#this is like college all over again

[foulbearobservation]

wanted to talk a little bit abt some of the references I listed in the end notes to bleed part 2 so here's some of them!

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

this letter makes me feel human emotions that have been previously undiscovered. I feel like I experience shrimp colors when I read this letter. It was written as Wilde was in prison for homosexuality, and while the first part of it is Wilde's reflection on prison but the second part is all about christ as a romantic and artistic figure and just,,,,, GOD. I used this as an inspo for part 1 and part 2 and I think, more than anything else, is the string that binds these together.

also fun fact! domine non sum dignus (the latin part of the title in pt1) is from that famous quote "Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and Domine, non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it". That quote is also why lilith kneels and why there's bdsm in these fics at all lmfao.

Domine non sum dignus roughly translates too "Lord, I am not worthy" which I used in the title for pt2 :) it's a fun little connection between the titles.

You can read De Profundis here.

2. On Love by Kahlil Gibran

This one is a little harder to spot but it was also the inspiration for the titles! this last section makes me want to chew glass.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own under- standing of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; To return home at eventide with grati- tude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

"to bleed willingly and joyfully" was the original title of pt1. I changed it after the phrase "to bleed is the sacred thing" came into my house and kicked my ass and refused to leave my brain, so "to bleed is the joyful thing" became the eventual title for pt 2. I love this poem so much it also makes me feel shrimp colors as emotions.

You can read On Love here.

3. The Devil Went Down to Georgia by the Charlie Daniels Band

I know my other inspirations have been very like. literary like poems and letters and stuff but sometimes u need a hoedown song to make you feel insane. The Devil Went Down to Georgia plays on the american southern gothic tradition of meeting the devil at a crossroads. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I wanted to infuse just a little bit of home into this fic, so I used this. I felt like it was an especially powerful visual for lilith, who is metaphorically at a crossroads post-season 2. (also fun fact this was one of the first songs I learned to play when I was playing bass, in addition to this song having a banging fiddle line, it has a cool bassline too!)

You can listen to The Devil Went Down to Georgia here.

4. A Cornstalk Fiddle by notbecauseofvictories

This plays off of the song, but it's straight up one of the best fics I've ever read and you all should read it. Yes it is based on the charlie daniels band song, yes it changed the way I think about stories. sometimes fics can just do that.

You can read A Cornstalk Fiddle by notbecauseofvictories here.

Anyway those are the big ones! I just wanted to talk abt these references because they really did make a difference in my brain chemistry and if I do nothing else, I would like to infect everyone else with the shrimp colors of emotions that de profundis makes me feel

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[damian-lil-babybat]

'Dead Poets Society' gang

Headcanon that these four drop poetry and literature quotes on their conversations unprompted.

Jason 'English-major-I-only-visit-the-manor-for-the-library' Todd-Wayne

Damian 'I-master-liberal-arts-unlike-you-plebs-PHD-holder' al Ghul-Wayne

Cassandra 'I-learn-English-thru-Shakespeare-as-god-intended' Cain-Wayne

Duke 'only-title-holder-of-vigilante-poet-and-will-cuss-you-just-as-poetically' Thomas-(future) Wayne

[puppetmaster13u]

Thinkin' of WOF Au for DC, but like, it's a Gothamite and Fawcett thing. (And Amity Park if crossover)

Like those are the most magical areas in the world, even if Gotham is cursed as fuck. An unspoken secret of sorts that while they present themselves as human to outsiders, they are all Very Much Not.

Which means hilariously in the league, when everyone expects Batman to be suspicious and short with the new guy- even made bets on it- they are then shooketh when both visibly relax and start talking. And half the shared complaints don't make sense!

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Now Gotham technically has no Queen, nor does Fawcett, but Batman and Captain Marvel are the closest things. Not in the traditional sense of back when they were in separate tribes (& maybe from a different dimension but shh that was millennia ago) but in the sense of, they're the ones patrolling and protecting the cities along with calling the shots in disasters.

Which does sort of change the dynamic they both have in their city. If one of them calls to arms, the city would follow them. They could declare war, and their cities (begrudgingly in Gotham's underbelly's case of strongest is in charge) would follow. And while Billy is oblivious, both Marvel-the-not-hivemind and Batman are. They know they have to be very careful.

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I'm sure we all want Nightwing Bruce but no. Bruce, like both his mother and father and father's father and so on before him, is actually an Icewing. The Waynes however, have a case of melanism running in their bloodline. Thomas Wayne? Only his quills and part of his back were darker, but Bruce? Practically pitch black scales that shadow his eyes.

Now Alfred on the other hand, is a Nightwing. No special powers there, though you would hear many a child protest with how he seems to know everything.

Commissioner Gordon is a Mudwing, big stocky and very tired, which translates to his human disguise as a large trenchcoat. He finds this very amusing. Barbara similarly, is half Mudwing. Her mother was a Hivewing, making her a hybrid between both. Which does ironically mean that Batgirl does in fact have insectoid wings. Though that does ponder the question on if they'd all go by their original vigilante names.

Dick is a Silkwing. Wingless as he watches his parents fall and unable to do anything despite this place supposedly being safe for beings like them. He grows into his own, and his wings, when they come in, are dark Gotham colors through and through, with the deep blue of the sky he's come to crave.

Jason is a hybrid between a Mudwing and a Skywing. He's also an animus- not that he knew that. He doesn't find out until he's dying, telling himself to not die, to get back to Gotham, to his dad, his family- And then he wakes up in his Coffin, alive.

Now Cass, raised to be the perfect killer, is also a hybrid, just one between a Nightwing and a Rainwing, egg set out under the moon. Which succeeds, partially. She can't straight up read minds, but combined with her talent in reading body language on both human and inhuman bodies, it's a near thing.

Tim is a Seawing, borderline abandoned by his parents who seek treasures and more wealth as he's trapped back in a city where the water is dark and poisoned. But he's Gothamite, through and through, and he adapts. Scales darker than the original blues he was born with, and glow shifting to that sickly white of the Gotham's Bats.

Now Steph, is a full-blooded Rainwing, and can in fact change her scales, but can mostly be found in purples and golds. Though for a short time she was in another set of colors, thought dead before she slithered out of the shadows older and wiser than before.

Damian is his father's son, but he's also an Al-Ghul. The not-quite dragonet is half Icewing, and half Sandwing. And struggled to adjust at first, to a place so different from his first home where the only other dragons were blood related. But like any Wayne before him, he adjusts, and he adapts.

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Billy wasn't a Beetlewing originally, and perhaps he would have hesitated if he'd known it would change him, would change his body and the last thing he had of his parents. But his friends, his Team and new family help. And he can pass as a Silkwing like their sort-of foster mother. All six of them can do so now, even if the others look more like hybrids themselves thanks to not being the Champion. They might not be, but they're his family. And that's enough.

[purpleshadow-star]

Pic context: Talking about the exy stadium at USC considering the fact that USC is a real school

I love how Nora just invents things in order to avoid complications with real-life things.

Like, using USC's football stadium as the exy stadium too would take a lot of work to figure out how that would be possible. Solution: invent a new stadium!

Having the characters play a real sport that already exists would mean looking into all the rules and regulations and history, etc, and there could be multiple elements of the sport that work against the plot of the story or complicate it in some way. Solution: invent a new sport!

I mean, it gives her full creative control over what happens in the story, and we as readers get to learn about a cool new thing without feeling the need to fact-check every element. Tbh, it makes so much sense to me.

Like, go off! Make stuff up! It's your world. We're just reading and enjoying and becoming obsessed with it!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

morning frost's '100% done with this shit' voice is everything to me. it's such a minute shift in his habitual monotone and yet. and yet

[skunkes]

i dpnt want to go hoooome

[mirabel-on-a-bicycle]

hey maybe I'll just stop watching shows from now on :) maybe that's an idea. never love anything and all that

[scarlet-sam-chaos]

nm just a girl freaking out about going to college and having to share a living space with people like actual humans-

[sunmoontruth-stiles]

I need a completely rewritten teen wolf series with Derek Hale as the main character. I think it would heal me.

[bunnyboy-juice]

stink monster appreciation post 💕💕

[bluespiritshonour]

*Shakes you aggressively*

Where did you learn to draw so fucking well?!

Aw thank you!

[jinxpologist]

i wish my grandpa was here

[introspectivememories]

touch-starved bernard dowd is sooo canon to me

[cumulo-stratus]

Max r u okay😰

yeth

everything just sucks rn

my sister is gone (at college she's not dead) so i'm dealing with that and the house feeling empty, and school is starting soon, and my mom is at a new job, and there's gonna be a ton of new students at school who i don't know, and idk my brain isn't built for this

i got overwhelmed tn but luckily i ended up being okay with minimal crying 🥇🥇

and i called my sister so i got to talk to her!!

[gayalanwake]

sorry if I become extra annoying im kinda tweaking over being on my own for the first time sooooo I might let myself become extra indulgent 💔💔💔