#e rambles

[red-and-white-and-black-and-gold]

I am going kind of crazy about them, I want to write about them so badly

This is from Xabi’s Player’s Tribune piece btw.

[slobber-teeth]

hi!!! your art amazes me. I wanted to ask, is your scarecrow design just a design or a developed OC? I would love to know more about the story if there is one! :)

HI THERE YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD <3 you are very sweet for saying so!!

yes he is an oc!! or like, as much of an 'original character' as he can be, having been based off of the comics (mostly scarecrow: year one!!), but i've given him so much more lore and attention than dc has in years, so. y'know. mine now <3 i've been working on his story for abouutt a decade now?

MASSIVE loredump under the cut that i've copypasted from my still unfinished toyhouse page for him, alongside some gifted/traded/commissioned artwork of him!! cw: slavery, antiblack racism, child abuse, drug abuse, harm to children

artwork by @ emeraldfox11 !! (i love u emmyyyyy)

Jonathan Keeny Crane was born to a seventeen year-old Karen Keeny, daughter of the wealthy Keeny family, and Gerald Crane, a slave working on the Keeny’s plantation, in Arlen, Georgia. She abandoned Jon with her mother (Marion Keeny) and grandmother (Mary Keeny) before skipping town to seek a new life elsewhere. Gerald was drafted in the Vietnam War shortly after Jon was born, and died in the line of service. Jon shouldered a lot of hate from his grandmother and great-grandmother, who took their anger with Karen out on him from the day he was born. Great Granny Keeny was a bitter widow who abused everyone around her, most of all Jon for the circumstance of his conception, and held lofty standards for Jon despite believing he would never accomplish her idealized version of him. When Marion had finally had enough of Mary’s abuse she also fled the state, and Great Granny Keeny’s malice narrowed down to the only member of her family left, Jon.

Due to his upbringing, Jon developed a passion for psychology, specifically the psychology of fear and child psychology. In his mind he considered fear to be the root of all psychological ailments, and figured that if he could conquer fear, he would be able to help himself– and more importantly to him, other children who had gone through experiences similar to his. He had in some form already decided by the age of fourteen that he was a lost cause; that the damage that had been done to him was irreparable. Still, this feeling of hopelessness would be much lesser compared to what was to come.

While his childhood was terrible, adolescence brought a few good things into Jon’s life. At age fourteen he had already learned to drive the old family truck, and the freedom this granted him was a solace. He was too terrified by his Great Granny to ever defy her (which would be all too easy considering the frailty of age) but between running errands for her he would take two hour drives to the nearest city– Atlanta. There Jon developed a greater sense of self at late-night discotheques, finally able to socialize with other Black people, especially gay Black men like himself.

At age seventeen Great Granny Keeny finally bites the dust. Jon is listless, unsure what to do as he still feels the weight of her abuse on his psyche, but eventually he makes up his mind. He applies to Gotham University, writes essays for scholarships, and after days has summoned up the courage to bury his great grandmother. With her in the dirt, it’s hard to be afraid anymore– but Jon is superstitious and has nightmares for the rest of his life about her ghost. He buries the deed to the house (and the land) with her and only takes a few heirloom jewelry pieces before burning the degrading mansion down. With cash from the pawned jewelry, he takes his truck on a fourteen hour road trip to Gotham.

Jon is much more accustomed to city life. Gotham is a shit-hole, of course, but he carries the courage of knowing that he has most likely gone through the worst of his life, and nothing that might happen to him could compare to that. He studies chemistry and psychology while in University, working at the campus library in what little free time he had left after studying, and graduates magna cum laude in both his preferred subjects. After that is medical school, and with his sights now set on becoming a child psychologist, he takes a residency at Arkham Asylum’s children’s ward. It’s there he meets and bonds with a young Tommy Elliot, who was on a seventy-two hour hold after his mother admitted him on the account of the eight year-old boy refusing to eat, sleep, or clean himself because he claimed he was ‘dead.’ With therapy it’s revealed Tommy is experiencing symptoms of Cotard’s Delusion, triggered by the murder of his mob-affiliated family (his mother and him being the only two spared.) Jon also learns Tommy had been abused by his father, and his mother took no action to protect him from said abuse. Seeing himself and his traumatic childhood in Tommy, Jon works hard to not only help Tommy get better, but also put together a document requesting Tommy be placed in a foster home and his mother denied custody.

Despite the best of Jon’s efforts, Tommy is discharged and placed back in his mother’s custody. Jon feels like a failure for not being able to save the child from further abuse, as well as feeling enlightened to how poorly the government works. This failure increases Jon’s fixation on the psychology of fear, and he transfers out of the children’s ward staff to the general population of Arkham, where he begins studying and experimenting on how far fear controls the mind.

By the time Jon’s residency is done he’s concocted the idea for Fear Toxin, a liquid (and later, gaseous) drug that inspires pure terror in those injected with it. Thoughts of pursuing a career as a child psychologist are pushed aside in favor of perfecting his new drug and experimenting on himself, subjecting himself to nightmarish hallucinations just to mentally conquer the experience. He believes that injecting folks with certain mental illnesses will grant them the opportunity to conquer their ailments, too. The absurdity of this idea is lost on him between his severe depression after failing Tommy, and the hard drugs he has been abusing in order to alleviate himself from the psychological pain.

Paying for the equipment and raw chemicals to make Fear Toxin (not to mention his own recreational drug habits) takes a toll on Jon’s funds, so when Gotham U reaches out to offer him a position as professor of their psychology department, he agrees. Jon teaches for around four years while he continues his personal downward spiral. It all comes to a point when he brings a loaded gun into the classroom and fires it into the air to teach his students a thing or two about real terror. He’s promptly fired, and without tenure, Jon resorts to petty robbery in order to fund his work– thus, the Scarecrow is born. Stealing from ATMs becomes large-scale heists against pharmaceutical plants, and along the way Jon begins to use Fear Toxin to incapacitate his opponents in lieu of experimenting only on himself. Jon spends years creating different variations of Fear Toxin and torturing the public with his mad science– some blends are subtle enough that any hallucinations experienced seem completely unprompted, while others are created specifically to kill, causing so much shock to the system that victims literally die of fright.

Every variation has been personally tested by Jon, and that paired with his trauma, depression, and drug abuse results in a severe degradation of emotions. At age forty-five, Jon now suffers from alexithymia and apathy. He injects or huffs Fear Toxin almost all of the time in order to encourage his battered mind and body into function, as well as to try and coax some emotional response out of his body. What emotions he does feel, he feels weakly, and in the years to come he will have become completely immune to fear (which is no longer the great boon he had once imagined.) His morals erode alongside his mind and body to the point where he’s morally accepting of harming children, a line he formerly refused to cross. ....there is still like so much i could say about him relating to his relationships with the other rogues, his gender identity, his experiences growing up, his taste in music... feel free to ask specific questions!!

[emeralds-city]

its so weird to be halfway through october with no new season of young royals to look forward to. no behind the scenes teasers on lisa's story. no vogue cast interviews. is it really over?

[exyrpf]

The bottle of gatorade/water after sex in sports rpf is a liminal space no I won't elaborate

[loganslowdown4]

It feels good to be mentally done with something and just finally decide to erase all notes, playlists and pictures off your phone, close all website tabs, yeah—

No more burden of unfinished things weighing you down lol

[ijustwantagoodurl]

Helloo tumblrinas, does anyone know whats physically wrong with me?

So im 23, adhd+autistic, transmasc on T, generally healthy enough and about a month ago i started getting joint pains all over. Its gotten really bad really quickly, like in pain sitting or walking, struggling to climb a singular stair and its really been fucking me up. The only thing ive found that consistently helps is heat or compressing my joints.

Im going to my doctor monday about this but idk i wanted to see if this sounded like anyone's experience??

[phantomoftheorpheum]

can i ask you to ramble about the artful dodger please?? your gifset is sooo pretty so im curious what its about!

Oh my God, have you come to the right place. There is nothing I would love to do more rn. Okay, so-

The Artful Dodger is basically (pretentious film & tv people are gonna absolutely despise this description) a post-canon/slightly canon divergent fanfiction set in the world of Dickens' Oliver Twist, following Jack Dawkins (The Artful Dodger) 15 years after the events of Oliver Twist.

So, quick recap of Oliver Twist (spoilers, obviously) for anyone who isn't familiar with that story- Oliver is this little orphan kid in England in the 18(30/40s?) << I don't believe the exact date is stated, but it was seemingly contemporary to when Dickens wrote it, which was 1837-1839. Oliver runs away from an orphanage to London and ends up meeting Jack (The Artful Dodger, AKA "Dodger" or "Dodge"), a street kid in London who takes him in. Jack is known as The Artful Dodger because he is particularly talented at pickpocketing/thieving, which is what he and the other kids he lives with do to survive. They are all "looked after" by a character called Fagin, who is basically using this child gang to support himself and his greed (listen, we can talk about Fagin's character in the show vs the books at some point if you want, but I want to keep this section brief), and Jack is the favorite because he is the best. Anyway, stuff happens, Oliver ends up having a long lost inheritance and gets to live a life of wealth, Jack is caught pickpocketing and sent to Australia (at that time a penal colony), Fagin is arrested and hanged.

*This post is relatively spoiler free for the show, but not 100%, since it's impossible to talk about without discussing character's actions, personalities, relationships, etc. However I'm doing my best to avoid any major spoiler plot points.

This show, The Artful Dodger (Hulu/Disney+) picks up 15 years later, with a few small alterations to the Oliver Twist ending. In the canon of this show, Jack was arrested for pickpocketing, but escaped prison, joined the navy, and was taught to be a surgeon. After his time in the navy, he now lives in Australia and is a doctor in a town called Port Victory, but seeing as he is also an escaped convict, he would be hanged if his past were discovered. Fagin (who dies in the original version of Oliver Twist) was spared by Oliver, and has now been sent to Port Victory as a convict. Obviously this will be a problem for Jack, who is hiding his past.

SO, with that out of the way, the premise of the show is basically this-

Jack is now a surgeon trying to live a lawful life, which is disrupted when Fagin arrives in Port Victory and threatens to expose his past and attempts to draw him back into a life of crime. Simultaneously, Jack meets Belle (totally OC for this show), the governor's daughter, who wants to be a surgeon and is willing to go to extreme lengths to get there. Unsurprisingly, Jack and Belle (who are both pretty stubborn and sassy personalities) clash in many ways, but also share common passion & interests, and thus the stage is set for the show.

So you've got two key dynamics to the show- Jack & Fagin, who have a long history (Fagin often tries to claim to be a father figure in Jack's life, which Jack rejects, as Fagin abandoned Jack when he was arrested in order to save himself) and different priorities/agendas, and Jack & Belle, who have just met, and are still trying to figure each other out. They are of very different pasts, class, mindsets/life philosophies, and this dynamic provides a lot of tension/humor/emotion (if your ask is talking about the gifset that I think, then you already know a bit about where this leads).

The show has elements of comedy, adventure, crime, romance, medical drama, etc. There are additional side plots/characters, but Belle, Jack, and Fagin are at the center of it. It's a lot of fun and only 8 eps, so I definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested! TW: blood/surgery shown on screen quite often.

Anyway, on a personal note, this show feels like it was made for me. I had this absolute obsession with The Artful Dodger character as a child; he's one of the first characters I was ever super emotionally attached to, and led to me wanting to write. For this reason, I paid to have an Artful Dodger tattoo designed while I was in college (though I have not gotten it yet, as it's part of a bigger piece that I'm still mentally workshopping) like as a reminder of why I love telling stories. So I was incredibly nervous for this show, since it was touching a character who has been fundamental to my own creative passions, so I am happy to report that it exceeded my expectations. It probably helps that I've been part of the fanfic community for a long time, so seeing "alternate" versions of characters I'm familiar with doesn't faze me too much, and I think all the actors did a great job with their performances/characters.

So if you're still here at the end of my ramblings and you think that the show sounds like a fun time, definitely check it out! I'd be willing to do a more spoilery version of one of these at some point, but I didn't want to get into heavy spoilers in a introductory post.

Thanks for asking!! <33

[use-your-telescope]

lol I have over 12,000 words for the next couple chapters of wemtbb and I’m still not done yet…

And I still haven’t matched up the next song/songs…

[bvckleyydiaz]

so just a question for you guys..

if i were to start making cm smau fics, would you guys want to read them?

@greg-montgomery @ssahotchnerr @hotchnerobsessed @hotchs-big-hands @wifeyreid @strawbeerossi @ssamorganhotchner @ssaaaronmontgomery @hotchs-babygirl @hotchnerbau @luvehotch @hotchandspencearedilfs @criminalskies @boldlyvoid @mrs-ssa-hotch

[red-and-white-and-black-and-gold]

This is so cute, and congratulations to Ben and Milly White, but like why are all of the men’s team Arsenal players having babies. At some point “They’re making Arsenal’s 2045-46 team” stops being a funny joke and becomes a conspiracy theory

[slobber-teeth]

becoming obsessed with your own oc is actually the most fulfilling, nourishing, soul-healing thing you can do for yourself by the way. i'm high as fuck staring at dog toys. these sentences are related

[emeralds-city]

every time I wear my fro people say I look like Ayo Edebiri and i love it yesssss feed my delusions i might go buy a blue apron like dont tempt me

[exyrpf]

Was gonna wait for the ex to tell our son she'd gotten remarried but i was fucking sick of waiting for her to do it so I did it myself. He said "I know, I heard grandma talk about it" like how fucked up is that. How fucking messed up is it that he only learned about it bc he overheard a conversation.

He then said "when are they getting unmarried?" which admittedly almost made me burst out laughing lmao

[phoenix-reburned]

I actually refuse to believe that Adam is dead there is no way that Lawrence just left him there after everything and there's too many inconsistencies surrounding his death (which leg is cuffed rate of decomposition etc) that just don't make sense.

Also he's my favorite I want his bisexual ass in another movie NOW

[six-seasons-andamovie]

Watching a four hour iceberg on serial killers that I'm either going to get bored of or scare myself shitless with!!!

[use-your-telescope]

Alternating between attempting the Path of Pain in Hollow Knight and writing some freaking FLUFFY fluff for WEMTBB, as one does on a Saturday morning.