Helen Oyeyemi, White Is For Witching // Legends Of The Dark Knight (2021) #16 // Lidia Yuknavitch, The

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Take one.

Micah is strong. More magic runs through his veins than any other student his age. He’s a little too human for Shadow Weaver’s tastes but she’s sure that it can be trained out of him. Then she doesn’t train it out of him fast enough.

She pays for that. Dearly.

~

Take two.

Catra is angry. She’s full of desperation and rage and Shadow weaver can understand that completely. She hopes at first that the anger can be turned into drive, into a need it be the best. It works, sort of. Shadow Weaver can see that she needs greatness like Shadow Weaver craves it, but she buries it. Buries it under her need for connection.

It’s pathetic, Shadow Weaver thinks. Pathetic and childish. She writes Catra off as a failure perhaps a little too early.

~

Take three.

Adora is perfect. Start to finish. She’s Shadow Weaver’s magnum opus. But she’s also not quite right. There’s not enough doubt in her for her to belong to Shadow Weaver, and if she doesn’t belong to Shadow Weaver then she can’t control her. And at that point, what is the child worth? Really?

~

Take four.

Glimmer is untrained and messy and has just had far too much responsibility thrust upon her for someone so young. It’s the perfect breeding ground for dependence. Her magic is just like Micah’s and Shadow Weaver is reminded that if she’d just had a little more time with the boy then he could have been exactly what she wanted. She’ll have that time with Glimmer, she thinks.

She’s wrong.

~

Take five.

There is no take five.

It’s probably a good thing.

Wirt and Greg learn magic: 1

~

After speaking the words of his first spell, Greg decides that he doesn’t like magic.

It’s a hard decision for him to make, because magic makes Wirt happier than almost anything else and Greg’s fairly sure that all the things that make his brother happy are good, but Greg doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. When he says the same words that he’s heard Wirt mumbling under his breath for the past few months something in his gut stirs with a feeling of wrong which makes his brain go fuzzy and scared until there are tears in the corners of his eyes.

Wirt doesn’t talk to him about magic after that. It makes Greg a little sad, because he worries that he’s ruined one of the only things that Wirt’s enjoyed since getting home, but he’s also very relieved. As long as Wirt keeps all of his magic away from him then maybe Greg won’t ever have to feel that awful feeling of wrong again and everything can go back to normal.

~

Things change a month or so later when Wirt asks him to read a spell.

“It’s different from the last one.” he says, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand he probably doesn’t realise still has sigils smudged across it, “I found it when I was looking into Auntie Whispers, not Adelaide, and when I read it I felt-” He shudders.

“Did it feel wrong? In your tummy?” asks Greg, so his brother doesn’t have to say it.

Wirt nods. He still looks worried even though he really shouldn’t and Greg takes the paper.

“You don’t have to!” says Wirt, panicked, “this was a bad idea, I shouldn’t have shown you this, I don’t want anything to-”

Greg starts to read.

He reads and instead of feeling something in him turn foul like he’d half expected, he feels… good.

As he speaks something that had been shaken out of place when he read that first spell slots back into place, something he didn’t even realise he’d been missing. He speaks the words and he likes the way they taste in his mouth and the way that as he says them he feels braver. He finishes reading and looks up at Wirt who’s smiling broader than Greg thinks he might have ever seen before.

“I’ve decided that I like magic.” Greg says with finality and it make Wirt smile even wider.

The parallel in the umbrella academy where in ‘I think we’re alone now’ it says ‘the beating of our hearts is the only sound’ and Vanya using the beating of her heart to bust out of the cage thing is god tier foreshadowing and you can’t convince me otherwise.

“Sometimes I think Batman is the only thing I made right.” Bruce says to no one in particular. The words cause Alfred to freeze for a moment before going back to work. “You disagree?” Bruce asks, not wanting to leave secrets between them.

Alfred looks up at him. “I have always thought of Batman as your worst creation, Sir.”

His tone is serious but Bruce can’t help but laugh. “I made the Red Hood, I made the Joker Alfred. You really think Batman is worse than them?”

“Yes I do, Master Bruce.” Alfred says, refusing to look at him.

The exchange is disjointed enough that Bruce stops laughing immediately. A tense silence is left hanging in the air.

Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the night.

DC Super-Heroes by Gabriel Picolo.

Scars, India Lawton / Becca Stadlander / This Party Never Ends, Diana Zhuk / Burning House in Winter, Bettmann Archive / Daria Golab / Shadow Work, Indigo / Painting Disaster From A Distance, Motohide Takami / Burn it Down, Brian Luong / Red House, Morten Schelde

catra and bakugou are the same character in different fonts in this ted talk-

Watching young justice and nothing is funnier than the justice league telling off the kids and captain marvel standing in the background trying not to act sus

I’ve been a fan of wolf 359 for YEARS and you have the AUDACITY to tell me that they put out Eiffels version of the lords prayer and NO ONE TOLD ME?!!!?!

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