since this is being posted i believe a month after the last part im gonna say that yes they've been at this for 4 weeks and grace categorically refused to engage with a weird dream riddle and delegated that in favor studying of his new front yard decoration until frustration finally broke him
we love an avoidant behaviour king
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 3.5, part 4, part 5
+ bonus what i imagine the eridians looked like witnessing the Plot™
random yapping by yours truly below the cut
i have FINALLY finished this thing!! holy crap thank you to everyone who has been following and for the incredible, enthusiastic comments that have been feeding my ego!
this wasn't honestly supposed to go beyond the first part but the muse asks for no opinion when she takes a mallet to your head i guess,,
since ive personally always been a fan of people showing sketches with their work heres some stuff from my process:
these are as i affectionately call them my insane person notes, frantically scribbled down and barely legible to even me
and here's a random warm up page that i did:
once again thank you everyone for your support and interest, it's been amazing
I hate when king arthur has all these fussy little steps in the instructions and you're like "no way do these fussy little steps matter" but you try it and they do. they matter so much.
I thought you meant Camelot quests and I was like "that's fair, 'never pick a four leaf clover on the last Wednesday of the month' IS a fussy little step that shouldn't matter" but then I was like "wait isn't that also a flour company"
Danny Fenton hadn’t meant to punch Captain America in the face. In fact, he’d spent the better part of the week trying not to punch anyone, despite the rapidly growing laundry list of reasons to lose his cool—like not sleeping for seventy-two hours because Technus decided to merge his data with every Bluetooth speaker in the tri-state area, or the GIW tracking his every move again, or that weird, suspicious portal energy he kept picking up from somewhere labeled Stark Tower. Danny was running on fumes, ghostly adrenaline, and one too many Red Bulls when it happened. Really, the stars aligned perfectly for an international incident.
He’d only been in New York for six hours, trying to find the source of the energy spike without alerting every superhero on the block—because the last thing he needed was to get into it with the Avengers. Again. The last time had involved Hulk trying to punch a ghost and failing miserably, Thor throwing Mjölnir into the Ghost Zone, and Iron Man demanding to know if ectoplasm was FDA approved. It was a whole thing.
Danny was crouched on the rooftop of some high-rise, scanning with a modified Fenton Specter-Tracker, eyes bloodshot and twitching slightly. He hadn’t slept since Monday. It was Thursday.
“Hey, kid,” came a voice behind him, calm but firm.
Danny spun like a feral cat, eyes glowing, hair frizzed out with ghost static. He registered the silhouette of a man—tall, broad-shouldered, carrying a star-shaped shield—and his brain went danger. Ghost hunter? No. GIW agent? No. Super-soldier-hydra-time-travel-experiment?
He didn’t even process it. He just swung.
There was a crack like a thunderclap, followed by the very human sound of pain—a grunt that broke mid-voice like it had surprised the man himself. Captain Steve Rogers staggered back, hand pressed to his jaw, blinking stars out of his vision and trying to comprehend the fact that someone had just hit him hard enough to make him feel it. Not just feel it—wince. His serum-enhanced, war-hardened, literally-punched-by-Thor-once jaw hurt.
Danny stood frozen, fist still outstretched, pupils blown wide in horror.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I just punched Captain America. I just decked the star-spangled man with a plan. I am so sorry—I thought you were a ghost! Or like—a time-traveling war criminal! Wait, that’s redundant—”
“Okay, wow,” Steve mumbled, touching his jaw again. “That’s definitely gonna bruise.”
Danny looked like he was about to combust. “Why were you behind me like that?! Who just materializes out of nowhere and says ‘hey, kid’ in the middle of a rooftop stakeout?! I thought I was being ambushed!”
Steve blinked. “I was asking for directions.”
Danny gasped. “You were WHAT?”
Steve looked sheepish. “Tony dropped me off on the wrong building. Said, and I quote, ‘GPS is for cowards.’ I’ve been circling the same three blocks for twenty minutes.”
Danny stared. “Captain America got lost and asked a sleep-deprived half-ghost teenager for directions?”
“I didn’t know you were a sleep-deprived half-ghost teenager,” Steve said defensively. “You looked… competent. Specter-tracker aside.”
Danny made a strangled noise and sat down hard, face buried in his hands. “I’m going to be assassinated by your PR team.”
Steve rubbed his jaw again. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“That is not the point here!”
“No, seriously,” Steve insisted, kneeling down. “That punch? I’ve taken hits from Thanos. You rattled me.”
Danny peeked through his fingers. “Are you flirting with me?”
“What? No!”
“You’re complimenting my punch like it’s a pickup line.”
“I’m—okay, no. You’re a kid.”
“I’m nineteen!”
Steve squinted. “You look like you’ve been through five timelines and one midlife crisis.”
“I have!” Danny wailed. “Do you know what it’s like to babysit the entire ghost population of the afterlife and then accidentally elbow Thor in the ribs during a training session because you forgot he was behind you?! I’m a walking international crisis!”
Steve paused. “Wait. You trained with Thor?”
“Long story. I died once, came back, now I punch ghosts for fun and may or may not be legally considered a WMD by six governments.”
Steve took a long breath. “Do all teenagers do this now? Or is this just a… you thing?”
Danny groaned. “Just me. I’m special.”
Steve lowered his shield and sat cross-legged like they were about to have a heart-to-heart. “You okay, kid?”
“No! I haven’t slept in three days, my enemies keep possessing animatronics to scare me, and I just committed accidental patriotic assault!”
Steve tried not to smile. He really did. “You got a name?”
Danny sighed. “Danny. Danny Fenton. Or Phantom. Depends on how you know me.”
Steve looked intrigued. “You’re the ghost kid.”
Danny flinched. “I prefer ghost young adult, thank you.”
“You’re the one Nick Fury won’t shut up about.”
Danny’s eyes widened. “He talks about me?”
“Nonstop. Every meeting. ‘The ghost kid leveled a tank with his pinky finger!’ ‘The ghost kid opened a portal to another dimension with a yawn!’” Steve did a passable impression of Fury’s gruff voice. “‘You think your team’s strong? Try containing a seventeen-year-old who talks to the dead like it’s a podcast!’”
Danny laughed, a bit unhinged, definitely sleep-deprived. “I did do the tank thing. That was an accident.”
“Fury thinks you’re the future.”
“That’s horrifying.”
“You’re not wrong.”
Danny looked at him warily. “Are you gonna try to recruit me?”
Steve considered. “Honestly? Not until you’ve slept. You look like you’d punch Thor if he asked you for coffee.”
“I have, and I did, and he was proud of me.”
“…Of course he was.”
There was a moment of silence, just the city humming beneath them, both of them sitting cross-legged like two war veterans who somehow found themselves on a rooftop in Manhattan instead of the battlefield they were clearly built for.
“So,” Steve said eventually. “You gonna tell me why you’re camped out here?”
Danny pointed to the tracker. “Someone in that building”—he gestured vaguely toward Stark Tower—“is leaking interdimensional ghost radiation like it’s designer cologne. I was trying to be subtle.”
Steve looked at the tower. “That’s Tony.”
Danny blinked. “Tony Stark is radiating ectoplasmic energy?”
“Yeah. He bought a ghost portal off eBay last month. Said it’d be good for ‘multiverse surveillance.’ It… got loose.”
Danny stood up so fast he swayed. “I knew it! I told Jazz that someone was messing with rogue ghost portals again and she said I was paranoid! I am paranoid! But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong!”
“You’re… very high-strung.”
Danny glared. “Do you have a collection of alternate-universe versions of yourself constantly trying to kill you?”
Steve held up his hands. “Fair.”
Suddenly, Danny wobbled. His legs buckled, and Steve caught him with a grunt. “Woah, hey, hey! Okay, that’s enough hero time for now.”
“I’m fine,” Danny slurred. “I’ve just been awake for three days. It’s not a problem unless I—”
He passed out.
Steve stared down at the kid—a half-dead, glowing teen who apparently punched like a demigod and talked like a sitcom character on speed—and muttered, “…Tony owes me so much alcohol for this.”
He slung Danny over his shoulder and started walking toward the Tower.
A few floors down, Tony Stark looked up from his holograms and blinked as the elevator pinged open.
Steve walked in carrying what looked like a sleep-dead raccoon in human form.
Tony blinked. “Did you adopt a raccoon?”
“He punched me.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “…You?”
“Knocked me back five feet.”
Tony whistled. “Damn. Strong raccoon.”
“He’s nineteen. Name’s Danny Fenton. Ghost kid.”
Tony’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh. The one Fury thinks is a nuclear bomb with social anxiety.”
Steve dumped Danny on the nearest couch. “Let him sleep. He earned it.”
Tony looked down at Danny. “Should I be worried he’s glowing?”
“No. But maybe hide the ghost portal.”
Tony scoffed. “I knew someone was tracking it.”
Danny stirred, groaning, “Stark, I swear to the Ancients, if I wake up and your toaster is haunted again, I’m putting salt in your arc reactor…”
Steve stared. “Wait, what?”
Tony sighed. “Long story. Ghosts don’t like me. Something about my attitude.”
Steve sat down, already dreading explaining this to Fury.
Across the room, Danny turned on his side, mumbled, “Tell the Captain I didn’t mean to punch him…”
Steve looked over, surprisingly fond. “It’s fine, kid. I’ve had worse.”
Danny let out a soft snore.
Tony grinned. “You’re getting soft.”
“He reminds me of Bucky.”
Tony choked. “Excuse me?”
Steve shrugged. “If Bucky died and came back with ghost powers, he’d absolutely punch me in the face for fun.”
“…Okay, yeah, that tracks.”
And thus began the weird, wonderful, mildly catastrophic journey of Danny Fenton, ghost boy, menace to the Avengers, and accidental best friend to Captain America, who still rubbed his jaw now and then, remembering the punch that nearly knocked out a super-soldier’s tooth.
Danny is Bruce Wayne's bio son, who was given up early to protect him from villains.
When Danny found out (shortly after becoming a halfa), he felt so abandoned, he decided not to contact the Waynes.
Fast forward years later, the JL and JLD are losing to a powerful ghost/demon/bad guy. Constantine gets the idea to summon the Ghost King.
Wish You Were There
There was something wrong in this picture.
Yes, the pesky demon had been subdued rather quickly after the Ghost King had agreed to help out with their newest upstart, but now the powerful entity was locked in a standoff with their good ol’ spook and neither Batman or the King had seen it fit to look away from each other.
John was not stupid. He knew that the air hadn’t been freezing minutes ago. The Ghost King must have one hell of a grudge to let his power leak this blatantly.
Oh, sod it. He was too curious for his own good.
“So…” the magician drawled, after he finished taking in a drag of his cigarette. “Do you lads know each other?”
“No,” the Ghost King denied.
“Yes,” Batman affirmed.
The ectoplasmic entity hissed instantly. The Ghost King drew back in affront, glaring holes into the white slits of the batsuit. The being’s entire form seemed to glitch out of existence for a second, before reasserting itself while shrouding himself in bursts of static.
“You have some nerve, acknowledging me now after giving me up immediately after my birth!”
John's cigarette fell to the ground.
“Bats… You must be pulling my leg,” he muttered.
The cold-hearted son of a bitch didn’t even deign to look at him. His whole attention was not straying from his so-called son. The fucking Ghost King of the Infinite Realms.
Oh, bollocks. This was going to come back to bite them in their collective arses, right?
“I couldn’t raise you while I was being attacked daily by assassins and supervillains. My own home was a target and I couldn’t possibly risk having you inside the manor while I was busy with something else in the city,” Batman said.
“Oh, sure!” the Ghost King said. “Is that what you tell yourself when you bother to think about it? That it was a matter of keeping me safe? What about all your Robins? What’s stopping you from having other children around when you didn’t want me to besmirch your ancestral home?”
Batman twitched, as if to restrain himself from making any movement.
“Things had changed by then,” he said stiffly.
The Ghost King laughed bitterly.
“But not enough to retrieve me? I can’t believe you.”
Batman stood still; a statue. His mouth moved and then shut itself in a line.
The Ghost King shook his head, his own face twisting.
“Well, this was a heart-warming family reunion. Good to know you’re still fighting the good fight, Dad-”
“How is it, that you are dead?” Batman asked, finally thawing enough to move and actually do something. The idiot made to grasp at the younger man and John sucked in a breath in surprise when he saw that he succeeded in having a hold on his arm. “The Fenton’s were a good family. Nothing came up when I did background checks on them. You should have been safe. Protected. And away from anything remotely supernatural.”
The Ghost King looked at Bats. At the way his hand had connected with his own. The physical contact seemed to throw him off for a second, but he recovered quickly. He shook Batman’s arm off and drifted away with flashing eyes.
“I sure hope that your definition of normal is not skewed, old man. Because, news flash! The Fenton’s were anything, but normal.”
“What happened?” Batman pressed.
A beat. Then, the Ghost King smirked.
“How about… You do some research on that, since you failed so badly the first time? I’m done with whatever this is.”
The bloody cunt vanished into thin air, leaving them both breathing into the chilled air.
It was mildly disappointing.
Huffing, John kicked the butt of his cigarette that laid on the ground, just waiting for Bats to fall into his predictable pattern and threaten him.
“Not a word of this interaction to anyone, Constantine,” Batman said. The sad sod had not moved from the spot where his son had left him at, except to throw him a glare over his shoulder.
“You mean, not a word about how you abandoned your son, and he died and claimed the throne to the entire realm of the Undead while you thought you were protecting him?” John asked, sarcasm loosening his tongue. “Sure! Not a word about it to anyone. I’m not going to think about this, ever.”
Batman grunted, already dismissing him, and stormed away to do whatever a Bat does to brood.
Danny is Bruce Wayne's bio son, who was given up early to protect him from villains.
When Danny found out (shortly after becoming a halfa), he felt so abandoned, he decided not to contact the Waynes.
Fast forward years later, the JL and JLD are losing to a powerful ghost/demon/bad guy. Constantine gets the idea to summon the Ghost King.
Wish You Were There
There was something wrong in this picture.
Yes, the pesky demon had been subdued rather quickly after the Ghost King had agreed to help out with their newest upstart, but now the powerful entity was locked in a standoff with their good ol’ spook. It had been minutes of tension and neither Batman or the King had seen it fit to look away from each other.
John was not stupid. He knew that the air hadn’t been freezing minutes ago. The Ghost King must have one hell of a grudge to let his power leak this blatantly.
Oh, fuck it. He was too curious for his own good.
“So…” the magician drawled, after he finished taking in a drag of his cigarette. “Do you lads know each other?”
“No,” the Ghost King denied.
“Yes,” Batman affirmed.
The ectoplasmic entity hissed instantly. The Ghost King drew back in affront, glaring holes into the white slits of the batsuit. The being’s entire form seemed to glitch out of existence for a second, before reasserting itself while shrouding himself in bursts of static.
“You have some nerve, acknowledging me now after giving me up immediately after my birth!”
John's cigarette fell to the ground.
“Bats… You must be pulling my leg,” he muttered.
The cold-hearted son of a bitch didn’t even deign to look at him. His whole attention was not straying from his so-called son. The fucking Ghost King of the Infinite Realms.
Oh, bollocks. This was going to come back to bite them in their collective arses, right?
“I couldn’t raise you while I was being attacked daily by assassins and supervillains. My own home was a target and I couldn’t possibly risk having you inside the manor while I was busy with something else in the city,” Batman said.
“Oh, sure!” the Ghost King said. “Is that what you tell yourself when you bother to think about it? That it was a matter of keeping me safe? What about all your Robins? What’s stopping you from having other children around when you didn’t want me to besmirch your ancestral home?”
Batman twitched, as if to restrain himself from making any movement.
“Things had changed by then,” he said stiffly.
The Ghost King laughed bitterly.
“But not enough to retrieve me? I can’t believe you.”
Batman stood still; a statue. His mouth moved and then shut itself in a line.
The Ghost King shook his head, his own face twisting.
“Well, this was a heart-warming family reunion. Good to know you’re still fighting the good fight, Dad-”
“How is it, that you are dead?” Batman asked, finally thawing enough to move and actually do something. The idiot made to grasp at the younger man and John sucked in a breath in surprise when he saw that he succeeded in having a hold on his arm. “The Fenton’s were a good family. Nothing came up when I did background checks on them. You should have been safe. Protected. And away from anything remotely supernatural.”
The Ghost King looked at Bats. At the way his hand had connected with his own. The physical contact seemed throw him off for a second, but he recovered quickly. He shook Batman’s arm off and drifted away with flashing eyes.
“I sure hope that your definition of normal is not skewed, old man. Because, news flash! The Fenton’s were anything but normal.”
“What happened?” Batman pressed.
A beat. Then, the Ghost King smirked.
“How about… You do some research on that, since you failed so badly the first time? I’m done with whatever this is.”
The bloody cunt vanished into thin air, leaving them both breathing into the chilled air.
It was mildly disappointing.
Huffing, John kicked the butt of his cigarette that laid on the ground, just waiting for Bats to fall into his predictable pattern and threaten him.
“Not a word of this interaction to anyone, Constantine,” Batman said. The sad sod had not moved from the spot where his son had left him at, except to throw him a glare over his shoulder.
“You mean, not a word about how you abandoned your son, and he died and claimed the throne to the entire realm of the Undead while you thought you were protecting him?” John asked, sarcasm loosening his tongue. “Sure! Not a word about it to anyone. I’m not going to think about this, ever.”
Batman grunted, already dismissing him, and stormed away to do whatever a Bat does to brood.
Ok, I reblogged this without adding anything at first, but I can't resist.
"I can't believe him!"
The shout was followed by the crackling blast of an Ecto blast. Jazz hurried down the stairs to Danny's side. It was rare for Danny to get this angry, ever since he had destroyed the GIW he had been on a much more even temperment. She entered into the basement as another ecto blast tore a hole through the dummy.
"How did getting summoned by the Justice League go?" She asked.
Danny turned, panting, his body twisted and misformed by his fury.
"He was there."
He turned and fired another ecto blast at the dummies down range, tearing another into pieces. There were only so many "he"s out there that could have Danny this upset, so either their parents had showed up or...
"Your bio dad?"
"Yes! My bio dad was there." Danny turned and began shreding more and more of the dummies to pieces. Jazz belatedly realized that each of the dummies had little black pointed ears on them. "He was there and he just kept making excuses about why he couldn't care for me, and couldn't raise me himself. Like I need any more of his excuses!"
"Oh, Danny I'm so sorry!" Jazz immediately ran forward and grabbed him in a tight hug.
Danny tried to squirm out of her hold but she just wrestled him back into her arms. Fortunately for ghosts, fights were just another love language so even though she would never do something like this with a human in distress it actually calmed Danny down and his body settled into a recognizable pattern of limbs.
"Danny I'm so sorry you had to see him again. That wasn't fair to you."
He sagged against her and she held him all the tighter as he pressed his face to her shoulder.
"I just don't understand why he gets to pretend he cares now? He clearly never wanted me." Danny sobbed brokenly in Jazz's arms.
.
It took a lot of digging. A lot of digging. But eventually Batman was able to find the information. He had to tear down strange morphing firewalls that almost seemed alive in order to find it, but he did. He found what he had missed in the intervening years since he had given Daniel away. Abandoned him.
The Fenton's website went in depth into ghosts or "ecto entities" and exactly what they thought should happen to such entities. Complete and total annihilation. Experimentation. Torture. To be torn apart, "Atom by atom."
Eventually he was able to find what had happened to his son when he finally fully cracked their database. He was able to read all about how the portal they had created killed Daniel, then turned him into a ghost. They had all the details listed in their vivisection of the boy Bruce had abandoned.
He put his head in his hands, despair overwhelming his senses. This was the fate Bruce had forced upon his son by not raising him himself. This was all Bruce's fault. No wonder Daniel hated him.
.
This would be a scene that would happen far later but it sprung into my mind fully formed like Athena and I couldn't resist. For context Danny has seen that Bruce has researched what happened to him, and he has already shut down several attempts from Bruce to reignite their connection, including shutting down several summoning attempts, culminating in Danny using Constantine's soul contract to forbid the mage from attempting to summon him again or to ever speak or communicate about it. Jazz agrees to investigate the Waynes in return and Danny watches over her invisibly.
Bruce had just left the cave. He was exhausted. He had been pushing himself harder and harder during his patrols. Dick said he was punishing himself and Bruce couldn't put up more than a token denial. He knew he looked like shit. He was covered in bruises and injuries, he limped on a sprained knee, had dark circles under his eyes to put even Tim's to shame.
He knew he wasn't thinking his best, or performing to any kind of acceptable standard. He needed to sleep to reset, but he couldn't. Not until he got through to Daniel again. He wasn't sure how he was going to do that though. After Daniel as the Ghost King pulled a contract for Constantine's very soul the wizard had vanished and refused to answer any communcations.
He dragged himself past the stairs down to the main entranceway and he could distantly overhear someone speaking to Alfred. It wasn't a voice he recognized so he paused to listen in.
"Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Pennyworth. I was just hoping I could ask you a few questions. My name is Jasmine Fenton."
Bruce didn't hear anything else. Fenton. "The Fenton's were anything but normal." Daniel's words flashed through his mind alongside the reports he had compiled on his child's adopted family. The ones who cut him open. The ones who killed him. They were here. They must have heard that Bruce was trying to reach out to Daniel and were here to harm him again. He could not allow that.
He snatched a set of hidden batarangs from their hiding spot and jumped down from the top of the stairs. He landed hard on his bad knee and stumbled to the side, but he was already throwing the blades as he did so.
Fenton dodged one nimbly and some how managed to catch another out of the air but the third caught her in the shoulder causing her to spin away. Bruce dashed forward to confront her but his charge was halted by running into a bright green wall.
"You abandoned me. You refuse to listen when I say I don't want contact." The voice could be heard from all around him as the temperature plumeted. "I wanted nothing more than to ignore you just like you did to me."
The very air was trembling as Daniel appeared, fully in his form of the Ghost King out of thin air. The walls around them began to shake in the face of Daniel's naked rage.
"You have crossed a line, however. A line I can't ignore." Bruce was distantly aware that Fenton had turned to face Daniel and pulled the batarang from her shoulder thought she didn't seem over bothered by the blade. Green blood was oozing down slowly from the wound. "You dared to attack my sister!"
The voice became a screaming wail and Bruce's vision shudderd and failed before the eldritch assault.
no hate to bruce, just sometimes he fucks up. Time to find out.
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
This is a scheduled post for two days before the anniversary of the moon landing. Please get your moon themed items and foods sorted now in anticipation.
so once me and my wife were watching a documentary where a snake ate like a million eggs. that snake just went to fucking town on eggs. and the snake made the eggs look so good that i kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it, and eventually it was 11pm and i ran out of willpower and decided to eat one (1) singular raw egg just to prove to myself that the snake was surely a liar.
the snake was not a liar. texture is like, super important to me and raw eggs are very Texture so i had another one, and then another one, and then another one, and eventually i ran out of eggs.
i had like, fifteen raw eggs.
i didnt really know how to explain this momentary madness to my wife, so my Plan was to put all the eggshells into a grocey bag, and then throw that grocery bag in the dumpster, and if she never noticed that would be Excellent and if she noticed immediately i could lie and say that the eggs went bad.
except i cant lie very good, and of course with murphys law being such, i got salmonella.
so i threw up a lot and my wife asked me what poisoned me so and i tried very hard to dodge the question but i was oozing shame like oil from a room temperature cheese and eventaully i gave in and told her everything and to her enormous credit she was more flabbergasted than actually upset. she did make me promise to not eat any more raw eggs, which i have stuck to, and she gives me weird looks during nature documentaries now as if desire was the only thing keeping me from eating thousands of pounds of krill
anyway i made a joke earlier about being able to eat my age in eggs and my sister in law in law made a drawing to comemorate the moment and also because it was my birthday. she's excellent. thank you 10000000% @cintailed. you should all visit her page and admire her work.
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
"Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope."
Oh, I remember this, the edit was done by youtuber Waffle to the left.
They didn't just cut out the parts with the oat milk, they skillfully edited over all the god-damn branding and replaced the audio.
But what I still find most hilarious about this whole commercial is the fact that everything they show in this solar punk world seems to be made with sustainable, zero waste and reusable materials.
Everything EXCEPT THE FUCKING CHOBANI BRANDED STUFF!
The only plastic you see in this whole commercial is all the straight to the landfill packaging made by the very corporation that tries to sell how sustainable and "green" they are.
Unintentional self satire at its finest.
They couldn't even show their yogurt and milk in (basically infinitely reusable) glass containers because they pretty much only sell their shit in plastic
It is such a perfect example of the true face of "green" capitalism, it's hilarious.
Another really interesting thing about this edit is that they changed the label on the side of the apple-picking machine.
From "donations" to "commons". It's a subtle change, but it makes a huge difference in the world-building of the video. The former implies that this big orchard belongs to an owner and that they're donating the fruits to "the less fortunate" (and, by extension, that poverty is still a thing); the latter implies that the orchard belongs to everyone and that the fruits are free to take in the spirit of solidarity.
Waffle To The Left brought out the potential in this gorgeous video and made it an actual solarpunk utopia — without brands and without corporate pandering, complete with true common ownership over land and resources.
last night i had a dream that i met mother earth and if u were wondering what she looks like it’s dwayne the rock johnson in a flowy white sun dress with rly good winged eyeliner