#and realise they're one and the same

[the-shining-river]

The Life of Pi

So I just finished reading "The Life of Pi", am still reeling from the ending, so this is a quick, unpolished take, but what the hell was that book doing in The Punisher? The show about a man who, you know, is so very NOT a religious vegetarian pacifist?

How did Frank 'Are you Catholic? — Once' Castle, who lost any remaining faith in God after the brutal massacre of his family, ever manage to get through a book where the protagonist suffered the same fate — even down to the tragedy having likely come from incompetence (drunken sailors vs Samantha Reyes' botched Central Park op) and greed (lack of lifeboats vs Agent Orange's operation).

I kinda wonder what Leo's take from the book was too, seeing as her family is Jewish but not terribly devout? and also that Leo is, what, eleven? twelve?

How did Frank, whose trauma is still so fresh in his mind, whose main priority is to avenge his family and make sure none of that shit happens again to anyone he cares about, his eternal soul be damned, he's made peace with having crossed the line you don't come back from — how did he manage to get through a book where the protagonist's solution is seeking strength and solace from God even harder than he used to before? A book that is so full of solid, enduring, rapturous faith? So full of kindness even towards a dangerous predator, and appreciation for the miraculous beauty of life, of the world all around us?

How is he and Leo discussing it so calmly?

For Leo, yeah, she's a kid, for her The Question might have been "Do you think the tiger was real?" For Frank — no bloody way. It's not even the point of the book, in my (still reeling) mind. It's about people and the atrocities they're capable of, the chilling dark side of the humanity (and man do I have some thoughts on the parallels with war vets, after listening to this podcast), and the way we cope with trauma, and the way people might prefer a fancy tale with animals instead of one that is so terribly twisted. Or, how maybe it's a kindness when others pretend they believe your fancy coping mechanism of a tale better.

(It's a beautiful contradiction of a person's ability to believe the unbelievable vs a person's ability to face a gruesome truth)

They could have done so much with those parallels, but ok, it was probably a matter of copyright limits as well. I'm gleefully cackling at the simple fact that apparently Frank had to suffer through it. I absolutely imagine he launched the book at a wall a few times in frustration and wild disagreement and hurt and because it must have been so raw to read it, and then grumpily went to pick it back up because he'd promised a kid he'd read it.

So yeah, that was a very interesting choice of a book in The Punisher, but it can't have been light bedtime reading material for Frank, whose reaction to his own tragedy has been very very different, and who is supported by people who can both face his gruesome truths AND believe the unbelievable - that Frank Castle is a good man.

@blackeyewhiterose , you were curious about my take on that book :D

[nikolaj-costerwaldau]

In Bruges (2008) // The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

[carlarosenakilah]

The more you think about it they're quite similar

[gomzdrawfr]

OC doodle with the 141 - tw: alcohol, small mention of death

Honest Feelings

[lunarharp]

shirahama-sensei reminded me she has a thing for the teacher from pokemon s/v so i randomly went off on an au where qifrey is the professor. etc

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [2/6] creatures -> banshees

It's not the scream that gives you power... All the scream does is help drown out the noise, allowing you to hear what you really need to.

[seas-of-silver]

For the ask game: "Stop with these ridiculous lies Dupain-Cheng, I saw you detransform!"

‘Stop with these ridiculous lies, Dupain-Cheng, I saw you detransform!’

Chloé smirked when the girl finally stopped avoiding her.

‘I saw your kwami and I know you’re Ladybug, and there’s nothing-’

Her heart jumped to her throat when Dupain-Cheng whirled around and pinned her to the wall with a hand covering her mouth, no doubt smudging her designer lipstick. She would’ve complained about the outrageous offence if it wasn’t for the intense glare that struck her like lightning.

‘Can you just stop yelling that for one second?’ Dupain-Cheng hissed quietly, her voice filled with a ferocity Chloé couldn’t help but comply with. The baker girl scanned the space around her before saying, ‘Come with me.’

Chloé scoffed. ‘As if. You-’

‘Now.’

The order sent a zing up Chloé’s spine. The person in front of her wasn’t some inferior unimportant insect of a school girl, but a general, a fearless leader born by trials of fire and hardened by fighting on the frontline of countless battlefields. Chloé followed silently.

They walked out of the school and into a secluded alley where Dupain-Cheng became Ladybug before her very eyes, wrapped an arm around her and zipped her way across the city. They landed somewhere entirely unfamiliar to Chloé, some weird disgusting abandoned warehouse or something, and Chloé only had enough time to register Ladybug sending some sort of message on her Bug Phone before her back slammed into something metal.

‘Ow! What the hell, Dupain-Cheng?’ Chloe cried out, feeling the magical yo-yo wrapping around her, securing her to a metal post.

‘Do not call me that when I’m suited up, you know the rules, Chloé,’ Ladybug commanded, catching the end of her yo-yo in her free hand. Her glare hardened. ‘Though, you don’t really care for the rules, do you?’

Chloé seethed at the slight.

‘How dare you! I did care!’ Chloé bit back, pulling at the unrelenting restraints. ‘When I found Pollen, I kept her safe and tried to learn from her so I could help you! And when Hawk Moth came after me, I fought back!’

‘You sold out our entire team to Hawk Moth!’ Ladybug retorted.

‘YOU ABANDONED ME!’ Chloé screamed, hot tears streaming down her face. ‘You knew Hawk Moth was targeting me relentlessly! Day and night for weeks on end! I couldn’t let my guard down for even one second, otherwise I would be under his spell! It was like he knew me, Ladybug - like actually knew me! He targeted every weak spot he could find; it was only a matter of time before I would break! I’m only human, Ladybug!’

‘Oh? And what about after Miracle Queen?’ Ladybug asked evenly, not much more than a red blob through her tears. ‘You weren’t being attacked then.’

‘I was hurt. I was angry. How could I not be?’ Her voice warbled as she sobbed. ‘I followed you, believed in you, and you left me high and dry. I had akumas tracking my every move and attempting to possess me - I even had one latch onto me, but instead of submitting, I threw it off!’

Chloé could’ve sworn Ladybug looked shocked at that. She hoped she was.

‘I thought that after everything I did for you, that I would have proved myself worthy to you, that you could believe in me too,’ she continued, ‘but no. You dismissed me at every turn and kept telling me I would never be Queen Bee again. The least you could do was tell me why! But you didn’t! My own parents were akumatised, and you wouldn’t even let me save them! How could I be loyal to you any longer when you couldn’t even let me do that much?’

‘M’lady! I got your emergency message- uh… why is Chloé tied up and why are you both crying?’

Chloé tried to blink her tears away, to see if the newly-arrived Chat Noir was telling the truth.

‘I’m fine,’ Ladybug obviously lied, her face suspiciously wet, ‘but we have a problem. Chloé knows who I am now.’

‘What?’ Chat Noir asked, shocked. ‘How?’

‘Remember when I had to go recharge mid-fight earlier today?’ Ladybug asked and Chat Noir nodded. ‘Chloé, for some godforsaken reason-’

‘Oi!’

‘-had decided to hide in the very alley I was recharging in,’ Ladybug continued, as if she hadn’t heard Chloé. ‘I thought the alley was clear, but apparently not. Once the battle was over, Chloé hounded me about knowing my identity, and when I denied it or ignored her, she got louder to try and draw my attention, and I was concerned she was going to grab other people’s attention too, so I brought her here.’

‘Okay, but why the yo-yo?’ Chat Noir asked, and Ladybug scoffed.

‘Have you forgotten that she betrayed us and our team to Hawk Moth?’ she asked hotly. ‘Or that she’s been behind many of the recent akumatisations and attacks recently?’

‘No, I just thought it was a bit of overkill,’ that stupid cat said placatingly, which only riled Ladybug up further.

‘Overkill?’ she echoed venomously. ‘Our biggest betrayer now knows my identity! I’m compromised and she’s a massive liability! She’s been my own personal tormentor for years, and now she holds the key to our demise if she hands that information over to the magical terrorist she’s now buddy-buddies with!’

‘She bullied you too?’ Chat Noir asked, surprised, before shaking his head at Chloé with disapproval. ‘Oh, Chloé.’

Chloé hated how Chat Noir said that, especially because of how his disappointment hit her. Somehow, it felt almost as effective as Adrien talking to her like that.

‘As I said, I would never have joined Hawk Moth if you had just trusted me,’ Chloé retorted angrily.

‘Trusted you? Trusted you?’ Ladybug’s eyes were flaming with fury, her voice and posture ablaze with rage - Chloé would’ve taken cover if she could’ve. ‘Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to trust you? You, who had tormented me for years. You, who has orchestrated the traumas that have and will haunt me for the rest of my life. You, who has blatantly, unashamedly and relentlessly targeted me, my friends and my family just for your own personal satisfaction. Hell! I can’t even ask out the guy I like because of what you did to me with the last guy I liked! And you wanted me to trust you more than I already did?’

Well, when she worded it like that, Chloé found it hard to find a rebuttal.

‘You should be grateful that I even gave you the chance to be Queen Bee,’ Ladybug spat, ‘let alone trusted you enough for you to hold that title more than once. Did you know your biggest champions were Chat Noir and Adrien?’

Chat Noir looked a little abashed at the sudden mention of him, and confused by the mention of Adrien.

‘Whenever my belief that you were changing for the better was starting to wane, those two held strong in their belief in you, and helped me believe in you, too,’ Ladybug continued. ‘I even convinced the Guardian before me that you deserved another chance. It was near impossible for me to trust you, but I was getting there, slowly but surely. I’ll admit I made mistakes, some cost me and the team dearly, but even when I fail, I will continue to fight because it’s the right thing to do, and I would rather die than let Shadow Moth win.’

Chat Noir nodded solemnly in agreement, which made Chloé wonder if she was missing some understanding about the gravity of this magical war, or if these two were just wayyyy too intense about being superheroes.

‘Surely it’s not that dire, seriou-‘

‘Chlo, Shadow Moth winning means he could wipe out our current reality and rewrite it entirely,’ Chat Noir said, no trace of his trademark humour to be found (effectively cutting off her objection to him using Adrien’s nickname for her). ‘Life as we know it could cease to exist - we could cease to exist…permanently.’

Chloé gulped nervously. Were the stakes always that high?

‘This is not a game, it never has been,’ Ladybug said darkly. ‘So the question is: now that you know who I am, what do we do with you?’

[daily-hanamura]

[allbuthuman]

do any other autistic ppl get the thing where they just Know that something will become their special interest before time can prove it? yk when you've been into a thing for like a week and u know it's not gonna leave ur noggin for a long long while??

[notyoinara]

day 7 - HIT ME ON THE GROUND

redraw of a shot from the inuyashiki op (flashing lights cw, reference photo under the cut)

[somegrumpynerd]

Dudeeeeee!!!! I just got a surge of love and affection and I have to yell at you now!!! You're wonderful and you always leave nice tags on my posts and you don't have to and I'm so grateful that you go out of your way to do so because it makes me feel so happy and it boosts my mood. I love being friends with you and I love your art it's always so cozy and cute or funny and it's so round and SQUIMSHY AND DNDNSSFBKSJXISN SO CUTE!!! SO LOVELY!! And we can ramble about college au or your truce au and it's so nice.

Anyway <3

OUGH... I can't believe you've done this...

Well first of all how am I supposed to not leave nice tags on your art when it's so cool!!! You're AMAZING at everything for a start like I watched you turn a stick figure into the most gorgeous drawing that belongs in a museum and it was incredible the whole time, I'm not exaggerating when I say I hurt my back from leaning over like a gargoyle to watch you draw lol and you always draw such cool stuff!!! Werewolves and cowboys and kross and don't get me STARTED on Enoch my specialest little guy!!!! He is like a beloved nephew to me and every day I am psychicly bullying Nightmare and Error into being good dads to him!!!

And I love getting to talk about college au and Enoch and truce stuff and all the sillies with you, you're so fun to bounce ideas around with and when I have a silly idea you're always one of the first people I wanna tell it to lol

Thank you for being so cool and nice and amazing at art and ideas and fun, this whole community is so lucky to have you <3

[melonteee]

The qrts on this are literally people getting mad and going "WOW way to MISS THE POINT" which, I agree with! But this is the same studio that made the opla, and this is the exact same thing they did to Luffy, by making Luffy care more about finding the grand line map than wanting adventure and a crew!

Tomorrow Studios is literally incapable of having a free flowing plot without an in your face exposition device. You can shorten down a story without removing natural elements of narrative or character. Both Luffy AND Aang's main personality of character is loving the adventure and the freedom of their lives. This studio is taking both of these go-with-the-flow characters and stripping them of their personality because... they're easier to write when they're put in a box, I guess?

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised at this point when Tomorrow Studios keeps doing this, but I suppose that's the difference when you use the original creator's name as a safety net for one and not the other!

Edit: my bad Tomorrow Studios is not actually making this one it's being developed by Rideback. Got my wires crossed due to the Netflix workers overlap. Either way, nice to see Netflix seems to be the rooted problem here, as it tends to be 😭

[psalmsofpsychosis]

"#Batman resists his own insanity so it spreads to e v e r y t h i n g around him"

You can't just say this and not elaborate in great detail. PLEASE elaborate oh my God. I do agree but I want to hear every single thought you have about this topic.

Btw, I'm the same Anon who asked -- or not really asked but more so talked -- about Batman and Joker's soulmate sort of bond.

AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH "COMBINING JOKER'S HEAD WITH BATMAN'S BODY"???????

I was thinking along the lines of the concept version and how they could never be satisfied like this, united in one body. What is the result of mixing chaos and order? What is the result of mixing the act of forgetting the past and fixating on it? What do you get through combining the ideology of making everything matter and taking all meaning away?

The result is that the pure concepts become stained and dull, pushed away from their original function, losing their purpose to oppose each other.

Becoming one entity is the act of becoming complete (concepts being stained) and losing the thing that made them them. Batman and Joker were never meant to unite in this way with overlapping voices, finishing each others thoughts and sentences and it SHOWS. I'm in love with their grotesque obsession with each other that borders on love and punishment. Their desire to win and conquer the other for good but never being able to because losing one side takes away the purpose of the other.

That's why I'm so, so, SO disappointed with how the Batman Who Laughs turned out. Where are my identity crises? Plural, because this could never be an one-and-done kind of deal. They became OneTM, inentionally or not, but BeforeTM, they were always wondering what it would be like. Batman could try to get closer to Joker's mental state but never fully experience it, same with Joker. But now they are OneTM and then what? Batman is just the Joker with Bruce's memories and face. I can't begin to describe how boring that is. That's like if DC made a "Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe" story only they used Joker instead of Deadpool.

Do you see my vision? Can you feel my pain? I wanted to psychoanalyse that asshole with my amateurish psychology knowledge but they only gave us a watered down Joker who makes other Batmen less interesting upon contact. WHERE ARE THE IDENTITY CRISES?? WHERE IS THE DIFFICULTY IN MAKING A DECISION?? WHERE ARE THE LENGTHY MONOLOGUES ARGUING BACK AND FORTH OR CONTRADICTING EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME??? The Batman Who Laughs is basically Two Face but without the wall seperating Harvey and Two Face. Joker!Batman should be unable to do anything or constantly switch between Bruce and Joker or save one life and then turn around and kill it. Like, where is the complexity? Why the hell is that guy only a murder machine?? That was neither Joker nor Batman's whole purpose??

Tell me all your thoughts, my friend, while I'm here spinning in circles and going insane. I'll never get out of this alive, you'll still find me ruminating on this on my deathbed.

I swear, if you give an absolute banger of an answer again, I'll come and start living in your walls.

Have a nice day!! :)

ANON LOVE OF MY LIFE, i'm shoveling all the insides of my walls out as we speak, you can move in by Wednesday morning—

Like, the way i felt every single word you said in my bones. You are so right, and there are a couple different points here and it's gonna get longer than usual so i'll separate each thought thread to avoid drowning in lé brain soup.

• Re: batman resisting his own insanity, i feel like i have simultaneously talked about this in 7986 different ways and haven't said anything about it at all 😂 possibly most of it has been discord ramblings. Long story short, the spine of his narrative to me is that he actively resists his own humanity and in extension of it, his evil. He wants to be good. But there's also immense psychological/emotional/physical price we pay whenever we make these kind of choices; whatever we disown and banish to our subconscious, we project out into the world and unto the people around us. The load you refuse to carry will be carried by the people around you, because at the end of the day /someone/ has to carry it, it doesn't just disappear into ether. So, in a way, for Batman to remain good, to remain a hero, someone else has to be bad. The extent in which Batman keeps his goodness "pure and untainted" dictates the horrors created around him— and particularly the creation of Joker. I say creation because the existence of Batman as a concept absolutely necessitates the existence of Joker. In a way Batman does create him, and it's true that with Batman gone Joker and half the evil in Gotham would be gone too, not because Batman is an evil presence— but precisely because he disowns his own evil.

And the thing is, in the specific context of Joker, it has become this almost loving, adoring symbiotic relationship; Joker has willingly shaped himself to fit the outline of an evil that Batman needs to defeat, he has become the sin that Batman can overcome so he can stay a saint. I actually have a draft on this that i never finished, a meta about how all the coloring choices in Joker's design eerily resemble the different color stages of a wound and the bruising after, how Batman almost feels like Jesus with Joker as his side wound, Joker being the price he pays and the pain he goes through for his martyrdom in order to stay pure, for his idealogy to have any form of meaning and significance, Joker being his very own holy suffering.

We fundamentally understand reality in form of contrasts, internal ones, external ones. As you very well pointed out, without an innate sense of contrast, we cease to have any form of coherent grasp on different concepts, and they start to sort of become noise, they become nothing. Would you truly understand what a day was and grasp it as a concept if it wasn't followed by a night? So like, what i'm saying is, people around Bruce/Batman become what he needs because they love him and they want to help him keep his narrative, the structure of his psyche intact. They help him stay 'him' by taking on the burden of what he doesn't want to be, he subconsciously shapes them in the image of what he needs to uphold his identity as a good person. This is why Alfred becomes Joker to save him, this is why Selina is the more socially acceptable pretty Joker that Bruce can actually marry and bring to his family, this is why Joker and Batman feel like they can never escape their narrative, their roles and their performance. It's the reason the moment Batman lurches to kill The Riddler in "the war of jokes and riddles", Joker stops his knife with his hand. It's their defined roles, and the greatest act of love that noone except Joker would show him. Joker says "I'm the sacrifice. I'm the evil, i'm the one who kills, i have made this choice so you can make yours. You're the good one. If you become evil, it renders both your efforts and my sacrifice meaningless, and i can not allow that to happen." And it's a truly fascinating dynamic really, for all that Joker has and hasn't done throughout the Batmanverse history, when it comes to Batman he's irredeemably selfless. Everything he does regarding Batman is to keep Batman's sense of goodness and heroism intact, and in this context he's more pure than him. Everyone around Batman wants him to kill, perhaps rightfully so, they mean well. But Joker says "i'll bear all the unbearable evil so you dont have to, and we both acutely understand that without my existence you mean nothing. I will be the monster so you dont have to." And honest to god there's a heartbreaking affection to this, something noone else will ever be willing or want to offer to Bruce, not to this extent.

in 'the war of jokes and riddles' Bruce tells Selina that "what separates him from utter evil is a hand on his knife. Joker's hand." like bro, he knows. In a deeply twisted and gutwrenching way Bruce knows that noone loves him the way Joker does.

• Re: combining Joker and Batman's heads and bodies, i was thinking.... two concepts maybe?? 👀 one is more like the Dullahan myth, in which Batman loses his head but he isn't carrying it, Joker steals it. And then Joker loses his head and Batman has to keep it and he's forced to use it. It'd be an insanely fun concept; the Dullahan myth can be interpreted as the idea of death of self by supposedly losing all that would make you human; your thoughts and memories and logic, etc. Except that you still have a heart, and a body, and they're not exactly cooperative. It'd be fun to have Joker's mind trying to tame Batman's heart and body, each fighting and singing their own song, same for Batman. A version of the myth has Dullahan carrying a human spine in one hand, and i mean, the possibilities are endless!

But also another concept would be: two frankenstein monsters lmaooo, same sense of discordent internal landscape, same sense of ideological tension and conflict, but also someone's gotta [tw mentions of gore] chop chop them and sew their body parts together, and that can be another interesting element added to their fucked up dynamic ✨️ it can also be Joker as Dr Frankensten and he sews parts of himself to Batman in order to save him!

• Re: Batman Who Laughs, oh girl (gn), i have nothing to add that you haven't already said more beautifully than me. There's so much emotional nuance and complex philosophy that could've gone into that concept, it's certainly one of the hardest Batman story variations to pull off, and weirdly enough, the people who dont directly aim for "Batman becomes Joker/Joker becomes Batman" stories often tell a better more intricate tale about that transformation than the people who straight up shoot for the concept. One of the things that always sends a chill down my spine is the ending of Batman: Europa, in which Joker is terrified and screaming as Batman laughs and lurches for him; that's the dynamic, that's the Batman who laughs, and the most unsettling part of it is that, Batman doesn't change. He doesn't have to. On a core level he is quite frankly a bit fucked up, it's not a stretch for Batman to be evil, and that's why his goodness is meaningful. Cue Nietsche's quote, "Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." Batman is not a good guy entirely, and that makes his goodness a conscious choice with so much weight and worth and significance. I dont think a lot of DC people understand this.

With Batman Who Laughs, the name kinda sums up the take unfortunately; it's a superficial interpretation that falls flat on its own face because the writers couldn't be assed to explore how a chemical combination of Batman and Joker's narrative would unfold. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as with any potent chemical reaction, the mixture is highly unstable and unpredictable, and that's the fucking fun of it. There's gotta be tension. I do think Batman and Joker can very well mix, i do think they can make a seamless fusion, but i dont trust any canon DC writers to handle the characterization well in a way that doesn't bore you out of your fucking mind. You gotta make a new person and you gotta capitalise on the core components both Batman and Joker share; their incessant sense of idealism, their need for purity, their volatile emotions and their aggression, their need to individuate from their context and deviate from the norm, take the third way out narrative wise, their philosophical and intellectual bend, their immense grief, their need to be oh so special and different 😂 they actually have a whole lot in common, this is why they're perfect enemies!

But yeah, writing that personality fusion is very hard because it's such an emotionally complex context and most DC writers have not felt a single emotion in the past 35 years aflhdtdhlf

Anyway yep i love your brain so SO much Anon, hope you have a wonderful day ❤️💕 and dont forget to tell me what ya think!!

[theotherrichardpapen]

...because any moment may be our last. everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.

[amidnightqueery]

I don't hate my job or anything, but man, being a float educator is so fucking thankless

[whatudottu]

Ever since making my human Shockwave design, both my original one and this one, I've been thinking of what arm he would have because even if you have access to a cannon arm as a human it's logical to have a functional arm prosthetic maybe idk-

An extra ever since after reading @nukeli 's SG Shockwave fic I've also been thinking of human Shockwave having a donor arm like what happens in the oneshot, it being mismatched because though demand is high supply is very very low and replacement body parts don't last-