#it either happens or it doesn't

[cosmicdreamgrl]

everyone on goodreads as i update my reading status for the ballad of never after: omg, prepare to be shattered at the end of it

me being a non-shipper of eva and jacks after the first book: sure, whatever you say

[is-not-a-bell]

Sleepy King

The Justice League Dark caught wind of a cult trying to summon the Ghost King. A being with power so terrible and great, that all of the chaotic Infinite Realms feared him. A true tyrant. Long ago it took the effort of ghosts equal to gods to seal him away into a permeant slumber.

And now this cult wishes to wake him and bring him to the living realm. It was a race against the clock to find the ritual site and all members were called on board, magic or not. Even Constantine looked stressed.

They did find the site.

But it was too late, the ritual was completed. The entire inner circle of runes glowed before being swallowed in a column of green light. The air filled with static and a ringing that made Supergirl crumble to the ground.

The light dissipated, but there was no great figure or being of pure evil. Instead there was a boy, a teenager. He laid on the ground curled up in his sleep. He was a ghost no doubt, dressed in regal clothing.

Despite this when he stirred, everyone froze. It seemed the cold hard ground woke him up. He got up slowly and yawned, revealing his sharp fangs. Once sat up he opened his bleary eyes to look around. He looked confused and tired, really tired.

"Where am I?" He mumbled. "I was trying to get some sleep." Constantine internally screaming, latches onto that last sentence. He glances over to Batman. He caught that last part too. Batman approaches calmly and crouches down in front of the boy king. Hardening his resolve, Batman takes on a gentle tone.

"Hey kiddo, sorry we woke you. Lets get you back to bed yeah?" The boy nodded in agreement. He pulled himself to his feet before looking around in a circle. "Where did my blanket go?" He asked rather sadly. Batman is quick to shed his own cape and drape it over him. "You can borrow my cape until we get you a new one." He nodded again, pulling the black fabric around himself.

John quickly summoned a portal door, while Batman led the King through it. John threw looks around at everyone. Everyone could tell he was mouthing the words. 'Find me a fucking blanket now'

Running on the logic of getting the king away from Earth, away from graves and the undead, that could give him power. The portal led to the Watch Tower.

Batman took advantage of the King's bleary state to send a base wide alert for all noncritical members to evacuate immediately. With a priority that death adjacent members leave first. "The stars are pretty." Bruce looked at the boy staring out the window in wonder. He almost looked like a normal kid, almost.

"Yeah they are, it's pretty late so we should get you back to bed." He nodded, going along with Batman's gentle coaxing.

He takes the boy to an unused bedroom. Making sure the room isn't dusty and that lights are dimmed. He glances back to see about a dozen different leaguers all holding blankets, one thought to bring extra pillows. The bed was pretty barren with only a single pillow and a thin bedsheet. So Bruce took a thick duvet, one of the fluffier blankets and a second pillow from his team before shooing them away.

The boy ended up keeping his cape, mumbling how it was warm. He tucked the boy in, before quietly exiting the room and turning off the light. He was pretty sure the King fell back to sleep before he even reached the light switch.

After the door shut, he made direct eye contact with John. "Constantine." They needed to figure out what the hell was going on.

[gender-euphowrya]

blazed post. tagged " #viral on the internet ". Babe that is not how this website works

[spam-extemporal]

Dcxdp where Danny has been working with a hero team (did Bruce adopt him? Did he help the teen titans and got told to join them? Idk) for less than a year, maybe they knew eachother for longer, but Danny has been living with them for some months.

Now, I imagined this as a "Danny has to flee to a different dimension after a giw attack/reveal gone wrong" but it can work with other scenarios, the important thing is, death days are important for a ghost's wellbeing, but nobody knows/remembers Danny's deathday or that it's important to commemorate the dead. Maybe he hasn't told anyone yet cause he doesn't want to be a bother, or doesn't trust them enough yet.

So Danny takes the matter on his own hands, each year he goes to a quiet corner of the local graveyard, where he has a piece of marble and a small vase, he usually buys some flowers for his memorial grave and makes some fudge as an offering.

This year wasn't gonna be different, he told his team/family that he was gonna spend the day out, he chose an elegant but comfortable outfit, made some fudge, and saved it on the fridge with a note that said "phantom, do not eat".

The next part might work better with a young hero team, cause despite the note, someone took a bite of the fudge for breakfast.

Danny clearly gets mad, they didn't know, but they just ate an offering, a great offense to the dead it was offered to.

It all ends in a big fight, Danny doesn't want to admit that it was an offering for himself (it just hurts to admit that nobody remembers his death), and the other person thinks he's just having a tantrum over some fudge, like, c'mon, they can make you some if it's SO important to you 😒

And I don't know how to end it cause it came to me while falling asleep and don't remember more T-T

[gordonfreemanspussy]

happy october :]

@scienceteamtober day 1: before the game

with lovely beautiful awesome forever character art by @winkreallyisntable goes CRAZY!!! full art below the cut.

[wantonlywindswept]

okay but like space jesus baby anakin declaring 'you can't kill a jedi' and the force is like 'oh shit fr? guess that's how it is now'

so jedi just. stop dying. they're confused but maybe okay with it? like some of the older ones still die of old age but when they're out fighting somehow they always make it through

palpatine is furious. he knows what's going on and tries to convince anakin that jedi CAN die, look at all these past instances, but anakin just looks at him like he's crazy 'okay but none of the jedi I'VE met ever die'

and palps is desperately trying to prove that jedi can die by actually killing jedi but like. no. they can't die. all his attempts to kill them fail.

and anakin is a nine year old child going 'well if i've never seen it happen then obviously it's not true'

10-year plan to wipe out the jedi foiled by one (1) overpowered boy confidently deciding that jedi can't die, seeing that jedi never die growing up, and thus continuing to believe that jedi cannot die even when there's a war on and jedi should DEFINITELY be dying

palpatine has time scheduled every night just so he can scream into the void in frustration

[sexy-sapphic-sorcerer]

i feel like these things are connected

[synchodai]

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood

the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens

hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]

Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92

the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter

Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”

Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".

[cozylittleartblog]

happy pride month. i did not make this up for th ememe

[threshasketch]

A little winter Shazam and Billy Batson doodle.

[mutantninjamidlifecrisis]

[chimerical-daydreams]

Art therapy.

I put Loop through too much already, they deserve a decent coping mechanism.

[gayofthefae]

Girl, I'm so sorry, but if you he really was gonna tell her he loved her before Argyle interrupted them, I would not want somebody to say to me

"I guess, I just, I don't know, I guess I just wanted to say that I love you."

You guess you love me? What, you don't know? Be sure then come back to me.

[starcurtain]

Sometimes I think about Aventurine in the moment he first discovered his Pathstrider abilities. The moment he first realized he could shield not only himself but also others. The very first moment he realized he could be a source of safety, rather than a burden--than a curse.

Sometimes I think about the hatred he must have felt for himself in that instant.

Where was this power when their camps were burned to the ground with every last one of their meager possessions? Where was this power when his mother died begging as he cowered, playing dead in a bath of the blood of everyone he knew?

Where was this power when his sister stood tall, a silhouette against the lightning, and used her body as the shield? Where was this power in the maze, when it could have spared the screaming child who was the first to die?

You could have saved them. You could have saved them. You could have saved them.

[jerrythebug]

The movie outfits are so awful because Max('s intern) designed them himself

[nattikay]