#sea cryptic Danny

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.4

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3][Pt.5][Pt.6][Pt.7]

Danny was sitting in the back, his backpack obnoxiously taking up the seat next to him, when the door to the lecture hall creaked open near silently.

“What are you in here for?” Danny asked the guy who crept into class. He sympathetically took his backpack off the Seat of Shame and allowed the guy to sit down. Funnily enough, they had the same hair and eye color.

“Gen Ed. Undecided. You?” The guy grunted quietly back.

“Environmental studies. I’m Danny.”

“Tim.”

With the implicit understanding of two people in a required class they could not give less than two fucks about, Tim and Danny tuned back into the lecture. When the class was assigned group work, Danny looked over to see Tim softly snoring, head slammed down on the table.

“Tim. Wake up, dude.” Danny poked his shoulder.

“Huh? Class over?”

“Nah, we got group work. Discussion board.”

“Oh shit, thanks for waking me up. Wanna team up?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure. We should aim to post it in the middle so the professor doesn’t read our answers to the class.”

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Any idea what we’re talking about?”

“Kind of?”

“Good enough for me.”

——

Tim Drake kept seeing Danny Fenton around on campus.

“Danny! Dude, what are you doing?”

Danny turned, gloved hands full of crumpled trash. “Picking up after the student population, apparently.”

“Didn’t think environmental studies was that serious.”

“Global warming is very serious, you jerk,” Danny smirked at him, crossing the grass to put the trash into the trash can. “Reduce, reuse, oil shouldn’t be spilled in water and all that.”

“Basic stuff,” Tim grinned. Nice, he basically had a friend past Bernard now!

They were friends, right?

“And yet humanity fails to comprehend it. Incredible. Incredibly stupid that is.”

“They get it. Major corporations just don’t care.”

Danny sighed. “True that. You on your way to your next class?” He took off his biodegradable gloves off (nitrile and nylon, baby!) and chucked them into the trash.

“I’ve got free time, actually. Prof cancelled for his daughter’s surgery.”

“Oh, shit, that’s rough! You wanna go downtown and join the strike?”

“A strike? What for?” Even as he asked, Tim hiked his bag higher onto his shoulder, ready to go. They fell into step as the two left campus.

“Apparently, Quillan Pharma was doing some shady shit at their manufacturing plants. I think it’s like killing kids, and pouring toxins into the ground.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Oh! Poison Ivy’s gonna be there!”

Tim blinked. He casted a sideways look at Danny. Sure he’s been here long enough to know… but it couldn’t hurt to check. “You know she’s an eco-terrorist, right?”

“Okay, but like… people suck sometimes. And all she’s asking for is like don’t kill the planet. And she doesn’t do that whole mind control thing too much anymore! The Sirens are so cool. Plus, one of my best friends at home might actually kill me if I don’t try to get her autograph. Poison Ivy is like, Sam’s personal hero.”

Tim snickered. “Yeah, okay. Mind if one of my friends join? His name’s Bernard.”

“The more the merrier,” Danny nodded. “Ooo! Hot chocolate. Want some?”

Danny bought three drinks as Tim trailed behind, texting Bernard.

“He said yes.”

“Cool! We should meet up somewhere before the drinks get cold.”

Well, Danny got the autograph. Tim got a new friend, and Bernard got a drink from his crush.

——

“Oh, you’re the glowing dude that Batman always talks about!”

Danny blinked, eyes scanning the wing-like cape and the yellow emblem on the hero’s suit. Danny was indeed glowing, stars and nebulas freckling across neon green skin, and glowing hair the color of a white dwarf star, tinged with the blue from his ice core.

“I… have absolutely no idea who you are,” Danny lied, like a liar. He’s found a surprising niche of entertainment in messing with the local vigilantes and he’ll be damned if he missed this opportunity.

He heard a snicker from the comm lines as Red Robin visibly brushes it off.

“I’m Red Robin. Why are you picking up trash?”

“Picking up after you humans, apparently.”

The both of them blink, feeling a weird sense of déjà vu. A moment of awkward silence passed before they both shook it off.

“Are you here to help? No offense, but the track record for you people is terrible.” Danny strode over and grabbed a bag. He opened it, and shook it at Red Robin’s face. “See? Batarangs, these odd bird looking ones, the R’s. Seriously, pick up after yourselves!”

“Oh, woah, can we have these back?”

Danny yanked the bag back before Red Robin could get close. “Pay me. These were incredibly tedious to pick up. Especially the batarangs. I mean, I even found a whole bunch of old rusted ones in the middle of the bay. What did you do, dump an entire bag in there from the air?”

Red Robin sighed and took out a wad of cash, with tracking fluid all over it. Danny grimaced, smelling the odd scent on the money. “That’s not real cash. It smells off. Are you trying to give me counterfeits because you’re broke?”

Red Robin gaped, oddly offended. “No! They’re real!”

“Doesn’t smell like it. It’s stinkier than the trash. Go get the one with the money, the litterer. Tell him I’ll be back the next full moon. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Danny grumbled, disappearing on the spot to watch Red Robin flounder with the stack of cash and the piles of dead bodies on the shore.

“What the fuck even is my life these days?” Red Robin wondered out loud, stuffing the cash back into his pocket. He looked over the plastic wrapped bodies and slumped, sighing.

Oddly enough, Danny felt a sense of sympathy. Well, he’s not getting paid for sympathy. He’s not getting paid at all tonight, actually. Danny flew off, plunging once more into the depths of the significantly cleaner waters, and used his ice to scoop out oil stains.

Danny glanced around and sighed. He had a lot of work to do.

——

“So you’re saying he’s like a werewolf mermaid fae child immortal god thing, right?”

Bruce grunted.

“B, what the hell are you smoking these days? You know drugs are bad, right? Do we need Superman to give you that PSA?” Jason snickered.

Tim, massaging his arms from having to haul an ungodly amount of dead bodies, grunted. He’s so similar to Bruce that it gave the people currently in the cave hives.

“He said full moon. I don’t think we can track him with regular stuff. The bugs kept shorting out.”

“Oh boy,” Dick sighed. “Don’t fall off the spiral cliff, Tim. You’ve got midterms to think about so no stalking the guy.”

“Yet,” Tim shot back, changing out of his suit.

Bruce grunted, setting aside a huge stack of cash.

#let Tim Drake go to college you cowards #he got his GED in this one boys #let Tim fucking age #danny phantom #batman #tim drake #dc x dp #dcxdp #dpxdc #danny the tired college student #bamf danny phantom #siren au??? #sea cryptic Danny #bro I had war flashbacks to discussion board group work #terrible why do I do this to myself #the batarangs in the middle of the bay was from when Bruce tried to kill the joker and himself #Danny: people just can’t clean up after themselves these days #sea cryptic! danny au

[croutonconfidential]

thinking of danny phantom aus and just headcanon stuff

pomegranate rules: eat enough ectoplasm/become contaminated enough and you will be stuck in the ghost zone(yall come get your Persephone hades au)

frozen au: Elsa! Danny and Anna!Jaz, Danny at his coronation as ghost king accidentally does some stuff that jeopardizes the kingdom out of pure anxious nerves

what if clockwork had a human alter ego and his sole income would be from predicting lottery numbers and stock prices making him practically the god of wall street, no one wants to play poker with him and he does palm reading on the side just for fun as a treat (only he can't read palms but as a time ghost he literally is omnipotent barring time stream altering events, now if only he would give clear advice and not cryptic sestinas)

pirate and merman au: mermaid shifter Danny, his parents are still scientists and want to study 'the humanoid fish monsters' only this is like the eighteenth century so their tools are just nominal torture devices and to escape he stows away on a ship, but it sinks, but he turns into a mermaid and lives! there he meets other mermaids and deep sea creatures but they don't like him for being only half a mermaid. it takes a while and meeting both jerks and nice people in equal measure but eventually he learns to embrace a piece of his identity fully. skip forward to 'x' amount of time later and he finds out that his sister set sail to find him but somehow became a pirate along the way. they meet and they talk there's feelings everywhere and Danny after so long just being a mermaid finds balance as a mermaid shifter with a foot on the sand and one in the tide but never far from either

coffee shop au: dan must do community service as a means to make up for his crimes, it's in the form of a coffee shop (somehow)(don't question it). but apparently he gets a little too into it and when someone asks why he's still there his response is 'what do you mean I've completed my community service years ago?' so in the end he's just some ghost with a magic coffee shop that shows up everywhere(maybe across dimensions even cough cough dcxdp crossover nudge nudge cough cough)

funny summons scenarios: one book said the summoner needed two hundred cursed idols arranged in a circle, they use Furbys and it works. Danny is terrified when he sees where he is and as a consequence his eldritch powers affect the electronics within the dolls and sets them on fire which terrifies him even more. it's a vicious cycle that only ends until he's burned them down into slag

dcxdp de-aged Danny: somehow Danny is de-aged maybe it was some accident from when Danny was helping clockwork clean his house or something, or maybe the Fenton parents made an ectoplasmic vacuum and sucked away some of Danny's ectoplasm causing his body to use its remaining mass to stabilize itself by making him a kid again. and it will be too hard to explain so cue jazz running away to Gotham with Lil Danny so their parents don't dissect him because this kid can't hide his powers for the half-life of him. and somehow she bumps into Talia or Bruce (take your pick) they hit it off while talking about kids and somehow it ends up as a scheduled playdate while Jaz also somehow becomes eligible for more programs (totally not through the good-hearted intentions of a super-secret assassin or gothic detective.)

dpxdc childhood rivalries: the Fentons went to college with this guy named bruce it was a shame he left so soon into the school year but they got on really well and even stayed in touch on and off through the years which led to lots of playdates between their families. but in dicks case he was a circus kid he could do a heckabunch of stuff and jazz even when being much younger had a competitive streak a mile wide it was a lighthearted competition but they both knew there could only be one victor. only Danny at the time just thought it was regular fighting, he and Jason had a sword fight only they used the antiques off the wall (Alfred was very displeased). by the time Tim came around the Fentons had fallen out of contact for a bit but eventually they go introduced to Tim hew as nice but between college student Jaz fourteen and a half Danny that still had to come to terms with half dying it wasn't great but it was a fun summer eventually. it's a Fenton Wayne family rivalry at this point and when Damian comes along and hears about it trust me when I say that it has been on site ever since. Danny drinking his coffee? stabbed. only for his opponent to either bend out of the way or just walk away just before he stabs Danny and Danny just says 'nice swing'. Danny sitting on the couch in the library reading a book? he's dropping down from the curtains only to be snatched up like a kitten and shown memes on Danny's phone instead. and when Bernard comes into the picture just witnessing all these feats of skill and ingenuity, and this is it. this is what makes him think that 'oh god these guys could be the batclan but wait whos this guy then?' Bernard searches but gets nothing and at the point where he just asks Danny to his face about which vigilante he is, and the response? "oh that was like three or four years ago, I'm retired don't tell anyone though my secrets is so illegal and dangerous you don't even want to know' and best of all is the Fentons, they are all clueless. they have no idea that the Wayne family is the batclan. it's a surprise to Danny but the thing is that he can't even consider it after all dick screamed at finding a caterpillar in his hair, Jason sneezes like a kitten and sure he might have the rage to put ten heads in a duffel bag but that dude? no, he gets sympathy pain from the tiniest things, it was like he was the one getting stitches rather than Danny after their failed sword fight. and Tim Tim? the guy that drowns in his oatmeal and once he gets to his eighth red bull starts speaking in ones and zeros? no none of these people could be vigilantes at all. and don't even think about saying bruce is batman the 'butts match' was a shitpost eight years ago and no one wanted to talk about bruce's butt, especially after the incident of '98 there was so much blood, also Danny remembers bruces thirty-second birthday, it was an escape room and the only way they all got out was through complete dumbassery and somehow abandoning their left socks, not. a single brain cell was used that day

#danny phantom #danny phantom au ideas #au idea #dpxdc #headcanons

[half-deadmagicperson]

And He Answered

Chapter 7

Words: 1101

Prompt: Mermaid AU, where instead of being ectobiologists, Jack and Maddie Fenton study wildlife from under the sea— specifically mermaids. Amity Park is next to multiples large lakes and rivers, the Ghost Zone is underwater, all the ghosts are mers, and Danny is struggling to find a way to explain his sudden aversion to any things water. By @erebecula

This is my last chapter of this that counts for Phic Phight 2023 points. I really enjoyed participating in the Phight and can't wait for next year!

AO3

     Danny couldn't breathe. Eyes from every corner of the room were fixated on him, watching his every move. For a solid minute nobody moved. A loud cackle broke out from the crowd

    "Oh, Ancients! This is rich!" A gruff voice called out. It was the scary mohawk dude from before. He continued laughing before finally calming down enough to continue, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! It's just there's no way the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of that whelp!"

    Some others murmured in agreement. Dora swam over to the Important Lady and whispered some things to her. Expressions flashed across the lady's face starting with disbelief and ending with shock.

   The sea of crowds parted as the four-armed lady made her way over to Danny.

   "Have you, child, seen the Time Master?" She asked in a hushed voice. Danny nodded meekly. He took a hard swallow. The Lady looked him up and down. She noticed the bracelet.

    "He…he is the chosen one," her voice gave away her disbelief. The crowd whispered to each other. 

   "Well, I suppose we should begin your training."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   The Important Lady, who Danny finally learned was Pandora, took him down a hallway in the complex. Pandora opened a large door to a room with seven large thrones each etched with the name of the seven main seas. In five of the seats sat some of the people Danny saw onstage as well as a few others.

     A giant kelp monster occupied the Pacific throne. It definitely wasn't a Kelpie because those were more like horses. This person(?) was more like a sentient lump of kelp and other underwater plants.

    On the Arctic throne, a giant, white, and hairy crab was talking to one of the attendants. He reminded Danny of those crabs that live on the bottom of the ocean. Danny's gaze shifted to the crab's giant ice pincher. Better not get on the wrong side of that guy.

    The India throne was occupied by a formless figure that was made out of a night sky. The only thing Danny could make out was a pair of horns.

   On the Mexico seat, a semi-normal looking mer sat. The current seemed to swirl around him, going faster or slower depending on his mood.

   The last occupied seat was the Caribbean. A familiar man in a purple cloak smiled at the young boy as Pandora took her place on the Mediterranean throne.

   The middle throne was definitely the biggest, but it was vacant. Danny stared nervously at the six intimidating figures in front of him. The kelp creature sludged over to him. 

   The plant circled him like a shark on a feeding frenzy before speaking, "This is our chosen one?"

   "I know what you think, Undergrowth. I was hesitant as well, but he was the one who pulled the sword," Pandora spoke.

   "He's a child!" The man with the whirlpool around him argued. 

   "Sometimes great things come in small sizes," Clockwork cryptically replied.

    "His aura is different. He does not feel like a normal drowned," the shadow creature spoke. Its voice warbled around the room.

    "You are correct, Nocturne, I believe the young boy has been blessed," the crab chimed in.

    "Clockwork! Did you have anything to do with this!" An angry jellyfish with a giant eye got right into the time master's face. The scar on the man's face crinkled as he smiled.

    "All is as it should be."

    "You can't be serious! You are not supposed to interfere!"

     "Ah, but then who would save us? Many strong men and women would have tried, but none had the right character to have the best outcome."

    "Why you!!!!" 

    The eyeball jellyfish began to squabble while Clockwork sat gracefully in his chair. Attention shifted back to Danny.

    "We should begin your training," Pandora stated, "We have assigned Princess Dorothea of the North Sea to be your basic magic teacher. Once you develop, if you develop a core ability, we will find someone suitable to train you. I will teach you the ways of combat. We shall begin tomorrow at dawn."

    "Uh, Ms Pandora? I would love to train and all, but I also start high school tomorrow, and I don't want to miss my first day," Danny squeaked out. The council began to whisper to each other. One of the stupid jellyfish burst into hysterics.

   "YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT HE'S NOT EVEN A FULL MER!!!! Clockwork you should be stripped of your powers where you stand! The land people can not be privy to the secrets of the deep!"

    Clockwork took a calm sigh and stood up.

   "Young Daniel may not be a full mer, but he is not intended to be. The world is in need of one to unite the sea with the land, and Daniel is the perfect candidate."

   "But what if he turns like the other one did?"

   "I will ensure that he doesn't."

   "Wait there's another one? Like me?" Danny spoke up. The people in the room looked at him like parents who didn't want to explain something to their child. Pandora bit the bullet and spoke up.

   "There is one like you. At first, he seemed like one of good intent. As time went on, however, he became increasingly hostile. He is the reason we are in this situation."

   "Was he also blessed by Clockwork?"

   "No. He was cursed by a Spectra, the sea witch."

    They finished planning Danny's regimen before Danny left for home. Apparently no time passes when you're in the dome because it was only a few minutes later than when he first got in the water. He slipped some shorts on and began to walk back home.

   He felt a little bit better about the whole chosen thing, now that he had some people to teach him. His mind was lost in thought before a familiar voice called out to him.

    "Hey Danny!" Danny looked up to see Sam and Tucker. A smile crept on his face as he walked over to his friends.

   "New shirt?" Sam asked

   "Yep! Jazz and I made it with scraps of jumpsuits."

    "It looks good for beach days," Tucker commented.

    "I agree. Anyways, we were about to come get you to see if you wanted to go to my house for a movie," Sam mentioned. Danny nodded his head, and the trio headed off towards the Manson Mansion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    "You will make an excellent servant. What is your name?"

    "My name is Plasmius, Your Highness, Vlad Plasmius."

    "Well, Plankton, you will do nicely. Now FIND ME MY RING!"

    "Yes, Your Highness."

#danny phantom #dp #phic phight 2023 #phic phight #fanfiction #mer!danny #mermaid au #and he answered

[xadoheandterra]

Series: still waters run deep Title: Transitive Existence Fandom: The Sandman (Netflix + Comics semi-fusion), Danny Phantom Chapters: I | II Enablers: @demigodorion @azthedragon @kbobrian (because you three litereally went “do it” soooooo….) Characters: Death of the Endless | Teleute, Time, Clockwork, Danny Fenton Pairings: Night/Time (historical) Tags: Discovery and Ignorance, Death Is Nosy, Clockwork Is Cryptic, Referenced Dream in the Fishbowl, dichotomy of existence, Death is a good big sister, introspective Summary: A New Endless is born, a new sibling of the Seven, a new child of Night and Time. This, predictably, has consequences. Not that Danny really cares. He’s just here to live his life and maybe make friends with these people who’ve been at this whole ‘Endless’ thing longer than he has. And okay maybe the idea of older siblings that aren’t Jazz is an interesting prospect and maybe being accepted by someone who understands is on that list somewhere.

Oh, and there might be something about rescuing a cosmic entity in there but whose counting?

Danny twisted lightly in the air as he floated in the sea of empty green that made up the Ghost Zone almost aimlessly. He'd been sent off by Jazz with a smile and a bag and a kiss to the forehead. There was the promise and threat to return to Physical once his business in the Zone had been done since Danny knew Tucker, Jazz, and Sam had all planned some sort of birthday celebration. Maddie and Jack weren't home, thank the Ancients, otherwise it would have taken more work for Danny to even get into the Zone for this visit.

With a grin Danny twisted to fly on his back as he stared at the expanse. He wondered what Clockwork had to tell him now that he was seventeen. It'd been almost a full year since Clockwork came into his life, nearly three full years since he'd died and revived in equal measure in the lab accident beneath his home. The older ghost had been a godsend after their initial and rough start; his knowledge helped so much in Danny's own growing grasp of his abilities and then his many questions and ever growing curiosity about the Zone. Now Clockwork specifically asked Danny to visit on 'the day of your arrival as a being in the Physical,' which was Clockwork-speak for birthday, apparently. Compared to, 'the day of your making in the Realms,' which apparently was the day of the lab accident. Danny didn't know why Clockwork phrased it like that, but that was the ancient ghost for you.

Not that Clockwork was actually a ghost; Danny had to be blind to not realize there was nothing 'ghostly' about Clockwork, but he lacked the context for what Clockwork is other than a mysterious time-based entity of unfathomable power who had an extreme fondness for young 'Phantoms' such as Danny. Dani did not find Clockwork so fond, but Danny was certain it was merely a lack of exposure that would correct itself in time. After all Clockwork handled everything in the aftermath of Dani's near de-stabilization and Danny hadn't had to worry about Vlad showing his ugly mug ever since! Danny considered that a win in his book, all things considered.

The sound of a ticking clock drew Danny from his thoughts as he leaned his head back and slowed his flight. He passed by a singular, floating clock as the landscape around him began to darken. Jagged bits of earth and rock formed small pathways that dipped through slight hills into peaks and valleys. Danny drifted over to one that he recognized, marked by a signpost with a night-sky purple clock decorated in little stars that looked vaguely like some sort of art project Danny had made when he was three. He always found it a little odd, but then he chalked it up to something that his parents had accidentally dropped into a natural portal that Clockwork eventually found and took a liking to. It at least served as a decent guidepost to being in the right area of the Zone.

With a twist Danny landed his booted feet upon the path, hiked his travel pack that Jazz had shoved at him a little more centered on his shoulders and began to follow the path on foot. It was rude to fly through another ghost's area of the zone unless you had previous permission, and while Clockwork had long given Danny permission to fly if he needed to, Danny preferred being polite. The first few disastrous meetings of the various denizens of the Zone because of his social faux pax made him more than leery of pissing of a being far more powerful than himself.

The remainder of the walk was rather peaceful as this area of the zone began to darken into something more like twilight, the distant lands looked little more than stars in the night sky. Danny always liked this view of the Zone best, and always found the shift and change from endless green to endless night fascinating. His love of it might have had to do with his love of space, but it wasn't wholly because he once dreamed of being an astronaut. The idea that the various lands in the Zone could be likened to small planets or stars had always appealed to him. The Zone was a lot like Space in that way--vast periods of emptiness, inter spaced with small budding galaxies of landmasses that orbited one another. Of course that implied there was some sort of logic or order to the Zone and there wasn't, but Danny thought the comparison was apt.

In the distance the Clock Tower rose up over the edge of the hill. It stood tall as a skyscraper, but as with most things in the Zone the closer you got the smaller it really appeared. By the time Danny was to reach the front porch the Clock Tower was the size of nothing more than a rather tall and thin house instead of the towering shape it appeared in the distance. Danny tilted his head when the door to the Tower opened and out stepped the rather familiar figure of Grias. The strange Observant-attendant ghost was a weird one, not like the rest of their kind that apparently worked to govern this world in the absence of a caretaker. For one thing Grias was kind, for a given measure of what kind meant.

They wasn't an asshole like the others, Danny amended silently as Grias came to a standstill in front of him. Danny remained quiet and watched as the ghost fidgeted with clawed fingers for a moment before they dipped their head with a short, "Lord Phantom."

Danny put on a smile and waved with a short, "Heya, Grias. 'Sup?" He earned a slightly hesitant fanged grin in response from the ghost before it was wiped away into blankness a second later.

"Forgive me, my Lord," Grias said carefully. "Your time with Clockwork will unfortunately be far more brief than previously hoped."

Danny frowned, fingers tightened on the strap of his backpack. He didn't know what Grias meant; he had no idea how long this entire meeting between him and Clockwork was supposed to go anyway, let alone what Clockwork wanted to tell him about that was so important it had to wait for this day specifically. Cautiously, slowly, Danny drew out a soft, "Okay?" and Grias inclined their head.

"You have four hours, my Lord." Four hours? Danny blinked, surprised at a given length of time for this meeting. There wasn't ever really a time put upon Danny's visits with Clockwork in the past, and if something were to be short Danny would anticipate it at being something closer to thirty minutes and not four hours. If Grias considered that brief Danny wondered how much time Clockwork really wanted to have with him. "After that point I am afraid I cannot keep the news from the Council. I am sorry."

Grias bowed once, and in Danny's stunned silence slipped past him and away. Danny blinked after the other ghost with another, quieter, drawn out, "Okay?" followed by a short, "What the fuck?" because nothing of that interaction made sense. After a second Danny shook his head and decided it didn't matter. He turned, marched up to the Clock Tower's door, and pushed it open with a cheerful call out to its resident.

"Hey, Clockwork!"

Clockwork looked up from where he stood, half bent over his own staff which he grasped tight enough to render his knuckles bone white, and graced Danny with a smile.

"Hello, Daniel."

Yeah, Danny decided as he felt that core in his chest tremble with emotion at the clear fondness from his ghostly mentor, whatever Grias was on about didn't matter.

...

Daniel was a curious and often creative child, Time learned in the years he spent with his gaze on his child. The youngest-oldest of his Endless children was so frighteningly like his third child in many ways that more and more often Time let his gaze drift in the direction of Morpheus. A part of him shattered every time he saw his little dream curled into a ball, ignoring the world around him. A part of him worried about the humans who held onto the drops of Dream's power, who used and abused gifts that were stolen. He may have, silently, tweaked a few bits of timeline in a sense of revenge--aged some, forced others to stay younger...but that was not the point. Time drifted back into the here-now to look at Daniel whose lips were pursed at the bombshell of information Time had just lain at his lap.

You are not alone in this universe, Time had uttered softly. There are seven others just as you are.

"Well I guessed as much," Daniel eventually said into the silence. He peered at Time over his knees and pressed his cheek against the bone there, and Time waited patiently. "I mean...Vlad and Dani exist, right?"

For a long moment, Time stared at his child almost uncomprehendingly. The form of it unfolded beneath his gaze with those simple words--things that Daniel should know but treated as unknowable. Ah, the poor boy feared his nature, didn't he? He kept the knowledge from himself to fit himself into the mold of a human when he wasn't. Time sighed deeply and leaned forward. He placed his hands upon his knees as he looked at Daniel with a narrowed gaze.

"Daniel," Time said, and his voice rumbled in this place with barely constrained power, he knew. This must be delicate; a careful extraction of the truth that Daniel willfully denied as ignorance. "What do you see when you look upon me?"

"An ancient and very powerful ghost," came Daniel's prompt reply, and when Time raised his brow Daniel flushed slightly before he mumbled, "I mean it's easier, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

Time watched as Daniel's brow furrowed, as he tried to think of what Time wanted him to acknowledge, before finally Daniel sighed softly.

"Not always, I guess," Daniel whispered into the air, and his words echoed faintly with something on the edge of his grasp. Daniel looked to him then, eyes a bright teal that overtook even the sclera and pupil. It was like looking into the edge of the aurora borealis, a twist of blues and greens that shimmered almost in the way of galaxies but not quite. A hint toward his cosmic parentage, but evidence toward his own unique nature.

"What do you see, child," Time urged softly, and waited for Daniel to look, to put words into what he truly saw before him. Daniel breathed out slowly, and Time let a smile cross his lips as Daniel looked to him with his nature--with the truth of it in his eyes.

"You are older than ancient," Daniel said slowly, words with that echoey quality to them. "From before a moment when things exist. When there was only darkness, and only time, that stood upon a vastness and an emptiness. You will exist even then, always shifting and moving from one moment to another, to another, to another...." Daniel blinked, and his eyes cleared back into bright green that they took upon this form. "You are Time," he said finally, his voice clear. "All of Time made manifest."

"Yes," Time said, and found himself pleased especially with the wide-eyed, awed way that Daniel now looked to him. It looked as if the child truly saw him for the first time.

"Has your hair always been this red?" Daniel asked, voice suddenly bright as he shifted and dropped his knee down. He leaned forward and grasped at the small bit of braided hair that had fallen from beneath Time's hood.

"When I am this young, yes," Time agreed lightly, smile on his lips.

"Oh," Danny whispered, as his gaze darted to Time's face. "Clock, your eyes...."

Time nodded slowly. "Now, little one, what do you see when you gaze upon yourself?" There is a moment, and then Daniel turned his head to the side for a moment. Time watched as he turned that gaze inwards, and his heart broke a little as the next second Daniel jerked away from him with a stricken expression. "Daniel?" Time asked, leaned forward slowly to place his hand upon one thin shoulder of the teenager before him.

"....I'm not human, am I?" Daniel whispered, and looked at Time with that unfathomably Endless gaze. Time smiled sadly in response. "What...what am I? What are you?"

With the care of a parent, even out of practice as he had been and with only the ability to observe the world around him and rarely to interact with it, Time drew Daniel into an embrace as he spoke in soothing cadence, "You are my son, Daniel, and we are Endless." He stroked a hand down Daniel's back, tried to sooth the teenager whose own truths laid bare before him--they had time to wait until Daniel had processed before Time brought up his siblings once more. There was much they needed to go over, in the moment granted to them. Much Daniel needed to know before--Time closed his eyes and breathed slowly.

It did not matter. None of it mattered in the face of his children.

...

The knowledge that he was something other had always been there, Danny knew. He'd always known in the way that he just knew things and in his boundless curiosity on how each item was put together, the workings behind it. His endless fascination with all things space and expanding--Daniel knew he was different. He and Jazz had spent hours and days just talking about it sometimes. Jazz said he might be something called autistic, or have some other developmental difference that made him just a bit unique compared to everyone else. He might also have been adopted, they speculated, given how vastly different to his parents he looked. He had hair that was as dark as the night sky after all, nothing like Jack's dark brown that bordered on black. His eyes were the complete wrong shape too, and the exact shade of blue was not quite the same as the Fenton's, either.

In the end Danny and Jazz had long concluded it didn't matter because Danny was Jazz's brother and Jazz was Danny's sister and Sam and Tucker were his friends. Even becoming what he was now--not half-ghost, Danny knew that was just a story to tell children, something to clarify the differences between him and the others, to ease the knowledge that Danny was other because Danny was other. Each of his 'powers' could easily be pulled from the reality that he was a child of Time and Night, of cosmic beings older than the universe, older than the oldest of universes by any rights. He had the ability to drift among the Physical because he was Endless, much as apparently the others in this family he didn't know about could. He could be seen if he wanted, or unseen if he didn't, and Danny knew he'd always been able to do that. Had always done that. The invisibility, intangibility, had only been something he'd taken up after the Fenton's various discoveries and his own worry about his nature.

Danny stood on the precipice between different species of being. Humans that he most resembled, that the Endless oft appeared as, and then whatever the Infinite Realms demanded he be. The white, the glow, the 'ghostly abilities' and 'ghostly core' were all aspects that pulled from the Neverborn. They weren't 'ghost's' per se, but manifestations of concepts of events, of common discoveries because the Infinite Realm was an Infinite Realm of Discovery, and it was all Danny's. Every thing discovered or learned and everything lost appeared there in one way or another--and in that way everything in the Realm was Neverborn but not necessarily Ancient like Clockwork--like Time.

It mattered in a way Danny didn't understand, except then Clockwork stood to his feet and offered Danny a hand and spoke in that soft, deep bass of his, that he wanted to show him something important. So Danny accepted the grasp and followed Clockwork down the winding halls of the Tower which grew and shrunk as it was needed. He followed Clockwork with red hair and blue eyes and pale-as-death skin with his core in his throat and his world partially upended. He grasp tight to that hand and felt just the slightest bit unmoored, untethered and so young. Youngest of eight--the idea that Danny had siblings just as strange and different as him made him the slightest bit giddy with everything.

The room Clockwork took Danny to was a bare, blank space filled with colors and small nebulae that resembled the sky untainted by light pollution. Danny gaped at it, spun in a circle as he let go of Clockwork's hand to take in everything. There were columns and pillars that wrapped around the room, and set in the center a series of items placed in a semi-circle.

"Your siblings call such a room their Gallery," Clockwork said softly, and drew Danny's attention over toward where he stood in front of a golden ankh. Danny watched how Clockwork stroked his finger along one of the wristwatches that littered his arms as he looked to it, and gestured Danny to come over. "They've built up rules among themselves, ways to conduct their interactions based upon mine and their mother's opinions of such things, and later to bind themselves as Family when things began to...sour, in our absence."

"Why have you been absent?" Danny asked as he stood next to Clockwork--he tried valiantly to again ignore that Clockwork had called himself their father in all things. He would rather unpack that little bit of information at another time, when he could properly decompress and hopefully have Jazz there to mitigate the freak out that was bound to happen. The freak out that he was barely able to stop right now as it was.

Clockwork looked to Danny then, just a sideways glance as he spoke. "I am old, Daniel. I am ancient."

"Yeah your basically dust," Danny quipped back and then winced as Clockwork blinked at him slowly. "Sorry."

"I am not offended," Clockwork chuckled. "You are not wrong. Cosmic dust I may be, yes, and yet...my children had their duties, a hand in their affairs. They did not..." Clockwork paused, lips pressed together.

"You felt like they didn't need you," Danny said and for the longest moment Clockwork nodded his head.

"It did not help that your mother and I had a bit of...well, that we chose to go our separate ways," Clockwork placed the words delicately out there before he turned from them completely. "As it was they did not need us, now fully formed and conscious of their actions. They had no need to be coddled or cared for any longer." He paused for a moment, stared at the wristwatches on his wrists--and Danny counted eight of them, when he'd thought once there were only seven. "I am always with my children, Daniel, even if they cannot see me. I am always watching."

"Yeah but...but you need them too, right?"

Clockwork looked to Danny with eyes that were so sad that it hurt and Danny wasn't sure what he could do to make it better. He opened his mouth, but Clockwork interrupted softly, "It is more complicated than that, child." When Danny went to counter the statement Clockwork reached out and grasped his hand and tugged him forward. "Here, grasp this."

Danny closed his mouth, breathed through his nose, and then grasped at the golden ankh with a roll of his eyes as Clockwork began to explain the workings of the Gallery. Why the Gallery was in the Clock Tower Danny didn't know, but he bet it was just some weirdness about the Zone and not that this was actually located in the Clock Tower at all. He wondered if anyone in the Zone could find him here, if he found his way to this place. Were the Observants aware of Danny and Clockwork in this space? Were the Observants aware of what Clockwork was? Danny doubted it; he doubted they would bother to try and order around a literal cosmic entity of Time like Clockwork was if they knew.

"Are you listening to me, Daniel?" Clockwork asked, and Danny blinked and then rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. He thought he heard a sound, faint and in the distance that reminded him of wings, but he did not let himself dwell on it as he replied to Clockwork a bit embarrassed.

"No, sorry. Got lost in my thoughts."

"Be careful with that; ones thoughts can be a dangerous place to wander off alone in after all!"

Danny whipped around, surprised enough to drop the ankh in his hand as it clattered to the ground. He did not miss the wince that crossed the woman's face in front of him, the ways she glanced to the ankh and then to Clockwork before finally her gaze landed on Danny. Her lips tugged up into a wide grin, and she seemed for a moment as if she would open her arms before she thought better of it.

"Felt you holding on to that for a while without saying anything and figured I should stop by and see what was what," she said brightly.

Danny looked down to the ankh, and then scrambled to pick it up and place it back on its pedestal with a faint blush and a mumbled, "Sorry."

"It's alright, little brother," Death said with a soft smile. "I'm not busy at the moment." She glanced once more to Clockwork with a raised brow, and Clockwork peered back at her from beneath the hood of his cloak. "Got to say I'm surprised to see you here, father."

Danny looked down and mumbled, "He was showing me this place."

Death arched an eyebrow. "Was he?" For a moment Danny could almost taste the way the air got tense, and then Death stepped forward and smiled reassuringly at Danny and said, "Well then, what has he told you about this place?"

Danny blinked at her, and then looked to each of the pedestals. "This is a...Gallery. A way to contact...contact my siblings." He stumbled over that, calling them siblings because while that is what they were, Danny was still new to the concept of it.

"Yes," Death agreed. "Did he tell you of the rules?"

Clockwork shifted, and then wrapped his arm around Danny's shoulders. Danny could feel the edge of his cloak brush past his knees and almost touch Death with the motion. "I had not gotten that far before you interrupted, daughter."

Death snorted. "Of course not." She righted her own sigil, and Danny watched her do so as she began to speak and explain the rules to him softly. "We are not allowed to interfere in each others business. It helps keep the peace between our sphere's of influence, you know? I wouldn't want Destiny to mess around with the souls I lead to the Sunless Lands, just as I am sure Destiny would not want me to meddle in his affairs, either."

Danny blinked, said cautiously, "Destiny?" and Death smiled at him in response as she gestured to the book on the first pedestal.

"Destiny's sigil," Death said softly. "It leads to his own Realm, The Garden of Forking Ways. Destiny, Potmos, tends to be rather solitary." Death moved on to the ankh. "This is mine, and leads to the Sunless Lands. I am Death, or Teleute," here Teleute winked and Danny flushed faintly even as his eyes widened in realization of her Function. She moved on to the next, a strange mask as she gestured and spoke. "This is my younger brother, your older brother, Dream's sigil. It leads to the Dreaming." She lingered here, and Danny watched her curious before she moved on to the next sigil, a sword, which Death stared at for a long lingered moment before she only said it belonged to Destruction and then moved on.

Following the sword was a glass heart that belonged to Desire, leading to The Threshold. After that was a hooked ring for Despair and a place called The Gray Realm. A swirl of colors apparently belonged to his older sister Delirium and a location known as Madness. Danny took all of this in for the moment before Death looked him up and down and then rocked back on her heels. Clockwork still stood at his back, hand upon his shoulder as a comforting presence in the middle of all of this new knowledge about his life.

"What about you, little brother?" Death asked, and Danny looked up at her in surprise. "I've talked about each of us," and she had, even if she glossed over Destruction rather quickly, "so tell me a bit about you and this place of yours." She smiled reassuringly at him, and Danny scuffed his feet for a moment before he looked to Clockwork who nodded slowly in response.

"I'm..." Danny breathed out slowly and then straightened his back as he looked at Death and said, "I am Discovery, and this is the Infinite Realm."

Death smiled even wider, and with a soft laugh wrapped Danny into a hug as she said, "Welcome to the family, little brother." Hesitantly, surprised at the action, Danny wrapped his own arms back around Death in a hug, and then let a small smile cross his face as his core hummed, rather pleased with the acknowledgement of family.

...

It was hours later, after Death had finished explaining the Rules that she and the others had put together to keep things civil--hours of wandering out of the Gallery and back into the Clock Tower which had left Death a bit surprised by all the time related items here, and then the admission from Clockwork, Time--which Danny was still processing that little revelation--himself that he had been in this Realm for some time now--settled into it, was well known to it--that had resulted in a rather flinty eyed gaze from his--his older sister. Teleute, as she whispered to call him if he felt more comfortable--

"Call me Danny, then. Or Phantom when I'm....like this. Uhm. Unless you prefer Discovery?"

"Any of them is fine, little brother, but what do you mean by 'like this'?"

--and then she made her excuses, that she had some work to do, but she told him not to be a stranger and if he needed help to always ask. The worst she could do was tell him she was too busy in the moment, but she promised if it was dire she would be there. Danny didn't miss the way Clockwork's lips pursed at that, or miss the way Teleute's breath hitched when Danny and switched from being 'Ghost' to 'Human' and that she mouthed a name that made his chest ache. Perhaps it was part of his 'Function' to notice the little things, to put together the secrets that were otherwise attempted to be kept from him. At any rate once she was gone he turned to Clockwork--to Time--who stared at him patiently and waited.

"What was she not telling me?" Danny turned and asked Clockwork, once she was gone. "About...about Destruction and Dream?"

Clockwork sighed heavily, and then gestured for Danny to follow him. They went from the Gallery to the Room of Windows which was an area that opened up viewing portals to various points in time. Danny had been there before, when Clockwork had punted him into the future to learn about--about himself, he supposed. He wondered now about the evil future him, Dan, and how he had been twisted in such a way as to be that.

"Your brother Destruction," Clockwork spoke softly, "grew rather tired of his Function and decided he wanted control of it no longer. So he left, and cut off ties to rest of the family."

"But...but destruction is necessary," Danny frowned. "Without it creation can't exist."

"And I am sure you can see that both exist well and good without your brother actively working," Clockwork pointed out with a small smile, and Danny nodded with a furrowed brow. "Destruction did not truly leave his post, merely....stopped placing his hand in things. There have been consequences, but not near so dire as there could have been."

One of the Windows showed a red haired man in some sort of art class working on a sculpture. Danny blinked and then looked to Clockwork who winked at him for a moment before that Window closed out.

"As for Dream..." Clockwork's lips thinned and he nodded toward another of the Windows. Danny turned to look, and then all of him froze. He felt his core stutter in his chest--felt the burning ache of anger began to boil somewhere deep within him. It was a rage he was familiar with, one he felt when Jazz had been hurt by an ex-boyfriend of hers years and years ago. He clenched his hands into fists as he stared at a dark haired, blue eyed, naked man in a fishbowl. He couldn't articulate himself, just looked to Clockwork whose gaze was focused on the Window and so--sad.

"Your brother has been trapped in this way since the early twentieth century," Clockwork spoke softly. "This has had...consequences, upon the Physical." He motioned toward another Window, a pair of Windows actually set beside each other. One was of a vibrant, almost fantastical land--the other that same land in ruins. "And it has had consequences upon the Dreaming, as well."

Danny swallowed heavily, and then asked, "Why has no one helped him?" almost hoarsely.

Clockwork looked at him, for a long inscrutable moment, and then said, "Because he has not asked," and Danny blinked because--right, the Rules that Death had told him about. The stupid agreements between the siblings. Danny crossed his arms and scowled back.

"Could he ask?" Danny demanded, wanted to know if this older brother of his was stupid enough not to ask for help when he needed it.

"No," Clockwork agreed, and then Danny nodded once, sharply.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go get him out!"

Clockwork smiled, a slow and sad thing and Danny didn't know what this smile meant except that it made his core curl and twist uncomfortably. It wasn't reassuring, but it also wasn't terrifying. Yet Clockwork still nodded slowly to Danny's request--his demand--and with a twist of the hands of a clock a portal opened for them to step through. Before Danny did so Clockwork placed a hand upon his shoulder.

"Stay out of sight," Clockwork said softly. "Do you understand?" For a moment Danny said nothing, then nodded once and slipped into that spectrum of space between that was Invisibility and Intangibility--a step toward Oblivion. Then, both of them stepped through the portal and into the basement of the Burgess Estate in Wych Cross.

#fanfic #fic: still waters run deep #fic: transitive existence #danny phantom #clockwork #time of the endless #death of the endless

[ghostly-penumbra]

Trick or Treat

FFN Ao3

Warning for referenced bullying and implied suicide.

Many thanks to @moipale for being my beta in this!

Sidney hadn’t been sure about this whole ‘going to the city’ thing at first. Because, leaving Casper High? His haunt? Unthinkable!

But Danielle had insisted on him Trick-or-Treating with them, and Phantom had sworn to protect him for as long as his Mirror was outside locker 724, being carried around in Phantom’s Lair. Knowing the boy’s obsession, Sidney finally conceded.

“Hey, tone down your aura!” Phantom, dressed up as a cheap Master of Time, told him as they all walked down a poorly-lit street.

(And wasn’t it curious how Phantom knew about such a figure in the Zone’s myths when he preferred to spend his time in the living world?)

Sidney grumbled but focused on toning down the greyish glow emanating from him, while he walked with both feet touching the sidewalk.

“These modern candies better be boss.” He said, earning a snicker (as in laughter) from Danielle.

“Cheer up, Poindexter, don’t be a boomer!” She said, shoving some more cookies in her mouth. “Ou’ can’ny ‘r’ ‘mazin’!”

Sidney raised his eyebrows and looked at Phantom, but the halfa only shrugged while his friends (Sam dressed as a werewolf and Tucker as Batman) just chuckled.

“We will see…”

They arrived at a house, and a man opened the door for them.

“Trick or treat!” They chanted as one.

“Well, what do we have here? I know Batman and the werewolf, but what are you meant to be?”

“A street urchin.” Dani said shamelessly, holding out her plastic pumpkin with a toothy smile. “A cool one, though.”

The man blinked. “Alright then.” He gave her, Sam and Tucker their goods, and stopped with an inquisitive eyebrow at Phantom’s costume.

“I’m a ghost.” He said simply.

“Huh, can’t remember seeing one like that.”

“Don’t worry, he has seen you.”

“That’s cryptic. I don’t want to anger your god. Here.” And he poured a good part of his candy bowl on Phantom’s bag.

At last, he turned to Sidney.

“I’m a guy from the fifties.” Sidney said.

“Hm, I can’t be the judge of that. Dad! Come check this out!” The man yelled into his house.

“What!” Came back the yell from an elderly man, and the teens awkwardly looked at each other.

“Come check if this kid’s costume is legit! Says he’s a fifties kid.”

“The fifties? Well, I will be the one to judge that!”

“Yes, that’s why I called you.” The first man mumbled before his father appeared. “He’s painted in grey and all!”

“Grey painting doesn’t make a man, you know?” The older man said, finally reaching the entryway. “Well, where is he?” His gaze fell on Sidney, and the floor seemed to disappear from under him. He paled, and his mouth opened like a fish, unable to form a word.

“Dad?” His son asked.

Phantom moved smoothly to put Sidney behind him, not quite hiding him but giving the old boy a chance to do so himself, and to put a powerful barrier between him and the potential threat.

“Poindexter…” The old man breathed at last.

Not that he was much of a threat anymore. So much time had gone by, and yet Sidney would know this boy no matter what (like the fact that he wasn’t a boy anymore), even if he wasn’t smiling, sneering down at him whilst shoving him into his dark, cold locker.

“Hey there, Reggie.” He finally said, barely above a whisper, and looked him in the eye.

No matter how painful, how unfair, how cruel it had been, there was no denying that this man had been part of Sidney’s life, had left a deep, permanent mark that had set him on a path with no exit and no turn-back, the one in which Sidney reached his dead end.

Sidney had already accepted this. He was dead, that wouldn’t change, and, after having relived his tumultuous life on his own Lair in the Ghost Zone, when his mirror had been touched and he had been freed… he didn’t want to seek vengeance. He just wanted… to help kids like him, weak, awkward, dorky nerds that couldn’t count on the teachers to protect them.

(He had gotten it wrong the first time, but things had gotten better after.)

But now, seeing him once again after all this time… he didn’t know what he felt.

“You are… here…” Reggie choked out.

“Dad, are you okay? Do you need your pills?”

“I think we should leave…” Someone in Sidney’s group said, but for the life he of him he no longer had, he couldn’t tell who.

Because victim and abuser were not paying attention anymore, both immersed in memories of laughter and hollering and pain, the two sides of their violent coin.

Reggie gave a shaky step forward, using his son’s arm for support, and Sidney’s companions parted like the red sea, as if they could sense what he wanted.

A wrinkled hand tried to take hold of his arm, but it closed into a fist as it phased right through him, and Reggie broke down in sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I did this to you. I pushed you so much over and over…” Danny moved as if to take him away, but he slowly held up a hand, unable to tear his gaze away from the man before him. “You didn’t deserve it… you didn’t deserve any of it… I’m so sorry…”

Sidney looked at his life’s bully with an unreadable expression.

“I know, Reggie. I know…”

#Danny Phantom #sidney poindexter #danny fenton #danielle fenton #dani fenton #ocs #bullying tw #suicide tw #just referenced though #ectober haunt #not gonna make the WHOLE month #but i did this #ghostly-scrypts #trick or treat #ectoberhaunt trick #ectoberhaunt treat #ectoberhaunt 2021

[bubblegumbeech]

Passing Through

Dannymay Day 5: Doorway

“Don’t go in there,” his mother warned. Her voice shook. “Never go through that door.”

Danny had no intention of ignoring his mother, especially since the night she’d given him that warning was seared so thoroughly in his mind he didn’t think even as an adult he’d ever forget it.

It had been dark, but not any darker than any other night with Danny’s myriad nightlights and glowing stars stuck everywhere he could reach and then some. The night had long since settled, and Danny was supposed to be sleeping and was instead, like any young child, not doing that.

In fact, he’d been staring out his window, arm balanced on the sill and face pressed up against the glass so he could see the night sky in all her glory. It was one of the only times he felt truly comfortable, alone and with his parents and sister asleep. He often imagined himself sailing amongst those stars. Or flying high enough to reach out and cradle one to his chest. 

Jazz always told him that was impossible, that each star was as far away from each other as they were from earth, if not further. He told her she could eat dirt, and she got a hurt look in her eyes that made him feel bad, but he didn’t apologize because she was being mean first. 

He’d been preoccupied, that’s why he didn’t notice it at first. 

When the soft pink touch of the sun started obscuring the night’s stars, Danny realized he’d been up all night and he was probably going to fall asleep in class again. He turned around to quickly dive into bed to at least feign having slept so his parents didn’t scold him and feel like they had to check in on him at night the way they threatened to last time. 

He hadn’t expected the door. 

It was small, very small compared to a normal door. It was just large enough that Danny could crawl through on all fours, and he knew there was no way his dad would ever be able to get through. At least not more than an arm. Maybe his head if he tried to dive through it.

The door was closed, a soft, purple light on the other side painting the carpet beneath where it stood, balanced, in the middle of the room. Acting as if it was placed in the wall like any good door, but missing the wall itself entirely. 

Danny walked closer, his mind off bed times and getting ready for school entirely. Now he was thinking of adventures and stories Jazz used to read him before he could read himself. Stories of exploration and hidden worlds. His hand brushed against the polished brass handle, and a jolt of electricity flowed through him, causing every hair in his body to stand on end. 

He probably should have let go then, released the handle and backed up, frightened. But instead Danny’s grip tightened and he twisted the nob, pulling it slowly open, his heart beating in rapt anticipation. It was barely open a sliver, the tiniest bit of purple light spilling out onto the frame, when his mother ran into the room and slammed it closed. 

She was wearing a hazmat suit, as if she’d just come from the lab downstairs, with thick rubber gloves and ominous red goggles that reflected a twisted version of Danny’s face back at him as she pulled him into a tight, unforgiving hug. 

“Thank goodness you’re safe,” she said, her words heavy with exertion. Had she run up here? How did she know there was a door? 

Danny looked over his mother’s shoulder to take another look, but the door had vanished at some point when his eyes were no longer locked upon it. That was when she gave him her warning. The one he had no intention of ignoring.

The one he was disregarding now, for no reason other than he was sick of it. He was tired of the nights, laying awake and seeing a door that promised so much and had yet to be given the opportunity to deliver. 

His mother would skin him alive if she knew, but she’d probably never find out. Honestly, if Tucker’s theories were true and it was some monster trying to trick him into its lair Coraline-style, it’d probably take at least a week for her to even realize he was gone. His dad probably wouldn’t notice at all. 

Jazz…

Danny shook his head. If anything, Jazz would be the one to forgive him for being dumb. She understood what it was like to have this burning curiosity, this need to know. 

The door didn’t always appear. Most nights it did, but only when Danny was distracted by something, usually the stars outside his window, sometimes a particularly fun video game or a good book. It only ever appeared right on the cusp of night and morning, before the sun rose fully but after the stars hid away. And it always waited for him to look away before it disappeared. 

He didn’t plan on looking away tonight. 

The first night after his mother’s warning, he’d stayed up all night, terrified, waiting for the door to appear. It never did. In fact, the next month, he spent every second awake expecting it to appear and being almost disappointed when it didn’t. 

It appeared again, in much the same way it had the first time, while Danny was star gazing. 

That’s why, now, knowing the rules (or rather what few rules he could tell from this side of the door), Danny was determined to follow through. None of his questions would be answered just waiting for the door to appear or not appear, nor would they be answered by spending time staring at it and studying it from the outside. 

He needed to go through.

The brass knob was cold against his palm, and it turned easily. The click of the mechanism was loud in the night’s quiet. He held his breath. He opened the door.

There was no resistance when it swung open. Almost the opposite, in fact, like it had been waiting for an excuse. The soft purple light that had teased the edges of the door was much closer to a deep, swirling purple that looked almost like mist and obscured the path forward. 

But Danny wasn’t scared. 

He was curious. 

He stepped through, and heard the door close softly behind him. Just like in a horror movie really, and exactly like the stories his mother told him, warning him of monsters and things from the other side. 

It didn’t matter anymore, if he’d made the right choice. He’d made his choice and there was only one path to take. Danny walked into the mists and kept walking.

No more than an hour could have passed, but it felt like much longer. Time seemed to stretch along with the endless path, and Danny hadn’t come any closer to the answers he wanted. 

He sighed. “Hello? Is anyone here?” he tried calling out, to no avail. 

This was turning out to be a waste of a trip. With all the cryptic warnings, he’d hoped it wouldn’t be boring at the very least, yet here he was. The only difference between this and one of Sam’s ‘nature hikes’ was that Danny couldn’t see anything through the damned purple mist.

Or could he?

Danny squinted his eyes, catching something moving just to his left. It was very much hidden, the deep purple of its cloak camouflaged perfectly against the swirling purples all around him. He took a step closer, off the path, and felt the air still around him.

A voice, haunting and deep, startled him. 

“A quick learner,” it said. 

Danny felt his mouth go dry. There was actually someone here, someone that might not be human. Someone that could summon a door into a kids room for half a decade waiting for them to open it. 

Someone who might have answers.

Danny stepped closer, and the mist seemed to gather, catching on itself and folding into a physical shape. The hooded figure. Danny forced himself not to blink. It felt like anything was possible, that if he looked away, he’d miss too much to make sense of it later. 

The hooded figure turned to him and beckoned with one gloved hand, the other holding a twisting, intricate staff covered in shapes and symbols Danny couldn’t quite make out. Danny didn’t step any closer.

It was clear this man wasn’t human, or at the very least hadn’t been for some time. The only thing Danny could see hidden under the cloak was an old clock. But even then, Danny couldn’t tell whether it was something he was wearing on his chest or if it simply was his chest and there was nothing else.

“You’re still cautious, even now when you’ve already made your decision?” the figure asked. “Did you not seek an answer to your curiosity?”

Danny frowned. This whatever-it-was knew more than he was comfortable with. Had he been watching from the other side? How? Is that why the door only appeared when it did? Why couldn’t he just open the door and step out if his goal was to spirit Danny away like in the stories? 

There were just so many questions, and Danny still didn’t have any answers. 

“Do you actually have any answers or are you just going to eat me?” he asked, growing irritated. It had been a long night, made longer by his fruitless walk, and it was starting to affect his temper.

Instead of answering, the figure lowered his arm, tilting his head to the side. “If you thought I was going to eat you, why did you come through the door? You’ve been very good at ignoring it so far.” 

“Yeah see,” Danny said, throwing up his hands, “that kind of stuff only makes you sound more creepy and suspicious, you know! If your goal is child eating you should set up, idk a candy house or something. Pretend to be a grandma, I hear that works wonders provided you stay out of your own oven.”

The figure laughed. It sounded, off, not like a noise Danny recognized, but more like a collage of sounds: a ticking clock chiming with heavy clanking clockwork all wrapped in canary song and it vibrated all the way through Danny from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. It filled the air around them much like the mist once did and Danny felt glee himself, caught up as he was.

He looked up desperately at the figure, trying to keep ahold of himself and how he truly felt, lost in the sudden sea of emotion. The figure’s cloak was bunched up, as if he was doubled over in laughter, his gloves clutching at his staff and the entire collection shaking with slight tremors.

The hood turned towards him, empty, and Danny’s panic spiked. The laughter stopped, and the figure stood once more, pulling the hood further down and hiding the nothingness underneath.

“I apologize,” he said, sincere. “It’s been some time since I’ve felt in such good humor, and you took me off guard. I hope you didn’t get too swept away?”

Danny, who was still definitely feeling the effects of the other’s laughter, shook his head no. “I’m alright. I just- what are you?”

“I am like Clockwork,” he answered readily. “Though the question you should be asking, Daniel, is what are you? That is a much more interesting answer.”

Disagreeing vehemently, Danny shook his head. Like Clockwork? Was that his name? Why he had a clock, er, was a clock? How did that work? What was he? Simply what his name implied? Something more? There were a billion and a half questions he wanted answers to that were more interesting than that. 

Then again, there had to be a reason he said it, right? “Okay Clockwork, I’ll bite. What am I?”

He could swear the thing smiled. “You are halfway there.”

#dannymay2021 #danny phantom #clockwork #danny fenton #horror #horror themes #loosely based off TPoH #but not nearly that well thought out #Bee's writing

[infectedpaul]

VOLUME 4 SPOILERS AHGHH

I FORGOT TO GET MY NOTEPAD OUT

OK NOTES: BRADS A QUARTERBACK HANNAHS HAVING VISIONS OF THE FUTURE PROB LEX DOESNT HAVE INSURANCE DR LASZLO

ok here we go 24,000 JOEY RICHTER ETHAN FDLFJDSLFDJLFASJ

HE LOOKS LIKE MY FUCKING BROTHER WEBBY IS SUCH A DORK webbyyy......:( waAAAH HANNAH BIRTHDAAAY HANNAH BIRTHDAAAAAY WE FOUND OUR NOISEMAKERS its october 5th hannahs bday is october 5th! A SEA BISCUIT? THE AFOREMENTIONED PIZZA PETE its that fucker from home alone HES THE HES THE FAT HORSE FROM THAT LAS PEGASUS EPISODE doug dimmadome owner of th I THOUGHT HE SAID JABLINSKI EDDIE JABLINSKI JDSLFJAS ok but this means that ETHan remembered hannahs bday even if lex didnt okaaaay. givin me a lil more respect for the fucker watch its like. a shining twist n all these people are from the 1920s or smth purple blue and green lights hm hatchetfield rollerama mother nature and father time the 4th dimension

that titan of time, he takes a lickin and keeps on tickin its stopwatch (jon matteson, who looks so dumb) the hotheaded human inferno, if you cant take the heat get outta her kitchen, she's spitfire (bryce charles) KILL JON MATTESON

HADOOOOUKEN HES GOT HYPERTIME its the soup thing from epithet erased WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHAT THE FUCK IS A SEA BISCUIT? pokey-man lex that isnt??? really?? ethans job to make sure you remember! youre her sisteR?? and maybe this is something you should talk about in private?? stopwatch's real name is daniel! (ELFMAN?) benji can talk to dogs and can make every dog in town bark at once A BIG SHOT? i love u daneil!!! BLUE SHIT mind melt?? her face is fresh, her power unknwon, lets find out if shhes got a killer sting! yeeeellloooww jacket WHY ARE THEY BOOING?? WHAT THE FUCk the drugs are kicking in HERE COME THE NEUROOOOOOOOOOOOONS "i love psychonauts- what the fuck" - hydra THIS IS THE FRIENDSHIP GAMES ITS HAPPENIJGGGGGGG HAH-NAAAAAH my legs were SHAKING when theat fucker showed up IM NOT KIDDING!!! i love these kids oh my gd... SHERMAAAAANFLDSKNFDSKFNJASKLDJLS LITTLE GERMAN BOY WITH A BIG LOLLIPOP GOIN TO THE POOPENFARTEN CAAAREFUL DAAEEEDY goT MY FOOT ONT HE GAS WERE R I CH MR B! "a saudi prince emailed me" YA EVER HEARD OF NFTS, LEX? hydra: MY FELLOW LORDS IN BLACK....I HAVE DISCOVERED A NEW WAY TO GET TO THE HUMANS...THEYRE THESE FUNNY LITTLE MONKEYS- where is ethans mommy SEEE IT WORRIES ME WHEN YOU SAY THAT CRYPTIC SHIT good  god you are so fuckin UGLY two people at the rollerama are DEAD charlie paid for pokey?? IS thatpokey?? TERRIBLE NEEEWWWSSS POKEY HAS BEEN BLOWN TO SMITHEREEEEEENS DANNY DELFMAN? theres a bomb in his head is this suicide squad?? somebodys getting marrriieeeedddd HE BOUGHT HIM FOR A DOLLAR 95 HEY BIG SHOT im so sorry i have no notes about lex and ethan were NOT listening LDJSLDJSAKDJ sophia is spitfires real name

the lord of the leaderboard, that masked menace here to give his opponents the blues, its OTHO! yooou aaare sooo FUCKIN UGLY so he can duplicate himself? ig that makes sense with the hive shit THEY CAN FLY? HES DOING THE MUSIC SHIT HES DOING THE MUSIC SHIT HE REALLY SAID "TRY ME, BITCH" oh its mind milk not melt PERFECTR HARMOYN??? THE HIVE/? THE HIVE THE HIVW? THATS SO FUCKED UPPPP "I'LL EAT THEM, HANNAH. I'LL EAT THEM...RIGHT. THE FUCK. UP." we gotta get that COIN CHUCK REMINDS ME OF TROY MCCLURE SLDJSALDJASL DO YOU THINK WILEY SOLD HIM and also DO YOU THINK WILEY SHOWED UP LIKE "AND HERE IS MY SON OTHO" OTHO: HELLO..........DAADDY. pokey is contained in otho but if he gets into hannah he can get into the real world and everyone is FUCKED YEAH TELL HER OFF BABY DOES THAT MEAN TGWDLM IS THE TIMELINE WHERE POKEY DID TAKE OVER HANNAH??? THE TGWDLM MOTIFS THIS IS JOIN US AND DIE STOP HURTING HANNAAAHHHHH chuck has plans for otho?? hmmm "Listen to the...noise. Don't you...despise them, Hannah?" "Do not fear. We will end this chaos...and suffering. There will be harmony. Peace. One. Singular. Voice." EEEEEWWWW Sing-along Pokey!!! JOOOIN USSSS i was not ready for pokeys voice to sound like a gregorian chant ljdlJKDSJFLKDS LEX KNEW WEBBY???? he might not be the hungriest, or the cleverest or the trickiest, but hes the most uncompromising. he hates every voice thats not his own. he wants everyone dead but him. pokey: IM NOT RACIST - I HATE EVERYONE EQUALLY webby: so youre quirky racist. "I will not allow your sister or mine to interfere."

"It is not death that awaits you, Hannah, but Godhood. When your power is mine, we will seize Hatchetfield in an instant. We will take this world, and all worlds. Rejoice, Hannah. Your Apotheosis is upon you."

STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE STOLE HIS THE THE BUTTON SHE GOT IT GET HIS ASS BLOW HIM UP! BLOW HIM TO SMITHEEEREEENS

NO NOT MY TUMMY NOT THERE NOOO MISS FROGGGY MAY I HAVE A WORD I TOTALLY FORGOT ETHAN WAS HEREBGFDKLFJSDK;FJASK dont trust this fucker

THAT ENDING IM SO NOT OKAY!!!!!!!

#dex says things #nmt2 spoilers

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: 11 Movies to Look Out for in 2021

  The year that wouldn’t end is, miraculously, finally coming to an end! A lot of movies we thought would be coming out this year (understandably) did not. That’s okay, though, because it means we have even more to look forward to next year! In anticipation of the year ahead, we’ve sifted through all the anime movies slated to come out in 2021 and chosen a select few we think you should be keeping an eye on. There are plenty of big-name sequels on the way — including one that’s been in production for nearly a full decade — but there are also a few promising titles you may not yet know about. Without further ado, here are 11 anime movies to watch out for in 2021!

  Gintama: the Final

    Gintama is somehow, apparently, coming to an end! It feels as though Gintama has been around forever, and yet I still have no idea what on Earth it could be about. What I do know for sure, though, is that people LOVE it. So this movie adaptation of the manga’s 77th (!!!) and final volume is sure to leave fans rolling from laughter and wishing it weren’t ending when it comes out on January 8, 2021.

  Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

    Would it be a stretch to call this the most-anticipated anime movie of all time? It’s been more than eight years since Evangelion 3.0 left fans excited, baffled, and desperate to know what will happen next. Multiple delays have kept it from coming out, but on January 23, 2021 fans of the Evangelion universe will finally see the conclusion to legendary director Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild of the massively popular Neon Genesis Evangelion series.

  Princess Principal: Crown Handler

    Fans of Princess Principal will be delighted to know that after a short delay, the first of SIX sequel movies to the television series is slated to premiere on February 11, 2021. Masaki Tachibana is returning from the television series to direct the first of many more forays into the world of Victorian spy intrigue.

  Pompo the Cinéphile

    And what would a year of movies be without a movie about movie-making? Adapted from Shogo Sugitani’s manga of the same name, Pompo the Cinéphile takes place in Nyallywood, the movie capital of the world. There, eccentric movie producer Pompo makes B-grade flicks along with her movie buff assistant Gene. When Gene finds an extraordinary script written by Pompo, he demands it be made into a feature film. However, Pompo tasks Gene with bringing the script to life, and thus takes on the role of director. Opening on March 21, 2021, Pompo the Cinéphile is sure to deliver audiences both an entertaining visual spectacle and a passionate love-letter to the art of filmmaking.

  Farewell, My Dear Cramer the Movie: First Touch

    Sports anime fans, rejoice! There’s something for you coming next year, too, with Farewell, My Dear Cramer the Movie: First Touch. Based on the manga from Your Lie in April author Naoshi Arakawa comes a story about Nozomi, a middle school girl who yearns to play soccer but is worried about having to play against boys in official matches. Everything changes when she’s confronted by a boy from her past. This movie opens April 1, 2021 and serves as a prequel to the Farewell, My Dear Cramer TV anime beginning the same month.

  Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight Movie

    Revue Starlight took many anime fans by surprise when it premiered back in 2018. Since then, they’ve been clamoring to return to Seisho Music Academy and its strange world of talking giraffes and underground theater fights. And thankfully, the wait is almost at an end. Revue Starlight’s sequel movie is scheduled to premiere on May 21, 2021. Not much is known about it yet outside of a teaser trailer, which in true Revue Starlight fashion features Karen cryptically standing amongst the dunes of a vast desert. As inscrutable an image as it is, we won’t have to wait much longer to find out what it means. 

  Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop

    From the director of Occult;Nine and Your Lie in April comes an eye-popping, boy-meets-girl movie in the form of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. This original story focuses on Cherry, a headphone-wearing boy who can’t communicate well, and Smile, a mask-wearing girl embarrassed by her dental braces. The two will meet by chance one day in what’s certain to be the feel-good hit of the summer when it premieres on June 25, 2021.

  My Hero Academia the Movie 3

    Not much has been announced about the third My Hero Academia movie yet, but come on, it’s My Hero Academia so it’s sure to be a hit. The team that’s made the anime such a massive success is back, and has left us with a cryptic teaser that states ‘HE WILL MEET ‘THE THREE MUSKETEERS.’” with an image of Bakugo, Deku, and Todoroki lined up together. Are they the three musketeers, or could the musketeers be a yet unknown threat? I suppose we’ll have to wait until summer 2021 to find out for sure.

  The Abandoned House by the Cape

    In remembrance of the tenth anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami comes The Abandoned House by the Cape. Based on the novel by Sachiko Kashiwaba, the movie focuses around Moeka, a 17-year-old girl who lost her parents, and Yurie, a woman in the process of escaping a violent husband. In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, they’re assisted by an older woman named Kiwa and the three begin a new life together in an old house overlooking the sea. Releasing in 2021, the project is helmed by director Shinya Kawatsura (Non Non Biyori, Tanaka-kun is Always Listless, Kokoro Connect) with a script by Reiko Yoshida (K-On!, A Silent Voice, Violet Evergarden).

  Free! (2021)

    Not much is currently known about this movie (it doesn’t even have a name yet) but with a studio like Kyoto Animation at the helm, its quality is all but assured. What we do know is that this film will follow Haruka after the events of Free!: Dive to the Future as he takes his swimming career to a whole new level. It's scheduled for release in 2021.

  Sword Art Online the Movie: The Aria of the Night Without Stars

    Nearly a decade after Sword Art Online took the anime world by storm, A-1 Pictures is taking fans back to where it all began in the first Sword Art Online: Progressive movie. This series begins one month after thousands of players have been trapped in a deadly game called Sword Art Online. On the very first level of Aincrad, two loners named Kirito and Asuna will have to learn to work together if either one of them is to survive. This revised telling of the events of Sword Art Online is sure to offer something new for both longtime fans and interested newcomers alike when it releases in 2021.

  Which of these movies are you most looking forward to? Are there any you think we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

      Danni Wilmoth is a Features writer for Crunchyroll and co-host of the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Danni Wilmoth

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.3

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.4][Pt.5][Pt.6][Pt.7]

“Aquaman.” Batman swept into the room, beelining straight for the suddenly apprehensive Atlantean king.

“Batman. What can I do for you?”

“Phantom. Does he pay taxes?”

“Pardon?”

Batman makes a low noise that had Aquaman’s danger senses buzzing.

“Does Phantom have to pay taxes. Towards Atlantis.”

“No…? Why?”

“He wanted money, in exchange for… information, of a delicate sort,” Batman said, diplomatically avoiding the topic of Phantom bargaining for the identities of corpses in exchange for a measly $100 dollars per identity. Like a flea market dealer, that one was.

“You encountered Phantom again?” Aquaman perked up.

“Yes. Gotham’s bay is… polluted.” Batman paused. “With victims. Of murder.”

The entire area quieted as heads turned towards the Dark Knight.

“Yes, I am… distantly aware of Gotham’s waters.” By that, Aquaman gets green around the gills whenever he turns his awareness in that direction. There’s a reason he doesn’t enter Gotham, and the Dark Knight’s ban is only half of that reason. “Ah, but you’re correct. For what purpose would Phantom need mortal currency?”

“Hn.”

“Maybe he needs some stuff?” Flash zipped to a stop next to Batman, feet tapping as he dug into the pile of snacks cradled in his arms. “Us mortals are always coming up with new things, maybe he wants to try some games or something?”

Batman tilted his head down, seriously considering Flash’s suggestion. “It’s plausible.”

“Barry, Barry, Barry. He’s old as hell, right? He probably wants to try the new booze!”

“Hal, my man!” Flash fist bumped Green Lantern, who came up. “You’re back! What happened to John?”

“Dunno. He got called somewhere that way,” Green Lantern waved a vague hand towards the left. “Had to deal with a politician or something from that area.” He shrugged, swinging an arm over Barry’s shoulders to put him in a headlock and stealing a chip.

“Huh. Anyways, would our mortal alcohol even work on a demi-god or something?”

“We should ask!” Hal turned towards Batman. “You should ask if he wants to go for a drink, spooky!”

“He’s a child.”

“He’s been around for more than a millennia, Bats.”

“Informational gathering, right, Hal?” Flashgot out of the headlock, quickly munching on his snacks to stop Green Lantern from stealing them.

“Totally. Yup.”

“…Fine.”

“Wait, are we just gonna ignore that Gotham’s waters are full of bodies?”

“Yes.”

——

“What?” Danny asked, mind half on the bags he’s dragging out of the water and the other half on the essay he has to submit in about four hours.

“Green Lantern wanted to invite you out for a drink.”

Danny turned to the stoic Gotham knight, who had his wrist computer out to log the bodies’ info the moment Danny gave him the information. Some of them even told Danny who murdered them, so Batman could start building cases with solid leads.

Danny’s only twenty. He’s not legal yet but he doesn’t want to give any clues to who he is. How is he supposed to…

Ah!

“Can’t.” Danny shrugged. “I’m not legal. I died when I was fourteen so…” Danny trailed off, speechless at the drowned puppy face Batman was giving him. What the fuck.

“Anyways, fork over my payment.”

Batman wordlessly hands him a wad of hundreds.

“What do you need cash for?” Batman suddenly asked.

“Huh? Isn’t it obvious?” Danny tucked it in. “Material things, obviously. I need a blanket,” because holy shit, Gotham is damn cold this time of year. “Anyways, see you same time next week, litterer.”

“I don’t litter.”

“Tell that to the batarangs I found under the water,” Danny grumbled. “But I’ll stop calling you that if you get a signature from Poison Ivy. I have a friend who loves her.”

“An alive friend?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy?”

Danny snickered and disappeared. He’s gotta cram that essay.

——

“There’s a possibility Phantom might be homeless.”

“Batman, I mean this in the nicest way, but for the love of Atlantis, please stop giving me headaches. It’s time like these I wish I stayed a lighthouse keeper.”

#batman #danny phantom #bruce wayne #dc x dp #bamf danny phantom #dpxdc #dcxdp #hal jordan #green lantern #the flash #Barry allen #mentions of Sam mason #phantom doesn’t pay taxes #but Danny Fenton absolutely pays taxes #his parents taught him how to file taxes #tax season is coming up soon tall I’m stressed #arthur curry #Aquaman #Aquaman and being interrogated on Atlantean history #Batman’s nickname is the litterer #you can’t tell me that batarangs don’t go everywhere #sea cryptic! danny au

[cantbehandled-ever]

nectarine & starfruit :D

thank you for the ask my favorite, breakfast-loving, danny-adoring, cryptic, ride-or-die cowgirl!! 🤠

nectarine: would you consider yourself an emotional person?

- yah lol. overly emotional, i blame it on the pisces moon

star fruit: favorite sea creature?

- manatees! i see them when i go kayaking and it’s definitely the highlight of any kayaking trip

#zara #asks

[tomorrowedblog]

Friday Releases for April 30

Friday is the busiest day of the week for new releases, so we've decided to collect them all in one place. Friday Releases for April 30 include Limbo, Yasuke, New Pokémon Snap, and more.

Limbo

Limbo, the new movie from Ben Sharrock, is out today.

Limbo is a wry and poignant observation of the refugee experience, set on a fictional remote Scottish island where a group of new arrivals await the results of their asylum claims. It centers on Omar (Amir El-Masry), a young Syrian musician who is burdened by his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland.

Without Remorse

Without Remorse, the new movie from Stefano Sollima, is out today.

In a war-torn region of Syria, an elite team of Navy SEALs led by Sr. Chief John Kelly (Michael B. Jordan) rescues a CIA operative taken hostage by ex-Russian military forces. Three months later, in apparent retaliation for his role in the mission, Kelly’s pregnant wife Pam (Lauren London) is murdered in the U.S. by a squad of masked Russian assassins. Despite being shot multiple times himself, Kelly manages to kill all but one of the attackers before being rushed to the hospital.

Meanwhile in Washington D.C., Kelly’s friend and former SEAL team member Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith) meets with CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) and Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) to discuss their response options. Leaked news of Russia’s unprecedented attack on American soil has caused the already-strained relations between the two nations to sour further. If something isn’t done soon the result could be a full-scale war.

Healed from his injuries, a rogue Kelly tracks down the corrupt Russian diplomat who issued the passports to his wife’s murderers, and forces him at gunpoint to give up the name of the surviving assassin. Sent to prison for the crime, Kelly bargains his way out by revealing the escaped operative is one Victor Rykov (Brett Gelman), an ex-Special Forces officer currently hiding in Murmansk, Russia.

With Secretary Clay’s reluctant approval, Kelly joins Greer and Ritter on a top-secret mission to capture Rykov and bring him back to the U.S. to face justice. But en route to Murmansk, their plane is shot down by the Russian Air Force and plummets into the Bering Sea. Using their SEAL skills to survive the crash, they eventually make their way to Rykov’s location, only to discover that the murder of Kelly’s family was part of a vast international conspiracy orchestrated by powerful political figures. Torn between personal honor and loyalty to his country, and with the fate of nations hanging in the balance, Kelly has no choice but to expose the truth, no matter the cost.

About Endlessness

About Endlessness, the new movie from Roy Andersson, is out today.

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is a reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality. We wander, dreamlike, gently guided by our Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe; a defeated army marches to a prisoner-of-war camp. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

The Outside Story

The Outside Story, the new movie from Casimir Nozkowski, is out today.

While on a tight deadline, an introverted editor (Brian Tyree Henry) is locked out of his apartment. In order to find his way back inside, he’s forced to interact with… his neighbors.

Four Good Days

Four Good Days, the new movie from Rodrigo García, is out today.

A long-estranged mother and daughter navigate the most difficult four days of their lives together in a heartbreaking and hopeful story based on real-life events.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The Mitchells vs. The Machines, the new movie from Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, is out today.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is an original animated comedy about an everyday family’s struggle to relate while technology rises up around the world! When Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), a creative outsider, is accepted into the film school of her dreams, her plans to meet “her people” at college are upended when her nature-loving dad Rick (voiced by Danny McBride) determines the whole family should drive Katie to school together and bond as a family one last time.

The Virtuoso

The Virtuoso, the new movie from Nick Stagliano, is out today.

Danger, deception, and murder descend upon a sleepy country town when a professional assassin (Anson Mount) accepts a new assignment from his enigmatic mentor and boss (Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins). Given only where and when along with a cryptic clue, the methodical hit man must identify his mysterious mark from among several possible targets, including a local sheriff (David Morse). Meanwhile, a chance encounter with an alluring woman (Abbie Cornish) at the town’s rustic diner threatens to derail his mission in this noir-style cloak-and-dagger thriller.

The Disciple

The Disciple, the new movie from Chaitanya Tamhane, is out today.

A musician’s unadulterated devotion, a mirage-like quest for divinity, and the courage to fight your own mediocrity. The Disciple is the tale of an Indian classical vocalist, Sharad Nerulkar, searching for the traditional absolute in a contemporary city that never stops hustling.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz, the new movie from Burhan Qurbani, is out today.

An African immigrant struggles to make a new life for himself in the big city in writer-director Burhan Qurbani’s audacious, neon-lit reinterpretation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel. After surviving his perilous journey, Francis vows to be a good man, but he soon realizes how difficult it is to be righteous while undocumented in Germany– without papers, without a nationality, and without a work permit. When he receives an enticing offer for easy money from the psychopathic gangster Reinhold, Francis initially resists temptation, but eventually he is sucked into Berlin’s underworld and his life spirals out of control.

Eat Wheaties!

Eat Wheaties!, the new movie from Scott Abramovitch, is out today.

Sid Straw (Tony Hale) leads a dull life until he accidentally stalks famous college friend, Elizabeth Banks, on social media. With each failed attempt to prove he knows her, he rediscovers more of himself and the true meaning of friendship.

The Innocent

The Innocent, the new TV series from Oriol Paulo, is out today.

An accidental killing leads a man down a dark hole of intrigue and murder. Just as he finds love and freedom, one phone call brings back the nightmare.

The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast, the new TV series from Neil Cross and Tom Bissell, is out today.

A brilliant rebel (Justin Theroux) and his wife (Melissa George) take their family on the run to protect them, but end up exposing them to more danger than ever. At every turn of their adventure, they encounter increasing threats and intensifying moral choices from which there’s no turning back.

Yasuke

Yasuke, the new TV series from LeSean Thomas, is out today.

In a war-torn feudal Japan filled with mechs and magic, the greatest ronin never known, Yasuke, struggles to maintain a peaceful existence after a past life of violence. But when a local village becomes the center of social upheaval between warring daimyo, Yasuke must take up his sword and transport a mysterious child who is the target of dark forces and bloodthirsty warlords.

Returnal

Returnal, the new game from Housemarque and Sony Interactive Entertainment, is out today.

After crash-landing on this shape-shifting world, Selene must search through the barren landscape of an ancient civilization for her escape. Isolated and alone, she finds herself fighting tooth and nail for survival. Again and again, she’s defeated – forced to restart her journey every time she dies.

New Pokémon Snap

New Pokémon Snap, the new game from Nintendo, is out today.

Welcome to the Lental region, whose islands hold everything from dense jungles to vast deserts! New Pokémon Snap is an all-new game inspired by the 1999 Nintendo 64 game Pokémon Snap. This Nintendo Switch adventure will take you from island to island on an ecological survey, photographing Pokémon and building your own Pokémon Photodex!

Parallel World

Parallel World, the new album from Cadence Weapon, is out today.

#Games #Movies #TV #Music #News

[probablyintraffic]

how to tell Popular But Bad fics from Popular Yet Good ones

This is part one of my You People Are Tasteless thesis. Some fandoms possess less taste than others--for example: there isn’t ONE good fic on the first page of kudos-sorted YOI AO3 page, not one, especially not the one containing the phrase, “Victor’s azure-hued eyes,” in the fucking summary.

The kinds of stories that earn many kudos are usually long, tagged to smithereens, and follow some popular trope or another. The favored tropes of the YOI fandom are the most egregious, because it’s fucking Soulmates, and Jesus fucking Christ I haven’t been twelve for a fucking long time but most of the people in this fandom sure have. When it’s a Soulmates fic, chances of the story being readable drops from .1% off a cliff into the deep sea, because in most of these romances that we love to read over and over, the main tension is that we don’t know exactly how the characters feel about each other. Soulmates fics take away the uncertainty and replace it with bullshit made-up angst all the while assuring us that these characters 1) really love each other 2) cannot love anyone else more than they love each other and 3) That your personality doesn’t require extensive surgery because somewhere out there, your True Love is waiting for you.

ANYWAY. The first Actually Pretty Good story on the kudos-sorted list comes in somewhere at No. 20-30, so clearly fandom is not completely without good taste. But how is this fic different from the rest? How can your poor, average fangirl tell in the least amount of time what piece of staggeringly cringe worthy writing to back button on before she has already spent >5 minutes on it and gotten irrationally pissed off? This gets especially difficult to do when the fics boast reasonable grammar and competent use of language, or if the summaries are just cryptic one-liner deals like “He wakes up” or some shit like that. Well for me, I look for signs of immaturity.

Let’s take a 900-kudos YOI fic that shall go unnamed as an example. One, it’s not popular enough that y’all are going to recognize it by a few sentences. Two, it’s a rather perfect specimen found in the wild, immature in both writing style and fantasies.

Now, the first sentence (and paragraph) is:

Yuuri regrets every decision he’s ever made leading up to this point.

That is the most generic shit I’ve ever read, but it’s pretty immature too, because this writer--painfully, obviously--hasn’t found their voice yet. You see this kind of writing online and on Tumblr a lot, in different permutations, projecting a sort of long suffering attitude while complaining about the vagaries of life, though this incarnation, I must say, is among the weakest. Just look at that sentence. It stands alone as the first paragraph, so clearly it’s very proud of itself, but some sentiment so vague and banal can’t possibly be a good enough hook, much less one that deserves so much emphasis. Also half of it is redundant: Does “every decision he’s ever made” really need “leading up to this point”? That’s just clunky and desperate for attention.

So two things here are aped from the general online language and culture--the words, and the sentiment. Normally, I think stealing is fine, great, fantastic, but this theft feels worse because it’s insincere. It’s not meant to express something authentic from the writer, using borrowed shorthand; this is the writer trying to wear others’ emotions and thoughts and fitting badly into the cut. Need more proof? This is paragraph 2 & 3:

He’s currently sprinting through a thick jungle, dodging phaser blasts and trying not to think about how much of his bare skin is brushing against alien plants of unknown toxicity levels. The thick waxy leaves of the trees cling to him, suffocating, until Yuuri wrenches away from their grasp and almost directly into the path of a phaser blast. He’s sweaty and tired and he just wants to go back to the ship, where he’s supposed to be, supervising the crew and conducting science experiments. Not running for his life on an unexplored planet, pursued by a large group of heavily armed Galra.  

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a typical day at work.

and....SPLAT. Look at how the serviceable-to-competent and rhythmic action/exposition sequence is ruined by a cheap follow-up. God, it’s all so bad. We have another one-sentence paragraph with some equally trite and unnecessary bit of attitude flouting about Yuuri’s ~exciting but dangerous~ job, which imo was done better when Danny Glover did it in his movies and said, immortally, I’m too old for this shit. So are we, Danny, so are we. 

P.S. I’ve done the actual homework of venturing to read more of this 900-kudos exercise, and surprise, it’s still painfully immature. So in this fic, Yuuri and Viktor have an existing work relationship with shades of mystery to it, but the original How They Met story is handled immediately after the first scene in an extended flashback, because any sort of tension is for losers. It’s explained that Yuuri and Viktor fell for each other from the very first, each impressed by the other’s abilities and intelligence and gusto and Jesus Christ, what fucking horseshit is this. Look at the insecurities it takes not to allow Yuuri and Viktor to have some ambiguity in their relationship, to make sure that they fell for each other On Sight and for the Right Reasons, both professionals at the top of their game, not one less deserving of the other. The hallmark of immature writing is here, isn’t it, in the fact that the predominant sense of insecurity belongs to the writers, not the characters.

#yuri on ice #fic writing #badfic #writing meta #fandom meta #tho seriously aesthetics are not morals

[spicynbachili2]

‘How I became friends with an octopus’

Picture copyright Sea Change Mission

Think about befriending an octopus, swimming alongside the much-feared nice white shark, having your face stroked by a not often seen clawless otter and cradling a wild rock fish in your fingers.

These fascinating, life altering experiences have been documented by South Africans Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck in a newly launched guide entitled Sea Change – Primal Pleasure and the Artwork of Underwater Monitoring following eight years of diving with out wetsuits and scuba gear within the icy waters of Cape City.

Mr Foster mentioned he developed an incredible relationship with an octopus in the course of the course of his each day dives into what he described because the “golden” underwater kelp forest outdoors Simon’s City, which lies on the Atlantic facet of the Cape peninsula.

Picture copyright Getty Photographs

Picture caption South Africa’s navy is predicated in Simon’s City

“I had the privilege of visiting this unbelievable animal for nearly a yr. It completely trusted me, misplaced all worry, it will take me on searching expeditions and let me into its secret world.

“Octopuses have totally different personalities, some are fairly daring, others very shy, she was in between,” Mr Foster instructed the BBC, describing how she would come over and greet him when she turned accustomed to his visits.

“It’s a nice privilege to step into that world to study – not like a mammal – however like a fellow spineless creature in her invertebrate world,” he mentioned.

Her den was primarily a gap she had dug within the ocean ground, which the diver described as a “correct house”.

“She hunts over 50 species however you’ll be able to solely discover that out while you’re allowed into her den and might choose up the bones of the animals she has eaten,” he mentioned, referring to the lobster and crab shells he noticed.

“You realise, my goodness, her life is so detailed and crazily linked to the whole lot round her.”

‘Human aren’t on a shark’s menu’

The diver has additionally had wonderful encounters with nice white sharks, probably among the ones which have been chargeable for assaults on surfers and bathers on surfers and bathers in close by False Bay through the years.

Not like the aggressive hunters of human flesh they’re usually portrayed to be, he paints a completely totally different image of an impressive serene animal.

Picture copyright Sea Change Mission

Picture caption There are greater than 500 species of shark

“When the nice white sees a human it scans us, its search picture is choosing up one thing that is not prey. They aren’t certain what we’re, they could be curious but it surely’s not one thing that is good for them to eat they usually know that.

“They are not animals which might be after us, in the event that they have been, there could be assaults daily. In the event that they see a seal, a fish or among the different prey that is a distinct story however people aren’t on their menu.

“The one assault a yr is an aberration. There’s one thing in that individual they assault that is triggering a response in that shark, it is extremely uncommon. Perhaps it is the muscle pressure that is excessive, possibly the shark is in a nasty temper.

You might also need to learn:

“I’ve made eye contact with them. I as soon as had 5 nice whites circling me in open water and I might see no aggression in the direction of me in any respect,” Mr Foster mentioned.

“I’ve had a few shut conferences with Tiger Sharks however they’re additionally very light when you’re relaxed. These animals aren’t the killers they’re made out to be.”

Mr Frylinck, regardless of a scary maiden encounter with an enormous shark, has additionally change into extra comfy with the much-feared animal.

“White sharks very not often enter the kelp forest, they patrol the fringes. They swim round this bay which has one of many highest concentrations of white sharks on the earth.

“At some point we have been swimming across the fringe of the forest and Craig’s buddy Danny, who was with us, instructed me a white shark had simply swum three to 4 metres away from my shoulder and had watched me fairly intently. He described it as an absolute monster – between 4 and 5 metres,” Mr Frylinck mentioned.

Underwater tracks

Mr Foster, an award-wining film-maker of pure historical past, managed to adapt to the underwater world the monitoring strategies he learnt within the Kalahari desert from the San folks, broadly considered being the very best trackers on the earth.

Picture copyright Sea Change Mission

Picture caption The coast off Cape City has a wealthy number of sea life, together with the blue dragon fish

“It includes numerous issues like refined modifications in sand and sand texture to see what animals have been round, trying to see if, for instance, there’s been a kill, if a worm has been digging, slime trails, egg casings – there are a large number of indicators underwater.

“Initially I assumed it will be unimaginable to try to monitor underwater however I used to be determined to try to break into this very cryptic world,” he mentioned.

“This loopy concept was in my thoughts for a very long time after which finally I began seeing the primary underwater tracks, that is once I first thought it might work however I had no concept that I might develop it into such an in depth method understanding of animals underwater.”

Diving 365 days a yr

It was this understanding that led to Mr Foster uncovering eight new species of shrimp, one among which – Heteromysis Fosteri – has been named after him.

The three new species, largely brilliant pink to orange in color with collection of both spots or stripes, belong to the genus Heteromysis and differ from beforehand recognized species by color sample, eye form and the patterns of spines on their legs and tails.

Picture copyright Sea Change Mission

Picture caption Argonauts are mentioned to be uncommon guests to the kelp forest off Cape City’s coast

Having managed to fulfill his dedication to do 365 dives a yr, he mentioned his interplay with sea life has made him realise the significance of fixing the best way he lives.

“The entire method I have been taught by different people to reside on this planet is totally unsustainable and I’ve additionally realised that these animals, notably the fighter plankton, present the oxygen for each breath I take. They supply the idea for each meal I’ve.

“They’ve taught me that every one the monetary, political and different points we hear about within the information are inconsequential in comparison with that pure basis that holds the whole lot up and we’re chipping away at it,” Mr Foster mentioned.

“We have to nurture it relatively than doing the alternative.”

from SpicyNBAChili.com https://www.spicynbachili.com/how-i-became-friends-with-an-octopus/

[funnythingshere0-blog]

David Ashforth: hole in one gets me in the mood for return to Brighton

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/david-ashforth-hole-in-one-gets-me-in-the-mood-for-return-to-brighton/

David Ashforth: hole in one gets me in the mood for return to Brighton

First published on Saturday, May 15, 2010

Do you play golf? Have you ever had a hole in one? No, I thought not. Have I? Well, it’s funny that you should ask. I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise but, yes, on Monday, at the Roedean course in Brighton. It was at the eighth hole, midway between Roedean School and the new sewage works.

It’s not a long hole (none of them are on the miniature golf course), about 100 yards, but with a swirling sea breeze and dips and cambers that Epsom would be proud of.

In the absence of a caddy, I pondered my club selection. The putter, or the number seven iron? I opted for the iron and watched my shot, shaped in heaven, which reminds me of a joke.

Moses and Jesus were playing golf. Moses stood on the first tee and drove his ball straight down the fairway. Jesus sliced his into the rough. As they watched, a crow swooped down, picked up Jesus’s ball, flew to the green and dropped it. The ball bounced twice and rolled into the hole. Moses turned to Jesus and said: “Are you going to play golf or just f*** about?” I like that joke, along with the one about the snail, which has nothing to do with racing except that some horses do a passable imitation of one.

Anyway, a man answered a knock on his back door. There was no one there but, as he was closing the door, he noticed a snail on the doorstep. He picked it up and threw it down the garden. Three months later, there was another knock on the door. The man answered it and, again, there was no one there. The snail was sitting on the doorstep. As he caught the man’s eye, the snail said: “What was that all about, then?” My ball curved and bounced, rolled across the green towards the flag and disappeared into the hole.

At the cafe that accompanies the golf course, I claimed my new car, only to be told that there wasn’t one.

My mate Mart, the sole witness to my triumph, settled our golf bet by buying me the set breakfast – two pieces of bacon, one fried egg, one sausage, two slices of toast. £4.20 and about 1,500 calories, probably of the wrong kind.

I like Roedean Cafe, with its cryptic sign at the roadside – ‘No Coaches. Only Coach Parties’. A jolly young couple run it, which makes up for being confronted by a picture of Jonathan Ross on the wall. To look on the bright side, at least he wasn’t there.

While I was busy holing in one, Danny was busy building up his cholesterol levels with sausage rolls and studying the form, always the sign of an optimist.

A trip to Brighton races. It’s almost like old times. Nothing, of course, is quite like them.

The man in the wheelchair who used to roll it over people’s toes has gone, as have most of the bookmakers.

I’ve got my doubts about the jellied eels, too. I didn’t see any but perhaps they were there, somewhere, slithering about.

The horses walk around the parade ring. It’s a pity that, after more than 40 years of staring at horses doing just that, I still don’t seem to be able to work out which one is going to win.

I wish some of them were fatter, or walked with a limp, to make it easier, but they aren’t, and don’t.

Danny had £80 on My Flame at 4-1 in the second race, the 0-55 Classified Stakes race (what happened to those weight allowances they used to give fillies? I used to like those, as did the trainers of the fillies). That won him £320.

Then he had £80 on King Olav, also at 4-1, in the fourth race. That won, too. Maybe Danny’s stumbled across a winning system, as has Barney Curley, although I’ve yet to meet anyone who really understands what it is except, possibly, Barney. It took a brave man (Danny) to oppose Curley’s Agapanthus. His bravery cost him £50.

If Sheikh Ahmed (those yellow colours with the black epaulettes) had put in an appearance, I might have backed Yashrid in the maiden race and, if Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum (dark green, red cap, dark green diamond) had been there to cheer on Jay’s Treaty, I’d definitely have backed that but neither owner was there, leaving the way clear for Ms Gillian Khosia’s Brannagh, Ryan Moore’s only ride of the meeting. I didn’t back that, either.

Even so, amazingly, I left Brighton without having lost any money. I think I’ve found the secret.

All you have to do is not have a bet. It works, but I don’t recommend it. Danny’s system’s better, and more fun.

Members can read the latest exclusive interviews, news analysis and comment available from 6pm daily on racingpost.com

Source: https://www.racingpost.com/news/david-ashforth-hole-in-one-gets-me-in-the-mood-for-return-to-brighton/138378

[orpheusterminals]

Tobacco and other Consumable Ash Residue, of Cigarettes, Cigars and Pipes for Forensic Criminology by Sherlock Holmes

..I am thinking of writing this book you are reading, I am going to call it:

Tobacco and other Consumable Ash Residue, of Cigarettes, Cigars and Pipes for Forensic Criminology by Sherlock Holmes

The Secrets of the Empire of the Nine, Revealed !

or

( the Further Adventures of Frank Fuckface edited by Iason Ragnar Bellerophon.) 

Part Two: Straight outta The White Feathered Octopus

2017© Tetragrammatron Press

(cue Cavemanrobot holding up the DODECATRON logo, by Biscuit Boy, Britton Walters)

Beautiful Greenberg, Monumenta, New Korpoils, The Untitled Snakes of Assyria, Helios Three, Sol, Milky Way, The Red Universe, Oversoul Seven.

As of right NOW! Here it is…

THAR SHE BLOWS, Tis a piny she’ a whore!

When we last left our hero, Jace the Ace, the original soulseeker, he was sitting on a love seat in a small Ape-artment in Beautiful Greenberg, with his 71 year old one legged father, they had both just spilt a bottle of Gato One Eye Wine, and 40oz. Of magic mushrooms….

A event it was Bellerophon was to term: The White Feathered Octopus.

This is the peak of the movie talking about Danny Kaye in Wonderman!

It explains everything!

Post War World Two, healing would the mind and the heart

The thinker and the clown!

What is this trick photography, YES IT IS!

Two-way ticket, the 4-d man, the clown is the trickerts-

No telling what I can do when I learn the ropes,

Oh what a set up when I wasted all that time living

The secrets of life were solid for a dime (nothing a symbolic boon at best) they offer all the various – lustful, muses each a color of the rainbow, the young lover pulls upon them all, the solution, the soul union, to finding love either getting the man you want to notice you or to find new lover or both is to be polyamorius to play the field, not just with love, Song of Solomon, to play the field of life to explore all the different kinds of being you can be, mother, lover, whore, child, wife, ex-wife, monster, body, object, image. With young man falling before you. That will instill lust in your true love to struggle to then win you, or die trying

The Perpetual Grinning Giantess

Okay, get up, push your hands down on the rug, flip over, on the knees, Arch the back, strech out back, Arch again, PAIN!, tight exhausted doing nothing calf muscle, PAIN!, up on your feet, Broken Wagon wheel feeling, pivot, push forward, thought the apartment, Dad there in his chair so bored, now so delighted that I am coming thought the kitchen over to him. It is maybe 10, I don’t know 10:20? Dad could not wait for me to make coffee, he have has been able to figure out how to use the espresso maker, so instead I see what is left of his Cowboy Coffee.

Recipe for Cowboy Coffee

Two tablespoons of coffee grounds

Pour directly into a small cooking pot

Drop in One Cup of Water

Do not mix!

Heating until boil and continue to boil until contents have boiled over leaving burnt grounds chemically bonded forever in the porcelain stove top

Hysterically pour directly into whatever vessel you can find regardless of cleanliness, the mug you left overnight with 4 or 5 tea bags from last night will work nicely, or the Pyrex measuring cup, or a soup bowl, our take a slightly smaller cooking pot and pour it in there, just do it NOW!

Drop in an ice cube, drop the tray still filled with more ice onto the floor and kick it under the stove.

Add one to fifteen packs of the cheapest imitation sugar to taste

Drink one scalding sip, then let sit till ice cold, then dump into sink.

Piss in the mug, and hide it behind the chair

Forget about it, then a few days from now kick the mug over with enough force to cause it to be smashed to more manageable bits

And That’s Cowboy Coffee, enjoy.

Without saying a word, I go straight into the shower, PAIN! Find the Monkey Wretch we use to turn the hot water on with, the knob fell off a few weeks ago, I would ask the landlord to fix it, but since we are behind in the rent it makes it awkward. PAIN!

Get the water really HOT, turn off the lights, in the in shower, now down onto my knees, pressing my feet hard against the surface of the tub near the drain. PAIN!

Arching my back, arms under my frame for support, pushing and pulling my next, compressing my spine, sucking in my gut, as tight and I can, release and again and again. IN the Dark, IN the Steam, eye shut tight, making a pillow with my hands, how else would anyone make any pillow of any kind without their hands? The inner surface of my eyelids, opens up to a long subterranean florescent hallway, I am following a pleasing figure slightly in front of me, I am enjoying my point of view.

The Perpetual Grinning Giantess, who is a fusion of past girlfriends, a buxom, dark haired beauty with amalgamated features, in a thick tangerine turtle neck, and short pelted wool skirt, with knee high matching Clementine stockings, finds me in a dark corridor and taking my hand leads me down into a takes me to the underground bunker, that I always knew would be at my disposable if I need it. Actually it is a palace, long halls, tapestries, modernist sculptures and fountains.

The Giantess leads me to where the strange weapons, ornate armor, and incomprehensible gizmos, taken from other worlds, are stored. The orange paint job on the concrete brick walls of the armory matches her heaving sweater. And we joke about it. She speaks in a rhythmic sing-song manner with left field code words dovetailing the ends, and cresting the middle of her sentences. It was as if she was trying to teach me a code, or perhaps an alternative language that happened to use the same words as English but with different meanings, or both those things.

Suddenly I notice that there is a book in the back of the armory, behind glass. The giantess explains to me that it was the one last book in this world. All the others were destroyed. It is a thick old fashion book kept enshrined upon a pillow. Making a corny Ray Bradbury joke, I asked if it was Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allen Poe.

The Giantess, looked at me with a blank stare and said it was, Tobacco and other Consumable Ash Residue, of Cigarettes, Cigars and Pipes for Forensic Criminology by Sherlock Holmes. As if I was foolish to think it could be any other book.

With a careful single motion she touched a tiny button on the side of the book’s pedestal, and glass, or what I thought was glass, instantly turned to cool steam flying away from the book. The whole bunker filled with a strong whiff of thick dust, that smell that only an old book can provide.

But, what a book! “May I?”

“Jugular! If justice is done, please just be careful, here use these gloves to turn the pages..”

I suppose the closest thing I could compare to the book would be the Voynich manuscript, Which I had been allowed to see when I was a grad student. This book seemed even more cryptic, page after page of elaborate diagrams of smoke, smokers, pipes, hookahs, and the various plants they are harvested from, but text was equally filled with wirework half-see through people, animals, and monsters. All of it appeared to be cross-connected with astronomical bodies; suns, moons, and stars of astronomy and astrology. One series of 78 diagrams depicts unconventional drawings for the zodiacal constellations from around the world ( a Winged Minotaur carrying a giant stone covered in dozen of human eye ball for Taurus, an eight legged centaur with a mane of fire and ice, brandishing a crossbow for Sagittarius, The Vedic Head of the Demon depicted as a man with a puppet on a stick riding a toad, a male and female pair of mere-people in coitis within a golden egg for Pisces, you get the idea).

There where different bevels running down the pages of the text block, so that fingers could easily find categories. In a section that appeared to cover geography I have a dozens different Maps of the earth, the largest of which folded-out in a special section of the book in one dived poster page, gingerly opening my six foot six inches arm span up to reveal a shockingly detailed chart of a planet called Helios Three, in the lower middle right of the map, the entire known land masses of our earth were represented as a tiny chain of islands the size of Hawaii all sharing the label Mundania, surrounded by quaint old timey sea-serpents, mostly hybrids of screaming women with hydra similar to classic allegorical images of Sin personified, in an area called the Internos Ocean, on a awesomely gargantuan orb filled to accommodate vast super-continents with labels that I could roughly translate as Atlemuriatis, Prospero’s Lillblefuscuiput, Ozqbar, and Xanthadu.

I laughed “This is an amazing document, a work of art onto itself, whoever made it really put their all into it, but Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he is not a real person, it is a common misunderstanding that inspired this Obsessive Prankster.”

The Giantess, saw and raised my laugh, with a slightly perturbed “Blacktail! You have made a blunder!, Doyle, that asshole? He was a puppet, an actor! Adfluxion, the account is full of errors! WE hired him to distract the general populous! I don’t know what Sherlock saw in that empty headed chowderhead, that hapless little man believed in ghosts! Modishly, a mismanaged affair.

I asked her what she meant by that, was there something in the text besides the new revealed to be real Holmes’ study of tobacco ash, she said yes. The she made a joke herself, with a slightly different smile, a sexy twist in the curve of her lips,

she said. “Rollable, your request is unreasonable, I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.”

“Okay, ha!” hoping over to a sturdy looking cot with a rainbow of earth tone striped wool blanket atop it and now under by backside. “ So Holmes, was an actual person, like some sort of Wold Newtonian idea.”

“World Newtonian, Cellar, the cheaper the better?” as she subtly shifted her weight to from on elaborately combat booted basketball size cafe muscle to the other, to align herself askew with a tilt of her solid fetching jawline.

Reaching over and strapping, what I thought were binoculars over my eyes, “No Wold, as in a meteorite which fell in Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795” after a bit of fiddling the switches I found on their side, binoculars warmly activate with a peachy hum. “Which gave rise to an obscured piece of pulp fiction fandom, that plays around with ideas about fictional characters being secretly retold stories of real adventurers.”

A rush of colors and hydrographic information filled my eyes, I was seeing the world based upon the about of water that exist within objects. Glancing over to the book was blank save for tiny dancing golden stars, The Giantess however, towering over me a now a swirling sea of turquoise, teal, and white poured at lightspeed into her skin, with the thickness and shape of a clear emerald old timey cola bottle now slightly larger than human scale, with faint flakes of tulip and melon pulsating at constellations filled with a zoo of tiny totem creatures, where her organs must be, as flares shoot off from the end points of her circulation. What was once and will soon again be her hand reaches over to my face, thousands of carnation and cream carrousels being patrolled by squadrons of invisible sea lions, swim up through her fingertips. She looked like one of the drawings in the manuscript, only brought into shock clarity. I thought to tell her, but I figured she must already know that.

“He called it a supernova of genetic splendor”.

Pulling the hydroculars off my face, with a genteel grimace, her ample right breast brushing against my raised up left knee for an ecstatic second, “Who is He? And where did you hear about this?”

“Oh sorry, I did that classic male thing, and just spoke as if you could read my mind! He is Philip Jose Farmer, that writer I told you about before, he put forth the idea that the meteorite was radioactive and caused beneficial genetic mutations in those exposed to it. That is the fun in Farmer, he plays fast and loose with the facts working them into his fiction. It really could have been anything, ties in with The Golden Fleece, Holy Grail, Super Solider Serum, a oddball device so that heroes can be spawned from mortal men, gives the reader, the slimmest of chances that there might be a….”

“Mustard Seed of Truth?” she completed the words for me, then added “Enringed, the news causes great excitement!”

As my eye re-adjusts to the cold light of the room, I ask myself if I really needed to start talking about pulp fiction fandom, and related nonsense, along with rattling off way too much information to a kind girl that is just being sweet and listening, because your starting to date one another.

The Professor, The Know it All, those are strong impulses in me, I think it is a direct result of feeling stupid in school, being labeled “learning disabled”, knowing that you are smart, but being treated like you have shit for brains, brings out the need to prove it, prove hard and fast. When you’re a larger man than average, it does not help either, people will just assume that if you are big, and my big I mean fat and tall, that you are also mentally retarded.

Such is life, right, we all have our crosses to bear, even a Bear.

But I am who I am and that stuff is important to me, the sabertooth is out of the bag.

Pushing a series of thin sliver bracelet up her wrist, “Well, actually Sherlock was just his code name, No Holmes was real! Expect was really your ancestor, Dr. Joseph Bell, who hand picked Doyle when, he had worked for Bell as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.”

“The E.R.I.?” making a joke, as if I was already familiar with so random war hospital, “Whoa, there sunshine, what are you talking about? huunnnnunun!” I said with my nervous laugh dancing up behind my words. “Why, would he do that? For what purpose?” pushing pass her, walking about over to the book again.

“In order that to better hide the knowledge, of course!. If it were not for him and the wisdom he encoded in this book all would be lost! If this book fell into the hands of most people they would think it was perhaps a prop from a theatrical production, or the ravings of a nutjob at best. Probably the poor soul would just burn it for kindling.”

The great burden of it all on her face, a afternoon shadow falling indoors onto hard wood floors.

“ That is why you are here, Jason, it is all here in the book, ever wonder why you would even know about some hairbrained pastime like that Fig Newton, or whatever you called that Grail stone! To get you ready for this day, this moment everyday there are new entries on the blank pages, new diagrams, new recipes! He did something to the ink, so that it would appear bit by bit, as if it is a clock, the book is alive and has a time delay for information. So far I have figured out that much, and that when he is talking about smoke is does not mean smoke, he means the residue of activity all human activity, and maybe other forms of higher and lower life. It is too much to handle, We need you to work with me on recording it all down, interrupting it, figure out how to use it. .”

The adventure suit was scarlet, and goldenrod, with cyan tiger stripe in artful placment…..

#pinballmanshoe

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.2

[Pt.1] [Pt.3] [Pt.4][Pt.5][Pt.6][Pt.7]

Danny dragged up another plastic wrapped body from the bay.

“It’s you. What are you doing?”

“Oh, holy smokes!” Danny screeched. “What-! Oh, it’s you! The litterer!”

Batman stood in front of Danny, cape draped around his shoulders and a far better sight to see than the last time Danny had seen the guy.

“… I’m Batman.” He introduced himself to Danny awkwardly.

“Uh huh. You missed a couple of things cleaning up the beach last time.” Danny dropped the body on the pebbled shore of the bay and crossed his arms. He sent Batman an unimpressed look. “You’re just like your city. There’s trash all over the water!”

Batman glanced down.

“That is a body.”

Danny scowled.

“No, that’s plastic. Plastic does not belong in the ocean.”

Batman sighed. For some reason, Danny thought he seemed less… antagonistic. Wait, did he think Danny killed the guy?!

“That is a body wrapped in plastic.”

Fuck it.

“If it was a body, then bury it. Or decompose it before you people decide to dump it into the water. Even the sharks have the decency to decompose when they’re dead. Do you know how long plastic takes to deteriorate??”

Batman glanced to the side, where the line of plastic wrapped masses had caught his eye to begin with.

“I do. Did all of these come from the bay?”

“Quite obviously, yes. I don’t have enough time to clean the waters! Ancients, it’s like they’re multiplying!” Danny knew why they were multiplying. It’s because Gothamites were getting murdered and dumped weekly. The problem is that Danny has classes and assignments to complete and he couldn’t be out here every week.

“I’ll handle it.”

“Oh, will you? And how do you plan on doing that when you couldn’t even properly clean the beach of your plane? I even stacked it up nicely for you to pick up!”

Alright, so maybe Danny had a couple of grudges. Like… a solid one that’s based on the hours of sleep he missed cleaning up after Batman and the wreck.

“We didn’t get everything?”

“No.” Danny huffed. “Whatever. Just figure out what to do with these bodies. I was not looking forward to digging graves for all of them.”

“You were going to dig graves for them?” Batman sounded off.

Danny scowled again. “I’m dead, genius.” And now Batman looked like someone ran over his dog. “Respecting the dead is important and graves are important for the dead. How else would we know we’re remembered?”

Danny threw up his hands. “Humans,” he muttered, like he wasn’t half human himself.

“Anyways, I’m leaving. Handle this properly or else I’m haunting you.”

“Wait-!” Batman said, but Danny had already disappeared.

So, while Batman had an angst crises at two thirty in the morning and thirty new unidentified corpses to contend with, Danny Fenton flew back to his apartment and passed out on his shitty couch.

——

“You need to stop.”

“Pay me to stop, then. What are your villains going to do? Kill me? I’d like to see them try.”

Danny looked Batman right in his lenses and plopped another body down at the man’s feet.

“I can tell you who they are for a fee.” Danny offered the vigilante. “Some of these still have shades of their souls attached still.”

“What.”

Danny tilted his head, moon once more lighting a halo of flickering white flames around his head. “$100 per identity.”

Batman stared.

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