Girl who thinks acronyms can only ever have one meaning: God it's fucked up that the Blue Economy framework for sustainable and equitable development of ocean resources supports Sudden Infant Death Syndrome :/
with all environmental achievements, because we fall so far behind what is fully 'just', there are always multiple ways to interpret things. 1.5 degrees of warming was an ambitious target, as was the EU's pledge to wildlife in 2022. don't get me wrong, it's of integral importance that we achieve these things. but at the same time, just because we have fallen short in so many ways doesn't mean we didn't achieve something worth celebrating.
if you're stuck in self-destructive habits, what's gonna help you get out--reminding yourself of how much you fucked up today and how much more there is to do, or celebrating the little victory you had today, that was a little bit better than yesterday or last week?
I don't think most people who are writing reports on our successes and failures on the environmental front have ever been in that situation. They're highlighting our failures more than achievements and fair enough, that isn't false. but very rarely is it helpful. 'you're doing a great job, maybe not as good as you expected, but keep it up you'll get there' motivated a whole lot more people than 'you failed again' did. and I care about results, so maybe we can put aside our guilt and shame for just a second? we'll have time for that later. but right now we need to keep going to get to net zero, to bring our biodiversity back. and we need positivity to do that.
So proud of St. Kitts and Nevis for their commitment “to transition from a primarily fossil fuel source of energy to alternative renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and waste to energy (WTE).” 👏🏾
Groundbreaking Agreement at COP30: Saint Kitts and Nevis Joins Greening the Islands’ 100% RES Islands Initiative with Support from the European Union
It was always inevitable, she knew. She’d even known it would be Mira and Zoey to do it. To finally end her time upon the planet she’s protected for all these years.
She just… never expected her death to be like this.
“You comfy, Ruru?”
The nickname makes her blush. Mira, one of the woman she loves, is laying on top of her. On their couch. During a movie night.
Rumi finds her voice isn’t working, so she simply nods, hoping her face isn’t too red. Based off of the chuckle Mira lets out at the look on her face, it must be pretty obvious.
Of course, that’s only half the problem.
“You ok if I keep doing this, Ru?”
Zoey, who currently has Rumi’s head in her lap, is carding her hand through Rumi’s hair. She’s almost embarrassed how much more relaxed she feels with each stroke of her fingers.
Rumi doesn’t trust her voice still, instead opting to just nod again.
Zoey let’s put a pleased hum, scratching a little harder against Rumi’s scalp.
A quiet sigh escapes Rumi’s lips.
Shes going to die, but at least she’ll die happy.
The tv keeps playing, some random drama where everyone’s overacting, but Rumi’s too distracted by the pressured warmth from Mira and the repetitive motions from Zoey to focus.
Then something shifts.
It’s subtle, at first. The way Mira starts to slowly rub her thumb in a small circle against her arm, soothing and electric all at once. How Zoey is resting her other hand against Rumi’s neck, not moving but still… there.
Her whole body feels weightless, almost like she’s glowing.
Wait-
“Unnie, your patterns are so pretty like that!”
Rumi jolted. Her patterns are glowing gently, pulsing along with her rapidly beating heart. Before she can respond, a hand started tracing her face. Glancing up as best she could, Rumi met Zoey’s wonder filled eyes.
Another hand began tracing the ones on her neck. Rumi looked down, meeting Mira’s gleeful eyes. Shes sitting up partially now, one hand bracing against the couch, the other still on Rumi.
Rumi’s breath stutters for a second at the look in her eyes. The hunger lurking there. A glance at Zoey, the same look, and Rumi knows she’s going to die.
Mira leans closer, slowly, ever so slowly. Her face slowly fills Rumi’s vision until it’s all she can see, but she can still feel Zoey under her head, brushing her hand through her hair.
Mira pauses, her breath ghosting against Rumi’s lips making her tremble in anticipation.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Rumi jolts awake to her alarm clock, eyes blinking away the sight of Mira on top her. Shes alone in her bed in the apartment.
Rumi sits up, slapping the alarm clock to turn it off.
Her patterns pulse gently, a faint pink tint to them the only indication of the contents of her dream.
With a groan Rumi covers her face, flopping back onto the bed.
That’s the third dream this week. She might not survive a fourth.
——
So this would be around the year and a half mark after Rumi’s captivity at the hunters compound on jeju island. She moved in with Zoey and Mira when they officially became Huntrix, but the dreams were a very recent development.
I figured y’all would enjoy getting too see Rumi being a little flustered, even in this state of polytrix where they start the mutual pining.
Masterpost: Reasons I firmly believe we will beat climate change
Posts are in reverse chronological order (by post date, not article date), mostly taken from my "climate change" tag, which I went through all the way back to the literal beginning of my blog. Will update periodically.
Especially big deal articles/posts are in bold.
Big picture:
Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions (x)
Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant (x)
Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives (x)
Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected (x)
The exponential growth of solar power will change the world (x)
Sun Machines: Solar, an energy that gets cheaper and cheaper, is going to be huge (x)
Wealthy nations finally deliver promised climate aid, as calls for more equitable funding for poor countries grow (x)
For Earth Day 2024, experts are spreading optimism – not doom. Here's why. (x)
Opinion: I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. (x)
The World’s Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think (x)
‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief (x)
Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (x)
Young Forests Capture Carbon Quicker than Previously Thought (x)
Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how. (x)
Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows (x)
The global treaty to save the ozone layer has also slowed Arctic ice melt (x)
The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past (x)
Scientists Find Methane is Actually Offsetting 30% of its Own Heating Effect on Planet (x)
Are debt-for-climate swaps finally taking off? (x)
High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN (x)
How Could Positive ‘Tipping Points’ Accelerate Climate Action? (x)
Specific examples:
Environmental Campaigners Celebrate As Labour Ends Tory Ban On New Onshore Wind Projects (x)
Private firms are driving a revolution in solar power in Africa (x)
How the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu drastically cut plastic pollution (x)
Rewilding sites have seen 400% increase in jobs since 2008, research finds [Scotland] (x)
The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West (x)
Waste Heat Generated from Electronics to Warm Finnish City in Winter Thanks to Groundbreaking Thermal Energy Project (x)
Climate protection is now a human right — and lawsuits will follow [European Union] (x)
A new EU ecocide law ‘marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals’ (x)
Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII [United States] (x)
These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren. [United States and Native American Nations] (x)
Century of Tree Planting Stalls the Warming Effects in the Eastern United States, Says Study (x)
Chart: Wind and solar are closing in on fossil fuels in the EU (x)
UK use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957, figures show (x)
Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity (x)
Indigenous advocacy leads to largest dam removal project in US history [United States and Native American Nations] (x)
India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world (x)
China is set to shatter its wind and solar target five years early, new report finds (x)
‘Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis (x)
Largest-ever data set collection shows how coral reefs can survive climate change (x)
The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What Does It DO? [United States] (x)
Good Climate News: Headline Roundup April 1st through April 15th, 2023 (x)
How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon (x) [Brazil]
Loss of Climate-Crucial Mangrove Forests Has Slowed to Near-Negligable Amount Worldwide, Report Hails (x)
Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala (x)
Climate adaptation:
Solar-powered generators pull clean drinking water 'from thin air,' aiding communities in need: 'It transforms lives' (x)
‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work [China] (x)
Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala (x)
A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output (x)
Global death tolls from natural disasters have actually plummeted over the last century (x)
Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be (x)
This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on [Namibia] (x)
Plants teach their offspring how to adapt to climate change, scientists find (x)
Resurrecting Climate-Resilient Rice in India (x)
Edit 1/12/25: Yes, I know a bunch of the links disappeared. I'll try to fix that when I get the chance. In the meantime, read all the other stuff!!
Other Masterposts:
Going carbon negative and how we're going to fix global heating (x)
Podcasts and newsletters to subscribe to for more good news (x)
What, precisely, is fallen London, and how can I play it? Ive been told it's a browser game, will it work on my phones browser or only my computer's?
SWEEPS EVERYTHING OFF MY DESK. SLAMS MY HANDS ON THE COUNTER. you're in luck because advertising this game is apparently my specialty.
fallen london is a free browser game that works on anything with an internet connection!! laptops, phones, tablets, the decade old 3ds you have stashed in the back of your closet- if you can open a web browser, you can run fallen london. the UI obviously differs between desktop and mobile, and desktop has the benefit of extensions that can make your life marginally easier, but that's all a strictly optional affair.
as for the game's actual contents; fallen london is a text-based horror game closely reminiscent of classic "choose your own adventure" books. you play as a new arrival to an alternate history version of victorian london that now flourishes in a deep, dark, marvelous (and more than slightly eldritch!) cavern known as "the neath", with the goal of making your name and ultimately pursuing one of the four possible ambitions that brought you here to begin with. along the way you encounter a wide variety of strange and inexplicable things, including but not limited to;
men with the faces of squid (who are not truly men)
actual real soul-stealing devils (who originate from Actual Real Hell, which is also london's next door neighbor)
snakes that are eternally bound to the realm beyond mirrors (who have an infamous feud with sapient talking cats)
treacheries of time, law, and all that which the gods hold dear (including the ability to bypass death itself)
sirens who are convinced they're dead (in a place where, as stated, death is easily bypassed)
sentient landmasses that get REALLY annoyed if you don't pay your taxes on time (and are also single and ready to mingle)
fabric that is not fabric (which is held in quite high value by certain giant bat monsters)
spiders that eat eyeballs (but are, fortunately, easily distracted by shakespeare)
genres of colors you didn't think possible (in seven fantastical flavors!)
batkissing (not canonically, but in our hearts)
batfucking (this is, somehow, marginally more canon than the above thing)
batmarriage (no.)
batdivorce (in comically large spades)
The Hat Man (who's in love with and yearns to become like a sentient island)
gay people (a lot of them)
trans people (also a lot of them)
doomed love, in all possible forms (as well as those who try and collect it)
this thing (this thing)
and last- but certainly not least-
a pitiful hope that perhaps, just perhaps, all shall one day be well. (even when you know it won't be.)
it's a game with lore as deep as the ocean, and a staggering wordcount (4.5 million!) to boot. it's not perfect, but it's something i've grown to love deeply, and in my experience? if it doesn't click for you, that's understandable. but if it clicks for you, it really does click for you. i recommend it to anyone and everyone who so much as looks its way. who knows! it may just surprise you 🦇☀️🦀🌃
as a further incentive, here are some out-of-context items and excerpts:
as stated, you can play it right now for free at fallen london dot com. there is a subscription and a small bounty of microtransactions on offer if you want to support the development team, but at no point is this ever required, and you will be playing for years before you reach the end of stuff to accomplish. all major content updates are free and available to all players, and FOMO to this day remains virtually non-existent. as once again stated, the browser specs are non-existent. if you can run google, you can run fallen london.
so head on down!! give the neath a try!! follow admiralty orders and dump a bunch of bombs directly into the zee (underground sea) whilst accidentally waking up a giant grieving sea urchin that screams fire and violently pursues your demise!! (that's what we're all doing right now, anyway.)
if the browser game isn't for you, there's also other outlets with which to explore the universe. you can find the spinoff games Sunless Seas, Sunless Skies, and Mask of The Rose available to purchase right now on steam, and there's recently been a very successful kickstarter to adapt the game into a TTRPG. it looks very cool so far. im very very very excited for it :)
in lieu of having to come up with a conclusion for this ask, im instead going to direct you to the MoTR stupendium song (which you'll find linked below). it says far more and advertises far better than i could ever dream of. also, it's a straight bop, and "all ends/swords pens" has lived rent-free in my brain for months.
welcome to the neath, delicious friend. we hope you enjoy your stay ❤️
Jason develops an increasingly concerning habit of breaking and entering into the same woman's apartment.
prequel next part
authors note: once, I was driving my friend to the ER and she said she wasn't sure what would kill her first: the dad rock or the sickness.
Of the crimes committed by Jason tonight, breaking and entering were at the very bottom and to add to his defense—her window was so easy to unlock, that Jason felt he was essentially being invited.
The apartment was filled with only the low hum of electronics. Jason had watched her leave; triple checking the front lock, as she did but never the window locks adding to his lack of remorse—forget that she never unlocked the window, (that was all Jason) so why would she check it?
Her apartment was familiar to him, despite never being explicitly invited.
Jason came and went as he pleased—nothing tying him to a place, or a person.
He floated through this new life as a ghost. When Jason woke from the pit, there had been no ache for his former life, the anger had filled the spot were the longing should’ve been—the need for revenge, to hurt as he had been hurt, wiped the slate of his teenage years, and from that came to Arkham Knight, and then to Red Hood.
Jason Todd was lost somewhere in the mix: since his resurrection, through violence and blood, he had been searching for something that had no name—something he was missing, that Talia dipping him into the Lazarus pit hadn’t returned.
It had taken a chance encounter, and his own face reflected back on him on a train station mural that he had always only passively looked at as he passed.
The muralist mixed him with the crowd and hid him so well the countless time that Jason had passed the mural he had not noticed. From there, finding the muralist was easy–her social media handle was in the corner. It wasn’t an instant moment of recognition, there was no missing piece instantly returned but a slow, gradual recognition that began with confusion and progressed into an insatiable need to understand.
This missing piece, a part of his past that Jason as missing, had forgotten, had been taken from him until he was feet away from her. She wasn’t aware that it was Jason, had only given him a slightly confused once over as Jason walked into gallery—out of place and sticking out severely with his plain outfit and baseball hat covering his face.
She had continued discussing the merits of a particular technique displayed, none the wiser to his revelations, the complete restructuring of everything that he had known.
The visits started after that, when he struggled to place her in his life. It hadn’t begun with him breaking into her apartment, it had chaste gallery visits; he learned her routine, followed her across Gotham, Bludhaven, even her brief stint out of state but somewhere along the line, visiting her apartment had become his primary form of interaction with the artist.
Jason told himself he couldn’t go further: couldn’t talk to her. Where did she fit? Why was she so important to him that he felt incomplete?
On the kitchen island, a candle in the elaborate shape of a bowl of cereal had recently been put out, but still filled the open plan living space with a scent of apple crisp and mango, two scents he didn’t appreciate mixing together. Someone worse than Jason mixed these scents.
An undercurrent of lilacs stemming from her studio made the combination worse.
Jason walked past the candle as he lightly threaded through her neglected, too small apartment. The living area was messy, crooked furniture, a coffee table piled with overdue bills, half-cut coupons, and a sporadic display of highlighters and pens on top of a too-high stack of notebooks.
Her kitchen counter was equally as messy: left out food, and piled up dishes with an egregious empty space where a dining table should have been, if she could have afforded one.
The walls were empty, except for poorly placed puzzles that she had put together at some point, despite some of them missing pieces. Her hallway was short, undecorated and at the end, there were two rooms, one serving as her studio and a bedroom to the side.
Her wide-open bedroom door showed clothes in various locations on the ground, an overflowing trash can, and a stack of electronics stacked haphazardly on various levels of a plastic rolling cart next to an unmade bed on the floor.
From his previous explorations, he knew there was a dresser with a TV from the 2000s, bulky and gray with a VCR attached.
The small area next to the bedroom was a different story—it was almost overflowing with decoration, traces of her. But uniquely almost clutter free. When he walked in, he was assaulted with almost every wall covered; on the left as soon as he entered were long, black shelves filled with books of varying sizes, colors, and ages to the ceilings.
Not a speck of dust on them, books were well-used, well-loved, and Jason could have quizzed her on the contents of each one, organized in categories he hadn’t even begun to decipher but could faintly recognize—one shelf being hardbound classical literature, a pink embroidered copy of ‘Emma’ next to an equally embroidered copy of ‘Crime and Punishment’, that transitioned into paperbacks of classical literature.
Above that, were books on varying painters and their techniques. Some shelves Jason hadn’t a clue on, like the one with a mixed genre of hardbound books with increasingly ugly, cartoonish covers or the one comprised of entirely of books that seemed wholly mismatched to Jason: ‘Cannibalism’, ‘The Unworthy’, ‘The Great Mortality’, ‘Meat’.
Past the bookshelves, she had a long desk, covered in different mediums of paints and canvas at every stage, from almost complete to having a plain, colored background.
The one still in the plastic was tucked in the corner. An adjustable stand that an open sketchbook rested in, filled with scribblings he could not decipher and small, barely thumb-length smaller images, but could recall that she had called them thumbnails to him once—those small, snippets of memory kept him on edge.
The memories were never complete, indentations of her when Jason felt that there should’ve been a gorge. There was a certain fog over his memories of her; as if he was looking through smudged glass.
His partner—he wasn’t sure why he called her (Jason knew without a doubt they weren’t dating) that wasn’t looking at him, intensely focused on the task at hand: her furious scribbling that was just now coming together and finally looking more distinct than random scratches across the page
“Thumbnails, Jason, thumbnails. To help us plan.” He couldn’t remember what they were planning. He was watching her mouth move more, but couldn’t remember the words.
She had various wooden cabinets for storage: multi-level wooden filing cabinets that he had opened to reveal stacks of papers organized by mediums, an egregiously expensive printers cabinet Jason hadn’t initially understood how she afford.
Some smaller wooden cabinets were stacked onto of them, few unable to close with the amount of supplies she had stuffed into them.
The prize of the room as in the corner—the reason Jason found himself returning, when his initial visit was intended to be a one-time occurrence, trapped in this cycle where he couldn’t stop breaking in, couldn’t stop learning about her.
A well-used easel, paint-stained, and always having the same canvas.
She had another, slightly less worn (but considerably more used) easel in the corner that never had the same canvas on it; sometimes Jason was drawn to that one. Not often.
The easel in the corner had a familiar face, a strong jaw, striking soft blue eyes, and messy black hair.
The painting was a teenage boy, determined by the baby fat he still had in his cheeks. It was a painting of him, before the Lazarus pit had turned his eyes into a sea green. The canvas was worn around the edges from years of being worked on, moved around. It was different each time that Jason visited.
She had defined it, refined it some more for years he had determined.
Jason wondered when the piece would be done. It wasn’t elaborate, nothing that warranted the years of her working on it—on Jason. He wasn’t worth her perfection, her repeated revisions were wasted on him. He had seen the painting brought to bare bones: nothing but slashes of brown paint that only looked vaguely human.
There was nothing unique about the portrait; no special paints, no specialized scene. Just that the model had died.
Sometimes, the painting would have a marker of age. Crows feet, smile lines, something to display that the man in it had aged, only to quickly be replaced by the teenage boy when the painter realized she had not had a clue how the boy had aged and there would never be a chance for him to come into those features.
On the walls around the easel, taped and framed were various iterations of a younger Jason, some were similarly styled to the painting: a portrait looking off into the distance, nothing specialized in the background .
The framed ones he recognized--they brought back the faintest of memories, like walking through a market and catching a familiar faint smell, but finding that it couldn’t be recognized and couldn’t be placed. Something you didn’t realize you missed until you were passing by.
The Jason in those drawings was unfamiliar, a stranger. He knew that boy as much as he knew the artist.
They reflected his tired eyes, occasional slouchy posture, and embarrassing-style choices. They capture Jason’s environment and emotions through the artist’s eyes. He had been unsuspecting in most of them, and in the latter ones had a faint idea of what she had been doing.
Jason knew that he had caught her somewhere in the middle. He liked to imagine that over time, some of his memories of the painter returned with clarity, liked to think that he didn’t fill in the blank spaces where she should’ve been with a poor amalgamation of what he had wanted her to be.
Jason could remember her fighting tooth and nail to hide her sketchbook from him. He could remember that it had initially started with bargaining, a deal refused, a bribe refused, another deal.
Jason could remember losing his patience, wanting to see what she had been drawing more than he had wanted anything before that resulted in Jason sitting on her back and using her own hand to look through her sketchbook.
That playful version of Jason was so disconnected with what he could remember, that Jason knew it couldn’t have happened. He had to have caught her in passing glances, a moment of unawareness.
The artist had haunted Jason—a reminder of youthful naivety, a reminder of when he had just been a good soldier.
The boy in the drawings that she had taped to the wall were of moments unfamiliar to Jason. They were messy, explorative and curious: exploring futures that neither of them would see.
They were at varying stages in what would be Jason’s life, exploring past his teen years, into middle age, his golden years though they were scratchy drawings of a teenage Jason, some of whom he could tell had been recreations of the framed ones.
Some of them developed further, past their experimental phase. Those ones stood out, more precise, methodical, bearing the marks of someone obsessively erasing and redrawing.
After his first visit, he had immediately left after seeing the easel.
It had left him sick, left him shaky, left his vision blurred and the only sound being the sound of blood in his ears but it was also that canvas that drew him back, Jason hadn’t been able to keep away.
She was a slow, creeping sensation that caused the skin on his arms to rise that transitioned into a blurry picture, a smudged charcoal rendition of a life before.
He had felt confused; why had she left an impression on him? That to Jason her absence had left him half of a man. Sometime past that, Jason had understood that the pair had left a profound impact on each other, past the endless renditions of him she had drawn.
There were traces of him in each facet of her life: the bike she drove having once been Jason’s dream.
Newspapers that were only half intact, the other half cut out that were buried under the mess that covered her apartment. He found the other half buried under her sketchbooks—the visits built into habit by then, one routine in a life filled with running across the world. Stability in a life that was constantly off kilter.
***
“Hey, doll.” The deep, objectively modified voice hummed. Red Hood leaned over her slouched, silent form. The artist thought if she stayed still enough, the vigilante wouldn’t notice her.
“Whatcha doin’ out here so late at night?” She staring at the man who had the faintest idea to maybe try and mug her, lying crumpled on the sidewalk “It’s dangerous, you know.” He offered her a hand.
She looked from the man, who was now groaning and half-conscious then to the vigilantes hand. She narrowed her eyes, but then reached out and grasped it.
“Thank you.” Red Hood hoisted her to her feet.
“What are you doing out here, so late at night?” he repeated, she noticed an irritated edge to his tone; less casual.
She looked like a deer in the headlights—eyes rapidly moving from Red Hood, back to the man, behind Red Hood and back to him as she held up her tote bag, hands still shaking from the earlier encounter, but lightly tipping the bag to show him rows of spray paint “Painting.”
“Graffiti.” He corrected
The artist scoffed, “Graffiti is another form of art. You know some of them are copyrighted, this is a whole genre.” She was embarrassed to have been saved: to be in the debt of this vigilante and that left her extra argumentative. There was something about Red Hood that put her particularly on edge.
Maybe it was because he was a criminal; but so was she, so the logic didn’t quite track. There were levels to being a criminal though, she was below even the common street thug while Red Hood was a murderer. That was almost at the top of the criminal pyramid, minimum five criminal occupations above the common street thug.
She hadn’t thought that being out in Gotham so late at night as her best idea, but had childishly thought that tagging protected her—an equal to any criminal, but having realized how stupid that notion sounded, she couldn’t admit that to the vigilante so she found herself stuck: like a child in the presence of authority.
“You doin’ this often?” Red Hood asked, and all she could muster was a shake of her head. She was growing increasingly nervous with his proximity—she wanted him gone.
“I better get going.” She stared at his boots; they were worn and had leather peeled off. She moved to walk past him when he held his arm out in front of her, low enough it was pressed against her stomach “Ya gonna go do your murals?”
“What?” She was side-eyeing him now, murals, murals, how did he know she did murals? His touch was burning, wrong, improper.“Your graffiti.”
The artist took a step bag, but Red Hood didn’t release her arm. “I might.” She took another step back.
This time, he let her go.
Then she began to see Red Hood everywhere.
She would see him in the news and immediately change the channel, somehow managing to see Nightwing and decide that all vigilantes pissed her off and she would turn off the TV entirely.
Then she would run into him.
Sometimes, she would just see the vague shape of his bike and immediately turn the other direction. Other times, Red Hood caught her off guard: dropping behind her when she was in the middle of tagging or a mural, disrupting her process—spraying paint where it wasn’t intended to go, dropping her palette all over her New Balance tennis shoes.
Those times had been the worst.
She had been furious the first time, the second and the third. It had faded to a dull annoyance with his repeated offenses. The artist had learned to be more observant, halfway always expecting him to drop down.
Those were the times that he chatted with her, saying that standing behind her and irritating her with the excessive amount of yapping that he got to.
Telling her about his recent missions, something funny ‘Harper’ had said—she personally couldn’t keep track of the amount of women that he walked about, but Harper stood above the rest. She wondered why Red Hood wasn’t bothering her.
Initially, once the annoyance faded (typically around the time it had taken for her to fix his mistake) she had been uncomfortable. Frankly, a little terrifying. She had seen too much about Red Hood: murder, kidnapping, violence. She had been more scared of Red Hood, than a street thug who may or may not try to mug her.
She didn’t really have anything of value, nothing she wouldn’t eagerly hand over.
Sometime in the middle of those visits, the fear was almost entirely replaced with annoyance. Red Hood talking to her, typically for hours was irritating.
if she didn’t want to be left in peace, she would paint during the day—disregarding the knowledge that what she was doing was illegal.
Tonight, she thought that Red Hood had been successfully evaded. She had seen his silhouette, waiting for her at a more elaborate tag she had been working on for the past two weeks and promptly turned the other direction.
She was wrong.
She had only worked in silence for an hour before the familiar sound of his modified exhaust in the distance, thinking maybe he would drive past.
Then it got closer, until it was unbearable before idling and she knew Red Hood was behind her.
She heard the sound of his heavy boot connecting with the kickstand, the sound of the kick standing being situated on the cement, listened to his footsteps crunch and ignored the way the street lights cast his shadow over her—engulfing her.
“Hey, doll. Didn’t know you moved spots.”
“I’m married.”
“To your work.” She had pressed too hard on the spray canister, causing what had been a steady spray to explode, covering half of the meticulously detailed train station she had been working on, the crowded area instantly transforming into a scene belonging in a horror—the white of the paint creating a flash bang effect she thought had somewhat fit into the danger of Gotham.
In the care of her mental health, she would leave it. She would leave it, try again another day when she had successfully evaded the vigilante. She would repeat that mantra until she found it true, until she didn’t want to make an anonymous tip to Batman’s line: telling him that Red Hood wouldn’t stop protecting her. She wondered if Batman would’ve even believed it.
Wondered if he would instead focus on her tagging buildings, rather than Red Hood borderline harassing her because the idea of Red Hood sitting, chatting for hours couldn’t be fathomed.
She would not give Batman exact coordinates, nor would she promise to distract Red Hood until he arrived. She would not. She would not.
Red Hood propped himself up against the wall beside her, just outside the perimeter of her painting. Courteous enough to avoid the wet paint, at least. She was trying not to openly glare, trying not to even really acknowledge his presence as he began to flip through a manilla folder.
It was a companionable silence, they had long since passed the stage where these spells were awkward and after a few minutes, she had felt comfortable to resume, going back to a steady, thin spray. She tolerated him in moments like this, tolerating the large and imposing man and accepting he definitely had scared away a few different unsavory members of Gotham.
“Don’t you have better things to do than sit with me?” She was tucking away the white spray canister, pulling out a rolled up pouch of brushes and dropping the canister into the bag, watching it rattle against the others as it made contact
“I’m researching.” Sometimes, she thought that his voice was familiar.
The way that Red Hood said different words giving her pause. She didn’t laugh at herself in those moments—chastisement fit them better. Red Hood was faceless and that meant that anyone could’ve been behind it, but not who she hoped and even briefly entertaining those thoughts were dangerous, it was those stupid, childish beliefs that would begin another spiral.
In those moments, she chose to focus on Red Hood not annoying her as much. Then, Red Hood would do something that reminded her too much of Jason and she would promptly pack up. She hated that she found similarities between the two, she detested that she looked for Jason in Red Hood.
Jason was worth more than this—than the violence that followed the vigilante, the bloodshed. He would’ve been great, Jason Todd would’ve been everything that this monster wasn’t.
***
Jason watched her a few minutes before he dropped down behind the doom-scrolling artist. She was leaning against a dried outline of her newest work—too new to even understand what it was. She immediately pocketed her phone when his footsteps hit the ground and her over-the-shoulder look could only be described as bored.
“You’re late.” She reached down to pull out a canister, shaking it as she stood.
“Didn’t realize I had to come on your time.” His tone was playful, his scoff sounding more like a half-laugh.
Her glare lacked malice “It is when you ruin my murals with your surprise visits.” He leaned closer to her now, grinning under his helmet as she tensed at his close proximity, the way that his jacket touched against her back as he whispered in her ear “Doll, I make them better.” She chose to harshly elbow Jason, anything to create distance between them.
Jason hadn’t really felt the blow. Mostly knowing that it had occurred due to physically having seen it occur, but he chose to step back. “Personal Space.” She shook the spray canister, again.
It was then that Jason chose to examine the rough outline of her work. She was now laying flat colors in differing areas and from Jason’s repeated visits, knew that she would take minimum two sessions to refine to look somewhat understandable to the layman.
Yet, he found that the scene growing increasingly, unbearably familiar. He tensed, not intentionally taking a step back but finding that it was Jason who now ached to create distance between them.
Jason thought of the blinding hot pain that had greeted him upon waking up in the Lazarus pit, the sensation of frayed nerves, then sutured back together by an unskilled hand. He thought of his first broken bone—how the world had felt like it was ending then and how miniscle that moment had felt beside the Lazarus pit.
This piece was a memorial. With an all too familiar face, a robin situated on his shoulder. He must’ve made a noise as the artist turned to him with a raised eyebrow “Whats with you? You think it’s bad?”
Jason shook his head, words escaped him. The artist turned away from him, “A commission from someone I know, his kid.” Her voice was robotic, lacking the sarcastic, slightly irritated underlying tone that she typically used with him.
It sounded scripted, an automatic answering system. Was it apathy?
He faintly recognized the composition of the memorial from her wall of framed pieces. One that he hadn’t remembered sitting for, but faintly remembered the day itself.
The only sounds were coming from the Gotham nightlife now, distant sirens, cars passing, a series of excessive honking from impatient residents, a very faint and distant shouting. All reminders that Jason was supposed to be investigating Black Mask.
Yet, he found himself desperately needing to know her answer, leaning too close, too tense, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket to remain the pretense of being relaxed, of being calm and impartial.
“Was he important to you?”
She stilled and he instantly regretted his choice of words—sloppy, giving away more than he ever wanted to, ever intended to. “He would’ve made more of life than me. That’s for sure.”
She lowered her canister, before allowing it to drop into her bag without care of the canisters that it hit, of the paint that was leaking.
“You don’t think you’ve done well for yourself?”
Her answer was a light shake of the head that Jason hadn’t expected more to come of, “If you’d met him, you’d know. An overflowing well of potential, good at everything he did. Kind, gentle.” Jason wondered if they were talking about the same person.
Jason couldn’t fathom that she had viewed his clumsy, cringe teenage self as someone that would’ve made more of their life than her: the driven, motivated artist.
The top of her class, the prodigal child. Jason could remember having been surprised when he learned she was drawing him—having never once considered him worth a second of her thought, especially hadn’t known how his death would seem to haunt her, careening her life off track (he had never remembered her to be so messy, so scattered).
Jason had only wanted to see the artist, to find where she fit and reclaim the parts of him that lived with her, passing through her life—he hadn’t wanted to introduce himself to her and yet somehow, had found himself returning to the artist, sitting with her for hours after he had impulsively introduced himself to her. Jason liked to say he returned out of concern: Gotham at night was one of the last places he wanted to find her.
Those feelings were dangerous, risky, could lead to confessionals: He would slip up, alluding to a detail that would alert the artist that he had been routinely breaking into her apartment for months.
Talia had shaped a man out of clay but had forgot the most important part: a soul, a passion, something innately human that Jason had begun to rediscover with the artist.
***
This time, Jason was staring at her other easel. The constant revolving door of canvas had a portrait of someone Jason hadn’t ever seen her paint: Red Hood. The faintest outline, the mask, still murky and undefined. His body more blobs of varying coloring, vaguely in a human-like shape with the moonlight illuminating him from behind, casting Red Hood in a light that Jason thought of as excessively intimidating.
Their first encounter from her point of view, he surmised. Then, he turned his attention to the even larger painting taking up the majority of her desk space, precariously closet of falling off the edge.
Jason was grinning now—this was their secret. The painting was a forgery, but an expert one with craquelure and a slight tint, as if it had not been fully restored.
This was her real job: the artist only worked part-time as a muralist, it was something that filled her time while she worked on forgeries while she passed herself off as an art historian, occasionally working to authenticate her own pieces. Vaguely, he knew that she worked with others to bring the paintings in and that was how she had been able to pass the works through the system so well, but that had been a low priority investigation.
To Jason, she was an impressive forger. To others, her professional opinion was merely an addition to the thoughts of her peers.
She was overlooked, if someone would discover the forgeries in the next 50 years, they wouldn’t be traced back to her as the culprit—she would be painted as a mediocre art historian who missed crucial details of the paintings fake status while remaining in obscurity: the artist would never receive the fame of Elmyr de Hory or Han van Meegeren,
If Jason were to open the bottom drawer of the storage cabinet, behind her commonly used easel, he would find the raw materials to make pigments, various brushes with different hairs depending on the artist she was replicating.
His eyes flickered to the drawer: closed. She left it open while in the middle of working on a painting. Jason leaned closer, the forgery looked unfinished to him, but he also didn’t entirely know whose work she was replicating though he could remember the learning of painting in similar styles, referred to as Baroque.
The scene was of many men, in regal clothing and in a setting similar to an old-fashioned courtroom. Jason had seen countless like it in his travels.
Jason had developed a habit of walking through museums and art galleries while he traveled. The older the painting, the more rare the collection, the more Jason gravitated towards it.
It was something he had done since the first month he had woken from the Lazarus pit. It was an unexplainable attraction, Jason had felt almost forced to visit any museum he saw. Consuming art that he didn’t fully understand, wondered where he got the compulsion from.
Then it had transitioned into a form of connection with her. A way that Jason resisted the urge to visit her, he told himself that just imaging she had looked at the same paintings was enough. Then, Jason liked to imagine that some of them were her forgeries.
He liked to pretend that his time spent in high school with her allowed him a special connection to her work. That he could recognize her forgeries even when they were perfect imitations. He knew from seeing them in progress that she would sometimes wouldn’t be happy with a perfect imitation, paint something to completion before scraping it away and bringing it back to level to paint again.
Those small details that mimicked true copies.
The artist had always hated scenery, hated the small details that separated a good artist from a great artist but judging from the ‘classical work’ in front of him she had overcome it.
Or at least, wanted enough money to work past it.
Jason would sometimes find her in the making of pigments, having to have left mid-way for something and never bothering to put them away. The smell of Lilac was nauseatingly intense in the studio, wafting outside the studio and hitting him as soon as he would step inside.
It clung to her, Jason had read countless descriptions of the ways that characters in novels smelt: sandalwood, smoke, cherries, whatever description used Jason hadn’t ever understood until he came back for her.
Jason turned from her forgery, to the painting of him in the old easel and tried to find what was different about it. He squinted his eyes, and leaned close to see if there was a build up of paint, where she had chosen to paint over, and over til it was elevated off the canvas but to his surprise, it really didn’t look worked on since his last visit.
“Hm.” Jason tilted his head, it had never not been worked on between his visits, even if those visits were only a day apart. This canvas was living, changing, moving yet now it had stilled and briefly, he wondered if she was beginning to forget the boy she had painted.
***
Her fingers traced the paint strokes of the forgery in front of her, ignoring the curator’s protests. It didn’t fucking matter, the painting was fake and it was damn good. She was irritated, it was too good and it wasn’t hers. Nor could she recognize the painter, which pissed her off even more ‘cause she thought she knew every one of them.
“Who bought this?” She questioned, throwing a cautious glance to one of the nervous curator, angry owner and dumbfounded staff. She narrowed her eyes back at the painting when no one fessed up. This didn’t make her work harder, just told her the buyer was someone who couldn’t admit that they were wrong—common in gallery work and narrowed her suspects.
She leaned back, crossing her arms and pretending that the position helped her commit the painting to memory better, that familiar tells would strike her like lightning and what had been presented as a lost Artemisia Gentileschi, ‘Self Portrait as Saint Cecilia’ would crumble away and she would instantly know who had tried to fuck her over, encroaching in her field.
The painting had a paper trail, albeit a jumbled one that led to nothing–the first sign that it was a fake but not always, that was just what typically drew attention to a piece.
It had passed an x-ray, showing places on the painting where ‘Artemisia’ had scrapped and redone, passed all the initial tests.
That was the easiest for forgers to fake, that was why testing the pigments was vital—why she always insisted on it because when these pigments were tested, they were found to be synthetic and the burden of truth sat on her: telling a crowd of anxious gallery workers that they had been screwed out of a few million.
She prepared herself for the arguments to follow. Accepting that such a good forgery was exactly that was difficult for the majority of the art world—accepting fault, standing against the grain and calling out a good forgery had only given her problems.
“This is a forgery.” The nervous curator looked like he was going to faint. His face had grown so pale that she wasn’t sure there was any blood left in the boy, it must’ve all went to the furious owner who had gotten so red in the face she thought the white of his eyes would fill with blood—he would have an aneurysm and die in front of her if the world was fair.
Thus began the arguing, the defense of the tests and her reasoning. Her patience that grew increasingly short as she came to the conclusion that the bitchy owner had been the one who bought the painting: that was why he was so intent on proving that it wast real, thinking it was his big fucking break when it was nothing but straw.
Towards the end of it, only the owner and three curators remained.
The staff had primarily been extras to the owners embarrassment, when he had likely intended they would be in awe of him for his genuine Gentileschi. They had resumed running the current showing, someone had to be out on the floor and interacting with the patrons, since the owner wouldn’t be.
“You only tested the pigments once.” He snarled, towering over her and attempting to use his inches on her to intimidate her. She wasn’t a brave woman, but she had met Bruce Wayne, begrudgingly tolerated Red Hood—she knew there was worse out there. She was a near recluse—social interaction was far from her forte but forgery was. She let the owner talk, faintly she knew that he had also had experience in art history.
She gave him a once over: expensive gucci loafers, wrinkled slacks and sweat stains forming under his blazer. She could remember listening to him talk of pieces and recognized his sub par knowledge then. She allowed him to continue, this was important to him and she knew that as the owner talked himself in circles, it was his own way of processing the forgery.
“Since it passed all of the other tests–” the owner was impatiently tapping his foot, fiddling with his phone as he bitched at her, “--and–” The curator raised his voice to put a particular emphasis on that “--has a paper trail, we should be doing further testing.”
The phone was at his ear now, she could hear the dial tone.
“You are a curator, from a third-rate majority acceptance rate college, below mediocre graduation problem and bare minimum PhD. You aren’t worth even a third of my resume.” She heard the call pass to voicemail “I have an exceptional history of forgery detection, a proven track record of success.”
She hadn’t meant to grow irritated, but as she thought of her qualifications stacked against his she found the situation increasingly ridiculous. The argument was pointless—when the test results showed everything she needed to explain, everything the owner hadn’t wanted.
She made a note that he wouldn’t work with an established artist for the rest of his fucking career.
“You are an assistant to a mediocre art historian, barely out of college—the cheapest to do the testing.” She hadn’t intended to laugh, not hysterically, but truly finding his continuous state of cluelessness to be the best part of this. “I’m no assistant and by college, you mean a recent graduate of the most competitive PhD program in the country? Ask me how many years I spent.” She leaned closer, standing on her toes to meet his height and seeing the full extent of his clogged pores “I almost broke a record.”
Angry men and stupid men typically overlapped, transitioning into one amalgamation of stupidity that stemmed from their refusal to see a different point of view than what they wanted to see.
One of the male assistant curators stepped in then, having noticed how the owner was further escalating the situation. The artist was fine though, she was being paid by the hour and unbothered by the lack of professionalism.
“Thank you for your expertise.” The curator smiled, tight and pained as fully stepped between the pair while another assistant curator began to talk to the owner. “Feel free to leave. Please send your billable time to us and we will compensate accordingly.” Free to leave, not free to enjoy the gallery. She took the hint, she had ruined their night.
The owner was still talking, rapid-fire hushed whispering to the curators as the artist took her leave. Her hands were shaking, her heart was racing. She felt dizzy, she hated this feeling of post fight adrenaline.
She followed the sound of the gallery, the laughing, the clinking of glasses. She thought of galleries as sacred places and viewed their poised laughter as disruptions, as disrespect. They hadn’t worked a day in their life, most certainly had debutante ball at one point and looked at these pieces at the surface level.
The gallery had a great turn out—it was packed, crowds had people pushing their way through and briefly, she debated on going back into the back of house to avoid being pushed around in the crowd after failing to fight her way through.
Her irritation hadn’t dissipated, but had morphed into a simmering anger that had her stepping into he fray. Something about this event was off in a way that she couldn’t place, something that the artist was attributing to almost every employee having seen the owner yelling at her but had missed her handling of the situation.
Those were the small details that haunted her: the idea that they would think of her as wrong, as unable to defend herself. That misconception would follow her, not openly but within the gallery workers and those they interacted with and she hated, hated, thinking of meeting people who had heard of that incident, who knew of her only in the context of a recent college grad being yelled out by someone who had spent twenty years established in the field.
She was comforted by the knowledge that he would insist for a second opinion, a third, a fourth. That her comments would follow the painting and taint it forever even if lesser historians called it a genuine piece.
Even without the argument, this event had felt wrong. An off sense that she couldn’t place. Lingering dread that had initially existed on the edges of her consciousness but as she stepped further into the ground, became a feeling to run from. The artist was wiping her sweating palms on her slacks, pretending that people weren’t giving her dirty glances as she tried to politely push past with an endless stream of “excuse me.”, “I’m so sorry.”, “my apologies.” Her guilt lessened with progress, reminding herself half of the patrons were drunk, celebratory and she was only passing through.
When the exit was in sight, the dread that had been a consistent melody transformed into a crescendo. It wasn’t an offshoot of her excitement to have made it through the crowd, or the dread of the traffic, or even someone having shoved her too hard.
A dead man’s voice had called out to her, “There you are.” it was a tone she could’ve recognized in a coma. Slightly different—the voice of a grown man, husky around the edges and deeper. Lacking the cracking of his adolescence, the softness that came from a boy’s voice.
She spun around without care of her surroundings, desperate, only to be rewarded by a collision with a server carrying a full tray of champagne. It was fine, the majority of the champagne spilled on her rather than the server, who got away with only splashes of the alcohol and none of the glass.
She hissed as the cold champagne covered her from the collar of her blouse, to past her shoes—she felt the champagne already sinking into her wool socks. She cringed at the feeling of the champagne leaking down her shirt and impulsively tried to use said shirt to dab at the liquid, only managed to smear the alcohol into her chest more. The server had immediately panicked, regardless of her state of almost entirely dry.
The server hadn’t been concerned over the artist who had collided with her, but the spilt champagne and broken glass. Immediately calling for coworkers to help clean the mess and steer curious, whispering patrons away from the scene. The artist was uncomfortably aware of how little they cared for her in that moment—no one asked if she was okay, no one asked if she needed help.
She was looked on with dismay—an inconvenience and that pissed her off. The artist surveyed the crowds, but she didn’t see anyone familiar, anyone that voice could’ve belonged to. She brushed the glass off, not caring how the glass bounced off of her and scattered. She didn’t offer to help the server, didn’t offer an apology or look in her direction. She stood, balancing herself and surveying the crowd again.
The artist decided she ended up better off than the server, despite being soaking wet. This was a gallery that she would never return to, people she would never see. This server would have to deal with the jokes for the rest of the time that she was employed.
She quickened her pace out, licking at a trail of champagne that went down from her forehead, to her lips. “That’s the most expensive they got?” She murmured as she pushed out the doors. The night breeze hit her instantly and the cold of champagne caused her to shiver.
The artist hadn’t parked too far away, one of the benefits of a motorcycle—she could park almost anywhere. The bike hadn’t always been hers and she ran her hand over the scratched in ‘J’ hidden on the gas tank of the cruiser. She hadn’t dressed with the anticipation of being covered in champagne, didn’t have a jacket. Tried to hype herself up for the drive by saying that at least she would dry quickly.
She situated herself on the worn seat, pulling her helmet from where she had locked it on the front of the bike. She considered the bike the last vestiges of Jason—something that he had touched which she could cling to. The artist thought of it as a way to honor him, ignoring that it was more a desperate attempt to cling to the dead.
When people asked about her bike, she should’ve been able to talk about Jason, explain how much he had meant to her but she could never find the words. There were no words that could encompass how vital Jason had been to that teenage version of her and if the world had been fair, he would be the one who turned the engine over and began to drive down the street.
She increased her speed, splitting the lane to get past the increasing traffic.
The artist would never been able to explain Jason’s excitement over the bike. How much he had told her about it when he thought she wasn’t listening. She had always been cautious, nervous when it came to the fast cars and bikes that he had loved; insisting she could never imagine herself speeding like he did. When Jason first disappeared, her first thought was a car accident.
Now, as she turned onto the highway ramp and broke one hundred, she had wished that it was a car accident that took Jason. It would’ve been quick at the speeds he went.
She needed to throw that fucking painting away.
***
Jason’s pace was casual. He had broken into her apartment so many times at this point he knew she never broke from routine.
He was greeted with the smell of the lilacs—faint when she wasn’t actively working on a forgery. The general disarray of her apartment seemed worse tonight: as if she had thrown papers, books, swiped them off the surfaces they were precariously stacked on with the way they lay scattered, some half open, bent and curled.
He stepped over the ones that landed in the walkaway, always careful to never touch any of her belongings. Jason peaked into her room first, more piles of dirty laundry than usual, “Don’t you ever wash laundry?” He murmured as he passed and into the studio space. Jason instantly noticed the distinct absence of the canvas—it was the first thing that he looked at every time he stepped in.
He felt panic, then confusion, then everything had swirled into familiar rage; his comfort. This was no longer a casual, routine visit. Every rigid rule he had maintained dissipated and he launched into desperation, carelessly moving canvas, opening drawers, pulling out cabinets and looking for the canvas.
The artist would know that someone had broken in—Jason didn’t bother to hope that she would expect someone had tried to rob her, every rule that Jason had built around her meant nothing; he meant nothing to her. The canvas was gone, the artist had finally crossed the precipice of apathy, of forgetting Jason.
He had ransacked her studio within minutes before turning his attention to her bedroom—a less thorough desperate search because of how little there was. Jason looked under her bed, pushing aside more piles of garbage that the artist had shoved underneath before moving on to her closet where he pushed aside the piles of crusty clothing.
There was only so many places that she could’ve hidden the canvas.
By the time that Jason had reached the living room, he had lost the drive to search, the anger having dissipated as he was resigning himself to staring at the front door and willed a break in routine; for her to come home early. There was no room for Jason in her life, if he thought about it, there never had been.
Jason’s hands were shaking as he made his way to the window. He hadn’t deluded himself into thinking that his repeated break-ins were ways to connect with her but hadn’t deluded himself into thinking that there had been a reason either, childish affection that never left him.
He wouldn’t come back, Jason would get this shitty fucking apartment complex condemned and he would be fucked to find a new place before the city came. He opened the window with a little too much force, shaking the frame and the walls of the shitty fucking apartment.
Jason stepped out, preparing to slam the window with equal force when he noticed it.
Something behind her couch. This time, he opened the window with a reverence, didn’t dare blink, didn’t dare look away from the point he could see sticking out just slightly from behind the couch—a detail Jason wouldn’t notice if he wasn’t a consistent visitor.
He didn’t instantly pull he canvas out, just stared down at the white edges of the canvas. They hadn’t ever been white before. Jason pulled the couch from the wall, just slightly to postpone looking at the canvas, grateful when it fell forward slightly as the weight of the couch no longer supported it.
Jason’s hands hovered over the edges, then he decided to rip off the bandaid, hastily pulling the worn canvas to eye level. He almost dropped the canvas, suddenly boiling the flesh of his hands.
It was Jason, perfectly as he had been. Jason almost thought he wast staring at a damaged photograph, painted impeccably with harsh strokes and aggressive blending that formed an ultra-realistic portrait with a large, gripping plant ‘X’ over the face.
The brush she used had to have been small because the mark indicated that the artist aggressively swiped at the canvas, repeatedly until the ‘X’ was large enough. At some point, he could see that she had begun to smear the paint with her hands, evident by the black-paint fingerprints on the edges and circular smears in the ‘X’.
Jason raised his spare hand, trailing over the raised service of the ‘X’ but felt little from under his gloves.
In World 3-7 of Yoshi's Island, the bubble-spitting Barney Bubble enemy and the Clawdaddy crab enemy appear in the same room. While they are a few screens away from each other, Yoshi can still easily eat one of the bubbles, backtrack to the Clawdaddy, and spit the bubble at him.
This interaction was evidently not tested during development, as the Clawdaddy will then enter a glitched state in which he will slide back and forth rapidly. The Clawdaddy will no longer be able to be interacted with, and will continue sliding forever until the room is exited.
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