#Liminals Arc

[irl-batsignal]

Я ₦klolʇɿɐʌ nlェ ʎʌɿwʇ ʇlwʌ hl olwʇ.

@l1m1n4ls

LIMINALS?!?!

[dreamcorpsinc]

Mess with the children!

OSAxOSA4IDE1IDIxIDEyIDQgMTkgOCAxNSAyMSAxMiA0IDE0IDIwIDkg

[l1m1n4ls]

[blu3iefiish]

BlueFish!! An intro. Or Something?

Good Afternoon, tilting my hat to you. Quite a lovely day is it not?

My name's BlueFish ! 𓆟

Chester for you weirdos..

So honestly what else are you supposed to write in an intro? Genuinely asking. I don't know what to put.

[ink-the-artist]

house tour :)

bonus art, lossy versions of the first 2 gifs

[evelyn-delphi]

...uh oh...

Quick PSA

DreamCorps ( @dreamcorpsinc ) is not to be trusted! Remember when me and Signal went missing for a few days and came back unable to sleep/cope with the things we saw? That was them. So please do not trust these entities!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 47

Hear me out. Amity Park gets shifted in universes slightly- maybe it’s from Pariah, maybe it was a wish, maybe they did so on purpose to escape something- and they end up in the DC-verse. The thing is, thanks to the media blackout and the shields, no one in the new universe notices. The Amityville Paekers know about outside, can go on the internet and leave whenever they want, but they’ve all become more than a little liminal. More than a little off. Movements too graceful, eyes too sharp, ears too pointed and teeth more akin to predatory fangs. Skin with a soft glow, hair moving as though underwater or being tussled by the wind- bodies seemingly unaging after a certain point. They’re so ecto-contaminated that they’re unsure they can even be counted as human anymore, and it wasn’t like the city wasn’t already practically self sufficient. Add in a portal or two through the Infinite Realms to get supplies to start a few fields or some fish farms and well, they’re pretty good. Sure it’s resulted in them using a mixture of modern and older money and having several extinct plants and animals running around but that’s fine. There’s magic in this world! Actual magic, that they can learn! And use? Oh this makes rebuilding after a sparring incident go so much faster! 

This results in the hero who stumbles across this place to believe they’ve stumbled across some sort of city of fae or elves. 

[acquired-stardust]

Arc The Lad Playstation 1995

[dreamcorpsinc]

We greatly appreciate it!

Salutations! I work with DreamCorps INC! I'm going around asking people if they would be willing to fill out our Survey!

We thank you greatly in advance!

https://forms.gle/EvGakDT3gXKRW1Xq5

Uh....um...okay...

[irl-batsignal]

Salutations! I work with DreamCorps INC! I'm going around asking people if they would be willing to fill out our Survey!

We thank you greatly in advance!

https://forms.gle/EvGakDT3gXKRW1Xq5

Why the hell are you giving out forms now?

[dreamcorpsinc]

Don't you dare talk, interact or even look at my child!

- @stray-tim

ტ₦xdw Ь₦ko₦w-⅄ェ₦bʌ? Or is he more of your brother?

℮ɿz Mェ₦bʌ? ⅄₦abɿm? I believe he's more of your brother too.

Did you mean ℮Ƨlz₦h X₦ェaʌェ? You seem to take care of him like he's your son.

Could you be speaking of OɈxd ᒋɈɿwɐʌo? She's your little cousin. Right?

[l1m1n4ls]

@stray-tim

Mʌ₦ェ ℮ɿzlaƧd Ьdoʌ,    

Я ₼₦waʌm al nlool₼ Ɉk ェʌʇ₦ェmɿwʇ aƧʌ ェʌxʌwa ɿhhɈʌ dlɈ Ƨ₦m ₼ɿaƧ lɈェ hʌェ∅ɿxʌ. ⅂wxʌ ₦ʇ₦ɿw, Я ₼₦wa al ʌckェʌhh lɈェ hɿwxʌェʌ ₦klolʇɿʌh nlェ aƧʌ zɿc-Ɉk—ɿa ₼₦h lɈェ zɿha₦bʌ, ₦wm ₼ʌ ₦ェʌ xlzkoʌaʌod ェʌhklwhɿʎoʌ nlェ ɿa.  

Яn dlɈ Ƨ₦∅ʌ ₦wd laƧʌェ xlwxʌェwh lェ ɿn aƧʌェʌ’h ₦wdaƧɿwʇ ʌohʌ dlɈ wʌʌm, koʌ₦hʌ, mlw’a Ƨʌhɿa₦aʌ al zʌhh₦ʇ�� Ɉh.  

℮Ƨ₦wb dlɈ nlェ dlɈェ Ɉwmʌェha₦wmɿwʇ ₦wm k₦aɿʌwxʌ, Mェʌ₦zXlェkh ЯWX.

[angel-hole]

SUPTOBER DAY 01 - liminal in the beginning

4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance;

— Ezekiel 1:4—5

[aliusfrater]

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Part 23: never as lost

"I'm not ashamed to own my pain, never as lost but I found my way, always knew I'd show my scars one day." -Black Sheep by Dorothy

Regent Masterlist A03 Mundane Macabre Part 22

Jason could keep a secret from his family, that was a given, but he would sooner let Titus use him as a chew toy before he kept something so wonderful from his grandfather. 

It was as if Gotham herself felt his happiness, the shadows embraced him with warmth where there should have been fingers dragging down his spine. No, it seemed the Lady of the city he loved was happy for him too. 

(He loved the Lady, for all she sacrificed to bring him back.) 

(Without the pit clouding his mind, he could find it in himself to be grateful for his chance at life.) 

He wanted to scream the news from the rooftops. 

His love, his soulmate, is having their baby. 

A blend of the two of them- Jason’s fortitude, Jazz’s strength of will. Her determination to protect those she loves, the lengths she would go to made him ache with his love for her. 

That wasn’t to say that they were without fault, no they were flawed beings that would make mistakes in the future. But Jason knew in his bones that any kid of his would be offered the chance to make mistakes without a fatal outcome. To be a kid before having to grow up. A luxury so few got to have. 

Jason decided to call Alfred, unwilling to leave Jazz for longer than he had to. She wasn’t ready to leave her haunt quite yet. 

The private line rang once, twice, three times before the familiar accent answered.

“Wayne Manor.” 

“Hey Alf.” 

“Master Jason! It is good to hear your voice.” 

“You too, Alf.” Jason paused for a second, giddiness bubbling up in his chest before he squashed it down, “I have some great news, but the bats can’t know just yet.” 

“I will not share whatever it is you wish to tell me.” 

Oh yes, his grandfather was the greatest man he would ever know. 

(Suck it Bruce.) 

Jason let the giddiness rise up, just a little, “I’m gonna be a dad.” 

There was a gasp on the other end, “Oh Master Jason that’s wonderful news! Congratulations!” 

“Thanks Alf. I wanted you to know before everyone else.” 

“Thank you Master Jason, I’m honored.” 

“I’ll let everyone else know soon, but it’s not safe right now. I’ll keep you updated, but I have to get back to Jazz. Love you,  Alf.” 

“Love you too, my boy. Whatever you need-“ 

“I have your number memorized. Bye Alf.” 

“Goodbye, Master Jason.” 

She hadn’t been able to hold down much food, morning sickness striking with a vengeance now that she’d been forced out of her cluelessness. 

When Jason stepped outside for a minute to call his grandfather, Jazz had tried to choke down some yogurt to no avail, but it only made her retch into the sink. Jason tied her hair back and made her sit on the couch with her favorite blanket as he made her some soup, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as he moved to the kitchen. 

It was…domestic. 

(She wouldn’t say that their lives together hadn’t been domestic, but it was in the way two vigilantes could orbit around one another.)

(They were two halves of a whole.) 

(Both vengeance and protection.) 

Their child would be born of the most liminal being in existence, the Regent bearing the Crown, but would its fragile heart be able to bear the burden of liminality? 

It would break hers if she lost the life she now carried. 

Perhaps she was meant to be pregnant now, to defy the odds she’d been given, if only to bridge the gap between her existence as Danny’s protector and as her own person. A person who would be a mother to a child born to a couple who had blood dripping off their hands- maternal grandparents murdered to protect their uncle Danny. Paternal grandfather a Kevlar-clad vigilante who was born into tragedy. 

(Perhaps, she and Bruce had something in common.)

(Other than Jason, of course.)

Jason had the sin of the Pit weigh on his soul, held down down down by rocks in his gut to the bottom of the harbor. A bright soul meant for more than what he had been given. In another life, Jason might’ve been a different man. Not better or worse- different in all aspects, all his rough edges that she loved. 

(If she can love his broken parts, why couldn’t he love hers too?)

(He did.) 

No amount of redemption could ever wash away the blood. It was a fact they would have to contend with for the rest of their lives. 

(In another life, Jason Todd would never meet Batman in that alley.) 

(He would never die at the hands of the clown.) 

(He would find his faith in the Catholic Church.)

(Father Jason.) 

(He would never meet Jasmine Nightingale.) 

(Not better or worse.) 

(Just different.)

“…about seven, eight weeks along.” 

If Jazz did the mental math, she would come to the conclusion that her child had been conceived on the same day the Anti-Ecto Acts had been demolished. 

However, this wouldn’t come until far later in the day as both Jazz and Jason watched, enraptured, by the strange black and white image on the monitor. 

Their child. 

The undeniable mix of two souls, two vigilantes, two death-claimed- was visible right there. 

If Jason hadn’t been squeezing her hand in an iron grip, Jazz would’ve convinced herself she had fallen prey to a Dijon. Her buried dream of a family, of children, rested underneath her heart safe and sound. 

“Alright mom and dad, got some pictures printing out. We’ll see you back here in a month for another checkup, alright?” The nurse gently prodded the couple, a knowing smile on her face as she walked them back to the waiting room. 

A month. Four weeks. Jazz would be eleven or twelve months along. 

This was really happening.

With how toned Jazz’s frame was, given her rigorous training and vigilante schedules, any differences to her body was rather noticeable. 

She had to be in shape for the armor to fit properly, because it was crucial for her vital organs to be protected. 

With her pregnancy about to surpass the second month a small slightly curved bump had been her reward. Just above her waistline and obvious to a trainee eye, Jazz had taken to wearing her least restrictive clothing around the apartment. When in the presence of others (bar Jason), her layers were doubled using the approaching winter season as a reasonable excuse. 

As for Jason, he had been supportive of Jazz’s choice to wait until the second trimester to reveal the pregnancy to their loved ones. 

(Jazz had heard Jason on the phone with his pseudo-grandfather.)

(She had no qualms with him telling the patriarch he respected so much.) 

It had taken Danny walking into the living room a few days after her appointment for him to know. 

His head cocked to the side as he came to a standstill, a confused look on his face as he appeared to be listening intensely to whatever had caught his attention so suddenly. 

“Danny?” Jazz sleepily called, book open on her chest where she’d fallen asleep reading it. She stretched out her limbs from where she’d been laying across the couch, taking a moment to rub at her sleep-encrusted eyes before focusing on her little brother. 

The teenager in question offered no sign of having heard his sister, his gaze stuck to the far wall as his head remained cocked to one side. 

“What’s wrong?” Jazz asked, moving to stand, but Danny stopped her with a fervent ‘shh’ motion. 

Shrugging, Jazz leaned back into the couch and sighed. Late night patrols were not the best idea with a passenger leeching energy. Should she still be patrols  by? Probably not, but she wasn’t going out unarmed or un-armored- short of driving a tank, Jazz was as protected as she could be and the Ridge needed to see her out and about alongside Phantom before they got any funny ideas. 

Danny’s neck made a sickening sound as his head snapped towards her direction.  “What the fuck is that.”

[A/N: Happy Holidays! This ended up a lot longer than I intended so I cut it off right with Danny there. Its not quite angst, but the undercurrent is there, but way subtle. (If you haven't picked up on the "mix of the two" hints...) Anyways, the next part will be a while, considering I'm working on a new one-shot I promised for 700 followers and I rewrote the ending of Regent again. If I don't post for Christmas, consider this your present. Stay safe out there and keep warm!] Thanks for reading!

[thinplacesradio]

a staircase ascending upwards, framed pictures on the wall to the right. a pink haze over everything. the image is distorted by VCR static. white text reads:

[028] THE CURSE. A CALLER RETURNS TO A DARK PLACE. THE HOST DOES TOO.

listen here, or anywhere you find your podcasts. transcript under the cut:

[static, radio tuning]

[Traveling Sales Rep: Don’t touch that dial! We’ll be right back, after these short messages.] [static, radio tuning]

[click]

Hello and welcome to Thin Places Radio. I’m your host,

and it is the middle of the night. But don’t worry. You’re not alone.

[Thin Places theme] 

[background thumps and buzzing]

I’m coming to you apprehensive from my studio, which is what I like to call this long, long staircase, built from decades-old creaking wood, descending down into the darkness below this antique store. I know I’ve been here before, even if I’m fuzzy on exactly when, or exactly how. Those memories I can look at out of the corner of my eye, if I don’t turn my head too fast. If I just let the road lead me back through my own mind, I think I’m getting somewhere. I’m its supplicant. I follow. 

[creaking footsteps] [thumping]

If I turn around now, I can see the rectangle of light above and behind me, the first eight and a half steps down, the splintering railing and a few shelves. A mouth. But now I’m lost to the sensation of nothing, the damp, woodsy chill that’s engulfed me.

[feet scuffing]

There is a kind of dark so absolute it makes you forget you exist as a thinking, feeling creature. You are nothing more than a heart beating in your own eardrums. If I listen very carefully I can hear it speaking with a voice of its own. But I don’t know what it’s saying. The dark. I have to wait for my eyes to adjust to it. But I know they will. You can adjust to anything if you give it a little bit of time. 

But it’d be nice if I could find a f***ing light switch down here instead. 

So… what is Thin Places Radio? Well, you can call in about anything strange that you’ve got going on in your life - feelings, omens, premonitions, hauntings.

Is your new pet a ghost? 

Does something bad keep happening to you when you pass through a certain place?

Are you trying to navigate a galaxies-long-distance relationship? 

When the veil between worlds is thin, we get closer than ever to the strange and the unexplained - and also to each other. Call in, get it off your chest. Lines are open.

[click] [voicemail:]

Hi - first time caller, long time listener, love your show. Thank you. I was wondering: do you think that a place can be cursed? Or that somebody can be - I don't know, like, when someone goes through a place that it can affect them in a negative way. The reason I ask is, I am sitting in Waco, and Waco always seems to be a weird place for me when I drive through. So I'm sitting here, in the middle of the night. It's been 3 hours. I'm sitting behind a car wreck. And people go up there and don't come back and it's just been a long time we've been waiting. But, anyhow, this first happened probably 30 years ago. I was driving through Waco, and we stopped at McDonald's, and we're eating our meal and look out the window and a trailer is literally being backed on top of my vehicle. It like, actually climbed up on top of my car. And it was just like so weird. So we kind of avoided Waco for a long time. We had like several other incidents where we got in accidents or almost got in accidents just in passing through Waco off of a particular stretch of 35. So my question: Are places cursed? Can a person be cursed in a place? Thank you.

[click] 

Hi, caller, thank you so much - it’s nice to be thought of. The answer to your question is exactly what you think it is.

Yes. Of course. 

It’s hard to imagine a place with darker energies than Waco, Texas, but everyone has their own personal cursed places, the places that pull them in again and again to get them stuck and to vanish them and to eat cars. Sometimes you don’t even know where that place is until you pass over it, again, and your body remembers that something happened to you there.

[searching music]

Sometimes what happens in a place curses it; sometimes, you keep carrying out the curse yourself.

And sometimes, when something cursed happens somewhere, it primes you to keep looking for the curse – to keep your ears pricked and your eyes peeled for another stretch of bad luck. When you’re stricken with a curse, that very first time, it’s really hard not to always be ready for it to come back to you. You want to be ready for when it hurts you again. You learn to expect the pain.

Pain will always find you. That’s not something that your mindset can fix. It always comes back to you, and you'll keep carrying it with you. But that’s when it becomes more important than ever to search for the blessed. The relief. The strange small beauties, even in a place like Waco, Texas. The gift of three hours to yourself, in the dark, in a place you didn’t want to sit and think in. The energy of a McDonald’s meal. The saving grace of a near-accident that wasn’t an accident. The wildflowers on the side of the road. The person in the passenger seat next to you.

You’re still allowed to take another route home next time, though. That’s okay, too. 

[click]

I could stay down here, you know. That’s what it’s telling me.

[echoed thudding]

In the dark you can be anything, and everything, and in the dark, it does not matter if you do not remember your name. It does not matter if you have a mystery to solve or food to find or a life to live. The forgetting lives in the dark, where there is no difference between sleep and waking. [buzzing, echoed words:] It wants me to stay. It would love me as a sponge loves water. There would no longer be a me. 

[buzzing builds, then stops abruptly]

But - no. No, there was someone on the line, just now. Someone that I was someone to. There’s a job I have to do. And there’s a lamp on a desk somewhere, back here. I remember. There’s - 

[steps]

There.

[lamp clicks on]

Oh. There’s nothing here. There’s nothing here. 

That was weird. I’m gonna get out of here. 

[lamp clicks off] [footsteps leave]

[click]

Thank you for listening, callers, and thank you for calling, listeners. I hope you feel a little bit lighter. I know I do. As always, our number is 717.382.8093. That’s 717.382.8093. Until next time. I’ll be here.

[static] [Traveling Sales Rep: visit us at the - diner just off -] [Various Garbled Voices: the - road - provides - the - road - provides -]

Thin Places Radio is a podcast written by Kristen O’Neal and produced by Kaitlin Bruder. The voice of Your Host is Kristen O’Neal.

Tonight’s voicemail was left for us by Kelly. Editing and sound design are by Kaitlin Bruder, and the music tracks you heard in tonight’s episode are: the Thin Places theme, by Miles Morkri, and Umeed by RANA. If you have a question to ask, a story to tell, or a suggestion for the host, give us a call at ‪(717) 382-8093. The lines are always open.

[Thin Places Theme outro]