#go figure. i don't know why

[front-facing-pokemon]

[teaboot]

Sometimes at work it's not my place to tell people the things I want to say, and I find I often go home at the end of the rougher days to stand blankly in my shower and tell myself over and over what I wish I could pass on.

This accomplishes very little, and mostly just gives me a tension headache, but through it all I think I've narrowed myself down to a few solid things I'd like to tell people the most.

You can't change people. Not permanently, not for anythig. You can support them, encourage them, love them, give them tools and opportunities and resources, but you can't make them change. They can change themselves if they want to, but they have to want to, and they have to want it for themselves, because they're the only one that's certain to be with them forever.

For better or worse, you make your own choices, and blaming bad choices on others doesn't only work to absolve you of responsibility- it also robs you of control. Because if you say you only did something because I did something, then you arent only shifting blame- you're admitting that you cannot control yourself, that you cannot truly make choices for yourself, that other people can control you- and as long as you truly beleive that, you'll keep facing the same problems over and over. You'll keep letting others dictate your choices, because you'll beleive that they can, and you'll never be free.

White knights on horseback are from fairytales. Nobody can help you if ou're not willing to help yourself. To try, to put the dirty work in, to belive you're worth that effort- Act as though nobody is coming to save you. From a struggle, from pain, from bad relationships, from yourself. And when you do save yourself, because you will, because failure here isn't an option if you want to survive, you'll never find another dragon that can keep you prisoner.

Don't say anything to anyone that you wouldn't want them remembering forever.

Doing the right thing in bad circumstances is hard. It's the hardest thing. But if you make the choice to do that hard thing anyways, despite your fear, you'll go on the rest of your like knowing that you're the sort of person who did something.

The present only seems the hardest because the past I over and the future hasn't happened.

There's so much joy ahead of you, the kind you can't possibly understand until you see it yourself.

The responsibility of consequences is often disguised as the power of permission. "I won't do this if you help me", "I'll work on my anger if you do this for me", "I promised you I'd quit, but can I have just one?". The unspoken question is, "Can it be your fault if this goes badly?"

You cant make someone love you the way you need to be loved. Someone can love you very much and still be bad for you, even if you love them very much in return. Two people can love each other very, very much, and try their very best, and still be wrong for each other.

Sometimes being near to someone changes you, even in good ways, and the people you become don't fit together as well as the people you were.

Caring takes work. Even if it's real. Especially if it's real. And the most important gestures aren't the grand, poetic, songs-and-flowers-and-tears moments; they're getting out of bed even though you don't want to. Paying attention to things you don't enjoy. Scrubbing pans, or opening a window, saying "thank-you", or helping carry groceries into the house. The small things fill the big things- without the small, boring, mediocre things, big things feel hollow.

Thrre is honour and dignity in humble work.

If you are a cruel and spiteful person, then you will find every place you visit to be full of the same cruel, spiteful people. This is not because the world is as cruel as you, but because everywhere you are, you will be disliked. This is the curse that comes with being persistently cruel and spiteful.

If you are a kind and ppsitive person, you will repeatedly encounter kind and positive people, because as they grow familiar with you, they will be happier to have you near. This is the reward of being a kind and positive person.

When splitting paths with loved ones, briefly or forever, aim for your last words to always be "I love you".

[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."

[rassicas]

Thank God splatoon 3 didn't end up introducing a playable cuttlefish dlc like I feared last year (I honestly don't think we need more new playable species, would've been too sudden, my expectations were on the floor after rotm) but the cuttlefish visuals are still so suspicious to me. This hat has to be on purpose. That's absolutely not a fucking squid or octopus

And this is undeniably a cuttlefish (and the double fin shape resembles the hat)

Like how the lack of mammals in the splatoon world and ark Polaris was something suspicious in the previous games, and characters like marigold and Glen fiddler and lil judd are suspicious now.... It's way more subtle but I think this could be the splatoon team planting some seeds in case they decide to introduce cuttlefish as a separate species in the splatoon world. ill be keeping it in the back of my mind

[muffinlance]

Can Sokka’s science tell him which of Katara’s 7 spools of blue thread 🧵 is the right one to darn that hole in his shirt with?

It could if she didn't keep changing her answer

Katara: I AM NOT CHANGING MY ANSWER

Sokka: YES YOU ARE THESE ARE IDENTICAL

Katara: NO THEY'RE NOT

Sokka: I DEMAND A DOUBLE-BLIND STUDY

Katara: I DEMAND YOU GET YOUR OWN SEWING KIT

[kirby-the-gorb]

[a-most-beloved-fool]

I wish we had gotten to see Odo shapeshift into objects and animals more throughout DS9. It could have been so much fun. Let the man be liquid.

Like, imagine a holosuite episode where Odo is stuck in one of Bashir's spy programs (he did not want to be there in the first place, and is very grumpy about being trapped), and the people he's with keep trying to play the game normally, while he keeps shapeshifting them out of things.

Locked door? Oh lookie, his hand's the key. Sidequest skipped. Character needs a disguise? Odo shapeshifts into a wig. Disguise acquired. An enemy puts him in handcuffs? Oops! No more hands! Bonds escaped. You need something on the other side of that ravine? Good thing Odo's a bird now! Detour averted.

and so on and so forth, while his companions are like "I know where the key is! Oh, never mind... We can steal a disguise from- ah, I guess not? Handcuffs? Are you just going to -- yup, I thought you might. ........ You know, Odo, you might have more fun if you actually played the game."

(later, Julian commissions a game from Felix that prevents those kinds of workarounds. little invisible walls are programmed in that prevent any key but the correct one from working, you can't leave the room until your cuffs are actually unlocked, not just off, etc.)

[pocketramblr]

Inspired by this post: give Bruce a star sapphire ring

I've never met anyone who cared as deeply for his fellow man as Bruce Wayne

[phoenixcatch7]

Reading loz/lu fics and it's just so interesting how wide the spectrum is of their personalities.

Sometimes it's got an in universe reason (different past (usually gender or species change), recent or ongoing traumatic events, a spectacularly bad first meeting), but sometimes (often) the characters are just... Weirdly angsty or peppy, there's no in between!

And I'm beginning to think less people have played more than one game than I thought XD.

Not that it's anyone's fault! One game is more than enough to be part of it all, and loz is exclusive to Nintendo consoles - and all the older stuff is frustratingly hard to get hold of. Heck, I'm still looking for wind waker, and that was really popular! And then you have to play it! They're not small games!!

But could people writing wild please ease off just a tiiiiiny bit so he can be a semi functional member of society pretty please XD? He's just as much a polite boy as any other member of the chain! He won't even run in shops! He can't attack npcs! He talks to every single person he's ever seen and remembers every single name. Yes, he's three quarters woodland creature with a hefty amount of trauma but he's also a fashionista who managed to avoid accidentally taking sides in a mayoral election and that's not easy!

[osaemu]

so uh funny story guys. i lost interest in anime men

[greenerteacups]

Fair warning: I don't think this is going to be a question, just a few post-latest chapter thoughts haphazardly stacked together under a trenchcoat.

Thank you for this chapter. It made my day to read something almost fluffy (I don't think anything in LH can be called purely fluff, and that's a good thing because fluff is best when it is padding for the plot, and that's what this chapter was).

LH Book 5 has been the beginning of payoff for the Dramione slow burn, and while that is immensely satisfying, it also means there are less milestones to look forward to. I don't know if this was an intentional decision, but I love how you started seeding in another slow burn that has kept us equally invested: the Black family drama.

I love reading anything that does the dysfunctional family dynamic well, and seeing Draco getting old enough to identify it clearly, have questions, testing his boundaries, fighting back against what he's been told to accept, has all been immensely satisfying as someone who has gone through this myself. Your depiction of the Black family dynamics has been /chef's kiss/. * spoiler for chapter 70 * when Draco witnesses his cousins casually throwing information his way, what I wanted was for one of the adults to see how much he needed that information, that connection, and give it to him. My god ❤️ You have written a lonely boy craving family so well.

Back to the Dramione of it all (and this might be a question), I love how Harry chose to approach the contained chaos waiting to unravel around him and just bluntly told Draco what he did. Question: do you think this is something Canon Harry would have done in this instance? Was there a choice to change anything in your characterisation of Harry (with respect to Canon) that resulted in this wonderful, blunt, more-mature-than-many-adults-who-can't-even-identify-their-needs version of Harry?

If not, what canon Harry actions/traits do you think would point to him acting this way?

Thank you! This is a beautiful and very kind trench coat, and I am luxuriating in it.

I will answer your question while continuing to luxuriate: I don't think canon Harry would ever confront his friends about an emotional problem, mostly because because he never does. Hermione and Ron, the two people he's most comfortable with in the world, are feuding for most of HBP, and while he does have a few "can't you guys just get along?" type-outbursts, he doesn't really sit down and ask "hey, what's going on with you? How can I help?" because canon!Harry is, as you might expect for a 15-year-old boy, better at ignoring his problems than solving them. (I also think there's an ingredient of conflict-avoidance in there from his upbringing with the Dursleys, but I'll be the first to admit that's mostly headcanon.)

My Harry is a bit softer — in part because that's just how I prefer my Harry, my favorite scenes with him are those where he's showing tenderness for things other people have neglected. This is the best of him, and this is the core of him, in my opinion. Canon Harry has this marvelous capacity for empathy, and when he chooses to use it, it's kind of astonishing how capable he is of resisting prejudice and caring for people. He's fiercely loyal in defending Hagrid, always. He makes a point of freeing Dobby, who's just spent a book trying to maim him. He refuses to let Sirius kill Pettigrew, even knowing that Pettigrew betrayed his parents ("My dad wouldn't want you to" — sweet boy, you mean you don't want them to, and you understand on some level that's the only thing you can say that will stop them.) He saves Gabrielle Delacour, because even if she would have been safe in the end, he's not leaving a little girl at the bottom of a fucking lake. He reads the Half-Blood Prince's handwriting — Snape's handwriting — and thinks: "I bet he's someone like me." On the basis of handwriting, he empathizes with this person! Harry is constantly trying to save people, and he doesn't ever really tell us why. And we'll never know why canon!Harry does that, consciously or subconsciously, but I have to imagine that every time Harry looks at someone in pain, he sees a lonely kid stuck under a staircase, and he thinks not fucking today.

[artkaninchenbau]

An AWS comic

[solradguy]

I thought the early 2000s "strong yet naked/mostly naked woman kept in her place by stronger, bigger, beast/monster or gang of racist caricatures" trope* was known by basically everyone but I mentioned it as a criticism of this older art book I'd flipped through recently to a friend and it turns out it isn't lol Maybe I've just read too many Heavy Metal issues... It used to be HORRIBLY inescapable in any sort of mature art scene back in the day lmao

*This trope is different from the pre-2000s one because the women usually look like they COULD fight back for at least a little bit whereas the previous trope had them be completely helpless damsels in distress

[milolovesbmc]

Gruesome Playground Injuries except House is Doug's doctor. That's it. That's the post

[cartwrong]

Whumptober / Day 22 / Tourniquet

"Oh, that's not good."

“Roddy, that’s not fucking helping!” Shirley sneered, and River thought she might strangle the tech expert if her hands weren’t currently covered in River’s blood.

“What? It’s not,” Roddy said, offended as he turned a shade paler.

River didn’t need to be told things were dire; the pain and the large amount of blood staining his jeans were enough to tell him that. Well, that and the bullet hole in his thigh.

“Give me your belt,” Shirley yelled at the tech whiz, holding her hand out impatiently, leaving one still pressed against River’s wound.

“It’s Gucci,” Ho scoffed.

“I don’t give a shit. If you don’t give it to me right fucking now, I’m going to strangle you with it.”

It would be quite amusing to watch Shirley threaten Roddy’s life if River wasn’t also concerned about bleeding to death.

“You’re buying me a new one,” Roddy said as he reluctantly unbuckled his belt before sliding it from his jeans but holding on a second too long for Shirley to rip it violently from his hand. “That hurt!”

“Oh, does that hurt?” River yelled, pressing harder to the bullet wound in his thigh while Shirley wound it around his upper leg. “I’m sorry my gunshot wound led to a little rope burn!”

River groaned in pain, his vision going white as Shirley tightened the belt around his thigh, just above the hole in his pants, before inserting the empty clip from his gun into it and twisting.

“Fuck! Did you have to tighten it that much?” he asked once he recovered, his breath coming in heaving gasps.

“If you don’t want to bleed out, I did,” Shirley answered, and that was fair enough. “Where the fuck is the ambulance?”

As if on cue, Marcus returned, paramedics trailing behind him.

“Thank fuck,” Shirley said, waving them over. “Took you fucking long enough.”

“I couldn’t make them appear faster now, could I?” Marcus argued.

“Look at him, he looks half dead,” Shirley replied.

“I can hear you,” River slurred.

Shirley ignored him and turned to the paramedics checking her watch, “I just applied the tourniquet a few minutes ago.”

River found it more difficult to follow what they were saying as he realised the pain in his leg had begun to lessen. That had to be a good thing, right? Only now was he suddenly freezing, his body beginning to shiver slightly as the first paramedic, a man around his mum’s age, knelt beside him.

“Does he have any medication allergies?”

“Fuck if I know,” Shirley answered.

“No,” River said, his voice quiet.

“What was that?” the other paramedic, a woman a few years younger than him, asked.

“No,” River said, attempting to be louder.

He was getting tired now, and the paramedics were here, so maybe he could rest his eyes a bit.

“Wait!” he said, his eyes flying open as a surge of adrenaline coursed through him. “You should leave. Lamb–Lamb’ll be mad. Go.”

He tried to lift his hand and shoo them away, but his limb wasn’t cooperating. He tried again, his hand merely twitching on the blood-stained concrete beside him. Well, that was annoying. He tried, but he couldn’t make them move now; it was up to them if they didn’t want to be fired.

Again.

He let his eyes slip shut, the pain now almost gone, though he was colder than before.

“River, wake up!”

“Tired,” he mumbled.

The other voices blended together. Some he knew, some he didn’t. He hoped they were listening to him. Roddy Ho’s unmistakable voice was the last thing he heard before he succumbed entirely to the darkness.

“Can I have my belt back now?”

[moongothic]

You know when I originally suggested that maybe Dragon is the one who gave Crocodile his scar and/or took his left hand --if only because [Dragon not recognizing the big scary man with a baby when he was supposed to go see his wife, assuming the worst and acting accordingly] would make for an A-Class tragedy and great fucking drama (something which I would expect to see in One Piece)-- I wasn't fully convinced with the idea, I just considdered it just another option on What Could Have Happened between those two to get us where we are ...But the more I think about it, the more I've started to kind of believe it. And for two key reasons, first being kind of everything we know about Whitebeard, and the second being the basic logistics around the suggested scenario to begin with

By which I mean; if Dragon had indeed gone to see his wife so he could deliver their newborn baby to Garp, but instead came face-to-face with a man he had never seen before but who just happened to have the exact same and very specific facial scar as his wife and/or the same god damn hook... Like I can't say he SHOULD be able to recognize Crocodile instantly, but also, surely either of those features would make him stop for a moment think and/or talk before he'd jump into action, let alone if the man had both the scar and the hook. Of course, there is an argument to be made that maybe Crocodile had a smaller hook originally that no longer fit on his wrist after getting jacked so maybe Crocodile just wasn't wearing any hook at all, and a missing limb isn't an unusual disability on its own, at least not enough to faze Dragon. And who knows, maybe the two were supposed to meet on a dark and stormy night, in which case between the low light and the rain it could've been hard for Dragon to see any scars on Crocodile's face from a distance. These are both reasonable arguments, absolutely. But, as I have mentioned a few times before, sometimes the path of least resistance might be the most likely option as far as story speculation goes. If Crocodile had both his hands and no scar on his face, then Dragon wouldn't have had any way to immidiately and instantly recognize Croc (aside from his fashion sense) as he would've been missing (what we would now considder) his most distinquishing features. Which would it much easier for Dragon to jump into action and attack the strange man without a second thought.

And then there's Whitebeard. Whitebeard, who was kind of famous for stomping rookie pirates only to invite them to join his crew as his "sons", but who also had a weird thing about not having women in his crew (his nurses aside), because he believed "women do not belong on a battlefield". For one, that actually kind of supports the "Crocodile is openly trans" theory because, again, how the fuck would Croc have been pre-t AND stealth as a Wardlord getting his shit kicked in by Whitebeard? Like it's not impossible, as we have discussed many times before (and that is not the point of this post!!), but once again it would be easier to just assume Crocodile was still living as a woman at this point in time. And indeed, that could answer the question of "why would Whitebeard not invite Crocodile into his crew to be one of his children like Ace and everyone else?". If Croc was still living and presenting as a woman at this point, Whitebeard would not have even wanted him in his crew. (Sidenote but since Whitebeard seemed to have no issues with Jinbei hanging around the Moby Dick despite being a Warlord I don't think Crocodile's Shichibukai status should've had any impact on WB's ability to invite him to his crew. To be fair though, Jinbei did join the Shichibukai much later so it is possible WB could've just changed his position on the subject over the years) And that leads to this question; if Whitebeard has that kind of views on women, then would he ever go as far as to severely injure and scar (someone he viewed as) a woman right on their face? With an attack that could have very easily chopped Crocodile's entire head in half like a god damn burger bun if he weren't careful? Do you think Whitebeard would have chopped Crocodile's left hand off and left him permanently disabled if he viewed him as a woman who shouldn't be a fighter to begin with? Yes, to be fair, we do not know the circumstances under which Crocodile challenged Whitebeard into a fight and what kind of a pirate Crocodile had been up until that point, what his reputation had been and if he had done anything in particular to invite Whitebeard's wrath (much like Kid and Barto with Shanks). Like for all we know he could've done something truly heinous and fucked up enough that Whitebeard thought teaching him a lesson was justified.

Just, looking at all of these notes together, I can't help but to feel that it's actually very plausible Dragon could be the one responsible for one of Crocodile's injuries if not both (if Crocodad Real).