So the shower perch fell off the wall today and Mia got a bit more water than she bargained for
Mia would like the internet to know that she is now warm and dry

So the shower perch fell off the wall today and Mia got a bit more water than she bargained for
Mia would like the internet to know that she is now warm and dry
if you think about it, every time we tranquilize animals to transport them safely to another place, we are the sleep paralysis demon
Peanuts by Charles M Schulz
after Edward Hopper
this is everything
Two cats won’t give up on trying to enter a Japanese Art Museum, the war has been going on for 2 years now.
You guys are missing the best part: THE CATS HAVE THEIR OWN MUSEUM MERCH.
Nearly twenty minutes after his call with Alfred finds Jason peering warily around the Gotham City Cemetery. Luckily it is actually dark and no one is in this area of town to see Jason half out of his mind searching for a spectral black dog.
Spooky is nowhere to be found and Jason still can’t feel that pull from before. The only thing keeping him from heading straight to the grave site is that Dick doesn’t know where it is. He texted Jason about 10 minutes ago that he, Cass, and Damian are on their way with Shovels. Jason doesn’t know when Cass got involved with this. Probably overheard Dick and Alfie talking it over.
He’s practically vibrating out of his skin when the three show up, shovels in hand.
“Any chance we can talk you out of this?” Dick sounds resigned. He already knows the answer he’s going to get but anger still flashes quick and bright for just a second.
“No,” Jason growls out but the anger is gone already. All he’s left with is that hollow ache where the pull used to reside. It echoes wrong wrong wrong and he can’t ignore any of it any longer. “I need this. It’s driving me insane.”
“Okay,” Dick says softly.
They follow him without any further words. Even Damian keeps his typical snarky commentary to himself.
Huh…Jason must look worse than he thought.
The realization that he didn’t remember to bring a flashlight hits Jason upside the head like a two-by-four as they reach the grove hiding away the unmarked grave.
“Uh…do you guys have any flashlights or headlamps?”
“Tt. Of course we do. We are not imbeciles,” Damian snaps with his usual snark. It’s hilarious that the commentary is soothing for Jason. Everything must be okay if Damian is stating his opinion for all to know and ragging on his siblings.
“Good…Good. It’s right here, I’ll mark it out so we can start digging. Spooky’s not here and I’m kinda-“ he trails off mid sentence to stare at the unmarked grave. It’s weak, but he can feel that pull again.
“-on, Jason!”
He blinks and drags his gaze over to Cass who has a gentle hand on his arm, then to Dick who was calling his name.
“Sorry. I'm fine. I just…I can feel that pull again, but it’s really weak.”
“Okay, Jaybird. Mark it out and we can get started.”
The others work in shifts, four people digging a single person sized grave gets a little tight after a while, but Jason can’t stop. He can’t bring himself to dawdle when he’s so close, that pull is feeling more like a cry for help. He’s fighting a losing battle trying to logic his way out of this feeling. The cry is so weak but so desperate. Same. Help. Same, echoes in that pull and Jason doesn’t understand. He’s starting to really worry about what they might find here.
Cass’s shovel hits something first. The muted clang of metal on buried metal brings them all to a halt to stare.
She signs, “close.”
Jason blinks before renewing his efforts at digging. It takes so long, even after they reach the surface of the metal coffin (who on Earth wants or can afford a metal coffin?), to unearth it enough to do anything with it. The metal coffin beneath his feet buzzes with a sort of alien energy. The flat gray metal broken up by lines and shapes of that same shade of glowing green as Spooky’s eyes. Dick brushes some dirt off by hand as he searches for some sort of locking mechanism but when Jason reaches to do the same the blasted contraption shocks him.
“What the-??”
“Did it just, did the coffin just shock you?” Dick asks uncertainly.
“I sure did. Felt like a high voltage electric fence.”
“But I’m fine,” Dick comments softly, as though unsure of this reality.
“Yes, we do have eyes, Richard,” Damian says sharply. They all know he's really just worried, he's tensed to spring into action.
Cass rests a gently restraining hand on Damian’s shoulder as her gaze moves searchingly between Jason, Dick, and the coffin.
"I will try," she signs and slips into the hole with Jason and Dick. She nudges Jason when he doesn't move. "Shoo. Out."
It takes everything in him not to snarl at her. He's in the way and standing there in the hole isn't going to get that coffin open or out any faster. Even once he's out, he can't help but crouch at the edge like some demonic supervisor. Cass stretches out a bare hand to touch the cool grey metal. She doesn't immediately recoil and even drags her fingers up to the glowing green.
"Buzzes," she informs them without looking up. "Not painful, just uncomfortable."
"Tt." Damian drops in beside her and crouches down to touch the metal. He draws his hand back, not quite a flinch or pained recoil, but something close. "It's like a static shock." He moves his hand to rest once more on the metal. "It's manageable when I maintain contact. As Cassandra stated, uncomfortable."
"Oooo-kay, I think we need to call Zatanna. This whole thing passed into magic territory a long time ago," DIck suggests, his tone kept carefully light.
"No, not enough time." Even Jason is surprised by his own words.
"You see, that right there is exactly why I need to call her," Dick replies with his phone already out.
Cass pats Jason's hand from her position below him. It's distracting enough and soothing enough for Jason to relax his overly tensed muscles. This shouldn't be bothering him as much as it is. Of course that's the way this whole thing has been ever since he set foot in this stupid cemetery.
Sorry Spooky.
"Hey Zee, how good are you with death and/or ghost stuff?" Dick pauses to listen and takes a deep breath. "So the gist of it is, we just dug up a glowing green and metal coffin. While I can touch it fine, Jaybird gets a nasty shock and Big-C and Babybird are mildly uncomfortable to varying degrees whenever any of them touch it bare handed." Another pause. "Yeah, that's what I said, but I don't think Jaybird can wait. He's been insistent we get it open. He doesn't know why either, but it looks like it's been driving him up a wall." Dick goes serious as he listens. "There's more to it, but that was my first instinct as well." He taps a finger on his dirt stained pant leg. "He can explain it better, he's the one experiencing it. Here," he says as he offers his phone to Jason. Cass snags it and passes it up.
"Hi Zatanna," Jason grinds out and then clears his throat. "Sorry, every second we waste standing here makes me more and more on edge."
[Dick said you had more info?] Short and straight to the point.
"When I first came back to Gotham, I felt this pull towards the cemetery. I ignored it for various reasons. Around two and a half weeks ago I finally checked it out. Met a grim, a Church Grim, Barghest, The Black Dog, whatever you wanna call them, doesn't matter. They lead me to an unmarked grave hidden away. It's old, probably from before I got back." Jason sighs as he pulls up the memory of Spooky. "Spooky was very insistent about digging up the grave. They're a spectral dog, they couldn't touch the ground, couldn't dig it up. The pull felt more urgent after that, or maybe that was just me. Stuff came up, important stuff. I woke up today and the pull was gone, like bad gone and I dragged Big Bird and the others out here with me to dig up the grave. I can feel it now, the pull, it's weaker but more desperate. Everything in me screams to get it out, get it open, get him out..." He trails off. Get him out? Him?
[Him?] Zatanna echoes his thoughts.
"That's new. It's like I know more instinctively than consciously..." He murmurs, half to himself. His siblings are looking at him strangely. Cass switches between watching him and the coffin.
[I wanna see this coffin before you open it] Jason opens his mouth to protest but she cuts him off. [Just in case it's cursed or something. You might be right about something being trapped in there, but no sense in cursing yourself or your siblings trying to get it out. Black Dogs are a guardian spirit and are generally no threat to anyone with good intentions. Despite some of their darker lore, they mostly leave well enough alone. I just need to grab a couple of items and I'll be there. I promise I'll go as fast as I can.]
"Kay, thanks," Jason chokes out before Zatanna ends the call. He drops his head into one hand as he passes the phone back through Cass to Dick. "She's on her way. Said I'm probably right about something being trapped there. She just wants to make sure the stupid metal box isn't cursed up the wazzu."
“Good.” Dick nods and plants his hand on his hip.
“You are clearly being influenced by this coffin or the remains within it, Richard made the intelligent call,” Damian huffs out. His inability to remain fully still betrays his concern. Jason appreciates it, even when given in such an unconventional way.
It only took Zatanna 5 whole minutes to collect what she needed and teleport herself to the Gotham City Cemetery. In that amount of time plus the time it took her to find them, both Dick and Cass had to climb out of the dug up grave in order to keep Jason from crawling back in. They each rest a steadying hand on a shoulder and Zatanna can see how much waiting, even this long, has taken a toll on him. Then she sees the 'coffin'. This bastard amalgamation of tech and magic has to be one of the wildest things she's seen, and as a magic user, she's seen some shit. She can't help but stand and stare. That someone could make whatever magical death energies work with the wiring and technological interface without it blowing up or melting down is some kind of supernatural miracle.
"So...what do you think?" Dicks question breaks her fascinated staring.
"Whoever made this unholy abomination either had a blatant disregard to the rules of magic or knew almost nothing about what they were working with. If you tried to recreate this it would be more likely to blow up in your face than work. Death energies notoriously hate technology, but someone somehow managed to frankenstein this monstrosity together."
She looks like she could rant about it half the night so Cass butts in during a pause. "Okay...but can we open it?"
"Yeah, it has mild to severe effects upon those who have died before, depending on the circumstances of death and manner of revival. It was made to contain something related to death so it also keeps dead/undead things out. I'm not gonna question how any of you all have died or been in extensive contact with death energy." She sighs heavily. Just this little encounter has exhausted her. Magic is bullshit and no one knows that better than magic users. "That's a you problem. Don't get locked in it and you're fine."
Jason jumps back in before Cass or Dick can stop him, he's digging around in his jacket pockets and after a long moment where Dick jumps in with him, Jason pulls out a pair of leather gloves. They're biker gloves, not work gloves but right now he doesn't care. He just needs to get to whatever locking mechanism is keeping this blasted thing closed. He's so close. He barely registers Dick and the others pulling him back, encouraging him out of the hole they dug so Zatanna can lift the coffin out for them. His eyes are only for that buzzing green and metal contraption. As soon as it reaches surface level, Jason is on it, fumbling at the stupid, dirt caked latches. He ignores the way his hands burn even through the gloves until finally. Finally...
It's open.
*cackles* you thought I was going to give you resolution?? Also, I feel like magic users being horrified by Fenton tech should be used more often
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Part 1 that I totally didn’t write. You don’t see this part 2 either. wc 1756
Jason was just doing his due diligence.
That was all.
Somehow, someone had rented an apartment on the floor below his.
That shouldn’t have been possible and Jason was absolutely blaming the online system that Tim had insisted he set up for managing the rentals on the various buildings he owned in Crime Alley. It will be easier to keep track of things, Tim had said. With the subsidized apartments it would make aid easier, Tim had said.
Fuck Timbit, Jason thought, bitterly, as he used his master key to enter the apartment.
New fic I guess, I need to stop adding WIPs. A comment on the fic @clockwayswrites isn't writing kinda snowballed into this. So have a snippet:
There was a knock on Jason’s door. He frowned, quickly slotting the loaded clip back into the gun he’d finished cleaning. He got up moving silently towards the door. It was probably some lost UPS guy, it wouldn’t be the first time.
He looked through the peephole then blinked. Nothing? Another knock. A kid then. Quickly he disassembled the trap on his door and holding the gun behind his back he opened his door a crack.
…
Jason was not computing what he was seeing. Outside the door was… a floating, green… eyeball creature?
What the-
Practical effects, puppets and robots at fan conventions are becoming more and more mind boggling, while Hollywood continuously pretends, that they’re “unrealistic” and CGI is the one true way going forwards.
He's got real camera
HE'S GOT REAL CAMERAS IN HIS EYES
Someone's piloting him FPV
DP x DC. Danny Phantom, Superman, Batman.
A group of villains attack an event they know the JL is going to be investigating undercover. They're looking for secret Identities amongst the crowd, and Danny, long since a full-fledged adult, happens to be attending as well.
Danny, unlike Clark, does not dress to conceal his physique, or hide behind glasses, or hold himself to seem smaller or bumbling.
He gets wrongly picked out as Superman within moments.
And Danny, who can fly, who has mild superstrength, who can tell where kryptonite is because it radiates like all food-quality ectoplasam, who's not as concerned about being discovered since the meta rights act overturned the anti-ecto acts, and who's only become more of a gremlin as full fledged adult, figures 'Sure, why not, I can be Superman :)'
Batman is not the only person who is blindsided when "Superman" leans over and eats the kryptonite right out of the man's hand.
"That was rock candy." Not-Superman gave the man a cheshire cat grin. "You might want to double-check your supplier."
"That was definitely kryptonite," Superman informed him over the com, his voice flat with the kind of flabbergasted disbelief Batman had thought they both left behind a couple of world-ending-disasters ago.
Day (634/100) in my #∞daysofwriting @the-wip-project 24th of Feb
You said 'long since a full-fledged adult' so I'm putting our boy at a neat and tidy 30. (This is also the year he will stop aging at a normal speed and start doing so at an extremely slow one. Vlad sitting pretty at looking the same as when he was 45ish though ages quicker than Danny while slower than regular humans.) He and Vlad will eventually claim to be half brothers when (quasi/functional) immortality identity covers become necessary.
Bruce is 32, Dick is 17, Jason is 13. (Dick and Jason not present in this drabble.) Hints of Danny/Bruce
None of this is important, but by god do I love world building bullshit.
Onward!
I grow our own vegetables. Many hybrid and heirloom varieties are bred for flavor rather than for commercial appeal and travel. There are entire species on the allotment that you can’t easily buy in stores because of this - like salsify, a root vegetable that tastes of fish and shellfish. Our neighbours happily take it to make vegan latkes of alarming similarity to fishcakes. You cannot sell it in stores because - despite looking like a white parsnip - it turns brown when you pick it if you scrape/bruise/cut the white root in any way, or damage the delicate little hairs, for some reason, it BLEEDS RED and is very upsetting to look at.
There are whole classes of foods like this. Foods that just don’t ship well or look good on supermarket shelves. Forbidden fruits. Vegetables that bleed and taste like meat. Sorry about this
This website is one of my fav places to find interesting heirloom stuff! I ordered a bunch of seeds to try growing next year I’m really excited about!
I’ve gotten and plants seeds from that site, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and they grow fantastically well for me.
I’m really looking forward to next season
Baker Creek Heirloom has good seeds but bad politics. They were going to host Cliven Bundy of the Occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Reserve who’s also pro the Capitol Riots and has made a lot of racist nastiness, although backlash made them cancel their guest list (which included other racist folks) Good sources of heirloom seeds:
Highly recommend Native Seed/Search and Truelove. Baker Creek has an amazingly large catalog and has some very cool and rare stuff, but they are also Mennonites and as you might expect, they do have terrible politics as listed above, although they do some decent work preserving heirloom seeds from threatened communities.
An organization that does really interesting work preserving seed from threatened communities (and larger companies like baker creek often piggyback off of some of the work done by orgs like this and NS/S) is the Experimental Farm Network. They are very explicit about their (left-leaning) political views and you don’t have to worry about them being Problematic. They have lots of interesting and rare varieties and species you really cannot find anywhere else.
If you are looking for a wider selection of heirloom seed varieties, these two companies are very good resources as well, and carry many of the same things as Baker Creek. Afaik they are not expressly political beyond their general mission to preserve heirloom seeds (although southern exposure does a good job of preserving some very traditional african-American heirlooms from the Southeast US in particular).
Omg I hadn’t heard of the Experimental Farm Network and I am delighted! I am also completely thrilled to see people other than me remember that Baker Creek is a bunch of lying fash. They claimed they did not know about Cliven Bundy AFTER VISITING HIM IN JAIL. He was literally in jail for his anti-social bullshit when they first talked to him about the watermelons he and his mentor stole from Indigenous people and made their name on. They also take seeds from Indigenous communities globally and profit from them without sharing those profits with the communities they took the seeds from.
…I am blocked by them on Twitter after publicizing the Cliven Bundy crap, full disclosure, I have an actual feud with these people and their unethical practices.
I was trying to get signal in the goddamn Himalayas to argue with them about Bundy. *grumble*
I also second Native Seed/SEARCH as a great org doing great work. Some of their stuff is so desert-adapted it won’t grow for me, but I’ve had great luck with some of their bean varieties.
New Zealand people: have some links.
https://www.sentinelsgroup.co.nz/ Heirloom growers group in Canterbury. Some truly unusual stuff.
https://southernseed.org.nz Another group out of Christchurch. These guys went out of their way to help me find a rare plant that had shown up in their area like five years before I contacted them. They found it for me and shipped tubers to Wellington.
https://www.seedstofeeds.nz/upcoming-events Seed and seedling swaps, all over the country.
https://www.urbanorganics.org.nz/seed-exchange Otago seed exchange
https://kahikateafarm.co.nz/ Live plants, some of them truly hard to find.
https://koanga.org.nz/ These guys had a scandal a while back and never really recovered. Their range is much reduced (unless you’re a member), but they do the work of importing new species into the country, so some of their stuff can’t be found anywhere else.
https://www.sporeshift.co.nz Mushrooms!
kingsseeds.co.nz/ A large commercial grower. Their seeds are clearly labelled if they’re heirloom (older varieties) or open pollinated (you can save seeds for next year). They have some less common things, as well as all the more popular stuff.
An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.
But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.
You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.
That's a "you" thing, not a "we" thing.
If you like frogs. Or possums. Or cool builds. Or happiness. This is the video for you.
Here it is folks:
My definitive ranking of my least favorite bodies of water! These are ranked from least to most scary (1/10 is okay, 10/10 gives me nightmares). I’m sorry this post is long, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this.
The Great Blue Hole, Belize
I’ve been here! I have snorkeled over this thing! It is terrifying! The water around the hole is so shallow you can’t even swim over the coral without bumping it, and then there’s a little slope down, and then it just fucking drops off into the abyss! When you’re over the hole the water temperature drops like 10 degrees and it’s midnight blue even when you’re right by the surface. Anyway. The Great Blue Hole is a massive underwater cave, and its roughly 410 feet deep. Overall, it’s a relatively safe area to swim. It’s a popular tourist attraction and recreational divers can even go down and explore some of the caves. People do die at the Blue Hole, but it is generally from a lack of diving experience rather than anything sinister going on down in the depths. My rating for this one is 1/10 because I’ve been here and although it’s kinda freaky it’s really not that bad.
Lake Baikal, Russia
When I want to give myself a scare I look at the depth diagram of this lake. It’s so deep because it’s not a regular lake, it’s a Rift Valley, A massive crack in the earth’s crust where the continental plates are pulling apart. It’s over 5,000 feet deep and contains one-fifth of all freshwater on Earth. Luckily, its not any more deadly than a normal lake. It just happens to be very, very, freakishly deep. My rating for this lake is a 2/10 because I really hate looking at the depth charts but just looking at the lake itself isn’t that scary.
Jacob’s Well, Texas
This “well” is actually the opening to an underwater cave system. It’s roughly 120 feet deep, surrounded by very shallow water. This area is safe to swim in, but diving into the well can be deadly. The cave system below has false exits and narrow passages, resulting in multiple divers getting trapped and dying. My rating is a 3/10, because although I hate seeing that drop into the abyss it’s a pretty safe place to swim as long as you don’t go down into the cave (which I sure as shit won’t).
The Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota
This is an area in the Brule River where half the river just disappears. It literally falls into a hole and is never seen again. Scientists have dropped in dye, ping pong balls, and other things to try and figure out where it goes, and the things they drop in never resurface. Rating is 4/10 because Sometimes I worry I’m going to fall into it.
Flathead Lake, Montana
Everyone has probably seen this picture accompanied by a description about how this lake is actually hundreds of feet deep but just looks shallow because the water is so clear. If that were the case, this would definitely rank higher, but that claim is mostly bull. Look at the shadow of the raft. If it were hundreds of feet deep, the shadow would look like a tiny speck. Flathead lake does get very deep, but the spot the picture was taken in is fairly shallow. You can’t see the bottom in the deep parts. However, having freakishly clear water means you can see exactly where the sandy bottom drops off into blackness, so this still ranks a 5/10.
The Lower Congo River, multiple countries
Most of the Congo is a pretty normal, if large, River. In the lower section of it, however, lurks a disturbing surprise: massive underwater canyons that plunge down to 720 feet. The fish that live down there resemble cave fish, having no color, no eyes, and special sensory organs to find their way in the dark. These canyons are so sheer that they create massive rapids, wild currents and vortexes that can very easily kill you if you fall in. A solid 6/10, would not go there.
Little Crater Lake, Oregon
On first glance this lake doesn’t look too scary. It ranks this high because I really don’t like the sheer drop off and how clear it is (because it shows you exactly how deep it goes). This lake is about 100 feet across and 45 feet deep, and I strongly feel that this is too deep for such a small lake. Also, the water is freezing, and if you fall into the lake your muscles will seize up and you’ll sink and drown. I don’t like that either. 7/10.
Grand Turk 7,000 ft drop off
No. 8/10. I hate it.
Gulf of Corryvreckan, Scotland
Due to a quirk in the sea floor, there is a permanent whirlpool here. This isn’t one of those things that looks scary but actually won’t hurt you, either. It absolutely will suck you down if you get too close. Scientists threw a mannequin with a depth gauge into it and when it was recovered the gauge showed it went down to over 600 feet. If you fall into this whirlpool you will die. 9/10 because this seems like something that should only be in movies.
The Bolton Strid, England
This looks like an adorable little creek in the English countryside but it’s not. Its really not. Statistically speaking, this is the most deadly body of water in the world. It has a 100% mortality rate. There is no recorded case of anyone falling into this river and coming out alive. This is because, a little ways upstream, this isn’t a cute little creek. It’s the River Wharfe, a river approximately 30 feet wide. This river is forced through a tiny crack in the earth, essentially turning it on its side. Now, instead of being 30 feet wide and 6 feet deep, it’s 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep (estimated, because no one actually knows how deep the Strid is). The currents are deadly fast. The banks are extremely undercut and the river has created caves, tunnels and holes for things (like bodies) to get trapped in. The innocent appearance of the Strid makes this place a death trap, because people assume it’s only knee-deep and step in to never be seen again. I hate this river. I have nightmares about it. I will never go to England just because I don’t want to be in the same country as this people-swallowing stream. 10/10, I live in constant fear of this place.
Honorable mention: The Quarry, Pennsylvania
I don’t know if that’s it’s actual name. This lake gets an honorable mention not because it’s particularly deep or dangerous, but it’s where I almost drowned during a scuba diving accident.
Reconstruction of Whitby Abbey using lighted drones, by Cyberdrone Drone Shows.