#NEVER ASKED A QUESTION AGAIN

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[linkedin-offficial]

me when i get the opportunity to think about speculative biology and non-existent game mechanics in media i like

⠀

[chloesimaginationthings]

Oooo I love the way you draw Jeff he's cute <333

I hope I did Jeff justice.. gotta love tired men

[thecoolertails]

too many books written by people who don't read books and only read fanfic. to counteract this there should be more fanfic made by people who don't read fanfic and only read books

[abaroo]

Morbid curiosity.

[knifearo]

ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story

[mirellapryce]

I am thinking about how Edwin asked Charles if he'd been crying, when they were in the Devlin house. Something about it seemed to me like this wasn't something Edwin was unfamiliar with.

So please picture, it's the early 90s, and for two ghost boys things are going pretty swell. They have their freedom, this blossoming friendship, and a detective agency they're starting up. But also remember that Charles is a 16 year old boy. No one can see him or hear him. He can never go home. He'll never hug his mom again. His friends killed him. He can't sleep. Or sometimes it's the little things, like not being able to taste his favourite foods and drinks. He is 16 forever now, and in those early years sometimes it hits him that he's dead, and the grief just knocks him down.

Edwin may never be comfortable with the emotional outbursts but he is understanding. Edwin didn't have time to grieve his own death, and he has no one on Earth to miss, but Charles had a life, and he had people, and things that brought him comfort that are beyond him now. So when Charles cries and grieves his own death, and says it's not fair, Edwin doesn't argue. He just tries to be there for his new friend as best as he can.

[deoidesign]

Time and Time Again comes back tonight!

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I know it was a long hiatus.

My health was struggling, my arm was (is) hurting, and I decided it wasn't worth it. I'd rather be slow!

So thank you for giving me that grace, and I hope you'll be there with me for the rest of the series.

[hayaku14]

pushing daisies kaishin au #2

pushing daisies au where shinichi has been able to revive dead animals, plants, even people since he was a child.

kudou "i can literally talk to the dead" shinichi

shinichi's parents didn’t exactly encouraged him to use this power. especially not in public. they’ve seen him revive and re-kill dead plants and animals in the same breath, it doesn’t take a detective to figure out what could happen near a human corpse.

but a young shinichi is curious, a young shinichi admired his father, and a young shinichi wanted to prove himself a detective. but most of all, a young shinichi wanted to help.

so when he saw his father struggle in solving a particular case, a young shinichi figured that maybe asking straight from the source would help give them a hint.

the complete horror in yusaku's eyes shinichi saw that day made him promise himself to never do it again.

shinichi realizes later on that reviving someone just for a clue on the whos, hows, and whys of their death only to touch them again, to basically kill them again, is sick and twisted and the realization leaves him feeling raw and dirty.

he then decides that if he’s gonna find out the truth, if he’s gonna bring justice, it’s not by making the victims suffer a second death. he will unravel the mystery not by magic but by logic.

the curious case of kuroba kaito

hakuba immediately contacts shinichi.

“he was...a friend. if i have to gather all the best detectives to catch his murderer then so be it.”

hakuba goes on to explain.

it was a kid heist. shots were fired. snipers. kaitou kid was caught on camera falling, as if he’d been shot, but he appears a minute later flying away on his glider with not a speck of blood on his suit. all should be well however, a few buildings away in an alleyway, the body of kuroba kaito is found dead. gunshots through the heart and chest.

a simple explanation would’ve been that the glider was a fake activated by kid’s assistant as a last ditch effort to save his legacy and this kuroba kaito was kaitou kid himself. he would’ve said it out loud but by the look on hakuba’s face, he can tell that he already connected those dots long before shinichi even stepped foot in the morgue. that wasn’t what hakuba called him for.

“can i...take a look at the body alone?”

hakuba raises an eye at him but moves to leave without questioning. "alright then. i have to check on another friend anyway. she's been...distraught ever since she heard the news and..." hakuba's words trail away as his eyes unconsciously drifted towards kuroba kaito's covered body. shinichi patiently waits through the quiet pain that he sees on hakuba. the pinch in his brows, the tenseness of his body. he must've been a really good friend.

hakuba shakes his head and turns his attention back to shinichi. "sorry, i...its been a long day. i'll leave you here then. call me if you find anything."

left alone, shinichi carefully zips open the body bag covering kaitou kid's upper body. he looked eerily similar to himself and imagining his own body cold and dead in the morgue sent a shiver down his spine. shaking his head, he pulls a chair close and reads through the file hakuba brought him.

"no witnesses. no camera. not a trace nor lead to anything. just some reports on mysterious gunshots in previous heists that lead to nowhere." they were professionals, whoever did this, shinichi thought. it was not going to be an easy case.

he takes another peek at the body. so this was kaitou kid, huh. too young to be the same as the one before his hiatus. perhaps a successor? motive could be related to his predecessor. his mother hasn't said anything of interest. does she really not know or is she protecting him? he runs his hand through his hair. there's too little information to go on...unless...

temptation rears its head. the source of information is right there in front of him. one touch and it could open up new leads to the case. an immediate disgust twists deep into his gut. he promised himself to never use it on people. to never kill. his father's haunted eyes embedded in his mind. he shouldn't. he really shouldn't. but he remembers the anguished look on hakuba's face. if he was going to do it, this might be the only good time. any longer and his touch would not revive kid. and gone along with him would be vital information to catch his murderer.

shinichi heaves a deep sigh. he has never used his abilities on dead people since that one incident as a child but he couldn't shake off the look on hakuba's face. it was now or never. shinichi reaches for kid's hand.

---

pushing daisies au #1

[allastoredeer]

;alskjdf;laskdjflas;dkfj POOR ANGEL!

I like to imagine that Alastor was full on sleepwalking and doesn't even remember running into AD in the middle of the night.

Angel Dust the next morning: Soooo...why were you skulkin' around last night?

Alastor: Pardon?

Angel Dust: You know. When I was in the kitchen. You stared at me before walkin' away?

Alastor: That wasn't me.

Angel Dust:....

Angel Dust: whut?

Alastor: That wasn't me.

Angel Dust:

(Based on this post)

[sanzodaily]

day 6 | its the thought that counts.

[bookshelfdreams]

Saw a Take earlier today like "Ed stans have only 1 argument and it's accusing everyone who likes Izzy of being problematic" or something to that effect

and it made me think "Nah babe, you're not problematic. You're just wrong."

And then I thought. Huh. Why do I think that?

It's a perfectly respectable thing to read a text in a way it wasn't intended to be read. In fact, "reading against the grain", doing critical readings, shifting perspectives when engaging with a text - all of thee are important skills! You can, and should, do feminist, antiracist, postcolonial, queer, etc readings of texts that were never intended to be read that way. Hell, all fandom (often) is, is doing queer readings! Ask the text uncomfortable questions it doesn't want to answer!

However. It's pretty difficult to do a queer reading when the text already is a queer narrative. The questions you would ask the text if you did a queer reading, or a reading focused on gender roles, or similar things - those are questions the text is already actively exploring.

If you want to do a subversive reading of a text that is already quite subversive - what do you end up with?

"What's the story like from Izzy's perspective?" is a question ofmd deliberately doesn't focus too much on because Izzy's perspective is the default and ofmd wants to challenge that. There's a reason the angry white man is the antagonist in this show, and if you ask "Okay, but could he be right though?" you're missing the point.

Or rather, you're turning everything that's interesting about ofmd back around. You're asking "Okay, but why don't we focus on a white perspective that strictly adheres to oppressive power structures?" of a narrative who already asked itself this question and gave the answer "Because that's been done enough and there are other stories worth telling."

And I think people are aware of that, which is how we end up with completely bizarre takes like "Izzy has the only queer character arc". He hasn't, but he has the only arc that a queer reading can be done on - for everyone else it's text, plain and simple. Refusing to engage with that text in favour of centering Izzy is basically doing a heteronormative reading without being willing to admit it to yourself.

And no, interpreting Izzy as a queer man doesn't change that.

[ganondoodle]

saw a few posts talking about ganondorf and while i dont want to uh .. risk having to argue with strangers ... i cant shut up entirely (you know me)

(in my opinion that is probably missing alot or just not as well read as a lot of others since i really just say what i feel instead of knowing what im talking about-)

its kinda hard to really talk about him bc hes so .... steeped into tired old stereotypes and harmful tropes with intentionally so little else, if anything, that you almost always end up playing into them if you just take what canon tells you (and alot of people love defending it too :/ )

to what degree is it really his character and what is literally just some things that were decided he does to make it clear hes the one note evil guy, to justify whatever horror is done to him and overshadow/bury what anyone else has done, to not think about maybe he had a point bc look how much bad stuff he does! if you made him fight for the freedom/sovereignity of his own people against an oppressive hyrule he would be in the right- so ACTUALLY he opresses them violently and selfishly even WORSE and then wants to murder everyone tm that dont bow to him bc thats what evil people do! and hyrule is justified in taking them over in turn bc their rule wont opress them :)

its like a game of trying to one up whatever hyrule did with something more bad tm bc otherwise it gets hard to justify killing him over and over

im not saying hes not allowed to be prideful, selfish or violent of whatever, but you gotta know that all of that IS one of those ways that is supposed to make it clear how evil tm the desert guy is; it doesnt matter what hyrule has done bc look! ganondorf is so much worse! and im sure hyrule had their reasons :)

hes never actually allowed to interact with his own people, hes isolated/alienated from them and their culture constantly, hes their king yet he .... violently takes over "free" gerudo villages (what? what for?? what does "free" even mean? they werent following him? their king?? were they .. allied with hyrule, who are good tm, which means they were living in paradise aka "free"? (bc they are good ones tm bc they rejected their evil one in a hundred year man king ruling violently over only women .. *cough*)), yet hes never seen fighting alongside his own people (the most is them .. silently serving him in what, one scene??) and then he drops them the second he has evil MONSTERS to fight for him instead and orders them to kill every living thing or something bc thats obviously evil, he doesnt even care about his own people! how evil! why would he do that? idk, hes the sole, selfish violent evil man opressing his own people, who are all women! that what they do! and WE need to free them from HIM (and they should be thankful to us for it and try to attone for ever having birthed him in the first place) (or he is the reason tm why they suffered/were wiped out and he is literally the sole survivor of his people, bc he doesnt care about ANYONE but himself)

i dont mean he has to be a goody two shoes character (you can be an ass and still do good/be in the right btw) bc more often than not what that actually means is being allied with hyrule bc those are the designated good guys and being on their side makes you automatically good (eugh) but do you rly want to just ... play along with all the propaganda?

imo, aside from being obviously racist, thats also so boring? does selfish, violent evil man king with no people (bc hes not part of them or fighting for them, hes always presented as the worse oppressor) and nothing else to him that only wants to murder bc ... idk evil? sound interesting to you? (to the point that the ONLY time we were shown literally any sort of vunerabillity, end of ww, that theres people trying to argue he was trying to to manipulate you even there?? what for? why? are you trying to reject literally the one glimpse we are allowed into his perspective qoq)

why do alot of people reject the idea so much to consider he actually cared about them, how maybe that prideful and selfish look is just a facade, or even a fabrication? violence that had to be met with violence, not for any sort of selfish reasons, but for his people and was met with a fight he could not win yet kept fighting on, perhaps losing himself more and more in the process, or a lie told so often that it became reality, if someone has nothign left to lose, if all was taken from them, maybe even blamed on them, why not play into what you where made out to be, you cant convince them otherwise anyway its the reason hes never shown to have done a single nice thing, never seen non angry/smug smiling, how he has no one at his side unless he forced them, how he is not allowed to be human even a little bit, never shown being anything but a boring ass trope personified, hes less a character and more a big bundle of racist tropes that fights you at the end (sorry) while looking epic so trying to meaningfully analyze him just by what we are told and shown in canon will always fall kinda flat or end up playing righ into every shitty trope

that is my opinion :I

[kacievvbbbb]

Super silly but I’m picturing a scenario where Shanks can’t really read all that well (raised by pirates etc) but he still figures out Mihawk’s little hobby and then becomes Determined to Get Better so he can keep up with the smut. Benn is like oh finally, you’re actually putting some effort into this, good, and then immediately regrets everything when shanks tries to persuade him to use Mihawk’s books for his reading lessons

No not silly at all! That’s not a headcannon I have but I can definitely see how it’s so popular Shanks doesn’t not look like he was the “education” type when he was young so I can defiently see him not knowing how to read.

And I am obsessed with the idea that his main motivation for learning how to read is so he can keep up with Mihawk’s smut publishing. I love it so much! Like he had no interest in learning how to properly read he could get on fine and Benn was always there but the moment he finds out that Mihawk is publishing smut? About them? He has to get on that’s hit immediately. That’s his new favorite hobby he is constantly buying books his crew is soooo confused.

Benn who has previously offered and encouraged Shanks yo learn is initially ecstatic but then he sees just what shanks is so excited about reading and god these fucking freaky dorks (Mihawk & Shanks) need to stop dragging him into their fucking foreplay. He is also very exasperated by just how much he features in these books and very wary of Shanks’ idea look he can see forming. (He’s not opposed to joining in but he also knows that those two weirdos have never been direct about emotions a day in their lives and so are going to go about enticing him in the weirdest most exhibitionist way possible.)

He does like to see how slightly jealous and turned on Shanks gets when Mihawk’s reader is fucking different pirates tho.

[unreachablevoice]

"You haven't changed."

... At all?

[detectivedarling]

Dreams and dead kids

I went through @starry-bi-sky's shorter dpxdc au's the other day, and fell too deep in love with too many of them. Here's something inspired by their Danny Fenton is Jason Todd au whose spooky elements and universe crossover gave me so many brainworms

He doesn't start talking about the nightmares. Dick never does - he starts with something light, something interesting, something warm. But they always come up. "Free since Thursday," Danny rasps into the phone. It's Sunday. He can still feel the dreams in the back of his throat and against the curve of his ribs, tar thick and heavy. He doesn't think it will ever go away, not anymore. It's as much a part of him as his blood, the real thing not stained on green gloves and a yellow cape, as his ears and mouth and teeth, as the dark circles under his eyes.

Danny picks up Dick's phone call without looking. The ringtone is set for him specifically - everyone in his contacts have a personalized ringtone, so he doesn't need to blink the blood out of his eyes to know if one of his people is calling.

"Seems they really are becoming less frequent," Dick hums from the other end of the country, soft and warm and comforting. "Good, that's good. I'm still looking into medication. I've found one that might work for you."

Danny leans his head against his phone. His body feels like one at war, stuck between night terrors and the fear-born insomnia that attempts to stay away from them. "We'll see," he mutters, low and tired.

"If it doesn't, I'll keep looking, Jay," Dick says Danny's name like it's the most natural thing in the world. "I'll get you sleeping again if it's the last thing I do."

In a little city in Illinois, with two adoptive parents working on a portal to the other side in his basement, Danny huffs a laugh.

"My hero."

-

Danny has an accident.

That phrase is so juvenile. Like he's a child that wet the bed. 

Danny had an accident. Danny was in an accident. Danny messed up.

He doesn't know what to call it, but he needs to find out. Tucker called it the incident, once. It's carried with a tone that implies something big, but in the bathos way, were you're pretty sure it hides an embarrassing joke. Sam calls it june, like it's 9/11 and only the date is needed to explain it. Jazz calls it neglect. Their parents call it an oversight.

Death, Danny can't call it. He can barely bring himself to joke about it. He told the doctor that surveyed his lichtenberg scars that his heart probably stopped and started, like a natural defibrillator. The doctor doesn't take it as the joke he had hoped it was.

The day I died, his lips form the words without sound, the portal, the pain, the waking nightmare.

The one good thing about dying is that his dreams have stopped carrying the same weight. There's little to fear from the pressure on his ribs and blood in his mouth when he's already felt his body break open and mold itself into something new. His vision breaks red in the low morning sunlight. With the memory of death seeped into his mind, he no longer wakes up heaving or choking, crying or with ribs breaking in on him. He no longer wakes up breathing at all.

He thinks his heartbeat hurts more than it helps these days. It's a pain to get it going again each morning. With the echo of ticking clocks in his ears and blood still staining unfamiliar gloves to the vision of mangled hands, with the reflection of a shock and mind melting heat and eyes covering every inch of the portal, with the memory of death, both foreign and too close to home, Danny wakes as the living corpse he's become.

I'm not dead lingers in the back of his throat. It's a lie. The doctor said a mantra could help to wake up from his nightmares, but that one doesn't work anymore.

"I'm alive," his hoarse voice whispers into his too dead and too alive bedroom instead, because that one is true.

Danny's reflection in the window looks at him with five glowing eyes, overlapping and breaking of his face. He'd joke that the house is haunted, but it's just him.

He starts breathing again.