#Ish but who cares

[leafatlaw]

me when the disorder that makes me feel bad when I get rejected makes me feel bad (I was rejected)

[moongothic]

Madoka is the promise you won't turn from a child, full of hopes and dreams and the wish to save the world, into a bitter adult who just wants to hurt others and ruin people's lives

Madoka promised to be there for you to remind you of the person you wanted to be and to stop you from becoming what you sought to destroy

Madoka made that promise and became the very embodiment of it

[childofsardior]

Inside of you there are two Koopas

[mbat]

jews: this thing in fiction feels jew coded to me, this character/group has several parallels to jewish people and i see myself here :)

non-jews: nah, that aint right, its clearly coded to be this other thing/youre stretching so hard to find a connection that isnt there

jews: this thing in fiction falls into antisemitic tropes, this character/group has several common antisemitic tropes that have a long history of being used against my people, and i think we should really consider not using these tropes anymore/consider if theres a better way to go about making the same point without doing it in this specific way

non-jews: nah, that aint right, its clearly coded to be this other thing/youre stretching so hard to find a connection that isnt there

just something ive noticed

[sorrelpaws]

>be me >make a friend >hang out with him >he gets hurts due to hanging out with me >mfw my only friend might die because of me

[cheatingtime]

[deepthought-1]

BLUDGEONING OPPROTUNITIES AMIST THE VASTNESS OF EARTHS RICHES

[rin-hanarin]

So Lucanis is in his 30s and is permanently tired, understandable. I'm gonna torture him with a silly little guy with manic energy, what could possibly go wrong.

[snikt111]

hi hi hi hi I found out about Hal Jordan TODAY and am going so autistic over him it’s insane can you please give me a rundown on what his deal is I think you’re the Tumblr Green Lantern guy

omg hi, insane compliment btw, tysm! i'm glad to give you a rundown!! also definitely check out @katmaatui for more hal info, red is SUPER knowledgable abt him. @rillette, @catboyollie, @halcarols, @starsapphire and @yellowcorps (along with so many others that i cant think to tag off the top of my head) have some great hal takes too! (edited the post just to tag more ppl)

apologies if this is a bit rushed/messy, i'm doing this while i smelt stone in minecraft LMAO

that being said... i think this will be a long one, so more below the cut :3

(cw for light mentions of pedophilia, abuse, canon typical violence)

okay, so hal jordan is the first human green lantern of the GREEN LANTERN CORPS. it's important to note that there was technically a human green lantern before him (alan scott, originally from earth two/the justice society, but integrated into main DC canon after crisis), but his power comes from a different source- which is a whole different ballpark that would take ages to explain, lol, so i'll move on from that.

hal was originally introduced in a showcase issue in 1959, but ended up getting a solo run in the mid 60s because of his showcase issues doing well. he's been a test pilot, middle brother, compassionate, rule follower (although being surprisingly liberal for the time) with an interesting relationship with star sapphire carol ferris since those first appearances. for the first 20 odd years of his appearances we had no information on his parents, but we got a lot from other family members, such as uncle titus, cousin hal jr (aka airwave), younger brother jim jordan and older brother jack jordan. through the 60s and 70s those members of his family were developed along with him; with the audience learning that jim's wife sue thought jim was green lantern, rather than hal, and hal himself training his cousin, hal jr.

the most known version of how hal got the ring in the first place is probably based off of geoff john's rewrite in the mid 00s, reiterating the original story of abin sur crashing onto earth and dying, leaving hal with his ring to be trained by sinestro and the rest of the glc, while also changing miniscule details that had been developed in emerald dawn 1 & 2 (which was released in the 90s, more on that later). the main premise of abin sur's crash has stayed the same, but the story around hal's current life, job, family and stability keep changing. for instance, the original comic with abin sur in showcase only showed hal getting the ring, the guardians choosing him. the first rewrite i can think of was emerald dawn volume 1, published in 1989 and continued in emerald dawn v2 (1991). here we get the classic hal watches his father die in a plane crash with carol ferris beside him as a pre adolescent, and some of the biggest implications of the mistreatment from his father. we also get introduced to hal, despite his stick to the rules, straight edge attitude, making some serious mistakes and putting people in danger and even death- with the implication of alcohol abuse. the audience HAS known hal used to be in the air force since sometime in the late 60s or early 70s (sorry, i don't remember the exact issue!), but emerald dawn shows us that hal's moved on from the air force and into test piloting, and that his mother keeps having to bail him out for making mistakes. emerald dawn vol 1 shows the abin sur moment, followed by fights that cost hal's friends life, and is followed up by sinestro training hal in emerald dawn vol 2, where we get to see the iconic scenes of hal finding out about sinestro and his... dictatorship.

along with that; how the guardians and rings are treated and hal and the glc's perception of them is vastly changed over time. in the early days of gl in the 60s, the guardians were really never to be seen. hal was repeatedly summoned to them and then had his memory almost fully wiped- only leaving a vague notion of his orders. the guardian's called hal to them at seemingly the worst times, ending up with him almost getting injured, getting in trouble at work, and even ending up jobless and homeless. the chaos of being a green lantern has been around the WHOLE time, but originally, the green lanterns didnt really... fight it. the guardian's were their masters (and even father figures, to hal) and not to be questioned. the rings in the 60s were also much more powerful, despite the yellow weakness (the yellow weakness is the notion that from about the 60s to the mid 90s the green lantern rings were completely unable to be used against anything yellow). time travel, phasing, teleporting, etc were all very viable and common things- as well as forceful shapeshifting, invisibility, mind control, mind reading, etc etc. these days, writers have dampened these powers down to mostly shooting light and constructs.

okay, it's parallax time. the emerald twilight arc from the mid 90s wasn't an arc that was as thoroughly planned out over a long period of time as it probably should have been. a lot of fans at the time (and even now) hated what happened there, and claimed it ruined hal's character entirely. i can understand why! but, at it's core, the parallax arc is a story about a broken man pushed to the limit, fully grieving his home and family (originally, he lost his brother jim in the destruction of coast city, along with a lot of other family members) and being goddamn fed up with how his "masters" treated him and the rest of the corps. the so called "perfect lantern" (no, he wasn't that much of a rebel, despite what johns wants you to think) snapped and essentially tried to gain as much power as he could to bring back coast city. when the guardians stripped him of his powers so he couldn't, hal became enraged and took down every lantern in his path, just to get to the guardians and that power. long story short, he kills the guardians and absorbs all the energy from the central power battery on oa, becoming parallax- essentially a god. this marks the start of zero hour, an event made by dc to restructure and reset; giving the comics a new generation of heroes. hal destroys the world and remakes it, but is ultimately taken down by kyle rayner, the new green lantern, with the help of the jla, jsa and associates. there are a few more run ins with parallax after this, before kyle convinces parallax/hal that he can make up for all of this by reigniting the sun after it went out- aka killing himself. hal does it, is stuck in limbo for awhile and then becomes the spectre to continue to make up for the horrible things he did as parallax. the spectre is the spirit of god's wrath and vengeance, a weapon used to drag sinners to their very own, self made hells, and scare the shit out of people. the spectre, from it's very first appearance, is a ghost like spirit that takes on a host, and is primarily described using christian terms and is used in a very... christian ideology. HOWEVER, the spectre 2001 confirms that hal is jewish (jewish mom, catholic dad) and that belief system, plus his personality as a whole, literally makes him change the spirit of vengeance into the spirit of redemption, for at least as long as they are bonded. the whole parallax to spectre arc is about grief, pain, cycles of abuse and terror, redemption and guilt. it is NOT about a fear bug that possess hal. (im so serious though, the spectre 2001 is one of the best comics ive ever read. amazing. changed my world view) but... geoff johns changed all of it, decanonized the spectre, and ruined the legacy of parallax and hal's growth as a person by releasing green lantern: rebirth in 2004/2005. this retcons hal's breakdown and journey through grief into him BEING POSSESSED BY AN ENTITY CONTROLLED BY SINESTRO THAT FULLY CHANGES PREVIOUS GREEN LANTERN CANON AND IMPLICATIONS. also, fucks up the importance of kyle becoming ion, but whatever. geoff johns writes hal (and even more so, carol) so very wrong, and change their stories so vastly in ways that go against the stories very meanings.

SIGH.

now... time to get started on some rougher stuff. hal jordan misconceptions. i'm saving that arc for last.

- hal jordan wasn't much of a rule breaker or rebel until the 70s/80s, where he BEGAN (very slowly, mind you) to be radicalized by oliver queen during denny o'neil's green lantern/green arrow. hal was painted as more of a conservative during this period (which, admittedly, kind of goes against previous canon... he's always been relatively central to liberal, not to any extremes like ollie though, lol) but gets more and more understanding of how power structures work and how lower classes are mistreated during this time- which ends up opening his eyes a bit to how shitty the guardians are. (this is helped by the guardians literally just. leaving. the green lanterns and kind of disbanding them so they can go fuck the zamarons, lmao). geoff johns tried to change this narrative into making hal a very... maverick-from-top-gun type of character, who punched his way out of the military (when, in reality, the original story during emerald knights in the late 90s was that hal had been framed for stealing a jet and was dishonorably discharged, which he took the punishment for because he knew someone had to) and hits on women constantly and gets ladies and allat (which, funnily enough hal was awful at getting carol to like him for a long time, since carol fell for green lantern rather than hal. not to mention the awkwardness of carol's proposals or hal's many, many failed relationships). hal has always been insecure and lowkey boyfailure, he is NOT a top gun maverick tom cruise sorta guy! fuck you jeremy adams!

- hes not that much of an idiot asshole. hal can be a real dick, he's had that going for him since the beginning, but he isn't what you read in batfam fics. he's not stupid and shouldn't be the laughingstock of the justice league. i assume this idea started from the obsession with batfam and the fact that the jla has quite the history of ignoring hal and his issues (as well as. all of their issues. theyre not so great at work life balance), but it's gone too far. hal isn't making fun of the robins and pissing bruce off bc of that. hal isnt fooling around on the job 24/7 (he takes being a gl and pilot VERY seriously, although he does enjoy some danger and high stakes) or slacking off to get girls. again. not top gun maverick.

- hal has not been a creep since the beginnings. hal was not weird with carol in the 60s. things were weird between them, yeah, but that's based off circumstance and the craziness of star sapphire and green lantern. he was NOT being horribly sleazy! i hate that i even need to say this, but i see this take too much not to

- going off of what was said above, lets discuss the arisia arc. if you want to be a real hal fan, this is unfortunately something you need to know about. in action comics, after crisis and the guardians left to go fuck the zamarons, most of the green lanterns fell apart and seperated. a small group went to earth- led by hal and consisting of hal, john stewart, katma tui, kilowog, salaakk, ch'p and arisia rrab. (also sometimes guy gardner, but that's complicated) previously to this arc, hal treated 14 year old arisia like a beloved little sister, welcoming her and leading her into the corps just like everyone else. things started to change once the timeline gets closer and closer to crisis, where arisia starts showing that she has a crush on hal (who is roughly 30s at this point). any advances made by arisia are shut down by hal at the beginning, because she's a child. now, it's unfortunately a common thing to just call hal a "pedophile" because of what happens in this arc- but it really isn't that simple. still weird and icky, but definitely not to the degree of which some fans like to act like it is- esp to attack hal fans for, which is... an odd choice regarding how many fucked up things every character (esp male characters) did back in the day. arisia ends up using her power ring to artifically age herself up, making her body AND MIND into that of a young adult (the comic makes this very clear). once this happens... hal stops rejecting her. they get together, they kiss. the only person in the group of green latnerns who actually has an issue with it is john (salaakk is meh about it, but he just doesn't like human-esque romance no matter what), and katma even directly encourages their relationship. kilowog ends up crushing on arisia as well, and guy gardner hits on her repeatedly throughout the whole period. eventually, hal and arisia break up, but this legacy (thank so much englehart, for wrtiting this. /sarc) is a big controversy among the comics crowd. "is hal jordan a predator?" personally, and i know a lot of friends/mutuals/other gl fans choose to erase the arisia arc entirely (versus how canon ended up retconning it to be 14 earth years is equal to that of an adult and she didn't really get super ages up, or whatever) and go with the familial relationship between hal and her. that's my preferred version! i know red (@katmaatui) has explored that version as well as an alternate version where the arisia arc did happen, and how it affects arisia in particular, which is really depressing but super interesting. anyway, it's complicated and weird and nuanced, but that whole occurence doesn't mean hal's a bad character or person (cause yk. retcons) and it's certainly not bad to like his character. (definitely ignore any guy gardner fans who try to bitch about this arc. cough cough. guy was ALSO into her and hit on her repeatedly. smfh) most people who bring this up to demonize fans didn't even read the arc, and don't know the nuance or the other weird shit that happens in it. (hal is not a horse, sigh)

OVERALL NOTES!

hal jordan is a super complicated character with an extensive history spanning from the 60s to his worse written appearances in modern age. it's okay to like any version of the character, but it is important to note the changes that have been made, the storylines butchered and lost, and more. he has quite the legacy, and he's particularly interesting as from a moral standpoint. hal's a real sweetie though, when it gets down to it! he's neurodivergent coded (imo at least.. his dad very much gets onto him for being disrtracted, hes kinda shit at social interaction (and then amazing at it the other half of the time) etc etc. "spacecase") and his dad is an abusive asshole, who he desperately doesnt want to be like but thinks he NEEDS to be like!

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[jessieren]

Following @librawritesstuff ‘s lead from last week - and given the continuing lack of HNW content (ahem… c'mon Evans…) I propose another One Word Wednesday

A reminder...

ONE WORD WEDNESDAY

Pick a photo or a gif that reflects the word of the day and reblog with tags in this thread (coz we want to see all the choices 😉)

Today’s word: SHHHH (IIIIIIIITTT)

Obviously if you have new (🤞) or recycled HNW content I am ALWAYS (repeat ALWAYS) happy to see it

[songfell-ut]

Happy birthday, Vene

This was drawn by @venelona on Discord and I cleverly tricked her into letting me put this here so I can do a very small gift and rewrite the fork scene if Frisk was a dude. I realize this is not reassuring to those of you who are tired of my self-AU, but I super swear I am editing the final draft of Chapter 34 in the other tab right now.

Also, it's not the entirety of their first meeting in Frisk's room, just skipping around to the relevant bits, explaining how there's still a dramatic reveal if this Frisk isn't wearing a veil because you can pry that dramatic reveal out of my cold dead hands.

Over a day later, the High Priest shut the outer door to his chambers, whistling to himself. He set a covered tray on the table, sat down at the mirror, and checked that his eyes were clear, or at least not too red. Then he picked up his coronet and settled it over his head. He stared at his reflection for a full minute, as if waiting for the young man in the mirror to get up first; with a sigh, he finally pushed himself to his feet.

Just outside his bedroom, he let the whistle peter out into a thread of magic that ran ahead to check the loose barriers he'd set around the bed. Two echoes came back, one very close by. "Good morning. Please step back," he said into the slight crack in the door.

A pause, then a soft creak of floorboards, unnervingly quiet for something – someone – his size. "Further, please," he ordered.

The skeleton made a noise he couldn't interpret. Floorboards creaked again, and the bedframe groaned under his weight. The priest turned the doorknob, picked up the tray, and elbowed the door open.

Sans was sitting near the edge of the bed, legs crossed, elbows on his knees. He had left the nearly transparent inner bedcurtains closed, but opened the windows, and even just his outline through the thin curtain looked menacing; the light shone through his filthy shirt, shadowing the spaces between his ribs, and the fire in his sockets fully illuminated his features. The young man made himself place the tray on a side table and pull up a chair with perfect unconcern, as if he couldn't feel him staring his down. "I see you're all healed. You must have slept well," he said coolly. "I know I did."

The skeleton glanced behind him at the rumpled sheets. "Uh..."

"You were alone the whole time," the priest hastened to assure him. "There's a very comfortable couch in my office that I've been using."

skip

That didn't feel quite right, but without more evidence, the priest decided to leave it for now. Instead, he pulled the side table closer and removed the tray's cover.

Sans twitched at the sight of steaming hotcakes, piles of cheese-sprinkled eggs, tomatoes, and crisp-crusted sausage links. The priest cut a tomato slice into quarters with his fork, speared one and popped it into his mouth; rather than making Sans share the napkin, he dabbed his lips in passing with the very edge of one sleeve.

This courtesy was lost on the skeleton. "Need somethin’ ta wipe with?" he inquired, and plucked at the curtain. “How ‘bout this?”

The young man ignored him and made a show of chewing, swallowing, and lifting another tomato to his mouth. Sans didn't have a stomach, but if he had, the priest probably would have heard it growling; the monster was shifting around and scowling, clearly agitated. So the human quickened his pace, taking a huge bite of egg, a chunk of hotcake, and a sausage in turn, eating as fast as he could.

Sans' eyes had lit to orange again, and the human was glad to put the fork down. "There. You see? It isn't poisoned," he said briskly. he stood and pushed the side table over to the bed. "Help yourself."

The orange faded. Sans’ skull tilted this way and that, like a wary but curious animal. "What?"

"I had breakfast over an hour ago. This is for you," the priest explained.

Sans glanced at the tray, then back to him. The human waited for a full ten seconds, almost holding his breath, before he was rewarded with a rude noise. "Can I have another fork? Don't want your germs," he said.

skip

The skeleton's face was impossible to see clearly. Now that it was quiet, it reminded the young man too much of when he'd grabbed him in the cell. His instincts screamed at him to pull his hand back and throw a barrier between them, but determination surged as he remembered how he'd already faced down the boss monster’s attempts to kill him. He was going to forge a lasting bond between their worlds and hand over a kitchen utensil like a normal person or die trying.

Slowly, Sans reached down through the gap in the curtains, and the human fought to keep from panicking as the massive hand approached. The skeleton paused...and plucked the fork from his grip with delicate courtesy, holding it up between them. "Hm. Too small. Still dirty." He tossed it to the floor.

The High Priest stared at the fork. He stared at him. He retrieved the fork, stood up, dropped it into the pitcher, and plunged his hand in after it. Out came the utensil; the young man strode over and shoved the bedcurtain aside enough to gather up a fistful of it as a makeshift towel. This bed was centuries old and the curtains worth as much as a commoner’s entire wardrobe, but they belonged to the High Priest, which meant they were his. And as High Priest, if he wanted to use his antique linen to dry a mostly-clean fork in order to please a giant monster who was intimidating him and somehow also being a complete snot, then who was going to stop him? No one, that was exactly who.

With a righteous huff, he turned back around, still polishing the bedamned fork. "Here," he said, fully facing Sans for the first time. "I hope this is satisfactory."

Sans looked at him. He didn't say anything.

The world always seemed a little too bright with the bedcurtains open, and the light from the window was in his eyes. The priest rubbed them on his sleeve, and scratched under his jaw where the curtain had brushed it. "Well?" he demanded.

Sans didn't take it. He was leaning forward, hand dangling as if he'd started to reach for it and somehow forgotten what he was doing. His sockets were blank, an odd color washing over his bony face. "Uh," he said. "It's."

The priest didn't know that that could be a complete sentence. It probably wasn't, he thought in growing irritation. "Sans," he said carefully, "are you going to use this, or would you like to eat with your hands?"

The skeleton shook himself and turned away. "Never mind. 'm not hungry," he grumbled.

The human bit back the urge to call him a colorful name or two. "Sans, this is not a joke. There is nothing wrong with your food, except that it's cold. Eat it. Please."

"I will, I will." Sans hunched his shoulders. "Just gimme a couple minutes."

He did not have the time or patience for this. "Sans. Look at this." The monster glanced up, and in one motion, the human stabbed a sausage and another chunk of hotcake. "Say 'ahhh,'" he ordered, and when Sans blankly repeated, "Ahh?" he thrust the fork into Sans’ mouth.

skip

Sans was not wondering the same thing. He was thinking how he'd woken up not knowing where he was and had had to figure out that he wasn't dreaming about the battle in his cell: a human witch really had trapped him and knocked him out with some kind of weird brain-magic. Once he got over the fact that he couldn't take any shortcuts and wouldn't fit through the windows, though, he had to admit things could be worse; the bed really was the most comfortable thing in the world.

Talking with the witch was not comfortable. It was bad enough when he was asking Sans questions about his capture and not breaking out of prison, but then he had to give him food and say things that made sense, and things that made even more sense, and then...

Sans did not like anything about humans, especially their looks. He never understood how they could be attracted to each other long enough to reproduce; they seemed far shallower than monsters, for whom the inside really did count more than the outside, except maybe when it came to reproduction. But that was a rare occasion for them, and they thought humans' obsession with it was shallow and weird at best. Sans in particular had no interest in the human form unless he was trying to destroy it: male or female, they were all just skeletons with varying degrees of hair, meat and fluids in the way.

And then this infuriating human had turned around in the sunlight, curtain and stupid fork in hand, and Sans suddenly couldn't breathe. The overall picture was what made him feel a huge mess of feelings he didn't like or understand, but he could see every detail perfectly: lips pursed in annoyance, the sun reflecting off that black circlet thing, chestnut hair shining and reddish-brown eyes half closed against the light…even the seemingly dull, coarse hair on his face showed wavy patterns picked out in golden threads.

And then the human had tipped his head and shown a glimpse of his throat, and now Sans couldn't think things right. All he could try to do was turn away, then eat it all in order to make him go away, and only his punning instinct had saved Sans from saying or doing anything else stupid.

Why did Frisk have to like puns, too?

This was bad. It had gotten very complicated, very fast. He had to get out of here. The human had demonstrated some emotion behind his priest-y facade; maybe Sans could appeal to it, persuade him to pick some other monster and not risk boning things up? Priests weren’t supposed to bone, right? Ha, ha, etc.

…Granted, this one could probably manage it, given how powerful he was, not to mention easy on the eye sockets, but there was no telling if he was—

"...going to do it," he was saying, wiping away tears of laughter. "I'm not all-powerful, but I have enough influence at court and with the Church to guarantee your safety." Frisk looked up at him, bright-eyed, and his SOUL did another loop-de-loop. "So, Sans. Will you stay?"

He didn't want to, it was a bad idea, and he said, "No," in his mind.

Frisk smiled, tilting his head.

"Yeah," Sans said out loud.

[popsicle-stick]

leaving this here and running away but i don't actually hate coppola's 92 dracula. as a film, it unironically slaps. however. as an adaptation of the 1897 book 'dracula' by bram stoker, it IS objectively terrible

[cluescorner]

Arlecchino's whole deal is unbelievable

Arlecchino: Huh I wonder what's causing my weird powers? I can't really worry about that right now tho, I've gotta become King and then kill my "Mother".

*Kills Clervie and "Mother"*

Arlecchino: Huh I wonder why I was able to defeat a Fatui Harbinger when I'm like 17 or so? I can't really worry about that right now tho, I've gotta be in jail and become a Harbinger.

*Is in jail for a while and becomes a Harbinger*

Arlecchino: Huh I wonder why I am-

Pierro: Hey what's up hello, anyways you're descended from the Crimson Moon Dynasty of Khaenri'ah. I'm sure that this is a lot for you to take in so-

Arlecchino: Ok.

Pierro: ...You're just cool with that?

Arlecchino: IDK maybe? I can't really worry about that at the moment, I'm a father now. This orphanage full of children I love (who also are child soldiers and are not allowed to leave or else I'll execute them except maybe now I'm just gonna wipe their memories IDK I'm morally complex) isn't gonna run itself.

*Runs the orphanage/spy recruitment initiative*

Me, the fucking player: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE KHAENRI'AN? WHY WASN'T THIS BROUGHT UP IN YOUR FUCKING QUEST?? OR ANYTHING ELSE????

Arlecchino, talking to me through my phone: I honestly don't know why you care, I'm too busy to give a shit. Anyways, I'm gonna go fight fate itself I guess. I'm sure that I don't share any thematic parallels with any other Khaenri'an characters (particularly as it relates to acting and family angst) and that I haven't made the idea of 'curses' on Khaenri'ans and what they entail even more complicated than they already were. See ya.

[horrorlesbians]

there’s something vaguely erotic about my completely clear phone case slowly becoming yellowed through the sheer heat admitted by my phone

[langernameohnebedeutung]

I love that Gentleman Jack as a show is advertised as Anne Lister being this swashbuckling womaniser who just seduces the ladies left and right with her rake-ish charmes. And then you watch the show and really her secret is that she sincerely and deeply loves all her girlfriends and treats them like human beings and listens to them and that her heart breaks a thousand times when she loses one of her partners to obligatory marriage and she tells them their opinions are important to her and has deep conversations with them about serious topics that men would find unsuitable and she makes it clear that she is interested in what they tell her. Like...that's her entire secret here. She cares.