#and this is certainly a call out

[time-woods]

doing these drawing pages is fun but they always end up getting more and morequeer

[starry-bi-sky]

mmm throwaway conversation between Dan and Danny that popped into my head that I had to write out:

"You spent ten years being a one-man mass extinction event, then went back in time and fought me, and lost." Danny snarls, arms crossed and throat tight. His mouth pulls back to bare dagger-sharp teeth, and his eyes burn with the familiar thrum of ectoplasm heating up behind his eyes. "If I didn't believe you were half of Vlad before, I do now."

His other self -- and really, can he even call him that? He's half of Vlad too. Two halves severed from each other and welded together to make a new whole, -- snaps his head over to him. Wild-eyed and furious, he looks unlike the man Danny fought before, the one unruffled and untouched, unbothered by the world around him. It's familiar, but not like the way a reflection is.

"What's that supposed to mean." The Other hisses, matching Danny's scowl one-for-one with fangs much bigger and sharper than his.

But there's a reason lions fear hyenas. Danny matches the rumble in The Other's chest with one of his own, and shoves his face close to his. "I don't lose."

[asgardian--angels]

my god bbno$ just got invited to riot hq because of the jayvik livestream either they're gonna tap him for jayvik marketing ideas or christian linke himself is gonna take him out back and shoot him

[chiimeramanticore]

it's cool if I ramble about yes man unprompted right. ofc it is. i wanna talk about his capacity for violence bc I think it's one of the most interesting parts of his character

yes man is nice. obviously he's nice. but yes man is not a kind character. he helps you, sure, but that's mostly just because he likes you specifically (and even that's debatable depending on how you play). i feel like this is exemplified w his pre-combat lines– "a pulled trigger's a happy trigger!" and "woo! bang bang!" like, he's clearly having fun! he takes glee in killing people, but not because he's sadistic, but because he just doesn't realize the weight of taking a life- or if he does, it just doesn't matter to him.

he was programmed without a sense of morality or an understanding of mortality. to him, violence is second nature. to him, violence is no different from play. he's like a guard dog– he doesn't care who he's shooting or why, he's just excited to do the thing he's good at.

and on one hand, he is a fantastic guard dog. but on the other hand, six must watch how... efficiently he kills, and wonder if they'll ever wind up on the receiving end of it. he wouldn't do it as long as he likes six, of course, but... if yes man was given good enough reason to believe six deserved to die, would he even hesitate? would their history and relationship mean anything to him? or would six just be another target, forgotten about as quickly as a radroach you stepped on?

six can only hope they never need to find out.

[stars-obsession-pit]

(Another) Ghost in the Machine

DP x Hellblazer (the original John Constantine comic)

Ritchie Simpson continued to search frantically for the connection out of the computer and back to his body as he begged John to explain what he meant by saying “Goodbye.”

Had John disconnected him? He knew John’s sense of humor wasn’t the lightest, especially after Newcastle drove them all a bit insane, but that felt too far even for him. Nah, he’d probably just gotten himself a bit lost in the wave of energy he’d experienced in the Tongues of Fire network and was accidentally looking for his body in the wrong spot.

He pulled himself back and let his mental connection to the digital world expand outward, probing the rest of the machine for the connection. He knew he was in the right system, so as long as he looked thoroughly he’d definitely fi—

Everything flashed a surge of blinding white and then was replaced by pure darkness. He thought he screamed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Couldn’t even feel his own thoughts. Trapped in one single instant that stretched for indeterminable eons. Then, eventually (or was it immediately?), awareness began to trickle back.

He was still in the computer, though it felt… different, somehow. His thoughts still weren’t entirely in order. The first possible hints towards his location he found were the sound voices trickling through from the outside world. Voices he didn’t recognize. Young voices.

“I’m happy to help, Tuck, but I’m not really sure what you expect me to do here. You’re way better than me at this computer stuff than me.”

“By all means, feel free to keep complimenting me, but this has been frying my brain, man. I got this thing secondhand, and the system should be quite powerful, but there’s something using up a ton of its processing and I can’t figure out what. I was hoping you could do your ‘enter into the computer’ thing and see if you see anything.”

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Red Hood finds Nightwing in the throes of fear toxin, babbling about missed calls and text messages.

[madbard]

Thinking about how the Long Quiet outsources change. As the embodiment of stagnancy, it was never meant to exist on its own, never meant to exist as sentient being which, by necessity, must adapt and change to survive. And it handles this by creating the Voices, mental embodiments of trauma responses and attitude shifts and altered worldviews and everything else, externalized advisors embodying the changes it cannot personally undergo.

It accepts these Voices as guides because it needs them, but it refuses to be altered itself. Each princess and each story bring with it a physical change that horrifies it, and every time, it resets those changes, kills the new voices and returns to its original state. Theoretically, it stays the same as it always was.

But still. As it continues forth, it can’t help but remember. With each story, memory returns. Against its will, against its very nature, it changes, because it isn’t only stagnancy. There is a splinter of the Shifting Mound in there as well.

Thinking about how the Princesses exist as mere facets of the Shifting Mound, how the Shifting Mound is scattered among them because personhood requires a certain amount of stability and stagnancy that she cannot perform all at once. How the Shifting Mound cannot exist as a single, stable perspective because even the continuity of thought is contrary to the concept of change and destruction and evolution and death, expanding always and infinitely and away.

She pulls herself together from limited experiences and ideas, rejecting the possibility of being any single person.

But still. At the end of each story, she greets the Long Quiet, offers it comfort and company in the way she knows how. The progression of their relationship, though it is by necessity a story of change, is also a tale of repetition and familiarity. The Long Quiet asks the same questions. She gives different answers. But it is ultimately the same conversation, again and again. And she is capable of that because she is not just the Shifting Mound – there is a sliver of the Long Quiet in there as well.

And the Shifting Mound is only able to reform itself because the Long Quiet makes different decisions each time, bringing her fresh perspectives – because despite being the manifestation of stagnancy, there is a piece of the Shifting Mound to motivate it. And the Long Quiet is only able to try and remain stagnant because the Shifting Mound is able to wipe its memory and reset it – because despite being the manifestation of change, there is a whisper of the Long Quiet to stabilize her.

They weren’t meant to be separated. They weren’t meant to be sentient. As separate beings, they fail. As separate beings, they greet each other with violence and hunger and desperation – the fury of their essential conflict warring with their frantic desire to be reunited, to never have been torn apart. Two people who never wanted to be people. Two people who want to be the same thing and try again and again to join themselves together through bloodshed and love.

Movements synchronized, moving as one. As if they were still the same being because, in a sense, they are.

There is a reason they always appear to be dancing.

[canisalbus]

.

[markscherz]

Do you have a favourite rain toad? I love them. They're so round and look grumpy even though they aren't.

Did you know that there are arboreal rainfrogs‽

[src]

Meet the genus Callulina, from the rainforests of Tanzania and Kenya

[src]

Who said you had to be lithe to take to the trees?

[src]

You may not like it, but this is what Peak Performance looks like.

[miela]

"katara would never fall in love with zuko when the fire nation killed her mom" well katara needs to realize that the fire nation probably killed a lot of moms that was under firelord ozai's reign she aint special now be punk rock and kiss his sON

[mcytegg]

i wanna post my yaps abt how the stickler-empire alliance is upheld by hopperclock and dualities friendships alone simply bc the empire only recognizes the sticklers as allies bc of minute and mapiccs individual alliances w jumper and ro—

like even that is tenuous at best bc mapicc doesnt care much for rek or jumper at all to the point that i think that theres most definitely a world where he kills them for a heart or smt if anything if he was caught while crashing tf out

while minute seems to mainly trust and want to work w jumper when given the chance while kind of seeing rek and ro be allies by proxy of them being her teammates. like even w ro offering to take pentars interest in him to help kill mane, minute still sees it as him helping mapicc SPECIFICALLY and not as him helping the empire as a whole (which is most likely true, in his defense!)

but like i cant articulate all of my thoughts and opinions in a satisfying way to MYSELF bc i have much to say and a few examples to help explain what i mean but the yap braincell isnt yap braincelling so all i can do is post this which is like...basically my yaps but on sale. discounted. not at full value.

[liliox-ciel]

Your Yi Sang has become Yi Sang

[medicalunprofessional]

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Hilarious seeing Kensington Palace release a photo of Kate and the kids for mother's day to try and crush the "Where is Kate?" conspiracy theories, but it was so obviously photoshopped it just gave them new life and actually got the mainstream press to start asking questions.

[navree]

You keep saying refusing to vote for Biden on moral grounds because of Palestine is ineffective because Trump would be worse, but that really isn't the point. Largely (with the exception of a few extremists and a contingency of people who wouldn't have voted anyways) the philosophy of a movement that has people withhold their vote is to force a significant policy change that wouldn't have changed otherwise. Its a form of protest. I understand from your perspective, election-focused and pragmatic, it is a threat to whoever is running, but if Biden had wanted the votes being withheld he would have capitulated.

Not that this isn't a moot point since he's out, but whatever.

See, this is intensely fucking dumb.

"force a significant policy change" it would not. One, because Biden is the president of the United States, and Israel is not one of those states. Short of sending the CIA to, idk, assassinate Netanyahu in his bed, which most of these people would be against I think because of how much they bitch and moan about US foreign policy at any given opportunity, he cannot actually make an independent foreign power do what he wants and what is electorally convenient for him. Like, I'm very sure Biden would love it if Netanyahu and his partisans stopped acting like fucking freaks for five minutes, if only so that it would stop being a PR nightmare for him. But that's not happening, because he cannot control what Netanyahu does. He could vastly reduce the support the US is providing Israel, and in my view he should, but that's not going to stop what Netanyahu and the Israeli government is doing. Because, I hate to break it to you, but the reason they're carpetbombing Gaza is because they want to be carpetbombing Gaza, and even without US aid they will continue to do it, even it just means with older and less effective weapons. Ultimately, the change that leads to a ceasefire and an end to the war is going to come from the actual parties involved, not Joe Biden.

Two, you've already gotten the significant policy change. Biden has, on multiple occasions now, come out in favor a ceasefire. He has actively been working, along with the Qatari government, to try and broker some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those two keep on fucking it up because they're both run by bloodthirsty psychopaths who don't care one iota about the people they're meant to be governing and only on killing whoever they want. That's been open fact for months now. And it has meant fuckall. The people doing their moral purity about how they'd never vote for Biden were still doing it, just moving the goalposts on what they wanted. First it was ceasefire, then it was 'no ceasefire until [insert impossible demand here] is given', because moving goalposts is what these people do. It's the same mentality as people who saw that Biden was doing COVID stimulus, or cancelling student loans, or reclassifying marijuana, and decided that the issue now was that he wasn't doing enough of it. It's a movement that's been consistently comprised of dogs that caught the car, and are angry that they caught the car because now they can't complain, and they don't want to actually affect meaningful change, they just want to complain because that's easier. And if that's what these people have been doing for his entire presidency, why on Earth would any reasonable person suddenly believe it's different on this one specific issue?

Three, cool you're protesting, then what? Your protest is utterly unserious and completely meaningless if it's not going to have any tangible effects, so what's the next step? You've decided to make your moral purity stance an issue that the vast majority of you learned from infographics on Instagram rather than listening to the voices involved (which is why the red triangle brigade is still a thing on Twitter), so what happens now? No political party is ever going to capitulate entirely to it, because the constituency is just too small (that "uncommitted" gambit was only getting like 10% of the vote wherever it was happening, Biden won over it as a literal write-in candidate in at least one state), so other than the compromise that's already happening, the goalpost movers are gonna withhold their votes because blah blah blah my morals. And their next step is, what? Trump gets elected. And their movement, which has no thought or serious effort put behind it or any actual attempt to provide material aid to the people actually suffering, has helped put a man who is going to be far worse for it in power. The "significant policy change" is going to be that Trump gives Netanyahu whatever he wants and he proceeds to wipe Gaza off the map. The "significant policy change" is that President "Trump Heights" actively makes things worse for the people this protest is supposed to help, as a consequence of that very protest.

It's not about me only being concerned with being "election focused" or some cold hearted bitch. It's about me, as a person who thinks what Israel has been doing since the start is godawful and deeply horrendous, realizing that this entire "protest" is not only asinine but will result in deeply negative consequences and very real harm for the people this protest is purported to be for, and being sickened by that. I live in the real world, and in the real world action speaks far louder than intent. I don't have to acknowledge that the protest wants this or that outcome or what the hypothetical impossible asks that are never going to be answered are, because I understand that they will not matter. What matters is what you get out of your protest, what gains are received, how that protest actually affects change, not the change it gives wishy washy lip service to.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

DPxDC media story prompt

Okay first off, this sort of thing has been done before, but here’s a different version involving Jazz Fenton.

Popular in DPxDC fanfic is that the GIW have a media blackouts—or whiteouts, there’s kind of a difference, where whiteouts work more like… there is a file, but you can’t edit it or it may be locked out for certain users, or an edited version of events where things are ‘whited out’ like with correction paste, among other definitions.

Point is!

The GIW have a media restriction, and among these is social media, probably with certain words or phrases pinging to location restrict the post. There was probably a phase for a while where the A-Listers tried to get around it, but ultimately failed, and since they could only get information IN rather than information OUT, and possibly still a limited amount of outside information in the first place, social media didn’t take off as much in Amity Park than in other places in the world. There’s still a small local presence, but at this point it’s almost like a city wide chat room than actual social media.

Enter in, Jazz Fenton. She’s chronically behind on trends, so by the time she decides to get on social media, the GIW aren’t being as militant on it. And she has that habit of calling the ghosts by code names instead of their actual names, such as Crate Creep instead of The Box Ghost, or Ghost X instead of Skulker. By pure coincidence of her personal language use and Tucker messing with all of Team Phantom’s phone locaters for easier excuse giving, Jazz manages to dodge all the word censors.

She accidentally creates a whole online story community convinced it’s some kind of altered reality game or role playing game, what have you. Meanwhile, Jazz is letting off steam by ranting online with, of course, made up names of all the people involved. She doesn’t even notice the numbers, and that’s assuming the GIW didn’t just—region lock the ability to see them for whatever reason. The few Amity Parkers on social medias see Jazz, maybe look at a complaint post or two, then move on because this isn’t even an unusual video inside Amity Park’s social media sphere.

Heck, PHANTOM has a social media presence and he’s done several rant videos too! One particularly famous one is him complaining about keeping his boots and gloves white while being chased and one of the GIW agents actually stops and gives him advice before shooting at him again.

Those outside Amity Park, of course, only see Jazz’s videos. And she has no idea that she has an entire online presence and mild amounts of online fame. And again, almost everyone thinks the whole thing is just a fun little game, if oddly detailed.

Until, that is, a certain young man by the name of Bernard comes in. One of the few who are totally convinced this is real, he tries to also convince his boyfriend—Timothy Drake-Wayne. Who, in turn, finds it incredibly suspicious that it’s this hard to get news and posts from one random town in the Midwest.