There is Beauty in the Way of Things

Reading sometimes. Writing always. Fandoms, etc.

[dickgraysonsptsd]

i like fanworks where dick is closer with the batsiblings than he is in canon but like generally speaking he's really busy and self-isolating and they have to break into his apartment or call him for backup to see him. like in post-crisis canon. even timmy who is his little purse dog doesn't spend half as much time with dick as you'd expect. the titans barely see him unless they're backing each other up or are on a team together at the moment which is half of why they keep manically reforming the team every three years (so they can actually hang out). post-crisis dick is not the person keeping the bats together (that's tim) or scheduling family hangouts (that's not really any of them on any kind of regular basis) he's spending 18 hours a day minimum working and nightwinging and somehow squeezing even more time out of the day to fix his neighbor's water heater and do six other good deeds and then he's getting shot again

[avayarising]

#to me he really just gives everyone the standing offer of#call me if you need me#and will honor every call he gets#but never calls you himself cuz he gave that offer to a million other people#if you never call him that’s on you#if he inexplicably has downtime he’s not spending it on reaching out to people#he’s spending it on America’s Most Wanted and animal documentaries – @nibblewinger

#honestly I think the thing really is is that Tim solved the puzzle on how to get Dick to pay attention to you#and it was just “show up at his apartment”#which is why when you go through Dick & Tim moments it's like#major event - major event - Nightwing issue - major event - Nightwing issue - story about Tim but it still takes place in Bludhaven#and then when you have stuff like GK 8 where Tim says Dick picked him up from school on his motorcycle#and you realize how special that was and why he felt the need to say that out loud – @katanahime

#or physically kidnapping him. which happens to be wally's favorite tactic#just straight up snatches dick in the middle of doing something else and takes him home to hang out with his wife#and dick's like jesus wally stop doing that and wally's like haha sorry (he's not sorry and will do it again) but now that you're here#you should eat dinner with us :) (you literally can't escape me)#crucially wally is also one of the big names in Dragging Dick Back Onto Teams#the extent to which wally gets away with tormenting him cannot be overstated i feel – @vintagerobin

#i feel like dg is that type of extroverted person who u hardly get to see and never responds to your texts#so you think he doesn't like you or is mad at you or smth#but then when you DO see him he's really friendly and acts as if you talk to e/o every day so you think maybe it was all in your head#but then a week later you're 10 unread texts in and starting to think he hates you again#he doesn't tho he's just bleeding out on his couch – @eerie-five

#Nightwing ‘96 and Grayson’s run made me realize this about him#and it’s essential to his character#he’s The Avoider#and he goes out of his way to fix other ppl’s problems to deal with his guilt about being The Avoider – @b0nes-mcgee

[nohoperadio]

You know that thing would eat you if you died, right? *pointing to the false image of you that others perceive*

[mumblesplash]

actually kinda fascinated by the attitude toward grace’s …participation in project hail mary that i’ve seen on here, more specifically how there seems to be a pretty solid consensus re: approximately how everyone feels about it. because my partner and i went into the movie totally blind, and prior to any outside influence my take was that i didn’t care about the betrayal element beyond ‘wow his initial unwillingness to die for earth makes his tenacity in these dire circumstances so much more interesting’ and matt’s take was ‘it’s unbelievable that it even occurred to him to say no. what does he think this is.’

[parawyrm]

Wait how is everyone else feeling about it? I’m not sure I’ve seen much on that specifically.

Also I’d love to hear more about your experience with that and how the memories returning affected your view on Grace as a character/the story at large

[mumblesplash]

haha well ok i can’t speak for Exactly how everyone else feels about it but the impression i get from scrolling top posts/dashboard osmosis is that 1) people primarily see it as something that was Done To Him and 2) the discussion is mostly about the extent to which stratt was justified. whereas on first watch my partner was actively and exclusively critical of *grace*, and while i fully sympathized with him it never even occurred to me to question stratt’s actions

as for the way it affected my view of grace, it honestly made me like him more. when i assumed he volunteered himself, he read more as someone who stepped up in impossible circumstances and then got (understandably) scared/maybe regretted it when faced with the reality. in retrospect, realizing he was *always* scared and was never actually prepared to die (“i didn’t mean any of that. it’s just something you say”) it makes every risk he took after meeting rocky feel so much more meaningful. especially the last one, when he turns around and actually chooses another life over his own with his eyes wide open.

someone in the replies mentioned that this was more obvious in the book, but even with less emphasis on it in the movie it didn’t escape me that when he turned around to save rocky he was doing so with no reason to believe he’d survive much longer after that. it brings his character arc full circle and disconnects his happiness from earth at the same time, which is a big part of why i walked out of the theater feeling like the ending was the absolute best case scenario. he can go back if he wants to, but he doesn’t. he wanted to stay on earth because he didn’t have anything worth dying for, he wants to stay on erid because he finally found something that was

[mumblesplash]

YESSS you get me. and here’s the thing right. if he had said yes, is that really a choice? is ‘get in this ship and die or the world ends’ actually that much *less* coercive than knocking him unconscious and putting him in there anyway?

he shouldn’t have had to die in space, but he did have to. that would have been the case no matter how he felt about it. but as an audience the fact that he went *un*willingly not only makes him more interesting but also makes every choice after that feel so much more important

[gabriellabowden]

This is one of my new drawings, it's 11x14, mostly HB, called "GET SOME!"

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[itsjesscapade]

the second 'o' in "zoologist" is putting in heavy duty work. girl is working two jobs

[psikonauti]

Johnson Ocheja (Nigerian, b.1993)

Yellow By The River, 2022

Oil and acrylic on canvas

[ad-astra-per-aspera-1389]

saw someone say grace had dogs on his cardigan bc of laika the space dog, patron saint of one way trips, because he was never supposed to make it back to earth, oh I'm sick

[melandrops]

the aroace read of ryland grace is so personal and haunting. "you don't even have a dog." was it not enough to love the world for the sake of living in it. was it not enough to live for the thrill of discovery. was it not enough to smile at your students. was it not enough to be afraid.

[zer0caffeine]

Original post by @morallygrayautisticscientist here, this post was so funny I decided to draw it lol.

Panel by panel below:

[pineappical]

thinking about statues of Grace being built all around Erid years after his passing so he can continue to watch over Eridians as they sleep

[cabinette]

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Your partner came back from the dead after being missing for decades. Every one of their friends who they went with ended up dying a horrible death.

Now, somehow, their entire mental health is based on the continued life and happiness of this fairground goldfish that they picked up.

Neither of you know the first thing about how to care for even a healthy fish. This fish has been poorly cared for, has multiple diseases and the person who handed it over explicitly didn't expect it to live nearly as long as it already has.

You're frantically googling how to set up a fish tank, where to buy fish food, can you even take a fish to the vet? Your partner wants you to know that they're happy they made it home and survived their horrific ordeal, but also that if anything happens to the fish then they're going to kill everyone on this planet and then themself.

You're honestly wondering if you're even helping the fish, or just prolonging its suffering, but your partner will only accept medical help for their many injuries or engage in basic self-care once they're confident that the fish is being looked after.

So you get a tank. You set up a filter and all that stuff. You learn way more than you ever wanted to know about water temperature and ph and nitrate levels. The fish is safe. You start to develop some affection for the little guy. Your partner begins to recover. The fish begins to recover.

Which is when you learn that in its 'healthy' state, the fish regularly refuses to sleep when tired, keeps begging for food that is obviously unhealthy for it (and struggling to eat the food that you do provide because “it tastes gross”), and continually tries to persuade your partner to take it out of its nice safe tank so it can go explore the wonderful world of Outside, where the slightest mishap will kill it instantly.

Your name is Adrian, and you kind of wants to strangle this fucking fish, statement.

[sonoftheria]

✴︎ BETRAYED STRAYS ✴︎

[mercifulmother]

– Animorphs: The Reunion, K.A. Applegate

[local-dragon-haunt]

Has this been done yet

Edit: was not expecting this to blow up, and I've seen some people mistake this as an original idea, so here is the original post this is based on

[sketchupnfries]

Since Rocky and Grace have access to a ton of video games on the Hail Mary, I figured eventually they'd play Just Dance during their trip to Erid

[penny-anna]

honestly funny to me that project hail mary stars Ryan Gosling bcos like imagine being an alien and the first human you meet is Ryan Gosling. im imagining Rocky trying to figure out how physical attractiveness works for humans (u know out of scientific curiosity) and while trying to get a fix on it being like 'Grace considered attractive??' and Grace is like nooo not really I'm pretty regular.

& then later in the event of making contact w other humans Rocky being like 'so that was a fucking lie'