#Basically Cass made a mistake

[dcxdpdabbles]

Have you seen the halfa cass post that's been floating around? I'd love to see your take on that

I'm going to assume you mean the au made by @phandomhyperfixationblog so I'll write about that but if I am wrong please let me know in another ask or message.

Cass was sent to Amity Park to investigate its residents' disappearance. Ghost towns in the USA were fairly common, often after they were abandoned, the earth would reclaim the land and would be left untouched for years to come until a lucky urban exploder discovered it again.

What wasn't uncommon was that everything was left behind when the town was abandoned. Cass walks down three more streets, eyes taking in everything around her. Although the lawns were vastly overgrown and the houses left to the elements, there weren't a lot of open spaces.

Empty cars were parked perfectly along the road or in a lot, chairs and tables on porches were left out, children's toys laid in driveways, and after squinting through a few windows, she could see fully furnished households- some even had a slight mess as if the owners hadn't gotten around to their household chores yet.

One house even had a dinner table set up. The meal was rotten and smelled, but she could tell it was a family dinner that was interrupted mid-way.

Yes, everything was covered in dust, as if years had gone by since someone was last here, but otherwise, it looked like a thriving community had been here only a few days ago.

Even the stores were fully stoked, aisled upon aisled of merchandise left untouched for who knows how long. Restuantants were similar, rotten food aside, everything was open and set up as like a normal bussniess hour.

Overall, it didn't seem like the residents willingly abandoned this place. They left literally everything behind. Nothing showed looting either, which indicated how uncommonly outsiders came here.

The fact Cass was investigating Amity Park at all was because she was doing a favor for Raven. The girls didn't talk much, but it was the least she could do as the magic-user had helped her with a fight in Hong Kong a few days ago.

Raven claimed that an abnormal energy pulse came from the town. It wasn't wrong; some places just had more natural energy to them, but she had always wondered what the cause was.

It is a low-level mystery that she put off exploring due to all other priorities, but about a week ago, Raven sensed another pulse-this one reeking of death- and had asked Cass to check it out while she went on a space mission with the rest of the Titans.

She was supposed to take picutes, do some scenes and get some readings. Cass was not expecting to find literally no one for miles.

Cass slowly made her way down streets, breaking into houses and stores, looking for clues. She found no signs of a struggle but that may be due to the time frame of when this happened.

It wasn't until she got to Fenton Works that she managed that she could figure out some parts of the puzzle. The building itself was a challenge to get into. It was rigged to the teeth with weapons and security measures.

Some were old and rusted, but a majority quickly powered up to shoot at her as she tried to get past. Ducking and weaving through the blast she felt all her muscles burn from the rapid dodge she was doing.

Through years of training, she turned a handstand into a run and then a leap to crash through the front window, and the weapons outside halted as soon as she rolled to a stop in what appeared to be a cozy living room.

Weary, she watched as the gun blasters slowly retreated back into the slight holes along the roof, the fake pathway, and the gnome. Once done the world fell silent again. It's now that Cass startles.

She hadn't noticed Amity Park's silence until it was broken. She hadn't heard birds or the wind blowing through the leaves as she walked. Something was terribly wrong in this place.

Maybe she can find out what it was in Fenton Works.

She began her search by examining the walls. They were lined with family photos- a family of father, mother, and what she assumes are the children of both based on facial features, one girl and one boy. There are art pieces every so often- primarily abstract. The furniture is nothing expensive- coming from a generic furniture store. The kitchen smells rotten food- like most houses- but there is a stack of books on the table.

Cass peers down at them, noticing that they all revolve around a psychology of some sort. An open book is lying next to a notebook filled with notes for teenage development. A pencil is even left over the last unfinished sentence.

Danny's need for acceptance may be due to living in my shadow. I should show him more support.

Cass moves upstairs after confirming there is nothing else of value. There, he finds three rooms- a master bedroom obviously belonging to the parents, a slightly larger room belonging to the girl, and the smallest bedroom belonging to the boy.

Cass can confirm that the girl was tidier than the boy but while her room seemed less personal than the boy's. While the boy has far more personal touches to his belongings, nothing seems to be in order or so driven.

The parents' room was covered with either machinery that could be weapons or images of their children. Whoever they are- or were they loved the two deeply.

In the master bathroom, Cass found that the couple habitually wrote sticky notes with their to-do lists taped on the bathroom mirror's corner. She could tell the differences in handwriting and word choice- the mother wrote explanations while the father did short annotations.

Clean the beakers in lab zone 2. They are releasing gasses, so they must be disposed of properly.

Jazzy-pants slam poetry night. Nov 19th. 6pm.

Danny's sleep study. Dec 10th. Teachers said he's been falling asleep in class too often. It might be Narcolospy!

Dinner Date with Maddie. Nov 22. Classical music reservation.

Cass taps her chin. This happened before December but what year and where did everyone go?

She looks down at the sticky notes again, noticing that many speak about a "lab" downstairs. Seeing as she did not find a lab on the ground level, that only left a lower one.

Leaving the bedroom, she makes her way down to the basement, where she does, in fact, find a large lab. There is a clutter of tools for the eye to see, all surrounding what looks like everyday household items and weapons.

Cass's lips thin as she takes in the strangely shaped guns, staffs, and blades. A weapon maifator? But why here? She tried the computers she scattered about, but none worked. She didn't think so, seeing as the electricity had been shut down across the city, but she had hoped.

Thankfully, this family seemed to believe in paper and pencils because she could find multiple writings throughout the lab. It's mathematical, primarily formulas, a half-baked thesis of "ecto-being" behavior, and notes on "ecto-beings." portal.

A portal that is sitting at the far right of the lab. Cass walks around the perimeter checking to see if it has any traps, but finds none. Then she walks over to the controllers testing the power on it.

She pressed the on button waits forty seconds to confirm that it was not active before she entered the portal. It resembles an early design of the zeta tubes. Maybe the family here were trying to develop teleporting technology-

"GET OUT OF THERE!" Someone shouts. Cass jumps a good foot in the air, swinging around with her fists raised for battle. She hadn't heard him! Hadn't sensed him at all!

It's been long since anyone has gotten the drop on her. She is just grateful she is wearing a mask- not her batgirl or Orphan gear but rather a borrowed ninja outfit Damian had granted her- since it means her identity is protected from the glowing man at the stairway's base.

Wait, glowing?

She opens her mouth to demand to know who he is when the portal powers on. She only had a moment to bite back a swear before her world exploded in pain.

Cass can hear herself scream, but it's too far away from the agony of electricity being poured into her body. She is being ripped apart by it, pushed and molded, and put back together again, only to start the process repeatedly.

It feels like ages before she can't handle it anymore- again, it's been years since that last happened- before the world fades away and she falls into blissful slumber

She has smoke-grey hair and glowing opal-white eyes when she wakes hours later.

The man is leaning over her with snow-white hair and glowing green eyes, looking worried as Cass finds that her body can no longer stay solid. It seemed that she had died and now had the body of a ghost.

She knows who makes this.

"Hello, Danny," She says, pushing through the pain of her death. Oh gods, how will Bruce react when he learns about her stupid error. She doesn't want to think about it, so she pushes it away to give the startled man an empty smile. She had to at least figure out the mystery so that her death can not be in vain."I have some questions about Amity Park."

#dcxdpdabbles #dc x dp crossover #Cass the Halfa #Basically Cass made a mistake #Danny sensed her walking over his grave #He tried to save her but it was too late #Cass isn't aware that she is a halfa and thinks she fully died. #Amity Park went missing

[your-turn-to-role]

so, was rewatching s1 of lovm, got to episode three again. and i'm thinking about percy's backstory. and also because of sylas briarwood, thinking about dalen's closet

and percy's got a real interesting relationship with the concept of drowning, huh

i mean first of all he's almost drowned (or actually drowned) three major times in the story. and all of those had similar themes, though different outcomes

so to explain what i mean, let's look at these in chronological order

1) the river. one of the worst days of his life, if not the actual worst. watching your entire family murdered, being locked up and tortured, your siblings bodies dumped in the cells next to you, just to rub it in. after weeks of this, you learn your youngest sister is alive, and she helps you escape, it's the first tiny bit of hope you've had. and then they kill her. you realise you're on your own all over again. you're hurt and you're lost and you don't know what to do, you run because you can't do anything else. and then you trip and before you know it you're in water and it's freezing and you can't breathe or move and you're so scared and so tired- and you don't remember much after that

when that fishing boat finds percy, he's basically in a fugue state, he has no idea what's going on and is barely responding to anything, his mind just couldn't take it anymore and left. and it doesn't get any better when he comes back to himself, because he survived, but for what. they're all gone. he couldn't do anything about it. he couldn't even save his sister like she saved him

and yes, they eventually save whitestone, and get cass back, but that experience stays with him

because then we get 2) duskmeadow.

percy's just learned that ripley bought up near industrial amounts of gunpowder, and he's terrified. he doesn't know what she's planning, but he knows what she will do with his weapons will change the world for the worse. it'll get countless people killed. and he made the decision to let her go, because at the time his personal revenge mattered more to him. he's feeling that "i survived for what" more than ever, because now not only did he survive when his family didn't, he didn't deserve to be the one that survived. none of the others would have caused destruction on this scale. he's not just alive for no reason, him being alive made things worse. (this is kinda explicitly his most suicidal point in the campaign, to the point of he literally wrote a goodbye letter that evening, and then just kept it on his person knowing vox machina would find it when his mistakes inevitably got him killed)

and so he goes to ask the raven queen for help. he's not yet reached the point where he's stopped trusting in gods (this meeting is about to be what sparks that), and he knows she's helped vax, so maybe she can help him, tell him how to fix this, he'll do anything

but there's only one way to talk to the raven queen. and that's to willingly let yourself drown in the communion pool.

and he tries, he tries so hard. he's putting every bit of trust he has in the raven queen right now, that this will be okay. but it's freezing and he can't breathe and he's so scared and so tired and all he can think about is how he survived and he shouldn't have, and then he has a panic attack. the only reason it eventually works is because he hits his head on the stone of the pool and then he's too confused and hurt to fight it

and when he finally talks to her, she tells him he can't fix it. that he was a broken person right from the start.

so far his two experiences with drowning have not only caused him lasting trauma around the whole experience, but continually affirmed that he's not only incapable of saving anyone he cares about, he actually makes the situation worse just by getting involved. and drowning honestly in itself makes a pretty good metaphor for how overwhelming and out of his control all of this is

but 3) dalen's closet. god, this was so good for percy and vex in so many ways, you can keep meta-ing about this episode for years. and in this case, sylas' attempt to murder vex and percy? chain them up and drop them from a cliff into the ocean

they're both drowning. there's no easy way out, and no one around who could rescue them

their attempts to free themselves, while clever, don't work

vex loses consciousness

it's just percy, alone, about to lose the person he loves most in the world, again. to a man who only knew vex even existed because percy got her involved

and percy doesn't panic

by all rights he should have, he's certainly got more than enough reason to. but he manages to stay calm enough to figure out a way to get his head above water, and to yell for help, because his fault or no he is not losing anyone else

and because of that, their friends can find them in time. he didn't get vex killed, he saved her

he's not helpless underwater anymore. and he's certainly not broken beyond repair. and it's only now that he's come far enough to realise that

#i think the fact that he has a daughter in dalen's closet also helps #she's only a few months old but she means the world to him #and she's proof that not everything he's ever created is evil #anyway i love him #cr1 #percy de rolo #meta #cr thoughts

[gffa]

You know you're in deep when you're about to write a whole ass essay on Batman and Robin Eternal despite that you're pretty sure only like ten people who have read the story will even see it said essay, but you can't help yourself because, look, it may not have been perfect, but it knew the narrative theme it wanted to center a story around and it fucking nailed that story down by the end. I am just so, so ready to dig into a story that is basically a love letter to the thesis statement of: "You couldn't tell Dick Grayson shit about what to do with his life, that kid was going to be Robin whether Bruce approved or not, Robin was the leash, and every Robin that followed after was in the same footsteps." This is a story about how Bruce's guilt makes him think he's forcing his own will onto these kids, that he's creating them in his own image, and they basically all tell him, "Nah, I get to decide who I am, nobody else." It's not a perfect story, I would have shifted the emphasis a bit (and focused more on Dick's temper as a kid, rather than just the mistakes his was making/his insecurity about it, to really show rather than just tell that Dick made his own choices, but I get that that was in service of the tension the story was building), I also spent so much time thinking, "the pieces are here, but they're just not coming together", but ultimately I feel like everything clicked together so well by the end on a narrative level and the characters it was focused on (Bruce, Dick, Cass, and Harper are really the central characters here, I would say), and had fun moments for everyone else (I wouldn't read this just for Tim or Jason, even if I enjoyed both of their banter very much in the series) that, eh, it may not be my favorite backstory for the characters, but I'm willing to accept that it's a really thoughtful version of their backstory for the current era. Anyway, consider it a rec with only a small asterisk, where I think it was an extremely satisfying story if you're into the meta aspect of Robin's relationship with Batman, if you're not particularly beholden to any one version of the characters' backstories, or if you just want to skim for some funny banter.

#lumi.txt #dc #batfam #comics recs

[hoetachi]

U GOT IT BAD — G. REYES

i saw this and i immediately wanted to write a little more on that scenario because it was absolutely hilarious // sorry for any mistakes

two months. you’ve been here for two months and the blackwatch commander finds himself already infuriated by you. he thought you was a simple soldier that was going to be the part of the rest of the growing overwatch society, however your skills surpasses any other person in your rank which cause you to gain the attention of strike commander morrison. now here you were, taking small teams on recall missions and as well as being present in debriefing meetings along side with other commanders. the grim commander wasn’t one to be comfortable with feelings like these and it was so hard to avoid you with your newfound popularity

what really made avoiding you harder was the fact around this time, ana was in her second trimester of her pregnancy and decided you would be the perfect fit to take over her current position. so as ana was close to gabriel, you as well was close to gabriel which left him off his game… alot

you came in during one of his drills with ana explaining what was the drill for and just having you watch him with such interest caused him to mistakenly crank up the difficulty until the training bots went haywire and basically chase his entire team in circles and up the walls. he felt the questionable looks coming from you and ana and cringed hard internally

then he had fellow agents boasting endlessly about you to him did a number. normally he’ll get real pissed hearing about some random’s personal information unwilling, yet every time he heard something about your life or things your interested in, it made him intrigued. he wanted to be the only source knowing these things about you, if he was being honest with himself

now who he didn’t want talking his ears off about you was cole…

“everyone seems to be takin’ a likin’ to that smokin’ commander already” the gunslinger kept paced with the mildly busy commander

“she’s not a commander cass, she’s just a commandant studying ana’s position before she heads off for maternity leave “ he corrected the young outlaw whilst skimming through files for an upcoming mission for his team

cole coolly shrugged his shoulders before placing his arms behind his head. “either way i feel like she’ll be good for you” he said which was followed by a teasing smirk as he watch the tips of the his brooding commander’s ears turned to a deep rue color

gabriel grew even more irritated with the young cowboys he knew his reaction would only cause more teasing from him which was making things worse, “good for me? w-what are you talking about cassidy?”

“you need a lady like that. strong, intelligent, not afraid to speak her mind…” he listed on his mechanical fingers as they walked side by side

gabe didn’t say anything else yet he agreed on everything with cassidy, however he’ll never let the gunslinger know due to his loose lips

“plus she got a nice ass in shorts” blurted cole which immediately catch gabe off guard making his instant swing on cassidy for his inappropriate comment

“whoops too slow jefe” cole snickered as he dodged the sudden attack swiftly

before gabe could stop himself from putting his full weight into his punch, it already connected with something else.. well someone else. turning his head to see what he hit instead of cassidy, he felt his stomach fall out his ass as his heart stopped

you sat on your elbows weakly as you watch your nose gush with blood while ana asked if you were okay. both the women looked towards him and he felt a deer in headlights, he couldn’t form a coherent thought which didn’t make his situation any better when his words were faster than his thoughts

“ARE YOU FUCKING SORRY?!”

ana’s face was split between confusion and anger, “come dear, let’s quickly get you to dr. ziegler” he watched as she helped you up and usher you past him as she glared daggers into him while mouthing ‘i’m going to kick your ass in 9 months’

“real smooth commande-“ this time he didn’t miss with hitting cassidy. “suicides until you drop dead, cassidy” he spat as bruised cole sat flat on his butt rubbing the back of his head

“YOU PUNCHED HER!? WHAT THE FUCK GABE!?” jack expressed, beyond shocked from the information his longtime just shared with him

“it wasn’t on purpose! stupid ass cole kept running his mouth and i didn’t know she was behind us— FUCK! what am i supposed to do now?” gabriel felt defeated. he knew he definitely blew things out the water this time and completely understood if you didn’t want to be around his presence anymore

jack stared at his friend with a sympathetic smile as he shook his head, “my friend.. i have never seen you so off guard before… you got it bad for y/n”

“i do not!” gabriel denied

“oh really? so you’re just out and about punching women who happens to make you more nervous than a virgin at prom?”

“no.. she just… so many people have such good things to say about her and actually being around her… i see why she’s a showstopper— christ sake i got into tea so i can have something to talk about with her”

jack gave him a giant smile, amused at his friend’s crush. “just apologize and be direct because the gabriel reyes i know was never the guy to be standoffish with how he’s feels” jack placed a hand on his slumped shoulder and handed a bouquet of flowers to him

“tell her how you feel man..” he encouraged

gabriel stared at the various colors amongst the bouquet, his stomach swelled up with butterflies and that’s when he knew he had to do this now or be a coward.

so striding along the empty midnight hallways of the base, he found himself in a internal battle with if he was making the right call. ‘the worst she could say is screw you, reyes’ he tried to make himself feel better about it but the twisted feeling in the out of stomach seemed never ending and only intensified once he realized he was now approaching her quarters

he stared at the name plate saying your last name. he gave himself one last prep talk before knocking and clearing his throat whilst pressing the flowers into his chest.

“y/n? a-are you up?” his voice cracked a bit as he waited for an answer. He soon heard footsteps approach the door for a moment, probably looking at the camera who was at the door. Taking a guess she figured it was him, he heard the steps start to retreat causing panic in him

he reached for the door as he was reaching for her to stop her from disappearing. “y-you don’t have to open the door, but don’t walk away… please” he pleaded quietly. his heartbeat was basically the only he could hear at this point. it was now or never to fix things even if he felt like he was unprepared for this interaction, however he took a shaky breath before laying everything out on the table.

“look y/n.. we got off on the wrong foot, but i promise you i have no ill intentions towards you. i’m just…” he struggled to finally admit to these feelings that reeked havoc over his being for the past couple of months, but he knew he had to set the record straight.

“i’m just not used to having.. i guess a crush on somebody, you can say”

“you’re all everyone talks about and just hearing about your interests— the things you like, dislike or find amusing— you’re special, interesting and dead gorgeous a-and i’m sorry for being a complete idiot towards you” he finally admitted. it felt like a pressure has finally been lifted off of his chest

there was a silence and at this point gabe was fine with just the simple confess, at least he man’d up and no one could take that from him. he sighed defeatedly, softly placed the flowers by the door as he turned on his heels to head back his side of the base to sleep off this nightmare

suddenly he heard the sound of the automatic door opening, he turned around to see you dressed in silk royal blue robe as you bend down picking up the flowers. a small smile graced your full lips as your eyes flickered from the flowers to his being and never in his life he felt so exposed before

you held the flower close to your chest as you leaned against your doorframe with hand on your hip. “it took you elbowing me in my nose to finally confess to me? you got it bad commander” you shook your head before signaling him to come back with your index finger, “care to share a glass of taylor port? i heard it was your favorite.” you raised a brow, which caused a short chuckle to leave the speechless man as he made his way back

#overwatch #overwatch gabriel reyes #gabriel reyes x black reader #overwatch x black reader #gabriel reyes x reader #x black reader #overwatch fluff #gabriel reyes fluff

[igotanidea]

Can I have 5 for the hug prompts with Cassandra Cain?

5. jumping into hugs

I'm sorry it took me so long, life's been a bit too much lately. And sorry if it's not that good, I've been dealing with terrible headaches and here's that.

Cassandra Cain was raised to be an assasin. Her mother, unknown, her father, not caring about her education or any basic human skills like talking. Poor girl became a living weapon, not knowing any life outside of her hermetic and closed world. That is, untill Batman came in and took her under his wings, making sure she would get better treatment. And she did. Slowly, gradually, she became more open, slighly more optimistic and the pillar of the batfamily.

But her years spend on training left her with some exceptional abilities, one of them being reading human body and body language like a book. With a single glance she was able to asses whether someone was a threat or not, what was the weak points of a person and how to incapacitate the opponent.

On the other side?

She could tell when someone was stressed, worried, tired and ... sad or even depressed.

And Y/N's slouched shoulders, shaking legs and a pout were more than an indication of that. Something happened to her and if there was anyone who could get any information out of her, it would be Cass.

"Y/N?" she slowly opened the door to her friend's room spotting her by the window, facing the garden "What's wrong."

"Nothing." the girl muttered in response, not facing Cass.

"You can tell me" Cassanda put a hand on her heart "I won't tell anyone."

"Promise" Y/N used sign langue to convey that. Sometimes it ws easier to communicate with Cass that way. And besides, her voice was slowly giving up on her.

"Promise" Cass signed back grabbing Y/n's hand.

"I don't feel like I belong in this family, you know. Between batboys and batgirls, all of you being vigilantes, I don't know where do I fit here. I mean, I am no one." Y/N moved from the window only to sit on her bed, legs held up to her chest like she was trying to shield herself from the entire world and all her bad thoughts. Cass did not move from her position observing all the action carefully. "I do nothing to help. And I feel ... cut out, estranged. I mean, I get that, you have your secrets and you always say you want to keep me safe but I want to be a part of the team. Like a real part of the team, not just honorary."

"Y/N....."

"I'm serious Cass." a single tear flew down Y/N's cheek and once it happened, she could not hold back more of them "I may know nothing about fighting and kicking asses, but I still have so much to give. I'm smart and quick to learn and familiar with tech. I want to help, but all I get is getting more and more lonely." she sobbed, angrily wiping the tear with her sleeve, causing even more mess on her face.

"Oh?" Cassandra gasped. All the words Y/n just said reminded her of her own past. When she joined Batman in his crusade was when she realised how miserable and secluded and deprived of all the good things her life was before. And it hit her hard, making Cass wonder about all the mistake she made and whether she could ever make up for them. And she felt exacltly the same way Y/n was now, pouring her heart out in emotional outburst she was holding for so long.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all those things. It's not your fault that I'm useless and....."

"Stop it" Cassandra shook her head "stop it and come here." with the lightest of smiles she opened her arms motioning for the other girl to come for a hug.

"Really?" Y/N's eyes widened due to the fact she knew the complexity between Cass and physical touch.

"Yes."

That single word was all Y/N needed when she spung out of bed and jumped straight into Cass's embrace, making her stumble a bit. It was strange how much safety and comfort the former assasin was giving her. How accepting Cass was of all her insecurites, doubts and fears. How none of them needed any words in that moment. Just a silent reassurance that whatever demons were trying to seize each other's mind they were always there for each other. No matter what. No laughing, no dissmising, no gaslighting. Just presence time and hugs, the most precious gift to give to the other person.

#batfamily #batfamily x reader #batfamily x batsis #cassandra cain #cassandra cain x reader #cassandra cain x you #the orphan #dc x reader #dc x you #dc imagine #cassandra cain fluff #fluff #cassandra wayne

[zahri-melitor]

Casspoll!

Okay I really had to think about this one and I quickly dipped into the runs I have not touched yet rather than just using their reputations:

Kelley Puckett – It’s Puckett. He created Cass. Some of her very best stories happened here – the first two Shiva fights, delivering a man’s final wishes, Nobody Dies Tonight, Thicker than Water. The absolute heart that Cass cannot allow people to be killed hits hard here. She’s still learning about what a society is.

Dylan Horrocks takes Cass and her growth and lets her mess up and brings Bruce and Barbara more into conflict over what Cass needs, but also allows Cass to be in conflict with them over what she wants. It has the Ivy twofer “The City is a Garden/The City is a Jungle” which I think is Horrocks’ best plot. It has Tough Love, where Bruce and Cass have their conversation over what the Bat means to Cass. It has Cooking the Books, where we see the abrasive side of Barbara’s personality come out and hurt her relationship with Cass. It has Cass taking her first steps into relationships, with her attraction to Tai’Darshan and Kon. It’s a messier, more complicated time.

Andersen Gabrynch has the best conversation of Fresh Blood with Tim over their life goals and their reflections on War Games. He has Destruction’s Daughter/Blood Matters and everything that comes with the culmination of that storyline. He gives Cass her first taste of civilian life. Gabrynch is the ‘how far will Cass go’ writer.

Adam Beechen: you’re all mean! Oh Beechen. He screwed up first time around, no question, but I continue to maintain he did useful things with Cass in Batgirl 2008. He brought in the chance to parallel Slade and Rose’s relationship with David and Cass’. He worked hard to find fixes for the mistakes he made. And if Fresh Blood set up the situation where we saw Tim and Cass become closer and start establishing a sibling-like relationship, then Beechen solidified it to the point that it was expected from that point onwards.

Joe Kelly: oh, Justice League Elite. You are certainly a story. I think the most important thing Kelly actually did in JLE was when Cass stabbed Kendra. It broke her. There is some beautiful writing in JLE surrounding Cass basically sobbing to Bruce over this incident, and Bruce promising her that she doesn’t have to stay undercover, he’ll pull her out, her happiness is more important to him than this mission, and Cass refusing to be extracted. And Ollie remaining there the whole time to keep an eye on Cass on Bruce’s behalf. It’s such a good paternal moment on both Bruce and Ollie’s parts, and they so very rarely get them in concert. It’s also a moment of growth in Cass that is rarely referenced, because as I must repeat, it happens in JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE.

Bryan Hill: I have heard good things! And immediately on picking it up and going through the first three issues I saw the exact thing I’d enjoyed and wanted more of from Dixon’s 2008 BatO run – Tatsu working with and mentoring Cass – which is a solid recommendation in itself. Will 100% be coming back to this when I get up to this era in my reading.

Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad: I dipped into #1 and #14. It suffers from the modern era problem of light and bright fluffy content without a solid base behind it. Also the fact that the writers didn’t initially realise that two of the characters they were assigned were ADULTS and were writing them that immaturely is certainly not reassuring. Um. I also know I’m not fully across modern era Cass yet, but #14 seems to miss something that’s basic to my understanding of Cass – talking can be hard but READING is harder. Cass not talking but having reading comprehension showing up constantly? It feels off. (Also I’m fascinated in how an issue like Batgirls #1 manages to be that off while still managing the Cass shower robe scene, which to my eye echoes and references the BatO 2008 Cass shower scene. Suspect they just got lucky and I’m reading too much in)

Mariko Tamaki: okay I have not yet read Shadows of the Bat: The Tower, but I have read Sounds, so I’m basing on that. Tamaki really seems to get Cass, her hand with the character work in Sounds hit some very fundamental parts of Cass’ character and struggles, and I really enjoyed it.

Overlooked: ALYSSA WONG. Wong’s work with Cass in Spirit World not only has been busy recanonising a bunch of things from Batgirl 2000, but is touching on some central aspects of Cass’s view of killing and death in beautiful resonance of things originally established by Puckett. Also it’s given Cass some narrative space back on her own, and while I think Cass’s relationship with Steph is important, I also think she’s more functional and useful to DC writers when she’s not assumed to be part of an automatic pair.

Plus a plug for Scott Snyder for Gates of Gotham and giving us proper insight into the Reborn era Cass relationships with her brothers.

#cassandra cain #writer comparisons

[forgedroyalseal]

My Reputation’s Never Been Worse

A/N: Above is the link to the playlist for this series which I really recommend listening to while you read this chapter

Chapter 18:

The sun had long since set when Will found himself staring at the door in front of him. It was rather unremarkable as doors went. It lacked any of the intricate carvings that the doors to the king’s chambers or the great hall were embellished with. Even the pattern of the wood grain was faint and plain. So why was Will stuck staring at it as if it was a masterpiece? He signed and turned to lean his back against the wall besides the offending door. He let his eyelids drop with a sigh. It shouldn’t be this hard. He should be able to turn the knob and enter the room and have some much needed rest. Just down the hall, Miles and Nyah were in guest suites of their own. Will smiled as he remembered their eagerness to tell him about every little detail of the rooms. The comforts, that to any nobleman would seem like a basic right, were the most decedent luxuries either of them had ever experienced.

Will had done his best to look impressed by their child-like descriptions of the wide mattresses, heavy decorative quilts, and feather filled pillows, but he couldn’t help but feel somewhat betrayed. He had firmly resisted sleeping within the palace walls, so long as one discounted the rest he had taken in the dungeon. But that was less a voluntary nap and more his mind and body collapsing from exhaustion and stress. After dinner, Will had expected that the three of them would go back to the camp site from the previous nights. He hadn’t even considered the fact that while he was in Eisel they had been offered, and had accepted, rooms of their own in the palace’s guest wing. Of course, it made perfect sense. Will had left them under the care of George, and the idea that George would ever let anyone sleep outside rather than in a warm bed was preposterous. Besides, Miles and Nyah had no reason to distance themselves from the luxuries that were overflowing from the castle and it’s staff. It made total sense. But then, why did it still hurt him?

“You know, it’s pretty cold out. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have frost in the morning.”

The corner of Will’s lips tilted up and he rolled his head over to watch Cassandra sidle up besides him. “I can handle a little cold. Even the worst of our winters are nothing compared to Skandia.”

She ignored him and continued. “Looks like rain too. Yeah I bet it will storm all night.”

“I’m not made of sugar. I won’t melt.”

Cassandra narrows her eyes at him. “Between the dark and the rain, the guards might mistake you for a bandit and shoot on sight.”

“I may not be as skilled as Gilan, but I’m still pretty good at not being noticed when I don’t want to be.”

Cassandra huffed in irritation and glared at Will. “Just sleep inside Will!” She half shouted half whined. “If you sleep outside tonight you’ll wake up cold and wet and miserable and you’ll be a bear all day tomorrow.”

“Cass,” Will said gently, but she kept going.

“And I know Horace told you about the wedding. What are you planning on doing until then, sleeping outside all winter? You’re just doing this for the sake of proving a point and the only thing you are proving is that you are as stubborn as a mule and won’t listen to reason.”

Will paused this time to see if she had anything else, but when she just folded her arms and slumped into the wall he said, “Cass, I am really happy for you and Horace. And I know things are, better, than they were when I first came back. I’m better. But I can’t just pretend like nothing happened. Like I wasn’t stabbed in the back by the people within this very castle.”

“And so you think they are going to come after you again? Drag you out of bed and into the cells?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Seriously Will? How can you not see that every person here regrets what happened? That my father is still sick over it? That Crowley barely sleeps anymore? Even Horace will wake in the middle of the night, a shaking apology abandoned on his lips. And don’t even get me started on Halt.”

A thick silence passed between them, then Cassandra let her head fall onto Will’s shoulder. “Go to bed Will. Please.” She whispered. He knew what she really wanted to say was stay here Will. And he was grateful that she didn’t.

“OK. I’ll see you in the morning.” He lightly kissed her cheek as his pushed away from the wall. He placed a hand on the brass doorknob and she stood still, not leaving for her own room until she saw Will step into him.

He bowed his head to her. “Goodnight Evanlyn. Sleep well.”

_______________________

Will woke to a soft knock at his door. He wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the fact that he had managed to sleep the whole night in the room without being attacked or the that he hadn’t risen with the sun as he usually did.

“A moment.” He called, voice rough and gravelly with sleep. Will rubbed his hands over his face and hair in an attempt to wake himself more throughly. He slipped out from under the warm covers and grasped out at the dressing robe that had been left for him. It was a rich green with little golden threads woven throughout. It was beautiful without being garish and Will knew that Cassandra had picked it out intentionally for him. Which meant she had been convinced he’d be spending the night in this room and not outside. He wouldn’t be surprised to see the wardrobe filled with similar clothing in his size.

Will made his way to the door, stretching as his did so. He assumed it was Horace or Alyss on the other side summoning him for breakfast. Or perhaps Nyah ready to tease him about his sudden change of sleeping arrangements. He was wrong though. Because on the other side of the door stood Halt, a bundle of wildflowers clasped gently in one hand and steaming mug in the other.

“It’s not coffee.” Halt said before Will could say anything. “It’s tea. Good tea, according to Pauline. Not that I’m convinced such a thing exists.”

“And the flowers?”

“For all of the riches and wonders of the palace, I find it lack a certain… homey touch.” And even though it had been so long ago, Will knew exactly why the flowers looked so familiar. It was a near perfect replica of the flowers Halt had left in his room on his first day as an apprentice.

“Picked them yourself?”

“Well, anyone else would have messed it up I’m sure. I’ve got quite an eye for florals.” Halt said seriously, eyes lit with mirth.

“Why are you really here Halt? Because I doubt it’s just to deliver questionable tea and criticize the castle’s lack of style.”

Halt ignores his question and responds with one of his own. “May I come in?”

Will steps to the side, allowing space for Halt to enter the room. He sets the tea down onto a small table besides the reading chair and places the flowers on the bedside table. Will closes the door but doesn’t sit and neither does Halt. The two men stand several feet apart, both unsure how to proceed.

“I just wanted-“

“What do you-“

Their words collide between them, sentences breaking and falling into the space between them. Will gestured for Halt to continue.

“I wanted to see you. That’s all.”

Will extends his arms out and turns in a small circle. “You’ve seen me then.”

Halt raises an eyebrow at him and Will has a disorienting flash of deja vu. He remembers every time that eyebrow rose at him for being a smart ass like he was now.

“Alright, perhaps I did have one more intention for coming. Pauline told me what she asked of you. And I just wanted to let you know that this is the one and only time you don’t have to listen to her. I don’t want you to force yourself into forgiving me just because she asked you too. You have every right to be angry with me.”

Will thought about it. Thought about how when Pauline had asked him to forgive Halt, he had been so sure that he would, eventually. But why was he so determined to put it off. What was the point? “I’m so tired of being mad at everyone I love. I’ve been dragging this hate around with me for five years, and it is exhausting. But I just can’t seem to let it go.” Will kept his eyes trained down. He focused on the swirling greens and blues of the soft rug below his feet, and not the man, the father, standing in front of him. “I want to forgive you. All of you. But I don’t know how to move on. I could barely bring myself to sleep in this room last night. How am I supposed to come back and go about my life again? How do I know when it’s time to stop running? Because right now, I feel like if I stay, I’ll be tore apart. Caught between two sides of myself. But if I go, then I’ll be letting everyone down. And I’ll just keep running away from the people I love until the day I die.” Will’s voice cracked and he sniffed, desperately trying to push away the tears he felt forming in the corners of his eyes.

Halt stepped closer and cupped Will’s face in his hands, gently tilting his chin up so their eyes met. “Will, you are my son. All that matters to me, all that has mattered to me since the day I found you, is your happiness. Losing you was the hardest thing I have ever had to endure, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for robbing you of your peace and joy over the past few years. All I want is for you to be safe and happy. And if you need to walk away from me, from us, to find that somewhere else in the world, then that is what you should do. Losing you again will break me, but watching you suffer even more so if you stay? That will destroy me. You need to prioritize yourself Will. Not me, or Horace, or Alyss. You. That’s all we want from you.”

“I- I don’t know what to do.” Will admitted in a small voice, finally letting go of any semblance of confidence. “I don’t know how to stay, but I don’t want to go.”

“We can make it work Will. If you want to stay, then you should stay.”

Will shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“It can be. We can figure anything out. You just need to choose what you want. We’ll support you either way, but you have to decide what you want. What you are willing to work for.”

“I never wanted to leave.” A tear rolled down Will cheek. He raised his eyes to Halt’s, the warmth and love he found in them drowning his fear and pain.

“I want to stay.” Will spoke with a surety he had thought he had long since lost.

Halt smiled. “All right then. You’ll stay.” He pulled Will into his chest with a tight hug and pressed a kiss into his hair. “Welcome home son. Welcome home.”

The End

A/N: I truly cannot express my gratitude to everyone who has read this story, everyone who has commented, everyone who has left kudos. This series has been my longest running project and has prepared me for starting my own original novel next month during NaNoWriMo. I’ve alway wanted to write a complete novel, but if it wasn’t for this fic then I would never have had the faith in myself to believe it was an achievable goal.

Please know how much your support and encouragement has kept me going even when I felt stuck. I genuinely appreciate all of you.

Thank you.

(P.S we all know I have trouble letting things go. I’ve already started the epilogue 😉)

#rangers apprentice #ranger's apprentice #will treaty #horace altman #ranger’s apprentice fanfiction #rangers apprentice fanfiction #halt o'carrick #alyss mainwaring #guilty until proven innocent #fanfiction #my reputations never been worse #reputation series #reputation #Spotify #happy fanfiction friday #fanfiction Friday

[breadandblankets]

talking with andy, so now im thinking about Bruce lmao, mostly the fact that you have to fanonize characters to a certain extent to basically define what Kind of character youre serving, there are too many differences between canons that it can be Really hard to pin down who youre even talking about.

Im sure my Bruce is irrevocably colored by my love of UTRH, Batgirl(s), and Metal, and that i usually prefer my bruce as part of the batfam and not as part of the wider DC universe

At his core, Bruce is a messy messy character, and thats what makes him so fun tbh, hes got this high stubbornness that bulldozes the line right into ego, where he is convinced that he is right and doesn't need to tell anyone else things, so many stories play out because Bruce is on a Mission and doesn't tell anyone else the important details leading to someone else stumbling into his Mission and things going fubar

he tries to logic and reason his way out of every situation, leading to him not taking people's feeling into account, but then when he gets overly emotional (usually when hes out of his depth and overwhelmed) he lashes out in anger and ends up hurting people (sometimes literally, re baterang)

but i think that after jason's death bruce had a very hard time being a father figure and not a commanding officer and Tim does not make that Any Easier (not that i blame Tim for Bruce's fuck ups, hell no, but Tim does Not want to be parented in Any situation). I think about how long it took Cass to get adopted vs Jason and go ://// I think that difference alone makes it clear just how Bruce was doing after Death in the Family.

even after jason's back he's still mourning his son, and there are some great fics that have talked about that, mourning is not something you can really stop even if the person in question comes back i don't think, the trauma is still there no matter what

In a more meta sense, DC writers doing grimdark made him honestly genuinely unlikable, if you hate grimdark bruce i do Not blame you, making Batman all "grounded" and "gritty" just makes me root for the rogue to put me out of my friggen misery already

I think on some level a lot (if not most) of us are projecting our issues and lack thereof with our fathers onto Bruce, either he reminds you of your father (affectionate) or (derogatory). I know im definitely projecting mine!

That's kinda why i write him as a messy fuck up that does his best and fucks up anyway but ultimately tries to get better. I let his kids forgive him for his mistakes, and he forgives them for theirs, cause thats what i want to see

#i guess here is where i have to ask #what do you want to see? #who is your bruce? #do you agree with me here? #or nah #is he perfect? No i wouldn't like him if he was! #is he good? no! is he human and trying his best? yes! #bread does this post really exist just to try and bait a conversation cause you like discussions? #yes yes it does #but also i thought i had some halfway decent points in the dms and i wanted them to be public lmao #batfam #bruce wayne #batman

[ali-annals]

tomorrow's a flower

Pairing: Cassinette

Rating: G

Genre: Fluff. All the fluff. @flufftober 2023 Day 9: ___ at First Sight. Random Word Generator chose 'Employee'.

WC: 1k exactly

Maribat Taglist (Open): [I'm so sorry I keep forgetting people like my works and join the list and i forget to tag everyone😭] @axis-for-the-dead @jennifer-rose123 @questioning-blob-of-fog @sarcasticbambi

A/N: Thanks to @axis-for-the-dead for betaing and hyping me up!! For @ramos123. Thanks for defending my wifey and me<3 (even if you did laugh at us). Edit: after scrolling through a million messages apparently I mixed my dates up😔 Happy day of birth anyways ig.

I did too much research into late-19th Century French fashion. Ignore any ballet mistakes I made; I forgot everything I once knew. Title inspo here.

Ao3 Masterlist

The sun was shining, the air was crisp with the promise of fall, and the smell of freshly baked goods wafted around the girl casually strolling the aisles of vendors at the autumn market.

Buckets of wildflowers added pops of colour, various species of gourds provided visual texture, and the sound of leaves crunching underneath her light stride put a spring in her step.

Hefting the bag on her back, loaded with goods from the many vendors she’d stopped by, she paused to watch a demonstration by a young woman around her age, who was explaining fashion in the late 19th century. 

Several replica pieces hung on racks in her booth, and a couple women were trying on jackets and bonnets eagerly. 

“Excuse me!” The young woman waved at her, and she walked over, curious. “What’s your name?”

“Cass.”

“Cass, it’s nice to meet you!” the woman smiled warmly, her cheeks a pretty blush from the cool breeze. “I’m Marinette. Would you be my model for the bicycle suit, to demonstrate how well it allowed for mobility?”

Cass nodded. “I do ballet.”

The girl grasped her hands dramatically, eyes practically hearts. “You do?! This is perfect! Thank you so much, Cass! My usual model is out sick today,” she mourned, gathering a pile of clothing and heading towards a small change stall. “Let me know if you need any help. The styles were a lot simpler as the fashions changed and drew inspiration from menswear, but they can still be confusing to someone who doesn’t typically wear antique clothing.” Cass nodded and entered the change stall, leaving her backpack behind Marinette's sales counter before she began to don the old-fashioned garments.

She emerged and looked questioningly at Marinette, who led her to her sales pitch circle.

“Here’s today’s model, Cass, who will show you how flexible the clothing really was!”

Cass started off with some basic stretches, warming up before she attempted grander moves. She preferred her proper ballet attire or looser clothing, but this wasn’t bad. The loose fabric was breathable and not very restrictive, so once she was sufficiently warmed up, she began some simple jumps and movements. 

Marinette continued her spiel as Cass performed one of her favourite dances, the solo from Act I of Don Quixote. It was short, but had jumps, twirls, and kicks, which provided a good range of movements to show off the clothing. 

Cass finished with a professional bow, looking at Marinette during the applause to see if she had liked it. She had a wide-eyed, smiling look on her face, so Cass guessed she had done a good job of promoting Marinette’s work.

Once the demonstration was over, Cass hung around examining the wares of Marinette’s booth. Some half-finished pieces were on display, Marinette showing the process of making historically accurate and comfortable clothing. 

A gorgeously embroidered blouse with many small wildflowers and birds and ladybugs caught her eye, and Cass held it up to herself. Once it was completed, it would be the right size to fit her, she thought.

Marinette came over, her eyes sparkling. “Thank you so much for your demonstration, Cass! I just made at least three sales because of that. Oh, I love this blouse. The embroidery is a pain, but it’s so worth it. The prettiest things always take the longest and hardest to become that way, don’t they,” she mused. “Did anything else catch your eye, that I can get for you?”

Cass shook her head. “Just this.”

“If you give me your contact information, I can let you know when this is completed, if you’re still interested in it. I’ll give it to you for free after the help you’ve been today,” Marinette offered.

Cass pulled out a business card from the depths of her retrieved bag and handed it to Marinette. 

“Will you need me to come in and try it to make sure it fits properly?”

Marinette smiled at her. “I might.”

~~~

Marinette set her pincushion down. “Alright, it’s all done, except for the finishing embroidery.”

“Can I add a flower?” Cass asked.

“Sure, what one do you want?”

“I need to research it first. Can I tell you tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Marinette agreed readily. 

~~~

“Can I add another one?”

“Sure. Do you need to do more research?”

“Yes. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow works! Oh, do you want your reference flower back?”

“You keep it.”

“Thanks, Cass. See you tomorrow.”

~~~

“I’m going to miss embroidering these flowers,” Marinette mused as she clipped the loose threads off her latest addition to the blouse’s garden.

“I’ll buy you more,” offered Cass. “You can embroider more of my clothes if you want.”

Marinette laughed. “Thanks, Cass. I appreciate it. Want to add another blossom?”

“Of course. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

~~~

“Another?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow, then.” ~~~

“Can I-”

“Yes!”

“Tomorrow.”

~~~

“One more?”

“Always,” Marinette grinned. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

~~~

“Hi, Cass! Be with you in a sec!” Marinette called from the depths of her shop the next afternoon, at two on the dot, as usual.

“Okay.”

Cass looked down at the stalk of tiny white flowers in her hand.

Marinette emerged, brushing the curtain to the back room out of her face (the one she always walked into), a smile on her lips.

Cass held out the flower for Marinette’s approval.

“Ooh, a mignonette! This would be pretty by the camellias on the lower right hem,” Marinette mused, pulling out the form with Cass’s blouse on it.

“So, any flower requests for tomorrow?” Marinette asked at the end of their session.

“No.”

Marinette’s smile dimmed a bit. “Oh, okay. Finally done with your garden? It’s actually been fun doing all this embroidery,” she looked at her handiwork sternly.

“Come with me to buy flowers tomorrow,” Cass asked.

“What?”

“I’ll buy you flowers, but you don’t have to embroider them anymore.”

Marinette’s eyes widened. “Are you asking me out?”

Cass nodded firmly. “Go on a date with me. Please?” She pulled out the puppy eyes Damian had perfected.

Marinette grinned widely. “Yes! Of course!”

#cassinette #dcxmlb #fic #ali writes

[dcxdpdabbles]

If possible could you do the Batkids summoning the Ghost King on a dare?

It starts with Tim because most insane things do. Kon had sent him a link to a trend, asking him to try it the next time Young Justice got together.

He made the mistake of clicking on the link while sitting near his siblings in the gaming room. The audio is also on full blast because he didn't realize his headphones were out of battery.

Thus while waiting for his turn to play Mario Kart, a loud male moan echoes from his speakers. Tim freezes in his seat, staring at his phone in horrified betrayal, as seven heads snap in his direction.

"Ugh, Timmy? Those are videos you should be watching alone" Dick says with half a teasing smirk. "I know you're growing up and are curious about-"

"It's not like that! It's a summoning circle!" Tim yelps, turning the phone around. On his screen, five male teenagers sit in a circle, each holding hands. Moaning. The caption reads, "Summoning the Ghost King! What's your offer?".

"What the hell?" Jason squints as the teenagers in the video burst into laughter. They jeer and taunt each other good naturally, indicating the random moaning was in jest.

"Oh, I know that trend!" Cullen chirps from the floor. He's been hugging the bowl of chips all night, laying down on his stomach to keep it guarded from the others. "Basically, you try to summon the Ghost King by offering something random. Guess he doesn't respond to human sacrifices or the typical stuff, so people have been getting creative. I once saw a group of girls who burned their training bras and offered the King the ashes. The point is to pick the weirdest thing you can think of."

"That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. We have to try it." Steph announces, standing up. She pushes the coffee table out of the way. The rest of their siblings, who weren't as into the speeding game, perked up in interest. "What do we need?"

"Um," Tim scrolls through the comments. "We need four never before lite candles, each placed in the positions of the four directions. We have to sit crossed leg in a circle holding hands and call out to the King with a poem, and at the end, we make our offering."

Harper springs up. "I got some candles! Do they matter if it's scented?"

Tim checks online. "It's not recommended, but it's fine if they are."

"This is idiotic! Attempting to make contact with the Ghost King is far too dangerous. I shall take no part in this foolery!" Damian cuts in, face twisted into a- surprisingly- nervous frown. His hands are clasped tightly over each other while his eyes roam the room looking for unseen threats. If Tim didn't know any better, he said the brat was scared.

"Aw Dami, if you don't want to do a summons, we can play the game of life or something. It's okay to be scared of ghosts" Dick says, placing his hand on the kid's shoulder. He was obviously trying to comfort the kid but it has the opposite effect.

"I am not scared of a mere ghost!" Damian hisses. "I am merely stating we should not bother forces well out of our leagues!"

Jason snorts, planting himself on the ground as Harper returns. She had four different color candles, purple, blue, black, and green. After consulting with Cass- a human compass-she placed them facing the east, west, south, and north.

"Why did you make that disgusting noise Todd?" Damian demands narrowing his eyes at the striking man.

"Just admit you're scared of ghosts, brat. No one is going to judge you for it."

"I said I was not scared of a mere ghost. The Ghost King is far more powerful then-"

"Alright, alright. Damian is too much of a scary cat to play, but who else is in?" Steph cuts him off, a knowing glint in her eyes. The youngest flushes angrily before he marches between the green and black candle and sits with his legs crossed. A nasty scowl is playing on his lips, likely not noticing the high-five Jason and Steph share for getting him to join.

Cass gracefully falls right next to Damian, offering the younger boy a small. His scowl lessens just a little. Cullen crawls his way over, pressing the bowl of chips to his hip protectively once he's sitting up. He ended up between the green and the purple candle, offering Cass a smile. Harper lands next to Cullen, cracking her neck as if preparing for a fight.

Dick does an unnecessary flip over the couch to take the place between the purple and blue candles. Next to him, Steph sits, her knee bumping the blue candle slightly. Jason struts over to sit next to Steph right between the blue and black candle. Duke shares the space with him, giving just a slightly nervous chuckle as Tim and Babs push the black and green candle apart a little to squeeze into though Babs remains in her chair.

"Alright, so the person with the candle on their right side has to light it. Do it at the same time. Once that happens, we join hands and do chat about the poem. Says only one person has to say the words, but if you want, I can send the link in the family group chat so we can all say it?" Tim waits to see them consider it, but Cass excited nodding has him copying the link he found on an online forum. A few dings go around the room as everyone checks their phones. "Now we have to decide on a sacrificial offering."

"We should do our most embarrassing secrets," Jason suggests.

"No, no, our fabulous hair!" Dick perks up, flipping said hair in a dramatic flair.

"It has to be something we all share," Tim says, eyeing Duke's short hair.

The other teenager makes an offended noise. "My hair is fabulous!"

"We offer the gay." Cullen cuts in. The rest turn to look at him as he wiggles his fingers. "Ohhhhhh! We're all fruity~! Spooky!"

"Babs isn't," Dick puts in only to see his best friend shake her hand in a so-and-so motion. He gapes at her before throwing his head back and laughing "We really do flock together!"

"So we agree? The gay?" Tim tries to say seriously, but his lips are twitching too much, trying to suppress a smile. There is agreement around the circle. He gives on a single node before passing around the matches Harper had brought. "How are we going to do this, though. Do we just shout, "I'm gay," or are we giving material things?"

"Let's write our gay awakening on a piece of people," Babs suggests grabbing her bag from where it hands on her chair handles. She tucks out a spiral notebook and a few pens. "I read that summoning needs something physical."

Everyone agrees as they pass along the notebook, writing down their awakening. Tim raises a brow at Damian's "Jon Kent" but doesn't call him out for it. After all, Conner Kent goes under his little brother's writing in his own writing.

He does wonder who Danny Fenton is, but knows better than to ask Cass about her life before the manor.

"Okay, let's do this! On the count of three- one-two-three!" Tim calls, watching Damian, Harper, Steph, and Duke simultaneously lite at the candle. They all hold hands, reading off phones that are prompted up by either their legs or kickstands on cases.

"We call upon the Undead King,

The one who bridges the realms,

The one who wields the Ring,

The one who will lead dies and breathes!"

There is a moment of silence where Tim swears he feels a slight shock along his fingertips, but it passes too quickly for him to care. Seeing as he is the ring leader, he calls out to the air. "Oh great King of the Dead, my siblings and I offer you a list of our gay awakening!"

"Stop, stop!" The youngest yells, leaping to his feet. His eyes are wild, scrambling to a far wall like a cornered animal. "No! He's coming!"

"Coming out the closet, like mama, I like boys, I like pecs

Like the arms when they flex!" Stephs suddenly sings, swaying in her seat. Everyone laughs before joining, and Tim wonders if they should have recorded this when suddenly Damian shrieks.

"Damian, who-"

The candles' flames all turn green as a haunting voice echoes through the room. "Your sacrifice has been accepted."

Tim's mouth drops open as the flames rise into the air forming a portal of liquid green. Familiar green. No wonder Daimain had been so scared. That was Lazarus Pit water. This meant this was the real deal, not just a random trend popularized by stupid teenagers.

Leaping Lizards Batman.

"What-what do we do!?" Cullen yelps as a burst of wind rips around the room, throwing everyone back. A laugh that sounds far too much like the Joker is heard through the portal as everyone tries to get into a fighting position with the wind pushing against them.

A head of snow-white hair peaks out and they are greeted by a laughing teenager. "A gay awaking sacrifice list! That's hilarious!"

"Who are you!" Tim hears Jason demand over the howling wings.

Another laugh, but this time, it sounds like clicking ice cubes is a response. "I'm Phantom!"

Tim has a second to see, wide green glowing eyes before the ghost reaches down, snatches their list, and zaps away.

Cass falls to her knees with a look of horror. "They know"

"I told you this was idiotic!" Damian screams, shaking so hard he looks like he will burst into tears in only a few seconds. Dick rushes over to him, pulling the sniffing boy into his arms. "We must never do this again!"

No one knows what to do in the wake of actually succeeding in calling the Ghost King or watching Dmaian cry from fear.

A ringtone plays from Cass's phone, breaking the ill silence. Tim catches a glimpse of "Danny" with two little hearts before his sister grabs the cell and leaps through an open window with what could only be a squeal.

"What the fuck just happened?" Cullen asks, but Tim can only offer him a shrug.

#dc x dp crossover #dcxdpdabbles #Ghost King Summon Dare au #Basically Cass met Danny on the streets #Gay awakening cause Danny is gender fluid #Damian is really scared of Danny #Prompt #Hope you like! #Dead Silent

[taylors-fourth-cat-meow]

Its nice to see someone else immune to Mors BS, now if you dont like Amren after ACOSF there *chefs kiss*. Anyway, the reason I never cared for her is because she felt fake to me, like a girl in highschool that smiles in your face or makes comments like "ugh im so (insert flaw here) " just to get the people around her to say "no your the BEST! We all wish we were you!" for her to just smile. IDK I just was never really on the hype train with her even from MAF (bc of what she did with Cass & Az)

Hi anon!

Yeh mor does seem super fake and idk 2D??? It's like she only shows up when the plot needs it otherwise she isn't relevant to the plot. Actually she isn't needed at all?

It's just that idk maybe Sjm water Feyre to have a girl bestie? Which seems unnecessary cause Cassian cud have been her bestf too? Idk why she thought that this femmine support was necessary (tbh her character wud have been much more interesting if she was the catty sister in law cause DRAMA)

And yes she's the girl who came between two brothers GOD I hate that trope that's so fcking disgusting??? AND THIS HAS BEEN GOING OM FOT 500 YEARS?????????

DISGUSTING.

Plus the thing where she's bi but not bi? Like idk if Sjm even understands the meaning of it when she made Mor a lgbtq character. What even is her orientation? She like men and women sexually but romantically she's only interested in women (i don't remember the books well so forgive me for any mistakes)and idk doesn't like men as much and/or only likes them cause that's how it's supposed to be and sleeps with them to remind azriel she's not interested

And the way she has been stringing along Azriel for centuries??? Why? What's even th point?, If he's ur so called family why not set him free? Why hurt the one u claim to love?

Then there's her powers? she's claimed to be this legend who fought the war and idk evryone's scared by her name? BUT WHATS HER POWER? is she a lie detector like what? 'TrUtH iS mY pOweR' Idk how far that can get u as a warrior.

Also I am immensely irritated by the fact that she's blonde. I'm srry but if the illyarians are are brown? (Like so many claim the bat boys are ) how tf can she be blonde and white? ISNT SHE RHYSANDS COUSIN? I'm srry I fail to understand how people living in the same geographic region in the same country have different ethnicities and DIFFERENT RACES??? Like wtf? Illyarians and brown but everyone else in the nc is white I'm srry I just- it annoys me to no end. Okay yeh Nc is diverse I get it, so is my country, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN SEPARATE RACES? (I'm srry this deviated a bit.)

Basically, to sum it all up, I don't like Mor.

#ps i didnt like amren from the start #she shud have died in the end of acowar #she's an unnecessary waste of space #anti sjm #anti acotar #anon asks #anti mor #anti morrigan

[cephalog0d]

Mind if I ask about Lazarus Pits Can Fix Anything?

Absolutely! The alternative title for this in my Fic List is "Lazarus Pet Sematary" (although there are no actual pets involved) XD

This was inspired by a conversation with @dizaryswrites where we started speculating about what if Lazarus Pits had an effect on inanimate objects, and then I got sucked into the idea of writing literal-child Batkids, and I have it all planned but I have to finish it because it's gotten much longer than intended (because I have no self control). The basic idea is doing an AU of de-aging/age-gap-shrinking the Wayne kids and having SOMEONE decide it's a good idea to fix a toy by tossing it in a Lazarus Pit, which...technically works? But there are Consequences. So it's mostly an excuse to write younger Batkids having a shenanigan together.

(For purposes of this AU, ages are roughly Dick - 15ish, Jason and Cass - 11/12ish, Tim - 7ish and Damian is a toddler.)

“You’re shitting me.” “No? I read about it online,” good to know Tim had bypassed Bruce’s child locks again, not that Jason was planning to rat him out for it (probably), “it’s supposed to be in a sub-basement of an abandoned building, but nobody’s figured out how to get down there.” “We could,” Cass’s voice said immediately behind Jason, making him startle and flail embarrassingly as he spun to face her. “Where the hell were you?” he demanded. Cass stared flatly back at him. “It was loud,” she offered as explanation. “Yeah no shit, that doesn’t mean you just bail and leave us to deal with it!” Cass’s face twisted into a scowl, but Tim spoke before she could retaliate. “Do you really think we could find it?” he asked excitedly. He was grinning, showing off the gap on one side of his mouth where he’d lost a tooth recently. Cass gave Jason the stink eye for another second before her expression smoothed out as she looked to Tim. “Yes,” she said confidently.

Dick, as Bruce is leaving him in charge for the weekend: I totally got this! Dick five minutes later: I've made a terrible mistake.

#wip ask #ceph writes things

[gffa]

THIS SERIES HAS BEEN RATTLING AROUND IN MY BRAIN FOR LIKE A WEEK SINCE I READ IT and I'm going to write a post that's just for me, but y'all're welcome to read it, too, if you want, because I'm gonna spoil everything, since I feel like that's the only way to talk about why it's been whizzing around my head like a pinball game. So, the above is the true core narrative of Batman and Robin Eternal and ultimately why I really loved this whole story. It's not perfect, I would have shifted around a lot of emphasis and would have given stronger narrative presence to Jason and Tim (this story is really ultimately about Bruce, Dick, Cass, and Harper, even if the others get some hilarious banter moments), I would have focused more on showing rather than telling that Dick was choosing his own path, but at the end of the day, the pieces of this story came together for me. It's a little too long to summarize, but the basic structure of the story is that it goes back and forth between the Present and the Past. The Present has Dick, Jason, and Tim running around the world to find out who this mysterious "Mother" is and put a stop to her, a new face (Cassandra Cain) shows up to give Dick a flashdrive of information on and she's somehow tied into this, and meanwhile, Bruce is in his amnesiac era. In the past, Batman and Robin are hunting down Crane and whoever he's working with, and Bruce is keeping most of this case away from Dick, which the narrative treats it like we're supposed to believe that Bruce is falling for what Mother is doing--she's a human trafficker who is making "designer humans", because as someone who went through mind-breaking levels of trauma when she was a child, she believes that when you break a child's mind through the loss of their parents/their world around them, you can shape them into "perfect" people, unstoppable machines who can do anything. Because that's what happened to her and she knows that Bruce wants a "perfect" protege, one who doesn't make human mistakes or have human feelings, like Dick Grayson is having throughout the series. The story falls a little flat in these scenes, because the sheer idea that Bruce would be willing to let a child's parents be killed in front of them just so that he can have a perfect partner is the absolute opposite of what the character stands for, and it works as him attempting to trick Mother, but it doesn't work when attempting to trick the audience, because Bruce Wayne would fucking never. But he walks right up to the edge of it, so that he can get close to Mother and figure her operation out, and she knows what he's doing and says, well, what happens next is on you, because you thought you could play games with me, but as soon as you agreed, you know what you set in motion. Eventually, it's revealed that the child who would have their parents murdered in front of them to traumatize them to become Batman's perfect partner was Harper Row and she had sent David Cain's daughter Cassandra to do it. Cass can only kill Harper's mother before she breaks down and Harper's father manages to get away. Harper has no idea of any of this until it switches back to the present storyline and eventually Mother tells her the whole story.

Each of the kids that have joined Bruce in this fight are ones that have made their own choices, he doesn't define them, he doesn't actually make child soldiers, this entire series is a refuting of that idea. The children who are manipulated into this life either wind up as empty cannon fodder or have a high rate of walking away or falling away from the methods that trained them. Not a single one of them (Harper, Cass, Jean-Paul most centrally) is still standing with the same beliefs that were meant to shape them into "perfect" people, every one of them turned away from that manipulation. Because they weren't more valuable, they died in droves, not a single one was able or wanting to carry on the legacy--meanwhile, all four Robins are alive and kicking by the end, still standing strong. But it's not just about that, it's about Bruce's guilt, because he knows himself and his relationships, he knows his personality is an extremely heavy one, and he's not wrong to worry that he could shape these kids into something they wouldn't have been by themselves. He's not wrong that their desperate need to live up to his expectations can strike at the core of these kids--when Dick is dosed with fear toxin, that's his biggest fear, that he's not good enough for Batman. Bruce isn't wrong to worry about how that affects Dick and the others long term!

He has a room made up for a young Harper and Cullen who have just lost their mother, but eventually backs off because he can't face the idea that he might be forcing her into molding herself after him, because the force of his personality is just too strong. He worries about how he's done the same to Dick, given Dick's greatest fear under Crane's toxin is that he's not good enough for Batman--Bruce isn't just being paranoid about this, it is a legit concern from his point of view. But it drives him to keep secrets from Dick, who is shown to be incredibly intelligent (he gets that Crane seems to want them to find him, etc.) and also senses that Bruce is withholding things from him:

Which, once I reached the end and was secure in the knowledge that, no, this wasn't the most batshit comic I'd ever read where it expected me to buy the idea that Bruce would actually try to replace Dick with a "perfect" version from Mother, it recontextualized these scenes for me. Bruce has no intentions of replacing Dick but instead is worried that he's destroying this kid's life, because Dick is pushing himself so hard. To the point that he worries that Dick still has fear toxin running through his veins, because he's been over-training himself obsessively.

This isn't a story about Bruce thinking Dick isn't good enough, but instead a story about Bruce worrying that he overrode this kid's path in life, that maybe Dick wouldn't have wanted this. Which circles back to Harper again and I think that's kind of the point. She was a necessary addition to this particular story to show that, when Bruce backed off, she didn't pursue this life. We don't know the exact specific details of Dick becoming Robin in this story (though, if they used the one from the Secret Files for Nu52, this still holds true), but in pretty much every story of the last three decades of telling it, it is always Dick Grayson is mad as hell and nothing is going to stop him. Bruce didn't drag him into this life, he saw a kid willing to sneak out at night to go confront Tony Zucco to bring him to justice because there was a fire in that kid that wasn't going to be stopped. But Bruce himself loves that kid so much that he's not really objective about him, he's so afraid that he's messing this kid up--because he's still in denial that he's a father to this child, just as Dick's still lashing out that Bruce isn't his father, they're feeding into those words hurled at each other, meanwhile the narrative is setting Bruce up as a contrast against "Mother", to show, yes, he is acting as this kid's father. It's a central core of the story, that contrast, how Mother treats those who are loyal to her, who would do anything for her:

She slices David Cain open and kicks him down to his death. Her endless hoards of children are nothing more than cannon fodder. Jean-Paul is loyal to Mother because she shaped him as part of the Order of St. Dumas as well, but she discards him just as easily, and it takes a knock down drag out fight with Dick to break him out of that:

It's not just being on Mother's side or against her, it's about living by her rules and her philosophy and her worldview. Dick has to be the one to break Jean-Paul out of this because Dick is the one who did the same thing for himself when he was Batman's first protege--he chose for himself. Whether or not he ultimately agreed with Batman's philosophy, it wasn't because Bruce's force of personality was so great that he forced Dick into this, no, Dick Grayson was always going to be on this path, it was that Bruce made sure he didn't kill himself along the way--because he genuinely loved Dick and wanted him to live the life that satisfied him. And that applies to how each of the Robins is valued and wanted. This is how Bruce speaks of them:

Every single one of them is wanted. Every single one of them is valued. Every single one of them is loved by Bruce. He parallels Damian's attempts to learn to them, because that is the parallel--they're all Bruce Wayne's sons. The big emotional climax of the story is narratively set on this moment, that Dick and Jason and Tim and Damian are all different from each other, and that's why they're the ones still standing at the end. David Cain dies, Mother's children are all dead or set free from her influence, Jean-Paul Valley turns away from the path she set him on, Cassandra Cain chooses to no longer kill but instead chooses to be a hero, Harper Row chooses to walk away. And the Robins, especially Dick Grayson, the one who created the role of Robin and chose this path for himself, basically kick everyone's ass along the way. Dick defeats David Cain in combat, he defeats Jean-Paul in combat, he gathers together Tim and Jason and Harper with him to actually defeat Mother in a way Bruce couldn't. Bruce isn't always great at what he sets out to do. He's secretive and lies to Dick about what he's doing, he worries that he created Robin when Dick might have lived another life if Bruce hadn't interfered, but in the important ways, he is the inverse of Mother. Which is why Mother, as a character, worked so well for me. Her whole backstory is the inverse image of Bruce Wayne--when she was a child, her parents (and entire village) were killed in front of her and she was so destroyed by this trauma that she was entirely transformed by it and chose to wield her trauma as a weapon, she chose to transform others around her as well. In the most flattened out of terms, Bruce Wayne does the same thing. His parents are murdered in front of him and he is so destroyed by his trauma that he's entirely transformed by it and chose to wield that trauma as a weapon (Batman), he chose to help transform others around him as well. Seeing two "parental" figures be each others' foils in the narrative, how they're set up as parallels to each other, meanwhile are entirely perpendicular in what they're actually doing, the way it shows why the idea of "Batman is creating child soldiers" doesn't really hold up, because you're not looking at what these kids' circumstances actually are, why they were driven to this life. It's not a perfect story, I think the balance is off, I think trying to trick the audience weakened the story, when spending more time on the various Robins' reasons for becoming Robin and the determination in each of them, would have made this a knock-out story, nor am I beholden to this as the current backstory for the characters.

Instead, I chose to enjoy this as a version of how the characters might have come together and enjoyed that it showed these kids are indeed capable of walking away, because that's a pretty important point when it comes to comic book storytelling and Robins in particular. Not a version I'm married to, but one I can pluck a fascinating story about Bruce's role as a father to these Robins, even as he fights it and says otherwise, what the story shows is a much different story.

He cared so much about the children that came to him that he went whole-assedly over the line in the other direction, that he tried to push them away because he was so afraid of being the kind of person who supersedes others' wills. Because he does toe that line a lot of the time, he's not wrong to worry about it.

But if he truly had made Dick Grayson into his own image instead of what Dick wanted, Dick would never have been able to stand up and wipe the floor with Mothers' minions or crack open her hold over Jean-Paul. Yeah, Dick worried about not being good enough for Bruce and that probably drove a lot of him.

But he also mocked Bruce right to his face while they were fighting, that's not a "perfect" little soldier, that's a kid who regularly goes toe to toe with Batman and doesn't back down.

That's not a child soldier, that's a father's son who has the same sheer stubborn force of will that his dad did and a father who desperately wanted the best life he could give his son. And that's what this story really was about for me.

#dc #batfam #bruce wayne #dick grayson #batman and robin eternal #long post

[gamesception]

Sception reads Cassandra Cain #5

The Batman Chronicles #18 written by Devin Grayson, pencils by Dale Eaglesham

I've kind of gone over this in the past, but whatever, it's been a while. So Huntress / Helena Burtinelli was very briefly Batgirl/Batwoman during No Man's Land, while Batman was outside of Gotham trying to use his money and influence as Bruce Wayne to get the government to rebuild the city instead of walling it off, and for a while continued under that identity with Batman's approval after he returned. She was always meant to be a decoy/red herring by the editorial staff - as they had to announce the upcoming Batgirl title long before introducing the brand new character who would be headlining the book, but I honestly think this was a mistake - and more importantly just kind of mean to her fans.

Because Helena honestly made too much sense as Batgirl. Her character had originally been conceived as an alternate universe Batgirl who was the daughter of Bruce and Catwoman/Selina Kyle, a version of the character that was unceremoniously killed off and then erased from existence during the Crisis on Infinite Earths mega crossover / continuity reboot. So this is already a character and fan base who were hard done by before she was re-imagined as Helena Burtinelli, a version of the character who has at times been poorly treated in her own right. Elevating her to the mantle of Main Continuity Batgirl would have been long overdue justice to her fans, and a promise that the character would be treated better going forward.

And it was all just a red herring so the new character reveal could be a surprise. Not only had editorial not suddenly found their long missing respect for the character, they thought so little of her that her entire character could be jerked around for a cheap stunt.

Worse, as Red Herring Batgirl she was now in the way and had to be removed for the new Batgirl to take her place, and the way that went down was also pretty much bullshit, making Helena look like a coward for not even trying to save people under Batman's protection from Two Face's gang and making Bruce look like a monstrous asshole even by the Batman standards of the time. I really should have talked more about in the write up for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #120. Oh, well.

I wasn't a big Huntress fan, but if I had been it absolutely would have soured me on this new, unproven Batgirl character. In universe Helena would be more than justified in giving Cass a chilly reception. As far as I know, this issue is their first interaction, and I don't think I've read it before, so lets see how that goes.

despite the cover, and my long tangent above, neither Helena nor Cass is the actual focus of this issue. Rather, this is a Dr. Leslie Thompkins issue. Iirc she was a DCAU original, a doctor and surgeon in Gotham who did a lot of charity work, who knew Bruce since he was a boy. She knew Bruce was Batman, and basically served as the emergency doctor for the bat family in general. She appeared fairly sparingly in the animated show, but became a regular part of the comics, where she served as sort of a moral conscience for the bat family, constantly questioning their methods and use of violence. TV Leslie was a pacifist too, but that wasn't the primary focus of her character, and the change in focus and overuse in the comics did her absolutely no favors.

Because, of course, the Batman comics can't endorse the idea that the Batman is fundamentally a bad idea, so Leslie is inevitably put in situations contrived to make her wrong. Over and over again. And yet she keeps harping on about how violence is bad and the bat folks should stop hitting people who are threatening to blow up city hall or that punching a supervillain who is shooting up a crowd of civilians makes you just as bad as them or how the morally correct thing is to politely ask the Condiment King not to drown celebrity guest Gordon Ramsay in ranch dressing, and if he chooses to do so anyway well that's on him but at least your conscience doesn't have to be burdened by the indelible sin of hitting, because hitting is bad, and if you don't feel bad about hitting then she'll be sure to feel twice as bad for you, and she'll rub your face in her own misplaced guilt until you feel some by proxy god damnit.

Overall it was very insincere and turned Dr. Thompkins from the beloved character of the animated series, an all-to-rare rare surrogate mother figure for Bruce, into a smug self righteous downer and a nag.

This poor treatment of Dr. Thompkins in the bat books would eventually escalate into one of the most egregious and disgusting and frankly uncalled for character assassinations in the history of the medium, as bad if not worse than what Cass suffered. Eventually retconned, badly of course. Even so, I hope I get bored of this project and drop it again long before we get to the point where I have to talk about War Games / War Crimes in detail, because that was some of the most disgusting, reprehensible, and just plain mean spirited comic book writing in DC history - already a shamefully low bar - and the entire editorial staff responsible for it should have been banned from ever putting ink to page again.

But hey, here I am going off on ~another~ tangent, instead of looking at the actual issue in front of me.

So anyway, this issue opens on Dr. Thompkins having a nightmare where she pushes through a refugee camp, unable to help any of the people due to a lack of supplies, while stalked by a monster man - obviously Bruce - trying to take her away from the work that needs doing but that she can't do anyway, and maybe secretly doesn't even really want to.

Leslie's nightmare isn't far removed from her waking reality, as her little medical camp is under-staffed, under-supplied, and overwhelmed by sick and injured people from across Gotham with literally no where else to go for treatment.

Adding to her troubles, Zsasz was brought in to her clinic beaten to hell and with a conspicuous bite taken out of his side, and while he's unconscious for now he'll doubtless start killin' again as soon as he wakes up.

As dangerous as Zsasz is supposed to be, though, mostly down to sheer relentlessness, he's still just a guy? He's not super powered or anything? If Cass is in this book she should just beat him outright in any sort of physical fight in a rock-beats-scissors sort of way? Hrm.

Zsasz's injuries come courtesy of Killer Croc, who attacked Zsasz after he attacked a homeless man who happened to be Croc's friend. Now both 'Stumpy' and Zsasz are being treated by Leslie, and Croc's stalking the outskirts of the medical camp, torn between tearing through the place to finish of Zsasz and holding back so that Thompkins can treat his friend. He wants Leslie to just hand Zsasz over to him, but of course she can't do that.

Above I criticized the sort of moral dilemmas the writers often subjected Leslie to, but so far at least this feels more fair and Leslie's position doesn't seem as unreasonable. But despite his current injuries Zsasz /does/ present a threat to everyone at the camp, arguably even more so than Croc does. The GCPD group in No Man's Land is run by Gordon, at least in theory, but most of the cops are more loyal to this other guy who would immediately kill both Zsasz and Croc if he got his hands on either of them, probably 'Stumpy' too if he heard the guy was Croc's friend, so she can't turn to them. Honestly, she knows Bruce doesn't kill people, so the ideal solution would be to hand Zsasz off to Batman.

Speak of the devil, it's Officer Pettit. His deal is that since there's no legal system in No Man's Land, no way to put criminals/supervillains on trial, no intact and manned prisons to hold them in (that he knows about anyway), that anybody he deems a criminal should just be killed.

The classic conflict between at least this version of Helena and Bruce is that she's willing to kill people sometimes, whether for personal revenge reasons or if she just can't work out some other way to stop them from killing other people in the moment. And killing is something that Batman generally, and especially at the time, took a particularly uncompromising view of. In Batman's mind, if you kill you're a killer, and no better than anyone else who kills people. Never-you-mind that he's pals with the justice league and most of them, even Superman, have killed at this point in continuity. Within the pages of the bat books at least, Bruce's feelings on killing are as uncompromising and iron-clad as Leslie's feelings about violence in general.

Come to think of it, why wasn't that the reason Helena stopped being Batgirl? Like if she had fought Two Face's gang to try to protect the people in Batman's territory despite their overwhelming numbers, but in the end had resorted to killing some of them to save the people they were attacking. That would have made for a believable conflict between Helena and Bruce to justify their falling out, one that would have been more in line with their respective characters and wouldn't have made either of them come off looking quite as heartless and frankly unheroic as what the writers/editors actually went with.

But whatever, the point is that with Helena's looser stance on killing, it makes some amount of sense that she'd end up with Pettit after cutting ties with Bruce, at least temporarily. Eventually she'll realize that he's no good, but I guess that hasn't happened yet.

Anyway, Leslie agrees to let Pettit's injured officers into the camp if they leave their guns behind. They agree, and Huntress accompanies them and Dr. Thompkins while Pettit stays outside the camp with his health and armed men to hunt for Croc.

Once Helena realizes Dr. Thompkins has Zsasz there, though, she objects pretty vociferously.

It's one thing to endanger herself for her principles, but Thompkins is also endangering all of the other people there seeking her help. Also, yeah, comic Thomkins is kind of a downer.

Around this time Bruce and Cass show up, dropping off medical supplies they got from... somewhere, I don't know.

And there's their first meeting. And yeah, a justifiably cold greeting from Helena, though at lest she's not particularly mean or aggressive about it. It's Bruce she's angry at overall. The fist-bump as a hello for Cass is cute and on brand, and I like that we can kind of make out her facial expression despite the mask.

I like these handful of panels, with Helena shoving past Cass to confront Bruce. For one, we get a good sense of difference in size where Helena, a grown ass adult, is shown as clearly larger than teenage Cass, while Bruce towers over her in return. Its not just these three, there's also skinny fragile Dr. Thompkins, and various background figures in the crowd scenes. I have to give Eaglesham credit here - he knows how to give characters, including the female characters, different silhouettes and body shapes and facial features and body langue, and he effectively uses these differences to convey the characters' different personalities and emotional states. Like, Helena is annoyed at Cass, annoyed at how quickly she was replaced, but she's angry at Bruce, and Eaglesham really shows that in her facial expression.

We're here for Cass though, and I really like how she's drawn in that panel where Helena's pushing past her. Her proportions, the big head relative to her body size, the way her cape folds, etc. Between that and the offered fist bump panel, this doesn't just feel like Batgirl to me, it feels like Cass specifically.

As much as Bruce and Helena are on bad terms right now, Bruce is very much on her side when it comes to treating Zsasz at the clinic, and in particular when it comes to giving him a blood transfusion when donor blood is so hard to come by right now. Of course, there have been versions of Batman - versions I generally prefer - who would have taken Leslie's side on this, but NML Batman was a bit of a grumpy guss, so this isn't exactly out of character.

Pettit starts shooting at Croc, interrupting Bruce & Leslie's argument, and... I'm sorry, what the hell is with that panel of Cass's face there. Like, cheat and draw her face through the mask, or just draw the mask, either would be better than whatever that mushy mess is. And I was just talking you up, Eaglesham, what happened there?

On a more positive note, this bit where Cass asks Bruce through pantomime if Leslie is his mother is good. Very on brand, gets the idea across well, doesn't take ~too much~ more panel space than if she was able to just ask him in a word bubble. It's also a good example of Cass being empathetic to the people around her which is simultaneously one of her core character traits and in a sense also her super power.

Like, she's not at all the focus of this book, but so far both the writing and the art for her are pretty solid.

The distraction is fairly brief, and afterwords Bruce & Leslie's argument resumes, escalating to the point where Bruce is compelled to storm off and brood for a while.

As he goes, we get this interaction between him and Cass, where, on the positive side it's a continuation of the themes I liked before, the empathy, the communication through pantomime... and her face is a lot better in these panels than in that weird mushy one from before. But asking if Bruce is sad by tracing a big ole fake tear down her face with a finger is a bit hammy.

Of course, the moment Batman leaves everything goes to heck. Zsasz is up...

And Croc gets the drop on Pettit.

So Zsasz is threatening Dr. Thompkins and Cass & Helena rush up to help, but - and this isn't super clear from the art - but Helena goes to shoot Zsasz with her wrist-mounted crossbow. Yes, it's a gimmick weapon that looks like a toy, but her crossbow has absolutely been established as a lethal weapon in universe. Cass, whose 'no killing' policy is if anything even more strict than Bruce's, stops her from shooting Zsasz, which leads to a scuffle between Huntress and Batgirl, preventing either of them from intervening to help Dr. Thompkins. Which I guess explains why Cass being nearby doesn't just neutralize Zsasz as a threat, but it does make her and Helena both seem kind of dumb in the moment.

But making Cass and Helena hold the idiot ball for a bit must have been worth it in the writer's mind in order to give Leslie her Big Scene.

Believe it or not, Zsasz is unmoved.

Wont resist him with violence? What would you do if you weren't so morally upright, Leslie? Lightly open-hand slap him into submission? Like, if this scene could somehow happen in such a way where she actually had physical power over him, like if he was tied down and she had a scalpel or something, then the decision not to exercise that power might have some meaning, but the way this scene was set up it's not like there was anything she could do anyway. She's not even making a convincing appeal here.

By 'not resist him with violence' she means 'no resist him in any fashion what so ever' - not even physically stand in front of him to buy the people behind her a moment to run. Instead she literally curls up on the ground in the fetal position. Cartoon Dr. Thompkins was also a stanch pacifist whose moral convictions would have compelled her to help even a killer if they were in need, but she had more dignity than this.

Croc shows up to save Leslie while Cass and Helena are still busy bickering amongst themselves.

And afterwards Cass gives Leslie this super respectful bow like the reader is supposed to have been blown away by Leslie's great moral fortitude.

And Bruce gets over his big sulk just in time to catch Zsasz and drag him off to his secret prison, which is an absolutely normal thing to have.

...

So yeah, I got super sidetracked this time by how much I don't like the comic version of Dr. Thompkins, at least not the way she was portrayed at the time. But focusing specifically on Cass... they didn't do a bad job with her here, like, at all. She mostly looks cool. She's recognizably a teenager most of the time, instead of being drawn exactly the same as when Helena was in the costume. She's shown to be curious and empathetic and a bit stubborn and actually quite communicative despite being non-verbal. There's a bit of her individual personality showing through here even though there's like four or five other characters who are more central to the story being told than she is. I didn't really enjoy the issue overall, but I'm honestly pretty happy with Cass's portrayal in it specifically.

#sception reads cassandra cain #batgirl #cassandra cain #leslie thompkins #helena bertinelli #long post

[lacrimosathedark]

You know something I find annoying?

"[Insert comic book character] is so out of character in [Elseworld material]!"

You realize that no comic book character has consistent characterization, right? Like, in mainline comics?

Do you realize how many different writers comics have had? Writers for the same character who sometimes didn't read their history or straight up hate them for no reason and ruin them?

Like, people will wholly recognize Kory's "ooc-ness" in Red Hood and the Outlaws, or that Heroes In Crisis was "ooc" for Wally West and ignored it or made their own fixes (before DC backpedalled from the sheer backlash) but won't do the same for other characters.

My specialty being the Batfamily, I know people ignore some comics.

Bruce Wayne has canonically been both emotionally constipated to the point of not telling his children he loves them, but has also at times been very blunt about it because it's a fact.

Bruce also has, at times, hit his children. I personally ignore most of these instances.

Dick Grayson is overall been written as a kind and compassionate, if sometimes angry, person. Yet there's the canon history of him telling Babs "Don't make me regret having elevators put in this building" and sleeping with her to tell her he was marrying someone else.

Dick has a history of both being seemingly demisexual and also being slut-shamed.

Jason's personality has been thrown every which way and has too many times been given to writers who hated him. His character lacks consistency to the point where most people ignore his characterization outside of Under the Hood because it was huge for his character. Like, Battle For the Cowl was horrible; he was basically made a psychopath purely for the drama.

Tim's behavior, and the "Teen Titans" as a whole was so bad in the New 52 that it's overall ignored and/or retconned. One example I can think of is when Tim apparently slept with Cassie and also Solstice (who was seeing Bart, though this is Bar Torr not precious bean Bart Allen but still) despite Tim historically both being faithful despite being repeatedly accused otherwise and also being hesitant about sex. This was bad enough that it was retconned he was possessed by Trigon.

Stephanie is a mixed bag, in part because early misogyny but yknow.

Do I need to talk about Cass? There's a whole area about her turning against her core "Don't kill" tenent and becoming an assassin and trying to lure Tim to her side and kill him when he refused. This had to be retconned that she was drugged and manipulated by Deathstroke if I'm remembering right.

Outside the Batfam: remember when Clark fucking Kent had a machine that turned people black for Some Reason and Lois used it? And then asked Superman if he would love her even I she never changed back and he dodged the question?

Like...comics aren't like books where there's one consistent writer, or a TV or movie where there's a semi-consistent board of writers. These people change throughout this large history of these characters. Some of them are going to make mistakes. Some of them are going to be assholes who don't respect the characters.

Like, yes, complain when they are written very wrong so DC can know, but understand that "in-character" can be very loosely interpreted.

#dc comics #batman #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #superman #clark kent

[fruit-salad-ship]

Does peach remember any other Pokémon from her old family home that come to mind like her moms gengar?

She remembers them all, every individual she saw there stayed with her, it’s why she has nightmares a lot.

She remembers her moms gengar being terrifying, putting her in a weird shadow realm alone whenever she messed up. She remembers her chandelure making sure she always felt watched, an ambient nagging drain on her body just to be around it, it’s purpose to weaken anyone close, make them pliable. The stupid delphoxXninetales was spiteful, mean, mocking cocky, and left her with a fierce burn through a redirected attack from Val. The worst was the luxrayXmamoswine, resembling a sabertooth in form, it’s dual type was volatile and it would be very unkind during training, to this day she fears the feeling of electrical attacks or even just static, and it’s one of the reasons she hates the cold with its icy moves.

The aunts had type specialities, ghost and poison, their teams were all made to fight, and were too dangerous to play with or be near without risk. Then there’s Rob. He went through dozens of Pokemon, training them too hard, working them to the bone. The older he got the more he pushed them. His first however was a sandshrew, a sweet little thing he befriended, but one day he made a mistake and that Pokemon went missing. He cried about it for a while to peach, upset that his friend was missing. Peach knew, deep down, it was taken by the adults as a form of discipline. Cass’s first was a sentret, cute, brave, perhaps too brave for the work the kids did. It got eaten by one of the Pokemon his mother trained, she seemed unfazed by this, he however grew cold over bonds made with partners from then on, and took little interest in connecting to any Pokemon he handled from then on.

I could go into the Pokemon peach trained, individually picked by her from a pack and hand raised, each one either being moved on due to her doing a good enough job at raising it, allowing it’s potential to fight to shine, one of the aunts taking it to push further. Every 6 months they’d review the cousins training and pick the strongest one to keep. The ones they didn’t do so well with would be disposed of one way or another, if not fed to another bigger meaner mon, then put down, by her own hands whenever she didn’t have her mon picked by the adults, pushed to do so by her moms beyheem, a hideous mon that would force its way into peoples heads and act for them, felt like you were deep underwater with the pressure it put in your skull, it’s one species she tends to have a lot of trouble with, gets quietly nervous around because of this. Val learnt how to defend peach from psychic types who like to jump into brains and puppet bodies because of this exact mon. It changed them both.

Her home was bad, her upbringing tough, and her memories of home all very bitter. She doesn’t sleep well because she made mistakes, and thinks she should have been better, or done more. She never forgets them, not a single one, remembers their faces, their lives, saw hundreds come and go, and loses sleep over it regularly.

The only exception to this, is Bob, who basically raised her, and sure he was sweet and gentle, somehow untouched by the many generations that came before peach, stayed kind, a sturdy rock in her life. The best boy.

#sad stuff but it’s the story #she’s not come from a good place #fruit salad