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two of you asked @fishcop and @octolingo-writes (hiiii guys ilysm) and i’m on a lot of robitussin rn so here goes:
art analysis (cold medication hallucinogen jrwi fated relationship chart edition)
- go read the individual types of relationships. all of them are insane. some of them are only used once. some of them (lake blue, 90% grey, rose, lemon, carmine) were meant to be used only once, and then their very existence forced me to examine all the various ways that emotion or relation could be considered applicable or canonical. some of them don’t make any sense. some of them are very straightforward. go read them and make one of your own.
-go make one of your own. all of these charts will be different depending on the creator and how specific they get and what individual interpretations they bring to the characters stories. go make one. do it. get crazy. be normal. do it. tag me if you want, i wanna see it. this fandom is so small i’ll see it regardless of what you do probably. make one.
-the mothers and wives are at the top, with the gods, because i am examining relationships, not plot; and in stories and lives everywhere very few things are more important than mothers and wives- especially when their relationships are restricted by the way their husbands and sons deify and restrict them. what is a woman if not a force of reckoning. what is a god if not a human’s hungry demands. what is a daughter if not a promise to be both. maybe that’s why there aren’t any daughters with mothers in the fated. maybe jared was scared of what they’d be.
-the gods relationships are absent unless they truly serve as humans when they interact. the storyteller is a plot point, a narrative device. ungaroh is an antagonist, an ending scene, a concept. for the purpose of this, they mean nothing. they are plot. i do not care about plot here. i care about plot in very few places. the interesting shit is the people- and they are easy (impossible) to understand, too. i included the gods on the paper for the purpose of excluding them in what matters.
-the narrative haunters and the salvation paths get represented differently (crosshatching and dotted or trailing paths) but the colors are similar because the ideals are similar. the same is true with the devotion of love (mahogany, the top line in the codex) and the feeling of bitterness (raspberry red- a little brighter, a little pinker, but hard to distinguish, especially in pictures).
-i stole the idea for crosshatching the doomed ones and the haunters (slate grey) from kurt vonnegut. “the destruction of dresden was represented by a vertical band of crosshatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.” (go read slaughterhouse five.) so if you want to really get inside my brain on this one, you should try and look at how names and space are encircled or overwhelmed by the grey. usually it’s for people who died, because jared had a real knack for killing- literally or just conversationally cutting down- societally “othered” characters. sometimes it’s just used over a name to say “what would they have been if they hadn’t been treated like mothers and wives? like monsters? like statues? what would they have been if they’d been complex?” other times, it’s a barrier. other times, it’s just true: doomed from the start and barricaded in all relationships behind that doom- but still reaching through it in that strange, pale, ghostly way.
-similarly, a lot of the negative emotions get angular edges. a lot of the positive ones get curvy ones. there are several modifiers to this formula. one: straight lines should not indicate a straightforward or close relationship, but physical distance sometimes does. the exception to this is for the pc’s at center: we see all their relationships to each other up close and personal. straight lines mean simplicity and comprehension for them. often, that makes the relationships simpler. take mountain and hilda, who we never see interact: he deifies her, her mourns her, she is or at least was his reason to live, and in many ways that pedestal she’s kept on is simultaneously why she is a form of salvation and why she’ll never get to be a real, multifaceted character. the lines will never quite reach. but, like. mountain and sylnan? we see them go drinking, we see them argue, we see them in combat. they’re friends in the worst and most unlikely of places. it’s violent. it’s a little unhealthy. it’s honest. it’s devoted. sometimes it’s a little bit closeted. within that, all those visible complications, it’s simple: they are friends in the worst and most unlikely of places. that visibility of their relationship covers so much because speculation is close to impossible- we know so much.
modifier two: the misogyny lines are curvy- not because they’re gentle, but because they’re all-encompassing, encircling. taking it back to color for a second: the “dioxazine” (or however its spelled im on my phone i dont wanna scroll back up to the pic) purple reads as blackish here but its purple irl, especially in light, and i chose it for a) velrisa and oriana b) because it’s pretty and c) because as a color it overshadows so much else on the page. the lemon yellow i use for a relationship of destruction i chose because it hurts to look at. purple is just the opposite- it’s woven into everything. it’s easy on the eyes. it’s as natural in the picture as it was in the podcast. that should scare you. it dissolves in some places. it’s bold and bright in others. if i made this picture again i’d probably add more- the love and labor of women is wasted and missed and dismissed time and time again.
-the curly lines (see above, misogyny) are used for encompassing concepts- themes and feelings that entertwine and encircle. the fated love each other, as awkward and clumsyfooted as they are about it. i drew the vine-like circle around them (mahogany red, devoted love) as my second thing on this page, and for a while as i made it you could see the start of each path leading out from each character.
-that’s most of it. everything else is just kind of there if you look and i think the interpretation there is sorta fun so rehashing it here wastes time for most of us. sylnan and br’aad are brendan’s reasons to live, and whether you interpret the crosshatch for destruction as him towards them or them towards him it’s true. velrisa’s destruction and salvation are both in her being disowned, and she and ander are each other’s reason to keep going, so their entire relationship is framed in salvation (90% grey) because it’s a mutual thing. ugarth is encircled in 921 orange because in another world he’d have lived. oriana’s doomed narrative crosshatching is covered by these dioxazine spirals i made, because the misogyny is what really doomed her. there’s an old man yaoi (process red) line between ander and mountain, because it’s my relationship chart n i say so. there’s a question mark about whether or not velrisa’s family would have worked out with her in another life for the same reason that she has a relationship of deification, destruction, and salvation with them despite not one of them having names- there are so many unknowns we can’t even hope that in another world she would have stayed a happy little fisherman’s daughter. there’s a sexually charged hatred line between jacquot and sylnan/mountain for all that fag shit during the kidnapping in episode like 11.5. so it goes.
this is the most important thing:
song of solomon 6:3 -neon orange- was the first relationship line i drew. i traced over it again and again, and scrubbed away all the places where other lines overlapped it.
that is all.
i’d love to blame this on cold medicine and isolation later, but i did this with such earnestness i refuse to let myself feel ashamed of this when time passes and i look back. art is cringy. loving things is cringy. storytelling and interpretation is cringy. the energy of live performance is cringy. all of the above are also sustaining and crucial to the development of a soul. it sustains the human race to be cringy.
i wrote this whole thing in-app on my phone. it took an hour and ten minutes nonstop. i refuse to edit it or read it back. im done now.
btw if ur still here- song of solomon 6:3 is “i am my beloveds and my beloved is mine.”
hey is this anything
(fated relationship chart)
Dick Grayson was very familiar with the homeless population, in both of his uniforms. Gotham wasn't a nice place, and neither was Bludhaven, so he was a lot less surprised than he should've been to find a teenager bleeding in an alley.
Cold blue eyes locked onto his, a noise like a rumbling growl emanated from the teenager. Dick held up his hands, "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'll just stay right here," A beat of silence while the kid narrowed his eyes, gauging how me he wanted to trust a stranger. He shifted backwards, but made no other move. Dick relaxed back onto his heels, dropping his grocery bag in a slow, deliberate movement. "That's a lot of blood you got there,"
"Wow, Sherlock, you've done it again," The kid grumbled, once again meeting his eyes as he pressed down on top of his hoodie, blood seeping past the pressure he put on it.
Dick grinned reassuringly. "Why thank you Watson. I've got some bandages and pain killers. Just bought 'em, you can check the seal,"
"Can't pay," Mystery Potentional Bruce Adoptee muttered, before hissing as a further tide of blood seeped past his hand.
"Not gonna make you pay, kid. I should really be taking you to a hospital right now," The baring of slightly sharp teeth told Dick all he needed to know about the kid's opinion on such a thing, "But I can tell you'd bite me first. My place isn't that far, and I'm pretty good at stitches,"
"Why?" The kid asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion once more. His movement's were more sluggish, and Dick tried not to show the anxiety that inspired.
"Why my place or why stitches? Well, to answer both, I've got a bunch of little brothers. I love them more than life itself, but the amount of trouble they get into? Tim skated headfirst into a wall, three stitches. Jason dropped half a bookcase on his head when trying to grab Jane Austen off the top shelf. And Damian's a bit too trusting with animals, he gets a rabies shot as often as his pets," Dick teased with a grin, slowly moving closer as he talked. The kid let him.
"Only little brothers?" He asked, flinching slightly as Dick came into contact with him before deliberately angling himself towards Dick.
"No, my little sister Cass just knows better than to get into trouble. Sole holder of the brain cell,"
The kid snorted, before grunting in pain as Dick helped lever him up, looping the arm not holding in his blood around his shoulder. "'M Danny,"
"Dick," he replied as he quickly reached down to scoop up his back of first aid kit restockments.
"Rude,"
"No, that's my name,"
"I'm very sorry,"
Duck barked a laugh as he started helping the kid hobble back towards his apartment. "Aren't we all?"
Prompt fill from the Discord server. This one is courtesy of @tourettesdog
Prompt where Danny keeps showing up like a stray cat at various hero's houses. He just comes and goes and they never know when he'll show up next. He's just this like pseudo-adopted child who will come over for dinner, crash on the couch, and he's gone by morning. No amount of research will tell them who he is past the limited information he's given them
The various heroes are unaware that his stray cat range wanders so far until someone mentions him at a JL meeting and all hell breaks loose.
There's eventually an intervention
Stray Cat Danny
Clark had just got home when he noticed the heartbeat on the fire escape two floors above him. As far as he knew, that apartment was empty, so it couldn't be the residents going out for a smoke. It was weird, very strange, and not his business.
He tried to leave it alone, but the heartbeat stayed on the fire escape for a few hours. Every now and again Clark would hear whoever it was shift, but other than that they stayed quiet. Again, weird, but not his business.
Until it started to snow right when Clark was about to start dinner.
He was just going to make sure whoever it was had somewhere warm to stay. Maybe direct them to a shelter. Clark opened the window and looked up, there was a dark bundle, worryingly still, on the fire escape.
"Excuse me?" Clark called. The bundle shifted but whoever it is didn't respond. Clark grumbled and made his way up to them, squatting down a few feet away.
"Are you alright?"
The bundle shifted, revealing one blue eye and a tuft of back hair.
"''m fine" a young male voice answered. The blue eye closed.
"You know it's going to snow tonight. I'm sure you'd be more comfortable in a shelter than on a fire escape."
"They're full." The boy answered. "All both of them."
Only two shelters for all of Metropolis? That can't be right. Clark looked up to the sky, the snow was starting to come down and he could swear it had gotten colder since he'd been out here. He couldn't leave the kid out here to freeze.
"How about you stay the night at my place? My couch is pretty comfortable, and I'm making beef stew for dinner, Ma's recipe." He let a bit of his Kansas accent show through. Hoping the country accent would put the boy more at ease. He was watching him now with both eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Did your Ma ever teach you about stranger danger?" The kid asked.
"Not exactly. She taught me to help people out if they need it. Did your Ma teach you stranger danger?"
"No," the boy said, "my mom taught me to put a full-grown man on the ground if I needed to."
That surprised Clark into laughing. "Well, you won't need to with me. What do you say you come inside?"
The boy watched him for another second before shivering violently and glaring at the sky.
"Yeah, alright. Just one night."
"I'm Clark, by the way," Clark said as he closed the window behind the kid.
"Danny." The kid said. He was rooted to the spot just a few steps into the apartment, eyes scanning the room.
"It's nice to meet you, Danny." Clark held out his hand to shake, but Danny didn't take it. After an awkward second Clark cleared his throat. "Uh. The stew is going to be a little while. You're welcome to the laundry and shower if you need it." Danny was pretty clean, but there was visible dirt on his face and clothes. "I might have some clothes my nephew forgot that you're welcome to." Dick was bigger than Danny for sure, but he was closer to Danny's size than Clark was.
Danny gave him a long look, before shrugging off his backpack. "Sure. Might as well."
Clark left to go get the clothes while Danny loaded some of his clothes and blankets in the washer. Once he presented the tee shirt and sweatpants Danny disappeared into the bathroom. When he reappeared he was scrubbed clean, his cheeks rosy either from the hot water or scrubbing.
Danny was even smaller than Clark was expecting. He was downright scrawny. Dick's shirt hung off Danny's shoulders, and Clark could clearly see his collarbones. This kid was not getting nearly enough to eat. Well, he was going to tonight if Clark had anything to say about it.
"The stew should be ready in about half an hour. Feel free to make yourself at home." Clark said. He expected Danny to sit on the couch and watch TV, but instead, Danny found his home office. it wasn't more than a desk with his work laptop on it and some of Clark's better pieces and awards framed and tacked to the wall above it.
"You're Clark Kent, the reporter?" Danny asked, eyes switching between the wall and Clark.
"That's me," Clark said. "You know my work?"
"I read your piece on metahuman and alien rights last year. It was good."
"Thanks. I really liked working on that piece."
"Did you always want to be a writer?"
"uh. No. When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut." Clark said, stirring the stew. Danny snorted. "What's funny?"
"Nothing," Danny said, taking a seat at the little kitchen table. "I wanted to be an astronaut, too."
"Yeah? You still could." Clark said.
"Nah. It's hard to be an astronaut without a high school diploma. What made you change to writing?"
"I went through a few different career paths before I landed on journalism."
"Do you like it?"
"I do. I like uncovering the truths people try to hide." Clark said. "You'd make a decent journalist, I'd think. Half of it is just asking the right questions."
Clark served up the stew into two bowls and brought them over to the table with some rolls and butter. "I don't have much in the way of drinks, is water okay?"
"Water would be great, thanks."
They ate in relative silence, Danny was too focused on his food to ask more questions. After they ate Danny nodded off on the couch almost as soon as he sat down. Clark couldn't bring himself to wake him up, so he just covered him with a blanket from the linen closet and headed to his own room.
Maybe in the morning he could make Danny pancakes or waffles and get him some new gloves and a jacket. The question was what to do after that? He didn't want to drop Danny off at a shelter, and taking him to the police would only destroy whatever trust he had gained with the boy. At the same time, he only had a one-bedroom apartment. He couldn't keep Danny here. Clark sighed. He'd have to talk to Danny in the morning and see what he wanted to do.
When Clark woke up he was greeted by the silence of the apartment and it took him a few minutes to figure out why that was wrong. There should be another heartbeat. Fearing the worst, Clark rushed into the living room to find it empty.
The blanket and clothes Danny had used had been neatly folded and placed on the back of the couch, along with a handwritten thank you note.
How did Danny leave without him hearing? Moreover, how'd he leave with the doors and windows still locked?
KEEP IT GOING WE'RE BREAKING TUMBLR AGAIN
how’s everyone doin tonight i just broke tumblr