More Clone^2 or just Damian Clone Au because these two have my heart rn.
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“Asmi Danyal.” Damian says.
“Asm- asmi Danyal.” Danny repeats.
There is a sharp jab to his leg.
Danny thinks this means he’s winning, and he grins goofily.
(He’s not, he did the pronunciation wrong. He has to say it again.)
Where he is, is his room. It’s nearing midnight, and him and Damian have been sitting in his room for the last three hours.
He has books about learning arabic sprawled at his feet, from beginner’s books to advanced, he got whatever he could get his hands on that would teach him Arabic.
And Damian, little Damian who has finally taken it upon himself to settle down over these last few months, has decided that he doesn’t really like the way Danny is teaching himself.
“Your pronunciation is bad.” He told him through the translator Danny downloaded onto his phone. And then he sat down onto the ground and pointed at the floor and said “‘Ardia.”
And then wouldn’t stop until Danny said it in a way that he liked. He moved on to the next object. And then the next, and then the next. And so this has been their dynamic for the last two weeks. They’re finally moving on to proper sentences.
(It’s not fool-proof, and that’s why Danny still has his books. Damian doesn’t know every word, and knowing words doesn’t mean he knows how to string them together into a sentence.)
(But never let it be said that Danny is not a quick learner when he sets his heart to something.)
“Asmi Danyal.” Damian says.
“Asmi Danyal.” Danny repeats.
(“My name is Daniel.”)
Damian nods, satisfied and sated. He points to himself, puffed up like a peacock showing off its feathers. “Asmi Damyan Alghul.” He says, “‘Ana abn aldam.”
(There’s a flicker of uncertainty on Damian’s face, a slump in his shoulders that exists for only a millisecond. It’s a look on Damian’s face that Danny sees on his own whenever he looks in the mirror.)
(A question of identity, an ‘I think’ - am I really who I say I am? Doubt comes in with fickle tongue.)
Danny - much to his own surprise - is able to piece together the second half of his sentence on his own. It’s slow, assigning words to translation, but he learns it.
(“My name is Damian Al Ghul. I am the blood son.”)
The blood son - he can only assume he means the blood son of Bruce Wayne, of course. He shares the same face as the very public figure’s youngest boy.
And Danny shares the face of the youngest boy’s father.
And much like him, this Damian was younger than the original, thirteen year old one. Much younger.
“Marhaban Damian.” Danny says, a sly smile creeping up his face. “Asmi Danyal Fenton —” his eyes glance to one of his books, a list of greetings going down the page. He finds one he’s looking for. “Tasharafna.”
(“Hello Damian, my name is Daniel Fenton. It’s nice to meet you.”)
(He’d hold out his hand in a customary, playful handshake, but his palms still sting and hurt from his last encounter with Damian’s blade. He’s got them half curled at his side, unmoving as much as possible.)
Danny got the last pronunciation wrong, much to his amused delight. Damian’s face darkens and his smug expression falls away into a scowl.
I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.
For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)
I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).
The general pitch is as follows :
AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.
In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.
Spring is here , the true beginning of the year , the season where my soul reborns and blooms .
I have made some progress in terms of the person I am becoming, truly in all my honesty all that i have done is to stop caring for everything that once used to matter , the less I care about anything in particular the less I am bothered and the happier i stay. And i really hope everyone here is doing well and I appreciate all the love that was sent.
The problem is I care a lot about everything and i don't even get the bare minimum in return and when i do get it it's too late, so much time has passed by then ,when it comes by then i do not want or need it because it's the not care that came out of love it came out of their guilts. And the longer i wait for it to come by -the more I learn why I don't need it anymore .
I am slowly learning to value myself ,trying to put myself in a position where I can agree that i too deserve all the good things and love even on the days when i have nothing to offer .
Idk guys I am just here to rant and to be stupid
Better late than never they say , I guess it's not too late for me either, I will start my life and live up to what I want & how I feel ,i don't have to care about anything else as long as I feel alive in my bones things will eventually flow, I will fall in love with myself little by little day after day.
I will choose myself instead of choosing others and I will fall in love with my solitude instead of bearing it with me , i don't care if I end up alone if I do end up all by myself I will be with someone who i know has a tendency not to give up .
Life is really short i just don't want to sit and watch it pass by , if I am lucky enough I will have 40 more springs to experience , I have clear boundaries and thoughts in my head now, eventually i will find peace through it I hope so.
Ramdan kareem to people who celebrate it here please remember gaza in your prayers and fastings
Hey, gentle recognition for the people who are taking care of themselves in "not aesthetically-pleasing" ways. To the people who have to do things they don't want to because they know they would suffer more if they didn't, to the people who have to brush their teeth with their fingers, to the people who have to use washcloths to bathe, to the people who need to punch pillows or scream into them to express their intense emotions, to anybody ashamed about the way they need to live and take care of themselves.
You are doing the very best you can with the hand you've been dealt. It's not easy, it's not pretty, but it sure as fuck takes so much to do these things. You are doing what is best for yourself, and I, for one, think you deserve to be proud of that. Self-care isn't easy. It isn't pretty, often, but it's something you shouldn't be ashamed of or hide away because it's deemed "grotesque" or "not really self-care (because self-care is pretty and non-threatening to 'normal peoples' senses)"
don’t understand izzy haters don’t understand ed haters they are intertwined they are broken into pieces they love each other but even the best they can do isn’t enough they are barbed wire they are a gold chain they are wrong for each other they were born to be side by side there is not one without the other and it’s terrible now but there’s a deep-seated need to fix it, they’re going to try fix it
The elder men spoke low. They took a vote and said no.
They turned around real slow. Where did they go? Where did they go?
And the question oh, the question: can the kid keep his eyes, if the fire doesn't die?
They said no.
Converts, please do not sell yourself short or underestimate the position that you hold within Jewish communities. Your love for Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Jewish culture is infectious and can make people realize the value of the culture they've simply grown up in. When people ask you, "Why did you want to convert?" don't take it as them really asking "Are your reasons for converting up to my standards, to which I will thereby judge whether you're worthy or not?" Most of the time, what we're really saying is, "Please tell me why you love the thing I just grew up in. Tell me why someone would choose this."
Many Jews grew up facing antisemitism in school. So it's baffling to think that someone would willingly subject themselves to this, and some of us grew up internalizing this shame and rejecting our Jewish identity in order to fit in. But you, as a convert, spark light within these people. You, as a convert, have boldly gone against the grain because you see the value in our way of life, one that is not easy. You've joined a people, many times at the expense of your friends and family, and your safety. You're something to aspire to. You rekindle the love and connection we have to our nation. If you don't already realize the value in this, you will when you notice those around you being moved by your words.
Being a convert is not a mark of shame because you're "different," it's a badge of honor. In many ways, you are lighting the torch for the next generation of Jews you come in contact with.
i hope we continue to see more protests within the US military. i see a lot of leftists and folks who are anti-military who have such an open disdain for the people who are in the military, yet neglect to considering the conditions this country makes to produce ideology, poverty, and the illusion of choice to make all kinds of people choose to enlist in the military. You ever see those videos of ROTC kids recording each other asking why they joined the military and everyone's like, "healthcare", "it helped me go to college", "I was bored" or "free ptsd lol". I hate to remind everyone but folks who are in the military are people, too, and they are the same victims and perpetrators of violence as the rest of you, we have all been shallowly conditioned to view each other as enemies just because one person is wearing army greens and the other is not.
some of the biggest anti-war advocates are those who engaged in war. Veterans who genuinely believed they were protecting the US against "terrorism" come back with blood on their hands, and they choose to realize that it was US imperialism that forced them to carry out violence, instead of doubling down and shielding themselves from the fact that they too are capable of atrocities... This is a class of people who are intentionally conditioned to be as poor and as ideologically aligned to US imperialism so that the military has a never-ending pool to send their youth to destroy other country's youth. The only people I have ever heard say "do not join the military" are those who ARE military.
This is in no way to ever excuse or explain away any of the atrocious war crimes and violence this industry and its people have committed against others. What I am saying is that we absolutely cannot cast aside the individuals who have been victimized within US imperialism, even if they are wearing army greens. I was speaking with my Palestinian classmate last week and another classmate--a member of the US air force-- walked up to me and struck up a conversation. My military classmate showed me her new bird, bid both of us goodbye, and left. My Palestinian classmate asked me if I was close with her, and I said we talked quite often, and she said, "I never met a person who's in the military. I still hate the military, but I never knew that they did, too. I didn't realize that they were also victims."
If my Palestinian classmate--one who is actively watching her own community die--can understand that it is not individuals who are the problem but it is in fact systems, US imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism...why can't we all? And she has EVERY reason to hate any individual military member. A lot of online activism just creates more barriers. if your optics look bad, complicated, or contradictory, you are cast aside. Everyone has got the be the perfect activist, you can never make a mistake or share a half-baked thought, you should always believe every word from a marginalized persons mouth (because being marginalized doesn't mean you're not entrenched in white supremacy too!) and you should never question what you see...Do you know what you sound like? The very imperialists who are convincing poor whites to vote against themselves. Perfectionism is white supremacy. Black & white thinking is white supremacy.
I'd rather have a military member who genuinely believed in the US imperialism machine but was disillusioned after being deployed as my comrade than some leftist who cherishes the performance of "being a good person". I don't want "good people" in our movements. I want humans who care. I want humans who make mistakes and who learn from them. I want humans who accept the messiness of a person. I want humans who hold others accountable and allow themselves to take responsibility for their actions. I want people who change for themselves and others.
fight systems, not individual people. we can change each other, but if we're too preoccupied looking like the World's Perfect Activists, we will only consume each other alive. Connect to your fellow humans, forever and always.
I'd love more exploration of Rex perhaps feeling like he got kind-of the short end of the stick in terms of Jedi. He LIKES Ahsoka, for sure, she's got a spirit he admires and she's tenacious and it's hard not to care for her. And Anakin is, well, powerful for sure and friendly enough, so for a while Rex thinks he came out pretty well with his Jedi.
But then he starts meeting other Jedi or working alongside other Jedi and he realizes how much more competent other Jedi often are, especially the more experienced ones. And while Anakin is friendly enough, he's seen a lot of the other clones have MUCH closer relationships to their Jedi and certainly none of THEM ask their captains or commanders to lie to superior officers about secret relationships or unsanctioned missions. He's a little surprised once when he notices pretty much every other Jedi remembers that the clones can't always keep up with the Jedi and will unhesitatingly adjust their battle strategy to accommodate it. He sees the way other young Padawans are being taught to do something similar, to really consider the lives of the clones when they're in battle as the higher priority rather than the success of the mission.
And Rex starts wondering what his life might be like if he had ended up with a different Jedi. He loves his men, he's proud of the work they do most of the time, and he doesn't DISLIKE the Jedi he ended up with, but sometimes he's kind-of jealous of some of his brothers and wishes he'd gotten their Jedi instead.