your love returns in tragedy (ID in alt)

Feeling real ridiculous for not having realized that Baron's "stark father" was the Nightmare King until now

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. 

i have a lot of stuff due at 7:30 am and it’s currently 11 so of course i drew the whole family instead

"i always wanted my friends to call me gerry" vs "my name's gerry!" i'm so sick

The Ghost on the Shore

wingman malleus-sama

ok humor me here- chnt au where mostly everything is the same except it takes place in the magnus archives universe ?? and yk I’m open to community speculation and yall adding on to this because I need more opinions !!!! unhinged ramblings under read more :^)

ok ok so camp here & there is a site that’s run by The Spiral, everything outside of that is practically normal, but the camp makes everyone believe that the events that go on here are actually not that weird. It could also be a place where the bridge between the fear entities and earth is thin, so that’s why there’s a lot of activity from several different entities.

At least once a counselor mentioned “why do we keep working here every year?” And Soren was never actually fired, which just adds fuel to the fire tbh.

Most of the counselors there are just marked by the spiral, but others are marked by different entities. Some might not be full on avatars yet, but still posses supernatural qualities (like Oliver Banks until his death). Rowan is an Eye avatar, and although it’s made a point that the eye can’t really see the future, that just makes Rowan’s situation that much more worrying. Soren, ofc, is an avatar of The End. Self explanatory. Jedidiah mighhhttt be Web aligned, or even The Lonely (now that I think about it he most definitely is the lonely in someway) but I’m not entirely sure what to do with him yet. Adam is a Flesh avatar, and maybe one of the only ones who actually knows he’s an avatar (besides maybe Soren and Lucille). Elijah seems like an End avatar, with him being overly obsessed with making sure Sydney stays asleep for the greater good of humanity. His trying to sacrifice Sydney was an attempted End ritual, and would’ve most likely failed w/o intervention bc Sydney hasn’t been marked by all the fears yet.

Sydney is this au’s Jon, he’s being led into the position of the antichrist by Lucille, who is The spiral avatar. So far Sydney has been marked by the spiral (working at chnt), the end (Soren, the gravediggress, and the mold), the hunt (… the hunt), the flesh (Adam), the corruption (the hive incident), the eye (the bonfire, Rowan), the lonely or the web depending of which Jed aligns with more, andddd I’m sure others that are slipping my mind rn.

Jed (more than likely on accident) cemented Sydney as an Avatar after he killed and reanimated him, and Sydney is able to stay fit at the camp bc he feeds off the unhinged Spiral energy it creates. I also think Sydney was marked by The End at an early age, and that’s why he was chosen to be the sacrifice by Elijah (even if he doesn’t realize it) and why he’s very into death and decay.

The Magnus Institute DOES exist in this au, and they (Jon n the gang) find out about this camp due to a tired looking young man who convinced his slightly unhinged boyfriend to make a statement with him about the strange place they work at over the summer (ps Juniper is Very spiral aligned, more so than the rest of them, thinks that the camp is actually pretty normal and doesn’t know what Rowan is going on about, and seems to live in a place that Jon later finds out doesn’t exist at all)

ummmm I think that’s it for now, let me know if you have anything to add or silly thoughts about it ??

it’s very important to me that I always draw sokka with the biggest eyebags imaginable. just looking like every day for the past five years he’s done nothing except gotten the shit kicked out of him by all the forces of the universe. et cetera. so the fact that in “the chase” they all do have eyebags to signify their sleepiness just like. feels fake to me. not because I don’t think it’s cute when aang is all sleepy or whatever, but because I think if the animators truly weren’t playing, sokka would’ve had those eyebags in every single episode.

happiness today and tomorrow (ID in alt)

Maybe it's a 'study finds water is wet' type of thought, but

considering it's an action movie whose overall plot is "immortal warriors Fuck Shit Up™️", I think it's significant that in The Old Guard the thing that makes Copley pull red strings through his Murder Conspiracy Board and say "[Merrick] doesn't care what [Andy]'s done with [her immortality]" is the people they save, not the ones they kill

Most of the Conspiracy Board is him circling random newspaper headlines and faces on old photographs to (more or less realistically) follow the immortals' treck through the world and big historical events. Which is, in-canon, not much different than putting portraits from different centuries next to a picture of Keanu Reeves and saying "they look the same, clearly Reeves is an immortal!"

But then there are the connections. A little girl holding Joe's hand in WW1 becoming the youngest (and first) woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine (suck it, Kozak). Or the grandchild of a family that Andy saved from [something] helping people escape from the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.

They are warriors. They have fought and been in the midst of countless wars, major or minor, throughout history. They must have killed as many people as they saved... and yet.

It's not them taking out a random warlord or dictator or rabidly hateful politician that has tangible repercussions in history. It's the children and families they get out of war zones, save from accidents, protect from natural disasters. People to whom they give a second chance at life, and grow to change the world (or even just their own world), like a mysterious stranger once changed theirs just by holding out a hand or patching a wound.

I don't know I just think it's particularly neat

good lord

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 :')

Actually.... have I ever talked about how I think Wheatley is basically the perfect synthesis of what an average Aperture employee was?? Because he was created in Aperture, he'd likely be a reflection of their entire work culture (....moreso than the gimmicky cores we meet in portal/tie-in games). Like the scientists responsible for making him really put all their hatred of their workplace/that-annoying-coworker-they-dislike into him.

He's sooorta miserable but Fine, mostly. A tad paranoid. Kinda classist/ableist (he disparages Manual Laborers in his dialogue and like... everything he says to chell is just so Bad lmao). he's TERRIFIED of GLaDOS but still belittles her. He laughs at the turrets dying in a shredder then realizes how messed up that is and backpedals (also backpedals on his smelly humans bit, but i'll be fair and say he deserves to hate humans as much as GLaDOS does). He breaks the nanomachines' work and then has the audacity to threaten to file a lawsuit against THEM for a Hate Crime?? (which is so so funny for so many reasons but I DIGRESS) Like I don't ascribe to him being a former human employee, but also I can clearly imagine working at Aperture and talking to Wheatley by the water cooler and he's That Moderately Unpleasant Guy who is juuust adequate enough to not be fired but never Exceptional enough to promote, but most importantly, he's not clever enough to actually do anything about his shitty situation in the company. He only fucks up a little less than what is allotted. He's got charisma! Fun for a chat sometimes! But he makes ppl feel bad when they talk to him. He's not the WORST, but he for sure isn't the best. It'd be easy to convince him to commit a crime in the name of Science. (He wouldn't sell your soul for a single corn chip, he'd only sell it for a whole bag.)

Wheatley is THE Aperture employee. And this all tracks because literally what could be a worse decision than continuing to work at Aperture Science?