#bc hes less stressed

[munchboxart]

I live in fear every day that someone would come up to me or in my tags thinking that I frayed Yueromui's tentacles to mimic human hair, when I did it because it's a cool headcanon (tentacles getting frayed due to stress)

[wanologic]

always good to keep a screamhole handy

[lunacias]

these are the silt verses, and I name our disciples thus

[luxaofhesperides]

For the ghostlights drabbles: “Say my name” with a favor being called in?

Duke had saved Phantom years ago, back when he was just out of high school and working to take down a branch of the government that was kidnapping and experimenting on people, targeting magic users and metas. Phantom had been working on his own to take them down, and they met in the middle, trashing a lab and freeing as many people as they could.

They had managed to shoot his back, knocking him down and making him bleed a glowing green. Phantom couldn’t move, protecting two kids with his body, and Duke couldn’t reach them in time before they were taken away by another swarm of agents. 

He was able to go after them in time, free Phantom and the kids, and evacuated the victims before Phantom rained hell down on the facility.

At the end, standing in the background as they watched paramedics treat the victims and take them towards the nearest hospitals, Phantom had turned towards him and thanked him.

Or rather, he thanked the Signal and offered him a bracelet with a rounded orb of ice, glowing faintly in the dark. If you ever need me, he had said, Hold this, and call me name.

Phantom vanished once the last of the victims were transported to a safer location, and Duke hadn’t seen him since.

He’s kept up with news about Phantom as best he can, but from what he could tell, Phantom is based primarily in Amity Park, Illinois, and the town is fiercely protective of their hero. News rarely leaks out of there, and with them running on their own servers and independent internet, it was nearly impossible to get in from the outside. 

Phantom remained a curious and distant figure in Duke’s life. He holds onto the bracelet still, guarding it carefully and sometimes running his fingers over the ice that never melts.

But he doesn’t call in that favor. He’s never to.

At least, not until now.

Sucking in a breath, Duke prepares himself and holds the orb of ice in the palm of his hand. He’s in civies, unable to hide his identity for this, and closes his eyes. “Phantom,” he says.

For a moment, nothing happens. Duke blinks his eyes open and frowns, mind already forming new plans to contact Phantom. Then the ice goes bitingly cold, almost painful, and the temperature in the room drops dramatically. The ice lifts up from his hand, floating in the air, then cracks open.

White-blue light spills out of it, growing brighter as it seems to swallow up the room entirely. Duke hurries to back up, an arm thrown up to protect his eyes. His breath mists out before him and he shivers as the sound of ice cracking fills the room.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, the light disappears and the cold fades away like a bad dream. 

Slowly, Duke lowers his arm and looks up at Phantom, floating in the middle of his living room with a crown made of ice, engulfed in blue fire, hovers above his head. He looks older, more regal, holding his head high. 

He regards Duke carefully for a minute, then tilts his head and says, “Signal?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Man, I’m so glad you came.”

“You… need help with something? You’re calling in your favor now, right?”

Duke nods. He understands Phantom’s confusion; being in the hero business means that favors like these tend to be used only during the most hopeless of times, when the world is close to ending, when the chances of getting out of a situation alive is close to impossible. It’s exactly the kind of thing Duke was expecting to call Phantom in for.

Not the kid sleeping on his couch.

“You’re a ghost, yeah?”

Phantom blinks at him. “Ghost king, now. Why?”

“Well…” Duke rubs the back of his neck, nervously. “I didn’t really know who else to call, and I can’t do this on my own since I’m not a ghost. But this kid got attached to me and won’t leave, so now I’m taking care of her and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I don’t know why you think I have any experience with kids but—”

“She’s a ghost.”

Phantom stops short. “Ah. I see.” He floats down until his feet touch the floor, and then he’s standing like any other person. “Where…?”

Duke looks past Phantom’s shoulder, and Phantom turns to follow his gaze. Chelsea, the ghost girl, looks to be around nine years old and is fast asleep on the couch, curled up under Duke’s softest blanket.

“Signal,” Phantom says quietly, “What, exactly, is the favor you need from me?”

“You can say no,” Duke starts. “I get that this is a lot. But I need help raising her. And since you’re a ghost, I figured you could help me learn about the ghostly side of things. You don’t have to raise her with me or anything! Just… I would appreciate any help you’re willing to give me.”

Phantom doesn’t say no. He doesn’t say anything. He just stares down at Chelsea, an unreadable expression on his face. 

On the couch. Chelsea shifts in her sleep, brows furrowing as she makes a choked noise in the back of her throat.

Moving on autopilot after so many nights of this routine, Duke kneels next to the couch, fishing one of her hands from beneath the blanket. He gives it a few reassuring squeezes, keeping it a slow rhythm to pull her gently from her nightmare. She settles down in just a minute, brow smoothing out as she continues to sleep. 

The silence grows and Duke is all too aware that his heart is the only one beating. 

He doesn’t hear Phantom move. Doesn’t realize he’s right next to him until he sees Phantom’s hand reach out towards Chelsea. When Duke looks, Phantom is sitting on the floor next to Duke, looking at Chelsea with something soft and devastated in his eyes. His hand hovers about her head for a long moment, then slowly lowers to rest on her head. 

The touch looks gently, barely putting any pressure on her head, but it’s enough to make Chelsea’s eyes snap open, suddenly wide awake. She stares at Phantom with wide eyes, then sits up and looks between him and Duke.

“Who are you?” she asks in a small voice that makes Duke want to stand against the world to keep her safe. 

Phantom smiles. It’s casual and charming and makes him look like anyone else, as if he’s not a powerful king from a realm unreachable to humans. “Hi there,” he says, “I’m Danny. I’m a ghost like you. Signal called me and asked me to meet you.”

The Ghost King is good with kids. Who would have thought?

Chelsea looks at him for confirmation and only relaxes when he nods. “I’m Chelsea. What do you mean ghost? I’m not dead.”

Both he and Phantom tense, carefully keeping their expressions neutral. She hasn’t told him much at all, just that her parents were gone and forgot her and she got hurt, so she wanted to stay with ‘Mr. Signal’ because he’s a hero and heroes keep people safe and he was the only one who was Black like her. Duke hadn’t had the heart to say no, and began searching for her family, only to find that her parents had fled the state, and likely the country, after killing their only child through neglect and a dangerous environment. 

It was then that he realized that her powers were not because she was a meta, but because she was ghost.

It still hurts to realize how young she is, how much of her life had been stolen from her in an instant. Duke hadn’t been brave enough to broach the topic with her, instead choosing to let her grow comfortable in his presence, get them both settled into a routine now that he was her primary guardian. 

“I know it sounds scary,” Phantom says, “And you may not want to believe me, but it’s true. I’m sorry that you died so young, but that just means you get to hang out with me and other ghosts from now on!”

Chelsea crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. “I am not dead,” she says.

“Cici, I’m sorry to say this, but you are,” Duke cuts in. “That’s why I called… Danny. You have new powers as a ghost, and he can help you get used to them.”

“I’m not dead!” she says again.

“Kid,” Phantom begins, but Chelsea shakes her head hard and hops off the couch.

“I’m not lying! Watch, I’ll prove it to you!” She closes her eyes and scrunches up her nose, concentrating. Her hands curl into tight fists by her sides, and the glow around her grows dim. Two faint, stuttering rings of light appear around her waist. They flicker and wobble in the air, as if weak and uncertain of their own existence, then split apart, one moving up towards her head while the other falls to her feet.

Beside him, Phantom sucks in a sharp breath, but Duke can’t turn to see what’s wrong when he’s trying to take in the sight of Chelsea suddenly full of vibrant color, looking more solid that he’s ever seen her, very much alive.

“See?” she says proudly, lifting her arms and doing a spin to show off her right she was. “I told you I’m not dead!”

“No, you’re not,” Phantom agrees, sounding shell-shocked. When Duke is finally able to look away from Chelsea to check on him, he looks awed. There’s the smallest smile on his face, just the slightest upturn of his lips, but it makes him look softer.

Duke turns his attention back to Chelsea before he can be caught staring. “Cici, can you come here for a second?”

She goes before he’s finished speaking, crossing the space between them in a single jump, then grins up at him. Her hair is a bit of a mess, the two buns he managed to get her hair into falling askew. He makes a note to visit the old aunties in the Narrows later to ask them to teach him how to do hair. For now, he holds out a hand and Chelsea drops an arm into it.

It seems to good to be true, having her be alive, but her pulse is steady and strong when he presses his thumb against the inside of her wrist. 

“Well,” he says, leaning back and letting go of her arm. “You certainly proved us wrong.”

Chelsea doesn’t have much time to look smug before PHantom quietly says, “You’re like me.”

“What?”

“You’re like me,” he tells Chelsea. “A halfa.”

She tilts her head to one side. “What’s that?”

“Someone who is half human and half ghost. Both dead and alive.”

Duke blinks, taking in the words, then turns to face Phantom so quickly he’s worried he might give himself whiplash. Halfa, he said. Like me, he said. 

And sure enough, two rings of light, bright and strong, appear around Phantom’s waist before splitting in half, moving over his entire body. 

Gone is the Ghost King, all powerful and adorned in dark clothing with a crown of ice above his head. In his place is a guy who looks to be Duke’s age, eyes a deep blue and his black hair messy, feet set solidly on the floor. He looks completely normal, completely human, and no longer an impossibility.

“You still up for learning how to use all your new powers?” Phantom asks.

Chelsea grins. “Yeah!” And then, with a quick flick of her eyes going from Phantom to Duke that he almost misses, very innocently asks, “Are you going to stay with us then?”

“I… don’t know?” Phantom looks to Duke for an answer.

Already, Duke can see this going two ways. The correct way forward, the normal one, has Phantom popping in every so often, taking Chelsea out for a few hours to work on training her and her powers. It’s easy and routine and they can keep their boundaries uncrossed and be professional. 

The other path is what Duke wants most that he shouldn’t impose onto the literal Ghost King. He could have Phantom living with them while he’s on Earth and out of Amity Park, having a place at the table, a section in the closet for his own clothes, a quietly domestic night together while Chelsea sleeps where they can get to know each other more, get to know each other outside of news reports and texts on a screen.

“You can stay with us if you want,” Duke offers, casually, “It might keep my apartment safe from her powers acting up on their own again.”

“Are you sure? I could always just fly in on the weekends or something.”

“I’d appreciate having you around. So you can help Cici.”

“If you don’t mind,” Phantom says, looking away. Like this, fully alive with a beating heart, it’s easy to see the blush steal away across his cheeks. 

“I don’t.”

“I don’t either!” Chelsea pops in, looking far too gleeful by their awkward conversation.

Duke can’t help but laugh, feeling lighter than he had in ages. The relief of knowing that Chelsea is alive, for the most part at least, eases the guilt of thinking he had been too late to save her, that there was no chance she could have made it out and had a future, makes him feel weak. All the exhaustion of the past few weeks hits him all at once and he wants nothing more than to collapse in bed and sleep for twelve hours.

“Alright, squirt,” he says, reaching out to pat her head. “It’s late. We can talk more in the morning, so go to bed. In your actual bed this time, not on the couch.”

Chelsea stands up taller, ready to argue, but Duke gives her a Look™ and she quickly shuts her mouth, nods, and drags her feet back to her room (the former guestroom he can never give any of the other Waynes ever again, once they find out about her). 

Sighing, Duke collapses onto the couch once he hears the door shut behind her. Phantom joins him after a few seconds, sitting tentatively on the edge of the couch. The cushion moves beneath his weight, another reminder of how solid and alive he is right not.

Duke wants to touch him, to reach out and feel for himself his pulse, the warmth of his body, his chest lifting with each breath. 

He doesn’t move. He stays where he is, hands carefully still, and tries to think past the dizzying thoughts of she’s still alive, I’m not too late, he’s still here, he’s alive.

“Rough week?” Phantom asks, voice purposefully light.

“Something like that.”

“You should get some sleep too.”

“I don’t think I can. Not after everything. My mind’s too loud right now.”

Phantom shifts closer to him, hesitant in a way that Duke has never seen before in him, and asks, “Want me to stay with you until you mind quiets down some?”

“Yeah. I’d like that. Thanks, Phantom.”

“You know, if I’m going to be around so often as Chelsea’s halfa mentor, then you might as well call me Danny.”

Truth be told, Duke didn’t think that was his real name. He’s glad to know it’s not. 

“Then call me Duke.”

“...Are you sure? You could still hide your identity from me.”

“Nah, I trust you. A name for a name, yeah?”

Danny smiles. “Duke,” he says, testing out the name, and it’s never sounded better than when it falls from Danny’s mouth.

“Danny,” Duke returns. He belatedly realizes that they’ve leaned towards each other, drawn together like gravity, stuck in each other’s orbit. It feels natural. It feels like this is where they’re meant to be.

Maybe he should be more cautious. They’ve only meant once before, after all. But he’s read all he could on Phantom and has seen how Amity Park loves him. He’s stressed and exhausted and trying to figure out how to look after a half-ghost child that’s already been dealt a bad hand in life. He should be keeping Phantom at a distance, watching over him carefully to ensure he isn’t a threat to Chelsea.

But Duke saw how he acted with Chelsea, so gentle and understanding and kind. That’s all he needed to see.

He may not know much about Danny, but he knows this: he is trustworthy.

Enough to entrust his identity to him.

Enough to entrust Chelsea to him.

It’s more than a favor; it’s a promise to walk this road together. 

There’s no one he’d rather do this with. 

“Thanks,” he says again, “For all of this. I know it’s a lot.”

Danny shrugs. “I don’t mind. Really. It’s nice to know there’s another halfa out there, no matter how she came to be one. Makes things feel less lonely.”

“Will you tell me more about halfas?”

“Later. Once you get some proper rest. We’ve got time, haven’t we?”

“We do,” Duke agrees, affection settling warm in his chest. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Learning how to control her new powers won’t be easy for Chelsea. Learning how to take care of her won’t be easy. Learning how to do things together, as Duke and Danny rather than the Signal and Phantom, won’t be easy. But Duke knows with a certainty he feels in his bones that they’re going to be fine.

So long as they’ve got each other, they’ll be fine.

[beatcroc]

peppino "never tell the health inspector" spaghetti

hey! it's a series! fake peppino world tour: [noise] [noisette] [peppino] [gustavo]<- u are here [gerome] [noisette again]

[lovehours]

i don’t even fucking care

[alumirp]

luffy gets a girlfriend

He is blissfully unaware of this fact, however. He meets Torao at work, he's a firefighter and she's a doctor. She stitched up a cut on his arm and he gets hungry, spontaneously invites her to eat and she accepts, probably hungry too (or totally thinking that the cute guy with the stupid smile is asking her out).

They go out several times after that, usually with Luffy showing up at the hospital randomly, either injured or bringing in a patient, or simply to bother Torao because he was bored.

Luffy gets a new (girl) friend.

They're weird friends, though, because one day Torao just leaned in and kissed him. On the lips! And he liked it for some reason, so they kissed countless more times.

And sometimes things get too hot when they kiss and one thing leads to another and- well, they had sex. Several times. Which is weird, because Luffy definitely has no desire to kiss, much less have sex, with his other friends. But it works, so he just classifies them as weird friends.

He's pretty sure they're NOT lovers, because neither he nor Torao made fancy proposals, with roses, candles, fancy dinner and fancy rings, like Sanji and most TV shows tell, so, definitely weird friends.

And its okay, he likes being weird friends with Torao :D

(They're totally dating and no one believes Luffy when he says they're just friends. Because he shares his meat with Law, he actually, like, listens to her opinion instead of just doing what he wants, he takes her side in arguments no matter how obviously wrong she is, he fights with Ace, physically, when his brother says Law should get out of Luffy's life.They are totally dating, Luffy has a girlfriend, it doesn't matter that he doesn't know it.)

((law is just happy to be here, even if her boyfriend is a little slow))

[haunted-xander]

So. Fatebreaker, right? Ryne's biggest fears made manifest, daddy issues personified, yes?

He's an amalgamation of Thancred and Ran'jit, his face, his voice and his weapon is Thancred's, but his body, his fighting style and his words are Ran'jit's.

Throughout the fight Fatebreaker constantly makes comments about how only he can protect Ryne, only he can provide for her, only he has even the right to so much as stand beside her, to be in her general presence. He's possessive and obsessive, repeatedly asserting that she is HIS and his only. Which is exactly what Ran'jit says basically every time we encounter him.

But this time it's in Thancred's voice. This time it's with the voice and face of a man she actually cares about.

Ryne isn't scared of Thancred, she never has been. Even when she first met him she was barely even nervous (as clearly shown in Thancred's short story). There's a lot of different feelings happening between those two, but fear has never been one of them.

But now, after things have gotten so much better, she is scared of Thancred becoming like Ran'jit. Because if Thancred was just a little further gone, if he was just a little less compassionate, he would've. It wouldn't be hard for him to go down the same path as Ran'jit did, to be incapable of letting go of the ghost of that girl he loved so so much to the point he'd stubbornly grip anything close to her he could. He didn't, but the fact he could've is terrifying.

It makes his final words, words that are Thancred's, so very important. This is her deepest fears made manifest, but he still says he wants her to be happy. Her happiness not only matters, but is important to him.

[charlotte-family-apologist]

Suchin's Backstory In My AU

Warning: Non-Graphic Addiction and Suicide

Suchin was the only child of a civilian mother and a former criminal father. When she was eight, her mother died in a car accident, causing her father to fall into a depression and relapse into his gambling addiction, taking out several loans from his old employer in the Red Dragon to support it. He lost his job within the year and started drinking, leaving Suchin to take care of him more often than not. He also fell back into old paranoid habits and took to training Suchin in case they went after her first.

Struggling with money, Suchin got a job at a local restaurant at fourteen, where she flourished socially. She even got a boyfriend at seventeen. Due to her always being away from home, she failed to notice her father spiraling further until he raided her savings when she was eighteen. She started to take more hours to build them back up, neglecting her relationships to do so. Because of this, her boyfriend broke up with her.

At nineteen, she came home to find her dad committed suicide. Upon reading the note, she learned all the debts had come to a head, and the Red Dragon was pursuing payment. The trauma of it finally breaking the barrier in her mind to fully activate her “radar” (see notes for explanation) that had been on and off her entire childhood.

Inheriting her father’s debt, Suchin fled and became a traveling vigilante known as Blackbird on a personal mission to destroy the Red Dragon and return to civilian life. She quickly became a notorious figure in Asia’s underworld for her efficiency and only took paid jobs to support her survival.

She swore off personal relationships and dedicated her life to completing her goal, investigating any lead on the Red Dragon she found. One of these investigations led her to Japan, where she met Kenshi for the first time.

And nearly killed him.

Notes:

Suchin’s radar is a danger sense ability she feels, not sees or hears. Despite it being a form of precognition, she can’t tell what is and isn’t a danger and has to identify them herself. She can’t turn it off and it works best when she’s calm and collected. The only time it doesn’t work is when she’s panicking, as it becomes hard to read and quickly overloads her senses and rational thoughts. It can also blank out when she doesn’t know how to process something, often freezing her in place. Because of it, she lives in a constant state of flight or fight and suffers from severe anxiety and paranoia, which is only made worse by her lifestyle.

Suchin’s father wasn’t physically abusive, only laying hands on her during training, even helping her patch any injuries before his addictions fully tanked his psyche. The majority of the trauma Suchin has from her father is from neglect, parentification, and the fallout of his suicide.

The timeline of these events are: 1957: Suchin is born 1965: Suchin’s mother dies in a car accident and her father relapses, taking out loans from the Red Dragon 1976: Suchin’s Father commits suicide, transferring his debt to Suchin (19); Suchin flees from the Red Dragon and eventually becomes Blackbird 1987: Kenshi (28) and Suchin (30) meet

[fumifooms]

Honestly I wonder if anyone’s ever read Chilchuck’s “I cheated on her” admission as an implicit reference to prioritizing alcohol over his marriage and feeling guilty abt it.

Ohh… "I cheated on her" as a half-truth because something ended up taking priority over their marriage, because emotionally he was elsewhere… "I cheated on her" because after having all the time in the world to think about it now that he’s alone, he realizes that that might have been how she felt, and that’s how it felt like to him too.

Love that. I def think he’s ironically someone who deflects guilt a lot, in a similar way that he compulsively goes "You’re wrong! I don’t care about you guys at all! I’m an asshole!" he flees emotions by making the problem something else that’s fake, a burden easier to bear, he’s so used to being seen for what he’s not after all. I went into it a bit in one of my fics and in a couple meta posts, but when it comes to his wife he was very much like an ostrich with his head in the sand, seeing her fall into a bad mood on the outing before she left him but dismissing it as something "sudden" that’s not worth thinking deeper about. Overdrinking is a problem for future Chil. I think he did a lot of "You want me to drink less and you’re afraid for my health? Get over it lol" and "I should be less strict with the girls and raise my voice less? My father was a strict drunk and look at me, I turned out functional and great! The girls are literally fine and love me" and "Oh? My drinking is affecting our family? No it’s not smh smh get off my back"< Drunk a significant portion of the time he spends at home since he’s off-work and somewhere he can relax. Type of guy to always dismiss any issues that might exists because he prefers ignoring them as if they’ll go away. All his problem solving energy is spent during work and the issue is with his family he already likes things as they are, they’re his comfort zone and change is scary, he doesn’t want the change, even if it’d be better. He doesn’t want to change, his unhealthy habits are guilty pleasures he wishes people didn’t try to make him feel guilty for

BUT POINT IS he struggles with guilt and like. Letting it be a feeling that he gets sometimes, so it’s all bottled up and festers and gets twisted into frustration or such like how his worry usually does. I like this take, wether it’s something he’s already thought a lot about or it’s something he’s repressed that came suddenly pouring out of him like blood out of a wound, now that he’s putting it into words with someone for maybe the first time.

It’s interesting how he didn’t refuse going up to the bicorn, I’m sure part of him wanted to see if it would like him, like the virtue test it is. Would a monster that loves despicable men be magnetized to him? Would it confirm his fears?

[plusultraetc]

Mic being a good fake stepdad in chapter 2 of the fake dating au for WIP Wednesday :D

[worm-angle]

The twins ❤️💜

[macskasbacsi]

im framing this panel

[3416]

everybody that's desperate to dunk on dubas is missing the compelling point of the whole dubas thing.... him actually wanting to be here, but being forced out because of a misstep... watching a team he literally had a hand in building come together for each other like this and add to his own problems... having to logically be in it with the pens but. you can't just turn your feelings off about this team that you raised and that raised you..... like it's devastating and delicious

[meangirlstobin]

religious steve is so alien to me that’s a guy who told his entire first grade class that neither god nor santa is real

[liquidstar]

and now for something stupid