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#when i had not had this epiphany
poorly-drawn-mdzs · 2 months
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Lap Pillow
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mardyart · 2 months
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girlbosses
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Price who knew Simon before Roba. Who thought he was a good kid, disciplined solider and got along well with him.
Price who then found out about what happened and decided to check up on Simon when he was cleared to come back.
Price who thought Ghost’s aversion to food was a trauma response. Who thought him staying up all night was because of nightmares and joked that he needed to stop covering himself up when he went outside because, “you’re as pale as a ghost.”
Price who noticed Ghost’s irises were red, not brown, but always thought it was the trick of the light or the fact that his eye color was always dark.
Price who noticed his strange speed and strength. Who began to get a little concerned when Ghost started getting aggressive, how he always blamed it on him being “hungry”.
Eventually one night, after noticing how strange Ghost was acting, he went to confront him only to see Ghost eating what he assumed was a rat.
Price who had to take a moment on whether or not he should call for Ghost’s removal from the military due to psychological distress or to politely ask him what the fuck was going on.
Only for Ghost to look back at him shocked but with hungry eyes that Price could only describe as “not human”.
Ghost who had to explain what exactly happened with Roba and how he’s different, how strange everything’s been, how he can’t go out into the sun without feeling like he has a sunburn or how he sees better in pitch black darkness and how no matter how many times he tries to eat real food he just throws it back up, so he resorted to drinking blood.
Price who had to take a long time to sit with this information before he took action, making sure it was only him who knew about this and making sure Ghost never hurt anyone when he got too “hungry”.
Price who trained him to cope better with daylight and helped him with his new found strength and speed. Who told him the only people who could drink from were enemies and that if that wasn’t an option he’d give his own blood.
Price who now as the leader of the 141 is the only one who knows what Ghost really is and refuses to disclose other information about it to save his lieutenant from other experiments.
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mizumonostragedy · 2 months
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Hello their heads form a heart?!?!? A FREAKING HEART??
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starry-bi-sky · 6 months
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Childhood Friends Au: Danny's in Gotham Again
when the wool is off your eyes you'll stop counting sheep at night cause you'll eat your fill of them during the daytime
A few weeks after Danny’s visit to Gotham, he buys an apartment in the city. It’s this little thing, a studio apartment on the same street he grew up in. In Crime Alley. When he tells his parents, they protest heavily. They don’t think it's safe. They think he should reconsider. There were plenty of apartments and places to live somewhere else. And what about college? 
Danny doesn’t think he’ll go to college. He isn’t sure what he wants to do, now that being an astronaut is off the table. It’d be a waste of money to go without a goal in mind, he thinks. He says he’ll take a gap year and apply at one of the community colleges funded by the Wayne Corporation, possibly. It just wasn’t in the cards right now. 
“If things get tough,” He says at dinner that night, “then I can talk to the Waynes. I’m friends with the family, remember?” He ended up getting Bruce’s number in his phone again before he left, and in the process got Tim’s as well. They don’t talk much, Danny isn’t sure what to say. But he sends Tim memes whenever he comes across one and thinks he’ll like. Tim sends memes back in return.   
His parents do remember. They remember. They also remember the horrified shriek that echoed through the house when Danny learned of Jason’s passing. They remember running up the stairs and bursting into their son’s room and finding him sobbing into his bed, curled up like a little kid, like he was in pain. He lost his voice that day, stuck between screaming out his grief and sobbing it. 
They’re still not sure if they should let him go. 
In the end, Danny wins them out, and he lets them help him search for an apartment. They take a break from their lab work to help search for cheap furniture to buy. They may have more money than when they were in Gotham, but that frugal part of you never fully goes away. They all agree that they don’t want Danny to be seen carrying in nice-looking furniture when he moves in. 
He ends up with a basic furniture set, all mismatched, and in the warm summer of June, his parents rent out a u-haul and drive him down to Gotham to move in. They meet the landlord when they arrive, a skinny and frail old man with wispy white hair and a wrinkled face. He gives Danny the keys and tells him what apartment number he is, and then he leaves. 
His parents help him move in. They help him carry his heavy furniture up to the second floor, where his apartment is. Danny isn’t sure if he wants them to help. His mom and dad are strong, but they are getting old, closer to their fifties now that their children are grown. His dad’s hair is slowly beginning to thin, and rather than the white eating at the sides of his head, it now streaks through his hair like salt-and-pepper. His mom’s hair is graying out too, and there are more lines in their faces than he remembers there being. 
When he voices his concerns, his mom laughs spiritedly and says that they may be getting old, but they are still as spry as when they were in their twenties. Danny isn’t sure if he believes them or not. He can see his dad struggle a bit when they return to get his bed frame, and they have to take a break before they go back down for the rest of their things. 
Five years ago, his dad could do this without breaking a sweat. It forces a heavy thing in the back of Danny’s throat. (He is less afraid of his own death than he is of his loved ones, and while he has always felt rocky with his parents, he still loves them more than anything else.) 
Danny’s apartment is exactly as he would have expected it to be: shabby and worn through. The entire room smells like stale cigarette smoke and weed, nicotine stains the wall with poorly covered bullet holes, and stains in the carpet that are a color he can’t discern. The fridge has a broken light and when he tries to turn on the gas stove, it click-click-clicks before lighting, fire fwooshing out while the smell of gas fills the air. There’s rat droppings in the cupboards and the closet-like bathroom is just as bad. 
The ghostly part of him can sense the heavy stench of death in the room; people have died in this room. People have died in every room of this building, he thinks. They have died on the streets outside and in the alleys squeezed between them. He can feel it like a heavy fog in the air. 
It is painfully nostalgic, a bittersweet feeling in his chest that he grimaces to. 
When the last box is placed in his apartment, his parents offer to help unpack. They are hesitant to leave and Danny knows it, although he doesn’t know if it’s from empty nest syndrome or because it's Gotham. He thinks it might be both. He is their youngest child finally leaving home to a city known for its danger. 
“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay behind, sweetie?” His mother asks, a frown she tries to hide settled in the creases of her face. She fiddles with her hands, a nervous habit Danny has since noticed when she feels truly unsure and doesn’t need to hide it. Hesitancy looms over her like a heavy cloud. 
His dad jumps in hastily, splaying his hands and smiling painfully wide to hide the glistening in his eyes. “You’re mother’s right! We can help you get everything set up, champ. I could probably do something with that stove of yours to make it faster!” He says, his voice still booming like it always does even if there’s a stumble in his words. 
It makes his heart squeeze, knowing just how much they care. It was hard last summer, telling him that he was the Phantom. Terrifying, actually. They couldn’t comprehend it. He hadn’t felt his heart beat that fast in years when he stood in front of them at the kitchen table and told them he was a halfa, begging them to believe that ghosts weren’t inherently evil. 
His parents were people of science, however, and after much, much shock, they slowly came to terms with it. How could they not? The evidence was right in front of them. Their son was dead-alive, alive-dead. Somewhere stuck in the between. The tears they shed that night could fill a river, moving from the kitchen to the living room as Danny explains how he died. 
(When Danny tells them that he died after a week Jason did, his mom and dad look horrified. His mom covers her mouth when he adds that it was his idea to go inside it, his dad looks ashy pale, gripping his pant legs so tight that his knuckles turn white. There is a conclusion coming to their minds that he can tell they don’t like.) 
(“You’ve always hated our inventions, Danny.” Mom says in a hushed voice, and Danny winces at the wording, sinking into the back of the cushions in shame. He never thought that his parents noticed. Mom quickly grabs his arm, “No, no, there’s nothing to be ashamed of Danny. We were… perhaps too careless with our inventions, too enthusiastic. You had every right to hate the things we made when they had a tendency to… to malfunction.”) 
(Malfunction is a delicate way of putting it, when Danny remembers every time they had to evacuate their old apartment complex because whatever half-baked creation his parents made inevitably blew up into ash and smoke. There were soot marks permanently stained into the ceiling.) 
(Her hand slides down and grabs his, and she cups it in both of her hands, squeezing tightly. He forces himself to look up, and there is a look like her heart breaking when he looks into his mother’s eyes. “You’ve always avoided the lab after we moved, Danny. And you had every right to, so why on Earth did you ever think about going into the portal?”)
(Danny struggles to come up with an adequate answer, a way to verbalize what came over him that day five years ago. The answer is there, hanging in the air like a knot in a noose. He opens his mouth, and then closes it.)
(Finally, with a tongue made of lead, he shrugs lamely and looks away. “I didn’t know there was an on button inside it.” He mumbles, and despite being the truth it feels like a lie. But that is the truth. He didn’t know there was an on button inside it. So he didn’t care what happened.)
(Something dulls in mom’s eyes, like she thought of something else that Danny hadn’t said. Her eyes shimmer, and she squeezes them shut, breathing in so deep that it shakes. And then she pulls him into a hug, a hand burying into his hair and pressing him close. “It must have hurt so much, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”)
(It is something that Danny doesn’t expect her to say, like missing the last step of the stairs. It startles him so much he laughs this short, bark of a thing. He feels his dad press against his back and wrap his big arms around them, his nose pushed into his hair.) 
(Because yeah. Yeah, it did hurt. It hurt more than anything else he’s ever felt before. It had torn him apart and sewn him back together again, only to rinse and repeat. The pain was nothing he ever spoke to Sam or Tucker about, and it was something they never brought up. No, that’s not true. If they ever brought it up, Tucker would call it a zap. As if Danny only experienced a mild static shock. Like it was painless. It’s a pretty lie that Danny lets him and Sam believe.)
(His eyes sting and water immediately wobbles into his vision, coming up with such a force that he doesn’t even need to blink before it spills over. “Yeah.” He forces out, voice unexpectedly rough and cracking. “Yeah, it- it hurt. A lot.”)
He tells them about fighting the Lunch Lady a month later. He tells them about finding Jason. It comes spilling out like a waterfall. “I found him, mom.” He says, holding onto her tight while she keeps him tucked under his chin like a little kid. The secret of Jason being Robin stays hidden under his tongue, it is not his secret to tell. Not his identity to expose. He grips her tighter. “I found him, mom. Right there in the Ghost Zone, and he was my Jason. He wasn’t an echo or a— an imprint of him.”
Mom is silent; quiet and attentive, and so is dad, who rubs his large hands up and down Danny’s spine in an attempt to soothe him. It only works a little. Danny breathes in like a gasp as the urge to cry overcomes him again. He always avoids talking about Jason, his grief is like a never-healing scab that can be picked off at any time. It is ingrained into his core. 
“And then I lost him.” He forces out, a sob layering under his words that he chokes on and swallows. The hand on his back stills, and he can feel mom and dad breathe in like a question. He turns his head and pushes it into mom’s shoulder. “He disappeared, mom. Just— just gone.”
“And he didn’t move on.” He says, voice snarling like teeth biting before his mom can ask, because he knows that’s what she was going to ask. It’s what Sam and Tucker asked when he came to them in tears hours after he found Jason gone. It’s what Jazz said when he finally told her about it. It’s what every one of his ghosts asked when he told them about it and begged for their help. 
Danny grits his teeth and tries not to dig his nails into mom’s clothes as a fresh wave of tears run down his face. “His haunt is still there. If Jason really moved on it would have disappeared with him. That’s how it works. But it’s still in the zone, so Jason’s out there I just don’t know where.” 
(Sam once asks him why Danny didn’t just move on from it a year after Jason’s disappearance. She asked him why he didn’t give it up. Danny nearly saw red, and nearly bit her head off for it. It was incomprehensible to him to just stop looking for Jason, to give up. Not when he was out in the zone somewhere. Because he had to be in the zone.)
(Danny once tried to take Jason through the portal with him, and much like what happened to Kitty, it didn’t work. Jason was too tied to the ghost zone to leave.) 
(Some bonds are just unbreakable, he thinks. Bonds forged through blood and time and trust, and when you’re on the streets of Gotham, you hoard what little trust you have in someone like a dragon with its gold. It is scarcely given and fiercely kept.) 
“I’ve been looking for him.” Danny whispers when talking becomes too hard for him, when it runs the risk of him crying. “When- when I’m not fighting ghosts or, or in school or with my friends, I’ve been looking for him.” He has explored the Ghost Zone in every reach he can. He has met so many people. He’s met the ghosts of aliens from planets in every corner of the galaxy. He has met gods or god-like beings and their disciples. 
He’s met famous scholars and writers (he’s gotten the autographs of all of Jason’s favorite writers). He has found entire cities that have so much life in it that it's been permanently etched into the ghost zone, like a mirror version of itself. 
He’s visited the ghostly vision of Gotham so many times, and he avoids the imprint of Wayne Manor like the plague. There are ghostly newspapers that he reads. There are the ghosts of Martha and Thomas Wayne in many of them. 
Jason’s haunt connects to Wayne Manor, but it is also the street they grew up in. It is a small brick building with a door that leads to Jason’s room. A ghost knows when someone enters their haunt, it alerts them like a doorbell in the back of their mind. A foreign ecto-signature in a place drenched in your own. 
Danny visits it every time he goes into the Ghost Zone. It’s always his first stop. 
He tells his parents all of it. He tells them of the ghosts he’s met, of the places he’s seen. And when he feels brave, he tells them about Rath and the terror that his future self brings him. He keeps some details hidden, the ones that he can afford to keep without muddling up the story. 
(Rath is a tall, spindly thing, like a funhouse mirror version of Danny himself. He has arms that are much too long and legs that are much too tall, with skinny fingers that extend into claws.He wears his suit the same as Danny does, with it partially undone and the sleeves wrapped around his waist.)
(There is a black hole in his chest that is much bigger than Danny’s own. It takes up his chest cavity and drips the same, viscous black liquid as the tears falling from his eyes. Danny never forgets his voice; a scraping, quiet thing like he’s screamed himself hoarse. Rath has a voice like goosebumps, and it haunts Danny like a bump in the night.) 
Danny speaks and speaks and speaks until he can’t think of anything else to speak of. He is tired and sad, and it feels like his heart has been ripped out and rubbed raw again. And yet, he also feels so much better. Like a long heavy weight has been taken off his chest. 
Yeah, last summer was hard. His parents walked on eggshells around him, and they forced themselves to unlearn their bias of ghosts. It was more than Danny could have ever dreamed of, and when they felt ready for it, they asked him more about the ghost zone.
He smiles sadly at his dad, “I think fixing the stove can be a priority another time, dad.” He says, watching him wilt and his smile fall. Jack Fenton was always so good at making himself look like a kicked puppy. “I can handle unpacking by myself, I promise.” 
His parents still look so unsure, like they want to argue. Danny watches his mom purse her lips tightly, confliction running across her face like a datastream. She takes dad’s hand, squeezing their fingers together despite the droop in her shoulders. 
“Oh, alright then, I suppose.” She relents, her hand placing on Jack’s arm. “I guess we could go, we’re just going to miss you so much, Danny.” 
Tears seem to have won over his dad, and Jack Fenton sniffs back before he can cry properly. “Our little boy, all grown up.” He says, voice wobbling. It makes Danny laugh, and it makes his heart pang. His smile grows impossibly wider and so much fonder. “You’ve become such a kind, wonderful young man, Danno. We’re so proud of you.” 
Danny laughs again, and it cracks. “You’re gonna make me cry, dad.” (He feels a welling of guilt in his gut that he ignores — he doesn’t feel like a kind man. He doesn’t feel like a good one either. Not with what he plans to do.) 
His father holds out his arms in hopefulness, “One last hug for your old man before we head out?” He asks, mustering up a smile on his face. 
Danny barrels into him, nearly knocking his dad over with an oomph. He’s as tall as him now, but he still feels little in his bear hugs. With arms wrapping around his middle, Danny hugs his father tight and breathes him in one last time. 
“Careful there, Danno.” He laughs, patting Danny’s back roughly. “You’ll break my ribs with that ghostly strength of yours!” But he holds on just as tight.
Out of spite, Danny bends back and lifts him off his feet, laughing when Jack tenses up and nearly scrambles out of surprise. His mom laughs with him, stepping back to give them room for the few seconds that dad is in the air. 
When it’s his mom’s turn, Danny has to hunch to hug her. Something bittersweet to him as she plants a kiss on his forehead and says that he’ll always be her baby. “Even if you do have that horrid smoking habit.” She adds on with a disapproving eyebrow raise. 
Danny turns red in embarrassment, and walks them back to the GAV. Gothamites of all kinds slow to stop and boggle at the monstrous, road-illegal thing that is parallel-parked next to the curbside. In the past, Danny would have died with mortification to be seen with it. Now it just makes him laugh. Before he goes back into the apartment building, he buys a newspaper from a nearby convenience store.  
The first thing he does when he gets back up to his room is one: make a mental note to buy a bicycle chain lock for the door. The locks jiggle and there are splinters along the side that show signs of it being broken into in the past. The second thing he does is pull his cigarettes out of his pocket and light one. 
Danny starts to unpack with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, placing the newspaper he bought onto the counter. He has a cheap loveseat that he pushes off to the side, and he moves the boxes into the kitchen. It’s a matter of organization that Danny has to think about before he does anything. 
It’s as he’s pushing the sofa up against the wall facing the windows that his phone rings a familiar tune: Sam. The phone is fished out before he can think about it and when he stares down at the screen, he realizes it's a facetime call. 
He presses answer and walks over to prop his phone up onto the counter. The smiling faces of Sam and Tucker greet him, rather than just Sam. Immediately, Danny grins. “Hey Danny.” Sam greets, smiling a dark-painted lazy thing. From the background it looks like they’re in Tucker’s room. Sam is in Tucker’s desk chair, and Tucker is behind her, leaning against it. “Have you moved in yet?” 
Danny pulls the cigarette from his mouth and huffs, a cloud of smoke following his breath. “Yeah! It’s a shithole.” He grins lopsidedly, and his feet carry him off to the side to allow Sam and Tucker view of his apartment. He lets thirty seconds pass, allowing the both of them to really see the rest of the room. And then he steps back into frame. 
Sam and Tucker both look like they’re trying not to look judgemental, like they’re trying to hide a grimace that Danny sees anyway with the small turns at the corner of their mouths. He grins wider, mirth filling his lungs. “I know, it looks awful doesn’t it?”
“It’s— it’s not so bad.” Sam says with a strain in her voice, a forced smile on her face that tries to be reassuring. Tucker nods along readily, and he looks just as unsure as Sam does. Danny stifles laughter behind his teeth. 
“No, no, it looks bad,” He takes a drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. “You can say it, I won’t get offended. It’s a fucking apartment in crime alley. Of course it looks bad.” 
Sam remains silent, a rearing of her stubbornness showing itself. Tucker takes a different approach, and heaves a dramatic sigh of relief, slumping like a weight. “Okay, you’re right. It looks bad.” He frowns, “Sorry, man.” 
While Danny snorts, Sam sighs. “Yeah, it looks bad. What even are those stains?” She asks, and both she and Tucker lean closer in tandem to the screen, eyes squinting at the floor behind him. Danny glances at the floor, and shrugs. 
“Blood, probably.” He says, and while years in Amity Park have accustomed him to a clean environment, the desensitization of Gotham still remains. Tucker and Sam both make faces and lean away, as if the stain itself was capable of passing through to them. “Yeah, there are bullet holes in the walls.” 
“Are you sure it’s safe to be there?” Tucker asks, a furrow appearing between his brows. He adjusts his glasses and leans against the chair. Sam is frowning heavily, and Danny can already see her thinking up of a new way to fix the problem. 
“Oh, I never said this place was safe.” Danny tells him cheerily, taking a last hit of his cigarette before placing the dead stick onto the counter. He itches for another one. Instead he walks over to the shelf his parents brought in and starts moving it. “It’s Crime Alley, Tuck. Safe isn’t even in its vocabulary.” 
Tucker and Sam look like they’ve both swallowed a lemon.
“But it’s where I want to be right now.” He says, grunting quietly when the shelf is against the wall he wants it to be, near the short hallway leading to the front door. He can push it in front of it if someone tries to break in. “And Crime Alley’s apartments are the only ones I can really afford right now without mooching off my parents, and I’d rather not depend on them.” 
He can hear the disapproving hesitance from where he stands. And he ignores it. 
Danny walks back into frame, lifting up a box onto the counter. He hums lightly, fingers run over the tape keeping it shut. “Why do you even want to be in Gotham, Danny?” Sam asks, and she sounds genuinely perplexed. Danny stills. “I thought this place only had bad memories for you.” 
His blood turns cold, and like a dime being flipped his slow heartbeat fills his ears. “It does.” He replies automatically, before he can think. Shit, shit. He knows that Sam or Tucker would ask that question, and yet he still feels unprepared for it. His heart pulses quickly against his ribcage, knocking, asking him what he’s going to tell them that isn’t the truth. 
Danny stammers, “I mean— I just— I guess I felt nostalgic.” He says, and it sounds like a weak defense. He looks away, finding himself instinctively scratching his jaw. A new tick of his when he’s nervous. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sam and Tucker both narrow their eyes at him. 
He cannot tell them the real reason why he’s moved back to Gotham. He can’t tell them of the little secret and vow he told himself five years ago, the one that’s been left to fester and burn like an open wound close to his core. The one that, if he thinks too much about it, sends a searing hot electricity through him, filling him from crown to toe top-full of direst wrath.  
(Danny was always the angrier one in the duo of Jason and Danny. He was always the one with glass in his mouth, cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world around them. His knuckles had more blood and bruises on it than skin, once upon a time. All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He has grown from it, that fury has turned to a small simmering candle.) (But sometimes, sometimes it rears its head, and electricity will buzz under Danny’s skin. There is lightning before the thunder, the second before a fist pulled to punch lands, the spark before it becomes a blaze.) 
He stumbles over his words, and then sighs long and low, drooping his head. “I… was thinking that I can’t avoid this place forever.” He says, and the best lies always have the truth in it. Because it’s not a lie, not completely. But it’s not close enough to the truth either. “And that maybe if I came back, I’d be able to do something about those bad memories. Make them better or make it hurt less.” 
Like wool over their eyes, it fools Sam and Tucker. Their narrowed eyes soften, and Danny feels like a snake is in his lungs as they both adopt their own versions of gentleness on their faces. “Oh, Danny.” Sam breathes out, and the snake squeezes, “Of course, we understand.”
Tucker nods, smiling at him. “Yeah, bro, that’s really brave of you. I know it can’t be easy coming back.” He says, “Maybe you can reconnect with the Waynes again, you always thought well of Mister Wayne whenever you came back from visiting.”
Danny smiles weakly, the gesture cutting into his cheeks like a knife. Perhaps he could. He was still upset with Bruce for hiding Jason’s killer from him. But he doesn’t hate him. Maybe five years ago, he did, when the death of Jason was still fresh in his mind and freshly bleeding in his heart. Now he just doesn’t know what to think of him. He was Batman. Jason was Robin, and the Joker killed Robin. 
It would need to be something he’d have to speak to Bruce about in person, he thinks, in order to resolve it. To hear his judgment on it and make an opinion from there. Danny has learned in the last five years, much to Jazz’s smug delight, that talking to people about something he was upset about did make him feel better. 
The conversation slips on from there into something more light, more breathable. And while they talk, Danny unpacks. He sets up his bed in the corner of the room, adjacent to the windows, and unpacks his cheap TV and table stand. It’s directly across from the couch, in front of the windows. He puts up knicks and knacks he’s collected over the years on the shelves.
When he puts up the curtains, he notices that more than one frame jiggles loosely. Sam makes a comment on the musty stains permanently dyed into the glass, and Danny talks about getting something to fix the cracks. Gotham winters can get brutal, and even if he can withstand the cold, doesn’t mean everything else in his apartment can. 
“Oh, watch this.” He says halfway through unpacking, and pulls out a stick of thick white chalk from a box. “This is something I learned from Clockwork a while back; I think he knew I was going to move to Gotham.” He grins sillily, popping into the camera frame to show them. “I wonder how?” 
Sam rolls her eyes, smiling while Tucker huffs. “It’s not like he’s the Master of Time and can see all past, present, and future.” Tucker snarks. 
Danny hums lightly, curt like he isn’t sure he believes Tucker, and walks to a piece of bare wall not yet blocked by furniture. He starts to draw on it. The chalk shimmers with faint ectoplasm on the wall. 
“Uhh…” Tucker’s voice cuts through, “Are you sure you should be doing that? Won’t you get in trouble for that?”
“There are bullet holes in the plaster, Tucker.” Danny retorts dryly, arching his hand to make a big circle. “I don’t think the landlord is gonna care if I get washable chalk on his walls.” Inside the circle, he inscribes the symbols of the Infinite Realms. “I don’t think he’d be able to see it anyways, he was really old.” 
When he is done, Danny steps back to admire his work. It’s not bad, he thinks, for a lack of practice. He tosses the chalk off to the side, it lands on the couch and rolls back into the cushions. Ectoplasm heats under his hand, slowly glowing from his fingertips before stretching down the rest of his palm. 
Danny’s fingers press against the wall, into the center of the circle. The result is immediate, ectoplasm is siphoned off his hand and into the circle. It glows, and then swirls. He steps off to the side for Sam and Tucker to watch its transformation. The circle fills with a swirling pool of ectoplasm, like a smaller version of the basement portal, and then it warps and stretches. 
It fills out a rectangular shape, shifting like taffy being pulled this way and that, before settling into a solid shape. It solidifies, and instead of a wall there is a glowing purple door, warped in nature and seemingly shifting like a trick of the eyes. He can hear the gentle hum of the zone standing next to it, and can see the carving of the circle in the wood. 
He gestures dramatically, grinning from ear to ear. “Ta-da~” He sings, “A door to my haunt! For whenever I feel like visiting it.” He pats the wood, making a strange thunk-thunk sound. “And then watch this.” 
Danny touches the circle again, and the door twists and recedes like water going down a drain. The circle flashes bright green, and then fades into nothing on the wall, invisible to the naked eye. “I can hide it whenever I want! So if I ever invite someone over—” which he doubts, “—I won’t have to worry about them asking, ‘Hey Danny? Why is there a creepy fucking door in your studio apartment?’”
He gets a pair of laughs for his efforts, and Danny grins wider. 
Sam and Tucker have to end the call when Danny is nearly done unpacking, leaving him alone with only his thoughts and the Gotham ambience outside. There were only a few boxes left, and they promise to call him tomorrow. He tells them that they better keep that promise. 
The silence that follows after they leave feels somberly, as if the reality of moving in has finally set in and filled the air with its loneliness. With its change. Finally, Danny lets the strangeness of moving back to Gotham hit him when he reaches the last box, and he stops to take another smoke break to let it settle. 
It feels so strange to be back in Gotham, he thinks. He’s all grown up, or almost grown up. He can vote and pay taxes, but he doesn’t feel much older than he was at fourteen. There’s a disconnect that makes him feel sad. 
There are cars running outside, driving by. He can only catch glimpses of them, his apartment faces an alleyway. There are dogs barking in the distance, strays he bets. It’s already dark out, and he wonders if he looks out the window he would see the bat-signal shining through the night and staining the permanent cloud that hangs over Gotham. 
Bruce would be so disappointed if he learned the reason for Danny’s return to Gotham. But Danny’s not here for him. He’s here for someone far more important. And like that, the simmering anger that has tucked itself into the furthest corners of his heart starts slipping through. His heart has teeth, ready to strike and snarl and bite. 
He crushes the cigarette in his hand and throws it away. When he opens the last box, it is with hands that tremble and with a face of stone. With a delicateness he does not feel, he reaches in and pulls a corkboard from the box. On the corner frame is a small, near inconspicuous carving of another ghost rune. 
Danny hangs it up on an empty space on the wall, out of sight from the window. It’s plain, and he has nothing to pin to it. He presses the small rune on the corner, pushing ectoplasm into it. Unlike the door, it does not twist and warp and shape itself into something new. Instead it bursts into green flame, eating away at the board and revealing the same thing underneath it, just in dark blue-black-purple. 
Now this board, this board Danny has something to pin to it. The newspaper he bought earlier sits abandoned on the counter, and Danny unrolls it with something like viciousness in his chest. On the front page is an image of a damaged street, and above it is titled: “JOKER STRIKES AGAIN, 3 DEAD AND 27 INJURED”
Danny rips out the first page, he rips out every mention of him. His hands shake and threaten to crumple the paper as he turns back to the board, there is hot blood pounding in his ears. There is an impending sense of finally in his chest, like a setting sun giving the stage to a starless night. There is a stern set in his jaw, five years of festering rage rushing forth like a tidal wave, threatening to make his vision swim. 
It would be so easy, he thinks, to go out as Phantom right now and hunt the clown down. It would only take a night. All it would take is a night, and then he could sink his hands into the Joker’s chest and rip out his heart where he stood. It would be so easy. 
The thought alone forces Danny to stop as he is hit with another rush of fury, really making his head and vision swim. Thorny vines wrap around his throat, making it hard to breathe. He stares at a spot on the wall until the shaking passes. 
If he wants to be discreet about this, then he can’t do it now. Even if he wants to. He doesn’t want witnesses. He doesn’t want an audience. He made a mistake, telling Red Hood about his plan. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all. But he can only hope that the Hood hasn’t mentioned it to Bruce. He knows it hasn’t been long since they started working together. He hopes that the Hood has already forgotten about it. 
He pins the newspaper clippings onto the black-blue-board, and stands back. It’s bare now, but it won’t be forever. 
He presses the circle again, and the pinboard reverts back to its original blank state. 
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Was I expecting to make a third part?? No. No I was not. I was also not expecting to make an entire google doc filled with summaries for short story ideas about this au that all tie into each other so that way if i DO continue this i have a skeleton pathway to follow rather than making everything up from scratch and potentially cornering myself
you can find this on ao3 or on tumblr 1 2 :)
#dp x dc#dpxdc#dp x dc crossover#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dpxdc crossover#childhood friends au#cw swearing#cw smoking#im calling them short stories bc if i call them chapters i might intimidate myself#fun fact every single chapter will have a crane wives lyric on it i am DETERMINED#i hope yall are subscribed to this on ao3 bc i almost didnt post this on tumblr#the fentons being good parents were a surprise to me too but also i never really planned on them being BAD parents#okay so they appear as negligent in the first post but we'll just call that a plothole#i had the idea that danny was the angrier one out of the duo earlier today and it felt like an epiphany#there's no guarantee of a next part but yk immm kinda hoping there is#on the docs the ending bullet point for this chapter was#'make it feel like a tv show where the seemingly inconspicuous and friendly character has something sinister up their sleeve'#WE know that danny's not inconspicuous in the least he's been thinking of this murder for the last five years. but nobody but red hood know#i had to come up with a in-story reason why danny doesnt kill the joker NOW but my out-of-story excuse is: there'd be no tension otherwise#its about the BUILD UP. Its about the RISING TENSION. Its about KNOWING that danny is planning to kill the Joker but you dont know WHEN#its about knowing that something is going to explode but never knowing when#i made the doc yesterday and spent my entire pluralism for educators class going thru the crane wives albums and looking up the lyrics and#matching them to the *checks doc* 18 short story prompts i have prepared#i am still missing one :((#its the tim and danny story and i have NOTHING PLANNED FOR THEM. i cant think of a thing for them to bond over :(( so i cant match a CW son#even DICK has a story and that was also a surprise#my favorite lines: He was always the one with glass in his mouth cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world#aND danny slapping his door like a used car salesman and going 'now people wont ask why i have a creepy fucking door in my studio aptm :)'
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piko-power · 21 days
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Every time I encounter a ship war with Sonic and Amy or Shadow, etc, I just smile to myself and believed that I'm the only smart shipper in the fandom because Sonic is bisexual and I'm the only person who knows that. 😎
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yeetlegay · 2 years
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What gets me lately is how Vegas is always trying to outdo Kinn both professionally (mafia-ly) and personally, and yet Kinn is the one who has a kiss embargo out of a fear of it being a gateway to real intimacy and vulnerability. Of the two, Kinn is actually the one who’s fallen in love before and knows what barriers to put up to keep it from happening again. He knows how to keep people out, when he wants to.
But Vegas doesn’t have that experience to jade him about what intimacy is emotionally dangerous for him. He throws himself right into kissing Pete, fucking him, lying in bed with him, completely oblivious to how thin a line he’s treading. He’s fucked up and traumatized and repressed, but where Kinn’s walls are carefully, meticulously built and designed to leave no weakness, Vegas built his walls for show, to intimidate people so much they’d never bother trying to knock them down. It’s no wonder he crumbled the second Pete made the barest effort to find the way in.
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accirax · 2 months
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New Evidence Regarding DRDT's Chapter 2 Killer?
Hello again, everybody! As I continue on my journey of rewatching DRDT via stream, I continue to pick up on more and different things than I noticed the first time. The subject of this theory post is the letter, signed by Eden (even if it wasn't necessarily written by her), that she, Rose, and Whit put together before the second Class Trial began-- I want to take another look at it.
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(CW for Despair Time spoilers through 2-10 and mentions of suicide as described in Arturo's secret)
This note is a highly important piece of evidence, and I would expect that anyone invested in trying to solve the case is pretty familiar with its contents. However, I want to highlight exactly what the killer had to know in order to put this note together.
There is someone in the cast who has a motive secret that someone was "responsible for the death of [his/her] sister."
Eden was the recipient of this person's secret.
Eden didn't mean to tell this person, but it slipped out.
This person threatened to do something to Eden.
Arei promised to be Eden's friend.
Like I said, shouldn't be too much of a shock to any of you. However, what I really want to draw attention to is the first bullet point: someone is responsible for the death of his or her sister.
Why am I drawing attention to it? Because the last time Eden or Arturo says anything even close to a family member dying is here... (11:31)
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...before Arei arrives. (12:44)
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(The last time anyone actually says "sister" is Eden at 11:13.)
But, why is the time of Arei's arrival such an important distinction?
The thing is, most killer theories I've seen for anyone other than Eden or Arturo account for the killer being able to write this note by listening in to the conversation through the door. What I'm trying to say is that there's a contradiction there that I, at least, didn't notice until just now:
If the killer, listening in through the door had to know that the secret Eden received was about Arturo being responsible for the death of his sister, they had to be listening in before Arei arrived, because that is the only time in which Arturo's secret is discussed in enough detail to mention a family member dying. However, when Arei arrived, she had to walk right past and through the door.
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This is what the door to the outside of the Infirmary looks like. There is no way in hell that Arei wouldn't have been able to see anyone who was walking by or listening in while she was doing the exact same.
So, what would this mean? Well, it would mean that only Arturo, Eden, and possibly Arei (depending on when she got into earshot of the door) knew enough about Arturo's motive secret before the murder to include all of those details in the note.
Or, at least, that's the boldest version of the claim. However, there are some counterarguments.
The first is that other people could have known if Arturo, Eden, or possibly Arei told somebody else about what happened and mentioned the detail about Arturo's secret. However, I don't believe that any of the three of them would have done that.
Arturo very clearly did not want his secret to get out, and seemingly didn't even want to believe that the death was his fault in the first place. Threatening Eden and making an enemy of Arei also make him look really bad. Both factors combined make it very unlikely that Arturo would want to tell anyone that this happened.
Eden also didn't want to tell anyone about what happened because she was afraid of Arturo finding out, as is clear in the Class Trial. Additionally, if she did want to tell someone so that they could help protect her from Arturo, it probably would have just been Arei. Thus, the information wouldn't have spread any farther than just Arei again.
Arei is definitely the iffiest option, but I still find it hard to believe that she would have told anyone about this occurrence. Firstly, it's already debatable whether Arei heard the specifics of Arturo's secret in the first place. Secondly, Arei probably would have had respect for her new friend and not wanted to share this traumatic event and put Eden in danger. I guess it's possible that Arei could have tried to tell someone about what happened to try to rally a larger movement against Arturo, and then that single person turned around and decided to kill Arei (thus leaving no innocent person who would want to bring up that Arei talked to them in the Class Trial). But, that's... a bit of a stretch. Plus, even if Arei did that, why include the specific details of what Arturo's secret was about?
The second option is that the killer could have planted some kind of bug or other listening device into the Infirmary so that they could overhear the conversation from afar. However, given that we have been given literally no advanced warning that a device like this can even be obtained within the set, much less that anyone actually used one in that location, I'm tossing this objection out, too.
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And no, I don't think J's remote could have accomplished something like that, either. Not without an actual listening device already in the room.
The final possibility that I've thought of is that someone could have overheard the conversation from somewhere other than the doorway, which holds a lot more weight. Let's take a look at what's around the Infirmary.
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Based on the map, I think the only places that are possibly close enough to the door of the Infirmary are the doors of the Cafeteria or Bathroom (Wash Closet; WC). Recall that, given the private nature of the conversation and that Arei is shown pushing the doors open in the CG, the doors were probably closed. Thus, anyone listening in would have needed to hear the conversation from behind at least one set of closed doors.
Let's start by quickly ruling out the Bathroom. I'm operating on the assumption that, if you can hear something going on in the Infirmary from where you are, people in the Infirmary could hear what's going on in that location, too. If people could hear what's going on in the Bathroom all the way from the Infirmary... Well, that's some pretty shitty architectural design, pun intended.
The Cafeteria is a viable location, though. In fact, we've already confirmed that you can overhear a conversation going on in the Cafeteria from the Infirmary.
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So, using the same logic I described earlier, if Teruko could hear something in the Cafeteria from the Infirmary, it stands to reason that you could hear something in the Infirmary from the Cafeteria.
However, this argument still has its issues as well. The thing that Teruko (and Xander) overhear in this scene is, funnily enough, Arei arguing with Eden over not being invited to bake with her. It is described in multiple lines as a very loud event.
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While I don't deny that a panicked Eden, a shaken Arturo, and an infuriated Arei could have been quite loud, all of those things, once again, happened after the last time that Eden or Arturo said anything about a dead family member. It's impossible to tell for sure given that the prior part of the conversation isn't fully voice acted, but it's implied that everything Eden says about Arturo's secret is in a regular, or possibly even hushed, tone of voice. If someone only started listening in after things got loud, they would not have heard about Arturo's secret in detail.
Additionally, there are the logistics of who would be sitting in the Cafeteria. Given that nobody else has stepped forward and shared that they overheard this conversation as well (even under potential penalty of death), it seems reasonable to assume that no innocent student overheard what happened in the Infirmary. Therefore, conversely, if any student(s) did overhear the conversation, they were probably involved in the murder somehow. I'm sure you could argue some fringe cases, but this is the general rule.
Unfortunately for this argument, though, the majority of scenes in the Cafeteria have many people present in them, whether due to partaking in a meal or a fight. Overall, that makes it unlikely that someone would be in the Cafeteria by themselves or with only one or two other people. That's not always the case, though, so we can't rule out only a few people being in the Cafeteria!
Can we try to further pin down the time period when this confrontation occurs to try to figure out who could or could not have been in the Cafeteria?
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Eden tells us that this confrontation happened on "the day Nico tried to kill Ace" and "the day that Arei and [Eden] had a falling out," which, by my notes, is Day 6. Arturo never challenges this notion, and it also lines up with Eden being afraid that someone is following her on the night of Day 6, so I think that this is true. The canonical events that Teruko takes part in during Day 6 are:
Teruko plays with cacti and gets caught by Eden
J and Arturo, Nico and Ace, and Arei and MonoTV fight
Charles' secret is revealed
Eden tries to host a clock decorating event
Arei has her breakdown and David comforts her
Teruko confronts Rose about her secret
Nico threatens to kill Ace
Nico's secret is revealed and Hu and David comfort them
J drags Teruko into a closet to get away from Arturo
Teruko runs into Eden in the Dress Up Room
Ace is nearly murdered and tries to confront Nico afterward
The events highlighted in green are the only ones of the day that none of Arturo, Eden, or Arei are in. Given that all of them were present for the confrontation, it could not have happened simulataneously with any of the other events.
If the confrontation occurred while Teruko discussed Rose's secret with her (and Nico was there), the killer could really be anyone other than Teruko, Rose, or Nico. Anyone who we didn't have eyes on theoretically could have been in the Cafeteria at that time.
If the confrontation took place while Nico was threatening to kill Ace, however, I doubt that anyone would have been able to listen in on the Infirmary conversation over that cacophony. Therefore, for the sake of someone listening in, that option should also be eliminated. If it took place while Hu and David were comforting Nico, things would look bad for Levi and Rose, as they were both still in the Cafeteria after Teruko left. I know what I said about multiple students in the Cafeteria probably all needing to be collaborators in the murder, but if it was Levi and an asleep Rose, perhaps Levi could have gotten away with eavesdropping by himself?
Despite all of that, though, I think that Arturo's relatively calm and normal (for him) demeanor during the closet scene would speak to the notion that he hadn't just heard that Eden knew about his sister's suicide. Therefore, I believe that the confrontation likely occurred between Teruko's two trips to the Dress Up Room, when she "spent the rest of the day in her room resting." That would line up both with Arturo's claim that he was just "in the middle of something with Julia" (Teruko saw them together just beforehand), give Arei more time to cool down and reflect after her big afternoon, and put the time of the confrontation very close to when Eden is worried about someone following her. (Although, it does give Arturo less time to have "been following" her, assuming that comment was about him.)
That would also give pretty much anyone the chance to have been in the Cafeteria, because Teruko wasn't with anyone at that time. However, it may have been during a pretty dinner-y time, which decreases the odds that anyone would have been in the Cafeteria alone or nearly-alone.
If all that wasn't enough, here's one final wrinkle: whoever witnessed all of this happening would have overheard Arturo threatening Eden and decided not to get involved themselves. It's not a total nail in the coffin, given that I would assume most theories in which the killer overheard the conversation require them to have not attempted to help Eden for one reason or another. But, it is something to consider. Personally, I have a particularly hard time believing that J, #1 Arturo Hater, and Levi, adventurer on the quest of being a good person in the same vein as Eden, wouldn't have tried to stop what was going on if they'd heard.
So, in summary, if the person who wrote the note is not Arturo, Eden, Arei, or someone working very closely with them, they have to be someone who was in the Cafeteria probably alone at the time of the confrontation (assuming Eden's words were even loud enough to be overheard from across the hallway through probably closed metal doors), who decided not to step in to save Eden.
What does that mean? Well, I think that it means that it's very likely that Arturo or Eden is the killer, because having all of those dubiously possible clauses happen to fire off all at once seems implausible to me. But, I already thought that Eden was the killer, so it may just be confirmation bias. Otherwise, since we can't pin down the exact time of the confrontation, I don't think it actually helps us to fully eliminate anyone from the running-- other than, arguably, Teruko. I do urge everyone who thinks that someone other than Eden or Arturo is the culprit to consider this data when coming up with their theories, though.
However, I will end this on the note that all of this deductive reasoning is... incredibly nitpicky. At the end of the day, the crew behind DRDT is very small, and I would understand if the exact details of where and when what parts of Arturo's secret were said or what exactly the Infirmary door looked like were things that they didn't take into account when planning out the murder.
I've seen some critics say about recent YouTube indie animation shows that the long hiatuses between episodes give the shows an unfair disadvantage. That's because the long gaps allow fans to scrutinize every detail of the worldbuilding and characterization and find their holes for far longer than a network television show would between episodes. While DRDT is not exactly one of these indie animation pilots, it is a YouTube show created by a small team of independent creators. I can only imagine that they may be facing the same thing with having to take a break mid-trial. If that's the case, and what I've presented here contradicts what actually happened in Chapter 2, know that I don’t hold it against DRDTdev at all, and don’t think you should, either. I would apologize for pointing out this “mistake,” if you can even call something this minor that.
However, I also think that all of this might be possible, perhaps even on a coincidental/subconscious level, because Eden or Arturo is the killer, and DRDTdev didn't think too much about the logistics of how someone else would overhear the conversation. So for now, I'm considering all of this logic as reasonable theorywork.
If you have any rebuttals though, whether about a specific character or the premise in general, I'd love to hear them! Or, if I missed some detail in the story in general that blows this theory to smithereens entirely, I wouldn't love to hear that, but it would probably be good if I did.
Otherwise, thank you for reading, and have a lovely rest of your day! :D
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what-on-earth-is-love · 6 months
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vanoé is the perfect guy yuri ship because vanitas employs the yaoi mentality of "if we touch each other or show too much vulnerability or even look at each other for too long the world is gonna explode or something" while noé employs the yuri mentality of "you're my best friend, my beacon of light in the dark, i'd go to hell and back for you and i'm sure it doesn't say anything out of the ordinary about my feelings for you haha. all perfectly normal here"
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cleo-serotonin · 6 months
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you’re in the wind, im in the water
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blackhholes · 5 months
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Teen Wolf as Horror Subgenres
Season five B: Gothic Horror
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“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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ch3shire-rabbit · 7 months
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Couldn’t be bothered to finish the background but anyways I think Pepito’s horse is comically bigger than Panchito’s <3
(Settled on calling the white Panchito/Shirochito Pepito Paracho 🎉 his thing is his paracho guitar like how Panchito’s thing is his guns)
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Do NOT repost, edit, trace, or use my art in any way. Thanks.
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alodiaz · 6 days
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lando is strollonso’s love child
why?
because lance + nando
what does that make
lando
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tangledinink · 8 months
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I just started reading "I'm Sorry, Teenage Mutant What Now?" on AO3 and I am obsessed. You are such a talented writer and artist! I'm just now getting started on chapter five and I am so hype, you have no idea. If I may, what's your favorite thing about working on these AUs?
Ahhhhh thank you!!!! ; w ; I'm really glad you like it!!! And I am but a simple man; my favorite thing is people's reactions. It's so much fun when I have a really fun idea for a scene in my head or I figure out how I want a comic to go, and I go, "oh my god, I can't wait to make this and show it to people and see what they think." And then I get to!!!! See what people think!!!!!! Comments on ao3, rambling in the tags, and asks and replies make me so happy! ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU GUYS END UP BEING EXCITED ABOUT THE THINGS I WAS EXCITED ABT,,, AND WE GET TO BE EXCITED TOGETHER,,,!!!! I love!!! Getting to share my ideas with y'all!!! ; w ;
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indiiglow · 4 months
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House doesn't wear the white coat because autism
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