#target on moments

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Archery Nemesis.

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[ofswordsandpens]

I fear that "fire bending didn't come easy to zuko" and "zuko isn't a prodigy" (both true) has somehow snowballed into "zuko is a bad or at best average fire bender".... which simply isn't true, especially by the end of book 3

[pinacoladamatata]

blink and you'll miss it moments around skyhold....

[taeiris]

the queer yearning squad

tender, emotional music plays…. and then-

prints, stickers and posters already up in my inprnt!!! shop here

close ups⬇️

[dysfunctionalupsidedown]

Hm. Will Byers may fear a lot of things, but lying isn't one of them.

[faeriekit]

The Foster Mother

Now on ao3 and VHS release

There was, supposedly, someone waiting for him in the green sitting room.

“…Why?” Tim asked. Most of the usual suspects had already come by to give their “condolences”—former Drakes Industries investors, curious about the newly orphaned heir; fellow socialites, once again flocking in to give and receive sympathies for their “close friends, the Drakes”; gawkers come to see what they could scavenge off of a dead family’s home, never mind that their child was alive.

“She claims to know you, Master Tim,” Alfred offered, kettle in his hand. He spent a moment deciding between different two canisters of tea; a sign of possibly difficult future conversation. “Her interest in your father's estate seemed quite…minimal.”

…Alright.

Tim was still in his formalwear. Dissolving Drake Industries would take at least another year, and plenty of future hours cementing the future home of certain resources in their dissolution, but the outfit probably was more appropriate for whatever oncoming conversation that was about to ensue than his planned change into Dick’s old hoodie and board shorts.

Okay. Tim steeled himself. The self-determination…mostly worked. Whatever. He trudged up into the green sitting room from the kitchen with his usual introduction ready on his tongue.

And then Tim walked into the room.

And then Jazzy was there.

*

Tim had been three, and Miss Jasmine had been his had been his third nanny. He’d outgrown the wetnurse early on, and his second nanny had been dismissed, so although Miss Jasmine was the third nanny, she was first nanny Tim could consciously remember.

She’d had red hair. She’d been very gentle with him.

She got him up in the morning and put him to bed at night; for the first time, there had been someone who sat with him until he was asleep, reading all sorts of books his parents had left to engage him with as an early genius. Then, when those were over and done as promised to his parents, they got unauthorized books from the library: silly books with made-up words, dinosaur books, books about teddy bears and adventures around the world.

Tim hadn’t been allowed to travel the world. Tim hadn’t been allowed a teddy bear. His parents had thought it would encourage undue attachment.

(It had been the same reason he’d never been given a pacifier.)

Miss Jazz had given him a knitted bunny. She’d said her dad had made it especially for him.

The toy’s name was Bunny and Tim remembered him being very soft.

She didn’t smile all the time, but smiles were rewards that were easy to earn. He finished his meal and she smiled. He finished an educational puzzle and she smiled. He was quiet all through her phone call and she smiled, and answered all his questions once she was done.

Jazzy had been the first person in his life who was there all the time. She’d kissed his forehead after the bath and kissed his scraped knees; she’d carried him in his arms when he was tired and sometimes even when he wasn’t. His parents had wanted him to be independent, proactive, and not clingy, but Jazzy had been someone who he could run to from his bed when he’d had nightmares and someone he could cuddle on her lap with when he’d cried.

She was gone when he was seven. He didn’t remember why. His parents had probably never told him, but still; he'd assumed he'd have found out why eventually.

Jazzy looked the same right now as she looked in Tim’s memories, although she was likely no longer a college student at a nannying gig. Her red hair was pulled into a high bun, her dress modest and conservative from her neck to her ankles. There was a backpack beside her foot. She was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, on the high-backed loveseat in the green sitting room.

She looked up when he came in.

Tim. Stopped in his tracks.

It didn’t matter. Jazzy—Miss Jasmine stood up as soon as she saw him, eyes alight with worry. Foggy memories were swimming to the forefront of Tim’s brain. He couldn’t move.

“Tim?” Ja—Miss Jasmine asked, teal eyes raking over his frame. Tim froze where he was. He didn’t move, wide-eyed and terrified for no reason at all when Miss Jasmine got closer to him, at a distance that was more appropriate for a conversation.

She stood there. Watching him. It felt like his mother had just come home from her trips with Dad, and a ghost of old terror wafted through him as he waited for her to decide he’d done something wrong. Her voice got softer. Her eyes got softer. Why was Tim feeling so wrong-footed?? It was only a former staff person!

“Tim?” her voice was so gentle. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—“

“M’s Jazz,” Tim croaked. Which. Wasn’t the level of formality he’d been going for, but better than Jazzy. He wasn’t a toddler anymore.

Miss Jasmine was so tall—honestly, was she taller than Bruce? She’d seemed insurmountable as a child; he hadn’t expected her height to truly be so statuesque as an adult.

(Or. Well. Almost an adult.)

She didn’t quite kneel down, but she did stoop lower, as if Tim was small and he needed to be on equal footing in order to have a serious conversation.

He could see all her freckles. Tim swallowed. It was too familiar. Everything about her was too familiar.

“You’re so big now,” Jazzy whispered, looking at his hair, his suit, his polished shoes. He didn’t feel it. “Oh, you’ve grown up so well.”

Thanks, Tim almost said. Something stopped him—something thick in his throat, to impassable to break through.

“I—“ he tried. He coughed. “Why…you… You’re here?”

Jazzy threw him an incredulous look, and then an incredibly wry one. “Well,” she drawled a little too primly, in the way that Alfred occasionally made obvious statements, “I’d think it obvious that when one’s parents have passed away, that those who care about you might come to check and see if you’re alright.”

Which. That didn’t make sense. Jazzy hadn’t come back for any other reason; she hadn’t come back for his mother’s funeral, nor when his father was injured publicly by a villain. Why start now?

“And,” Jazz added, seeing his visual confusion and distrust, “Your parents can’t exactly threaten me with a kidnapping charge for visiting you when they’re dead.” Pause. “Which I am sorry about. My condolences.”

Which. Whiplash. What a statement.

“Uh,” said Tim, who was rapidly losing control over the situation.

Jazzy stood again, and went back to her seat; she didn’t set herself down, though, as she only stooped to grab her backpack. “I am sorry for being unable to visit, although I really wanted to; you were at a very vulnerable age and had already moved into a class a year above you, and your parents should have been less hasty about replacing your main caretaker. The assassination attempts were unwarranted, but they did drive the point home that attempting contact was perhaps discouraged.”

“What,” said Tim. “Assassin what.”

“They were ninjas,” Jazzy offered, as if that was an answer. “Except the last one, which was a former marine. The point is that I do care about you, and wanted to ask if you had any idea where you’re going now that your parents are no longer…available guardians.”

Tim’s mouth opened. It closed.

Jazzy waited patiently.

“…How have you been?” Tim tried, resorting to a part of the script they hadn’t gone through yet.

Jazzy’s laugh was tired, but no less real. It was nothing like listening to his parents titter politely; he didn’t think Jazzy would even know how to fake a laugh. “Well, my brother told me that my former bosses had died, which was somewhat stressful. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy: I live with my brother and worked with him for the last few years. I was going to pursue medicine, but…well. The assassination attempts made it hard to interview for scholarships. I suppose that I could return to that now,” Jazzy mused, attention now elsewhere. She pulled the backpack off the floor and up into her grip. She opened it, and flipped through its contents. “How are you doing? I know that Wayne Manor fosters, but your parents were always rather…hands off. I thought the difference in levels of attention might be overwhelming.”

It was. Tim should be surprised how clearly she sees through him—

—But Jazzy used to watch him stim for almost a full hour after school, twisting Bunny’s arms back and forth until he could calm down. Seeing other people all day had been too much for him. Coming home from his parents’ parties had been similarly stressful.

She’d never been mad at him for it. She held him while he talked and stimmed and talked and talked and talked, and brushed his hair sometimes, or if it was very late and he was very young, helped him brush his teeth through all the medieval execution facts he could name.

“It is a lot to get used to,” Tim agreed quietly. He didn’t want to be ungrateful. He didn’t want to let on anyone about his plan to leave.

He had an out. The papers had already been filed; there was an actor waiting to play his uncle for a custody battle, ready for the fight.

Tim was ready to up and go. It was no hardship to leave all the good things here; anything beat making Bruce stick his fingers into Tim any deeper than they already were, compromising the dynamic they’d already established.

It was for the best.

“I can imagine,” Jazzy sympathized easily. “And I wanted to offer—well. I know there’s probably a lot of choices available to you, but my brother and I recently moved back to Gotham proper for the time being. He’s teaching astronomy courses at the university and I’m filing paperwork for Arkham patients. It’s not so privileged a home, but it’s quieter, and more central in town.”

…Tim’s heart skipped.

He. He couldn’t stop staring. Jazzy stared back at him, quiet and sure. Sure of what, Tim had no idea, but…

Why? Why would she want Tim? There was no way she would be able to get to his trust fund without his help, and he for sure knew better than to enable her ability to leech from him. The last time she’d known him, Tim had been a snot-nosed kid who cried all the time and couldn’t be normal for twenty consecutive minutes. His parents couldn’t even stand to be on the same hemisphere as him as a child. What appeal did this have for her?? What could having a teenager with severe baggage living in her house do for her?

And it’s not like there was any chance she knew he was Robin!

“Oh,” Jazzy suddenly interrupted. “I brought these for you, by the way. Your parents had tossed them out at various points; I’ve washed them since, of course.”

She handed him the backpack by the handle.

…Tim peeked inside.

On top was Bunny, still a washed-out faded sort of pink. He looked as fresh as he had the day when Tim’s parents had ”cleaned out” Tim’s nursery—in other words, a faded, a little gray, and slightly discolored from an old spaghetti stain. His button eyes were big and blue.

And beneath him were books that hadn’t passed his father’s muster as appropriately masculine reading material: The Velveteen Rabbit, with the cover a little scarred from a fierce attack of wet wipes. There’s A Monster at the End of This Book, with a goofy-looking Muppet on the cover, gold spine beat up beyond belief. Art Tim’s teacher at the time must have laminated and sent home; Tim’s dorky, crayon cat proved he would never make it as an artist, but attached to it was a photograph of a grinning boy with a bowl cut and a missing tooth.

Tim stared. There’d been purple marker on his hands and face. His grin looked���really bad, actually, like as if he was baring his teeth because he didn’t know how to smile. There was no formal grace there. Nothing to show the neighbors, nothing worth framing to put into the line of sight of the investors in the office.

Jazzy had kept it and brought it home with her. Jazzy had fished it out of the trash, and brought it with her to give back to him in Gotham.

It was crinkled like it’d been folded, over and over again. Further down in the bag was a crumpled certificate dedicated to “Timmy Drake, for: knowing a lot about octopi”, and a baby blanket Tim didn’t even remember. It had rocket ships on it. It looked as if someone had cut into it with scissors, although it had been obviously and brightly mended with red embroidery floss later on.

Jazzy had only been his nanny until Tim was seven. She had simply been gone one night, and Mom and Dad had been home for ten nights after without help before giving in and hiring Mrs. McIlvane and Mrs. Edith. Ms. Edith had never been so…permissive…with Tim as Jazzy had been.

Tim swallowed. He carefully put everything back into the backpack, unsure if he even wanted to keep it or not. It wasn’t like he could leave it here; he’d be gone, ideally, before the week was out. There was no point in taking it with him if he only planned to live with a stranger until he was eighteen.

“J…” Tim tried. He cut himself off before he could get too informal without prompting. “Miss Jasmine—“

“Just Jazz,” Jazzy corrected politely.

“—Why are you here?” Tim asked, ignoring how she’d technically already answered. He didn’t believe her. “What made my parents fire you?”

Jazzy’s expression turned…soft. Tim couldn’t look at her. Something horrible was welling with it, and he didn’t know how to cope.

“I’m here because I care about you,” Jazz repeated, and knelt beside him. She looked up into his face, and took his hand. Tim didn’t know why. He was practically an adult—he didn’t need this!

“And I was fired because your Mother overheard you calling me ‘Mommy’ on accident when you were tired. I suppose she was insulted, although I’d never know why; it’s not like she was ever home to bond with you in the first place.”

Tim’s throat closed. He missed his mom. He missed waiting up for his parents’ flight home, seeing their headlights outside the window, and knowing they’d bring home gifts from overseas. He missed using Mom’s perfume, and knowing he’d used more of the bottle sitting on her dressed than she ever had, but that it still smelled like her. He missed hearing his Dad telling all sorts of adventure stories and promises through the phone to be home for the holidays, even if Tim knew there was every chance he’d find some other way to spend the time back in Gotham.

And there was some small child in him who missed Jazzy, who hugged him and walked him to the library and made him soup from a can instead of fancy dinners and, who’d never needed to be waited for in the first place.

Tim looked at Jazzy’s round, freckled face.

He swallowed.

Tim moved out before the end of the week, as expected.

[mylastmoleculeofserotonin]

I’m convinced that people who hate Mabel have a) never watched the show and/or b) don’t have siblings. Because until they encountered Bill Cipher for the first time, there was nothing to suggest Dipper’s obsession with the journals was more important or valid than Mabel just wanted to have a normal summer with a whirlwind romance. And even after incident with the portal Dipper and Ford actively keep everything secret from Mabel and Stan so she has no idea of the stakes or what Bill is capable of. Add to that that her dreams of the future were all suddenly crumbling around her all at once, and it is perfectly reasonable if not expected that she would fall for an immortal chaos demon’s tricks.

Also, most of the stuff involving the journal that goes wrong is Dipper’s fault but he still pretends like he and Mabel are in it together. And those of you who are siblings know that Mabel takes it extremely well. Like if I had accidentally sold my body as a puppet to a demon and the only way I could ask my sibling for help was through a sock puppet, I would expect them to help, but only after they spent a good half hour laughing and making fun of me with the additional consequence would be that any time I ask them for a small favor in the future, they would remind me that they were the one to save me from my stupid mistake, so no, they won’t pass me the salt.

(Also, can we just take a moment to see the giant double standards when it comes to the romances that Dipper and Mabel’s have. When Mabel pursues a romantic people treat it as irrelevant and getting in the way of the plot even when it doesn’t. But when Dipper tries to win Wendy’s affection, people expect Mabel to drop everything, sacrifice her pet, mess with time travel to help set up a scenario which Dipper can win a carnival game as a flex.)

[bylrndgm]

MIDDLE CHILD CORE The "Mike Wheeler in Every Episode" Outtakes #1

[pianokantzart]

Bowser after getting defeated a second time: Darn it! I'll get you next time, Mario! >:(

King Boo after getting defeated a second time: Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate Luigi since we've met. There are 387.44 million units of ectoplasm that make up my apparition. If the word "hate" was engraved on each iota of those hundreds of millions of units it would not equal one-billionth of the hate I feel for Luigi at this micro-instant...

[starry-bi-sky]

im on my hadestown bullshit again but im also still on my SVSSS bullshit too so au where Shen Yuan gets transmigrated into a nameless NPC sometime after Bingge merges the realms and becomes the demonic emperor over like, basically everyone. And Shen Yuan manages to become an immortal cultivator and has a few years to himself to explore the world he's in, conveniently avoiding Bingge the whole time. Until eventually Shen Yuan joins what is essentially a traveling theater group.

They all love the strange stories he tells, ones he claimed he learned from far away places, and eventually ask him to write one as a play so that they can share it with the world. He does one better and writes a musical and slightly xianxia-izes Hadestown so it fits with the times better.

Eventually they learn everything, the music is st up, their lines learned, and the group rents out some kind of low-class stage for a night in a town that's neither too big nor too small. One that Bingge is conveniently passing through.

The actor for Orpheus falls 'sick' the opening night, and Shen Yuan gets convinced into taking the role by his. He has the prettiest voice, and he knows Orpheus' lines and character the best! Shen Yuan agrees.

Bingge attends that night too, and sits in the far back, in a seat where nobody can see him that well.

There is nothing to prepare him for the Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Not the actor, who looks distressingly, uncannily similar to Shen Qingqiu, from the sharp curve of his jaw to the sound of his voice. It's Shen Yuan's saving grace that he has just enough differences that Bingge doesn't fly to his feet immediately.

Not the character Orpheus either. Who shares a distressingly similar worldview to the one Bingge once had a long, long time ago. A young man, a boy really, with so much hope for the world around him to near the point of naivety. Who believes that there is still good in the world and the people around him.

There's nothing to prepare him for Epic III. A song the lone Orpheus sings to convince Hades to let him and Eurydice go, one that rends Bingge of his flesh and leaves him feeling raw and wanting.

Suddenly he's no longer watching the stage; he's on it, standing in Hades' place, jaded and bitter and cold and reigning over all. Having become cruel like Shen Qingqiu once was. He stands in Hades' place, tall and imposing and powerful.

And there is a shadow of the past sitting at his feet. A boy in love with the world looking up at him, stripping him down to his soul, and asking him where he's been. Bingge stands in Hades' place, and just like that, becomes a man again.

[yashley]

imogen & fearne in c3e94

[fatedroses]

Two tanks without their emotional support healers.

[rubyvroom]

we can all agree this is unacceptable, right?

“I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking is a normal thing to do to people who are famous,” [Chappell Roan] says in the aforementioned TikTok, which has since gone viral. “I don’t care that it’s normal. I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it OK. That doesn’t make it normal. It doesn’t mean I want it. It doesn’t mean that I like it. I don’t want whatever the fuck you think you’re supposed to be entitled to whenever you see a celebrity.” [...] Roan is far from the first artist to push back on these expectations. She’s the latest in a string of young, mostly female pop stars, like Eilish, Doja Cat, and Reneé Rapp, who have expressed their discomfort at the parasocial expectations that come with being in the spotlight. It’s a risky sentiment to share in a world where one of the worst things a woman can be is rude. But at this point, it can’t possibly be shocking. In her 2022 documentary, the actor and singer Selena Gomez said, “Everything I’ve ever wished for, I’ve had and done all of it. But it has killed me.” That sums up everything that’s wrong with the current fan–artist dynamic. We are asking too much, and we are chasing a level of intimacy that simply isn’t sustainable. In the process, we reward the stars who try to give us every piece of themselves, and we find reasons to villainize the ones who make an effort to protect themselves.

We're overdue for an internet Come-To-Jesus moment about this

[why-is-it-always-autumn]

We've all heard of "Barry Bluejeans was the roadrunner to Kravitz's Wile E Coyote for like ten years post-Stolen Century pre-Gerblins" (impeccable concept, always hilarious) but consider:

Kravitz has attempted to reap Merle-Fuckin-Highchurch at least 4d6 times since he first appeared on this plane. Through a series of miscommunications, lucky rolls, slapstick shenanigans, and the occasional bout of divine intervention, he has never once succeeded.

Merle is totally oblivious to both his alleged crimes and Kravitz's increasingly desperate attempts to charge him for them.

[non-newtonian-id]

hate it when ppl are like "shen jiu DID have chances at happiness!! he just didn't take them!!" bc... no he didnt? he was a character in a book who was created to be a jealous asshole, no chance at happiness he ever had was actually real because if he'd been happy he couldn't have fulfilled his role in the story

none of the characters in PIDW actually had free will, their actions were dictated by what the book's audience wanted because airplane was writing it to pay rent

of course he didn't take any chances at happiness, he was written to be a miserable bastard in order to fulfill his role as an antagonist, he couldn't be happy in that story because then he wouldn't have done what was needed to move the plot along

airplane outright states that the reason he wasn't a more complex character in PIDW was because when he tried to hint at there being more to shen jiu his readers hated it, so he stopped and just made him one dimensional

[oneshotprincess]

kind of want fics where orion doesn't resurrect as optimus prime just to see how megatron would deal with learning that choices made in anger cannot be undone...