#Hack Liminality

[setteidreams]

.hack//Liminality (50 sheets) has been added to the WIP section (https://patreon.com/setteidreams).  

[greenglowinspooks]

(DCXDP) The obligations of a rogue versus those of a parent (Pt. 5)

—

Tw: torture scene (GiW agent receiving), general angst, canon-typical violence (DC), nobody is having a good time

Will be crossposted to AO3 eventually

(Masterlist/subscription post)

—

It was pretty easy for Danny to forget that Dr. Crane was a rogue at times.

Most of the time he wasn’t comically evil, like what he’d expect of a Gotham rogue. He was helping Danny, even if only because he didn’t want to be taken in by the GiW as well. He was even downright nice most of the time, or at least neutral.

Sure, he had a strange obsession with fear and psychology, but that wasn’t really out of the ordinary for Danny. It didn’t feel like living with a rogue, just like…staying with a distant relative, or something.

He seemed like just an ordinary person.

Today, though, Danny was brought back to reality.

The GiW agent they’d tracked down together writhed on the ground, screaming in pain and terror. Scarecrow was sat a few feet away, setting up a syringe of the antidote he’d made.

After a few more moments, he injected the man with the antidote, watching him like a hawk the entire time.

Suddenly, the man surged forward, lunging at Scarecrow with a feral scream.

Unluckily for him, though, he was still weak from the fear toxin in his system, and from the beatings he’d received prior. Scarecrow easily wrestled him to the ground, settling himself on the broad part of the agent’s back with a vice grip on one of his arms.

“Let’s try again,” he said sharply, all of the warmth Danny had grown used to gone from his voice. “Where is the GiW base of operations?”

The agent took several shuddering breaths before spitting at Scarecrow, defiance and hatred written all over his face.

For just a moment, the room was utterly silent.

“Fine, have it your way.”

Scarecrow began to twist the man’s arm further. It wasn’t long before the agent began to squirm, then writhe, beneath him. Danny’s stomach churned.

“You know,” Scarecrow began, almost conversationally, “there are plenty of jobs that one can get without the use of their legs, especially with the level of education you have. Anything that doesn’t involve hard labor, really.”

The man’s face was beginning to turn red in his struggle not to scream. He took in gasping breaths, the way that his mouth moved almost reminding Danny of a goldfish.

(He felt awful for the comparison, but it was true.)

“However,” Scarecrow continued, “I find you’d be rather hard-pressed to find a job without the use of your arms. Especially in a place like Gotham, where you can always be replaced by someone eager to do your job for even less money. Of course, you could most likely coast off of savings and severance pay for a while, but…”

He leaned closer to the man’s head, his voice lowering.

“Would you be able to live like that? To live with yourself, if you no longer have a purpose?”

He allowed the agent a few seconds of rest before increasing the pressure on his arm. The agent gasped, letting out a strangled hiss. His arm bones were making fascinating noises in response to the strain. Danny felt sick.

“You seem like a rather driven young man. I’m sure your family would hate to see you unmotivated, directionless. Would they resent you, do you think?”

“Fuck you, you—”

The man was cut off by his own scream as Scarecrow finally allowed his arm to break, audibly splintering into thousands of useless shards of bone.

He had the exact pressure memorized. Clearly, he had done this before.

This was wrong. This was wrong.

Shouldn’t Danny step in, do something?

“That won’t heal cleanly. Even with the best medical care in the world, you’ll end up with permanent damage.”

The man below him wheezed and sobbed, choking on air as Scarecrow let go of his arm carelessly, letting it flop back onto the ground.

“Just the sort of thing something like you deserves,” Scarecrow hissed, his voice cold.

“You tortured a child, and you enjoyed it. You laughed with your friends about it. In your notes, one of your friends complained about the screaming,” Scarecrow brought his leg around, grinding his boot into the man’s broken arm. He howled in agony, writhing uncontrollably.

“Was it inconvenient to him, do you think? Too loud? If you were joking about it, clearly you thought so, too. I could fix that as well.”

He drew out another needle, this one once again filled with fear toxin.

“Scarecrow, wait,” Danny choked out.

Scarecrow turned to look at him.

Even his posture was different than usual. He looked… stiff, more like an animal than a man. When he tilted his head at Danny in a silent question, it looked like something in his neck had snapped, his head lolling to the side.

Danny wondered if he was consciously moving like that, or if it was habit at this point.

“You—we don’t have to do this. We can get information some other way, right? You don’t have to…”

Danny looked down at the GiW agent below Scarecrow. He didn’t even have it in him to glare up at Danny like he had before. Instead he laid limply on the ground, tremors rolling through his body uncontrollably.

“We’ve exhausted every other option and you know it,” Scarecrow said, his voice low, “this is the only way we can move forward.”

“Still, I—I don’t,” Danny swallowed, his throat tight, “this isn’t—this isn’t right. Isn’t there some other way to do this? Like—a truth serum, or something?”

“Truth serums are notoriously unreliable. They’re almost as bad as lie detectors. We’re much more likely to get a reliable result from this.”

Danny just stared at the GiW agent and his splintered, ruined arm. He began to weakly wriggle in Scarecrow’s grasp, which was graciously ignored.

He vaguely remembered himself doing the same thing when he was on the operating table; even if he knew there was no chance of escape, he still thrashed and screamed, desperate to get away. The jagged I-shaped incision on his torso felt uncomfortably warm.

What was there left to say?

“The Bat does the same thing at times, you know,” Scarecrow said, “him and the rest of his brood. By using my toxin, I’m actually lessening the amount of permanent damage that I’m doing. Physically.”

“Still, that doesn’t make it right,” Danny said desperately. “Even if—even if everyone in the world did this, it wouldn’t make it right.”

Scarecrow hummed.

They were both silent for a moment.

His next words were gentle, absurdly so when compared to the scene in front of him.

“I would love an alternative. But…”

He shrugged, hand coming to rest on the break in the GiW agent’s arm. Even without applying any pressure, the man stopped squirming immediately.

“There aren’t any other options,” Danny repeated, his voice flat and his body numb.

“Yes,” Scarecrow said. “I’m sorry.”

There was a pause. No one moved a muscle. Eventually Scarecrow spoke again, his voice strangely empty.

“You can stand outside and keep watch, if you’d like. At such a short distance their radars won’t pick us up.”

Danny said nothing, leaving the room silently.

He sat outside for quite a while.

He was grateful that Scarecrow had, with his help, dragged the agent to one of his previous hideouts. It was soundproofed, after all.

He was glad that he didn’t have to hear the rest of what Scarecrow did to the man.

After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Crane left the building, joining him outside. He guided Danny back to his beat up old truck and they drove home in silence.

“Did you at least…do you know where they are, now?” Danny asked as they entered the apartment, his voice small.

“They didn’t share the details of all of their locations with any one person. I know where one of their locations are, but not their main base of operations.”

Danny felt disgusted. With himself, with Dr. Crane, with the GiW.

He was disgusted by the agent, too. Did he just hate the restless dead so much that he would prefer to be tortured than to give them the upper hand? Did he really think he was in the right?

Was there a chance that he was?

Danny felt very, very small, and very stupid. Stupid and weak and cowardly.

“Danny,” Dr. Crane spoke, his voice soft.

“I’m truly sorry that this is happening to you. I really, truly wish that you didn’t have to endure my company. I…”

He fell quiet. Danny wondered if he was just saying this to pacify him, or if he truly meant it. He wondered if it really mattered in the end.

After a few moments of silence, Dr. Crane sighed, looking truly pained.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Danny was quiet.

“I’m going to bed early,” he finally said, turning away and leaving without a second glance.

—

[acquired-stardust]

.hack//SIGN Bee Train 2002

[dead-girl-tells-stories]

DP x DC Prompt

This, but it's because their flight home was canceled due to Gotham's airport being destroyed. And they didn't want to drive all the way back.

The reason it all started was because Tucker was really bored and was getting a bit frustrated when he couldn't get past one of WE's many firewalls. He had already skimmed through everything else and concluded that Gotham's Brucie Wayne was a literal angel sent from heaven to one the worst cities in the world because he committed a crime so horrific that not even God could look him in his pretty little face anymore and that firewall proved it!

So to cool his head off, he decided to hack into a bank. Banks were pretty easy, right? Almost anyone could do it with just enough knowledge and the proper equipment. What he DIDN'T expect was just how EASY it was to do so. Laughably so, to the point it made him cry.

Did Gotham's rouges or Gothamites in general not like money? Not even the small-time rouges? Because he KNEW those operations that they try to pull off cost money. Shit tons!

So when his laughter became so disturbing that his friends and even his frenemies got concerned, all he had to do was show them what he found out. Which sent them spiraling into laughter as well. Like, c'mon, even Amity Park's bank was more secure than that and they only had fucking GHOST CRIME!

As the tears began to dry, and the laughter turned to giggles, one of the girls suggested something.

Star: Why don't we, like, rob it or something?

The hotel room went silent and Star started to fidget. Then she started to ramble.

Star: I mean like, we don't have to. It was kind of a joke anyway, since their security's so bad ya know, and I'm pretty sure we're gonna be here for a while and-

Dani: Star, baby, sweetie, honey. Why are you justifying yourself when we were all probably thinking the same thing, right?

Nod and hums of agreement filled the girl with relief.

Wes: Besides it's not a class trip unless we cause some trouble right?

They all then pilled into the bed and around Tucker as his finger flew across the keyboard.

Tucker: So, where are we hitting up first?

[newgabeorder]

Toon Time Theater Brings You U-PICK Poll No.7!

Salutations, anime fans. This is Gabriel Ramos, DJ and live-streamer of Toon Time Theater. I heard that the upcoming UZUMAKI will have Saturday premieres on Toonami, but I have a poll up my sleeve. I am concerned about what to live-stream on Saturday mornings. You have these outcomes to vote for, and the top result determines tomorrow's lineups, also affecting the weekends following it.

Saturday morning UZUMAKI (lag)

Sunday morning UZUMAKI (no lag)

EDEN

THE KING OF FIGHTERS: ANOTHER DAY

.hack//Liminality (may pre-empt a program)

CASTLEVANIA (Season 1)

Pokémon Origins

LARRYBOY: The Cartoon Adventures (E/I)

You have until September 27 at 2 PM PDT to make your choices. When the time comes, I will end the T3 Express peepshow and review the poll results and reveal the lineups before I live-stream SAILOR MOON.

If most of you vote for Sunday morning UZUMAKI, then I will end T3 Express after the poll and move most of its programming to the Saturday Morning Animation Cram Session (More One Night for Japanese late-night viewers). Not only that, I will introduce T3 Essentials, the Sunday morning replacement for T3 Express that focuses on cartoons which I deem "essential" to my weekend cartoon block live-streams. Most of the programs will be carried over from the previous SMACS (M1N) lineups, giving (American and Canadian) Sunday morning viewers a short-but-satisfying lineup just in case they miss out on the Saturday morning lineup.

---

Anime fans, if this is your first time seeing this post, this is because I run a series of weekend anime blocks on the New Gabe Order Twitch channel, Toon Time Theater. My purpose of Toon Time Theater is to showcase the latest and greatest of action-packed animation on Saturday mornings at a time where modern Saturday morning cartoon blocks on FCC-controlled over-the-air TV stations no longer exist in today's world.

[nyarlylicious]

[8-9-24]

Drew some chibis for .hack day! Wanted to draw some favs, but due to being busy, I couldn't draw them all. There's so many. Moonstone, I owe you art.

Also can I scream about the new birthday Ovan artwork that's coming out soon?? I had to draw him in that cute outfit, Tri-Edge included because I love her.

[norever]

[jokersjunkpile]

Okay this has actually been on my mind for the last few days and I'm finally going to spill it.

I've got this conspiracy on the identity of Helba. I don't have much evidence to back it up, but honestly in my heart of hearts I believe this is her.

Kaoru Asaba.

Upon watching the second episode of Liminality, both my cousin and I saw this woman and pretty much immediately agreed that this woman was Helba. I can obviously only speak for myself when I say that I was expecting some sort of reveal there.

It never happened, but I'm okay with that. I still think this is her.

Both the English and Japanese voice actors remain the same for Asaba and Helba, which is absolutely significant (they also remain for Emma, but considering she's deceased at this point in time, I feel it's alright to disregard that information for the time being)

Also acts the exact way I would expect from Helba- She's strong, she's confident-- But she's selfless too, and she absolutely knows WAY too much. What she says at the end of the episode also SCREAMS Helba to me.

It's just a conspiracy theory for sure, but it's one that I'm believing in unless someone can disprove it with knowledge from elsewhere in the series. (And please, if you CAN disprove it, please say something I need to know if I'm actually insane or not)

Well, happy .Hacking, everybody! I'm off to maybe watch GIFT soon... And probably keep watching SIGN with my friend.

[japanese-movie-god-at-yahoo]

[animebackgroundmusic]

"Mai" by: Yuki Kajiura from: .hack//Liminality

[agronian]

another form of my rancid dead girl

[celcompile]

Thank you to my copy of Thrasher Magazine for your contribution. I tore that bitch apart.

[cincybird]

Drew these back in 2020 and figured I would post them here. The one for Magus is just a WIP that I started to colour but then realized I did a bunch on the same layers and then never went back to but I've been considering giving it another go, who knows!

[rubyashes]

.hack//Liminality was so bold for locking 4 30-45 minute episodes behind 4 16 hour games that aimed to give you carpal tunnel by the end of each. Peak fiction.

[standardquip]

Fear Dot Hack

Video:.hack//Liminality, .hack//sign Audio: Trailer audio – Fear Dot Com movie trailer Premiere Date: 2003 Original: 2 March 2003; Remake: 9 Oct 2020 Status:Downloadable, Streamable Genre(s): Parody, Horror Cons/Awards: Original: won “Best of show” at FITcon 2003 | Remake: submitted to AWA Expo 2021 Outside Links: Original: .org | Remake: .org Categories:Trailers, Award Winning, Remakes & Remasters

Original vid from 2003:

2020 Remake:

[cedarstreet]

Why does everything feel like a lucid dream

Trapped inside my own head

I hope I find my way around wonderland

Rippling remembrance in reflecting pools

Could I be stuck here? And if I am

Do I have what it takes to be me

And not just another plains Jane