#but I couldn't get the thought out of my head

[muzzlemouths]

good morning DFtR community. i had a vision

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[cellgatinbo]

they're just a little bit awkward expressing their feelings sometimes

[imrllytootiredforthis]

your little office slut that gets used by you, the boss, whenever you want<3

under the desk while you do some frustrating paperwork, hoping to relieve some of that tension by sucking you off like a good little toy<3 and when you cum allllll over his face, he'll make sure to lick it all up like a good boy<3

bent over the table during meetings, all your workers trying not to make eye contact with either of you as your little toy moans like a shameless whore, spreading his legs further for you, hands helplessly grasping at the table as you fuck him within an inch of his life.

shivering at the cold glass pressed against his skin as you fuck him hard and fast against the window of your office. his face is stained pink even though he knows all those people down below can't see him, or he doesn't think so at least...

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 4 - Nuthin' but Boothill Edition

[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[pokimoko]

haunting the narrative -> haunted by the narrative -> haunting the narrative -> haunted by

[asaka-lucy-dr-rc]

Nyagito, Hinyata, and Nyanyami!

[greyallison]

A form of pet shaming: dakimakura, but for cats. Nekomakura, if you will.

[mayaishiipeters]

"Hello. My name is Joe Pera and I have 40 minutes until the chicken kiev i'm eating for dinner is cooked in the oven. So in the meantime, I thought I'd see what's new on tumblr. See the snoopy icon? That's [username redacted]. We've been mutuals for 6 years. I don't know their name, but i do know they teach preschool kids and they have a cat named Checkers. Sometimes i post pictures of Gus on here. They usually get a few likes. Occasionally people even reblog his picture because they want him on their blogs, too. Can you blame them? I mean, look at his handsome face."

[shushmal]

Steve notices when Eddie disappears from the party, almost immediately. Robin and the others are crossfaded and a little weepy, and Steve knows they're excited—and scared. They're all heading out next week, Robin to Chicago, Nancy to New York, Jonathan to California. So they didn't notice it, when Eddie got up for the bathroom and didn't come back.

Steve did. Steve's pretty good at recognizing stuff like that, especially when it's painfully familiar.

He's pretty loud when he crawls through his own bedroom window out onto the roof, loud enough that Eddie startles and drops his cigarette onto the asphalt shingles.

"H-Hey!" he says, all false cheer despite the croak in his voice and the sniffling—the way he wipes quickly at his face.

"Hey," Steve says, going for softness and compassion. God knows he's spent many a night out here crying by himself. He doesn't want Eddie to think he's being a dick about it. "You okay?"

"Yep!" Eddie says, pitched too high and the words crack between his lips. "Totally fine! I'll come down in a bit so—"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Eddie's teeth clack together when he shuts his mouth, falling into silence as Steve settles down at his side. Neither of them say anything. Faintly, they can hear the murmur of their friends' voices, mixed with the summer night call of forest frogs and bugs. Steve thinks about chasing fireflies in the back yard when he was little, how the dark woods are near impenetrable to Steve now, the boyhood security long stripped from him.

Beside him, Eddie wipes at his face again, his elbow brushing Steve's arm because Steve's sat himself so close. Steve, carefully not thinking about it, leans over—further and further—until his head hits Eddie's shoulder.

The sound Eddie makes is soft and broken, so Steve tucks himself even closer into Eddie's side, arm going around his back, and closes his eyes just so he could overwhelm himself with the warmth radiating from Eddie, the smell of soap and sweat and weed, the feel of Eddie's hair on his head when Eddie bows his head as he cries, hair long and curtaining the two of them—Eddie keeping Steve, pulling him in to witness his private grief.

[imaginative-joy]

Meanwhile on Tanalorr, circa 4 ABY...

Text (In case you can't read my handwriting):

Merrin: So the Rebels blew up another Death Star. Cal: Good for them.

[yourlocal-goodgirl]

please daddy, let me suck on your cock while i fall asleep. i haven't been sleeping well lately, i really need your help :( it's so comforting having you in my mouth, it's the only way i'll be able to relax and shut my brain off. i know you like it when i get all dumb and empty headed. i bet you'll even put me into a deep enough sleep that you could use my mouth however you'd like and i wouldn't even wake up. please, i'm begging

[bittersweetresilience]

so do you think he succeeded?

[000marie198]

Sonic and Tails dressing up as Dr. Frankenstein and his monster and getting too into the bit to the point that Sonic doesn't even act like himself even once all night and Tails is given free reign to speak as much mad scientist technobabbles as he wants to remain in character and one of their friends jokingly say, "Did he lose even more braincells or something?" abt Sonic and Tails goes

"Hm? I'm not sure? That neurotransplant surgery I performed wasn't very well prepared and granted I shouldn't have dug up decaying bodies out of worry for high security in GUN's post mortem forensic cell but don't worry! There's only a 67% risk of infection, isn't that right, Sonic?"

Cue Sonic attempting to pick up a piece of candy with lolling head and floppy hands and making incoherent gruff noises

Tails: "See? He'll be fine! 😊"

Nobody can tell if he's serious or not and they stare at him horrified.

The brothers are cackling and wheezing at the reaction pictures they secretly took after returning home

[imrllytootiredforthis]

hard thought of the day:

just imagine babyboy sannie,

who's been needy all day long, at home all alone in the big empty apartment, with only himself as company while you have to go to work,

all horny and desperate, trying to jerk off but it just isn't enough, he needs to hear your voice, feel your touch, have you.

at the end of the day you come in, slipping your shoes off, setting your keys on the counter, wondering where he is as he usually greets you at the door.

until you hear the moaning.

and there he is, splayed across the couch, wearing nothing, face red, body sweaty, cock throbbing as he whimpers and whines.

the ruined, frustrated sounds that could only be caused by being edged all day.

-not on purpose of course, he wanted to cum, he needed to cum so so so bad, but he couldn't.

"mommy help me~please,"

pretty wide eyes, the plea so adorable on his face. the neediness so transparent you can hardly help how feral it makes you feel.

soon enough your babyboy is laid out across your lap, sucking on your tit as you jerk him off, whining and mumbling incoherently, drunk off you.

your touch. your hand moving up and down his cock at a dizzying pace, thumb sweeping over the tip, moving faster and then slower right as he's about to cum.

your taste. his tongue swirling around your nipple, spit all over his chin and your chest; the way you taste unlike anything else, intoxicating making his head-spin, so uniquely you.

your voice. whispering sweet words to him, telling him what a good boy he is. "good boy, sannie, such a good boy for me~", such a poor little baby for having to go through all that today. poor thing.

all for him, only for him. your sweet babyboy, your sannie<3

[applestorms]

actually. @moonlarked you wanted someone to talk about near & light as parallels? cuz uh...

ok SO, my big hot take on near is something like this: one of the most common criticisms i see about near is that he is simply too apathetic/bored/uncaring/etc, and that because he is not as emotionally invested as L, his win against light doesn't feel nearly (lol) as satisfying as it could've been. this is a view that often frustrates me, but for a very particular reason— namely, while i think it is somewhat accurate in content, i think it misses a lot of important context (and also misses a lot of the importance of light's character arc, but we'll get to that much later).

one of the most important things to remember about the wammy's kids is that, whether they like it or not, each and every one of them is defined almost entirely through their relationship to L. this is perhaps more obvious in the case of characters like BB and mello, who are very Aware of this shadow being cast upon them and react in very overt, emotional ways (e.g. becoming a literal serial killer out of seemingly pure spite & desire to be noticed, idolizing him but in a very emotionally complicated, kinda detached sorta way, etc), but it is true for Every wammy's kid, purely because of how the house itself functions. these kids are being raised to be L's successor— the greatest (and second greatest, and third greatest) detective on the planet. this is the ultimate goal hanging over every one of their heads, and it places a constant pressure on every kid there.

oftentimes, i think (perhaps both out of story and in it, as well?) people get so caught up in comparing near to L that they forget he also falls under this umbrella— only, for near, his position is slightly different because he actually somewhat succeeds at the task? like, yeah, L never gets the chance to officially call near his successor, but between the fact that he's constantly called the #1 kid at wammy's and that he. literally does actually end up becoming the new L after kira, i think it's always been pretty clear what his path was going to be.

going back to my starting point, this is one of the main ways that near makes a really good parallel to light in my mind, specifically the light that we see right at the start of the series. in both cases, near and pre-DN light, we see a kid who has succeeded at everything they've been handed, and more notably, we see a kid who is bored out of his fucking mind looking at the prospects of what he's got.

in the case of light, this is maybe a little more realistic/easy to understand— light does well in academics, he does well in sports, he does well with people. he is likely to follow in his father's footsteps with something criminal justice/police/law related, but even if he diverges from that path it likely won't be too big of a deal, as he has shown himself to be capable in enough areas that he's likely to succeed no matter what. by all measurable standards, light's doing pretty good at the start of the series. and yet— there is something so distinctly and inherently Bland about his life before he gets the DN. i've said before that light wouldn't call the DN a curse even if he wanted to, but i think in that moment when he's telling ryuk he disagrees w/ his father after visiting him in the hospital, when he says, "I've never once considered finding that notebook and gaining this power a misfortune. In fact, it's made me happier than I've ever been." (ch.22) he's still getting at something real and truthful.

again, going back to my equating of boredom with depression in this series— light's life is pretty good by all measurable standards. he has a family who loves him, presumably more than enough money to get by with a pretty cushy lifestyle, and does well, honestly better than well, in every single system he is presented with. but even so, he's still unhappy. there is something in his soul that has not yet been satisfied. he's bored of the world, bored of his place in it, how easy it all is. what the DN really offers him is a challenge, entertainment— just the same as L, and just the same as ryuk.

near similarly suffers from this kind of boredom, though it is perhaps less overtly stated than in the case of light, L, and ryuk, and less easy to catch as it is not as realistic/common. again: near basically ends up the winner of wammy's house. he is the one to take the title of L, he's declared the smartest, bestest kid at wammy's, and he gets all the power and privilege that comes with such a title. but still— he's so. fucking. bored. much to the embarrassment of mello, this shit was never really a challenge to him. it's pretty obvious that near isn't really even all that attached to the title of L— don't forget that his first real introduction to the story involves him explicitly saying that he'd be just fine working with mello as essentially co-L successors. and this is a viewpoint that he holds onto until the very end of the series, actually, claiming that he was only able to best light due to mello's sacrifice. near doesn't really give a fuck about the rat race he's been slotted into, though it's perhaps for that exact reason that he ends up winning it anyway, and getting all the responsibility that comes along.

that being said, i think there are still two main differences between light and near:

light fucks up.

near never gets past his boredom.

in the case of this first point, i do not mean to say that near never ever makes any move/judgement that could be considered a mistake— mello killing the entire SPK is the first thing that comes to mind, which i see as blood on near's hands for the same reason that L takes at least some responsibility for lind l. tailor. rather, i mean that near never makes a such a monumental fuck-up that he has to overturn his entire worldview just to account for it in the same way that light does when he accidentally kills two people w/ the DN the first time.

it's like, if you've ever known (or been) the kind of kid who always got perfect grades in school, straights A's for K-12, only to reach college and suddenly bomb their first test and have an existential crisis as their only real achievement in life is crushed into dust, then you know light yagami. only for light, it's on a whole 'nother scale, because not only does he fucking oopsie daisy kill two people, but he kills in such a context that he can mentally manipulate it back into seeming heroic. i hate to say that suffering causes character development because that's terrible advice (it's how you react to terrible circumstances that matters, imho) but to some degree, yeah, having conflicts/hard times in life is just necessary to figure shit out sometimes. near (and L, oh goddd i need to write about L properly sometime) has so many things smoothed over and handed to him, and on top of that, he's a super genius very rarely fucks anything up, at least according to base logic. he doesn't even really consider the morality of anything he's doing until light straight up asks him in a desperate bid to keep talking at the end, it's all just logic and factors to consider.

this all leads to my second point, which is that near never really gets the chance to overcome his boredom in the same way as the others. ryuk at least gets his entertainment for a couple years, and light and L (and mello) get so invested in each other and their game that it literally kills them, but near just kinda. keeps going. he keeps being L, he keeps solving cases, he does the duty he was given and enjoys his toys... and that's it. he lies around, the only one left to live, never even taking credit for the end of KIRA, never gets another haircut, and keeps the title going. what a life, for a kid who dragged a god back down to earth.

sidenote1: toys

am i reading too into things? maybe. near's toys hold a lot of significance throughout the story in more specific ways, most notably the finger puppets he uses at the very end of the story while tracking different people's/kira's actions, though you could probably read some kind of meaning into every toy he has and the ways in which he plays with them. what i want to look at here though is more the general reasoning behind playing with them in the first place— a desire for a childhood he didn't get to have? a love of games more generally? (could track with him seeing the KIRA case, or really all detective work, as just another game.) you could also read into his toys as another source for near's apathy/detachment from reality, literally breaking every notable person around him down into a doll by the end of the story, speaking a lot to how alienated he is from the world (again, very similar to both L and light, there). i don't have much more of a point to make here, just wanted to add this in somewhere since it's one of his most striking visual character traits.

sidenote2: light's arc

going back to my point at the start of this post... light's character arc.

uhh. near winning is a good thing, actually. and i don't just mean that as a moral claim— DN itself as a story isn't really concerned with trying to answer any moral questions about good or evil or the justice system, so it makes sense & is fair to me that it doesn't try all that hard to answer anything along those lines by the very end of the story. what i mean to say here is that near winning is a good thing on the level of the character arc, specifically as an end to light's arc.

i made a post a while back while mid-manga reread talking through some of the reasons why L's death can feel kind of unsatisfying/paint the second half of the story in a less interesting light (hah) for a lot of viewers, with the main point i ended up on being that L wasn't really able to win because he never really had all that clear of a win state in the first place. i still kiiind of agree with this point, though i think there's a lot more i could add to that post... anyways. point is, i bring up that post because it touches on a similar thing to what i want to talk about here: light's character arc being a tragedy.

this is more speculation on my part, but i think another part of the reason why people get turned off to DN post-L death is not just the fact that L isn't really a playable character in the game anymore, but the fact that light's character arc takes such a dramatic twist after the timeskip. i talked about this a little bit in my little ramble on light & titles (which a lot of you liked, apparently!! ty for all the lovely comments on there, i love reading what you guys have to say ^w^), but light's character arc in DN is a tragedy to me, full-stop.

tragedies to me are cyclical— revolutionary, if you will. since all stories necessitate some kind of something to take place, a tragedy to me is all about a character beginning in one point, then continually getting hit by Event, after Thing, after Event, only to end up in essentially the exact same place that they started. any character changes or development that seem to happen throughout the story are ultimately nullified by the end— the main subject does not truly grow, does not truly reflect on their actions or traumas, does not move on. two steps forward is two steps back. even ending up in a position worse than they started is sometimes better than a true tragedy, in my mind, as at least then there is some chance they may still reflect or change or grow in the future, leaving the hope that they may still overcome this new circumstance later on. a true tragedy ends in nothing meaningful ever getting the chance to truly change, at least in the case of the main subject of the story.

light's character arc in the first half of the story is an upward, underdog kind of story. yes, light has the power of a shinigami, of a supernatural force that the rest of the world doesn't even know exists— but part of the real appeal of his conflict with L is how powerful L feels in comparison, having the wealth and respect and title to command a world's worth of forces against him. fuck, even taking down naomi misora feels like an incredible hurdle overcome, a teenager managing to charm and yap and flutter his eyelashes out of a shitty situation he was only just lucky enough to stumble across in the first place, to stop someone who could've ruined his entire plan with a few words. killing L was always going to be light's greatest accomplishment when it comes to his rise to godhood, not only because of L's great power but the comparative position of light at the time that he did so— not yet an adult, not even really out of school, perhaps barely out of his parents' house.

in contrast, light's arc for the second half of the story is a downward spiral. we see all of the consequences light has been miraculously avoiding smack into him like meteors in this half, his ever-growing ego torn to shreds as he's yanked back down to earth. and in comparison to the anime, the manga really beats this point into you, dedicating the entire second half of the story to light's fall from grace as he loses his mind and loses his humanity. like, while i do kind of prefer the manga ending to the anime, i have to admit that light's death there is fucking brutal. light goes through pages, chapters, purely dedicated to near tearing him a new asshole, only end the story bloody and delirious and crawling on his knees begging a god of death to fix everything— all just to die the exact same death as everyone else he's killed. i mean, look at these fucking pages (ch.107):

(that last fucking picture of him. clawing at the sky. it always fucking gets to me.)

it hurts to read this shit!! we spend the entire first half of the story watching this dude's rise to glory, the entire time stuck inside of his head, emotionally connecting with him even if we don't really mean to or disagree with his actions or question his morality. watching his fall back down, especially after all of that, is fucking painful— an in no way does near make the process any easier. if anything, his blunt, snarky bitchery, saying all the quiet parts out loud, calling light out for being a terrible replacement L and pointing and laughing at his failures to his face, only shoves more salt in the wound, only proves just how human he has been all this time, how meaningless any of his supposed "rise to power" ever really was. light got his fifteen seconds of fame, sure— but near is armed and ready to make sure that's all he'd ever get, that the name Light Yagami would never even be associated with the position he held for so long. six years was all he got— and it was all he was ever going to get, because light yagami did not do this for humanity, he did it for himself. all near did was collect the debt that L prescribed. he fulfilled his duty as told— nothing more, and nothing less.

i just have to wonder... is this why people hate him? because he has no sympathy for the fall? maybe. i don't know.

either way, i don't think i could ever really hate him. it's a big responsibility, being the only one left behind. but near has always been the one to hold such weights on his shoulders.