#but it's been a rough week so like

[ruushes]

a friendly little murder 😊🐦‍⬛🖤🗡️ the crows really said you're going to wear purple leather and you're going to like it

[makowcy]

about an hour painting so i dont forget how to draw

[starry-bi-sky]

Blood Blossom Au: Baby's First Commissioner Meeting :)

TL:DR This Post: Danny (orphan) gets poisoned with blood blossom extract by Vlad. He runs away from him and ends up under the care of one Pre-Robin Battinson Batman! Starry is loudly pushing her batdad agenda.

(Also known as "Late At Night, When The Nightingale Sings" on my ao3!)

This was a fun rough idea I've been sitting on for weeks, thinking about how Commissioner Gordon and Nightingale's first meeting might go.

---------------

Commissioner Gordon likes to think that he's adjusting to the new normal of Gotham very well, -- the new normal being grown men running around dressed like bats, in military-grade strength body armor, committing acts of vigilantism, -- and slowly, little by little, he was no longer being surprised when this new normal pops up out of the shadows like the world's most terrifying daisy. His shaving lifespan thanks him for it.

....

The kid is a surprise though.

Granted, he seemed to be a surprise to the Bat too.

There's been a string of murders lately, -- which, in Gotham, is kind of like saying there's been another storm during monsoon season. And there's just been another; in some dilapidated building down in south Gotham, with the broken, boarded-up windows and mildew-crawling walls to match. The victim is a man in his thirties, multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, left in the center of the room for the blood to pool out around him.

The place is already secured when he arrives, the building swarmed with officers and the forensic detectives. The Bat emerges shortly after he does -- or, he might've been here the whole time, hiding someplace dark and shadowy. For his own sanity, Gordon doesn't think about it too hard.

The kid is a surprise, and he appears like a bolt of lightning.

He shows up in the middle of a conversation Gordon is having with the Bat.

A whistle, sharp and loud, slicing through the air, meant for open air rather than a confined space. Gordon's ears pierce and protest the sound, and the solemn, murmured chatter floating through the room abruptly cuts off like the swing of a gavel. As he turns towards the sound -- as they all do -- he swears, up and down, that he sees Batman's shoulders jump, just slightly.

At the source, perched on the window, is a boy. A boy in a gray-blue scarf and an oversized black hoodie, one that hangs off his frame and has ace bandages wrapped around the wrists in some attempt to cinch the sleeves. The hood is up, big like the rest of it, and threatens to swallow the upper half of the boy's face whole in the fabric. What upper half Gordon can see, is smeared with some kind of opaque, black face paint. He's holding onto the side of the frame with one hand, on his hip is a grappling hook. A familiar grappling hook.

Gordon has multiple questions, and his officers tense up.

Martinez puffs up, brows furrowing as his face shapes into a frown. Shoulders rolling back. "You can't be here, kid--"

The reaction is immediate, like a spark to gunpowder, the boy yanks his fingers from his mouth and his mouth twists into a scowl. Head snapping over to Officer Martinez, his hood manages to stay on but Gordon swears that as he bares his teeth, the glint makes them look sharper than they should be. His voice is rasp and quiet and harsh; snappish in its hissing; "Put a fuckin sock in it, Martinez. I'm not stayin."

Martinez reels back, and the boy immediately veers his attention off him. Like a switch, his demeanor drops. Despite half his face being covered, his mouth twists into a cringing, apologetic smile. Slanted and off-beat, embarrassed. It'd be disarming if this wasn't Gotham, and if he didn't just hiss at Martinez like he was about to bite his head off.

"Sorry." He whispers, voice deceptively polite and softer now. Gordon has to strain his ears to hear him. "I was looking for him."

He points his finger towards-- Gordon? No, Gordon follows the direction, and finds himself looking at -- the Bat.

The Bat, who always looks stiff as a pole, now looks even stiffer. Somehow. Well, the explains the grappling hook attached to the boy's waist.

"What are you doing here?" The Bat says, gruff and unable to completely smother the stumble of surprise in his tone.

The boy still holds a sheepish smile, and slips off the window ledge. His feet hit the creaky boards with a near-silent thud, the Batman finds his feet and rapidly begins crossing the room.

Gordon notes the slight tremble in the boy's legs as he straightens. He adjusts his scarf, which droops close to his knees now that he's standing, and slings a backpack -- how long has had that? -- off his shoulders. When the Bat reaches his side, he does as he always does, and looms over the boy like a spectre. A threatening mass of shadows cloaked in all-consuming black. Standing next to him, the boy looks teeny in comparison.

The Bat is a man who terrifies even the most hardened criminals, Gordon has seen grown men shiver in fear at the mention of his name. And yet when the boy looks up at him, he doesn't even flinch.

Instead, his sheepish smile melts away like ice under the sun, holding only traces of his previous embarrassment. It remains as a shadow on his face, a small upturn at the corners of his mouth. The boy pushes his hood back just enough to reveal glinting, ice-flint eyes surrounded in tar-black face paint. He holds the backpack up with one arm. "You forgot this."

[tordoise-x3]

never drawn luis in a not silly way before X(

[toffeebrews]

so. anyway. he's totally not holding anything behind his back nooo not at all.

[wooldawn]

[raiiny-bay]

some WIPs from the 80s AU i never finished

[audliminal]

It's Just a Game, Right? Pt 9

Masterpost

"Well, it certainly looks like your suspicions were correct." Tim says, staring at the decoded response, as Bernard posts the plain text.

"Yeah, it definitely looks like it, huh? This is practically an entire clue drop in and of itself."

"I mean, it kind of is. If they wanted to encourage us, al they really would've needed is to parrot themselves with the 'dig deeper' thing you said you kept finding."

"Ha, yeah that would've been a little more succinct." Bernard laughs, and turns back towards Tim as he finishes typing. "So what else is it meant to do, then?"

"Well, on one level it shows us how the clues are supposed to be solved." Tim says, pointing to the steps they'd gone through. "In the future, we should be looking for the keys to each step in the solution of the prior step."

"They can't just do that every time, though. It'd get too predictable.

"Maybe not every time, but it definitely gives us a better idea of where to start."

"Yeah, I guess it can't hurt to look. Anything else, Mr. Genius?"

"I'm not a genius."

"You totally are, but whatever. Tell me more of your mad science thinking."

"Not a mad scientist either. I think we need to start looking at whether individual details are intended to be taken literally or metaphorically."

"Oh." Bernard blinks, then glances over at his computer.

"Did you think of something?" Tim asks. The implications of the response are sprawling by itself, but if the contents are referencing something Bernard's already seen...

"Well, it's just. The first video was pictures, right? And people take photos of stuff they wanna remember so, like. To be seen is to be remembered?"

"That... Makes sense." Tim murmurs.

"Yeah, but it doesn't explain what the rest is about."

"One step at a time. If the people in the first video are our messengers, and they're concerned with being remembered, then I think we should be looking for more information on who they are."

"Right. So I should pull out the clues that reference them, and we can go over those next?

"Sounds like a plan."

[ganondoodle]

id probably have more success as an elden ring/fromsoft artist but alas, my heart still belongs to the legend of zeldas most unpopular villain, oh well..

chapter 2 rough draft is approaching 70 pages, im confident i can start painting it this week :3

[gods-perfect-idiots]

something something blood-soaked hands cradling your face something something

anyway here's the post btw

[sluckythewizard]

YOU JUST HƎARD IT FROM [HIS MOUTH] FOR SURƎ!!!

[obsolescent]

[lady-harrowhark]

guess who's back, back again

(it's my exposed jawbone)

[mythtiide]

fishy love 🐟🩵🦈based off of BbK224's fic A Union of Sea and Sky

[runefactorynonsense]

I exalt the wolves and unicos a lot, but, fun fact; the Elefuns are my favorite Rune Factory monsters

[butchviking]

i hate being a mentally ill adult actually. i hate that there’s always groceries to be bought and housekeeping to do and work in the morning i hate that we have no space to feel it all i hate that we walk around acting normal. there are so many people i know who are clearly deeply unhappy with their lives and we make silly little jokes that allude to it but sometimes i want to grab them by the shoulders and scream ‘i know you are miserable!! we can’t keep living like this!! this is why people break!!’ im sick of this drudgerous apathy i want us all to be dramatic like when we were teenagers i want us to sob together and scream bloody murder at each other and tell each other we want to kill ourselves not as a funny post-ironic joke but because we all feel like that sometimes!! i want us to get fucked up on god knows what til we can’t open our eyes i want us to take care of each other instead of always taking care of ourselves i want us to be vulnerable i want us to hold each others hands in the ambulance!!