#halfway appreciation

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN BIRTHDAY COUNTDOWN (2024): hyunjin in every letter... ↘ D-15 | PONYTAIL

[veinsfullofstars]

🎵 MetaDede Week 2024 Day 4: Music 🎵

(ID: Kirby series fanart of Meta Knight and King Dedede dressed in their outfits for the Kirby 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert. The knight hovers at the top left playing the violin, his cape flared around him and his eyes shut in serene concentration behind his mask. The king hovers beside him at the bottom right playing the cello, laughing in determined delight. Music notes dance around them in soft pastels and sparkles, a treble clef floating near MK, a bass clef near DDD. END ID.)

Previous Day | Next Days | Prompt List (made by @/mtddweek)

Started 08/17/24, finished 08/18/24.

[dragonairice]

Been rewatching Sasaki to Miyano and istg everytime Miyano does the bag thing™ I die a little inside /aff

[baldursghaik]

A full lineup of my "core" party in bg3, with some creative liberties taken (plus postgame Thyneron)

I figure Thyneron has probably never been with someone that was actually taller than him before, so

bonus:

[sforzesco]

Crassus, Caelius, Cicero, Catiline, Conspiracy

boy howdy these four sure are something. not featured in this soup of C names, Caesar! what on earth happened here.

Plutarch, Crassus

Sallust on Crassus, Ronald Syme

Patron and Client, Father and Son in Cicero's "Pro Caelio"

Crassus' New Friends and Pompey's Return, Eve J. Parrish

Catullus and His World, T.P. Wiseman

Cicero's Catilinarians, D.H. Berry

[memesandmusicalss]

drew the pretty man 👍👍👍

[antebunny]

a summer is sold

[part six of my fae!Tim AU. masterpost here]

~

Bruce returns to the Unseelie Queen. He steps through the fae circle with the trusty protections of salt and iron. It is quite unlike Batman to use tools that are so low-tech, but he will not deny the efficacy of that which has protected humankind from the fae for thousands of years.

“Unseelie Queen!” Bruce shouts. Last time the forest of mushrooms simply melted into a clearing where he placed his protections and conducted his business. Today, the poisonously red caps simply grow and grow until the mushrooms tower over him.

The smell of organic matter decaying and a swirl of turquoise leaves. She arrives in her usual fashion. Ten feet tall and dressed in a gown of rushing rivers and starlit nights. A gray face and the smile of nightmares. The Unseelie Queen attempts of human beauty and misses in a manner so violently unsettling, so uncanny-valley-upsetting, that even Batman feels fear.

“I have come to make a new deal.” Bruce shows no fear. Rule number one.

“Oh?” The Unseelie Queen bends down until her back splits in four places and they are eye to eye. Screams dance madly in her silver-violet-smoke black eyes until Bruce drops his gaze to her chin. “Do you wish for me to take back my gift?”

Not Jason. It is love that pangs around Bruce’s heart, love that morphs into fear when she threatens Jason’s life out of curiosity. 

“You overreached,” Bruce accuses. He will not acknowledge her threat. Rule number two: admit to no emotion but rage. “You made a deal with Tim for humanity. If he fails, he leaves.”

This is once again educated guesswork on Bruce’s part. He’s still not sure what the Unseelie Queen is getting out of all of this. But Tim clearly wants to stay in the human realm. How else to punish him but to make him leave? 

“If he leaves, you’ve failed your bargain with me,” Bruce continues. 

The Unseelie Queen gnashes row after row of teeth to dust until her frustration works itself out. “You cannot make a deal on his behalf.”

“And you can?”

Bruce’s bargain with her depended, from the very beginning, on her right to bargain Tim away. He had believed, when she first handed Tim over, that Tim was a subject of the fae, a member of the Unseelie Court, and therefore hers to do what she liked with. A loyal subject. A spy meant to serve as the Unseelie Queen’s hand in a realm she could not otherwise reach. 

But Tim delights in the cuisine explorations Dick and Jason take him to. He soaks up Barbara’s computer crash courses, which is quite unusual for a fae; they are notoriously tech-averse. He yearns to be human. If there is any chance that Tim truly wants to turn away from the Unseelie Queen, then it is the morally right thing to do to keep him away from her. Batman has offered hand after hand to the most irredeemable villains; what is one more to a strange little creature who may still be a child by the standards of the fae? 

Moreover, it is in Bruce’s and his family’s own best interest to expedite Tim’s process of becoming human. If Tim’s deal with the Unseelie Queen doesn’t work, he may attempt to become human by eating one, or by stealing the skin of one, or whatever else a fae’s mind might think up. Suppose, even, that the Unseelie Queen has no jurisdiction over the humanity of her subjects. It made sense to Bruce that she could de-fae whoever displeased her, but he knows now that she makes promises vastly out of her reach. Perhaps she has no humanity to offer Tim. Then it is still in Bruce’s best interest to keep Tim away from her and teach him the morality of humans. 

“Very well.” The whistling shriek of wind in the trees escapes the Unseelie Queen’s nostrils. “What is your proposal?”

“I keep Jason, no strings attached.” Bruce doesn’t need Jason one slip-up away from dying again. “I keep Tim. If he fails his bargain with you–”

“Do you love him?” 

Bruce, caught flat-footed, adheres to rule number two.

The Unseelie Queen cycles through a magnificent number of eldritch recreations of faces, yet maintains the air of leering. “Do. You. Love. Him.”

Rule number three: do not lie to the fae.

“No.”

Another hiss akin to howling wind issues from the Unseelie Queen in fits and spurts. Not until she calms does Bruce realize she was laughing.

“He may be your responsibility now,” the Unseelie Queen concedes, “but he will always be mine before he is yours. You may keep Jason. But if dearest Timothy fails, he will return to me.”

Now it is Bruce’s turn to gnash his teeth. But he follows rule number one and hides it behind the stiff line of his cowl. “Three-fourths,” he suggests finally. “He’s done that much. Cancel the bargain you have with him right now and take one fourth. You’ll have him in the summers. I’ll take him the rest of the year. And I keep Jason.”

He waits patiently as an awful cacophony of bird calls, the clicking of beetles, and all the untempered rage of nature arises to spite him. The Unseelie Queen sways, collapsing into an eight-legged beast rampaging around the mushroom forest one second, then whirling into the purple sky the next. A tempest. A temper tantrum. The Unseelie Queen throws a hissy fit when she realizes that she cannot get away with her double-bargaining this time. That because of her habit of trying to have her cake and eat it too, her favorite toy is at risk of slipping away. Bruce always offers second chances, but in this instance he finds himself entirely out of sympathy.

“Fine,” the Unseelie Queen hisses once she finishes throwing a tantrum. “I accept.”

Bruce does not love Tim. Tim is not his son. He acts on moral imperatives. His heart opens glacially slow. If they had more time, perhaps Bruce would come to love Tim and see him as one of his kids. Perhaps he would not have had to fight the Unseelie Queen for 75% of Tim’s life. But the summer is escaping, and Bruce knows when compromises must be made even if he detests them.

Now he just has to tell Tim.

[banished-away]

artemis and dahlia are so good. the contrast between the supposed hero drizzt always keeping her at an arm's lenght, preferring the "soft look" she puts on to please him where she acts and looks softer and covers her tattoos and scars, knowing she had a painful past but not bothering to ask or look into it because it would shake his morals and he would rather pretend to not know than to actually confront it or even help dahlia through it. meanwhile the supposedly cold killer artemis with just a few looks saw the pain in her, let her have the kill against herzgo because he realized it was important to her even if he had just as good reasons and he didnt know dahlia's yet, and when they were alone he let dahlia be vulnerable to him, asked her about her pain, and when she was not comfortable to speak about it he just stayed near her and comforted her

[oooocleo]

behold the foiled september (=quarterly) postcard, for the 5eu and 10eu tiers on my patreon! if you subscribe to either of those tiers before the 31st of august (to avoid timezone complications) you'll get this willing sacrifice in the mail...!

patreon 🍃

[hood-ex]

Cass looks like a vampire

Nightwing #106

[zukkaoru]

could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship

[cleverreports]

We report: this is one we saw while lying on our back. We were determined to keep our mind as empty as possible, and so we made it our task to let our eyes follow it through its journey. It was a slow one. Our neck feels somewhat tender. Our mind is suitably empty.

[kingofthering]

F1 2023 SEASON stats recap

[alcairsei]

ayden is the dawnfather right? why does he pray to the "father" like he's talking to someone else? maybe i missed something... maybe because he's in a mortal body?

[cowbutchbait]

wanna leave my lipstick kiss print all over her cute face or whatever idk fuck you