#best to just vanish

[patriamrealm]

-smooches Aspect Ingo’s cheek-

Just had too

Ah-there he goes

[belle-rosse]

In the trailer for act 2 we see the Firelights think that Ekko is dead because, well, no one is aware of his situation with the Hexcore.

And then there’s that frame of Sevika talking to Vander’s statue, where she says, 'we have lost so many.' Interestingly, that same statue has 'Ekko' written on it, which we clearly see in season one.

Could it be that Sevika tells Jinx that Ekko hasn’t returned? That Jinx believes Ekko is dead too? Is this what triggers the undercity alliance, including the firelights?

I am thinking thoughts. I cannot stop thinking thoughts. This won't happen but I need to see it happen.

[chaoswarfare]

Over This Whole ‘School’ Thing

Dick leans on the railing of the school building's roof as he watches the building the deal’s about to go down in. It’s an abnormally quiet night, which is great, since it’s the first night he’s getting to take Danny out on patrol with him since he joined the bat clan.

It was pretty obvious that Danny had suspected them of being the bat clan the moment Masters dropped him on their porch, and finally getting confirmation that he was in the know and actually wanted to help was probably the best thing of Dick’s year.

Now, waiting on the Joker’s goons to show up for a deal, he’s glad he’s getting the chance to hang out with his newest brother(excepting Oracle on the comms, of course.). It was almost relaxing just sitting together on a quiet stakeout, and listening to the noises of Gotham and the occasional siren wailing in the distance.

“You know, I never actually liked school.”

Dick jumps when Danny finally starts a conversation. He’s been very quiet the entire time and it was almost startling how quickly he moved from dead silence to noise. It was almost a surprise that he decided to start a conversation at all, given how quiet he’d been since coming to the manor. Alfred is probably the only one he talks with regularly, now that he thinks about it.

“How so?” Dick asks hesitantly. God knows that he had a pretty rough time in school too, so he may not be the best person to talk with about the subject. “I thought Masters said your schooling was just fine? Your records didn’t say anything either.” Dick trails off a bit when Danny flinches at the mention of Masters. It’s not the first time he’s acted hesitant about the man, but nobody has been able to figure out the mystery or get any information about him yet.

“I wasn’t exactly popular, you know? Lotta bullies in small town schools, and my life outside school kinda kept bleeding over into class time. Sucked hardcore.”

That was new. Danny hasn’t really talked about his school experience before now, but it could be where they are at the moment prompting this, Dick thinks as he gazes out over the run-down neighborhood they’re watching.

“I wasn’t exactly ‘mister popular’ back then, myself.” He starts warily, smothering his words in fake cheer. “High society kids don’t take well to ‘circus freaks’ stealing their opportunities and invading their school. Couldn’t do much about it either because I didn’t want to tell Bruce I was struggling.” Dick drops a bit of the over-the-top peppy mask as he thinks about it.

“So what did you do about it?” Danny leans over, peering at the older vigilante as he waits for an answer.

“Got tired of it and beat them up after a couple months. They gossiped about it for months and refused to talk to me for a while. It was pretty sweet, actually.” He sighs in contentment at the memory. “Bruce and Alfred were pretty disappointed in me though. Practically grounded me for weeks.”

Dick preened as Danny let out a chuckle.

“Man, I wished my parents cared that much about my education. ‘A Fenton always gets A’s. Or in your Dad’s case B-‘s.’ was something Mom always said.” Danny seems to droop as he thinks of his parents. It’s obvious something happened there, but he’d usually shut down immediately if anyone brought them up.

“On top of the ‘out of school’ activities taking over my life, this dickhead named Dash made it his personal mission to ruin my day every time we interacted.” Dick busts out laughing as Danny considers what he said, before freezing and slapping his hands over his face. “Ancients, I didn't even think of that- sorry Dick. He was definitely an asshat though. Real piece of work, that one!” Danny chirped mock-cheerfully. “Did you know that if you’re really flexible you can fit in a half size locker?”

Dick freezes at the sudden question. “Uh… No?” He replies warily. The idea of someone being inside a locker that small physically pained him, and he really didn’t want to think about why Danny would know that.

Why anyone would shove his little brother into a locker.

He pushed the fear and guilt boiling in his gut down and turned to Danny with a smile. “How would you feel about online classes?”

Danny whips his head around to stare at Dick like he grew a second head. “Online?” He asks tentatively, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Online.” Dick agrees quietly.

Danny stares out over the dreary scenery and the sun just starting to shine light over the edge of the horizon. ‘The only time you can see it through the smog’ Dick muses as Danny thinks about his offer.

“I think I would like online school. It might help.” Danny admits in a quiet voice, hands gripping the railing almost painfully tight(For a second Dick thought he saw the metal give a big, but that must have been a trick of the light. Danny’s blood tests didn’t have the meta gene.). “And thank you… For offering to do that for me I mean.” Danny mumbles.

“Of course! What are older siblings for!” Dick beams at him, only faltering a little at the well concealed hurt in Danny’s face. It was pretty obvious that he was just about to shut down the conversation completely, when the batcom went off. Perfect timing.

Dick waves the com in Danny’s direction. “Looks like our clown friend got picked up across town on his way here.” Danny glances up in confusion as Dick hops off the railing he had been sitting on. “You want to race back?”

Danny visibly perked up as he hopped over the railing and pulled his grapple out of his belt pocket. He smirked Devilishly and took off before Dick could even hop over the railing.

“Get back here! I never said start!” Dick yelled out after Danny as they sped across the rooftop and swung between buildings chasing each other back to the cave.

Back home.

[redbootsindoriath]

Happy Hobbit Day! (I almost forgot and it's technically well into the 23rd where I am right now, but I haven't gone to bed yet since waking up on the 22nd, so we'll say it counts.)

I think if Boromir had survived he should be allowed special permissions to go into the Shire to see his friends in their native habitat after everything is over.

Transcription:

Shire border security guard: "Sir I don't think you can bring those out with you..."

[incomingalbatross]

I just don't believe in a societal collapse dramatic enough to make humans reset the calendar to count from it.

[hfjonewiki]

in case anyone still cares about object show crew discourse: brian finally confirmed that taylor wasnt exiled from the team as a result of one dumbass thing he did, but rather because he has a history of being a massive jackass for no reason and lorengate was just what tipped them over the edge

[mimdecisive]

does anyone else find it kinda weird that SPOP just casually dropped in the fact that there’s a Prince who can see ANYWHERE in the world magically, aka the perfect spy, and Glimmer just… didn’t think of recruiting him?

Why wasn’t Peekablue already part of the Rebellion??? What is he using his powers for that’s soooo important? He could literally see all of the Horde’s plans and warn the Rebellion and give them a HUGE leg up on them, and he wasn’t even mentioned until S5.

I know he was a hermit almost never seen but are you telling me Glimmer wouldn’t even TRY to find him and convince him to join?That’s a mystery in itself; where IS Peekablue, and why does no one care? Is he literally missing? Because if he’s literally missing, maybe someone should help him.

[nikolai-alexi]

Sirius: okay ms transfiguration genius, if matter cant be created or destroyed then where the fuck are all my hair ties???

[fate-defiant]

I can't believe they put my boy Mytho "does fucked up shit to himself because his entire identity and self image relies on being loved(in the right way by the right people)" and my girl Rue "does fucked up shit to everyone else because her entire identity and self image relies on being loved(in the right way by the right people)" togehter in the same show and never did anything to meaningfully juxtapose and explore All That

[aritany]

okay. this book is NA which means it's going to be inevitably marketed as YA were i to ever pursue publishing for it. do you think this sort of content belongs in YA spaces? do you think there's room for conversations about this with younger audiences, or does this belong in adult fiction?

(content on consent derived from ace by angela chen, a 10/10 read)

[sun-marie]

2023 was the year of warm-toned sleepy snuggles 💕

x x x

[italoniponic]

I heard about the ch7 update on March 1st, thought "well, it will be three long days until there..."

I forgot we're in February

[serenanymph]

Heads Up Seven Up

Tagged by @faytelumos um.*looks at smudged notes* a while ago. Find his post over here. Gently tagging uhhh @space-writes, @macabremoons and @scribbling-stardust, pulling from Beast book 2, Witch's Book:

It’s later in the night – when they’ve brought out the cake and sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and Zephyr has blown out all six candles (one of them larger-sized) – that Madge wanders out of the kitchen where mama and baba are divvying up the cake to track down Zephyr and Kas, who’ve somehow vanished in that short amount of time. The backyard feels quieter than before: peaceful, now, as if all the world is fast asleep. Madge inhales, again, the same way she did earlier with the cake, breathing in the scent of spring – stretching her arms out to the side, her fingertips straining, her head tipping back to look up at the sky. The longer she looks, the more stars seem to appear, spreading out and multiplying, thousands of tiny glittering diamonds spilling across the black. The breath she takes in morphs into a yawn. Murmuring, from up on the roof. She spins towards the ladder leaning against the side of the house, and ah – they must be up there, then.

taglist (lmk if you want to be +/-): @deer-in-headlights-stare, @allianaavelinjackson, @arctic-oceans, @space-writes, @reneesbooks

[longagoitwastuesday]

Every day I wake up regretting getting emotionally invested in Jujutsu Kaisen

[brown-little-robin]

hi robin :] very random but im watching craft videos while i eat dinner and it got me thinking about ur ceramics. giving u permission to ramble about the ceramics process (or literally anything abt ceramics), if you want to <3 idk anything abt ceramics like not a clue but im very curious and every time u talk abt them i stare at u w sparkly eyes (also i've recently developed a HUGE respect for all 3d arts bc holy shit making it look right at all angles ?????literally how)

👀✨‼️

Hi thank you so much!! staring at you with the same sparkly eyes,,, watching craft videos while you eat that's so cool,,, Also, weirdly enough, I have the same "how???" thoughts about doing 2d art. I have trouble conceptualizing making something look right from only 1 angle; that seems like a lot of pressure. with a sculpture, if something doesn't look right from one angle, I know there's probably some structural problem, and I turn the sculpture around a little bit and usually figure out that the problem is deeper than what I thought. I'm thinking of ears, specifically—how, often, my problem with the outlines of my ears (seen from the front) is that the back of the ear isn't full enough, I need to add clay, and just nudging the clay to fix the outline wouldn't Work. and I wouldn't have known if I couldn't turn the sculpture around. the respect and awe goes both ways

longgg ramble about the ceramics process below the cut :]

okay SO. the ceramics process, huh? Well, I mean, I'm really in love with the sculpting part, where you take wet clay and make it into an Animal with Bones And Muscles. I just love the animal form—I think in a similar way to how you love the human form and the way clothing folds. I do wheel-throwing too (I make cups, bowls, that sort of thing), but I've been sculpting since I was like 8 years old and I'm way better at sculpture. it's one of a few things in my life that I take genuine pride in. I love teaching people about sculpting, too!! nothing better than seeing someone instantly grasp the insight I spent years developing <333 ANYWAY

one thing that often surprises people about clay is that it's very... flexible, water-content-wise. clay is basically made of a bunch of small "plates" of dry material with water in between. the water makes the entire structure flexible, which is why clay shrinks and goes brittle when it dries. and clay is always drying out. small sculptures like the ones I make, especially ones with thin limbs (more surface area for the air to leech moisture out of) dry out within half an hour. I have to add water to the thin parts every so often the whole time I'm sculpting. but of course the clay has to be firm enough to hold the creature's overall shape, so it's a balance. it's always a race against time. it's super exciting. To Me, anyway

it takes a day or two for a sculpture to dry. After the sculpture dries out, that's when I paint it with my special pigments. (pigments that survive 2,000+ degrees of heat!!) Like this:

these are the same sculpture. the first picture was from right after I sculpted the wet clay; the second picture is after it got painted.

Then once a sculpture is made, it sits and dries, right? the water leaves the clay. but not ALL the water. that's why you "fire" the sculpture: you put it in a kiln and heat it up to ~1800°F. EIGHTEEN HUNDRED DEGREES. at that point, all the water boils out and the clay CHEMICALLY CHANGES. the "plates" begin to bond to each other. But they don't bond all the way in the first firing, because you want the clay to still be porous / hydrophilic. you want it to SUCK IN WATER. this is because you want GLAZE to attach to the clay.

Glaze—at least the kind of glaze that I use—is basically DIY glass. It's a lot of very fine silica (sand) with other stuff (like powdered metals) in it to give color. The sand-metal-powder is suspended in water to make it usable, and I stir up the glaze in its liquid form and dip my sculpture in it, and the super dry clay goes YAY WATERRR I'M SO THIRSTY and GRABS the glaze, and the powdery part is left on the surface of the sculpture while the water goes into the clay. it feels funny on your skin when you hold a sculpture in the glaze; you can actually feel the dry clay accepting the water. it feels like... have you ever dropped water on a bone-dry wooden board and seen the water spread out in the direction of the wood's grain? it feels like that.

the sculpture is left looking white and powdery and generally not very attractive. unfired glaze is just... thick white chalk.

THEN I fire the clay a SECOND time. The heat varies, but I always fire to at least 2,244° F. >:D >:D >:D and the sandy glaze actually MELTS INTO GLASS. and I open the kiln, which has the products of about a year or two of work in it, and I WEEP IN JOY because everything has COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED. firing is always risky. some of the sculptures always fail somehow—they break in firing for various reasons, or the glaze runs onto the shelf, or the glaze color turns out different than I thought. but some of them always come out BETTER than I imagined. and it's always a process of discovery, slowly unloading the kiln, layer by layer... the objects still warm from the heat of their firey transformation... hot enough to burn, if you're unloading before they've cooled enough, which I usually do because it's just so exciting...

and my glaze shrinks slightly more than the clay does. imagine that: a thin layer of glass shrinking more than it can take. you can actually hear it breaking. little quiet "plink! plink! plink!" as the glass shatters just a little under the stress. we call it "crazing" and it leaves little cracks in the glaze, like so:

you can also see tiny bubbles in the glaze on the rabbit's inner ear!

I just. (physically shaking) I just love ceramics so much. The sculpting part feels almost like meditation. it's almost a form of worship, for me, it's religious, it's a little version of creation, a way to look at bodies and try to express how they work. For the simple sculpture, I just make them from memory, but I work from references for my difficult sculptures—for instance, here's the little pile of images I collected to make my recent tiger:

the painting part is just plain fun, putting cool designs and stuff on a 3-d object in a low-pressure way. and then the two firings are pure magic. pure delayed gratification. it's incredible. you're telling me this thing I shaped with my mortal human fingers survives TWO THOUSAND DEGREES OF HEAT? you're telling me I get to MAKE COLORED GLASS? out of SAND and METAL? you're telling me after all that, I get to open up the kiln which has put these things through immense heat and see these beautiful objects and go I made those?????

YEAH. SCREAMS.

thanks for reading, I hope you had fun <333

[kariachi]

Quick little fic. Alan's little brother Jason and firelizard breeding.

~~

Flits were an entirely different animal from what Jason was used to breeding.

Literally, of course, they came from an entirely different part of the galaxy, they couldn’t be more unrelated. But on a more hands-on level, they required entirely different care to the poultry he normally worked with. More attention, more enrichment, different foods, he needed to go to the necromancers for any health problems rather than just call the family’s vet, and God help him but they needed different egg care.

Thankfully he could make a bit of money with his peafowl- the guineas, turkeys, and bantams mostly just covered their own costs at best- because taking space from the family’s incubators would not cut it for flits. Sure he’d done his research, but had quickly come to the decision that not only could he not make the modifications that would be needed to family property but also he didn’t trust their incubators to maintain the extreme humidity necessary. So even before investing in breeding stock he’d had to get the money together for a whole new incubator. Not a big fancy one, he didn’t have that sort of money, but a tabletop model large enough to fit a green clutch or two.

He had a pad of paper next to it now, keeping copious notes on his first flit clutch as it developed. Day of laying (in the little sand box he’d built for the greens, because they were good girls), known genetics of both parents, the temperature and humidity at each check-up, a description of each egg, updates on every candling. He knew exactly what sort of shades, patterns, and even rank distribution he was expecting, and had it written down to check against after the hatching. The expected hatching date was not only written down, but he’d put it on calendars as a series of days set aside solely for Egg Watch.

Another difference between the flits and the poultry- chicks hatched with enough yolk in their bellies to live off of for a few days, flits used up their yolks prior to birth and so hatched ravenous. He would have to be ready with plenty of healthy food handy, lest they turn to cannibalism. Sure, it was only one of the two species that had been domesticated that did so readily, but it was also the more readily available due to the lack of seasonality in its breeding, larger clutches, and greater ease of hatchling care. Besides, even if he’d had access to the other variety there was still a chance, just a lesser one. If they stayed confined, didn’t have enough food, they’d turn on each other eventually.

Jason’d already done the math on how much food he could expect to need handy, increased it by twenty percent just to be sure, and had a grocery list and estimated cost all written down ready to go.

It may have been his first attempt, he may not have had any experience in the field, but he was going to do the very best he could.