#hes back to be killed lmao

[all-thestories-aretrue]

IRA????? HES BACK????? IRA!!

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 170

Once again on my Ras & Danny being training rivals thanks to time travel bullshit. 

Look, Danny knows about the league of Assassins, but he almost dies of laughter when he realizes it’s the modern name of the league of Shadows. He’s an adult now, has been for a while, he’s allowed to find the situation he’s found himself in amusing. Hell, his sparring buddy who is somehow still alive is laughing too. 

And no one else knows what’s going on, okay? This random man walked into their secret base, completely ignored the many assassins trying to stop him, and called their illustrious leader a “Little Bitch Man” and they are now fighting?

The fighting is familiar, but why the fuck is Ras cackling and saying things like “Ayreh Feek” back. Practically saying “Fuck you,” while laughing and oh Pit, they’re Bantering this is terrifying, why has Ras not won yet, why has this man not died yet and- bodies aren’t supposed to bend like that what the fuck- 

Ras on the other hand, has One friend, who is immortal like him, actually remembers the shit he complains about, is also down for saving endangered animals, and actually knows how to spar! It’s not a proper spar unless someone loses at least a hand that has to be reattached! And honestly, people nowadays should know that the proper greeting to an old friend is to instantly try to kill the other. 

[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."

[fascinationstreetmp3]

I have what you're looking for. High quality. Befitting a man of my tastes. I have a room over on Divisadero, not too far a walk.

[ceabu]

hs anniversary AND black butler season 4 !!!!!! fav media combo

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[izzystizzys]

Echo’s world has gone decidedly… wobbly. Blurry. Fuzzy at the edges, and what-will-you-else. He can’t feel his fingertips, is his first thought. Kriffing overdid it on the glowing green shots, is his second.

“Holy kriff, Echo, that manhole-cover underneath you is moving!”, Fives exclaims, third. Or more like slurs into Lt. Jesse’s shoulder, who is himself moaning indistinctly into the Captain’s pauldron, who is in turn swaying back and forth gesturing at Commander Cody.

And it really is - the manhole cover, that is, once Echo stumbles off it with a shriek. Jumping up into the now open air with sudden force, steadying and then scraping across paveme-

“Are those kriffing hands?!”

In an instant, seven highly drunk pairs of fists and one blaster, courtesy of Commander Cody (the only one present who’s sober enough to be legally handling it) are aimed in a circle around the cover slowly being shuffled to the side, then the hands reaching up to palm at the edges of the hole -

- and are slowly being lowered again when two white-red painted helmets are heaved into view, along with chest-deep groaning and grunting. Two armored Corries collapse in a heap at Commander Cody’s feet, who stares down at them in open-mouthed shock.

Slowly, Echo blinks. Slowly, he raises a hand to snap his fingers in front of his face. No, still there. Slowly, Fives grabs for a piece of flank underneath his blacks and twists. Echo yelps, and slaps his hand away hard enough to hurt himself. “OI!”

“B’have, boys”, Captain Rex makes a brave attempt to slur out as he sways on his feet, still staring down at the trembling heap of armor at their feet. Whoa, Echo didn’t know they had those kinds of funky armor designs in the Guard. Very avant-garde.

“That’s blood, Ey’ika”, says Appo.

Oh.

Slowly, Hardcase raises his right foot, inching towards-

“Don’t even think about it”, Commander Cody snaps, and Hardcase’s foot whips back to the ground next to its companion. Fives chortles. “Yeah, genius, those are Commander kamas - they’d put you down in a second flat!”

“Why would two Corrie Commanders go crawling out of holes in front of 79’s, huh, genius?!”, Hardcase retorts, somewhat justly, Echo feels. Next to him, Commander Cody frowns, and kneels carefully. “Good question, trooper. Fox, can you hear me? Fox’i-“

Which is when one of the bodies - Commander Fox, Echo realizes with a shudder, The Marshall Commander Fox - convulses on the ground, and an arm rears up to nail Cody face-first with the back of a hand, sending him sprawling back into the pavement with an undignified squawk.

“Thorn”, the sad figure that is the highest decorated clone in existence groans, still faceplanted into pavement, “Thorn, I’m hallucinating Cody. Thorn, tell him to shut up.”

“Shuddup”, Commander Thorn heaves, loyally. Cody makes an affronted noise, braced back on his shebs. “Sdubid Codeh.”

Commander Fox’s visor scrapes against the ground with his nod, a sound that sends the surrounding vod’e cringing. “Yeah, you go, Thorn. You’re my favorite.” A considering pause. “Oh, kark. I need to call in medevac - Fox to Stabby, Fox to Stabby - the kriffing Narglatches are back on the lower levels.”

The Commander’s comm crackles to life, as he heaves himself over with a punched-out moan - oh, yup, that dark patch’s definitely not paint, and are those teeth marks?! On plastoid??

“I’m going to wring Senator Hliii’s neck, and then I’m going to twist him into a human kriffing meat-lasso to catch every last one of his little pets with”, sounds through Fox’s comm, who just hacks out a laughcough in response. “Pinging your location now. Where’s Thorn?”

“Pr’snt”, slurs Thorn.

“Concussed”, adds Fox, “We crawled out forty levels to behind 79’s, so no one would see us.”

Awkward silence follows.

“Uh, about that”, begins Rex, only to be interrupted by a deep groan from Fox.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kriffing kidding me! As if Cody’s ugly mug wasn’t - WHAT THE KRIFF ARE YOUR KRIFFING ARC KARKHEADS DOING IN MY HALLUCINATION, REX?!”

“Shuddup, Rex”, Thorn moans bravely.

[purpurussy]

charli xcx's critically-acclaimed album BRAT (2024) is something that can actually be so dan howell-coded

[fairyroses]

He was about to kill you, Lex. Or divulge something you didn't want me to know.

— SMALLVILLE, "Forever" (4.21)

+ bonus from "Arctic" (7.20):

[dimonds456-art]

More of this AU, whoops

[flowersnax]

the tower, reversed (id in alt)

“You see Orion's mech tighten its grip on its gun and widen its stance as it braces itself. If you could see inside the cockpit, you’d see a very rare sight: Orion is visibly furious. Teeth bared, eyes wide, brow furrowed. He’s almost snarling, like a guardian dog protecting its flock. His hands grip onto the controls so tightly they’re almost shaking. It’s unclear whether he says this to will his mech further than he’s ever pushed it before, or if he’s saying this to the mech opposing his, but in his anger he almost roars out “COME ON, YOU SON OF A BITCH” and fucking unloads into the mech before him, a blaze of gunfire and spent casings as mech and human become one. Orion’s bullets rip into the mech, tearing it apart. He doesn’t stop until it lies inert before him, a pile of scrap still smoldering, where a mechanized chassis once stood. His mech slouches over, as if it had been holding its breath this entire time, and the adrenaline finally left its system.”

[gingermintpepper]

Why did Apollo favor the trojans in the Illiad?

So, dear Anon, I've been thinking about how to answer this question since I got it a couple days ago and I think I kind of want to make something clear before I get into it.

The Iliad by itself as a poem only covers some of the events that occur in the final year of a long protracted conflict that had been brewing for at least two decades and was an active war for ten. Within the space of the Iliad itself, the motivations and affairs of the major players are often referenced but there are many, many parts of the story that are not there because they belong to a different story cycle that has been since lost or was never recorded with words. In the space of the Iliad Apollo's motivations are questioned a lot - his pride is questioned by Poseidon who thinks Apollo should be just as angry at the Trojans as he considering Apollo was treated equally as poorly by Laomedon while they worked together. His honour is questioned by Hera who chastises him for taking the Trojans' side when he'd proclaimed that Achilles would live a long life and prosper at Thetis and Peleus' wedding. His own sister calls him a coward for refusing to fight when Zeus gives permission for the gods to go wild on the battlefield. For all that there's this image of Apollo in the Iliad as some staunch and unwavering protector of the Trojans, believe it or not, I largely think of Apollo as neutral in the war.

Which, I suppose, comes back to the question - why did Apollo favour the Trojans? The truthful answer is that I don't know. The Iliad and all its connected stories isn't something I've done enough research on to have an answer or a reference to an answer off the top of my head. The reasoning I'm aware of is that Apollo was a Patron God of Troy and really a god doesn't need any reason besides that to protect his people but it's not like Apollo abandoned the Greeks either. Calchas is the biggest example of that I can point to - descended directly from a priest of Apollo and one who attributed his mantic power to the god, Calchas was pivotal in ensuring the Greeks even got to Troy in the first place.

From a personal perspective however, I think Apollo was more dedicated to the house of Priam than he was the city of Troy itself. Apollo's affection for that house and all its members ran deep - from his admiration of Hecuba and Hector to his love and attempted courtship of Cassandra to his blessings given to Helenus, Deiphobos, Cassandra, Troilus and even his partnership with Paris - Apollo loved the house of Priam. When you think about the times Apollo lashes out against the Greeks, it's generally because they've done some nonsense to earn his ire. The plague was caused by Agamemnon disrespecting his priest, his aid in the slaughter of Patroclus was because he didn't respect him, his minor grudge against Diomedes too was because he tried to test Apollo's mettle and well, the less said about Achilles the better. Apart from his obvious favouring of Hector in the skirmishes, Apollo doesn't really oppose the Greeks. He has a ton of reasons to by the time the Iliad rolls around, including avenging the death of two of his sons, but he remains mostly satisfied with conducting his father's business and overseeing the war from a somewhat professional perspective. To me, it's always been less about Apollo caring about the fate of Troy as a city itself and more about him just really wanting to protect the people in the city that he's come to love and respect.

Of course, I encourage you to take my words with a big tablespoon of salt - like I said, I don't really know enough about the facts in particular to give a solid, confident answer but I can give you my interpretation of it. Maybe consult someone like @littlesparklight for a more comprehensive and grounded response 🤔

[mttonex]

joanfucius if one of them was a zombie and they killed people for body parts (lisa frankenstein au)

bonus doodles :3

[shima-draws]

I’ve mentioned it before but I’m a fucking sucker for unhealthy dependent relationships. There’s just something about them that is so. Chef’s kiss 👌

Anyway I’m still thinking about how Law was so attached to Cora and was so traumatized by his death that he literally devoted thirteen YEARS of his life to revenge killing Doflamingo. Even though all Cora ever wanted was for Law to just be free and live his life happily. And Law spending all his time in a hateful revenge spiral is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what Cora wanted for him. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. If the thirteen years of endless devotion to avenging his savior wasn’t enough Law 1. Named his pirate crew the Heart Pirates in honor of Cora, 2. Covered himself in permanent heart-themed tattoos in honor of Cora, and 3. Fashioned his Jolly Roger to be a mockery of Doflamingo’s and ALSO to honor Cora. Homie is a walking memorial for a man he only really knew for six months and again crafted the most intricate plan known to mankind to murder Cora’s killer. Because losing Cora fucked him up THAT much. Because even though Cora set him free, the moment Doflamingo shot him Law was chained to the memory of a man who no longer existed. Law literally fashioned his entire life down to his own appearance after Cora and it makes me so insane. I cannot even imagine what went through his head after Dressrosa I mean how do you move on after a thirteen year grudge is put to rest. What is he supposed to do now. Avenging Cora was literally his entire existence, his entire reason for living for half of his life. He needs therapy probably. If Cora somehow ever did come back to life Law would lose his fucking mind. The dependency is SO unhealthy and I am SO here for it

[todayisafridaynight]