#HE IS BEING PONDERED!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

pondering my lorb

We Are All Pondering His Orbs

[lotus-lost-n-found]

Some Batfam Headcanons because the brain never stops;

Jason hates being called "Bruce's Son". But he hates it more when hes called "One of Wayne's Orphans/Wayne's child" because fuck you I'm his son-! wait no--

With the exception of Damian, they rarely refer to Bruce as "Dad/Father". Either it didn't occur to them/didn't see the need to/thought it would be strange. But when Dick/Jason/Tim/Cass are tired or injured it might slip out. And Bruce might just crumble a bit at it

Doesn't mean they don't say it to their siblings when Bruce is out of Earshot.

"Dad said you couldn't." "What do you mean Dad said I couldn't use that mug? It's my mug!" "You snooze you lose Timmy Boy-" "Jason don't be an asshole-"

That being said Bruce says "son/daughter/child" at every available opportunity he can after he knows that they have acclimated enough that they wouldn't be uncomfortable/know they can tell Bruce that they don't want to be called that.

First time Bruce called Dick "son" in a way that meant "You are my kid" and not in a "This police officer just called me son with a brow furrow" way Dick grinned and carried on with the conversation. Later he wondered if his dad wouldn't like someone else calling him Son; but Dick thinks about the life he was given because of Bruce and thinks maybe his dad wouldn't mind.

Calling Jason "son" is a hit or miss situation, even before he died. The first time it happened he was confused, he didnt think that was the relationship they had and it made everything change for him. He got frustrated--not angry--with himself and Bruce at this sudden emotional turmoil. Wasn't he just the kid Bruce picked up in an alleyway? Wasn't he just some street rat in bright Robin clothing? (He lets himself believe that he can be Bruce's son. If for only a little while).

Tim cries after Bruce is out of earshot, it would've been a year or so after his parents died and he was adopted. He didn't think he could have been wanted like that again. Even if you think the Drake's had A+ Parenting or not, I don't think he would have gotten a lot of confirmation of being wanted otherwise.

Cass smiles, emotions carefully concealed under her expression. She's grateful she found Bruce and he doesn't mention it if she leans a bit closer in a request for closeness.

Damian doesn't expect anything less, he only appears satisfied. But also relieved that he has gotten the confirmation that yes, Bruce wants and accepts him.

EDIT 10/11; hiii, i have added Duke, Steph & a Bonus in a reblog you can find on the same blog under my 'batfamily headcanons' / 'sore rambles' tag. have fun :)

[puppetmaster13u]

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. 

[ruporas]

happiness today and tomorrow (ID in alt)

[deerspherestudios]

How would mychael be with a religious s/o? Does he believe in some sort of higher being? (my bad if this was asked already)

I've answered if he has his own religion before, but meeting a religious MC I think he'd be respectful about it despite not understanding the appeal.

There's just too many things that humans believe in that doesn't apply to Mychael's lifestyle, but he commends the human race for having multiple rich and diverse beliefs that overall guide them in doing good.

[infamously-winking]

hot take on billford is that the secret third thing is obsession with being seen by someone for the first time in each of their lives

[formerprincewille]

Something that really sets Wille and Simon apart from other queer ships is that when we say their love language is physical touch, IT REALLY IS PHYSICAL TOUCH. And I’m not speaking of just sex. Over the course of the show, the amount of touching between them is astronomical. And that’s really something rarely seen in queer media. There may be moments here or there, but often times there’s a lack of physical contact unless it’s for “the plot”. Wille and Simon feel like a real couple in the way they’re always physically reaching out for each other.

[lynxfrost13]

Penitent beast

[jayktoralldaylong]

Seeing Lestat again in Season 2 really reminded me how much Armand broke him. No one has been able to make Lestat cry the way Armand makes Lestat cry. And that's saying something cause his abusive parents and Magnus came before Armand, but no one has matched Armand's level of crazy.

And I think it's because the other tortures were...brief?

He ran away from home, the abuse from his parents stopped. Magnus died and that stopped too. Armand, meanwhile, has decided to dedicate the rest of his immortal existence to torturing Lestat. It has become his favourite pass time.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Even the scorned women are learning work from Armand. 💀

Everything about Armand just messes with a person's mind.I t's the way he's not even chasing Lestat around for me. 😭😭😭

He really like "I'm old enough to be your biggest problem by staying in the same spot for 5 centuries." And he was right. 💀😭

I hear the next season is gonna be The Vampire Lestat and oooooh boy. 💀💀 People are about to discover just how terrible Armand can be. Baby's name gonna be dragged in the mud when the secrets get out. Gonna see if he can gaslight his way out of this one.

(Who am I kidding? Bro was torturing Louis and Daniel AND still had us feeling sorry for him. He can gaslight his way out of anything.)

[royalarchivist]

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 :')

[themeraldee]

Soulmate AU where you have your soulmate's name on your body somewhere first and last and somehow Vought managed to fuck up Homelander's and it's unreadable now. Then he meets reader who isn't all that worried about finding their soulmate and so when Homelander pulls well a homelander and they eventually start to date it's a week or two in and he's been real good and hadn't pushed for anything so he's never seen his partner's soulmark Maybe out of genuine curiosity or insecurity, he asks them and without a beat they say his name, his real name first and last. Maybe he hasn't told them his real name yet so they don't know

This is such a great idea. I don't how they could damage him per se but in the world of soulmates I wouldn't be surprised if Vought tried to capitalize on it with all sort of soulmate bio-tech. Like some chemical/drug that hides your mark should you want to not be tied to the name on your body, etc...

So I imagine they could easily either just feed him shitloads of that like they did V. Because they can't have their biggest asset running around looking for his soulmate whom he's gonna have stronger allegiance to than Vought. No, no, no, they need him obedient.

So I think Homelander's comic book name is John Gillman but because they don't mention it in the show and Gillman is very random (unless someone can point me to the lore) I think it would be interesting if his soulmate's mark said either just 'John' or 'John Doe' because what would you make of that.

What person only has a first name? Or if it was John Doe and reader works at a hospital or something where they deal with multiple people being labelled as John Doe they kind of give up on it because it's not known whether the mark is what you first meet the person as or their actual name. (Like for trans people, would it be their chosen name or dead name?)

This would send Homelander down a spiral, going back to Vought/Vogelbaum to try to find some info on his soulmate and why he doesn't have a mark. Chaos ensues.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

It's just guys night talk! Don't worry about it!

(Read Tiger Tiger and shake this man awake so he can finish that thought!)

[hedgehog-moss]

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

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

Biographies

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

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

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

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

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

Fantasy

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

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

Essays / literary criticism / philosophy

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

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

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

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

Did not fit in the above categories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[hatterladz]

So let's talk Cuphead's kills

I CAN'T DO IT ANYMORE I NEED TO YAP!!! REREAD BE DAMNED I NEED TO SPEAK!!!!

Alrighty so spoilers for Inky Mystery, buckle up this is going to be a long one

Okay so I was going to my fav chapters and doing some rereads

And I'm going rabid about Chapter 177: A Broken Cup and it made me also realize some things with Chapter 334: Can't Sleep a Wink

Now to start off with 334 always bugged me, it felt so out of nowhere. I mean, Cup is sleeping around with girls, being Bendy's wingman and before that doing Fanny favors? Sure there was the gangs but it felt sudden that Cup just killed Wink not only that but that murder was much more emotionally involved then his other jobs. Why?

At first I could believe it's his overprotective streak, but now I think it might be something else, because I reread Chapter 177, where he's getting taunted by the Night Terror. And when I read him being taunted I took it all as lies but during my reread...

How much of Wink's death was really the B-Bros protection? How much of it was for Wilson? Was it really that? Or was it something else?

Much earlier in the story it's mentioned Cuphead laughed at hurting and killing people. But we know he didn't enjoy it, it haunts him. His guilt and regret is mentioned frequently. He even remembers all of his victims.

So why? Why is there so much emphasis in the Labrynth that Cuphead is not just a killer but a killer who likes his job? When he has this much guilt and regret? When he remembers all of their screams and deaths?

Because it's how he copes. He was raised as a killer, it's what he's good at and he also knows that, when it comes to the underworld, an easy solution.

The events surrounding this chapter was more then just Cuphead going through a playboy era with his friend Bendy. The house stresses him out, he can't go there now after the events that happened with Holly. So he went to the Candy Shop, except then Fanny hurt and betrayed him. He doesn't have anywhere to go so he's coping in the worst ways possible.

Violence and women. Now this isn't my post where I talk about how using sex is a coping mechanism is a horrible idea, so I'll move on from that. But let's look at that quote again "I've need something to hit for awhile".

He's doing it as a stress relief. He can't figure things out with Fanny, he can't help his friend with his guilt and fears of killing angels, he can't do anything about the deal with Marcus, the ink machine, the fact he's trapped as the "Devil's Dog".

But he can kill Winky. Winky has his goons all over the house. Winky killed Wilson which caused all his friends pain, Winky tried to attack his friends, Winky has answers to his questions, Winky is a problem. So he takes it out on Winky. He wasn't ever intending of letting Winky go easy, and he especially wasn't planning it after his suspicions were true. Why would he mention he works for the Devil otherwise?

Why did he leave Mugman home? Because Mugs would stop him. He didn't want to be stopped. It's why he doesn't tell anyone about it or Darius after. Sure Darius is a target, and I'm sure information was also a target. But that wasn't the only reason.

But he doesn't want to admit how easy it is for him to kill, the relief it gives. And how guilty he feels afterwards.

Because he doesn't even want to address it's his fault. He did what he had to. He doesn't want to believe what sort of person he is, he doesn't want to remember all the things he's done. He tries to forget. It's not his fault, he was protecting his brother. He was told to by the Devil. He did what he had to. Didn't want to acknowledge the times he had fun tormenting people, to acknowledge how good he is at being a monster [since deep down, that's how he sees himself], and he especially didn't want to acknowledge he killed when he didn't have to. That he took the "easy" way to do things.

He did what he had to. That's what he needs to believe.

[inpursuitofnunchi]

the subtitler understood the assignment

[dukeofthomas]

I don't want Jason as a declawed version of himself, all 'murder Is Wrong' and part of the batfam, but I also don't want him as an evil 'I blow up schools and shoot people for fun' villain.

I also once saw someone say a big part of the divesiveness here comes from how Robin!Jason and Red Hood!Jason are practically different characters. If you want villainous Red Hood, you make Robin Jason more aggresive, angrier, you make him more like what he'll become as an adult. And if you like Jaybin, you explain his murders and mistakes as side-effects of the pit and make Red Hood nicer and more agreeable, like how he wss before.

But I feel like both are a disservice to his character, but the 2 extremes of him are also really hard to reconcile.