#meta kinda?

[panther-os]

This is just me thought dumping at 3am but it's interesting to me how when I was Ahsoka's age, I shipped Rexsoka like my life depended on it. But now that I'm Rex' developmental age at the end of the war, it's pretty much become a squick.

And your mileage may vary, you may be an adult who ships them or a teenager who doesn't and that's between you and your ao3 search history, but I find it interesting for me just.... When I was fourteen, I needed a way out of a shitty situation, and I'd been raised to believe that a husband was supposed to be that way out. And most if not all of the fandom agrees that Rex is husband material. So I gave Ahsoka a kind, strong husband to get her out of the war and out of Order 66.

Over a decade later, I identify far more with the clones than I do with Ahsoka. And I just can't imagine starting a relationship with a sixteen year old, no matter how traumatized, parentified, child-soldier-ified they are. I mean, first of all, I find it morally reprehensible with the life stage difference not to mention it's illegal in my country, but I just genuinely could not imagine it. I need a mental and emotional equal (and I have one who I love very much) and not only do I remember being sixteen and how unstable I was and how much I thought I knew versus how much I really knew with hindsight, but also a developmentally sixteen year old's brain is still growing. It's still making the pathways for feeling and dealing with emotions, still building up the critical thinking muscles.

I was "mature for my age". Ahsoka is "mature for her age". She's academically and emotionally intelligent, but she's still a teenager. And the difference between the way a teenager's mind works and an adult's mind works is just insurmountable for me. The way we take in and process information from our surroundings, the way we think and feel and plan changes so much as we age, and you really don't see it until you're looking back.

I think if Ahsoka got together with Rex during the clone wars, she'd look back when she was my age and she'd regret it. And if she didn't get together with him during the clone wars, I don't think she'd want to when she's my age.

Again, these are just my thoughts. I'm a big believer in ship and let ship. Please don't start drama on my post. It's not a bad ship and people aren't bad people for shipping it, it's just not my cup of tea and these are my 3am thoughts on why it's not my cup of tea.

[longlivechips]

My favorite Merlin head cannon is that Arthur knew Merlin had a secret that they didn't talk about because it would get him in trouble with the law

but he always just assumed the secret was Merlin that preferred men.

feat: this scene

[gale-force-storm]

Thinking about the fact that, to pull Gale from the stone and get him in the game at all, you have to decide to try to touch an extremely dangerous looking swirling mass of unstable magic. Something that is, objectively, a terrible idea

Like, the options it gives you are to either touch the sigil or leave, and if you leave you just... don't get Gale in the party

You have to take the risk. You have to let your curiosity override your common sense. You have to look at this unstable, possibly dangerous malfunctioning magic sigil and go "...Ok, but what if I poke it?"

In short, to get Gale in your party, you have to do exactly what he would in that situation, and indulge in a moment of reckless curiosity. And I just think that's delightful

[dyinggirldied]

Rosemary's Baby Misunderstanding

It's the usual: Ellie and Dan get injured and reverted back to cores which Danny basically adopts inside his own to help protecting them.

Meanwhile, every single mages, wizards and magical-inclined person sees this young, high-school-age boy carrying what must be a sort of equivalent to Satan's babies except this particular Satan is not really Satan and is more of the High King of Infinity Realm I guess.

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[nagitosstolenhand]

i don't like the growing opinion that people are being 'too hard' on deku for his failing to save shigaraki.

i've seen quite a few people complaining that a lot of the bnha-critical crowd are being too mean to deku for getting tomura killed, arguing that it isn't really his fault, and that hes a 16 year old child soldier who's been failed by almost every adult in his life, why should we be putting all of this on his shoulders? hes just a kid after all?

and the truth is, they're right. deku IS a 16 year old boy whos had the fate of the world thrust on his shoulders. but the story itself just plainly refuses to acknowledge this.

the narrative doesn't acknowledge how fucked up having a school that trains literal children how to be combo cop-celebrities is. it only tentatively acknowledges the fact that a universe having combo cop-celebrities is fucked up, and even then the only people who ever point this out are antagonists, who are portrayed and treated in-universe as untrustworthy. the narrative doesn't care how fucked up dekus circumstances are. the narrative treats deku like hes a fucking messiah here to touch the hearts of the evil depressed villains with his magical empathetic heart of gold before they get blown up or just sent to fucking superhell for daring to challenge the status quote.

deku isn't a person. he's barely even a fucking character at this point. he's a plot device, and a mouth piece for the objectively shitty themes bnha is trying to spout. the themes that tell you that if you're mistreated by society and want to do something about it, you're a villain. that disrupting the status quote and refusing to repent to some random teenage boy spouting empty platitudes at you means you deserve to get sent to fucking superhell. the themes that portray people fighting for civil change as mass murdering supervillains. the themes that look the audience dead in the eye and can call deku the greatest hero to ever live.

deku, who barely spared a second thought to lady nagant telling him the truth about the hero commission. who spouts meaningless platitudes about heroism and morality at nagant, and aoyama, and toga and shigaraki, when even the thought that he should question the world around him comes up. who's constantly talked about as this truly kind, empathetic person, but hasn't spared an empathetic thought to literally anyone who is classified as a villain. who listened to every authority figure around him except the ones who asked him to question his worldview. who saw la bravas tears, shigarakis various breakdowns, himikos plead for understanding, chisakis catatonic state, lady nagants truth, and barley batted a fucking eye. deku, who killed tomura shigaraki.

people don't criticize deku for failing shigaraki because they just hate deku. people criticize deku because of what he represents. because hes a mouthpiece for the atrocious morals and themes of this ideologically rotten manga. because any character he had was chopped up to bits in favor of the incomplete husk we have now. people criticize deku because hes the main character of my hero academia. theres nothing more damning then that.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[justrustandstardust]

i saw an incredible post on tiktok and i wanted to expand on it, because it's genuinely amazing. all the credit to @noesbf on tt for the idea that inspired these thoughts.

geto's character is threaded through with motifs of consumption. he takes things in, whether they be curses or daughters, and is spurred by intense empathy that ends up going in the "wrong" direction once he takes the entire jujutsu world under his wing.

when we're introduced to him in hidden inventory, our first glimpse is of him consuming a curse. he's also alone, in a dark alleyway, a symbolic image that parallels his journey throughout the story. he's a consumptive force, a facet of his being that ultimately leads to his undoing because he consumes the responsibility of "saving" the strong, who are burdened by the weak.

gojo, on the other hand, repels. he's an outward force, extending out a physical barrier that creates distance between his body and the world. where geto invites, gojo rejects. their abilities are constructed as diametrically opposed to one another's.

through the motif of gojo's abilities, this image captures their consume/repel dynamic in a singular shot. after riko's death, gojo leans into red, which repels. he focuses on growing stronger and in doing so, isolates himself from the world (and subsequently, geto). on the other hand, geto leans into blue, which aligns with the consumptive nature of his character. he harbours riko's death inside of himself and it festers, like a curse.

black holes are all-consuming vacuums. they subsume everything around them and create an inescapable vortex— once you're pulled in, you're never getting out. it will literally eat you and in doing so, makes you an everlasting part of it.

white holes, on the other hand, function in opposition to black ones along the same axis. where black holes pull, white holes push. nothing can enter them; they're doomed to a lonely eternity because of the force that holds the universe at a distance. nothing outside of it can affect what goes on within, yet it affects everything around it.

however, white holes can be subsumed by black holes. while nothing can enter them, if a white hole were to cross paths with a black hole, its consumptive force is so powerful that it would eat them too.

after geto and gojo experience a rapture in their relationship, gojo withdraws from the world, holding everyone at a literal and figurative distance. yet, even while he's alone, he's endlessly drawn towards geto. his eyes are bound but his soul isn't— it's tied to the piece of him inside of someone else, and gojo visibly feels the pull.

white/black holes also correspond to the colours associated with gojo and geto's characters (they align with their yin/yang dynamic, where yin (black) symbolizes darkness & the moon and yang (white) symbolizes light & the sun).

yin/yang are more than two halves; they form an indivisible whole. they become one another: light turns to dark, the moon replaces the sun in the sky, life transitions into death only to be born as life again.

if two celestial bodies exert oppositional forces upon each other, they function in equilibrium. geto's consumption was growing alongside gojo's repelling, reaching an event horizon when he took the lives of 112 villagers and forcing the two of them out of equilibrium. he continued to consume (curses, money, vulnerable people through his cult) until he died and took gojo's soul with him.

consumption can only exist if there's a repellant force pushing back. geto and gojo are not opposites, instead, they each contain the other— every yin has yang within it and vice versa.

they are borne of each other, they are unknowable without the other. they are more than matching; together, they are complete.

[murdrdocs]

Babe. Babe. Babe. I’m ovulating and it shows BUT. I’m thinking SO heavy abt how in MULTIPLE of ur luke fics you comment on his desire to cum inside, knowing damn well he can’t/that he’ll be able to talk her into it one day and it WONT leave my brain alone. I need a fic where reader finally lets him. I’m gnawing at the bars of my enclosure as I type this. down horrendously. send help.

creampie; MDNI – i did not realize that I did this that often erm

if he hadn't have told you verbally, with the way luke is fucking you, you would've been able to figure out what his goal was.

it was one he recently set, having been given permission by you, coupled with extremely enthusiastic consent.

truthfully, it was about time.

all of those sessions where you would see him staring longingly at your cunt after he fucked it, as if he were expecting something else to happen. all of those nights where he would hesitate before putting on a condom, plump lips parting as if he prepared to ask a question, and then promptly closing as he decided against it.

it all led to this: luke finally fucking you raw, leading himself to an orgasm that would make it all worth it.

he has you in a mating press, as if he needed to amplify his intentions even more.

the tops of your thighs pressed against your chest, your ankles and calves thrown over his shoulders, the position spreading you open to give luke access to the deepest parts of you.

he keeps mentioning it, clearly as entranced by it all as you are. little breaths of "so deep" and borderline gasps of "you feel me?" spoken into the stiff air.

you really aren't much better. the ferocity of his hips, the hunger behind each thrust, has made you go dumb. you can only respond in pornographic "yes"'s and "mhm"'s every so often. all of your energy and sense has gone to the feeling of luke driving himself in and out of you like you're nothing but a pocket pussy.

he'd already made you cum once, and another is steadily approaching. it comes closer and closer as you realize that luke is using your body.

it arrives when luke tells you he's about to cum, since you know what that means.

somehow, your brain begins to function and words form.

"please, luke. please cum in me. i need it so bad."

you sound desperate, like something out a video curated perfectly to appease audiences. but that's just how luke has made you feel. that's what he's done to you.

he presses one of your legs further down into your chest and begins to roll his hips into yours, abdominal muscles going taut as his eyelids lower to watch it all happen.

"'m close, baby. just a little..." he lets the sentence tailor off without a complete ending but its not necessary. not when his hips twitch and then still and then finally, he's spurting cum into you.

it's a foreign feeling, but in the best possible way. warm and wet, copious amounts, more than you would've expected. you think you felt him fill you out a little more for a second, but you can't even begin to consider that whenever luke pulls out and his cum follows.

you barely mourn the emptiness before luke's speaking to you.

"did so well, angel. but i need one more thing from you." he lowers your legs, kisses the tops of your calves. "push it out 'f me. need to see it, angel."

you do as told, letting his cum drip out and encouraging it a little with your last remnants of energy. luke's breath hitches, and then you flinch when his fingers probe at your entrance.

he apologizes in a soft whisper but continues his exploration. thick fingers sliding in his cum, smearing it over your cunt. when he gets up to your clit, teasing the bud with the newly added slip, you say his name. it's meant to be a warning, but it comes out more as a plea.

either way, he still chuckles through his halfhearted apology.

"can't help it," he reasons.

"just look so pretty with my cum leaking out of you."

[what-is-love-babey-dont-hurt-me]

Taking my own shot at a MK gijinka because it came to me in a vision. Don’t mind the swords in his back it’s like enrichment for him

[blorbologist]

Y'know, I think I figured out why the Hells still feel like a new low-level party to me, even though they're level 13 and almost 100 episodes in.

I don't quite think it's the lack of conversations, or the fact half the party's plot hooks are big ties to past campaigns - though that definitely plays a part.

... Bell's Hells still primarily rely on quest givers.

Most of their goals are given to them and do not feel organic to the party, and constantly remind us that the Hells are pretty much never the most powerful people in the room. Which is usually something you see with a low-level party.

NPCs offering jobs is not a bad thing; it's a very common plot hook. Matt has been extremely skilled with using NPC quest givers in those two campaigns. Not only do they provide an obvious plot thread, but they can put the party in the path of others (say, the Nein running into the Iron Shepherds while doing a job for the Gentleman and everything that came of that). And the Hells had a solid start with it too - Eshteross was an excellent quest giver!

The problem is that Bell's Hells have never really not had a quest giver.

Maybe it's a byproduct of the more plot-heavy structure of this campaign? But while prior parties have felt like they decided on their course of action and what they prioritized, Bell's Hells feels less like level 13 (13! Level 13!) experienced adventurers and more like an MMO group clicking on the exclamation point over an NPC's head. Where does the plot demand we go next? Who do we report back to?

They're level 13.

At level 13, Vox Machina had just defeated a necromantic city-state to clear their name and Percy's conscience. And, you know, the Conclave just destroyed Emon. No one was explicitly telling the group to gather Vestiges and save the world (though Matt guided them there), and they were usually among the most powerful people in the room. They chose which Vestiges to prioritize, which dragons to tackle when, even if the over-all plot was pretty clear.

At level 13, the Mighty Nein were celebrating Traveler Con (another PC goal, I'll note) after brokering peace between two nations, accidentally becoming pirates and heroes of the Dynasty. The Nein regularly chose what to do based on personal goals, not grand ones. Though definitely smaller fish than Vox Machina at this level, they were very independent and gaining solid political clout.

While we're at it: level 13 is one level lower than the Ring of Brass, who had a huge amount of sway over Avalir. They ended the world, and also saved it, while in the grand scheme of things being only a smidge more powerful than Bell's Hells are now.

Can you really see the Hells wielding that amount of influence, when they're constantly being told what to do next?

The god-eater might be unleashed, so Bell's Hells have no time to do anything but what is asked of them. No time for therapy unless stolen from Feywild time, no travel on foot and late-night watches. They haven't even had time to grieve FCG. Percy was grieved in the middle of the Conclave arc. Molly was grieved when half the party was still in irons.

Matt is in the very unfortunate spot of not being able to give the Hells the same agency as the other two parties. Not only because of the world-ending plot introduced so early on; they are surrounded by characters they know (and the cast knows) are stronger and wiser than them - the familiarity of the past PCs and NPCs is to their disadvantage.

Why would the party reasonably ignore Keyleth's task that will help save the world and go off on a romp? Why would the cast when they know well Keyleth has to be sensible and with the best intentions in mind? The stakes are just too high.

It means that the Hells still feel like they're running errands instead of pursuing their own destiny. Their accomplishments are diminished as just being parts of a to-do list, and any stakes feel padded by several level 20 PCs/NPCs standing 5 steps away ready to catch them.

This isn't Bell's Hell's fault, nor is it Matt's. It could be amended, I think, if the Hells are really left to their own devices for a long period of time without support and shortcuts (like during the party split)... which would be really tricky to pull off at this point in the campaign.

They're level 13. They're big fish, but they're stuck in a pond full of friendly sharks, so they don't feel big at all.

[veinsfullofstars]

“Any more stupid questions?”

Bonus live reactions to being saved from a Dark Matter ambush:

Started 07/13/24, finished 07/27/24, updated for color correction 11/02/24. | Kintsugi AU Masterpost

[knowmypower]

when your dad is the coolest guy in the tournament but also the biggest DORK

[luxaofhesperides]

Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!

Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.

He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.

What Duke gets instead isn’t even words. 

Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.

“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”

He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.

“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,

Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”

Jason looks him over critically, then nods. 

Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing. 

This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.

He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.

For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.

He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.

And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.

Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white. 

Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.

Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.

Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws. 

The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all. 

The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope. 

“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.

Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.

“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”

Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”

“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”

“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”

“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.

“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”

Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”

Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room. 

“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”

Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others. 

Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.

Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape. 

Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.

The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic. 

His left hipbone burns.

Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.

The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.

And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.

“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.

“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”

The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”

“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”

“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”

The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room. 

“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.

He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.

“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”

“You—what?”

“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.

Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances. 

“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”

“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”

Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”

“And you dreamed of me.”

“I did.”

“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”

“Okay.”

“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”

“I’ll help,” Phantom says.

“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”

“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”

Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”

“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”

“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”

“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”

There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.

Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.

“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”

“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”

Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”

“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again. 

“Let’s go find them, then!”

They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together. 

The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now. 

He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.

[godlessyaoi]

about a conversation between two dirks

[karvviie]

somebody on instragram told me to draw um. errrm. uh. well. uh. um. uh… uh. well uh

[originally posted august 2022]