Roadside Inspiration

Harmonies of the Multiverse

THEME

When Jupiter collides with autumn, a single moment is born between two entities. Equal harmonies with balance, dancing along a fine line of too far and too near, of brightest and dimmest, of perfect alignment. People say that on an equinox, the sky divides into two parts, golden light and silver darkness.

For Damian Wayne, it meant heading to the rooftop instead of sleeping peacefully in his bed, staring at the sky, but not seeing anything. His eyes would remain blank as they stared up at the twinkling stars almost covered by the rancid smog. He learned at too young of an age that life was not about myths and fairytales, but of monsters in the form of flesh and bone which held their smiles on their face and their daggers in your back.

The equinox meant facing the demons of his past.

He always knew he was never the best person. He wouldn't ever be as selfless as Dick, he wouldn't be as level-headed as Tim, or even as passionate as Jason. He wouldn't have his father's ingrained need to help the dying cesspool they lived in, and he would never have Alfred's heaven-bound level of patience. There would always be that selfish, rash, cold-hearted, narcissistic, impatient prince lying inside of him, waiting to rear its foul head. It surfaced every second he held a blade in his hand, at every mob member terrorizing innocents and criminals alike, every abuser, every villain. A voice inside him purred to rid the world of their filth, of their moral grime. And every single time, it grew louder and louder and louder and louder.

Each time a criminal escaped through his grasp was another chip in his fortitude.

Each time an innocent civilian broke a smile at him, only to die minutes later from an explosion was a stab in the wall between morally good and vengeance.

For every stabbing heart, for every gutless cry of a mother who lost their child.

Wouldn't it be so much easier to erase them before they could commit such barbarisms?

The cold kissed his cheeks, so much like a viper's poison, and he shook his head, banishing the thought from his mind. Ah, she's still inside my head.

Maybe symphonies are built on a beautiful melody. However, the melody would never work if they worked on different concepts. The one his father blasted into his mind was a righteous march, darker in tone than most melodies, but an overarching victory for Good reigned. It taught him patience, morals, ethics, light against darkness.

But, his mother taught him the cellist's devil nature. The darker tones, the echoing, vibrating puppet master giving the audience the illusion that the melody is in control, but in reality, all the melody can do is fall victim to the villainous, tragic whirlpool of misery, murder, and fascist brutality. She placed the blade in his hand, had him earn her love through feats of glorious atrocities, built him up from the ground up into the perfect weapon, too jagged and unpredictable to be used for Good, but whittled down, rusted and corrupted for far too long to be remolded into something useful.

Now, he didn't know where he belonged. Did his melody rise above the dark cello nurtured in him? Or will the melody drown under the alluring, tempest bass driven through his heart, buried deeper than the center of the Earth?

The wind, maybe sensing his demise, could do nothing but blow harder to calm his feverish head filled with questions he could not answer. The somber cold stung the sweet chapped lips all too used to the desert's ice and fire of his childhood, but it stung more bitterly as the North Atlantic ocean blew in the new change in season. Gotham was an outlier. A ghost town of improbabilities and plausibility all clashed together to create a cesspool of madness, hate, and impossibilities.

He wondered why his father, or his ancestors before him, would ever want to stay in a city like this for the rest of their rich, detached lives. Why they would ever choose to spend their lives in this miserable landfill, giving what they have to make the ever-draining city a better place. Why they gaze at the buildings and streets with fond gazes. Why they find it so easy to smile at a Gotham native without feeling like they will get a knife's edge poking their sternum the moment they show their backs.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he cursed God that he was not given this ingrained sense of belonging and mercy to Gotham like all of his family before him.

Pages rustled on in the breeze, and, by miraculous luck, the cover tipped open. Blue light shone through the darkness beyond his closed eyelids, but he did not notice beyond the salty river squeezing through the crevice.

"S'il te plaît, ne me dis pas que tu pleures." Please, don't tell me you're crying. Soft French carried over the quiet din. "I never know what to do when you are crying."

He pried his eyes open, and a vision filled his eyes. A girl, no older than he was, but with a more youthful smile cracked in sorrow, dressed in a midnight blue evening gown glowing in the darkness, blowing in the wind to its own rhythm as it reflected the stars ten times brighter than Gotham Fair's lights. She floated over the torn book of ancient Tibetan magic he brought with him that night, just like he did every solstice, her legs crossed underneath her in an informal squat. Cheeks blossomed like dusky luminescent wisteria, and constellations made of stars brighter than Rigel lost across the bridge of her nose. Her blue crown of hair burned a halo around her, framing bluebell eyes that looked older than a thousand of his lifetimes staring deep into his own green eyes.

The only word he could say was, "Marinette."

Her grin made his heart's symphony subito pianissimo. "Hi, Damian. Happy Autumn Solstice."

================

not me wanting to make this a full fic ;v; (hence the chapter title "theme")

for @jumpingjoy82 for the maribat gift exchange 2022 (i posted on time on archive, just not on tumblr ;v;)

Jason: Kid we need you to-

Jason:

Jason: Are you making Sims of the entire family?

Damian: Yes, I'm also going to recreate Wayne Manor to house them all. Do you want to join me?

Jason: Scooch over I have an idea for one of Dick's outfits

Since I've got nothing to do, I decided to share a scene from the comics that destroyed me.

But before that I need to give you some information. This post is about Damian's death.

Before his fight with Heretic, Bruce orders Damian to stay inside because it's dangerous.

But of course he doesn't stay in. Instead he tells Alfred that he needs to help Bruce. And eventually he convinces Alfred.

We all know what happens after that. Damian dies by the hands of the Heretic.

Then time passes, and everyone is grieving. But Bruce is devastated and builds a simulation machine that replicates the fight between Damian and the Heretic.

The purpose of the machine is for Bruce to prove to himself that he could've saved Damian. If only he was faster and stronger etc.

However in every single simulation he fails and keeps seeing Damian die and die. He doesn't give up however and keeps going for 4 days.

Eventually, Alfred being worried, call Dick to talk some sense into Bruce. Dick, not being able to convince Bruce, goes into the simulation with him and manages to save Damian and kill Heretic by stabbing a pole through his chest.

Bruce then agrees to take a break and leaves. We are then left alone in the cave with Alfred. But it doesn't end there, and this happens:

Honestly, this hurt me more than seeing Bruce's grieving. And it does make sense that he'd blame himself.

Anyways just wanted to share this...

Tim, [pointing his staff at the human traffickers]: YOU ARE OUTGUNNED

Jason, [hyping him up]: WHAT?

Tim: OUTMANNED!

Jason: WHAT?!

Tim: OUTNUMBERED OUTPLANNED

Jason: PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES!

Tim: PUT YOUR GUNS DOWN ON MY COMMAND

Jason: HAND EM OVER!!

Tim: THIS IS HAMILTON MY RIGHT HAND MAN!

Jason, [getting his guns out]: PWO PWO PWO PWO PWO-

Goons: *shaking* what the FUCK are Batman feeding his partners--

keeping this as a reminder whenever i feel like my writing isn’t good enough

MARIBAT ARROW APRIL 2023

April is dedicated to the ARROWS. This can be any member of the Green Arrow/Arrowverse extended family.

Roynette Shippers This Is Your Month!

Got an even rarer pair? Those work too!

It can also be BioFam!

Do one prompt! Do them all! Any participation is great! They just serve as ways to encourage that creativity. No Pressure.

This year we are adding an extra prompt weeks for the most popular arrow ship: Roynette! Like with the calendar, only write those prompts which inspire you. You don't have to do them all, and you don't have to do both (though, extra kudos to anyone who tries).

AO3 COLLECTION:

This is the same collection from last year, with a new tag, so if you are looking for last year's this is it now.

TAGS FOR BOTH TUMBLR AND AO3: 

#Arrow April #Arrow April 2023

BE SURE TO TAG THIS BLOG @MARIBAT-CALENDAR-EVENTS AND REBLOG SO OTHERS GET A CHANCE TO SEE TOO!

Guidelines

Any orientation or relationship style is welcome and encouraged (familial, platonic, romantic, aged-up NSFW)!

Any creative works (writing, fics, drabbles, head-canons, art, poetry, incorrect quotes, etc.) are accepted

Tag @maribat-calendar-events in your works so we can share it

Use the hashtag so others can see your work

Keep NSFW works under the ‘Keep Reading’ line with an appropriate warning above

Questions? Send us a message/ask, or contact @izanae

Get creative and have fun! We all look forward to your participation and submissions!

okay something I was thinking about yesterday was how Tomoe clearly wants Kagami and Adrien to be together because of status, right? Adrien is an adequate match for Kagami in terms of wealth and upraising?

I simply think it would be really funny if Kagami chose to date Felix instead and Tomoe couldn't even be mad because Felix is, if anything, more adequate than Adrien - more money, more status, he's even lined up for lordship in Britain. And he's a gentleman, too - he only does what is expected of him socially.

And she hates him so much but there's nothing she can do, no argument she can make, because he's - on every tangible level - perfect, just really really fucking annoying.

The saying ‘someone walked over my grave’ and everyone assumes Jason is just being morbid. He’s not- he shivers every time someone steps near the casket. The family doesn’t know how he can always tell when one of them visits his grave but he will blow up the group chat complaining about it.

Editing next week's episode of the podcast, and I noticed we introduced our guest as having a PhD from Notre Dame.

At the time, I thought nothing of it, because usually when one says that, it's understood that you mean the university in Indiana, and that is in fact the case here -- she has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame, the one in Indiana.

But, as we all know, Notre Dame just means "Our Lady" -- i.e., Mary -- and so lots of things are named that, especially when Catholics are doing the naming.

There are of course other educational institutions called "Notre Dame". When I was growing up, we were all aware of the nearby "College of Notre Dame of Maryland" -- not because of any particular prestige the college possessed, but because its initials spelled CoNDoM, which is a very funny thing to happen to a Catholic institution.

I double-checked this when making this post, and apparently they changed their name to "Notre Dame of Maryland University" in 2011 after over a century of being called CoNDoM.

But you could iterate this idea into absurdity.

There is of course the cathedral:

"Yes, I have a PhD from Notre Dame." "Oh, the one in Indiana?" "No, the one in Paris. You know, Quasimodo and all that." "I didn't know they granted degrees." "Well, it's honorary."

A variety of just... places:

"Yes, I have a PhD from Notre Dame." "Oh, the one in Indiana?" "No, Notre Dame Bay. In Newfoundland." "Um..." "The Lady of the Bay, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft a sheepskin from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I was an expert in my field."

And, naturally, the original:

"Yes, I have a PhD from Notre Dame." "Oh, the one in Indiana?" "No, Notre Dame. Our Lady. Mary, Mother of God." "Sorry, what?" "She appeared to me in a vision and said I had a doctorate now." "I wasn't aware her authority extended to the granting of terminal degrees." "You want to tell her that?"

...this whole post is just such nonsense. Maybe that fever hasn't really dissipated yet.

I don't think this one deserves them, no.