#you opened a can of worms

[daddymikeyway]

You worked with birds?!

What sorts of things did you do with them? What kind of birds? I must know! 🥺🦜

I worked with house wrens in college!! I was a field tech for a grad student who was studying the effect of urbanization across a gradient.

:readmore:

There was actually a lot that went into it! So she had 3 sites; a park in the city, a location on the outskirts of the city where our uni had a farm, and a nature preserve. All of those locations had bird boxes.

The beginning of the season was pretty monotonous. Like are the sticks in the box enough to be considered a nest in progress? But once the nests are built, oh man. Half of the nests at each site got food supplementation, to see if chicks would get bigger than others. The mom’s would get the food as they started laying eggs so hopefully!!! they could spend more time incubating and being good moms than needing to go get food.

Once eggs were laid, they were all measured and weighed. The grad student took half of the eggs to measure the cortisol levels, the stress hormone.

When mom is incubating, she’s caught on the nest. Usually around incubation day 7-10, so she’s far enough along that she likely won’t abandon the nest. My first year, we had a fishing line trap over the entrance. Basically, two people sit with binoculars and stare at the box. Bird goes in, pull fishing line, run to box, bleed bird. It’s generally mom. They’re not sexually dimorphic, but if you blow on the belly feathers, the female won’t have feathers bc they’ve been sitting on eggs. Mom gets colored bands and such. Then when the chicks hatch, we try to catch dad. And honestly, house wren dads suck. They really only show up half the time. If they’re caught, they get banded too.

After eggs come baby birds!!! Everyone’s favorite part. It’s so cool to see them grow up. House wren chicks are feeble and pitiful looking when they first hatch. They got measured one day after hatch, 5, 7, 10, 12, and 14. At 14 they have blood drawn to measure their cortisol levels. This was the exciting part! So the grad student would sneak up on the nest, cover the entrance, and grab the chicks out of the box and throw them to the field techs. There were just 3 of us last year. If there were more chicks than us, they sat in a bird bag and whoever finished bleeding their chick first started on the extra chick. The literature says cortisol levels start to diminish after 3 minutes, so the goal is to bleed X amount of chicks in that time. It can be stressful lmao.

Around 16 days they start to fledge. If they’re getting food supplements, it stops at 14. They get checked everyday until the leave.

Last summer, it was wild. It was a wet winter, like it snowed in early May as we were putting up boxes. Lots of nests.

There was also a nest at the site in the city where a mom had laid eggs, and the chicks had hatched, yay! Dad finds another female, brings her to this box, female digs it. Uh, ok, chicks are still there. One of the other field techs notices that the chicks are buried under sticks. Are they doing it to themselves? All of a sudden, another egg pops up. The dad had cheated on the first bird and mated with another. The new female kicked the first female out. Not only that, the new female killed one of the other’s chicks.

A different grad student joined in late summer 2021, so he didn’t really get to do much. But last year, he put up little cameras in the nest boxes and watched the parents come in and out and feed the chicks. I bring this up BECAUSE he caught the new mom from the previous paragraph pecking the chick to death.

It also led to the discovery of one of the best sentences I’ve read in a scientific paper, not verbatim, “the male continued to sing in the tree while the two females fought.” It’s from an old ass paper, but you know, fantastic to read.

Bewick’s wrens and mountain chickadees also use nest boxes, so we got to interact with them too. Mountain chickadees are very fuzzy. The also make a hissing sound and beat their tail feathers against the box when they’re threatened. They imitate a snake. Even though I know this, it’s still terrifying to hear it.

Those are all house wrens

Mountain chickadee

[jadewritesficshere]

Steve is nonchalantly browsing the chips, waiting for Eddie to return (who in all honesty is probably getting the bag of sour gummy worms Steve already said they couldn't grab).

Steve feels a tug on his shirt. He smiles as he turns, expecting to see his boyfriend but-

Steve looks down at the child staring up at him. "Uh hi?" Steve looks around the empty aisle," Where's your parents bud?" The kid shrugs, but points to Steve's shirt," Tiger."

Steve's faded shirt from his freshman year of high school, now the most soft and comfortable after years of wear, does in fact have a tiger. "Yeah, sure is. Who-" the kid cuts Steve off with a loud roar. Steve can't help but chuckle as he crouches down to be on the kid's level.

Steve is fully focused on this kid, trying to find whoever the kid should be with. When he stands back up, he holds his hand out to the kid, who tentatively grasps his hand. The kid continues to roar and talk about tigers.

Meanwhile, Eddie has watched most of this exchange. Seeing his beloved boyfriend talk to this random child, the concern on his face? Eddie watches from a distance as Steve finds the mother, who was freaking out (understandably).

Eddie can't help but watch as Steve says hi to the baby in the stroller, laughing as the baby reaches out and grabs his finger. Steve says goodbye to the family, roaring back at the kid, who lights up.

Eddie can't help but think how good Steve is with kids. How good of a parent Steve would be. Which, started innocent, but then Eddie's mind jumped to the process of how a child comes about.

And now all Eddie can think about is how he's gonna give Steve one. He doesn't give 2 shits about biology, Eddie's putting a baby in that man.

[apollos-boyfriend]

if i was a streamer and someone asked me about my gender identity/sexuality i would just say that i’m queer and that’s all they need to know BUT i would be willing to reveal one (1) label if we hit subgoal by the end of the stream

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[havenandart]

if you perchance wanted to draw jay n dick just hangin out. i would have no choice but to love and appreciate you forever

"watch your mouth, little wing."

just thought about dick being a good big bro to jaybin before everything falls apart. ruined my own life for a moment

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[arttsuka]

have Jedidiah and Octavius watch brokeback mountain on Larry’s phone

Sorry anon, but my headcanon is that Jedediah watches it alone for some reason (maybe Octavius was busy that night with something else) and he starts questioning his whole existence.

Internalized homophobia am I right? (Also Jed is definitely the kind of person who thinks like 'this isn't all that bad except from when I'm doing it, then it's the worst thing ever). Anyway, I think it's way more difficult to actually think about your feelings than just have them. It can be scary too, putting a proper name on a situation.

Then he just kinda dissappears for a few weeks, no one knows where he is. He doesn't say anything to anyone but even when he gets back he kinda avoids everyone.

He vents to Larry without giving him any context.

Octavius just blames Larry. It was something on the phone that made Jedediah upset, so naturally it must be Larry's fault.

They make up in the end but I don't know if they talk about what actually happened. Maybe Octavius watches brokeback mountain too and he understands idk

A little sequel to this here

[cheolism]

hello my beloved jupiter i would like to peek at the kinkiest jun thots inside ur brain pretty please 🤓

THE SCENT OF YOU

✰ wen junhui x reader ✷ wc is approx 1.5k ✰ warnings: nsfw! salirophilia and olfactophilia (attraction to the state of being dirty; attraction to body odor/scent). ✷ notes: based off of that one thing napoleon allegedly wrote to his wife asking her not to bathe before he came home. thank you mars (@onlymingyus) and junie for helping me w the names of the kinks!!

i.

jun wakes up to the uncomfortable feeling of being terribly warm.

the summer sun blazes through the bedroom windows, peering through the blinds and casting its light. the aircon kicks on in the next room, the box fan -- set on top of a dining room chair jun had dragged into the room -- whirling gently, casting a slight breeze onto jun's face.

he's still unbearably hot.

the two of you had gone to bed at midnight, the temperature dropping considerably compared to what it had been that afternoon. you turned the aircon to the perfect temperature; jun switched on the fan. he tucked the duvet around your figure, giggling alongside you as you wiggled your toes underneath. and then he had ducked underneath the covers, pressing his body to yours and tucking his face into your neck.

naturally, cursedly, time crawled on as the two of you slept and eventually the sun rose into the sky, coloring it a lovely blue. the room had heated up, despite the aircon doing its best, and so jun woke with his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his arms and his mind hazy with heat.

irritated, he throws off the duvet and swings his feet over the edge of the bed. he had stopped cuddling you sometime in the night, and perhaps that is why he's truly pissed.

he checks the temperature outside -- eighty-seven fahrenheit, what the fuck -- and then adjusts the thermostat. the aircon kicks back on, and he stumbles back into the bedroom.

you're frowning at him from the bed, lips in a pout and brow pinched. "why'd you leave?"

jun jumps back into the bed, throwing the duvet back over his figure and latching onto you. "was hot," he explains, and then he's ducking his face to press it against your neck.

his nose nuzzles into the baby hairs at the back of your neck, breathing. his hand settles onto your hip, and then he's sliding his fingers underneath the waistband of your boxers. jun doesn't do anything more, just keeps his fingers against your skin, warm from your body.

he presses his face against you, lips skimming over your warm skin. you're wearing a tank top, and he thinks, faintly, that just like the boxers the tank top is his.

you sigh as his mouth dips to your collar. he presses his lips against your skin, pushing his tongue out and feeling the hard bone hidden beneath.

he moves again. jun presses his face into the valley between your tits, concealed by the tank top. it's hot there, heat radiating off of your tits and trapped beneath the tank top, which in turn was covered by the duvet.

you're hot there, and when jun noses along the gentle curve of one of your tits he can smell you.

it's the smell that comes from sleep and heat. it's a smell that is so inherently, distinctly you. it's the smell of your soul, he thinks, his dick beginning to swell in his boxers and his fingers twitching down down down, until the tips of them are touching the hairs of your cunt.

"junnie," you hum, reaching out and looping an arm around him. he catches a whiff of that gentle scent of sleep and heat, and then he's mouthing at your tits through the fabric and settling his hand against your pussy.

ii.

"i'll be home late," you murmur into your phone. he can hear the noise of the conference through his phone speaker. you had told him, before you left, to prepare for as much; had, optimistically, said that it would be over at four but seungkwan had booked a room with a karaoke machine so you may end up staying longer.

"are you having fun?" jun asks, bracing against the counter with his free hand and glancing over the ingredients he had set out. he'll have to put the pork back into the fridge, package the chopped veggies and hope they'll be as fresh tomorrow. really, though, it's for the best; he's low on egg roll wrappers and doesn't know if he'll have enough for a full meal.

"yeah," you say, and he can hear the smile in your voice. it's like bottled sunshine, the way it seems to settle within him and lighten his soul. "we got free pens."

"holy shit," jun says, and you laugh. eventually, though, you hang up; he can hear seungkwan scolding you for being on your phone during a company conference before you manage to end the call.

jun packs away the veggies and pork, snapping the lids onto the plastic container and stacking them in color order in the fridge.

he throws two packets of ramen on the counter; checks on the rice in the cooker. with thirty minutes left for the rice to be done, he leaves the kitchen and begins wandering about the apartment.

there's a sock in the hall. he swoops down, grabbing it and balling it into his fist. he rounds into the bedroom, and he begins picking up your discarded sleep clothes.

he throws your shirt over the crook of his arm — it once belonged to choi seungcheol, but the man had left it in jun's gym bag when he borrowed it once and so it had been put into rotation as a sleep shirt for the both of you. you wore your own panties and shorts to bed, and he picks up those, too.

they're one of your favorite pairs. they’re on the side of nearly too-raggedy, the elastic loose around your hips. jun remembers the first time he saw you wear them, nearly two years ago; remembers how he had pulled them down your thighs; how they had been soaking wet from your cunt, how he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to bring them up to his nose and —

jun presses his thumb into the flat seat of your panties, stretching them. whatever wetness that may have been there from your cunt had long dried. he can see the faint bleaching from your fluids on your panties. 

he lifts your panties up to his nose; breathes in. he smells you, still, hours later. jun can smell yoru essence, the very fabric of your being. slowly jun slides his hand down his stomach, fingers gliding over the veins of his hips and following down down down. 

iii. 

you look, jun thinks, absolutely destroyed. 

the half-assembled desk still takes up a majority of the second bedroom, metals bars sticking straight up and wooden surface flat against the floor. you’ve paused the music you had been blaring for the past hour, staggering into the living room with your phone in hand and a scowl on your face. 

“you want help?” jun calls, setting his own phone flat onto his bare stomach and stretching. 

“i can do it,” you snap, dropping your phone onto the lazyboy. your hair is pulled up off of your neck, strands escaping and flying about. your face gleams from sweat and your natural oils. you’re wearing a baggy shirt and pants, and when you lift an arm to grab at the ceiling fan string, he can see a patch of sweat on the armpit of your shirt. 

you are destroyed; you had attempted to build the desk and came out of it sweaty and ruined, pissed and unsatisfied. 

jun pats his thighs, sitting up a bit. you huff, and then you’re waddling over to him. you throw your leg over him, knee digging into the cushions as you settle back on him. 

your jaw drops, and you reach back and slap his thigh. “what the fuck are you hard about?”

“you’re beautiful,” jun says, taking you in once more. you’re messy and sweaty, and he wants you. 

his hands go to your thighs, settling. he smoothes his hands over your sweatpants, grabbing, groping, feeling you. 

you roll your eyes. jun moves up, wrapping his arms around your body to keep you in his lap. he presses his face into your neck, and you groan something out about being too hot for this. he can smell your sweat, your stink; he can feel his dick swell in his pants, can feel it strain and want. 

“wen junhui —”

jun pushes his tongue out, sliding it against your skin and tasting the salt of you. you let your head fall to the side, and jun slides a hand into your hair, feeling how hot and sweaty they are at the very start of them. it takes some shifting to get your sweatpants down your thighs, to tuck them under your knees and give him some space, but he does. 

and then jun is shoving his hand against your cunt. it’s hot and sweaty here, too, just like he had hoped. he can feel, through your underwear, how wet you are. the cloth near the elastic, damp from sweat; the cloth covering your cunt wet from your juice. 

jun pushes back again, and then your shoulders are against the cushions and he’s between your thighs. he pulls your sweats and underwear the rest of the way down your legs, discarding them next to the couch. jun lowers himself, pressing his face against your hot, sweaty cunt and breathing in. 

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[mediumgayitalian]

y’all i cannot stop fucking thinking about it. will with his big blue eyes, youngest of them all, completely musically untalented and rhythmically challenged but by the gods does he understand the human body. following lee around holding his quiver and rattling off whatever he just learned from watching michael in the infirmary. doted on by his big siblings. talking for hours about a galaxy far far away with heroes who choose to save the world, aren’t forced to, hey, they’re heroes, just like you, lee! and his siblings have dreams, they know the prophecies, they look at their little brother and they know he will be alone. they don’t know why or how yet but they can feel in their very soul that he will be out in the stupid world with all its hatred and violence and he will have to defend himself. and he can’t shoot straight and he cries when he hurts someone in training, and all he wants to do is help, and he doesn’t understand that people can be cruel and they will take his kindness and bleed him dry. and a war is coming. they can feel it. do you think they would be desperate? for themselves as much as will? i don’t know how long i will live. i don’t know how long i have left. but you will be there, son of phoebus. i know you will. remember me, okay? remember how i loved you. remember how we loved each other, remember how we healed and fought and cared. please. please, will, remember us. and remember how we loved you.

[shadowqnights]

crazy how everything about mcd is so much more insane when you apply what i call the dog rule and that is when they are all dogs now in some way shape or form: an analysis.

when garroth is purebred, a hound made to serve, that does not know how to do anything but heel. he has purpose. he is sleek and well-groomed because he has to be, because he has always been tended to. a dog that falls into desperate spiral when that dynamic shifts - because who is he, without someone to follow, protect, love? a dog that becomes flea-bitten and hungry when he runs because he was never taught to take care of himself, to be his own master. he falls apart. he needs this, he knows, but what is he without someone to own him? a dog that cannot lead any kind of pack or family because it is afraid to understand the kind of animal it is if not in submission. if a parent, a teacher, he is promptly punished by his students as cruel reminder that he is not allowed to find joy in anything other than what his makers intended. a dog so desperate that it offers up its own leash to whoever will take it when things crumble - even if it means turning back to distasteful company. as long as it is held at all. time and time again, he tried to tend to the younger, weaker. he tried to feed them and lick their wounds - and time and time again, only to be mauled in turn. no more, he thinks. life was simpler when he was mindless, just four paws and a purpose. if that was what he was bred for, what business does he have pretending?

when laurance is a stray but made out of love. his coat shines thanks to the love of his family, his sister. he is sleek and well-groomed with them. the nether breaks him in, turns him a little wild. gives him cause to show teeth when threatened. when he bites, he mauls. there is something wicked in his animal eyes. he goes for the kill. when he bites, something in him wants it to hurt - whether his prey or himself, he can't tell. a part of the dog believes the suffering is natural because its maker declared it so. the pain wanes in and out like the cycle of the moon; life is unpredictable. he is braced to survive, sometimes with teeth already bared to expect the suffering. constantly on edge, pacing, waiting for the next disaster. a loyal, desperate pet that will follow to the ends of the earth - a desperation that borders on obsession. he will eat you alive, if only you would stay with him, inside of him, never leave him. never look at anyone else the way you would him. don't put him on a leash - let him choose who to lope after. his leash, in fact, is in tatters. he can't be collared. he merely follows, hungry at the heels of who fed him. his sense of duty is not of obligation but of love, a sacred need to stay at the side of those who treated him with kindness and them alone. and worse, he is burdened with the constant fear that if left untethered for too long, that obsession might turn carnal - that if wronged, he may not kill to eat and feel full, but kill merely to feel the blood on his teeth, just to feel the pain. feel something. anything. that he might enjoy the taste of his loved ones. maybe a leash is the right thing. maybe he needs to be caged. he can't bear either thought.

when they both bite the hand that fed them. when they bite each other. when they are dogs and kind of made for each other.

dante is a dog. aaron is a dog. aph is a dog. katelyn? oh you fucking guessed it. ivy. jeffory. zane. yeah. all of them are dogs. welcome to the dog rule fuckers its exactly how it sounds. are you sick of the word dog yet.

[eatnightmares]

faulkner naming himself falconer is like. carpenter being brought up with the belief you’re born either to water or land so what happens if you’re neither. what if you belong nowhere, what if you belong somewhere your siblings can’t follow you. what if you try to join them in the water but you can’t swim and now your wings are too weighed down to fly away.

[tmos-time]

Have you ever done Erisol bloodswap designs before?

ive drawn a couple specifically for eridan, and have talked and bounced around ideas in length about a LOT of erisol ones in dms LMAO; the one that keeps making me lose my mind (thats my own thing to share at least LOL) is cerulean sollux and olive eridan

im PRETTY SURE, if i remember right, this is specifically based on inverted colors; eridan is green when inverted which leads to olive + his quirk and nicknames being inverted too lol. meanwhile sollux's inversion from yellow to blue probably SHOULD have been indigo, but god... the idea of sollux being themed around using bad luck was too good to pass on making him cerulean LOL. he's probably more of a ttrpg nerd over a tech nerd in this swap too lmaoo

[emblazons]

And when Jonathan is looking at Mike and Will in S5 with his classic 🤨 and Nancy keeps wondering wtf he’s thinking about so they nearly get into another argument borne of their lack of communication—

—until he finally admits “there’s something going on with our brothers” and she does that like what? no *smile-laughs uncomfortably* head shake of hers…until some time passes and her inner investigative journalist, “I thought you were acting weird because of Will” self puts the shit together? What then?

[yuutaguro]

hiii!!!

i love so much your art <3

little question: what was that made you fell in love with nanami? :3

hello! thank you so much for enjoying my art!! <3

and oh god how much time you got? I'll try to keep my yapping at a minimum.

so INITIALLY when I first introduced to Nanami in the anime, I found his serious personality a little grating and off-putting. His suit and goggles didn't help him on that front either (I've since made my peace with his fashion choices). But as I kept watching, and we see him face off Mahito for the first time and he takes the time to wipe that transfigured humans tears while lying about how he "doesn't bring personal feelings into work" is when I realized there's more to him. And when we reach his backstory of how he "ran away" from jujutsu society in order to earn enough money so he can retire and live away from people and curses made me realize how,,,human he is (he just like me fr fr). To see a character question his life purpose (or feeling like that was beyond him) endeared me in a way I wasn't expecting. Also how duty bound he is to put himself in harms way so Yuji, a child, can remain as safe as possible and reminds Yuji that "it's not a sin to be a child" like ARE YOU KIDDING???? a responsible adult in an anime??? unheard of. As much as Nanami tries to make the impression he's just there to clock in and clock out it's shown through his actions and words just how much he cares. From obtaining his black flash record because he was saving young sorcerers in the jjk0 to spending time with Ino as he trains for a Grade 1 promotion, like this is a well rounded character that goes way beyond the salaryman trope. And while Yuji's (and ours) time is limited it's amazing to see how much of an impact Nanami had on him.

-ahem- anyway tldr; I think everything about Nanami from his introduction to how Gege wrote him (and even his death but let's not get too into that) is one of the best things to come out of JJK despite not having the best first impression (but that one was on me).

[bl0rbohandbag]

– some vampire the masquerade x changeling the lost concepts that will not leave me alone.

"but vtm and ctl are from different settings–" shhhhhh :)

— part 2.

before i begin: i have been dabbling in vampire the masquerade and changeling the lost content for a while, i am not a fan of changeling the dreaming and vampire the requiem is unfamiliar to me. anyway! buckle up, enjoy the ride, this is kind of long.

trigger warning for abuse/unhealthy parental relationships because vamps i guess.

first of all: i recently read vtm: bloodstained love. while it focus on the more romantic and sexual aspects of kindred relationships with a lot of references to obsessive/posessive behavior and grotesque acts of love, it also made me wonder how those would translate to platonic or familial relationships. add some changeling shenanigans to that and we have some interesting concepts to play with! and with that being said...

– you're a changeling. kidnapped into arcadia and trapped there for who knows how long. in your durance, you dream of going back home, of reuniting with your friends and family, escaping your keeper to finally, finally enjoy freedom in the world you were born in.

– and one day, you do escape. back into your world, never feeling completely safe with your keeper looking to get you back and huntsmen being a very real threat, but you're ready to rebuild your life and enjoy your newfound freedom.

– there are various mentions throughout the ctl books on how unsuspecting or heedless changelings might have their freedom stolen again, this time by kindred. so, as it turns out, you'll have to deal with creatures other than the true fae who are more than willing to keep you caged!

the angst potential in a changeling reuniting with ther parent(s) only to find out they've become something inhuman, and not all that different from their keeper is unmatched.

maybe you watch them from a distance first. maybe you excitedly seek them out. maybe you just randomly bump into your parent by complete chance, after presuming them dead or deciding to abandon your old life. maybe they find you.

but the point is: they're kindred. so different from when you last saw them, as a teenager, as a child, before you were taken. as if having huntsmen and your keeper after you wasn't trying enough, a vampire parent comes (back) into your life to make it even more complicated.

a ventrue dad will make his ghouls your bodyguards, following you day and night. it makes you insanely uncomfortable, as you liken them to changelings serving true fae back in arcadia. he says it's because of his own dangerous kindred affairs that might affect you, but after an unplesant encounter with the huntsmen he might just decide you shouldn't be out and about at all.

your parent is either a neonate or an ancilla by the time your return from arcadia. your fetch is dead for whatever reason, expired, after living a life in your stead, automatically making the vampire believe their child is dead– now imagine their surprise and confusion when they see you– real you, living and breathing. and maybe you're distraught, too, seeing that they haven't aged a day or should, depeding on how long you've been gone, be most definetly dead.

(this is absolutely NOT going to send the vampire parent into a mental breakdown and spiral into obsession upon discovering the child they have lost and buried was literally a soulless copy of their real child who got kidnapped by faeries. a clone made out of twigs and a cat's eyes that stole their child's place and they never noticed. everything is just fine. it does not them affect them mentally at all :3)

(bonus points if the fetch was killed by the vampire parent's enemies after being entagled in their mess. they feel like they are getting a second chance and will absolutely not screw it up! cue you, poor changeling, being locked away or put under heavy surveillance.)

on the other hand, a kindred parent who currently has a living fetch of their child just being EXTREMELY distraught when they keep spotting someone who looks exactly like their kid at random places they definetly shouldn't be at is very funny and kind of unsettling!

(a vampire mom just feeding on mortals at the club, socializing with other kindred, perhaps dealing with some unresolved issues with her sire, etc. Then she spots you, her real kid, unbeknownst to her, just chilling, among all those dangerous vampires, when you're supposed to be in your dorm room at least a thousand miles from there. she calls the fetch's phone, expecting you to pick up and start explaining yourself. your fetch answers the phone, talks to her, sleep-drunk and confused as to why she's calling so late, but the person she's looking at has made no motion at all. they're not talking. they have not picked up the phone. but that's her kid's face, she's sure. what the fuck?)

for low-humanity ancillae/elder kindred, having their child back might bring about long-forgotten mortal feelings of genuine parental love, although they might express in the very unorthodox way kindred would. they simply do not understand why their child does not want to be around them. they just want to bond with you and keep you safe where kindred and fae can't get to you, make up for lost time. what do you mean they're "just like your keeeper"?

i think a lot of kindred parents will leave you be, mostly brujah or gangrel, knowing you'll be safer if they keep you away from their world. provided there was no fetch to replace you, they think it's amazing enough you were found alive and well after years of being a missing person. you don't like talking about what happened in your... "durance"... fine, they'll keep the investigators off your back, too. they might not even know you're no longer human. but they are going to check on you once in a while, or keep tabs on you, or even have some of their people watch you from a distance. just to make sure.

(just don't let them catch wind of all the changeling shenanigans or huntsmen attacks on your person. that might just change their mind...)

kindred parents might believe you're safer away from their world, yes, but they can just as easily bring you into the mess of kindred society without a second thought.

not very fun being a fairest when your toreador mother insists you show your mien to impress her fellow clan mates and other kindred with your overwhelming beauty. she's always been a pageant mom, so this shouldn't surprise you. there's several layers of wrongness to this, from having your changeling identity exposed to multiple vampires to further your mother's social status to this very situation bringing back so many unpleasant memories from your durance, and it's bound to end badly.

(the toreador pageant mom could very easily be a nosferatu pageant mom, a cleopatra now living vicariously through your fae-given beauty.)

(she will realize how terrible a mistake that was when vampires start really paying attention to you. or not. who knows.)

(gifts that could easily have come from a true fae lord start pouring in. letters written in excessive passion, bouquets of bloody roses, dresses made out of human skin, all delivered by equally dazed-looking ghouls. perhaps your mother will know, then, she fucked up severely. or maybe she'll just tell you to be grateful for those wonderful gifts.)

on another hand, a nosferatu parent taking one look at their fairest child's mien and deciding "oh. no kindred can see you like. ever. stay away from toreador specifically". you don't know what a toreador is, but you'll try to heed the advice.

your ancilla mother meets your motley and proceeds to show them baby pictures of you, taken in the 1870s shortly before your abduction to Faerie. they are very well preserved and you look most proper in your little sailor outfit.

you have a beast/ogre seeming and your gangrel parent thinks you're pretty rad :) you go hunting together.

your tzimisce dad has living furniture made out of human skin, but it's nothing you haven't seen in arcadia before. he's a little disappointed by your lack of enthusiasm, and very offended when you tell him your keeper had better taste in couches. trying to evade a tzimisce dad after he's been made aware of your existence is a difficult task, and you will get caught and held captive at one point (for your safety, of course!). if there is a fetch currently living your life, they will be immediately killed or horribly tortured (read: vicissitude) for the crime of decieving the tzimisce and impersonating you, regardless of you already having decided to leave said fetch alone.

(tzimisce dad thinks you should be thankful. he dealt with the imposter. shouldn't you be happy?)

(if he’s got cash and has some land within his domain to spare, he might let you build a little home not too far from his own to give you a semblance of independence to try and settle you down. might.)

(on the other hand, you have the chance to become a really good escape artist. take your time in captivity with your tzimisce dad to practice your escaping and running away skills, after all, every good changeling needs it! you also get the bonus of reliving your childhood/teenagehood with all the sneaking out.)

(quick intermission: all of these concepts might result in low-clarity for the changeling?? i'm not too sure how clarity damage works yet.

update: it absolutely might!)

your malkavian mother thinks she's plagued with visions of her missing child, glimpses of what they might look nowadays, wherever they are. this is actually you, visiting her in her dreams through oneiromancy.

(everyone thought, back then, that it was just a scare. you wandered into the forest and for ten hours people searched for you, only to find you safe and sound, without a scratch in your body or a speck of dirt in your shoes hours later. but she knew better. she knew that wasn't really you. it haunted her for the rest of her life, and it haunts her unlife even now. she never made it to the hedge.)

you can't take your tremere parent ANYWHERE. you give in after endless nagging and take them to a goblin market, but their arrogance will get them roped into terrible deals if you don't keep your eyes on them full time. you do take this as an opportunity to show off your changeling capabilities. you're in your element.

(you also drop life-altering bits of Faerie lore at random or inappropriate times. it sends them spiraling. you just hope they won't share it with anyone...)

darkling changeling just chilling with their nosferatu dad in the sewers, sharing rats.

and that's all for today, folks.