#10 happy things

[daily-rayless]

10 Happy Things

Thank you for tagging me @thunderboltfire

I love making lists (let’s call this an eleventh thing I sneaked in) and thinking about this really picked up my mood.

1. Graveyards: I don’t mean this in any dark or edgy way. I feel like graveyards are extremely peaceful, reflective places. I love wandering through and looking at the headstones -- seeing the different sculpture designs, seeing the names, and inscriptions, making little guesses at these people’s histories. I like the newer graveyards where people make so many unusual design choices (an entire recipe on the back of a headstone! a stone that looks like an electronic device!) and I also like older graveyards where you can feel the passage of time. When my mom was little, her family sometimes would eat their lunches in graveyards on road trips, so I was never raised with the idea that it’s disrespectful to talk and laugh in a graveyard. They’re pleasant, welcoming places.

2. Brush-tip markers: Along with being smooth and velvety and blending so nicely, they let me pretend I’m a Master Painter Painting Masterfully.

3. Used Book Stores: This is a little similar to graveyards. Broadly speaking, there are two types of used book stores, and they’re both good. 1: Bright colorful bookstores with more recent used books, lots of paperbacks from the last twenty years, books you’ve been interested in but didn’t want to buy at full price and here they are. 2: Brown, quiet used book stores with much older books, lots of hardbacks who’ve lost -- or never had -- dust jackets, lots of foil-stamped covers and thick pages with huge margins and frontispieces protected by translucent paper, books you’ve never heard of, without Amazon reviews or back-cover blurbs, that you decide to take a chance on.

4. Finishing a journal and lining it up on the shelf with my other journals: Along with the sense of accomplishment and thinking I’ve made a bit of a record, my journals are mismatched, lots of them gifts from people, and they remind me of those people.

5. Really Old Stuff: This may be because I come from the States, so there isn’t a lot of really old stuff around me, and even the oldest stuff usually isn’t very old. Really old trees, old houses, old knickknacks -- I love these tangible proofs of the past, thinking about where they’ve been and the people who’ve interacted with them. This exact knickknack was sitting somewhere the day I was born. People were clumping across these wooden floors when they heard the Titanic went down. It’s a neat feeling.

6. Meeting Animals: I don’t currently have any pets, so meeting other people’s cats and dogs and horses and goats feels like a treat.

7. Character Building: Landing on just the right name for an oc, or drawing an oc and finally seeing their personality in my pencil lines. I can “see” the character in my head, but putting that on paper can be really hard. Some characters, like Arsen, still haven’t really “appeared” on the page for me yet.

8. Wandering around in fandom spaces and finding art of a favorite character I haven’t seen before. Extra points if something about the art is so good and so spot-on I want to incorporate it into my own headcanon.

9. Names and Words: I haven’t studied it very deeply, but I’ve been interested in name/word derivations for a long time. When I find out that two words, deep down, come from the same root, it’s magical. My dad once speculated that foal and pullet might have a common source, and I didn’t believe him, but he was right. The other day I learned that Lucy and Luna come from the same Proto-Indoeuropean root, and it means both “to shine” and “to see”. There’s something fascinating about the history of the very words we use, hidden meanings and connections we don’t even know.

10. Hot cocoa: I used to drink hot cocoa regularly, but not so much anymore. It’s the best hot drink, in my opinion, and I don’t take it for granted these days.

Please consider yourself tagged, especially if we’re mutuals. This picked up my mood, and I’d love to spread that around.

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[machneherald]

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big, dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you’re always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh. Even worse when you make me cry. I hate it  when you’re not around, and the fact you didn’t call. But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit. Not even at all.

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU | 1999  happy birthday @djo ♥

[nightmareonpeachstreet]

I love this picture for a couple of reasons

for one:

"ladies, is it gay to stare lovingly at your wife?" -Dehya, every hour of every day

and two:

the fact that Kaveh was the one setting the self timer on the kamera but Alhaitham is in the outside position means Alhaitham was canonically saving Kaveh's seat for him. again, very gay behavior.

[arttsuka]

Finally, I drew them all

[abrandnewshadow]

[gatoburr0]

[silverlombaxwitch]

Not done fighting, I don’t feel I’ve lost

Alt under cut

[finalgirlguy]

h o t t o g o snap and clap and touch your toes raise your hands now body roll dance it out you're hot to go

(I just wanted to make one of those dancing in film edits and this was fun)

(largely inspired by @wellwaterhysteria )

youtube link

[cloudycleric]

guys guess who got accepted to chapman university AKA dodge college of film AKA where the DUFFER BROTHERS went to college!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ryllen]

With this absolute unit I declared that my entire savings to pull Eternal Knight sebek is gone

[marshmallowgoop]

no thoughts just Heiji Hattori (HD)

[hiddenbarinapocketdimension]

This morning sucked. Woke up at 7 on less than 5 hours of sleep to bake over 50 Eccles cakes. Didn’t have like half my ingredients. Bought more only to realise I still didn’t have them all. Burnt myself on the syrupy filling. Printer died on me as I was trying to get a printing job done. Forgot to have lunch I was so excited. Locked my car key in the boot. Waited an hour in the sun in all black to make sure I didn’t get a parking ticket whilst trying to get said key out. Got stuck in traffic for half an hour only to find I’d just moved under 100 metres. Accidentally had the thermostat cranked up to 40C the whole journey. All of this, just to get to a screening.

Then when I got there….

Shrimp emotions. The atmosphere was incredible. Got there 3 hours early. Immediately bonded with people, and it just felt so warm and exciting. I passed round the Eccles cakes in its little (very large) Antichrist basket. We all counted down with the timer waiting for the episodes to start. The episodes were amazing, and I have to thank @neil-gaiman for making this season come true - it was everything I hoped for and more, and I think that’ll be the case for pretty much everyone. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world, even if I had to live through this morning 20x over.

Trust me when I say you’re not prepared for season 2. No one is.

Anyways here’s a picture of the cakes in their basket:

[mblue-art]

happy birthday cross !! it's always a delight to see your genuine smile, and i mean it when i say it's an absolute treasure to me !!

(meme src)

[starry-bi-sky]

finally giving fem danyal her own au and fulfilling my 'danny is an animal whisperer' agenda at the same time: mother of monsters danyal 2.0

i say "2.0" because TECHNICALLY 'mother of monsters danyal' is an au I made back in June for Dark fem!Danyal (who I promptly named Layal). However, I haven't posted much for her yet, and I like the "mother of monsters" premise too much to leave it only to Layal. Plus Danyal in that au was going to become the mother of monsters anyway, just with significantly less world domination and mass extinction.

'Animal whisperer' Danny has been something I've been thinking about since my latest DP 'wolfpack au' post and it's! So fun to think about, and who no better to assign the idea to than Danyal Al Ghul? Who comes from a family infamously known for their love of animals and nature?

Fem Danyal is just purely self-indulgent. *gestures wildly at her* i just lomvb,,, her,,,, I've only really mentioned her in context of the 'Things in Threes' au/my first Danyal al Ghul au with the facial scar, but she's!!! I love her. She deserves her own au <33

So kill three birds with one stone! Make a post about it.

Anyways, Danny has a large lair. Similar to cult leader danyal, her lair is a giant mountain region resembling nanda parbat with a big temple/palace-like area built into the mountain. It's large, it's overflowing with natural flora, with its own mini-floating islands hovering over some areas, and it's also completely empty.

Danny takes one look at her lair upon first meeting, -- noting that it looked relatively smaller from the outside -- and promptly, with the elegance of an Al Ghul, goes "What the hell??" Because yes, while she does enjoy her own solitude and privacy, this is a bit ridiculous.

For heaven's sake, there's even a massive lake in there! What's she going to do with all this space? Can she make it any smaller? Why is it so big in the first place? This looks borderline like one of the mega-islands!

She finds out later that apparently, the amount of ectoplasm a ghost has can have an effect on the size of their lair. And since she has such a large core, her lair reflects that. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's bigger on the inside so it doesn't take up "too much space" on the outside. Don't worry about it too much.

Danyal isn't totally opposed to having such a large lair, she's just... a bit baffled by it. It feels like so much wasted space is all. All this flora and no fauna to enjoy it with. It's practically eerie.

She decorates her temple-palace area, transforming rooms to match her needs as she sees fit. In the center of the inner gardens is a massive tree that she likes to climb, with twisting, winding branches. Sam and Tucker have honorary rooms, even if they can't safely leave the specter speeder for long periods of time, even with proper safety equipment. So does Jazz. Ali (Dani) has one too, but he can actually use that one, and Danny brought him to her lair so he could decorate it himself.

She has a personal garden, but for the most part she lets the flora exist as it is. Too much space to cultivate it en masse anyways.

Skip to a few weeks later, on her next visit to Clockwork. She developed a habit of going to see him semi-regularly just because. She enjoys his wisdom, and he has a lot of stories to tell, and when he's not being the cryptic and esoteric timekeeper, he's a bit goofy.

(pushing my dadwork agenda here,,, i think Danny deserves to go 'hey, Lord Clockwork, do you want me to buy you something' while she's at walmart, only to receive a singular glowing sticky note that says 'cucumber gatorade'.)

(She insists on referring to him with his proper titles even for the most mundane of things because it's proper, but Clockwork sees a future where she eventually calls him "Cee" and by all things in existence is he determined to get there. Anyways,,,)

On her next visit to Clockwork, just as she is about to leave, Clockwork stops her and goes; "Ah, I have something for you. Hold out your hands."

Danny does as such, and Clockwork doesn't give out things often, so her curiosity has spiked to the highest levels. He turns away from her for a moment, using his staff to summon whatever it is he needs, and when he turns around.

He drops a fish into her hands. Granted, a fish in a small glass tank. But a fish nonetheless. A small one, roughly about the size of her finger, with a blue-black, eel-shaped body and four sets of glowing eyes. She can see thin, almost translucent, but spiny fins down its back and the start of bioluminescent markings. It's swimming around in circles in its small container.

"Lord Clockwork." Danyal says all too calmly.

"Yes, Danyal?"

"What is this?"

"That is an adolescent leviathan, Danyal." She’s transfixed onto the tank, but she doesn’t need to see Clockwork’s face to hear the smile he’s stifling.

The myriad of emotions that runs through her all at once threatens to overwhelm her, and she can’t tell if the feelings are negative or positive. So she carefully closes her eyes to breathe in through her nose.

“Clockwork.”

“Ah, I see you’ve dropped formalities.”

She ignores that.

“Why have you given me an adolescent leviathan?”

She's expecting the trickster to look amused when she opens her eyes. Instead, he just looks endeared. "I know you're fond of animals," he says, "and you always look amazed when you come across an animal of the realms. So I thought you might enjoy taking care of the young beast, it's mother is dead so it has no one to care for it."

Oh.

"But, if you don't like it," Clockwork's hands reach out for the tank, "I can simply take it back--"

Danyal shifts the tank out from his reach and hugs it possessively. "I never said that. How do I care for it?"

And so clockwork gives her a list, and when Danyal returns to her lair, she sets up a large tank in her room for the leviathan to swim in -- it's much too small for the lake right now, she thinks. She'll feel better if it's somewhere she can find it. She names him Suhā.

Suhā grows quickly, and by the end of the mortal month she transforms one of the rooms into a large pond for him to swim around in. He's a very loyal beast, recognizing her as it's mother of some kind. Danyal takes great care ensuring that her beastie gets quality care, and Suhā swims to the surface to see her when he senses her in the room.

It spirals from there. Somehow, Pandora catches wind that Clockwork gave her a leviathan, and so the next time Danyal visits the Greater Athens, she gives her a baby chimera. It's eyes are still sealed shut, Danyal can't bring herself to say no. She names the little beastie Firas.

Frostbite hears about it too, and not to be outdone, gives her an animal she's never even heard of. Infinite-realms born, apparently. A fox-like creature with two small horns like an impala, four eyes, and tall legs. The name isn't something she's quite sure how to write down, and she's positive that her friends won't be able to comprehend it. She names her Eira.

Getting the three of them used to each other was... interesting. Suhā tried to eat Firas when Danyal first introduced the two, and they've hated each other ever since. Firas and Eira are seemingly getting along. Her island already feels full enough with the three of them on it.

Of course, that's not the end of it. With her luck, she begins stumbling across other monsters. Realms-borne or otherwise. An injured hydra in the Grecian islands that, through lots of trial and error, Danyal is able to rehabilitate and heal. It routinely comes to visit her afterwards.

A griffin with a broken wing that she moves permanently to the island that likes to keep to itself, but tends to come down when she's near. It gets along best with Firas.

A panther-like monster from the Shades Woods that had six legs and three tails, with ends that reminded her of a venus flytrap. It stuck around the heavy foliage and she can only make out where it was when she saw its golden eyes reflect.

She befriends a young indrik with its leg injured, and much like the hydra it follows her back to her island, and stays there in the mountains. It comes out when she's alone, much like her other beasts.

She receives two more leviathan -- one from clockwork, and one she finds herself while exploring the deeper and darker recesses of the Ghost Zone. It was huddled against the carcass of its mother, and she managed to befriend and get close enough to it to bring it back to her island. Suhā is fully grown by then, with a head bigger than Danyal herself and he still likes to stick her head out of the water for nuzzles when she's near.

He's not very happy with his new siblings, but he's not trying to eat them when she's not looking. So she calls it a win in her book.

And it's not just large beasts either; smaller animals begin popping up when she's not looking. Bird-like creatures and small mammals, and she swears she saw a doe (or something resembling a doe) grazing in the forest while she was walking by.

She takes back with her a lone snake egg once, and it grows so big it wraps around her island and sleeps with its massive head on the mountain beside the temple, like some smaller breed of Jörmungandr.

And on and on it goes. Some of the beasts she comes across never step foot onto her island, some of them follow her back, while others she has to carry back. Not all of the ones that follow her stay, and Danny rehabilitates the injured and releases them when they're fully healed.

It's hectic, and busy, and frankly she loves it. Some of her rehabilitated beasts return to visit her, or to have their children somewhere on the island, or whatever it is they need to do.

She becomes a bit infamous for it. She goes to visit Dorathea once, and as she's walking through the streets she can hear some of the denizens whispering while she walks past.

"Is that her?"

"Her highness' friend? Yes--"

"--that's the one--"

"--Mother of monsters--"

Danny's not sure how to feel about that.

Although, she can't say she's opposed.

Danyal Al Ghul, Mother of monsters, raiser of beasts. It has a nice ring to it.

[yuviur]

Bring Your Kid to Work Day!

(These two deserve something nice after last episode... from simpler times when the Closes were truly a trio)