyebrow raise. 
Danny turns red in embarrassment, and walks them back to the GAV. Gothamites of all kinds slow to stop and boggle at the monstrous, road-illegal thing that is parallel-parked next to the curbside. In the past, Danny would have died with mortification to be seen with it. Now it just makes him laugh. Before he goes back into the apartment building, he buys a newspaper from a nearby convenience store.  
The first thing he does when he gets back up to his room is one: make a mental note to buy a bicycle chain lock for the door. The locks jiggle and there are splinters along the side that show signs of it being broken into in the past. The second thing he does is pull his cigarettes out of his pocket and light one. 
Danny starts to unpack with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, placing the newspaper he bought onto the counter. He has a cheap loveseat that he pushes off to the side, and he moves the boxes into the kitchen. It’s a matter of organization that Danny has to think about before he does anything. 
It’s as he’s pushing the sofa up against the wall facing the windows that his phone rings a familiar tune: Sam. The phone is fished out before he can think about it and when he stares down at the screen, he realizes it's a facetime call. 
He presses answer and walks over to prop his phone up onto the counter. The smiling faces of Sam and Tucker greet him, rather than just Sam. Immediately, Danny grins. “Hey Danny.” Sam greets, smiling a dark-painted lazy thing. From the background it looks like they’re in Tucker’s room. Sam is in Tucker’s desk chair, and Tucker is behind her, leaning against it. “Have you moved in yet?” 
Danny pulls the cigarette from his mouth and huffs, a cloud of smoke following his breath. “Yeah! It’s a shithole.” He grins lopsidedly, and his feet carry him off to the side to allow Sam and Tucker view of his apartment. He lets thirty seconds pass, allowing the both of them to really see the rest of the room. And then he steps back into frame. 
Sam and Tucker both look like they’re trying not to look judgemental, like they’re trying to hide a grimace that Danny sees anyway with the small turns at the corner of their mouths. He grins wider, mirth filling his lungs. “I know, it looks awful doesn’t it?”
“It’s— it’s not so bad.” Sam says with a strain in her voice, a forced smile on her face that tries to be reassuring. Tucker nods along readily, and he looks just as unsure as Sam does. Danny stifles laughter behind his teeth. 
“No, no, it looks bad,” He takes a drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. “You can say it, I won’t get offended. It’s a fucking apartment in crime alley. Of course it looks bad.” 
Sam remains silent, a rearing of her stubbornness showing itself. Tucker takes a different approach, and heaves a dramatic sigh of relief, slumping like a weight. “Okay, you’re right. It looks bad.” He frowns, “Sorry, man.” 
While Danny snorts, Sam sighs. “Yeah, it looks bad. What even are those stains?” She asks, and both she and Tucker lean closer in tandem to the screen, eyes squinting at the floor behind him. Danny glances at the floor, and shrugs. 
“Blood, probably.” He says, and while years in Amity Park have accustomed him to a clean environment, the desensitization of Gotham still remains. Tucker and Sam both make faces and lean away, as if the stain itself was capable of passing through to them. “Yeah, there are bullet holes in the walls.” 
“Are you sure it’s safe to be there?” Tucker asks, a furrow appearing between his brows. He adjusts his glasses and leans against the chair. Sam is frowning heavily, and Danny can already see her thinking up of a new way to fix the problem. 
“Oh, I never said this place was safe.” Danny tells him cheerily, taking a last hit of his cigarette before placing the dead stick onto the counter. He itches for another one. Instead he walks over to the shelf his parents brought in and starts moving it. “It’s Crime Alley, Tuck. Safe isn’t even in its vocabulary.” 
Tucker and Sam look like they’ve both swallowed a lemon.
“But it’s where I want to be right now.” He says, grunting quietly when the shelf is against the wall he wants it to be, near the short hallway leading to the front door. He can push it in front of it if someone tries to break in. “And Crime Alley’s apartments are the only ones I can really afford right now without mooching off my parents, and I’d rather not depend on them.” 
He can hear the disapproving hesitance from where he stands. And he ignores it. 
Danny walks back into frame, lifting up a box onto the counter. He hums lightly, fingers run over the tape keeping it shut. “Why do you even want to be in Gotham, Danny?” Sam asks, and she sounds genuinely perplexed. Danny stills. “I thought this place only had bad memories for you.” 
His blood turns cold, and like a dime being flipped his slow heartbeat fills his ears. “It does.” He replies automatically, before he can think. Shit, shit. He knows that Sam or Tucker would ask that question, and yet he still feels unprepared for it. His heart pulses quickly against his ribcage, knocking, asking him what he’s going to tell them that isn’t the truth. 
Danny stammers, “I mean— I just— I guess I felt nostalgic.” He says, and it sounds like a weak defense. He looks away, finding himself instinctively scratching his jaw. A new tick of his when he’s nervous. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sam and Tucker both narrow their eyes at him. 
He cannot tell them the real reason why he’s moved back to Gotham. He can’t tell them of the little secret and vow he told himself five years ago, the one that’s been left to fester and burn like an open wound close to his core. The one that, if he thinks too much about it, sends a searing hot electricity through him, filling him from crown to toe top-full of direst wrath.  
(Danny was always the angrier one in the duo of Jason and Danny. He was always the one with glass in his mouth, cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world around them. His knuckles had more blood and bruises on it than skin, once upon a time. All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He has grown from it, that fury has turned to a small simmering candle.) (But sometimes, sometimes it rears its head, and electricity will buzz under Danny’s skin. There is lightning before the thunder, the second before a fist pulled to punch lands, the spark before it becomes a blaze.) 
He stumbles over his words, and then sighs long and low, drooping his head. “I… was thinking that I can’t avoid this place forever.” He says, and the best lies always have the truth in it. Because it’s not a lie, not completely. But it’s not close enough to the truth either. “And that maybe if I came back, I’d be able to do something about those bad memories. Make them better or make it hurt less.” 
Like wool over their eyes, it fools Sam and Tucker. Their narrowed eyes soften, and Danny feels like a snake is in his lungs as they both adopt their own versions of gentleness on their faces. “Oh, Danny.” Sam breathes out, and the snake squeezes, “Of course, we understand.”
Tucker nods, smiling at him. “Yeah, bro, that’s really brave of you. I know it can’t be easy coming back.” He says, “Maybe you can reconnect with the Waynes again, you always thought well of Mister Wayne whenever you came back from visiting.”
Danny smiles weakly, the gesture cutting into his cheeks like a knife. Perhaps he could. He was still upset with Bruce for hiding Jason’s killer from him. But he doesn’t hate him. Maybe five years ago, he did, when the death of Jason was still fresh in his mind and freshly bleeding in his heart. Now he just doesn’t know what to think of him. He was Batman. Jason was Robin, and the Joker killed Robin. 
It would need to be something he’d have to speak to Bruce about in person, he thinks, in order to resolve it. To hear his judgment on it and make an opinion from there. Danny has learned in the last five years, much to Jazz’s smug delight, that talking to people about something he was upset about did make him feel better. 
The conversation slips on from there into something more light, more breathable. And while they talk, Danny unpacks. He sets up his bed in the corner of the room, adjacent to the windows, and unpacks his cheap TV and table stand. It’s directly across from the couch, in front of the windows. He puts up knicks and knacks he’s collected over the years on the shelves.
When he puts up the curtains, he notices that more than one frame jiggles loosely. Sam makes a comment on the musty stains permanently dyed into the glass, and Danny talks about getting something to fix the cracks. Gotham winters can get brutal, and even if he can withstand the cold, doesn’t mean everything else in his apartment can. 
“Oh, watch this.” He says halfway through unpacking, and pulls out a stick of thick white chalk from a box. “This is something I learned from Clockwork a while back; I think he knew I was going to move to Gotham.” He grins sillily, popping into the camera frame to show them. “I wonder how?” 
Sam rolls her eyes, smiling while Tucker huffs. “It’s not like he’s the Master of Time and can see all past, present, and future.” Tucker snarks. 
Danny hums lightly, curt like he isn’t sure he believes Tucker, and walks to a piece of bare wall not yet blocked by furniture. He starts to draw on it. The chalk shimmers with faint ectoplasm on the wall. 
“Uhh…” Tucker’s voice cuts through, “Are you sure you should be doing that? Won’t you get in trouble for that?”
“There are bullet holes in the plaster, Tucker.” Danny retorts dryly, arching his hand to make a big circle. “I don’t think the landlord is gonna care if I get washable chalk on his walls.” Inside the circle, he inscribes the symbols of the Infinite Realms. “I don’t think he’d be able to see it anyways, he was really old.” 
When he is done, Danny steps back to admire his work. It’s not bad, he thinks, for a lack of practice. He tosses the chalk off to the side, it lands on the couch and rolls back into the cushions. Ectoplasm heats under his hand, slowly glowing from his fingertips before stretching down the rest of his palm. 
Danny’s fingers press against the wall, into the center of the circle. The result is immediate, ectoplasm is siphoned off his hand and into the circle. It glows, and then swirls. He steps off to the side for Sam and Tucker to watch its transformation. The circle fills with a swirling pool of ectoplasm, like a smaller version of the basement portal, and then it warps and stretches. 
It fills out a rectangular shape, shifting like taffy being pulled this way and that, before settling into a solid shape. It solidifies, and instead of a wall there is a glowing purple door, warped in nature and seemingly shifting like a trick of the eyes. He can hear the gentle hum of the zone standing next to it, and can see the carving of the circle in the wood. 
He gestures dramatically, grinning from ear to ear. “Ta-da~” He sings, “A door to my haunt! For whenever I feel like visiting it.” He pats the wood, making a strange thunk-thunk sound. “And then watch this.” 
Danny touches the circle again, and the door twists and recedes like water going down a drain. The circle flashes bright green, and then fades into nothing on the wall, invisible to the naked eye. “I can hide it whenever I want! So if I ever invite someone over—” which he doubts, “—I won’t have to worry about them asking, ‘Hey Danny? Why is there a creepy fucking door in your studio apartment?’”
He gets a pair of laughs for his efforts, and Danny grins wider. 
Sam and Tucker have to end the call when Danny is nearly done unpacking, leaving him alone with only his thoughts and the Gotham ambience outside. There were only a few boxes left, and they promise to call him tomorrow. He tells them that they better keep that promise. 
The silence that follows after they leave feels somberly, as if the reality of moving in has finally set in and filled the air with its loneliness. With its change. Finally, Danny lets the strangeness of moving back to Gotham hit him when he reaches the last box, and he stops to take another smoke break to let it settle. 
It feels so strange to be back in Gotham, he thinks. He’s all grown up, or almost grown up. He can vote and pay taxes, but he doesn’t feel much older than he was at fourteen. There’s a disconnect that makes him feel sad. 
There are cars running outside, driving by. He can only catch glimpses of them, his apartment faces an alleyway. There are dogs barking in the distance, strays he bets. It’s already dark out, and he wonders if he looks out the window he would see the bat-signal shining through the night and staining the permanent cloud that hangs over Gotham. 
Bruce would be so disappointed if he learned the reason for Danny’s return to Gotham. But Danny’s not here for him. He’s here for someone far more important. And like that, the simmering anger that has tucked itself into the furthest corners of his heart starts slipping through. His heart has teeth, ready to strike and snarl and bite. 
He crushes the cigarette in his hand and throws it away. When he opens the last box, it is with hands that tremble and with a face of stone. With a delicateness he does not feel, he reaches in and pulls a corkboard from the box. On the corner frame is a small, near inconspicuous carving of another ghost rune. 
Danny hangs it up on an empty space on the wall, out of sight from the window. It’s plain, and he has nothing to pin to it. He presses the small rune on the corner, pushing ectoplasm into it. Unlike the door, it does not twist and warp and shape itself into something new. Instead it bursts into green flame, eating away at the board and revealing the same thing underneath it, just in dark blue-black-purple. 
Now this board, this board Danny has something to pin to it. The newspaper he bought earlier sits abandoned on the counter, and Danny unrolls it with something like viciousness in his chest. On the front page is an image of a damaged street, and above it is titled: “JOKER STRIKES AGAIN, 3 DEAD AND 27 INJURED”
Danny rips out the first page, he rips out every mention of him. His hands shake and threaten to crumple the paper as he turns back to the board, there is hot blood pounding in his ears. There is an impending sense of finally in his chest, like a setting sun giving the stage to a starless night. There is a stern set in his jaw, five years of festering rage rushing forth like a tidal wave, threatening to make his vision swim. 
It would be so easy, he thinks, to go out as Phantom right now and hunt the clown down. It would only take a night. All it would take is a night, and then he could sink his hands into the Joker’s chest and rip out his heart where he stood. It would be so easy. 
The thought alone forces Danny to stop as he is hit with another rush of fury, really making his head and vision swim. Thorny vines wrap around his throat, making it hard to breathe. He stares at a spot on the wall until the shaking passes. 
If he wants to be discreet about this, then he can’t do it now. Even if he wants to. He doesn’t want witnesses. He doesn’t want an audience. He made a mistake, telling Red Hood about his plan. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all. But he can only hope that the Hood hasn’t mentioned it to Bruce. He knows it hasn’t been long since they started working together. He hopes that the Hood has already forgotten about it. 
He pins the newspaper clippings onto the black-blue-board, and stands back. It’s bare now, but it won’t be forever. 
He presses the circle again, and the pinboard reverts back to its original blank state. 
-----
Was I expecting to make a third part?? No. No I was not. I was also not expecting to make an entire google doc filled with summaries for short story ideas about this au that all tie into each other so that way if i DO continue this i have a skeleton pathway to follow rather than making everything up from scratch and potentially cornering myself
you can find this on ao3 or on tumblr 1 2 :)
#dp x dc#dpxdc#dp x dc crossover#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dpxdc crossover#childhood friends au#cw swearing#cw smoking#im calling them short stories bc if i call them chapters i might intimidate myself#fun fact every single chapter will have a crane wives lyric on it i am DETERMINED#i hope yall are subscribed to this on ao3 bc i almost didnt post this on tumblr#the fentons being good parents were a surprise to me too but also i never really planned on them being BAD parents#okay so they appear as negligent in the first post but we'll just call that a plothole#i had the idea that danny was the angrier one out of the duo earlier today and it felt like an epiphany#there's no guarantee of a next part but yk immm kinda hoping there is#on the docs the ending bullet point for this chapter was#'make it feel like a tv show where the seemingly inconspicuous and friendly character has something sinister up their sleeve'#WE know that danny's not inconspicuous in the least he's been thinking of this murder for the last five years. but nobody but red hood know#i had to come up with a in-story reason why danny doesnt kill the joker NOW but my out-of-story excuse is: there'd be no tension otherwise#its about the BUILD UP. Its about the RISING TENSION. Its about KNOWING that danny is planning to kill the Joker but you dont know WHEN#its about knowing that something is going to explode but never knowing when#i made the doc yesterday and spent my entire pluralism for educators class going thru the crane wives albums and looking up the lyrics and#matching them to the *checks doc* 18 short story prompts i have prepared#i am still missing one :((#its the tim and danny story and i have NOTHING PLANNED FOR THEM. i cant think of a thing for them to bond over :(( so i cant match a CW son#even DICK has a story and that was also a surprise#my favorite lines: He was always the one with glass in his mouth cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world#aND danny slapping his door like a used car salesman and going 'now people wont ask why i have a creepy fucking door in my studio aptm :)'
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tinybro · 9 months
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jasico server was chatting about the cupid scene and jason getting nico's memories blasted straight into his brain and how jason being shot with one of cupid's arrows while with nico and this was just never brought up in canon again and now i'm thinking like...what if that's just how cupid's arrows work? not by magically manifesting love for someone out of nothing, but by giving someone the perspective that'd make them fall in love naturally? jason gets a front row seat to nico's memories and instantly understands him intimately and can trust him completely without any doubt or suspicion
so what if jason, after slowly realizing he's totally in love with nico, just thought back to the arrow incident and it made him second-guess everything? because maybe he's only feeling this way because cupid hit him with an arrow with only nico was around and it's no different than any other god messing with his love life
#i live for anything that drags out the pining/pre-relationship period as long as possible okay#give me the drama of jason frustrated about constantly being manipulated by gods#in love with nico but convinced it's just cupid fucking with him and not wanting nico to get dragged into it#maybe telling nico eventually because he's having trouble hiding his feelings and he doesn't wanna hurt nico by confusing him#which is of course an emotional rollercoaster for nico#hearing jason say he's in love with him only to then immediately hear that it's just godly fuckery#nico agreeing to help jason find cupid to get it reversed because he knows how much it sucks having feelings for someone unwillingly#and he doesn't want jason stuck mooning over someone like him just because he was unkucky enough to be with nico for the cupid incident#whole quest in which nico develops feelings in return and angsts because he's sure jason only feels that way because of the arrow#maybe a slip-up in the middle somewhere with nico accidentally revealing he likes jason back before backpedaling wildly#so now jason has hope despite himself because he'd never really thought it was possible anyway given nico's feelings for percy#and he doesn't like being manipulated by gods but he doesn't mind the idea of being in love with nico#and what if he just gave up on the hunt for cupid entirely and let it happen#while nico feels guilty since clearly it's just cupid arrow magic fucking with jason and he's enabling it#and then of course when they finally find cupid he explains how his arrows work and that he can't just FORCE someone to be in love#no more than hera could with jason and piper by fucking with their memories to push them together#cupid's methods are just way more effective#my tag babble ended up longer than the actual post oh my god#pjo#jasico#my dumb headcanons
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satorugojoswiife · 3 months
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don't think or talk about gojo for one (1) day challenge (FAILED)
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human-wof-designs · 1 year
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at long last, i've designed some pantalans! i love blue, he's one of my favorite characters from wof
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ywpd-translations · 5 months
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Ride 755: Departure 2
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Pag 1
2: Ding ding
3: The boarding the flight number 621 to Fukuoka, departing at 10:30 will close soon
4: If you're boarding, please speak to the staff member closest to you
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Pag 2
2: Ah, that guy is angry
Shh
3: Oi
4: He said “I'm coming”, right?
Yessir!! I called him thirty times but he only picked up once....
He just said “soon”....
5: Then why aren't you here, Manamii!!
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Pag 3
1: There's the Inter High soon, the Inter High!! Buah!!
So-sorry, I even sent many messages, but his current location-
It's been more than thirty minutes since you've said that, how's that soon!?
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Pag 4
1: “Arriving late is a crime”!!
“Causing troubles is a serious crime”!!
Yessir
We told him that, too!!
3: Alright, I put Manami's ticket there, let's go
Huh!? Next to the window!?
That's a little-
Enough
4: Let's go, Yuuto, Tobirama
This time we'll fight as five people in the Inter High
'lright
Yes
No, but, he's the captain!?
Can't be
5: Ah... this must be my ticket
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Pag 5
1: Kyushu
3: Take me there, too!!
4: Waaaa, Manami-saan!!
I'm so glad you came!!
Thank you so much!!
Well...
You really are like an here who arrives in the moment of need!!
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Pag 6
1: Oi, don't misunderstand!! We were the ones in a pinch and this guy was the culprit!!
Yessir!
Sorry!
Ah, you exposed me...
2: Don't think you can dodge the matter of your tardiness just with your mood and cute face!!
Ah I thought I could make it
3: So?
Why... why were you late?
4: Ahh, I forgot my passport, then I remembered and turned back to get it
5: Ohhh... that's a problem indeed...
Wait!! You don't need a passport to go to Kyushu, right!?
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Pag 7
1: Woah!! That was a clever excuse, Manami-san (It was so cool!)
It wasn't clever, and now let's go!!
Did you doze off?
2: Mh...? Well, on the train... it was only one stop?
So he really slept too much...?!
3: Jou-kun and Yuzukoshi-kun went on ahead?
4: They went there with yesterday's flight
Huh!
5: So, when you said “passport”, earlier- what was it, really?
6: Did you really turned back to go get something?
7: Mhh, how should I put it
8: In order to fulfill the final promise....
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Pag 8
1: “The final promise”?
It was
3: a necessary piece
4: You're still wearing that ridiculous hat, Manami?
Ah... it's the one Ashikiba-san wanted last year... (Yuuto)
This is for exclusive use during the Inter High
Ohh... “exclusive use”, cool (Tobirama)
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Pag 9
2: Kyoto... Kyoto...
7: Small fries!!
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Pag 10
1: Then, should we go?
Are you...
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Pag 11
1: finally ready?!
2: Yes....!!
3: Mi!!
6: This year's victory will be ours
Our long-awaited victory
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Pag 12
1: It's checkmate!!
2: They're coming!!
3: They're coming!! One by one, to this land of Kyushu!!
4: Won't it favour us!? It's our hometown – us, Kumamoto Daichi!!
#yowamushi pedal#yowamushi pedal translations#yowapeda#yowapeda manga#yowamushi pedal manga#yowamushi pedal spoilers#ride 755#another short chapter i really hope sensei is okay!!#I dont mind the short chap at all (especially bc lately ive had little time to translate) but im kinda worried :')#This chapter was so asdhsdfksdg Manamiiiii you absolute disaster#who would have thought that the responsible one in this team would end up being doubash huh#now that's the surprising thing lmao#manami really went back to get the best boy cap i cant with him#btw i dont remember; does he know that the one who gave him the cap is onoda's mum?? how does he know#'i went back bc i had forgotten my passport' 'you dont need a passport to go to kyushu!?!?!?' ashdkasdfs well at lest he tried lmao#also 'Yuzukoshi-kun'??? is he the other hakogaku member?? :eyes emoji:#cant wait to see what other weirdo hakogaku will have this year#i think this year's hakogaku is the weirdest one - which is a lot tbh#i feel like its going to be my fave hakogaku team#btw doubashi wanting to leave manami behind and just run as five assdgfkdfgs hes right and tbh he should just do just that whenever manami#doesnt show up - 'well i guess we're a five people team from now on'#btw i love i we saw everyone! only kiji's team is missing#(maybe theyll shop up next chapter who knows wanatabe loves kiji enough that it wouldnt surprise me)#midosuji shows up for exactly one panel and hes already creepy af i love him#cant wait to get to know the new guy!!#and hiroshima!!!! cant wait to see them try so hard and then get defeated in the most pathetic ways like every year#i love them i cant wait to see what kind of weirdo higashimura has become#he was kinda normal last year but we cant have a normal person as the hiroshima captain lrb#and then theres kumadai#acting all important and then we all know theyll do absolutely nothing ajsgfksadf
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limonjarritos · 5 months
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The wine bottle and symbolism
this is personally my take on the symbolism of the wine bottle/bottle opener as based on a post by galaxitic
The wine as a symbol for obsession for a loss of control. For how Vincent feels about his fixation with Rody. Of even in a way a symbol for Rody himself.
The wine opener being Vince's semblance of control over that obsession. That he believes he has control on his feelings about Rody. But when he goes to open that bottle its not in a semblance of control but that of panic, that of impulse but he still tells himself that it's something, not realizing that with a sip of the wine he's consumed back. His rational is consumed. Just like how this whole time Rody has made him drunk with impulse.
How the wine is admittedly what does him in.
Vince breaks the bottle, breaks 'Rody' through a lack of control. He uses the bottle opener to try and open the real thing, drunk and searching for more, willing to truly give into his impulses and be intoxicated.
Vince has for the most part up until this point been bottling up his feelings, playing the part of mild mannered and in control (though his control isn't perfect. The rat, the watching through the peep hole-)
Rody taking that broken bottle in hand, takes said obsession and kills Vincent with it. Because a broken bottle is going to hurt you. Because Rody is so broken right now, shattered, reeling from the revelation that Manon has been killed. The love bleeding from his body and a hot demand for revenge coming to him that results in the burning of Vince.
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omaano · 1 year
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“You’ve come for your turn early,” the stranger says, turning to look at Boba as if Gregor does not exist. Gregor flashes Boba a grin, all too-sharp teeth, as the stranger steps away, shaking off the attractive glamour as if it’s nothing. Gregor seems as delighted as Boba is troubled to realise that their would-be customer is more cunning than he seems.
Mereel & Family Booksellers by binz, shiplizard
Allow me to recommend one more awesome Bobadin fic - since @sidhebeingbrand and @toughbreaks were kind enough to let me illustrate their fic for my "Jaster lives" square for @bobadinweek's Bobadin AU bingo card... with a bit of cheating - my love for which only grows and grows with time (and trust me, it does get better with every re-read! ). Fantastic and delightful world building with Victorian era and fae magic, and beautifully written characters where every single one of them vibrate with life. (Boba gets to suffer his 99 siblings, Jango is forced through some emotional catharsis kicking and screaming, and Din is trying his best to be a dad of a fae child. It's just the best, okay?) I'll eventually want to make one more drawing for chapter 2, I just realized during my latest re-read that I imagined the whole scene wrong ^^;
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skitskatdacat63 · 8 months
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Hey do you remember all those videos of Fernando smelling flowers? Haha yeah....
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#posting this both while im asleep and after whatever bee event ends up happening#so who knows what will happen! will we get nothing? will we get eye contact? will we possibly get an interaction? its a surprise!!#anyways this is basically me hearing about seb's bee event and he said the drivers will be there#me deep in my vettonso brainrot: OH MY GOD THEY'RE GONNA BE IN THE SAME VICINITY#will be so funny for me if when i wake up i find out fernando didnt even go 😭#but we remain hopeful 🙏#also this is just very funny to me bcs like both seb and fernando have very specifc quirks#and what are two of their specific quirks? seb and his bee thing. fernando and his flower thing from this season#so this fanart is perfect y'know 🥰🥰🥰#also screeching over how this is the first canon au drawing ive ever drawn. ive literally never drawn non-au until now 💀💀💀#okay and now some horrible jokes thay happened during the process of this:#thesis of this drawing: whats Fernando gonna do? Pollinate him? 😏#C. why did you have to make me think of bees that produce sex pollen 😭😭 this is gonna haunt me forever. but also vettonso post-japan fic-#and then also the barry benson thing. im like what do humanized bees look like and then realized 'oh no....oh no.'#fernando to seb at the bee event: 'ya like samurais...?' SORRY 😭#also having to pick the colors from one of my historical au drawings was haunting. just the sheer difference btwn them yknow......#anyways please take my old men yaoi. took a break from historical yaoi to draw this 😭😭😭😭#this is my peak vettonso fanart cannot improve from here. also a fever dream#vettonso#f1#formula 1#sebastian vettel#fernando alonso#catie.art.#*not gonna edit the tags bcs i like the time capsule of it all but like. yeah. we were fed.#*catie from 2 hours prior(atm its 3 am) would be so pleased right now i think
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