this is sort of pathetic, but when you were younger, you were sort of puzzled by the cartoon representations of fathers: how a kid would be outside with a mitt, waiting to play catch.
it's not that your father never played catch with you, but you also didn't like when he did. something about a hard ball coming quickly towards your face doesn't seem exciting. not that you'd ever say you don't trust him. you trust him, right?
it's not like he never tried to teach you anything. or never tried to parent. on rare days, a strange person would walk in your father's skin. bright, happy, magnificent. this version of your father was so cheerful and charismatic that you would do anything to keep him. and this is the version of your father that would laugh and gently coax you try again. this is the version of your father that would break down the small elements of a problem and point them out so you have an easier time with them.
as a kid, those days happened more often. but somewhere around 11, you started being too much of a person, and he was often cross about it. when he'd try to sit you down to learn something, you spent the whole time with your shoulders around your ears, nervous, uncertain. terrified because you didn't immediately understand how to navigate something. worried you will run out of his goodwill and then you will have the Other Father back, and you will have ruined a good day for your entire family. something about you being visibly afraid - it just made him angry. he would accuse you of not wanting to learn and storm away.
on tv, it's not like there's a lot of versions of men-who-are-mostly-fathers. they can be good dads, but usually their stories are not told in the household. so it's normal that your father is there, but he's never around. you know he was in the house, somewhere, it's just not that you guys ever... "hung out". he just seemed to get kind of bored of you, annoyed you weren't made in his perfect image. frustrated with how much energy it took to raise a kid. over time, you kind of adopt a bittersweet band around your throat - he knows nothing about me. he says at least i never abandoned my family.
and it's technically - technically - true. he was there for you. sometimes he even made an effort and made it to the big moments; the graduations and the dance recitals. he grins and tells everyone that he taught you. it almost erases the days in between, where he complains because you need a ride to school. the weeks that go by where he doesn't actually ever speak to you. the times you say i am struggling and he says figure it out on your own. i can't help you.
and that's fine! that's all fine. you can call him if you are having a problem with your car. or if you need a ride to the hospital. he loves playing hero, he just doesn't like the actual work that comes with being a father. and you've kind of made your peace with that; because you had to, because you don't want to live your life like he does; the whole world at a managed distance, a little rotating and controlled orb he can witness and take credit for but never truly love.
as an adult, you are rewatching some dumb cartoon - and again, the child standing in the rain, with a mitt, waiting for their father to come play catch. as an adult, there's this strange creeping dread - this little thing? this little thing, and their dad can't even show up for that? oh god, holyshit, it's not about the mitt, is it. oh god, holyshit, your father spent most of your life leaving you hanging.
Danny was one of the people hired to design/build the Watchtower. He got attached to it during this time and the space station is now considered as a part of his haunt.
This is the JLD's first time on the Watchtower, they IMMEDIATLY know what's up.
LJD: did you take a supernatural entities property or something?
LD: what? No! The lights are just like that :)
Danny, still employed on the Watchtower: Space go brrr
I've been thinking about QiJiu and how they could be post-reconciliation and I'm like. I love most flavors of these tragic idiots, but I like them as either romantic or full on disaster siblings the most, probably.
Because them becoming close platonic friends feels like sort of... an extension? Of the state they are in canonically, where they are devoted to each other, but in a lot of ways have grown apart. They just fix up the holes in it - and I don't think that works all that well for them on the long run, because it would be all too easy to be reminded of the bad times. I think for them to be happy and stable long term, they need a shift in their dynamic either to something new (romantic relationship, with the courting period acting as a sort of soft reset) or back to the (codependent, but not necessarily in a bad way) sibling-relationship they had before.
Like. Honest to god I want a story where the two of them make up and Liu Qingge is the first one to look at them and go:
"What the fuck?! WHAT THE FUCK?! So this was just a sibling tantrum?? Like the time Mingyan refused to talk to me for three weeks because I got monster guts on her new dress, except you idiots dragged it out for thirty years?! I'm ashamed to be your shidi! Shame on you!"
"It was a bit more serious than-"
"Zhangmen-shixiong, what could you have possibly done that's worse than monster guts?"
Just Liu Qingge shaking Yue Qingyuan until dumbass failbrother explains what happened - perfect grounds for Liu-Jiu reconciliation too, because in LQG's mind 'making your little brother think you willingly abandoned him to slavery' is a perfectly valid reason to become the angriest, bitchiest bitch to ever peak lord. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense, his big brother instincts tell him that if he did something like that to Liu Mingyan then blood would flow. He doesn't know what a Joker even is, but in his mind that would be Mingyan's Joker moment for sure.
Concept: the justice league finds out that Blaze and Satanus, the rulers of hell, are kids of their ‘even more of a boy scout than Superman’ coworker’s “boss” and think Shazam is the Christian God. They ask Billy really vague questions that lead Billy into confusing them even more and they become convinced that Marvel’s Wizard guy is God with a capital G and Marvel’s either an angel or the second coming of Jesus.
Meanwhile Shazam doesn’t even know what the Bible is and his knowledge about religion is so outdated he still thinks Solomon’s Judaism is new age and not worth his time to research such a ‘fad’ religion, but he knows humans will make a religion out of anything as well as bastardize existing ones and very well could have mixed up actual tales that involve him, his allies, and his children into some sort of melting pot of a religion.
So when someone finally asks Marvel outright if his “boss” is God, Billy goes ‘wait… old guy in white robes and sandals, with long white hair and a beard… lives in space… aka the “heavens”, whose a ghost(Holy Spirit), and knows everything(historama)??? I need to dig deeper into this hold on guys’ and goes off to ask the wizard.
So when Billy asks the Wizard he just tells Billy “well, my boy, if so many things match up, maybe it is so and the tales of myself and my champions grew so estranged from their origins or mixed in with other beliefs that it can explain the things that aren’t true to our reality.”
Then The Canonical Character To The DC Universe, Jesus of Nazareth, shows up.
I feel like if humans came into contact and formed alliances with aliens and the aliens discover “humans are space orcs” on tumblr, they will share the same reaction we do to flat-earthers.
Honestly, thank god for the tumblr version of humans are weird/space orcs/whatever. I love the stories I read on here about discovery and interaction between different species and how cool space is. Every time I try to go to reddit (into the r/HFY one, which is supposed to be the same thing), all I get usually is stories of human's deadly military in space.
i keep thinking about hobbies and how i often spill over myself to pick up new ones. i have adhd, i end up trying something for like a month and then just getting far enough in it that i move on, satisfied.
and that should be fine; but it's never fine.
i am a pretty decent artist; but i can't just make art for my dnd campaign, i should be selling dnd maps and character designs and scene setting pieces. i can't just make my friends matching earrings, i need to get an etsy and ship them internationally and take bulk orders. i make pretty good props and decorations and use them to throw my friends parties - but i should be running a party planning business and start taking paying clients and networking and putting my skills to actual use.
for some reason, i never figured out the specifics of pottery. it was a fun class and i enjoyed myself - and still, i'm embarrassed, years later, that i put in all that useless effort. everything i make has to be stunning. stellar. i should have applied myself more. maybe i'm too lazy. maybe i'm broken and selfish and needy. actually creative people would have kept going; they would be bettering themselves at every possible opportunity.
we find ourselves in this trap, even accidentally: we need to commodify our time, because it is a commodity. if we spend our efforts and our time not earning, isn't that the same thing as burning free money? and god forbid you ever take up a hobby that ends up being more expensive than you thought. you sit in your car and you look at the receipt and in your head you hear a conversation that isn't even happening - your mom or your friend or your partner all saying oh great. not this shit again. it's always something with you, and it never actually means anything.
i have realized this horrible thing, recently - i'll get excited to start a project, pick up a new hobby. and then i just... stop myself. i start thinking about the amount of time it will take, and how it'll look in my monthly budget. what if i can't even produce a good enough final product. sure, it's exciting to think about how i could make my friend her own custom dice. but i'm just polluting the earth if i don't get it right. better not bother. better not try.
restless, i get caught in the negative space. the feeling that oh god, i want to create. and that horrible sense - yeah, but i don't have the time to just put to waste.
"Even without full scan function, I still had my dark vision filters and my own mapping data, so with the fixed point of the corridor hatch, I could retrace my steps to the ramp. It just looked awkward and stupid because for the first part I had to navigate like a floor-cleaning bot." - Martha Wells, System Collapse
(Video and audio description below the cut)
VIDEO ID:
An animated video of Murderbot, in a full environmental suit (featuring a little 'Perihelion' logo on its chest and an opaque helmet).
Murderbot is wandering around a dark space, the sound of its footsteps on the stone floor are audible. It walks in a straight line to the right until it hits a pillar with an audible 'thunk' noise and stops. A grumpy smiley face appears next to it.
It recalibrates, making little chirping calibrating sounds, then turns and moves towards the viewer until it seems to hit the camera (again with a 'thunk' noise and a little frowny smiley face next to it) and recalibrates again.
It turns its back to the viewer and starts walking again, this time seemingly hitting the wall in the back. It recalibrates again, then turns to the right and starts walking again. After a few seconds it stops briefly, two exclamation marks appear next to it along with a beeping noise, then it quickly walks out of frame.
So I personally don't play DBD (though I think it might be fun to try but I'd be bad at it so) but a streamer I watch plays it a lot and her survival rate against Wesker players is astounding. And funny to watch. So I draw lil doodles for her Wesker interactions to put off doing other art.
What if we're the only species to create fictional characters, then get
sad??? About them??? Like, they're not real, but if dare tell a fangirl™ (this term applies to all genders, yes I know, shocking) to "get over it???"
...you will not escape their wrath. Alien commander X'theiloz found this out the hard way...
By interrupting a shERLOCKIAN MOURNING.
And soon enough, after X'theiloz had been frightened and possibly traumatized far beyond help by the human's reaction to his simple comment of "but it isn't real", the 'How to deal with a Terran' handbook was updated.
Never, ever, comment on a Terran's emotions to even a fictional story.