#what he should really be saying

[minaa-munch]

What's the one thing chunin Minato wanted for himself?

"Chunnin, ka?" Cue a contemplative hum. He eyes the steam rising from his tea while the chatter of academy students and adults fill the air. As a newly minted Jōnin and a representative at the open house, he had been asked all sorts of questions - how many missions did he have to complete, did the job pay the bills (the answer was 'barely'), and how he managed to keep his hair the way it was (by one of the adults).

Yet this was the one question he actually had to think about.

"I wanted more time."

"I developed my jutsu because I had time and opportunity to experiment with fuuinjutsu at the outpost during the war" He begins, tan digits pulling a three pronged kunai from his weapons pouch as if to elucidate "I made a lot of mistakes in the process and could never really work on some of my failed combinations because I was always being sent out for recon or infiltration."

The glint of metal catches blue hues as he eyes the fuuin on the handle before his gaze shifts to the academy student. "In our trade, we barely get enough of it, ne?" The weapon is promptly deposited back to its holster, "Spend it wisely while you can."

[pangur-and-grim]

one thing that took me embarrassingly long to learn is "sometimes when people say things, they will not be true."

I used to tell people about this revelation and they'd be like yeah.....duh.....but like, why wouldn't my base assumption be that you're communicating to me in a straightforward manner. anyway, I get scammed a lot.

[papanowo]

i think dan should get to be a little weird too. as a treat

[jicklet]

1.07 || 2.07 → Ekko getting emotional over wanting affection

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[da-janela-lateral]

Seven-headed beast.

[maybe-a-gatto-or-a-catto]

hold on I'll make this my personality for 3 months

[benevolenterrancy]

Scholarly peak is catching up on recent literature

[nelkcats]

Strange courtship gifts

The last thing anyone would expect is for the Joker to believe in the supernatural, but apparently Gotham was in luck, because the clown was about to make a deal with the King of all ghosts to revive his prized foe.

Said King was not happy about the request, nor did he care about the clown's feelings, but he knew it was a necessary evil. Or at least, that's what Clockwork told him; of course, Danny didn't intend to do anything for free.

The Joker got his wish, Bruce came back from the dead and Danny wondered what he should do with the clown's soul. With a shrug he decided to put it to the best possible use and wrapped it in a little bow before handing it over to Jason Todd.

Jason thought it was a joke, a cute guy giving him a gift out of nowhere and claiming that the frozen ball in his hand was the Joker's soul? Yeah, right.

However, John Constantine came through Gotham and it became obvious that it wasn't a joke and that the cute guy was more than just a regular guy. It also came with the feature that Bruce returned to the living, which made him strangely relieved.

And fuck, reckless or not, Jason needed to find the guy again and steal the air out of his lungs, because that weird ball was the best gift he'd ever been given in his life and it might as well be an engagement ring.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

Danny Fenton, aka Phantom, has been given a new task!

In short, literally no one in the Ghost Zone/Infinite Realms wants their mostly peaceful afterlife to be rocked by a certain Gotham rogue named Joker. Which, when he dies, is almost sure to happen because of whatever the hell was in that vat he dropped in included ectoplasm. So, yay, he’s also a little ghostly too, meaning he *is* pretty hard to kill. Unfortunately, there’s also a certain vigilante that is quite keen to murder him in recent years.

So now Danny has to keep the mass murderer trauma clown alive for as long as he possibly can while attempting to keep the Joker from. Well. Being the Joker.

Oh, and naturally, Danny got this assignment AFTER Joker got out of Arkham. Again. And entirely blew up the asylum. Time to join the Goonion, he is NOT doing this without getting PAID, thank you.

[bunnieswithknives]

Thanks.

Prev

[the-barefoot-hatter]

pediatricians are hard to find.

you aren't broken and other important things a triangle needs to hear

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

[ ID in ALT ]

he giggles

[firstprinced]

sometimes, you just gotta jump and hope you're not standing on a cliff

#he really said it's probably a cliff but i'll survive and climb back up with henry

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.