#the two body problem

[i-ate-the-rats]

just think about it.

[symphonyofsilence]

What drives me even more insane about this scene is how you'd expect Gojo to imagine High school era! Geto in the crowd. Or at least not the cult leader, worst of all the curse users Geto Suguru. But no, it's the cult leader Geto. It's Geto as Gojo last remembered him. As Geto last was. Whatever choices Geto made, wherever his choices led him and them, however he was, whoever he was, traumas and messed up ideas and bad choices and ill reputations and scorns and all. Gojo wanted Geto Suguru there. Not any ideal version. Not any "what if" version. Not any "at some point in time before things went downhill" version. Not any "when your hands weren't stained with innocent blood" version. He knew very well what he wanted. And he wanted it all the same. He wanted Geto Suguru. However he was. He just wanted him to be there. He just wanted him to be.

And he didn't want him to help him, he didn't want him to fight with him even if they were strongest together and always fought together for a while. He just wanted him to be there in the crowd and cheer him on. He just wanted him to stand there and give him one of his sweet, heartwarming smiles that shaped his eyes into crescent moons. He just wanted him to be. Then even if Gojo had died in the end anyway, he would have been satisfied. It would have been worth it. Only if Geto was there.

[starry-bi-sky]

i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.

He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.

And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.

And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.

Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.

Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."

There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.

It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.

Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.

At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.

"Do you like to do anything?"

Nothing. Just silence.

Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.

Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.

Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.

And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.

He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.

Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.

So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.

"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"

"Don't."

He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.

Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"

"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."

It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"

The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."

Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."

And they fall back into silence.

Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."

He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.

(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)

At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.

Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.

("Tucker told me once--") ("Tucker?") ("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")

(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)

(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)

It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."

The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."

The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.

When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.

Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."

When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.

Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.

[venomgaia]

Hey do u think any of the district 23 chefs have ever gotten 'ingredients' from R corp. All that meat has to go somewhere, unless R corp is pulling a soylent green

I'm sure there are plenty of places that could actually manage to use 'ingredients' from R corp seeing as there's absolutely a surplus! Although, anyone who's procuring fresh 'ingredients' for the sake of the culinary arts...may end up with more of a mess than they bargained for...

[beneathsilverstars]

you know what fuck you [loopifies your figure drawings]

original normal drawings under the cut lol.. for the art-heads

[hansama]

I tried to sketch Papyrus in both my art style and @skull-otaku xD

[roots-symphony]

do you think the reason agatha’s trial felt weird is because she was the only one who did not actually buy into the mythos of the road since she knew the truth? like that was why no perspective change and all the other reasons why people thought it was a fake trial

[oodlenoodleroodle]

"Most people are incorrectly taught from childhood that disability simply means that something is medically wrong with an individual person’s body and/or mind. Since the 1960s, disability activists and scholars across the globe demonstrated that a more accurate way to understand the lived experiences of disabled people is by using a social model. On a social model of disability, one distinguishes between a person’s impairments, the way one’s body and/or mind is different, and [a person's] disability, the social responses to one’s impairments. As the disability studies 101 example goes, you may use a wheelchair because of a spinal impairment, but what disables you is a world without ramps and lifts, with stigma and discrimination in education, labor, and so on. It was a social model understanding of disability that led to Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and that paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It is not an exaggeration to say that a social model approach to disability underwrites every major legal, social, and political advance for disabled people in the US as well as across the globe. Following on the heels of such advances, research in social epidemiology, public health, and qualitative and quantitative work spanning the social sciences and humanities continues to bolster the claim that a central reason why disabled people face worse health outcomes is due in large part to socially controllable factors, as the ACDWGD report demonstrated."

Source

[ikram1909]

“only hector left” are you forgetting this

https://x.com/evtpe/status/1718934508345651262?s=46

This interaction sends me because it looks like Hector was fighting for his life to get Gavi's attention 😭😭

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all! Another weird question for you: How long do you have to fast for a blood sugar reading to count as a fasting blood sugar measurement? Also, does drinking soda (like, full sugar soda) slowly over the time before the blood test count as not-fasting? Asking because I keep testing* in the fasting blood sugar range when I am pretty sure I am not supposed to. Like, two hours after eating a meal when I've been slowly drinking soda the whole intervening time, or half an hour after drinking a whole full-sugar gatorade *with the home blood sugar test thing, not like doctor's office tests. though I test in the fasting range there too? I do know the word for the tester thing but I am brain fogged at the moment

[nientedal]

The Reef and the Deep

For @buginateacup's fic Haute Water, in which the trio goes to the Met Gala in Minion's designs. These were so much fun! I learned a lot!

Image descriptions: Roxanne and Minion and Megamind in extremely fancy outfits.

Roxanne's dress is cut sharply up the thigh and looks like a wave rolling in - sleeveless, strapless, it has a bustled train of tulle scattered with seed pearls and a waist gather with a seashell and corals. The top of the bodice also has the same seafoam tulle, which wraps around Roxanne's arms. She is wearing a necklace and crown of coral and has iridescent blue highlights on her face. She is holding Minion aloft in a net of pearls. Minion looks extremely pleased with himself and is wearing pink eyeshadow.

Megamind is wearing ink-black and very sharp fins on his ears, a net of black pearls on his head. He has spines of very dark blue rising from his shoulders and arms, and similar spines falling in a narrow overskirt from his waist. He has lionfish-fin spines framing the sides of his cape, which is very dark blue inside and black outside. He has no shirt, but is wearing fishnet sleeves with scattered black pearls, and black armor on the backs of his hands and fingers. His boots are laced all the way up his thighs.

Both are on a pinkish-lavender background with a faded splash effect behind them.

[evelynpr]

Chinese Tencent version: In the cold mountains of painful labor they shared knowledge and food, nurturing fondness and trust despite their circumstances.

British Netflix version: In the cold mountains of painful labor they shared some ideas ig, held hands, and started making out in a tent. This clearly shows how they form a genuine trusting bond despite their circumstances.

[girl4music]

“What I have heard is that it’ll be more truthful in the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle in that it will show who they are and their love for each other in a new way. All I can hope for is that it keeps the layers to the characters as rich as they were with the original show in that it’s not just that they’re partners, it’s that they are everything to each other.” — Renee O’Connor about how she hoped the thankfully now scrapped Xena reboot went in how the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle would be written and portrayed.

I love so much the way the roles reversed in that as Xena becomes softer, Gabrielle becomes harder because we know it only happens in this way because of how ride or die they are with and for each other. That the depth. intensity and authenticity of the connection, relationship and friendship that they had was so immense that it influenced their personalities and changed each other emotionally and they became each other in the end as my character study thesis goes into great detail with explaining because they are one soul in two bodies for eternity. Which isn’t merely just soulmates but also twin flames in that they constantly navigate this match and mirror dynamic throughout all of their soul’s life experiences almost as if there’s an eternal dance between them where they keep shifting from the lead partner to the follower partner and there is always that equilibrium where they are just perfectly balanced as one nature and you just don’t get that in just any romantic ship. You might get a soulmate connection but you won’t get the characters irrevocably changing and evolving as individual people and as a couple because of that connection because love stories just aren’t that EPIC in TV art/entertainment. They’ll never be as profound as the one between Xena and Gabrielle where they truly were - as Renee said - everything to each other.

I think about how in the episode ‘Little Problems’ Aphrodite temporarily puts Xena’s soul essence into the little girl Daphne so that she would have a second chance at life. I’m just thinking about how that was essentially 3 individual soul essence’s in just one little girl’s physical body. That of Xena, Eve and Daphne.

As insane as the idea of that sounds in my INTP head, the plausibility of it in the Xenaverse isn’t because they do this more than once across both shows. Twice in Xena. The first time Ares is responsible (Succession) and the second time Aphrodite is responsible. And maybe the idea does require some divine intervention.

So the question is - based on my interpretation and conclusion of my thesis - who does it the third time?Who is responsible for returning them to their roots as a nondual entity? As the fundamental Yin and Yang? Because if an idea like this is ever-present in the Xenaverse as a thematic narrative in soul hopping, body swapping, reincarnation, and an exploration of AU, then what’s stopping that from being an ending?

It might be an insane idea in any other fantasy TV show - but in Xena, it’s a pretty common storyline. Temporarily, sure, but very possible as an endgame. The more I watch the show and the more I delve into the nuances and intricacies of its characters and themes and narratives, I am reminded over and over again just how much this idea makes sense because they do effectively set it up to work out that way in that Xena and Gabrielle disappear into each other.

And it’s like - okay, so they’re now just going to be one human being. One person with two legs and one head. Now what? Where does their story go on from there? Well, it can go anywhere forever. It’s like what Steven L. Sears said: They’re between the lines of the Mehndi. The body or physical manifestation of it is temporary, but what’s between those beautiful patterns is eternal. The spaces in-between which you must have to even be able to witness such beauty in the Mehndi design.

So they’ll separate in another lifetime, another Universe, another body, but then they’ll join back together and it will always be a continuous journey for Xena and Gabrielle - or whatever their names are in and at that moment - because they are the human representation of yin-yang and what you can learn through them as both individual characters and a character dynamic is love - be it whichever way you wish to interpret the nature of that love. The point is that it’s an EPIC love story first and foremost and that everything else about the show becomes far more valuable when you view it as that from episode one. That way even the early episodes are significant in terms of the trajectory of their romantic arcing, even when - especially when - they are paired with others because it is a romance what they have. It’s just that it’s not just a romance. There’s so much more to it.

And for me - that’s exactly what makes it even more of one. It’s the fact that it can’t just be pinned down as romantic love but all other different types of love too. It is that - absolutely. But it’s far more than that to the point where there really isn’t a necessity for it to arc romantically because the journey is why you want it to. And the journey is immense. Nothing could eclipse it. There’s not a single WLW love story out there in the TV art/entertainment hemisphere that can come close to what Xena and Gabrielle have. They are the ultimate. It’s bitter suite to think that the first ever WLW love story we had in a TV show was also the greatest one because they really couldn’t confirm it textually. But it’s precisely because they couldn’t why it’s so great because it forced them to have to find another way of representing a romantic relationship without any sex. And if all you care about seeing is the sex, well then this isn’t a relationship I would recommend to you because, besides from a few kisses, there isn’t any. It’s an emotional romantic relationship and it’s beautiful and well-worth watching for me - who is so tired of overtly sexual ships that have little to nothing else to them and it may be a double-edged sword, but if you asked me, they need to go back to the censorship because it’s too insulting for me to only see that between WLW/queer ships in TV art/entertainment. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. I have no issue with sexual intimacy in general. But I do if it’s all it is. If the only thing that ship is is sex, it’s a big no from me.

Xena and Gabrielle didn’t have any representation in a sexual context but they did have everything else that a real life WLW romantic/sexual relationship would have.

So you’ve got to take your kicks for the ticks - as I like to say. But in my view, that “kick” was barely a nudge. It did not phase me whatsoever that they had no sex on-screen. What bothers me is that they cannot be considered “canon” without showing sex on-screen because showing kisses was enough for me to see and believe of them as a canon WLW ship. But in this day and age, that would be very frustrating for people because for some reason… that is what is required to “canonize” a romantic/sexual ship - same-sex or not. And I just… I don’t know. I preferred the censorship when the intention of the showrunners was sincere and they actually cared about representing true love between two people that didn’t involve constant sex and showed you the emotional connection and how those two people relate to each other instead ‘cause for me, it is far more worthy of my time and attention.

Xena and Gabrielle were just one of a kind in such a way that they came about in a time and place where WLW representation couldn’t be so explicit in TV but, because of that, the writers built on their relationship in so many other ways that still showed the romance and at the same time made it far more than romance. And it was the most beautiful and profound ship ever.

Were a reboot to ever happen,… I wouldn’t want it to because I know they will never be able to do this again.

And if they can’t - why would I even care to watch it?

I’ve been a big fan of this show for a long fucking time. It’s not just Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship that I love about it but it is what keeps me coming back to it because even though I will come across ships that are worth my time and attention, I just know I won’t be gifted a relationship like Xena and Gabrielle’s again.

[socksandbuttons]

The dadcode what if for Lunar makes me wonder how Moon would deal with two people in his head yelling

Also did he just not erase KC like in cannon because of Lunar being his brother or because it would erase Lunar too?

Idk Moon dealt with it just fine having Lunar, Moon's had sun before and its not like hes in pain with either Lunar or KC in his head (especially after the deal he and KC has. Which would have to be thought about cause Lunar would be involved) Also i dont get the next question too well. Moon doesnt erase KC, in canon he tried removing the killcode and leavin it in Sun (which made eclipse), but its so rooted in his code that he couldnt get rid of it (thus it resurfacing and becoming sentient aka Killcode). The next instance of KC being discussed on removal was debated because it could break Moon/Reset him (which it did in canon). With Lunar in this au now still in Moon's head they'd aim to remove Lunar first if they still were going with that plan (and we know Getting lunar out isnt as consequential). Its more of a matter of; If Lunar will go with this plan, Killcode honestly would probably advocate for Lunar getting his own body too (it'd give him more time to do the things he needs to... also properly hold son), other events either being altered or like canon (eclipse in the computer, solar flare existing, Bloodmoon dying by suns hand, KC turning good etc). I doubt Moon and later KC would want Lunar being erased at all in effort to seperate. ...Thatd be so funny (and tragic) if KC demanded Eclipse to make Lunar a new body or soemthing.

[taleweaver-ramblings]

I know the world doesn't need another "basics of design for non-designers" post/site/guide, but storm me if I am not sometimes tempted to write one anyway (and then make it required reading for any ministry leader who wants to make their own graphics to be used on Official Church Things).

[stuckinapril]

Every time I go through a period of not working out I lose my mind. I truly cannot be outside of my body for too long