#there's also a difference in delivery

[idontdrinkgatorade]

my mom was just trying to tell me that it wasn't acceptable to send digital invitations to a graduation party

[puppyeared]

horrible truth bomb dropped on my head 20 min ago

[drawingwithegg]

i drew a fewa the scarecrow lego toy designs!

[starry-bi-sky]

Blood Blossom Au: Baby's First Commissioner Meeting :)

TL:DR This Post: Danny (orphan) gets poisoned with blood blossom extract by Vlad. He runs away from him and ends up under the care of one Pre-Robin Battinson Batman! Starry is loudly pushing her batdad agenda.

(Also known as "Late At Night, When The Nightingale Sings" on my ao3!)

This was a fun rough idea I've been sitting on for weeks, thinking about how Commissioner Gordon and Nightingale's first meeting might go.

---------------

Commissioner Gordon likes to think that he's adjusting to the new normal of Gotham very well, -- the new normal being grown men running around dressed like bats, in military-grade strength body armor, committing acts of vigilantism, -- and slowly, little by little, he was no longer being surprised when this new normal pops up out of the shadows like the world's most terrifying daisy. His shaving lifespan thanks him for it.

....

The kid is a surprise though.

Granted, he seemed to be a surprise to the Bat too.

There's been a string of murders lately, -- which, in Gotham, is kind of like saying there's been another storm during monsoon season. And there's just been another; in some dilapidated building down in south Gotham, with the broken, boarded-up windows and mildew-crawling walls to match. The victim is a man in his thirties, multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, left in the center of the room for the blood to pool out around him.

The place is already secured when he arrives, the building swarmed with officers and the forensic detectives. The Bat emerges shortly after he does -- or, he might've been here the whole time, hiding someplace dark and shadowy. For his own sanity, Gordon doesn't think about it too hard.

The kid is a surprise, and he appears like a bolt of lightning.

He shows up in the middle of a conversation Gordon is having with the Bat.

A whistle, sharp and loud, slicing through the air, meant for open air rather than a confined space. Gordon's ears pierce and protest the sound, and the solemn, murmured chatter floating through the room abruptly cuts off like the swing of a gavel. As he turns towards the sound -- as they all do -- he swears, up and down, that he sees Batman's shoulders jump, just slightly.

At the source, perched on the window, is a boy. A boy in a gray-blue scarf and an oversized black hoodie, one that hangs off his frame and has ace bandages wrapped around the wrists in some attempt to cinch the sleeves. The hood is up, big like the rest of it, and threatens to swallow the upper half of the boy's face whole in the fabric. What upper half Gordon can see, is smeared with some kind of opaque, black face paint. He's holding onto the side of the frame with one hand, on his hip is a grappling hook. A familiar grappling hook.

Gordon has multiple questions, and his officers tense up.

Martinez puffs up, brows furrowing as his face shapes into a frown. Shoulders rolling back. "You can't be here, kid--"

The reaction is immediate, like a spark to gunpowder, the boy yanks his fingers from his mouth and his mouth twists into a scowl. Head snapping over to Officer Martinez, his hood manages to stay on but Gordon swears that as he bares his teeth, the glint makes them look sharper than they should be. His voice is rasp and quiet and harsh; snappish in its hissing; "Put a fuckin sock in it, Martinez. I'm not stayin."

Martinez reels back, and the boy immediately veers his attention off him. Like a switch, his demeanor drops. Despite half his face being covered, his mouth twists into a cringing, apologetic smile. Slanted and off-beat, embarrassed. It'd be disarming if this wasn't Gotham, and if he didn't just hiss at Martinez like he was about to bite his head off.

"Sorry." He whispers, voice deceptively polite and softer now. Gordon has to strain his ears to hear him. "I was looking for him."

He points his finger towards-- Gordon? No, Gordon follows the direction, and finds himself looking at -- the Bat.

The Bat, who always looks stiff as a pole, now looks even stiffer. Somehow. Well, the explains the grappling hook attached to the boy's waist.

"What are you doing here?" The Bat says, gruff and unable to completely smother the stumble of surprise in his tone.

The boy still holds a sheepish smile, and slips off the window ledge. His feet hit the creaky boards with a near-silent thud, the Batman finds his feet and rapidly begins crossing the room.

Gordon notes the slight tremble in the boy's legs as he straightens. He adjusts his scarf, which droops close to his knees now that he's standing, and slings a backpack -- how long has had that? -- off his shoulders. When the Bat reaches his side, he does as he always does, and looms over the boy like a spectre. A threatening mass of shadows cloaked in all-consuming black. Standing next to him, the boy looks teeny in comparison.

The Bat is a man who terrifies even the most hardened criminals, Gordon has seen grown men shiver in fear at the mention of his name. And yet when the boy looks up at him, he doesn't even flinch.

Instead, his sheepish smile melts away like ice under the sun, holding only traces of his previous embarrassment. It remains as a shadow on his face, a small upturn at the corners of his mouth. The boy pushes his hood back just enough to reveal glinting, ice-flint eyes surrounded in tar-black face paint. He holds the backpack up with one arm. "You forgot this."

[thewhizzyhead]

So like one common theme when discussing bullying is the tendency for bullies to project their insecurities on their victims right? like them taking their own shit out on the people they bully?

so i know that may not be exaaaactly the case with Max Jagerman in Nerdy Prudes Must Die like the dude even in the afterlife just really fuckin likes terrorising the shit out of people due to his god complex BUUUUT what I found very interesting was when in the Nerdy Prudes Must Die sequence, he was telling Richie to repeat after him: "Who will pray for me when my body's gone or until another Richie comes along?" And mind you, this song comes directly after another musical sequence about all the teens in that high school being so fucking happy that Max was gone. And like, well yea you can't blame the kids for being happy that Top Terrorizer #1 is gone and that they don't have to abide by his social strata anymore - but then again, having nobody pray or give a fuck about Max after him being mysteriously missing for 2 weeks is,,kinda fucked up for Max no matter the kind of person he is. So, to see someone he victimised get the attention and appreciation I would assume Max would've wanted from his team especially after being missing for so long - it really does seem to me that he was projecting onto Richie when he was about to kill him and making him feel how little he will matter to other people when he dies - like what he could've felt after literally everyone considered the high school "objectively better" now that Max was gone.

Which makes things a whole lot more interesting when Max snaps out of his WHO WILL PRAY FOR YOU solo when Richie belts out I'M NOT A LOSER - henceforth defying the idea of worthlessness Max was projecting onto Richie. So damn.

[hesgomorrah]

dear dad (1x12) // a holy mess (10x13)

[just-an-inchi-dent]

"fia is definitely checking one of our cars this weekend now" deceased

[swan2swan]

If you want to see Sad Sapphics breaking up in the darkness and rain before they've even started dating, you can watch Camp Cretaceous or you can watch Arcane. Same dish, different chefs, both delicious.

[kanalaure]

(*i dont know what kind of dog huan is, but he sheds. a lot. caranthir just wants to have ONE (1) space thats not covered in shed fur)

assume this is in the context of a modern au, or else that everyone is miraculously back from the dead and generally getting along fine and in the interim aman has had its industrial revolution and produced a more eco-friendly equivalent to our technologies

dont take this too seriously or get upset if your blorbo isn't represented, i filled out the ballot on a whim lmao. if you have someone you are Convinced would have one that isn't on this ballot, please do mention it in the tags

[bongo-clash]

Peacock Au Part 1

Okay so Big Huge credit to @stealingyourbones for letting me do my own take on their amazing eldritch Danny idea!!!! This started out as me just doing a drawing but then I ended up with a whole DPxDC fic that I'll be posting the part two for at some point!!! Anyway, here's the vague designs:

And here's the part one of the fic under the cut!!! :D (Edit: Part 2 is Here!!)

There’s a Lazarus Pit forming underneath Gotham. Normally, this would not concern John Constantine at all, because it’s Gotham, therefore Bat territory therefore not his problem, and honestly he has his own things to worry about. Unfortunately for him, however, the infamous Dark Knight has somehow gotten it into his head that he can do something about it and, Hell, he’d said it would be a ‘big favour’, which meant the man really must be desperate; had to have been in the first place, he supposed, to have even bothered with John in the first place. 

Still, he’d almost kind of forgotten what a huge mess any kind of favour for Batman could be, and thus, he now holds possession of a book that is probably going to get him killed. 

Whether the actual book itself wants to kill him is up for debate, but Constantine has read the contents of this particular Book of Summonings and nothing in here seems remotely safe. He’s absolutely going to be hiding this away somewhere deep in the archives of the archives of the Justice League watchtower with an incredibly pointed ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ on it once he’s done with this, but for now, it’s the only thing he’s got in the way of sorting out this Pit problem. 

There’s an entity that exists, this book claims, that keeps the balance between realms. ‘Closes doors’, apparently, and the doors the pages depict certainly look like a Lazarus Pit. This is brilliant news, obviously, but the book doesn’t describe the entity itself at all beyond that; barely any of the other entries are as vague as this, and that plus some of the frankly bizarre sigils he’s having to draw to summon the damn thing are giving him no comfort. The only remotely comforting thing about it is that the ritual doesn’t require any blood- which either means the entity is benign, or it wants something more valuable than blood. 

…Okay, maybe not that comforting, actually. 

But, before he can consider that maybe this wasn’t his best idea and backing out would be for the best, the sigils flare with light, and Constantine squints to keep track of the way they activate, desperate for any indication of what he’s managed to summon with that stupid book. 

His feet feel feathery against the ground, like they’re barely tethered by gravity and just waiting to float away, and perhaps the seeming lack of atmosphere is fitting with how dust like stars lift from the summoning circle, bringing with them intercepting layers of purple-blue-pink-white, galaxies and nebulae being peeled off the floor. It comes with a sound- something whistling, almost. Seeming hollow, between a shriek and a bell ringing, or maybe more musical than that. It seems to change every moment he tries to focus on it, as if it’s something his ears can’t really hear but his brain is desperate to process, painful to try. 

And then, the entity begins to form. 

Unnoticeably at first, a white glow drifts forming in the centre. It congeals as Constantine’s gaze finally fixates on it, layers forming like jellyfish trails, or flowers, or peacock feathers with runic circles at the tips, fading smaller and smaller as they reach the centre, and a thing akin to a body unfolds into view at the front, a centrepiece. A child’s image of a shadow in opalescence, a strange curving feature where a neck might be, and searing-green spots of varying sizes scattered along the space where cheeks and eyes could’ve been, fading up and down across the lower-half of the ‘face’ and into the ‘hair’. He barely understands what he’s looking at, but maybe that’s the point. 

The sound of a thunderstorm rings across the room, and the curve of the neck unfolds, and it’s an eye, and the tips of a thousand twisted, cosmic peacock feathers become eyes as well, if they weren’t always. They move, wavering, either lashing or flickering from visibility. 

“And what is this?” The voice is a kaleidoscope, echoing off and from every corner of the room, and when they speak, infinite eyes become infinite mouths, too many teeth barely contained by the edges of what seem vaguely like frostbitten lips. To have something even remotely human suddenly etch itself onto the entity is somehow worse than the parts he can’t comprehend. “Who are you, to have summoned me, and seem so afraid?”

Constantine wishes, maybe for the first time, that it hadn’t been an obligation to do this alone; he’s never wanted Batman or one of the Light members with him more than now. It’s a difficult thing, almost impossible, to shake off the speechlessness. It’s a wonder that it’s possible at all, with how the room seems to have been twisted into a vacuum. “I was told you could- you could help with the pits?”

“The pits. There are many pits.”

God, this is creepy. “The Lazarus pits to, uh, to be specific. There’s a huge one cropping up under Gotham that’s not supposed to be there, and the local- I mean, the locals are getting antsy about it. …I heard you can take care of them.”

“I can smell its blood between the gaps of atmosphere, encircling. You, whose soul is bound in so many directions, who may be pulled apart like meat in time- can you sense it? Does it draw you?” John doesn’t know how this- this thing knows that, but he’s scared asking will invoke some kind of consequence, and more and more he’s wondering why the Hell he decided to do Batman this favour. He feels exposed. 

“Uh… no, I don’t think so. But can you fix it?”

“Yes.”

“…Will you fix it?”

The chill is getting to him. Goosebumps are running across his arms like a livewire, and he’s never doing anyone a favour ever again. The entity makes an approximation of a hum, his ears shriek with whale song and stars, and after a pause, everything switching up and down on itself, the peacock eyes form into huge, reaching hands. For a second, Constantine’s whole body freezes with terror, because he’s petrified the thing’s going to grab him, but then the arms tumble phasing into the ground, and the green spots on their ‘face’ flare with a supernova glow and they make another piercing noise, chiming or trilling. 

A long moment later, the hands slowly return to the entity’s back, and fade into the peacock feathers or jellyfish bells or whatever they were before, blinking at him. “It is gone.”

“Uh… cheers?”

“It will not return, but this place shall see its dead for some time. Try not to look.”

This is maybe the worst day of Constantine’s life. “Can I- uh, yeah, great advice. ‘Appreciate it. But, can I ask just, y’know, what you are? Or not.”

“That is up to you.” They say, and though the eyes that appear briefly between sentences bely or reveal no expression, it feels scrutinising. “What is it that closes doors? Is it alive?”

He hates riddles. He hates riddles and he hates cosmic horrors and he hates eldritch entities and he hates Batman for getting him to agree to this horrible favour. He wants to go back to the House of Mystery and pass out for long enough that this whole thing becomes a dream. “Fair enough! Forget I asked- cheers for sorting out that pit, though. Uh, don’t suppose you’ll just let me go on my way or anything now.”

“I know of your Bat.” 

Oh dear. Constantine’s stomach sinks like a shipwreck into the Mariana Trench, but the entity moves on like they’d never even said it. “I will recede, and find you in time, perhaps both. You will know when I am coming, and I will find my recompense.”

And just like that, their whole form shimmers into clouds and pearls and smoke and mirrors, and they fade back into the runes that summoned them like tap water down the drain. The galaxies they’d formulated within the confines of the room fold back in on themselves and turn to whispers and then nothing, but the feeling persists on his skin long after weight has settled back onto his bones. He hadn’t known a thing like that existed until now. He doesn’t know what it can do, doesn’t know how all-encompassing it truly is. 

And he owes it a favour. 

Crap. 

[werewolfoffeverswamp]

artistic ode to some of the jobs ive had over the past year. you may be saying to yourself, three very different jobs in the span of one year? to which i would say i get bored easily

[domini-porter]

Maybe this will be helpful for you (or maybe not):

When it comes to writing naturalistic dialogue, don’t be afraid to structure it so that it more closely resembles the way people actually talk!

Hyphens and em-dashes to represent hes-hesitation and—and breathlessness!

Ellipses for thoughtful pauses and . . . trailing off

Contractions! Use contractions! People almost never speak in perfect grammatical English (or language of your choice) and it tends to scan oddly/clumsily on the page (or screen) and clang against the ear.

A really helpful practice or two (at least for me):

1. Read your dialogue out loud. If you stumble over something repeatedly, that’s a clue (this applies to prose, too). If you automatically shift a “did not” to a “didn’t,” when reading out loud, change it in the text. I recommend giving it a couple days before going back to it, so you’re not forcing yourself to stick to the cadences you used in writing it. Related: if all your sentences are similar lengths and with similar structures and cadences, mix them up—people naturally talk, think, and write in varying rhythms.

2. Listen closely not just to what people—actors, characters, real people—say, but how they say it. Aside from some specific stylistic circumstances, odds are you’re going for dialogue that sounds like two people talking normally, so listening more critically to quirks of speech and phrasing and attempting to record that on the page, not just approximate it, will help your written dialogue move more naturally, and help you develop specific, distinct character voices.

3 (2a, maybe): Work on finding particular patterns or idiosyncrasies in the ways your characters talk, and make them intentional and consistent. You can only achieve so much in the prose parts without it coming across as exposition, and it gets dull and repetitive when a writer has to identify who said what after every line of dialogue because everyone sounds the same. Maybe one of your characters uses very informal speech, and another more precise. Maybe one character punctuates important thoughts with “you know?” while another tends to . . . sort of . . . shrug. Maybe one says “dunno” and one says “I don’t know”—these things might seem small, but they add to characterization.

As always: text is your medium! You’re allowed to do so much with it, even if you had textbook grammar and five-paragraph persuasive structure drilled into your head as the only correct way to do things. UNTRUE.

Mostly just do whatever you want; it’s not illegal and nobody can put you in jail (I hope)

[royalarchivist]

I just remembered this old silly storytime video Rubius made a few years ago, and I wanted to share it because it's still very funny and I know most English fans aren't familiar with the story!

In summary: Rubius orders some takeout while chilling at home (shirtless, only wearing PJ pants), and due to a language barrier and a series of unfortunate miscommunications, the delivery person winds up inside his house without him realizing it. Rubius refers to this story as "the most awkward moment of his life."

(There aren't official subtitles for this video, but the Youtube auto-caption translations are pretty good!)

[mariocki]

Infinite list of favourite lyrics: 225/?

Billy Joel - Big Shot (1978)

"Well, you went uptown riding in your limousine,

With your fine Park Avenue clothes;

You had the Dom Pérignon in your hand

And the spoon up your nose.

Ooh, and when you wake up in the morning

With your head on fire

And your eyes too bloody to see,

Go on and cry in your coffee

But don't come bitchin' to me."

[senkamikakushi]

very interesting to think about the way the topic of work is handled between spirited away, kiki's delivery service and howl's moving castle