#he's so good damn#obvs he doesn't have the same athleticism as the students#but he's so much more in control of his body#he moves much more self assuredly#and doesn't exaggerate the way the more inexperienced ones do#he knows exactly what to do and how to do it naturally#wow
Oh so that's what books mean when they talk about seeing a swordperson or a martial artist move and immediately knowing you're fucked. If I saw someone handle a weapon or switch martial art stances that smoothly and with that economy of motion, I would immediately know I was going to die.
i found a recording of the full performance on youtube!!!!!! the āØauraāØ is INSANE!!!
(fun fact: i used to do chinese folk dances back in the day and my when my dance class traveled to outer mongolia one summer for an intensive dance workshop we had the opportunity to learn from some big name mongolian dance professionals - and we used snippets of this exact song during our workshop! really nostalgic for me :D)
Newly crowned Crime Lord Red Hood stops in an alley. Thereās a black cat there, lots of fur where he looks bigger than a normal cat. Itās eating a burger on the ground. It reminds Jason a little bit of himself. All alone, fending for itself.
Jason takes it back to his primary safe house with him. And itās a cat, so he takes off the helmet and the domino around the fluffy animal. He chuckles to himself when he named the cat Batman.
And for two weeks, he had no idea that the cat was, in fact, Batman.
āYou taste like how wet dogs smell,ā Chiara complained, retching into the pink bucket they usually reserved for cleaning. She was sitting her coffin, head close to disappearing within the bucket so as to avoid any unwanted spillage. The satin lining her coffin was a bitch to clean after all.
āOK. First, rude. Second, that makes no fucking sense,ā Devin said, standing in the doorway of the dark room, his large bulk blocking out most of the light from the hallway, the smell emanating from the bucket keeping him well away.
āYou gave me food poisoning!ā She hissed at him, fangs extended, eyes blood red.
āYou tried to eat me!ā Devin squawked back, hands raised in exasperation.
āI only wanted a snack,ā Chiara moaned in between retches.
āThatās what the blood bags are for.ā
āBut they never taste as nice,ā she spat out the last of her bile into the bucket. Amazing how much vomit such a small person can expel. āItās not like I would have killed you,ā and then under her breath, āMaybe.ā
āHeard that.ā
āStupid werewolf hearing,ā she muttered to herself and, subsequently, to the werewolf.
āNo,ā Devin said, āYouāre just a terrible whisperer.ā
Chiara hissed again, fangs gleaming under what little of the hallway light managed to sneak past Devinās mass.
Devin was unimpressed. Itās hard to be intimidated by a vampire cowering her coffin because sheās got a bit of a tummy ache.
āI canāt believe you never told me,ā Chiara said, making sure to infuse as much betrayal in her voice as she could.
āHonestly, I thought you knew. I mean, what the fuck do you think I was doing every full moon?ā
āI donāt know. I just thought you were PMSing or something.ā
āPMSing?ā Devin asked, more bewildered than exasperated now.
āSome peopleās cycles can get very violent,ā Chiara said defensively.
āI donāt think going into the woods to slaughter innocent rabbits to satiate oneās bloodlust is a very common symptom of PMS.ā
āGoes to show how much you know,ā Chiara huffed and finally done retching, placed the pink bucket on her coffin-side table.
She bundled herself up under layers and layers of deep red blankets, not dissimilar in colour to the blood red satin of her black, ornate coffin which paired nicely with the red and black floral wallpaper. Chiara had a theme and she stuck with it admirably.
āThough that would explain all the raw steaks you consume,ā Chiara said, after a momentās reflection, āAnd your hatred of the postman.ā
āMaybe if Rony were better at his job, I wouldnāt need to hate him.ā
Chiara sat up suddenly, dozens of blankets pooling into her lap.
āWait. Are you the one whoās been digging holes in the garden?ā
Devin thought about defending himself, thought about outright lying, but heād never been very good at that, āI needed somewhere to bury all my bones,ā he finally admitted.
āYou arsehole! You blamed it on the neighbourās pomeranian.ā
āSprinkles is hardly innocent; she is an equal participant in the excavation work.ā
Chiara was about to retort before she leaned over the coffin, only just managing to get her head over the bucket in time for more fluid to spew out of her mouth.
She groaned as dramatically as she could in her state, and threw her covers over herself, burrowing into the fabric until there was nothing but her deep red eyes and a thin sliver of her pale faceāpaler than usualāpeaking out.
Devin did feel a bit bad about the whole thing, mostly because Chiara was looking especially pathetic and especially small in her oversized coffin (she needed the XL coffin because, apparently, she liked to stretch out during her slumber; Devin thought she just liked to be ostentatious).
āWhy donāt I go and find you a nice human you can eat? Would that make you feel better?ā Devin asked.
āIt might,ā she said, her voice muffled. She peered out from underneath the blanket. āCould you get me a type O+?ā
āOkay. Type O+.ā
āAnd a virgin?ā She asked, pushing her luck.
āAlright, a virgin,ā he sighed, rolling his eyes.
He turned away and made to close to the door only to stop when her small voice emanated once again from the pile of blankets.
āCould you clean the bucket before you go?ā
āOf course,ā Devin stepped into the room, breathing through his mouth.
a concept : aziraphale has an absolutely euphoric pavlovian reaction every time he sees a snake or anything snake-related because the first time he met one it ended up yielding such unbridled long-term happiness for him
#he reacts to snakes like we do with puppies and itās extremely disturbing to humans #like he sees a huge cobra in the desert and goes oh you BEAUTY i LOVE you c'mere c'mere do you like wine you darling dearest #has no clue heās unconsciously channeling his love for crowley towards all snakes #i bet all snake-related miracles are from him because heās such a fan. he thinks eveyrthing gets better if you add snakes #like moses transforming his staff into a snake? aziraphale #crowley was like ādonāt you think you should have picked a more positive animalā #and aziraphale was like āwhat are you TALKING ABOUT snakes are the BEST ANIMALS SHE PUT ON THE PLANETā
so i see you too hide most of what you say in the tags uh
Something about the whole "Eming is born of Hua Cheng's desire to live and Rouye is born of Xie Lian's desire to die," and then how Xie Lian wears funeral colours and Hua Cheng wears wedding colours. God oriented towards death and stillness and self-denial. Ghost oriented towards life and hope and happiness.
Oh oh oh. The way that makes my brain sparkle! Like, they are complimentary opposites. They each contain a tiny piece of the other. Like Yin and Yang (and thereās something there about how ghosts useā¦.Yang energy? To stay alive? But Gods use the other? I forget which is which.) They are each complete alone, but together they form a greater and more powerful whole.
Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.
He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked ā#1 worker-friendly corporationā, and productively and profits soar again.
Ok, so clearly investing his workers isnāt the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.
But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WEās new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.
Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.
Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.
So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because theyāve been claiming all these measures heās implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and theyāre finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyoneās eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. Thatāll go well, right?
Gothamās infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.
Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city isā¦.Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gothamās infrastructure somehow increases WEās profits.
Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (itās not his fault the best administrative system software is WEāhe looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.
Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.
Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.
Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. Itās so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce canāt even donate to his own charity.
But by this time, Bruce has children. If he canāt get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?
Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, wonāt touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and wonāt legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richardās footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruceās wealth. And she wonāt even accept a trust fund of only one million.
Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then heās at least not have the money.
So childrenāgenerous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, childrenāare also out.
Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the worldās superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroesābut the public canāt know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.
At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.
The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.
Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.
All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.
Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.
This is great. But consider that at this point Bruce Wayne invites Every Single Gotham Rogue that can be reasoned woth and goes "What would it take for you to stop doing crime?"
josephine: inquisitor i know you think itās helpful but you have to stop saying āsee thatās funny because those were literally your last words in the other timelineā
inquisitor: i donāt think itās helpful
josephine: could you try to be? because our forces are falling apart as we speak.
inquisitor: oh wow. okay i know this is a boy who cried wolf situation here but those were literally the lastā
inquisitor: hey mother giselle just brought me a letter and i want to say upfront i know i stood by you through the last time you reunited with your father but if we have to do it again iām going to kill him
dorian: understandable but iām going to have to ask you to not
inquisitor: can i at least tell him that in the other timeline we were gay married for three decades or something
cullen: we met this tevinter necromancer two days ago and now heās in all our war table meetings?
inquisitor: cullen iām going to be real with you i was much more understanding the first time we had this conversation but if i am separated from the only person who understands what iāve been through right now iām going to start shaking like a chihuahua and then possibly start biting
dorian: i hate to admit to any such reliance but yes if you try to remove me i will probably simply tell you when youāll die
inquisitor: and itās not even a good one, cullen
dorian: distasteful way to go, really. pick something else this time
Other people having half Human half Vulcan children and Spock just receiving emails from the panicked parents heās never met like āare their medical readings supposed to look like this???ā
āIām not a damn pediatrician, Spockā *proceeds to give them all the most helpful medical advice theyāll ever receive* *ends up pioneering half human-half Vulcan childrenās medicine* *becomes known as the expert on the subject*
Little baby toddler Spock is out with his mother one day and they see a very elderly Vulcan lady with iron grey hair cut in a typical severe Vulcan way who is just. Watching them. Saying nothing. And Amanda assumes it's disapproval because she knows what most Vulcan think of her, of her son, but she's used to this so she just kind of puts her chin up and keeps going about her business with Spock, who has no idea what's going on other than whatever his little toddler focus is on.
But the lady eventually makes her way over and Amanda braces herself but she just says "You are Amanda, bonded to Sarek?" Amanda nods and the lady looks at Spock. "This is your child?" Amanda is maybe a little defensive but the lady doesn't seem prissy about it so "...he is".
There is a pause. The lady seems almost hopeful. For a Vulcan. "Is the child...well?"
And because the lady didn't berate her, and because Amanda thinks she sees a deep sadness under the hope in this woman's eyes, she crouches and says "Come, Spock."
He toddles over to her and she looks up at this lady, allowing herself a small smile, and says "He is". The lady nods and walks away
When Amanda tells Sarek about this later he merely sighs and says "That was T'pol. I am not surprised."
He refuses to elaborate on it but when Amanda looks her up later on her data pad she has to go find Spock and give him a tight hug, Vulcan tradition be damned.
*Years later, Amanda will share this memory with Spock, on one of the occasions his mind touches hers. When he asks her why she chose this meeting to show him, she says that she wanted him to know that not everyone viewed his birth and existence with disgust or disdain. To some, he represented hope.
When he is contacted by the first desperate new parent he will steeple his hands as he looks at the screen, pondering and recalling his mother's memory.
Then he will forward the request on to McCoy, the man he trusts with his life on a regular basis, with no context or explanation. Because he is a petty bitch.
pour one out for all those fic readers who found one author who wrote one really good fic for their fandom then clicked on their profile to find they wrote exactly one fic for that fandom and the rest for, like, csi or something
