#he looks older than everyone

[armando-triplepapito]

Everyone is so mean to Ricardo Velez (Mario’s actor)!

What do people expect? Everyone has to age, no need to be mean about his appearance!

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

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

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

[midnightcrows]

Tlt sketches

[tomatoart]

me if drawing inconsistently was a job 💸💰

[mmelolabelle]

look I don’t know what award-winning journalist and author daniel molloy said to make louis look like a kicked puppy and armand to huff like a 1950s housewife whose appetisers were just insulted —

but he was absolutely right and they deserved it

[typosandtea]

Nobody including me posts about their ocs enough so please please please reblog reply or whatever with some oc tidbits!

[ryssbelle]

Some of y’all portray John Dory as so old and yeah he is older and you can do whatever you want forever as an artist or writer but he is 30 years old and yall draw him like his pushing 50

Mans got one foot in the grave and the others going in the second he his 36

Bonus:

[createandconstruct]

Toshinori and Inko finding out their pregnant a year into marriage and just sitting staring at the test like...oh. This was not exactly in the plan...nor did they even think it was possible??

They tell Izuku first of course and when they do he actually thinks they're kidding! Haha! That's actually...pretty funny, guys...uhhh...why do you both look so serious.......oh, oh shit. OH. All Might and Mom are having a kid? He's going to be a brother? In his twenties??? HUH?

Cut to nine months later and Izuku's holding his little sister, Toshinori beside him, arm around his shoulder, as Inko watches on with love and pride, because their family feels even more complete than it was before.

[deathnguts]

Regulus gets hit with the classic de-aging curse of some kind and he’s back to being four years old and emotionally volatile so they call sixteen year old Sirius to watch over him until the affects subside to try and give him a sense of familiarity and when he comes in Regulus is throwing a tantrum on the ground but he immediately straightens up when Sirius tells him to calm down and it’s honestly super jarring and only gets worse when regulus tells Sirius “desole papa.”

[merriclo]

i love the idea that Wild is a big brother to basically all of the kids in his Hyrule. it’s such a good heacanon that i never see utilized.

[undertheredhood]

au in which the real reason why tim drake is still seventeen years old is because he was turned into a vampire and he’s really bad at hiding it.

surprisingly, his family who are the supposed ‘greatest detectives’ have not caught on yet even though tim has slipped up in front of them many times.

[lokh]

would u trust me to be able to carry heavy grocery bags

[starry-bi-sky]

Clone^2 - Separation Strikes

"Why do I have to go?" Damian asks, surly and accent-thick, it sounds more like a demand and a whine at the same time. Sitting on the kitchen table with his arms crossed, in a green t-shirt that Danny bought him at a whim when he was at a thrift shop, and black shorts, he's never looked more like a kid. There's a little backpack leaning against the table leg, Damian begrudgingly picked it out when they went shopping.

His English has grown in leaps and bounds since Danny found him -- er, or more accurately; since Damian was spat out in front of him. -- and very little did they have to use the translator on Danny's phone these days.

Which meant one thing: Damian can start attending school comfortably now. And 'go' was the Amity Smiles Child Care Center. Danny and Jazz went as kids until they were twelve, and Mom and Dad actually managed to convince the center director to let Damian enroll for the summer.

And it was summer; Damian starts today.

"Because," Danny says, trying and failing to hide the smile pulling on his face, his heart warm and soft, and also laughing at Damian's expense; "being cooped up in the house all day isn't good for you, and you're starting school in the Fall. And, in Jazz's words: you need to have interactions with other kids your age for the benefit of your social development. And besides, it's only for the morning."

Damian's nose scrunches up, and his eyes roll so violently that for a moment, Danny thinks about joking that he'll get his eyes stuck like that. He holds his tongue; his little brother already looks like he's five seconds away from committing an act of violence.

"I don't need social interaction." Damian sneers, his cheek in his hand; a neverend pool of pride. "I am--"

"The Blood of the Demon Heir, better than everyone else." Danny cuts off, waving his hand in dismissive circles, his voice mockingly deep. Damian's brown skin darkens in embarrassment, and he scowls at Danny. "I know, bud. But Jazz is right, -- don't tell her I said that, -- you should be around kids your age."

Especially when he starts First Grade in the Fall. Honestly -- Danny was a little nervous to send him to the center. Damian's long since cut the habit of trying to kill or otherwise maim people, his palms ache-burn with gentle reminder, but his tongue was as sharp and as cutting as his sword. He still struggles with trying to quell it when he's upset. Vicious child-weapon that he once was, and will never be again.

Danny knows that it comes from a place of fear and defense, that Damian lashes out because that's what he's been taught. That at the end of the day, he doesn't really mean what he says, and he's learning to express himself better. But the other kids don't know that, and kids can be unforgiving and cruel.

Danny just...

His slow beating heart sighs, melancholy settles behind his lungs.

He doesn't want Damian to be outcasted. He doesn't want him to be alone.

Not like he was.

Damian sneers again, but says nothing, his shoulders crawling up to hide his ears like a turtle receding into his shell. Danny watches him silently, leaning against the kitchen counter with his own arms crossed. The clock hanging on the wall ticks in their ears -- it's almost time to go.

He watches Damian, careful, and so he sees it when his little brother's stone-shell pride and petulance shudders, and cracks. The darkened furrow of Damian's brows weakens, and for a moment, slants back.

Ah, Danny thinks, his own shoulders slumping. Epiphany washes over him, and his sad-heart soothes in warm understanding. So that's what it is.

His head tilts, and his hair spills over his shoulders, messy and fluffy, tickling his neck. Some of his bangs fall into his face. "Hal 'ant easabiatan ya habibi?" He asks, voice low and soft. Just as Damian's English has improved, so has Danny's Arabic. He still stumbles over himself some days, and Damian says his accent is trash, but they can have whole conversations now in Damian's mothertongue.

(Danny was incredibly proud of himself for it.)

Damian's face darkens, his blush spreading across the rest of his face, and he ducks his head down. Grown-out curls, black-brown and springy, falls over his eyes. "La!" He yells, loud and indignant, and not at all convincingly. "La 'asheur bialtawaturi!"

He was nervous. Danny can see it now, in the hunch of his shoulders and the tightness of his face, and faintly, he can feel it too. In the ecto-rich air of the Fentonworks House, it thrums, barely-there, like a hummingbird behind his lungs.

Danny can't stop the little, fond smile that forces itself across his lips and upticks the corner of his mouth. "It's okay to be nervous, little brother." He says, he sounds like Jazz when he says that. He doesn't think she'll mind him borrowing the nickname.

He pushes himself off the counter, and Damian refuses to look at him, hiding behind his hair and in his shoulders. It takes three long strides for him to reach the table, and Danny turns, plants his hands on the ledge, and hoists himself up. Right next to Damian.

Damian leans into him easily when Danny's arm wraps around his shoulders and tucks him close to his heart. He can feel his ear against his ribs. Danny hunches over him, resting his chin on Damian's head. "It's so okay to be nervous, actually. I was nervous, Jazz was nervous." He tells him, scratching the blunt edge of his nails across his scalp. "Everyone gets nervous."

"'Ana last aljumiea." Damian mumbles, as small and feeble as he was the night on the OPS Center balcony, realizing that his mom and the League weren't coming for him. Realizing that he was replaceable.

Danny's half-working heart squeezes; in grief, in rage, and his faucet eyes sting. He breathes in carefully, and presses his nose into Damian's hair in a loving faux-kiss. "You're right, you're not everyone." He says, steady and strong, because if he's not a pillar for his family, who else is he?

He can feel Damian's eyes flick up to him, and Danny smiles into his black-brown curls. Tilts his head to squish his cheek against him instead, hand dropping to thumb below Damian's lashes. "You're Damian Fenton," Because the adoption went through a few weeks ago, and he's still riding that high, "You're my baby brother. O' Artist Extraordinaire, Kickass with a Sword, Vegetarian and Wonderful Co-Ghost Hunter."

Damian tries to stifle a smile, and fails. Score! Triumph gathers in Danny's gut, his smile grows wider. He squeezes Damian tight, and only releases him so he can look him in the eyes. "And if anyone gives you a hard time at school, and I mean anyone--"

Danny has bad memories of the teachers looking the other way when the other kids were bullying him, all because he was a Fenton.

And Danny, bleeding heart, bleeding hands, loves his family more than he will ever love himself, will never let Damian experience the same injustice. Not if he can help it.

His eyes narrow, and the buzzy-film of ectoplasm covers his eyes, making them glow, "--You tell me. And as your awesome great big brother-and-technically-dad-but-only-biologically, I will handle it."

Damian, wonderfully made, full of light, his little brother Damian, giggles weakly at him. A sound that's worth it's weight in gold. The scary eyes dissipate, and Danny matches the sound with a cock-eyed, impish grin, dragging Damian into a soul-crushing, too-tight hug. The kind that only annoying older brothers can give. "Got it?"

That gets a proper, if short, laugh out of Damian. He wriggles in Danny's arms, trying to break free. But Danny does calisthenics, his arms are as big as Damian's head, so it doesn't work. "Understood, now, daeni 'adhhab ya 'akhi!"

Danny laughs, loud and bright, and loosens his hold just a smidge, only so he can adjust his grip and hop off the table with Damian still in arm.

"Never!" He crows, hoisting Damian slightly. One eye flick at the clock, and in one quick move, he secures Damian under one arm like a football, and hooks his foot under the strap of his backpack. Kicking it up, he tosses it into the air and catches it with his free hand, and slings it over his shoulder. "Now, to the car, my boy! Before we're late and Mom and Dad get charged."

Damian groans, childish and dramatic and long, but his face is all squished up with a wide grin and glee. Danny can taste his joy beneath his tongue.

"And, if my little pep talk didn't encourage you," He says, reaching the door to the garage, flipping Damian up onto his hip instead. "If you have a good day today, I'll make you bal mithai when you get back."

Like all kids at the promise of sweets, Damian's eyes widen and glitter. Danny loves seeing Damian be a kid, it's his favorite thing in the world. "I will!"

[rawrsatthetree]

Been seeing it circulate on Twitter that Cazador looks younger than Astarion and I’m sorry but no he fucking doesn’t 😭 Cazador looks significantly older than Astarion like he’s closer to Halsin’s age.

[smallest-moon]

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 12 my beloved ♡

[kavehater]

I support girls but NAH THIS IS REACHING “if you look carefully LIKE REALLY CAREFULLY 🤓☝️”