#but in a mild? way

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Instead of Dick or Tim, Red Hood straight up goes for kidnapping Bruce Wayne and keeping him hostage just to see how desperate the birds get in trying to find him.

It’s a foolproof plan. Batman won’t blow his cover unless absolutely necessary, and “Brucie” would never know how to slip away from a crime lord of Red Hood’s caliber. It’s foolproof. It’s perfect. Jason can keep dropping hints and make threats towards the birds and watch Bruce squirm without consequences if he plays this right.

But then “Brucie” keeps begging him not to hurt his kids…

[off-mozzarella]

If you saw me posting this 30 times no you didn't ♡

[phantom-peachie]

what a little freak (i am fighting back the motherly instinct to raise him as my own)

[an-internet-introvert]

Going to Phil's to do the Laundry

[arcticclimes]

Something something Fitzjames and Hodgson are two of the most dandy-ish characters in The Terror but they're also two of the most dangerous; they've both been to war, both do the greatest damage to Tuunbaq using the weaponry they were trained in by the navy (Hodgson with the cannon and Fitzjames with the congreves), and Hodgson is also the one to kill the Inuit family, directly connecting the violence of imperialism with the gentlemanly facade it likes to use.

[dredgesnails]

it's very funny seeing the tuff guys talk about gem being so passive this season because on the one hand i totally see why, considering she's happy to let her barn burn down and she's brushed off the many attempts on her life and continued to stay allied with a number of them (even encouraged them to kill her), but i don't think she's as passive as they say.

i think she's being held back, like a hunting dog on a leash. gem likes to play the game and the game says green lives cant kill, but she's still bloodthirsty. she's so happy to convince everyone else to kill anyone but herself (mostly scott, to be honest). she helped scar build a trap and lured cleo in. all he had to do was pull the trigger. she planned to team up with jimmy to kill scott, and even when scott was no longer dark green she tried to convince him to go through with their plan anyway. she wants to pvp pearl, one on one, the honourable way. even back in episode three she was talking to her snail about what a great team they'd make (if only it wasn't targeting only her).

she's playing the long game but its only a matter of time before (like etho's apt volcano metaphor) she unleashes carnage on the server, and we've seen what that looks like in secret life.

[mavigator]

i talked about it a little bit already but i have things to say about it. for context, i was born with amniotic band syndrome. the amniotic band wrapped around my left wrist in utero and stunted the growth of my hand. i was born with about half a palm, four nubs for fingers, and a twisted half of a thumb. i can open and close my thumb and pinkie joint like a claw.

yesterday at work i had a shift in the room with 5-10 year old kids. i had my left hand hidden in my sleeve (a bad habit of mine). a kid asked if he could see my hand, and even though internally i was debating running into traffic, i said “sure you can” and showed him my hands. he stared for a moment, looking disturbed, and then said “i don’t want to look at that anymore”. that hurt to hear, but i understand that kids are new to the world and he probably didn’t mean it out of malice. i put my hand away again, told him that it was okay, and that i was just born that way.

he then went on to talk about how he knows a kid with a similar hand to mine and called it “ugly”. i told him that wasn’t a very kind thing to say and that he wouldn’t feel good if someone said that to him, and he replied that no one would say that to him—because he has “normal hands”, and he’s glad he does because otherwise he’d be “ugly”. i tried to talk with him for a bit about how everybody is born differently, but he just started talking about a girl he knows with a “messed up face” and pulled on his face to make it look droopy. i went on some more about how it wasn’t very kind to talk about people that way, but the conversation moved on to something else.

i’ve told my supervisors about it and they’re going to have a talk with his mom. what i wanted to say is this: i’m genuinely not upset with the kid. kids are young and naturally curious, and he clearly simply hasn’t been taught about disabled people and kind ways to speak to/about others. which is why i am upset with his parent(s). i know he’s encountered visibly deformed/disabled people before (he said so himself!), yet his parent(s) clearly haven’t had any kind of discussion with him about proper language and behavior. i knew from birth that some people were just different than others, but my parents still made a point to assert to be kind to and accepting of others. i wonder if adults in his life are the type of people to hush him and usher him away when he points out someone in a wheelchair. that kind of thing doesn’t teach politeness. it tells children that disabled people are an Other than can’t be acknowledged or spoken about; which, to a child, means disability must be something bad.

i’m lucky enough that this was a relatively mild incident, and that i’m a grownup with thicker skin. i’m worried about the other kids he mentioned to me. has he been talking to them this way? when i was a kid, i had other kids scream, cry, and run away at the sight of my hand. or follow me around pointing at me and laughing at me. or tell me i couldn’t do something because i was ugly or incapable or whatever. one time a girl at an arcade climbed to the top of the skeeball machine, pointed at me, and screamed at me to put my hand away and wouldn’t stop crying until she couldn’t see me anymore. another time, a kid saw my hand, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran into my friend’s arms, crying hysterically about how i was scaring her. that second incident made me cry so hard i threw up when i got home. i can kind of laugh it off now, but having people react to me that way as a child is something i’m still getting over. why do you think i have a habit of keeping my hand in my sleeve? it just irritates me to see children that have clearly not been taught basic manners and kindness—their parents Clearly missed something pretty important .

[milatheartsy]

Some ep 7 lukas from both routes

[sprongisupreme]

The aftermath

-

I've been thinking a lot about Albrechts notes and what happened to him after he got out of the void... the way he describes just sorta floating there waiting to die, too scared to act. And Loid taking care of him once he decides to get his act together. It makes me so emotional & conjured up a lot of images in my mind.

[kiwinatorwaffles]

do you miss me as much as i miss you

[golfishwiththebigeyes]

I just think he really deserves a constructive hobby (that maybe isn’t the RCM)

[bucksboobs]

Wait so Ms “he should be bullied more” went private twenty minutes after saying it? Hmmmmm

[salt-2-negotiations]

[hausdellamorte]

veilguard having woke necromancy but still sending skeletons to work in the necropolis' corpse gulag - ghoulag if you will - is such a bizarre choice and also frankly quite hilarious because you can tell that they didn't want to commit to anything fucked up and unethical because why would they

oh no we don't *actually* resurrect dead people against their will. these are just wisps who have no prior memory of being a sentient being. skeletons are just empty vessels because the essence of that person left so it's not actually questionable for us to use people's remains. also people fill out consent forms to be resurrected and used in the ghoulag. also yes only good people can become a lich because the lichlords - that we somehow have now - do some serious soul sifting and ONLY the people with good intentions - like reading books for the rest of all eternity - are allowed to become a lich. no emmrich having a little skeleton servant isn't unethical because he wasn't a person before, he was a wisp - you know our new ex machina - and he really wanted to be a necromancers servant and learn and it was HIS choice all along.

because we at bioware are all about informed and consensual necromancy because why would we have something morally ambiguous going on? or even actually question the ethics of our companions? have challenging discussions about morals? what do you expect us to do? make things actually interesting?

[libbydd]

sketches i might clean up later. 🐚 lord of the flies + youre gonna go far kid

[thesummerstorms]

There's no way at least a few of the Crows gathered for the show down in the Opera House didn't look at Lucanis and Arsinoë de Riva and pick up on the fact that they were involved, even if both parts of the couple thought they were hiding it like professionals.

Most likely, those Crows perceive this as Viago's attempt at a power play.

They're wrong; he's in the corner gritting his teeth and silently begging Arsinoë to stay under the radar for once in her life. Openly attaching herself to the first Talon as a romantic partner makes her a target. That's a complication for House de Riva as a whole, one the Talon part of Viago is already complaining about dealing with, but also in general he wants Arsinoë to live.

(Dellamorte spouses companions do not tend to live long, healthy lives.)

But to the traditionalist Crows' outside point of view, it makes sense for Viago to make a power play through his protege. In his handling of the Illario situation, Lucanis has just exposed the fact that he can, in fact, be manipulated by a soft heart. The way they see it, if Viago then manages to place his protégé as Lucanis's lover and House de Riva as his ally, much less if Arsinoe eventually marries Lucanis and they have children, then Viago will have a considerable amount of influence over the First Talon and the whole of House Dellamorte through her.

Hell, if Arsinoë and Lucanis have children, then after a couple of carefully placed accidents, Viago could even place House de Riva in the seat of first Talon by declaring that his protégé's children belonged to their mother's house.

I cannot stress enough that this is the opposite of what Arsinoë, Lucanis, and Viago all want. Arsinoë doesn't even want to be a mother under regular circumstances, much less as part of an entrapment scheme, and no amount of calculation would ever make Viago use her that way.

But Crows are Crows, and the traditionalists especially do not believe that the more "Reformist" houses like Cantori and de Riva (and now Dellamorte by virtue of Lucanis) don't have some long game they're planning.

So in an a not entirely unexpected move, a few of those Houses send their own agents, their best or most beautiful or most charming, to try and make Lucanis a "better offer" as it were.

Again, this isn't entirely unexpected. Viago can't do much directly without putting more spotlight on Arsinoë or confirming things that he doesn't mean, but Caterina still holds the real power at this point. She deals very harshly with anyone she catches in the attempt.

Arsinoë is a little upset at the disrespect towards her character, significantly more upset that Lucanis has to deal with it, but ultimately stays out of it except comforting Lucanis and deflecting any attempts made in front of her. Maybe the occasional bout of poison, since they've made up their minds about her relationships and reputation either way, but generally it is what it is unless she can spare Lucanis discomfort directly.

Lucanis can't help a certain level of emotional "what the fuck", even though Caterina warned him and Illario extensively growing up that Crows from other Houses might try to romance or bed them as a power play. Illario had responded to that by turning the strategy back on anyone who tried it, not to mention his regular contracts; Lucanis had never thought it would be relevant to himself.

The attempts are upsetting in what they reveal about how outsiders perceive him (weak, easy to manipulate, yes, but also potentially unfaithful which is much more infuriating) and Arsinoë (who's being slandered/minimized). They're also just generally uncomfortable and annoying. Yet he doesn't actually have the power to make them stop; professing his love for Arsinoë doesn't change the perception of those involved. It just puts more of a target on her back.

Spite is honestly the most pissed though. He doesn't even entirely get what's happening. The emotions bleeding over from Lucanis are confusing, even if he's growing to slowly understand emotions outside his domain from his attachment to his mortal host.

He does, however, understand that these other humans are INSULTING his human and their Rook, trying to separate them as if they aren't both Spite's, and trying to hurt them besides.

Spite has many, many ideas how to deal with an insult and a threat. There's a growing risk that one day Lucanis might be fed up enough to agree.