#dc means disregard canon right?

[thevoidstaredback]

Adventures In Gotham

Enough Caffeine to Kill an Elephant Side Story

The first time Danny had ever been to Gotham, he swore it would be his last. He was twenty-two at the time.

In an effort to relax after finals had ended, he, Tucker, Sam, Val, Wes, and Dani had been playing a round of Truth or Dare after finishing a few movies. Sam had dared Danny to wander around Gotham without attracting attention to himself. The catch was that he wasn't allowed to use his powers except to fly there and back. His time limit was Sunday night.

They'd all been planning to stay the night at Sam's anyway, so no one would even notice he was gone. Though, the dare had seemed easy at the time, Danny should've realized his luck was not that good.

Regardless, he flew to the outskirts of Gotham City, dropped his transformation, and entered.

The first thing he noticed was that there was some kind of bubble around Gotham preventing the Shades and overall feel of death from leaving. It was overwhelming at first, but he got used to it pretty quickly. The next thing he noticed was that he had walked into somebody's haunt.

Shit.

He made himself presentable and spoke to the night, "I apologise for trespassing," His voice echoed through the open area as though he was shouting in an empty room. Ghost Speak tended to do that. "I mean no hostile intentions. I simply wish to play a game with your protectors." With any luck, whoever this was would be playful or friendly, at the very least. He didn't hold his breath, though.

A lie. He was holding his breath, but that's only because he was nervous!

The night air stilled as though considering his words. Then, a breeze from behind pushed him further into the city. Flapping wings of bats and owls seemed to hide the whispers of "You may come in." and "Be careful." and "You will lose." and "Good luck.".

A vote of confidence from the City Spirit. "Thank you." He was going to be as quick as he could, but he couldn't draw attention to himself. Easier said than done. Batman seemed to know whenever anyone ever stepped foot into his city, especially if they've never been there before. So, he had to play hide and seek with Batman and Robin.

Again, easier said than done.

Danny knows very little about about Gotham and her heroes and villains. What he does know is that Robin is fairly knew to the scene, but also very serious in what he does. He's still a child, though, and he likes to play around a bit. Batman, on the other hand, has already become something of a cryptid, despite only showing himself a year or so ago. Either way, the two balance each other nicely and work well as a team.

Batman and Robin obviously know the entire city inside out, so Danny has to somehow keep an eye on where they are at all times while not drawing attention to himself. Which would be easy, except for the fact that Danny can only sense where non-living beings are. Batman and Robin are very much alive. He's pretty sure. Unless either of them have a shit ton of Shades attached to them, which is unlikely but not impossible, then he'll have to rely on finding them first and keeping them within his sight as he tours around their city.

Why the hell did he agree to this? He so deserves a reward if he succeeds.

'When', not 'if'. 'If' is pessimistic and implies that Batman might just drop him off a building and watch him fall. 'When' at least lets him continue with the illusion that he may get out of this no deader than when he arrived in Gotham.

All he had to do was basically tour the city, then he'll be done. It went well for the first hour, but then he spotted the shadows moving around him. It wouldn't normally be a problem, but one of those shadows was made out of bright colours. Seeing as his Ghost Sense didn't go off, Danny figured the he'd just run straight into Batman and Robin.

Shit. Fuck. Okay, play it cool, Danny.

He ran. He ran as fast as he could without using his powers. When he was sure he'd lost the two vigilanties, he allowed himself to stop in an alley somewhere in the Narrows. (The map he looked at was coming in very handy all of a sudden)

"Could be worse," he said to himself, backing into a corner.

The sound of shattering glass and the scurrying of mice and rats gave the impression of laughter and taunting. Which, rude, but fair.

"Your Knights, my lady," he spoke into the darkness, "are terrifying."

"Who you talking to?"

Danny did not jump. He didn't! Liar.

The kid, about twelve years old, was in bright green, red, and yellow. His hair windswept and he didn't seem even the slightest bit out of breath, let alone tired. Shouldn't he be in bed? Did he have a bedtime? He should have a bedtime, in Danny's expert opinion.

"Did you know that humans are endurance hunters?" Robin had been smiling since he dropped down in front of Danny. And if that wasn't a scary ass line to hear from a twelve year old up way past his bedtime-

No, he's not intimidated. "It's, um, a good thing I'm not completely human then, huh?" Stupid, stupid, stupid! Shut up, Danny! Stop talking! Right now!

This made Robin frown and the shadows started to move again, Batman taking his place just behind the boy. "What do you mean?"

Damn, he's scary! Danny's a sucker for a deep voice with a growl, damn.

"I, um," Intelligent response, Danny. King of the Realm Between Realms of Infinity. Keeper of Balance, Timeless Protector of the Dead and Living, and he can't even form a proper sentence.

Batman and Robin's stares were uncomfortably similar, even as Robin tilted his head ever so slightly to the right.

For all his wisdom, Danny couldn't see how he could manage to get out of this without using his powers. So, "Gottagobye!" he let intangibility and invisibility wash over him and he slipped through the wall behind him. From there, he let the rings of light cover him and he flew away.

He'll take the L. That was scary as hell!

The night wind brushed against him, the sound of breaking bones and cackling telling him to come by to play again some time. Had Gotham's City Spirit lead her Knight and his child to Danny? Probably. She seemed like the type. At least she seems to like him? Silver linings.

"I'm never going there again," he muttered halfway to Illinois.

Storyboard

Tag List: @zaiothe4th @someonebored0100 @wolfeyedwitch @angelheartgamer @nymanders @princessbelix @luminanightfall @kgne-k @bianca-hooks123 @reigning-catsanddogs @sassywombatranchhorse @dontfightmecauseillcry @soul-lime @anarinette @serasvictoria02 @the-chaos-goblin-child @confusedshades @caicie @fantasticstoryteller @randomshtickidk @itsberrydreemurstuff @blueliac @i-love-mangoes @nymanders @highimpactemotions @anarinette @sleepingdead96 @orbr @tkiesai @atomicsheepscientist @8000fangirl @shower-phantom-ideas @blep-23

#Enough Caffeine to Kill an Elephant #side story #danny's first adventure in gotham #gotham city #lady gotham #batman #robin #dick grayson as robin #bruce wayne as batman #very early days of batman #hopefully this gives some idea of the timeline #danny phantom #danny needs a nap #danny doesn't get paid enough fro this #dc means disregard canon right? #dcu #dp #dc x dp crossover #dp x dc #dcxdp #dp dc crossover #danny just wants to get this over with without ending up any deader than he was before #is that too much to ask? #this is very much crack #this is also very self indulgent #a little comedy after last time #a palate cleanse #maybe a bribe

[feather-bound-spark]

Got a 35 page long doc of a DC, Batfamily Fic I'm writing. Issue is, I've got the first chapter, then the next several chapters aren't even half done. Then I've got several completed chapters farther down the line. So I keep adding more future stuff without finishing the second chapter.

I will admit like 2-3 pages are notes and not chapter writing, but I still have so much written considering I can barely write a couple pages for an essay.

#dc batfam #my fic #the strugge is real #too many wips and i added another to the pile #dc means disregard canon right?

[mysterycitrus]

Clearly you’ve got a lot of opinions abt the characterisations of the batfam in fandom /pos

Can you elaborate on your interpretation for all of them? /gen

it’s called caring too much — and it’s incurable! wrt my personal interpretation, that's a long and complicated answer, so ill just focus on the internal character of the waynes (specifically bruce and his five canonical kids).

bruce wayne is a control freak, we know this. his parents were killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he has literally never ever been able to truly process it. the degree to which he is controlling - firing robins, survelling his allies without their consent, compiling personal information from others, disregarding others feelings in favour of his own - is all about trying to achieve the best possible outcome. everything he does is justified, because if he's in control then he can stop bad things from happening. it is all in favour of the greater good. it's the logic of an eight year old who's just lost everything and hasn't grown up.

if bruce's trauma manifests control then dick's manifests personal perfectionism. he holds himself to such an absurd standard because he's a flier - when you're catching someone on the trapeze you quite literally have to be there, always, ready to take their hand. if you don't, they fall. if there's no net, if dick isn't the net, then they die. he’s always swinging back out and in again, waiting for the next person to slip through his fingers. he does not fear falling, only what will happen when he hits the ground. he’s a born performer made to be an atlas, carrying an unbearable weight that anchors him to the earth.

jason after death is a tragedy of his own creation, and dc's worst crime is trying to justify the terrible decisions he makes. jason isn’t right, because what he wants is not about protecting other kids from his fate or being a better batman. he wants to be personally vindicated, even though he knows it's impossible. jason rejected himself, bruce, everything, in order to transform into a weapon to enact violence. deep down he's so angry, so hurt, that he'll go after other children - tim, damian, mia - and still decry bruce in the same breath. killing the joker, killing bruce, killing dick, killing every robin before or since won't take him back to who he was before. you cannot go back. you can never go back.

cass sees everything. she can't unsee it, she can't ignore it, nothing in the body can be truly hidden from her, but like bruce that doesn't mean she's always right. she killed a man and witnessed his death, and thus will never take another life. she is all knowing, but she was not born knowing herself. she's jason in reverse — she turns from steel to flesh and bone. she will do whatever it takes to be good. she has made herself real.

tim chose this life in the most literal sense of the word, and then kept choosing it. it’s his duty, it’s his honour, it has hollowed him out and left nothing behind. his tethers to the world snap one by one — janet and jack and darla and dana and steph and kon — and suddenly it’s much harder to extricate himself from the black. robin, dick grayson, is his guiding north star, but his north star is only human. he knows he is capable, he knows this is his choice, and he knows he has long since lost the chance to unchoose.

damian is raised in the shadow of the bat. he is born of blood. he knew death before he knew his father. he is a child. he is ancient. he is a killer. he only wants to do good. he loves his mother. his father is gone before he learns to love damian. damian loves someone else who wears the bat but does not carry wayne name. everything he knows about himself is questioned — robin is given to him, and suddenly he can decide his own fate, make his own family. he wants to be the best, but he doesn’t know what he wants that to mean anymore. he wants the chance to find out.

#sorry this got long! not sure if i actually answered ur question lol #batfam #dick grayson #bruce wayne #jason todd #tim drake #cassandra cain #damian wayne #nightwing #batgirl #batman #dc comics #the ask and the answer #dc meta #ig?

[thesmollestsnek]

I’ve seen a lot of fics n headcanons where Dick Grayson has adhd, and I see you. But also. Consider: Tim Drake having (undiagnosed) adhd. As a certified adhd bitch myself, I have A Lot to say about this, so more under the cut.

Before we get into it, just a quick disclaimer: pretty much all of my dc knowledge is from fandom osmosis, so. If you see something that’s ooc or contradicts canon no you didn’t. Now with that out of the way, on to the main event!

Okay, so! First of all, let’s start at the very beginning. That’s right, I’m talking about Tim Drake’s “night photography”! Now I’m not gonna say neurotypical kids don’t get up to some dumb ass shit when left unsupervised for long periods of time, because they absolutely do. But. The complete disregard for the many, many dangers a young child alone in Gotham at night would face is still notable. And he doesn’t just ignore danger - he runs straight at it. That shows an impressive lack of impulse control, and inability to factor future consequences into current decisions, both of which are hallmarks of adhd. Plus, hyperfixation kinda… changes? How you perceive things. So if Tim was hyperfixated on getting the perfect shot whenever a major crime/fight happened near him, he may not have processed that he was danger at all during the part most likely to scare a neurotypical child away.

Next, we have the coffee. Yes, I know the coffee thing is super overblown by the fandom and not really supported by canon but ssshshhhhhh my world my rules Tim drinks lots of coffee. Now, this one’s kinda obvious, but caffeine is a stimulant and surprise surprise so are most adhd meds. I have seen firsthand how ppl with undiagnosed adhd will mainline caffeine as a form of self medication, whether they’re aware of it or not. Some people use soda or energy drinks, but coffee’s also a really popular choice for this kinda thing. So not only is it completely plausible for someone with undiagnosed adhd to self medicate by drinking a shitton of coffee, it’s extremely common.

Next up! We have the insomnia. Which, again, I think might be played up a lot in fic? But this is my world and you’re reading in it, so. Tim’s an insomniac. This is one of the less well known symptoms of adhd, but again I speak from firsthand experience when I say it’s a big one. Insomnia is extremely common among ppl with adhd, for a couple reasons. One is time blindness, which I’ll come back to in the next point. But also? It’s just really hard to turn your brain off. And if a large portion of Tim’s brain space is being devoted to casework, guess what. That inability to turn one’s brain off will manifest as late night case solving blitzes. Not to mention that hyperfixation, again, changes the way you perceive things. When I hyperfixate on something I often lose hours at a time, and bodily needs like hunger, tiredness, the bathroom, etc aren’t just unimportant they straight up don’t register. With the number of times I’ve come out of a hyperfocus to realize that I have a dehydration headache that’s been brewing for at least an hour, or have completely skipped a major meal, or desperately need to pee, I can 100% believe Tim not noticing any sleep deprivation symptoms until he’s finished whatever he was working on. And I, again, speak from experience when I say that if you happen to hyperfixate at something at the wrong time of night you will be staying up way later than is reasonable. Which brings me to my next point of…

Time blindness! My most favoritist thing in the whole wide world! (/sarcasm) This shit can and absolutely will fuck up your ability to be a functioning human if you let it. Having no internal clock causes more problems than the obvious losing track of time. It means your appetite is sporadic at best and you could very easily forget to eat. It means your sleep schedule has a tendency to just disintegrate if you don’t keep on it. It means being completely dependent on external clocks to know how long things are/should be taking, even for stupid shit like cooking food or brushing your teeth. It means that if you don’t set an alarm for something there is a very real possibility that something isn’t happening no matter how much you want or need it to. In short, it completely fucks up your ability to care for yourself without a lot of external regimented support. Now, who does that remind you of? Which member of the batfamily is known for neglecting his own health? I may not read many comics but the sheer number of “Tim Drake subsists solely on coffee and spite” jokes on ao3 and tumblr is very telling.

His brains. Tim is very, very smart. Have you ever heard the phrase “twice exceptional?” It describes Tim Drake to a t. Plus, I’m living proof of how you can be both smart of brain and dumb of ass. This may be more of a “my family who just so happens to consist entirely of twice exceptional adhd dumbasses” thing than something most ppl with adhd experience, but. You can be really smart and incredible at putting together complex plans, both ahead of time and on the fly, and still have. No common sense whatsoever. Which seems to be a lot of Tim’s characterization: incredibly smart while simultaneously being a complete dumbass. So make of that what you will.

And most compellingly? I think it’s funny. This kid is brothers with Dick Grayson and best friends with Bart Allen and especially next to those two people would never expect Tim to be the one with the quote unquote “cant sit still disorder”. Yknow what? Let’s take this a step further. Let’s make Bart autistic. (I don’t know enough about the flash family to say how accurate this is but for the sake of the joke let’s say he is). People see Impulse standing next to Red Robin and they think they know which one is adhd and which is autistic and they are Wrong. Tim n Bart are Completely unaware of this but the rest of their team finds it hilarious. There’s probably at least one running joke about it.

#tim drake has adhd (you can’t) change my mind #btw I don’t mention it here but my version of batman is 1000000% autistic #I’d offer to give headcanons on which batfamily members I think are which flavors of neurodivergent but. #I’m not NEARLY as familiar with any of the other things I headcanon them as #also none of the other headcanons are quite as solid as this one #I think Bruce n maybe Jason are autistic. Damian’s def got Something going on but idk if I care to put a name to it #dick most definitely has some cptsd but also? I think there’s a portion of ‘weird’ things he does that aren’t from anything specific #he’s just Like That #there’s most definitely some more stuff floating around in the family I highly doubt any of them is 100% neurotypical #I just can’t be bothered to figure out who’s most likely to have what and why lol #maybe some of my other nerdy neurodivergent peeps can chime in with their thoughts? #and just to reiterate: #all of my dc knowledge is from fandom osmosis and that’s how i like it #headcanons #dc headcanons #tim drake #tim drake headcanon #red robin #dc red robin #red robin headcanon #adhd #adhd tim drake #adhd red robin #neurodivergent tim drake

[nabtime]

Our Empty Graves XIV

Fandom: Danny Phantom / Batman: Under the Red Hood

Pairings: Danny Fenton/Jason Todd (Dead on Main)

Rating: Mature

Tags: batfamily, hazmat AU, Nobody Knows AU, Mute!Phantom, potential ghost king danny, slow burn?, DC means Disregard Canon, AU means AU nothing is exactly the same, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, more than canon typical violence, danny is a Halfa and also a Fetch, no beta we die like basically everyone

Summary: They say that Red Hood has a loyal mutt. The man rules his territory in Crime Alley with an iron fist and a guard dog at his side. They say that Hood calls him Fetch, sometimes Fetcher. No one's ever heard him speak. Anyone who's ever seen him says he looks like an experiment gone wrong, that Hood picked him up somewhere unspeakable. They say he'll do anything Red Hood asks of him and he'll do it well. That he's strong and fast and probably inhuman. The girls say he's sweet; quiet but charming in his own way. Rival gangs say he's vicious; that he'd sooner rip your throat out than let you go.

Jason just wants to help him.

Chapter 14: i wanna build my house inside your heart (and make you love your scars)

Chapter Summary: Bruce isn't happy with his research, Danny has a crisis over hands, and Tim is determined to help despite the consequences.

Chapter Notes: title from Bravado by Yoke Lore // Betaed by Garden from the BatPham server!! Links: AO3 // Chapter 1 // Chapter 13 // Chapter 15 // Spotify // Art!

Bruce went over the research again. And again and again. He was hoping he’d find something different after the sixteenth read through, but it never changed. What Tim found… he didn’t like it.

He’d been antsy this past week. Terrified about what it meant that Red Hood hadn’t been seen on the streets since the explosion at the docks. The explosion that Bruce had seen his son previous Robin horrifically injured by. That he’d been too late to rescue him from. Again. The one where he’d seen an Unknown, the one Jason worked with, standing at the edge and watching the flames.

So he dove into the research Tim had been able to dig up from the Drs. Fenton and tried to ignore everything else. Tried to ignore the guilt at leaving Tim alone to his own devices in the mean time when he’d only just returned from the Titans. Tried to ignore the admonishing looks Alfred sent him every additional day he stayed holed up in the Cave. Instead he sunk deeper and deeper into a haze of reading paper after paper, and rereading paper after paper. And, what little of it he could find in the first place, was all pointing in a direction he hated.

The Fentons… were odd scientists. To say the least. And he really was saying the least. But their research, without an outside source to better verify it, was sound. Thorough. Horrifying.

Ghosts, or ectoplasmic entities, were non-sentient. Non-sapient. They were impressions of emotions left after death. Unfeeling. Unthinking. Driven by nothing but the deceased’s final thoughts and emotions. Often violent ones. Thoughts of revenge, of regret, of nothing but the pain surrounding their death.

Monsters seeking nothing but to spread the pain that had been imprinted upon them. And territorial. If both Fetcher and Jason were nothing but ghosts, did that make the fire a fight for the right to haunt Park Row? A dispute that- that Jason lost?

He knew they could be harmed. Could be hunted. That much the Fenton’s research made clear. They could be captured and studied and released back into some vague mention of a Ghost Zone. Supposedly the place where they originated.

That part wasn’t very clear. They spoke of ripping a tear in the fabric of the universe, of punching a hole into some flipside dimension that was something of an Afterlife. They seemed to hinge all their research on it. What they called the Ghost Portal. There was no record of it existing, no patent for its schematics. No proof that they’d succeeded. Yet, a chunk of their research acted as they had. As if it went without saying that the “ghosts” they studied emerged from the portal they’d successfully built.

Like they’d scrubbed that particular piece of research from existence. A lot of it was struck through. Much of it was missing. There were holes everywhere.

It didn’t help that after a certain point, it all disappeared. What he could find himself had to be recovered from deleted files. And then there was no trace of anything . It all just cut off. Abruptly and coincidentally in line with their signing on with an unknown government agency.

Dr. Maddie Fenton’s last published paper- one that had been erased, mind you- had been about their study of a smaller blob of a ghost. What happened when they cut into it, what happened when they brought it from inside the Zone to out (and that in itself was curious, did they have a lab inside the Zone?), and what happened when they injected it with different forms of ectoplasm. She’d made notes to indicate they planned to do more but that had been the last piece of research. Months ago. He’d been unable to find anything else after they signed with the mysterious GIW.

He’d gone back, then.

They had papers from college, barely acknowledged and never published. Papers they turned in in tandem with one Vladimir Masters, of all people. His school records at the University- disappeared after a certain point. He didn’t graduate early. He didn’t transfer. He didn’t withdraw. There were mentions of something, or more, the shape around that something. Records of the school repairing the classroom the three had done most of their research in. Vague condolences in the school paper. Professors continually marking Masters absent after a certain point in the semester but never docking points for it. But nothing further. No hospital records. No information on what happened; what caused the classroom to need repairs and what caused Masters’ continued absence.

His best guess was an experiment gone wrong. But he didn’t know.

The amount of things he didn’t know with this case was driving him to the brink. It was giving him hives.

He couldn’t find record of where the Fentons lived. He knew they lived in a town named Amity Park, they’d mentioned the place often enough in their research- touting it to be the most haunted town in America. But he couldn’t find it. No map could place it. No government database had it cataloged. No post office had an address for it.

Amity Park didn’t exist. Older maps, scanned in and therefore not originally digital, placed it somewhere in Illinois. So it did exist. Theoretically. Elmerton, supposedly its sister city, refused to acknowledge it, despite the fact that half of Elmerton itself had been blown off the map- everything going up in flames if it was anywhere in the radius of what was supposed to be Amity. Social media made no mention of it.

He looked into the GIW instead. And found nothing of use. He was a fair hand at hacking, but not near the level of Tim or Barbara. He loathed the thought of asking either of them for help on this, but he couldn’t crack their codes, could barely even find them at all. Their firewall was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Maybe it would make a good distraction for Tim. All he found on his own were a few vague mentions of an Anti-Ecto Act. A warning about an entity at large but with no description.

There was something more going on here. Something he very much didn’t like. But it would have to wait. He’d have to see the town in person at some point, maybe let Tim or Dick investigate. Dick had been pestering him about what was going on recently, maybe he could distract him with this. It would take him out of town and Bruce could even convince him to take Tim with him. That way he’d be alone for what was going to have to happen next.

They didn’t need to be here in Gotham when he went after Jason. Or, the thing that was what was left of Jason.

His ghost.

The mindless, twisted version of his second Robin- hellbent on revenge against the one that killed him and the one that failed to save him.

It would explain how he came back when even Ra’s didn’t know for sure. And if he’d had a dip in the Lazarus Pit it would explain even more. He knew from the research that ghosts could be tangible, frighteningly solid and destructive. And he suspected from the descriptions of ectoplasm that Lazarus Water was just another form of it. Making him stronger. The twisted after-shocks of the emotions he’d died with stronger. What Ra’s had brought back wasn’t Jason. Just a ghost- but worse.

It made Bruce feel entirely guilty. And sick. He’d only just accepted that Jason had returned. That he was alive. That he hated, rightfully hated, Bruce for what happened. But now? Jason might not be back at all and he’d have to learn to accept that all over again. Grieve all over again. Bury him all over again.

(He had yet to check the coffin. Yet to check the grave. If he’d had the thought to look inside, he might have changed his mind about it all at finding it empty.)

═════ ◈ ═════

Danny shifted nervously, acutely aware of how he balanced on Hood’s thighs ( and man, did he have thighs for days ), and waited for some sort of reaction. He was unsure as it was about being able to heal Hood’s hands, he didn’t need anxiety about the man’s reaction on top of it all. He’d offered because he couldn’t stand to see the look of resignation, of helplessness, of pain on Red’s face when he talked about them. Like he thought their loss was inevitable. Like he thought it was his own fault they’d taken so much damage- that losing them, their function, was his punishment. Like he wanted to forget the pain of gaining those wounds altogether, the fear and desperation surrounding their creation, but kept pressing on the bruises anyway because that’s what he thought he deserved.

And Danny couldn’t stand to allow that look on his face remain for a second longer. His own hands were frigid and monstrous and soaked in blood. The hands of a dead man- brittle and cold and far too clumsy for something as sacred as healing. But they were all he had and damn if he wasn’t going to use them for Hood- to hold something gently for once.

The problem here was that he had… made a pretty bold claim. Saying he could fix Red’s hands.

There wasn’t a guarantee that manipulating his organic ectoplasm into becoming the regenerative type- assuming he could even manage that outside of the ecto-rich environment of Amity- and applying it to his hands in order to boost the healing process would work. It might not even do anything. Or it might just backfire. But… Hood was also some sort of ectocontaminated undead being- far more human than Danny would ever manage to be, sure- but still a guy that had ectoplasm running through him, which meant far better chances at absorbing the Good Goo. Yes, sure, the ectoplasm was some weird rancid variation of the combative stuff that he really needed to figure out how to fix, too.

But still.

He’d managed with the people of Amity, he could manage with Hood. It didn’t matter that these were completely different situations. Didn’t matter that the artificial liminals of Amity Park had been contaminated with pure ectoplasm. That when he’d healed them it was usually on instinct, sloppy and desperate, and usually with the regenerative ecto already on hand from his own wounds. Didn’t matter that he didn’t have the first clue on how the poisoned ectoplasm within Red would react to the healing. All that mattered was that Red had just looked so damn sad about it all and Danny had something that could help. So he would. He’d do anything.

Hood still hadn’t said anything.

He lowered the board, erased it, and started writing anew.

I don’t know if it’ll work. It might even make them worse. But there’s a chance- a small one- that I can patch them up. I don’t know what I’m doing here though so it’s pretty risky.

He flipped it over and waited again. He watched Hood’s eyes trace along the words, reading them agonizingly slowly. His turquoise stare was intense when his eyes flicked up and met Danny’s own.

Red leaned forward, intent, and said, “Do it.”

Danny huffed soundlessly in disbelief. He whacked Hood in the chest lightly with the whiteboard and then tapped at his own temple and made a sharp, sweeping gesture with his palm up. Think about it first, idiot.

“I don’t have to think about it!” Hood insisted forcefully before his tone turned plaintive. “Fetcher, Spooks, Jellyfish- you don’t understand. I don’t care about the risks. Hell, I don’t care if you fail- but if there’s a chance that you can fix my hands; fix them now- I’m going to take it.”

Danny sat the whiteboard between them for the moment and crossed his arms, regarding the pleading face of his boss, friend, savior . He hadn’t expected a reaction as... vehement as this. He’d expected skepticism. Expected a careful measure of consideration, suspicion even. Or… honestly, a flat out rejection. Not… this.

“I need to get back out there, Jelly,” Hood whispered, leaning in so their noses were inches apart and Danny could see the intensity in his eyes up close. “I need to help my people. Save the Alley. I-,” he paused and looked away, a bitterness showing in his gritted teeth. “I have to get back to my plan. I can’t do that without my hands. Not without taking too much time. The people of the Alley don’t have the luxury of waiting for me to relearn everything from scratch. Black Mask is getting bold. Messing with kryptonite . I need to know what he plans to do with it. I need to get back out there now .”

Danny did not like the desperation there. The slightly frenzied gleam to his eyes. He could also tell that there was something unspoken underneath his words. That there was something more to this “plan” that Hood wasn’t telling him. Something, probably, that had to do with why he got his hands butchered in the first place. I have to strike now, he could almost hear, they already know who I am and I can’t wait any longer when the answers I need are so close. Red was thinking so hard it felt like he was projecting them into the little air between them.

Danny, already thinking this was a bad idea, grew more uncertain. This felt reckless, too rash in respect to Red’s health. Like they were playing with fire and Hood almost wanted to get burned.

But he couldn’t go back on it now. Couldn’t stand to see Hood disappointed in him, in his hands, in himself. Couldn’t endure seeing Hood in so much pain again.

His shoulders sagged in a soundless sigh. He straightened his back and gave a determined nod. He would do this. For Red. And just pray to whatever Ancients were feeling merciful right then.

Gently, he held the other man’s hands between them, slowly unwinding them from their bandages. He’d helped change them before, the motion soothing and familiar. Something about the ritual of it all both mundane and divine. Watching as white fabric revealed mottled flesh. Bruises and lacerations breathing in fresh air again. He watched them shake- ever so slightly- as he traced with a feather-light touch along the crooked fingers, the dips and lines of the palms, the bony jut of the knuckles. He bent his head and placed a reverent kiss- the barest brush of lips against skin, to a bruise that painted the meat of his thumb a dark yellow-brown. Hood watched, gaze fixed, remaining silent the entire time save for a single hitched breath.

Carefully, he lowered those precious hands and then leaned back for some space ( neither one of them saying anything about the fact that he hadn’t moved from Red’s lap this entire time ) before reaching into his chest and pulling out a knife. A special knife. An athame magicked to rend through spectral flesh. Which is why he kept it sheathed in its protective case and hidden nice and safe in his chest. Didn’t need any assholes getting hold of it. It’d been a bitch and a half to wrestle it away from Plasmius in the first place.

“Why the fuck do you have that in there?” Hood questioned, words spilling out of his mouth and looking surprised but unrepentant with them.

Danny shrugged, holding the knife aloft carelessly. Convenience. I have more.

“What-,” he sputtered, “How many do you have?! Where did you get them?! Are those from when we were patrolling? Have you been keeping them in there this whole time?!”

Danny flicked his wrist, waving off the man’s question, and used the incredulity as a distraction so Red wouldn’t stop him from what came next. To potentially heal Hood’s hands, he needed regenerative ectoplasm. The only way to get it without finding a way into the Realms, was to make it himself. He couldn’t just do that on demand, though. He was sure there were some ghosts that had that ability out there, but he’d never met them and he was sure they probably wouldn’t be willing to share their methods with him.

So, knife time. Athame time. Whatever.

He sliced along his palm, a dull green blood rising to the surface. He pulled a rag from his chest as well, cursing himself for not thinking this through and grabbing it before this. He felt Red lurch under him, thighs bucking up in an aborted move to stop him.

“Fetch,” the other growled, tone a warning. “What the fuck.”

He rolled his eyes. The fact that Hood had stayed still after his knee-jerk reaction told him that the other had figured out what he was up to. The grumbling was just because he didn’t like the method or the execution. He shook his head a bit. Big baby.

He put the rag to his palm and let it soak up the initial flow. The darker green ecto was useless to him, it was just the stuff he was made of peeling away from itself because of the blade’s magic. It let the regenerative ectoplasm bubble up from beneath in order to try and heal the wound. He mopped it up and used the athame to hold the wound open, waiting for the color to turn. Once it was a vibrant, toxic green he dropped the rag and let the “ectoblood” drip and coat his hands.

He looked up and almost laughed at Red’s disgusted look. Yeah, it was pretty gross, but there wasn’t much of a better way to go about it. That he knew of, at least. He wiggled his fingers towards Red’s face mockingly and repressed a laugh at the other’s returning scowl.

“Don’t make it weird,” he said with a grumpy protest.

Danny rolled his eyes. In what world would this not be weird? They’re both undead and Danny has to bleed all over him. They’re beyond weird at that point.

He gave the other no warning before picking up Red’s hands and holding them between his own bloody ones. He really, really wished he knew a better way to do this. Wished he knew what he was doing at all in the first place. But this was as good as it got, fumbling around in the dark and just praying anything would work.

He held Red’s hands as gently as possible while still making sure his ectoblood coated all of his injuries, his bruises and breaks. He would envelop the other in everything he had, surround him with his soul and sooth away all of his aches and pains.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing on his core. He thought about healing, about mending, about soothing, and pouring his very being into fixing every break and every bruise. He could feel the ectoblood warm up under his fingers, glow brightening as it bent to his will. He could hear Hood hiss as it all seeped into his skin and dug into his bones, the heat of it intensifying as the ecto went to work.

It’d been a hell of a time learning how to do this for the Amity Parkers back home, especially when they would run and scream at the sight of him. Thankfully he hadn’t usually needed the athame to help, he was just already injured from one fight or another when he’d check on the bystanders. They hadn’t really liked it either when he’d bleed on them, but they always stopped screaming at him once their wounds sealed back up. He hadn’t even meant to do that the first time, he’d just been so panicked when he’d found Sam buried under rubble after an attack. He’d been freshly dead; his first year as Phantom. He didn’t think she even remembered what happened, but he did.

When his ectoplasm had sunk deeply enough into every part of Red’s broken hands, he could start to feel the extent of his injuries. The old breaks, the chronic damage, the new fractures and lacerations. And carefully, so carefully, he willed the ectoblood to stitch every one of them up.

He… struggled. More than usual.

He’d tried to heal someone without ecto-contamination once; an out-of-towner that’d been visiting family and had been caught up in an attack at the wrong time. Buried under rubble that most natives knew to avoid. They’d reacted a little bit like this. A rejection of the ectoplasm, where the human body recoiled and tried to destroy the foreign substance. Where it reacted so violently that the body started attacking itself in order to be rid of it. Their wound had already been fatal, his interference had at least made it quick. That didn’t stop him from feeling guilty afterwards, feeling the weight of their death on his shoulders and their blood and viscera on his hands.

Red’s body wasn’t reacting... quite so violently. But it wasn’t reacting like it should either. The ecto was oozing into his bones and binding the breaks together, but it wasn’t sticking, for lack of a better word. It was healing him, but it also wasn’t. Like wrapping a band-aid around a cut that needed stitches. Better than nothing and not necessarily useless, but not enough to fix it completely either. Something was stopping it from doing its job. Like there was a layer of ectoplasm already there, fighting it off- not taking kindly to the foreign ecto-signature. Danny didn’t like that one bit. He didn’t even know where to begin to address that, let alone fix it.

The heat of the ecto was starting to become too much to handle, a sign that it had done all that it could. But Danny tried to push it just a little bit further. Just enough to maybe get it to hold.

He and Red both hissed when the ecto bubbled and burned them. Danny dropped his grip and immediately blew a cooling breath over Hood’s hands in order to get the temperature down and cement the ectoplasm in place. What he didn’t expect was for it to make a makeshift icy shell. That was new. He knew that if he concentrated he could make the cold of his ghost sense come forward, but it’d never done that before. He couldn’t complain, though, because this way it would keep all the ecto in until it could properly adhere and do its job.

“Huh,” Red said, staring down at his frost-encased hands, turning them this way and that and watching the dusky sunlight streaming in through the window glint off the thin layer of ice as he moved them.

Danny nodded, wiping down his own hands with the rag and mopping up any excess ectoplasm. He’d already irrevocably stained the couch so he wasn’t worried too much about dripping any on the upholstery, he just didn’t want to leave a mess. He skimmed the rag over the cut he’d made on his palm, the wound already stitching itself together now that he was done using his ectoblood to heal. He didn’t really understand how it worked, but he knew, instinctively, that ectoplasm was ruled by feeling and intention . So if he was willing the cut to stay open and using his blood to heal, the ectoplasm would obey. Most of the time. It wasn’t an exact science, by any means.

He watched Red warily, hoping the man knew better than to immediately try to use his hands for anything while they still had the ice around them. He didn’t have much faith in that. Red had a horrible track record for recklessness.

He slumped his shoulders in a small and silent sigh and pulled out his whiteboard again. Better make sure Red knew what he was dealing with. That, while he’d pieced him back together- he could still fall right back apart. That Danny might have just failed him after all if it turns out the ecto didn’t stick. He felt a terrible lurch of guilt at the thought.

They’re still really fragile. Don’t push too hard. Something was wrong when I tried to heal them and I think it might be the Bad Goo you have going on. What I did might be temporary.

He watched, squirming, as Hood read over the words, waiting for the anger that was sure to follow when he realized that Danny had lied to him. Danny had told Hood that he could fix his hands, that he could absolutely heal him. And he’d failed. Sure, the bones might still stick together and he might have managed to actually do something there. But it wasn’t enough. It was half-assed and slipshod. Just like everything else he’d tried to accomplish in his life. Imperfect to the point of catastrophe. He might have even ruined any progress his hands may have naturally had.

At this point, if Red lost the use of his hands after this, it would be all his fault .

“Fetcher,” Hood whispered, voice full of an awe that made Danny flinch. He startled at the cold feeling of ice against his skin as Hood gently cupped his cheeks and tilted his head up so their gazes could meet. “ Thank you. ”

He keened, the sound emanating from deep within his core; a small and pathetic sound. Hood grinned at him but he backed away, swaying back from his reach and getting perilously close to falling off the other’s lap. He picked up the whiteboard again. Red didn’t understand. He didn’t deserve his thanks. Didn’t deserve any sort of awe. He needed to make him understand.

It didn’t work like it should have! If you break them again the damage might be worse! Don’t thank me for fucking up!

He was near to tears when he flipped the board over.

“Jellyfish,” Hood said sternly, the sharp tone making Danny flinch again. “If I break my hands again, that’s on me . Not you. You told me from the beginning it could backfire.”

The frost on Hood’s hands was beginning to melt, allowing him to flex his fingers and clasp Danny’s chin with a better grip, tugging him back towards the inferno that was Red’s chest. He planted his hands against Red’s pecs ( and he would not think about that ) in an effort to keep some distance between them and from just melting against him. He felt far too guilty for cuddles. No matter how much he really, really wanted them.

Hood sighed, releasing Danny’s chin when he refused to make eye-contact- instead staring at the whiteboard that was resting on his thighs.

“You and I both know that the damage done to me was extreme,” he said, voice measured and tired and Danny still refused to look up. “That if something went wrong with my recovery, I might have needed to have one or both of my hands amputated.” Danny winced, but he kept going. “Especially since I can’t see a specialist. I don’t care that you couldn’t heal them all the way, the fact that you were able to do anything for them at all is a miracle to me.”

He finally looked up, making tentative eye contact and getting caught by the look of conviction on Hood’s face. He really thought that Danny had done something profoundly good for him. That he hadn’t just fucked up his hands monumentally. He looked at them where they laid on Danny’s thighs, holding him in place with a gentle grip.

They were still mottled with bruises, yellow and deep purple splashed in contrast to tan skin turned sickly pale from being covered for so long. Angry red scars stretched across their surface in jagged lines, crisscrossing each other with no rhyme or reason. He could feel them shaking, ever so slightly. They were still broken, still fragile. But they were also still there. Still functional. Still whole.

Danny, reluctantly, gave in. He knew how stubborn Red was. There would be no convincing him otherwise about Danny’s mistakes.

He let his shoulders drop and gave in to the warmth that was beneath his fingertips, head curling into the now familiar crook of Red’s neck. At least this way he wouldn’t feel so guilty about not being able to face him fully.

Chilled fingers carefully wound themselves within his hair, gently threading through the foggy mass that was slowly growing past his shoulders. He was trying his damnedest to repress a purr at the feeling. Why the hell were ghosts so much like cats in the first place? It didn’t make any sense at all and he resented the purr that was building in his core without his permission. He hated how easily it gave him away.

“I’ll take another week,” Hood murmured, voice a pleasant rumble Danny could feel more than hear with how he was pressed against the other’s throat. “I’ll stay in and be careful with my hands for another week. And then I’ll be extra careful with them when it’s back to business, okay? Does that sound alright to you, Ghost Doc?”

He huffed and gave a small nod, lightly pushing at Red’s shoulders at the same time. He shuffled around and maneuvered the both of them, Hood just bemusedly going along with his manhandling, until they were lounging back on the couch again. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want to feel about it anymore either. A nap was what he wanted; to sink into blissful unconsciousness, and if it meant cuddling on the couch with Red? So be it.

He could feel the slight shake of a laugh in Hood’s chest once they’d fully settled. “If you wanted to sleep with me that badly, Fetch, you could have just asked.”

Danny lazily brushed an intangible hand through Hood’s stomach and relished in the startled yelp it elicited.

Asshole.

═════ ◈ ═════

Something was bothering Bruce about the case, the one that Tim wasn’t allowed to look at. He knew this because Bruce kept looking for something, looking so relentlessly that he didn’t notice the times that Tim would sneak down to the cave to check on him. It’d been another week. Two weeks since he’d come back from confronting Ra’s and two weeks since Tim had shown him the similarities in hazmat suits.

And he knew that his case with Fetcher was connected with Bruce’s case with Red Hood. Fetcher and Red Hood worked together. But this seemed… worse. More intricately entwined. Bruce, who had offloaded the Fetcher case to Tim in the first place, took over both and booted him from the cave.

Not that that would stop him. Never had before.

No, Tim was going to help whether Bruce liked it or not. It’d been hell and back to get Alfred to agree, but he’d come up with a plan to get B out of the cave and himself down in it so he could get a closer look at the Bat-computer. Alfred was all for anything that would get B to take a nap for once in his life, he just didn’t like that Tim was going behind B’s back.

But Tim was determined.

He was going to find whatever the hell B was looking for and he was going to prove his worth again. If Jason was back- if one of the Robins that he’d looked up to so much was back- the one that he’d replaced… He’d have all that much more to prove. To show both Bruce and his predecessor that he was capable. Bruce had barely acknowledged him when he’d gotten back and he knew Jason wasn’t likely to even care who he was, let alone how good at his job he was. But Tim wasn’t one for complacency either, even when no one else paid any attention. That wasn’t anything new, anyway.

So. Tim drugged Bruce’s cookies.

B trusted Alfred, and usually he would be right to trust Alfred. But he should know not to underestimate Tim. Or Alfred when he was really truly worried about B. So, with Alfred’s supervision- if not express permission, he drugged the cookies. And Bruce took a nap.

He was going to be pissed when he woke up, but Tim was hoping to temper his ire by finding stuff and solving part of his case for him. Also, it’s not like Tim was doing anything new, not when Bruce had pulled the same drugged cookie trick on Tim. Multiple times. So, really, Tim was just using the lessons Bruce had taught him. Turnabout was fair play or whatever the hell. Tim may or may not have needed a nap himself.

So after shoving B onto the couch they kept in the cave specifically for situations like this, he cracked his knuckles and got to work.

And fuck was it work. After finding what Bruce had been toiling over the most, going back to over and over and over again, he hit the same wall that must have been driving B insane. He didn’t know who the hell the GIW were, but their firewall was like nothing else he’d ever seen. It was like it was alive . At least he knew why Bruce was so frustrated now, if whatever he was looking for was locked behind it, he’d be pissed too.

If Tim didn’t know that Bruce was going to be out for a solid twelve hours, he’d be worried. Fighting the firewall of some unknown government agency (if they were even actually with the government) was not what Tim thought would be one of the hardest won achievements of his career as Robin, and yet. It didn’t work the way code was supposed to work. It moved and shifted in a way that it most definitely should not.

At one point he could swear it growled at him.

Numbers would change value right before his eyes. The line of code he was working on would disappear. The more he worked the less it made sense. He thought he would have to give up (but he couldn’t, he couldn’t ) before it all snapped into place. The code suddenly seemed less like a wall and more like a cage. He couldn’t explain how he knew this when nothing had actually changed while he hacked, but he did. The growling grew in volume, like a guard dog snapping warning bites. And the more he worked, the more he realized- whatever was protecting the database wasn’t just protecting it. The servers the GIW worked on- they were insulated. Isolated.

Whatever caged the GIW database grew more frantic the more he dug in. Working faster to patch what holes he poked rather than attack him and kick him out. Like it was worried more about what was inside getting out , than him finding his way in.

It took him ten hours. And he could swear he heard screaming when he finally broke through.

The heavy weight of an admonishing hand on his shoulder let him know his time was up in that regard as well. But he’d gotten through at least. Even if he felt sick in the aftermath of it all (that scream).

Bruce didn’t say anything, just stared up at the files upon files now available for them to rifle through. Gently, he pushed Tim out of the chair and took a seat himself, pausing only long enough to give Tim a hair ruffle- the only sign of affection or acknowledgment he’d gotten from Batman lately, before setting to work and clicking away.

Tim- Tim left the cave without another word, feeling oddly guilty and bereft. He couldn't figure out why.

#naps fics #dp x dc #Our Empty Graves #im going back and fixing all the broken links i promise #dpxdc

[cryptidhyrst]

assuming i am asking the correct person, I saw a post you made that repeatedly reinforced the point that the tv show Danny phantom was not in the superhero genre. I mean this in the LEAST confrontational way, and i am simply CURIOUS about the reasoning behind your ideas, and i have nothing personally against you. i just want to know about why you said that Danny Phantom wasn't a superhero. i am merely curious, nothing more. I don't agree nor disagree, i just want to know.

I'm sorry if this was weird, or if i got the wrong person.

If i DID get the right person, only answer if you want to, or if it's convenient.

Have a nice day!

I don't think I've made a post about Danny Phantom and how it's not a show that can be classified as belonging to the superhero genre, but I did reblog gilly-moon's post about Danny Phantom redesigns and briefly touched upon the topic there.

I'm always happy to expand on my thoughts, especially when it comes to Danny Phantom! (I hope you're okay with me answering this publicly).

Now to get this out of the way: Danny Phantom isn't a superhero show; nor does it belong to the superhero genre.

"But, Cryptid. Danny fights ghosts. He has powers. He saves Amity Park from calamity and destruction from time to time. Surely that counts for something."

And yes, normally these things would, except, well at its core Danny Phantom just isn't a superhero. But before diving deep into my thoughts about why it isn't, I think we need to establish what exactly makes something/someone a superhero?

I once read a paper that defined a superhero story and a superhero as having four things: a mission, powers, a (secret) identity, and a costume. And Danny Phantom should be all of these things, right? He has the powers, the secret identity that he keeps hidden (unless you're of the rare persuasion that Phantom Planet is canon), he has a costume, and debatedly he has a mission (keep his friends/family/Amity Park safe from ghosts). All of this should make it a superhero show, right? It should be no different from Teen Titans, Miraculous Ladybug, or the numerous Marvel and DC animated shows that exist.

Believing that Danny Phantom is a superhero show is contingent on one thing and one thing alone: whether or not you take Butch Hartman's statements as canon or not.

Now it's no secret past season 1 of the show, that Hartman was remarked as saying that:

[...] the ghosts [in Danny Phantom] are in fact otherworldly monsters and creatures that came from the Ghost Zone, with no connection to human spirits.

He gives this explanation as a way for letting the audience create the backstories for the ghosts that do appear in the show

Which has worked in the favor of Phandom; after all, I can't even count on both hands the number of posts or projects that I've seen that have attempted to give some or all of the ghosts in the show their own backstories. Hell, even my own project gives many of the ghosts their own backstories as well.

Now Hartman's no stranger to modifying or adding onto DP canon as he pleases *coughtenyearslatercough*. Much of what he adds, tends to be rejected by the Phandom for various reasons. And I think that Hartman's evangelical Christian leanings and beliefs tend to bleed through in the way that he approaches the way ghosts exist within the DP universe. (I say this because fringe Christian ideologies tend to be really really fucking weird about paranormal entities such as ghosts).

Now, if you think that what Hartman says about the ghosts in DP being monsters from a different plane of existence. Then you're going to be more inclined to believe that the show fits within the superhero genre. After all the whole plot of: young kid gets electrocuted in parent's machine, gains powers, and fights ghosts fits within that system.

But if you're like me and disregard 100% of what Hartman says and believes that ghosts are well...ghosts (and that death exists within the DP universe, because what are ghosts, if they aren't the remnants of dead people?) then the plot of the show is: young kid gets electrocuted in parent's machine, dies, comes back to life with powers, fights ghosts.

One scenario treats Danny Phantom as a superhero show because the caveat is that ghosts are interdimensional monsters that traverse into Danny's plane of existence to wreak havoc. That would make it a superhero show. The other scenario treats Danny as a cosmic horror nightmare tale that it is, except it's trapped by the limitations of being a kid's animated show.

So yes, while Danny does have nifty powers, a secret identity, a costume and the whole shebang. It just doesn't make him a superhero. He's fighting ghosts (regardless of the fact that Butch Hartman would argue this point); at best this makes him a kid version of a ghostbuster.

Tl;dr: Danny Phantom is a superhero show if you believe Butch Hartman's stance about ghosts being interdimensional monsters. It isn't if you think Butch Hartman tries to skirt around the concept of paranormal entities because he's an evangelical.

Edited to add a closing statement.

#cryptid answers #Danny Phantom #Danny Phantom meta

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Far Far From Home

by aiki_sweetie Peter was a decently normal person, right? I mean besides the fact that he's a superhero that works with the Avengers. In his defense, that is pretty normal where he lives. How many people have powers and don’t become a hero or villain? So someone could also argue that the situation he is in now is also perfectly normal. It's perfectly normal to wake up in an alleyway in his suit, Karen completely offline, covered in blood. That he's pretty sure isn't his. The only thing that's a bit confusing, is that he was just with Doctor Strange, asking him to make everyone forget he is Spider-Man. ----- Superheroes [2,682,196 Results] Thank you. [Batman] [Superman] [Wonder Woman] [Flash] [Green Lantern] [Green Arrow] … No, thank you. WHO THE ACTUAL HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? … Calm, Calm Peter, Calm. Peter took a deep breath in and out. So, I’m probably not in my universe, that's fun. Does that mean I need to create a whole new identity? … …Fuck… Words: 2112, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Barbara Gordon, Jim Gordon, Kate Kane (DCU), Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Alfred Pennyworth, Duke Thomas, Rogues Gallery (Batman) Additional Tags: Why do I make the rules, I have issues, Canon Died a Brutal yet Necessary Death, DC stands for Disregard Canon, Man older brothers are so cool, I wish they existed, Author Had No Plan And It Caused Problems, Cobblepot Coffee, spiderman - Freeform, Batfamily, Captain Cold is Kinda, Bruce Wayne has Adoption Issues, Is it Incest if they are Both Foster Kids?, Once Again I have ISSUES, No Smut cause they are CHILDREN, Author Blames Kwite, Foster Family is Shit, but its gotham, We Stand the Flash Rogue Gallery Here, No Beta we die like Tony Woodward, How Do I Tag, Homophobia, Marcus is a jerk via https://ift.tt/VEBZYcz

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the dark knight #the caped crusader #gotham #dcu #dc #ao3 #ao3feed

[sing-me-under]

YOUR ART IS SO PRETTY! :) also as a fellow dsmp/batfam lover I was wondering who would be who if you made an au of the other? (From batfam to dsmp or dsmp to batfam, you can choose!) me personally Tommy gives a bit of Damian,,

Hello hello! Thank you very much ✨✨✨ I’m glad you like my art!

About the DSMP x Batfam AU…. I really had to think this one through. I love both of them, but they have such different character dynamics and ideologies. Even the very worlds they are set in are like complete opposites. However, I have also read like so many (so many) superhero AU fics for the DSMP (before the fandom tag got overwhelmingly oversaturated), so I have some thoughts on…

DSMP Characters as The Batfam

You’re right. c!Tommy does feel like he’d be a good match for Damian. Loves animals? Feral? Stabby? Genuinely good? Artistically-inclined? The youngest? If we’re going by characters traits, Tommy would absolutely be Damian… But if I did that, I’d spend way too much time comparing characters who can’t be compared… So my list is going to be based on vibes. Same vibes are also why I’m choosing to make L’Manberg the main members. I’m completely disregarding age, motivations, personality, etc. This is all (mostly) vibes. There is some justification for them.

I wasn’t able to think of a match for everyone, but I got a decent chunk.

Wilbur as Batman

Fundy as Nightwing

Quackity as Oracle

Tommy as Red Hood

Tubbo as Red Robin

Jack as Spoiler

Niki as Batwoman

Ranboo as Black Bat

Slime as Batgirl 2 (also Cass but specifically Batgirl-era)

Eret as Talia

Philza as Ghostmaker

Kristen as Martha and Thomas

Technoblade as Azrael

Karl and Sapnap as Harley and Ivy (who’s who? Idk)

Dream as the entire Rogue Gallery — every single rogue just compressed into one blob of a man

I felt compelled to draw Tommy as a Robin and Red Hood.

Notes under the cut. They’re explanations for what little of my thought process can be converted into comprehensible words. It’s long. I ramble A LOT. Read at your own peril.

I’m pretty sure the obvious explanations are Wilbur, Tubbo, Techno, Karl&Sapnap, and Dream.

c!Wilbur is so much like Bruce Wayne — it’s kind of not funny. There’s the obvious “led children to fight a war” thing, the “compulsively acquiring children because they won’t leave him alone” thing, the “becomes evil immediately after crossing the no kill thing” thing, and the “sad little meow meow wet rag of a man but still extremely charismatic” thing…

c!Tubbo and Tim Drake are the closest 1:1 of this entire list.

Okay, okay. c!Techno as Jean-Paul. The vibes are wrong if we’re talking about canon Azrael, but I’m specifically thinking of fanfiction/“goes to family dinners WFA-style” Azrael.

c!Karl and c!Sapnap have such “married anti-villains befriending the heroes” vibes. I love them so much in superpower AUs even when they’re not with c!Quackity. As I’m writing this, I’m remembering that Schlatt and Quackity are also very often written in a Joker x Harley Quinn situation, but we’re talking about Batfam!

Dream is like the caricature of a Gotham Rogue(TM). He’s got the sympathetic motivation sticky noted onto a decades’ worth of terrorism with only the vaguest hope of redemption that he’ll probably never actually get because he’s too popular as a villain. I could make a point for any character interpretation (both fanpn and canon) of c!Dream as Ivy, Penguin, Riddler, Scarecrow, Black Mask, Joker, etc. (also, not a Rogue, but Ra’s too)

The thing about the DSMP is that it almost feels like a reversal of DC. It’s like a mirror, the same solution from a reversed conclusion. That also means DSMP characters appear un-traumatized and naive then get completely fucked over by the sheer horror that is the SMP, meanwhile DC characters appear fresh from traumatized and find themselves in a position to believe in goodness. The late-stage DSMP was filled with isolation while DC heroes always end up in found families.

It’s why I couldn’t think of a proper match for Damian.

What I loved about late-stage c!Tommy is that he keeps (disguises) that hope and love for people despite everything. Meanwhile, Damian’s character development is learning all that from the ground up. The vibes are similar but not the same. Honestly, for a hot second, I considered Purpled as Damian but alas, not enough Purpled content. If I were to project my own timeline of events upon the DSMP, Purpled would make a great Damian-esque match.

But that does not change the fact that Tommy as Red Hood has the best vibes.

No one else is quite as “doomed by the narrative and irreversibly changed yet somehow still painfully compassionate” in the same way Tommy and Jason are (also the “rejecting their father/brother but still loving them unconditionally). Their vibes are truly something.

I’m also very stern in my belief that c!Tommy should never kill because it would negatively impact his character development, but he very very easily could have gone the Red Hood route. By technicality, it’s more like Tommy as Robin 2, but I so dearly love the potential of villain! and anti-villain!Tommy. It’s such an underutilized concept. (Also I wrote a protege AU like way back and it makes me think of Red Hood now lol)

But originally, I flip-flopped between Fundy as Red Hood and Tommy as Nightwing, but I dunno. The logic was there but the vibes weren’t.

If we were considering a timeline of events, Tommy would make a great Robin 1 with Fundy as Robin 2 . Dick Grayson was the OG child hero, much like Tommy. He was angry and craved justice but he was also full of Light. Meanwhile, c!Fundy grew up in Tommy’s shadow.

However, Fundy also has that “if I can’t make them smile, I’ll make them cry” thing that Villain Dick Graysons also tend to have. Dick is always like four steps away from flipping a switch and becoming a supervillain. He tries so fucking hard to do good, but if he ever determines that “being good” isn’t enough to “do good,” he takes over the world. But Dick would also like step away from toxic energy by holing himself up in his apartment filled with depression, which is exactly what Fundy did.

Fundy and Dick are more “blood-soaked wet cats with strained smiles and bowling alley carpet polos” and Tommy and Jason are more “dramatic Greek tragedies.”

The Batgirls and adjacent female Bat vigilantes came to me immediately, but it’s not as long as the above.

Quackity as Barbara Gordon. He followed Wilbur filled with Hope and Justice. Quackity makes an excellent Batgirl 1. His Las Nevadas arc would then be Oracle but Lawful Evil and also completely isolated from any friends, family, or rational support. Quackity isn’t inherently bad. He still has good intentions, and he’s still good at heart, irregardless of how he portrays himself. He’s the classic femme fatale, including the whole sexist Hollywood “he needs a strong male love interest to take care of him” thing because he is absolutely spiraling on his own. Anyway, I am a fiancés shipper, so this would lead to a Birds of Prey-esque team up of LN and Kinoko.

Jack Manifold has Stephanie Brown’s “glitter bomb in the face” and “functions entirely on spite but also is just really tired of being hurt” energy. Jack isn’t quite Stephanie, but his dynamic with Tubbo made me consider him as Spoiler. Also consider: Jack and The Nuke being Steph’s Robin 4 arc.

Slime is so much like Batgirl-era Cassandra. There’s a lot of “innocent vs naive, manipulated by those with intentions, both evil and morally just” going on. Batgirl!Slime and RH!Tommy would have such a dynamic. I think about Fort Big a lot.

It is literally a crime that c!Jack Manifold and c!Slime never interacted in the DSMP.

Ranboo as Black Bat. I don’t know how to explain it, but Tim Drake and Cassandra have such a great dynamic (albeit one that I’m only familiar with in fanfics). I was originally going to say Ranboo as Orphan, but I don’t think he’s quite there. Maybe GhostBoo as Orphan.

Speaking of ghosts, GhostBur as Carrie Kelley’s Robin. He’s in the wrong places at the wrong times and (unknowingly) shoves himself in situations, and he’s got that unfair “why” going on during Doomsday. Unfortunately, GhostBur suffers from memory loss and is often willfully ignorant. I think in an AU space where’s he’s an actual character and not the echo of an idea, he’d make a great elseworld-type Robin.

c!Niki is a WLW revolutionary war veteran with a very close relationship with Wilbur. There’s more, but again, Vibes.

Now here’s where my hot takes truly lie: Philza as Ghostmaker and Eret as Talia.

We all like Dadza but c!Phil? Absolutely not a Dad. If you actually look at c!Phil without the rose-tinted lens of his content creator’s dad energy, c!Phil and Ghostmaker aere weirdly similar? I really don’t know how to explain it exactly, but I think that Phil would have brought Wilbur up as like this weird amalgamation of BTK-era Bruce, Phantom One, and Clownhunter, leading to Wilbur eventually being… not abandoned because Phil wanted Wilbur to have more independence… but struggling to make it on his own. Eventually, Wilbur would follow his parents’ (Mumza would be Martha AND Thomas) footsteps and become something that’s essentially the same but different. Like how Ghostmaker is basically Tynion’s Batman OC but somehow more edgy except Wilbur is in the opposite direction. Like how Martha and Thomas saved people through philanthropy and surgery and Bruce wanted to save people in his own way too. Phil and Kristen influenced Wilbur towards fighting crime… Also I could totally see c!Phil becoming a crime fighter as a fun and challenging art form rather than any genuine interest in being a good person. c!Phil’s got that immortal dilemma where he’s basically a sociopath running purely on an ingrained and steadily eroding moral code.

Now… Eret as Talia. Where do I begin? I love Talia. She’s such a badass but also she’s a kind person who believes in Bruce’s cause but she’s also extremely loyal to her father’s cause but she loves her family so much but she’s also a assassin princess but the world is against her and everything she is will only continue going downhill until she either becomes straight up evil or stands her ground. I love the characterization of Talia who chose to side with “the greater good” against the person she loves and more has to live with the burden of this decision for the rest of her life and continue to do what needs to be done even, for better or worse… Did I say Talia? I meant Eret. Wait, no, it’s both. That applies to both. Talia’s choice is betraying Bruce to aid her in running a global assassin cult and killing people. Eret’s choice is betraying his revolution to run a monarchy and enforcing taxes. Yes, the vibes are the same.

This has been my TED talk. Thank you for reading this far.

#personal #dsmp #batfam #too many characters to tag #dsmp au #dreamlessart

[internerdionality]

20 Questions for FanFic Authors

Tagged by @dragonmuse, thank you! 🥰

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

39. I've been publishing since 2020, so a relative newbie, and I apparently can't write actual short works to save my life. I'm looking forward to hitting 50 fics, maybe even before the end of the this year, although that might be overly optimistic.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

817,200. Also looking forward to hitting a million! I started writing fanfic in part because of Diane Duane's post about the first million words being for practice, but I've realized as I've gone that fanfic is also just more fun in a lot of ways than original work, because it's lower stakes and more silliness and really all about the community.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mainly Our Flag Means Death and the DC universe. I have a long crossover plotted out in the Slayerverse but I haven't published any of it yet, and one fic (I think my shortest) that I wrote to expiate my feels for the fourth Matrix movie. Oh! And a few Good Omens, only one published so far.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor? , Our Flag Means Death, Izzy/Everyone + Canon Pairings. I started writing this one literally the night after I finished watching the show in late April 2022 and managed to hit the wave of gay pirate frenzy as the fandom was born. I swear I'll finish it. 😅

A Fucking Duel, Our Flag Means Death, endgame SteddyHands with some strong Sprizzy side-action. This started out as crack, again very early in the gay pirate brainrot, and then turned novella size on me when I wasn't looking.

To Err is Human, to Purr is Batman. DC. Shades of SuperBat but mostly Bat-Family focused. I turn Bruce Wayne into a cat. Pure fluff.

Mutually Beneficial. DC, SuperBat. Classic identity porn romcom with a sugar daddy twist. Nonbinary Clark Kent. My first fanfic on AO3!

Soaked to the Skin. Our Flag Means Death, Sprizzy with a side of BlackHands, my take on how things would go for the Revenge right after the first season ended, doesn't include any of the characters who weren't on the ship during SO1E10. Double the length of any other fic I've ever written!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! I am a praise-gremlin and treasure every comment I receive. I also include answering comments in my total word count for the day (I made a resolution during the HHD 5781-82 to write more, and while it took me a little bit to get started, I have written at least 250 words a day since mid-December 2021). So answering comments often gets me pumped for writing more fic!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Disregarding the prequels in the big dark vampire romp (which aren't really standalone) probably a tie between the surprise twists at the ends of Untethered and Gently in the Night? Both fics end happily but then have a little angsty setup for the sequel at the very end.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Definitely Mutually Beneficial. Most of my fics end happily but I usually try to leave them somewhat open without doing a lot of epilogueish kind of things. MB was an exception where I wrote two fluffy epilogues with lots of romance and sex because I didn't want to leave my boys! Although honestly now when I think back on it I think it would have been a stronger work if I'd ended it right after the climax and posted the fluffy epilogues as separate works.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

There was this one unregistered user who went through all my SuperBat fics and engaged in this long comment thread where he accused me of not liking Clark Kent? (Which, almost all my DC fics have Clark as the protagonist, I adore him, so). It was very surreal. I eventually just deleted it every time they'd write a new comment and they stopped after like two or three of those.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Lots of smut! It's actually just in the past year that I've stretched myself to write more Gen-ish fics with WDYDWADS and TEIH, and it somewhat surprised me that those became my two most popular fics in their respective fandoms.

As far as what kind, I really try to diversify but the strongest commonalities tend to be strong power dynamics, bondage, pain-play, and consent-play, with my darkest stuff going hard into noncon. I have fluid squicks so I tend to avoid anything in that area.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

The only one I have published is the Our Flag Means Death/Pirates of the Caribbean (which seems pretty obvious, I'm honest surprised there isn't more). I have the whole arc plotted out where the vampire!DCU series is going to branch out into the Slayerverse. Hopefully I'll actually write it one of these days.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of. I don't go looking, but my works aren't crazy popular, either.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

A couple! I'm always really honored. 🥰 Many thanks to people who labor for fandom.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I did a long entirely cowritten canonized fiction for Steve Stirling's Emberverse—it's published on his site, not AO3, and under my real name, so don't go looking! (Nah, JK, I won't link it but I don't care if people figure it out).

And then I wrote this companion piece to Rimbaud's Give Pearls Away and Rubies. I had nothing to do with his piece, but he consulted heavily on mine. And Dragonmuse and I starting workshopping a Dragonriders of Pern pastiche that we might finish one of these days. 🤣

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Can I say the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one? It's the platonic ideal of a ship, really... 😂

Otherwise I really don't have one, I'm too poly for that. Even the ships I'm most feral about, I'll ship any of them with other people.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I won't say the DCU/Slayerverse crossover because I refuse to doubt that I'll finish it one day. So let's go with the JLA bad orgy crack—I actually posted on that one that it should be considered abandoned. I still love the idea but I kinda just ran out of steam.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Exposition, worldbuilding, delving into character emotions. Metaphors and whimsy.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Having actual plots. Action scenes. Actually finishing/ending anything.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I speak enough French and Hebrew to do either of those (and have).

I've done a very little Spanish for Jim from OFMD, but I tend to just copy actual stuff that they've said in canon. I do have a Puerto Rican friend that I've leaned on occasionally, but she's busy and I don't want to make it her job to constantly write dialogue for me so I usually try to avoid it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Define "wrote." 😂

When I was a teenager I plotted out long self-insert fixits for Star Trek, Harry Potter (look, even then the only thing I wanted to do in that verse was fix its many sins), X-Files, Stargate, and Buffy. I never wrote any of them down, though, just enjoyed the daydreaming.

Well, I lie, I did actually write about 60K eventually in an original novel that was based on some of the dynamics I'd created in the HP one, but that's the only one I ever got out on paper and it was altered enough that its origin was pretty unrecognizable.

If we're counting published anywhere, it's Stirling's Emberverse.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Soaked to the Skin. I'm honestly so proud of the actual! plot! in that one, the narrative flow, the emotional arcs, and like. the fact that I actually finished it. Even now a year later, every time I get a comment or kudo on that fic it sends this thrill of happiness up my spine.

Tagging (only if you want it), @thetardigrape, @sunless-garden, and @jupitermelichios.

#chain post #ask game #writing meta #ao3fic

[alfredsolos]

I definitely agree with your repost about people having the right to prefer fanon because canon sucks sometimes but i find it concerning that there is a growing subset of writers that like to flaunt the fact that they’ve never read the comics and then have the audacity to say that they’re “fixing” canon. These writers then proceed the most out of character and stupid stories I’ve ever read. It’s one think to prefer fanon Jason over canon Jason, its another to say that Jason is treated unfairly and is a poor misunderstood meow meow when you’ve never read the comics and don’t acknowledge the fact that Jason has committed some pretty heinous acts (of his own volition, mind you, that pit madness stuff isnt canon). Canon and Fanon are interchangeable to me in quality because Ive read great canon stuff and awful canon stuff, but i’ve also read great fanon stuff and awful fanon stuff. I think it’s more nuanced that the op says it is.

You are right in every way.

What people need to understand is that canon and fanon is and should be connected to each other.

Because there wouldn't be a fanon, if there were no canon.

And the reason why people try to 'fix' the canon is that because they don't want to see their beloved character have flaws or make (big or small) stupid mistakes.

They see these characters as comfort characters. So acknowledging their fuck ups can be hard for some of them.

That doesn't mean that they can't change the course of the storyline because they did not like it. I mean that is the point of having a fanon. Because they either want to change some things or they want more stories of their favorite characters.

But this can be misleading. Because I'm sure that there some people that think, a certain plot that was written in a fic is actually canon.

And yes, getting into comics is hard. I tottally get that. There are too many issues, too many retcons, too many deaths.

But I think a simple google search, or even asking a friend/mutual about a certain topic is a good way to learn.

I don't like gatekeeping or see other people do it. And whether you want to read a comic or not is up to them. But there is also something that I don't tolerate.

Which is whumpify or demonizing characters.

I will give an example of this by using Tim Drake (which I love very much). Personally, I think that Tim is the character that is whumpified the most. And some writers really go out of their way to make the supporting characters OOC and antogonize them for 'making' Tim depressed. Turning everything into their fault. Even if they haven't done anything wrong in the first place.

This example can be applied to every fan favorite character.

I would also like to add that this increase in 'fanon-izing' characters, are mainly due to DC writers.

Because they, themselves, also tend to write OOC or disregard previous media. They, too, have favorite or least favorite characters. And you can see their intentions while reading their comics.

So it kinda goes both ways.

Anyways, thank you for your input!

#dc comics #batfamily #batfam #tim drake #jason todd #dc

[thelastraigeki]

Death Battle - Boba Fett vs Predator RIGGED!!

So I managed to finally watch the most recent episode of Death Battle, Boba Fett vs Predator, and we can thoroughly say that the fight was rigged and the research for the Predator was downright botched and completely disregarded in favor of Boba Fett to get the win here.

Now before someone comes up and calls me a fanboy just because I downright disagree with the outcome, please bear in mind that Death Battle has botched matches in the past regarding match ups such as Wonder Woman vs Rogue, Tifa Lockhart vs Yang Xiao Long, Ben 10 vs Green Lantern, and Akuma vs Shao Kahn. Death Battle has even redone match ups in the past such as two battles between Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy fame and Link from the Legend of Zelda series, both battles producing two different results. Another match up are the two Mario vs Sonic match ups which they have done as well, two battles featuring same characters but both producing different results. The point of this being that Death Battle is not at all perfect and should not be considered an authority to who wins in character battles to the death.

Having watched the analysis between the combats, I can certainly say that there was a HUGE bias in favor for Boba Fett. Death Battle’s use of Legends continuity is the largest contributor despite Star Wars Legends no longer being considered canon immediately right after the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm. In the past, Death Battle has used multiple continuities to create composite characters, case in point— the case with Godzilla when they utilized both the Showa era, Heisei era, Millenium and current Legendary versions of the character but each and every version of Godzilla is recognized as largely being canonical to the original 1954 film or a complete stand alone.

However, in the case of Star Wars, Legends is EXPLICTLY non-canon. This means every weapon and accomplishment from Legends is no longer a viable resource to be used in a Death Battle debate. If Pre-Crisis Superman was not at all used in the battle for Goku vs Superman because of it’s revoked status in the DC Universe at the time, then Legends should’ve been barred from the use of this particular battle. Both Boomstick and Wiz even have stated that Disney axed the original Star Wars expanded universe, but then outright said “But who gives a shit when you’re sitting pretty on Jaba’s throne like an absolute pimp.. or like a Bantha!”

This seems like a complete disregard for their own rules… Looking at the Death Battle rules over on the Death Battle Wiki, it states the following:

“A character’s maximum potential is examined unless otherwise specified. Factors unrelated to the characters cannot end the battle.”

“All official material related to a character as applied unless found contradictory to original source material.”

Granted, I am not exactly proficient with Star Wars lore in either Legends or Canon but as far as we know Disney did not want to be beholden to the Legends continuity as they wanted to create their own lore knowing that their changes would perhaps contradict what came before. So the use of Legends should have been barred from the get go. They acknowledge it’s non-canonical status and didn’t care.

In the case of the Predator… Predator’s canonical expanded universe material outside of the films is all over the place, but it’s generally seen by Twentieth Century Fox— now Twentieth Century Studios as being largely overall canon, depending on the continuity of the films and the stories the material. This is why there is Predator continuity, AVP continuity and Alien continuity. If the research was of any indication, it looks like as if the Death Battle research team only looked at the only a few of the expanded universe material outside of the films— specifically only a few of the Dark Horse comics and only TWO Alien vs Predator games, specifically Predator: Concrete Jungle, and AVP: Extinction. They hadn’t looked at Rebellion’s AVP game from 1999, nor had they even so much as looked at Monolith’s AVP2 which showcased another Elite Predator whom they could’ve based their generic Predator from, specifically the Yautja protagonist Prince. They hadn’t even bothered in looking for details which can be gleamed from ANY Predator respect thread from a majority of forums which even have excerpts from novels raging from Aliens vs Predator: Prey, Aliens vs Predator: War, Predator: Cold War, Predator: South China Sea, Predator: Turnabout, or even so much as the recent Rage War series.

If they were going to count a non-canonical source for Boba Fett, then Death Battle should’ve also counted non-canonical and alternatively canonical sources for the Predator as well… Non-canonical sources being Batman vs Predator, Superman vs. Predator, Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator, Mortal Kombat X, the Witchblade/Darkness crossovers and those are just the non-canonical.

Then there are the instances where Predators canonically show up in external franchises such as the Judge Dredd crossovers and the Dark Horse comic, Agents of Law, specifically Agents of Law #6.

When it came to utilizing the research and footage that they did showcase in their analysis, Boomstick and Wiz outright omitted further strength feats for the Predator as well as additional weapons. Case in point, when they looked at the Plasma Scythe from Aliens vs Predator: Extinction, there were other weapons which are accessible to Elite Predators— be they Spearmasters or Disc Masters. Considering that Death Battle created what I can only assume is to be a general broad and all around Elite Predator, these weapons SHOULD have been made available to him. And they’ve outright stated in their analysis that the further a Yautja goes in rank— the better weapons which he earns. So the Nanovibronic Disc specs and the Plasma Glaive from AVP: Extinction should have been examined and accounted for in order to better cope with Boba’s Beskar armor and the lightsaber in his possession which he acquired in Legends continuity. And there were even MORE weapons from AvP Extinction which should’ve been further accounted for, such as the Omni-Caster— the upgrade from the usual Shoulder Plasma Caster. And the Omni-Caster has multiple energy types ranging from plasma, incendiary to dark matter.

And then there was the research of weapons from Predator: Concrete Jungle which the openly showcased in their analysis video. It seemed as if they largely based their research on Yautja weapons from this— which is a start but Concrete Jungle’s weapons showcase doesn’t even so much as have nearly as much detail as they do compared to what was detailed in Aliens vs Predator: Extinction. And whatever weapons they did showcase from Concrete Jungle were only scant, as they didn’t show or even utilize the weapons shown there such as the Maul blade or the Glaive weapon, nor did they show the weapon specs on those— specifically regarding how the weapons are plasma forged to have exceptional and even unbreakable strength.

There was also the omission of displayed and listed weapons from the analysis. Both the medicomp and the netgun were listed but were completely unused in the fight animation. If these weapons were not at all used, why even so much as mention them in the analysis at all? Had the Predator in the match up been able to use the netgun to ensnare Boba Fett, the net would’ve binded Boba Fett and kept him pinned down long enough for the Yautja in question to get in a kill, or to completely disable his jet back, and if the ensnarement had Boba pinned to a tree, boulder or full ensnared into a compromised position, it’s doubtful he would’ve been able to have access to his lightsaber.

And when it had come to certain physical capabilities regarding the Yautja, Boomstick and Wiz have outright ignored some feats and perhaps even the context of some of these showings. They’ve mentioned that a Yautja is able to tear through a two inch steel wall with their bare hands, however they only showed on instance of it�� we’ve seen a Yautja adolescent (named Tichinde in the AVP: Prey adaptation of the original comic) tear through a steel door with his bare hands. This is indeed true and something a Yautja is capable of, as they also show a Yautja ripping through a wall of what appears to be a tank.

Similarly, they also seemed to have either missed or ignored that the Yautja are also strong enough with one arm to rip through and tear off the emergency hatch of a passenger airliner while in mid-flight.

However, they completely ignored a strength feat seen in Predator: Concrete Jungle and that was a showcasing of Scarface Predator, a disgraced Yautja who ultimately redeems himself and becomes an Elite, lifting a locked and heavy security gate that is much bigger than him which is meant to prevent Xenomorphs from getting inside core reactors.

And then there was the Yautja in the novel South China Sea, who has a striking feat by kicking and derailing a speeding military carrier vehicle that was carrying passengers and weapons. The average military transport truck can weight somewhere up to 12,000 lbs— six tons with leaving only 13,000 lbs for guards and weapons. Said Yautja would’ve had to perhaps have considerable strength to knock it over.

Another strength feat or perhaps even what could be considered a striking strength feat is the fact that a Yautja by the name of Broken Tusk or Dachande, is said to have outright slain a Xenomorph with his bare hands, as well as a Queen. While this is unseen and cited as a memorable event in the narration and character recollection, this can be considered a skill feat as well… And a Yautja who had done a similar feat in killing a Xenomorph Queen, accomplishing with only his wristblades would be a Yautja leader by the nickname of Smiley.

It should also be worth noting that in the ending breakdown to why they decided Boba Fett was the winner, it’s very clear that they’ve downplayed the Yautja’s mobility. Yes, Boba Fett definitely has a jet pack but without it— he is as only mobile as any other human being be they man or woman. In comparison, a Yautja far exceeds even a peak conditioned human being in terms of athleticism. The Yautja are able to jump three times their own height, and the average Predator is around somewhere between 7” to 8” feet in height meaning that they can make bounds of over twenty feet from an immediate leap and they can likely achieve more if they get a running sprint. We can see this many times in the movies, and even better examples in Predator: Concrete Jungle and most especially in Predator: Hunting Grounds, where we see Yautja running and bounding over trees with no problem whatsoever. The Yautja can also from fall from tremendous heights, higher than they can jump and land on their feet with no ill-effects. We see this in the first two Predator films, and many of the comics and games as well.

Also omitted from the research was the lack of research into the Yautja senses. The only examination was the research into the Yautja’s thermal infrared vision, but they have superior senses compared to a human. Numerous references to this are made in the expanded universe material. In the novels, we do see many Yautja utilize their sense of smell to track down their prey, and it’s even mentioned that they have an attuned sense of hearing. There are even some notable examples of this found within the canon of the films.

In AVP: Alien vs Predator, immediately right after Scar slices a Facehugger with his shurikens, he is about to be ambushed from behind by a fully developed Xenomorph that’s utilizing stealth. The Xenomorph in question is moving slowly and silent as to not alert the Yautja, but Scar is clearly listening to his surroundings and able to pin point where the Xenomorph is only to turn and slice the Xenomorph’s face with his shuriken.  In PREDATORS, Nolan even implies the attuned senses of the Hunters with the captured party on the Preserve Planet when he’s quote saying: “If I can smell you, if I can hear you, they can too.” And while this does apply to the Super Predator species, this likely can also apply to the traditional Yautja species as well.

And then we must look at the lack of researching skill when it comes to an Elite Yautja that Boomstick and Wiz. If we look at first-hand accounts from Broken Tusk in Aliens vs. Predator: Prey— the Yautja are trained in a martial art referred to as Jehdin. This is their close quarters combat style, and generally referred to as hand to hand but also very much likely encompasses melee weapons as well. Further examining this martial art from the viewpoint of Machiko Noguchi, a brown belt in Karate who was trained by Master Ko, this Yautja martial art is described as being so further complex than any other martial art from Earth. Machiko notes that Broken was moving so swiftly, so gracefully that it almost seemed like a dance of death, and Broken Tusk took down a dozen Xenomorphs in a few seconds as she raises her Smith revolver and finishes before she could even set her aim. Absolutely no mention of this was at all raised by Wiz and Boomstick.

Listening to the context of the presentation of the Yautja, Boomstick and Wiz seem to either have no idea on what makes an Elite Predator, their research came up short with whatever information they had to use or they simply didn’t care. They had implied that we were getting an Elite Predator, but then said that to achieve this they would have to become a Blooded ranked Hunter. This isn’t entirely true. Blooded ranked Yautja are still low on the totem pole in Yautja society. A Blooded who has achieved his Rite of Passage does not equate to an Elite.

It is worth mentioning that Yautja Elites also learn from the Hunt via their experiences. In the audio tapes of Predator: Hunting Grounds, the severed arm of the Yautja Hunter dubbed as either “Ghost” or “City Hunter” has been carbon dated to be over three hundred years, and was confirmed by OWLF scientists that the Yautja in question was indeed an adolescent. This would mean that Predators have a further length of time to hone their skills from childhood to the age where they partake in their Rite of Passage hunt. This is longer than any amount of training which either Jango Fett or Boba Fett have in terms of overall training, and the Yautja who live long enough to become the rank of an Elite or higher certainly have far more battle experiences in the Hunt than Boba Fett, and if they’ve learned from the Hunt— then likely also a unique set of skills learned from their prey, such as the example with the Samurai Predator, a Yautja who hunted in Feudal Japan and even developed skills learned from samurai warriors and even wields a unique katana as a weapon. Thus, it is likely that an Elite Yautja who has learned from his hunting experiences has developed unique skills that can vary from Yautja to Yautja.

It’s very clear that Death Battle hosts Wiz and Boomstick as well as Death Battle staff picked a winner. Their allowing of non-canonical material from Legends, the lack of proper research on the Yautja species as well as their feats and capabilities, makes this pretty evident.

There is so much more I could rant about the way how Death Battle handled their research on the Yautja and their representation on what was supposed to be an Elite Predator but we feel as if this has gone on long enough. Screenshots of the material on the very games which they’ve looked at have been provided on what they omitted. Whether or not you feel if they have rigged this particular match is entirely up to you to decide.

Death Battle is not at all an authority to who wins in deathmatches in character battle debates and should not be looked upon as such.

#Death Battle #Rooster Teeth #Yautja #Predator #Alien vs Predator #AVP #Alien #Aliens #Alien 3 #Alien Resurrection

[thevoidstaredback]

I should be sleeping, but I'm not, so here's a thing based on a thing I just saw!

Pre ID reveal (I do a lot of these, but that's because the comedy is endless)

The JL and JLD especially, as well as all the protege teams treat the Bats with Fae or Vampire or Cryptid rules. The Batfam figured it out after the third time the others turned down the invite into Gotham, and they all started rolling with it. Nothing really comes of it, though, until someone does accept the invite to Gotham.

I'm thinking it's gotta be Clark, Diana, or Oliver. Clark could be there for an interview with Bruce Wayne (probably shortly after he buys The Daily Planet) and Tim Drake. Diana could be there for any number of reasons, but I think she's there for a new art exhibit that opened up in the Greek part of Gotham museum where she bumps into Damian Wayne and Dick Grayson. Oliver could be there on business, strictly speaking, but he hasn't talked to Bruce in person since just after their senior year of high school, so is it really a coincidence that he meets up with Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd (who was revealed to have been in witness protection for a time)?

Dealer's Choice on who's there. Could be one, could be all three. Could be someone else entirely! (Though, I can really only see Barry as having a good excuse of working with the GCPD on a case and meeting Dick that way if you really wanted to not use the other three)

Anyway. We're gonna use Clark here because he'd be extra cautious around magic, seeing as it's one of like...2 weaknesses he has.

Clark is sent to Gotham for an interview with the head of Wayne Enterprises. Ownership didn't change, but stuff got mixed up around last year, so he could either be meeting with Bruce Wayne or Time Drake-Wayne. Either way, Clark doesn't want to be here. Lois was supposed to be here, but she got sick, so he got stuck traveling across the harbour to the Crime Capitol of the Country.

He'd normally be ecstatic about potentially running into any of his JL coworkers in their natural habitat home cities, but Gotham was different. Batman, for all that he is Superman's best friend, doesn't let anyone into Gotham. There had been speculation for a while as to why that was, but no one had really been able to confirm it.

Kal-El didn't make it a habit, but he had, admittedly, tried to find out who Batman is under the cowl. He couldn't help it! He and Diana had told both each other and Batman who they were, but Bats had refused. He and Diana were understanding, of course, but that didn't stop the journalist side of him from slipping into the forefront of his mind.

At first, Kal thought he was sick. But he can't get sick. It's not like he could just ask B if his cowl was lined with lead or magic or kryptonite or something!

God, he hoped it was magic that was preventing Kal from seeing through Batman's cowl. It couldn't be kryptonite because Kal would've known it the second he got too close. Lead was the only thing he couldn't see through (that wasn't magic) but that brought up the issue of B's health how heavy the cowl was.

Magic, believe it or not, was the most logical explanation. Batman's cowl and cape are connected, so any magic on one would be on the other. With the way that Batman's cape seems to move on its own, somehow pull him deeper into shadows, and is able to hide at least four humans at any given moment, well, it's not a stretch to say magic was being used. Ignoring the fact that Batman hates magic.

That's a lie. He hates what he doesn't understand. And, try as he might, the man can't get a handle on magic.

Off topic.

Clark got off the train at exactly fifteen-hundred hours. Fourth-five minutes before he had to be at Wayne Tower (who named it that? surely not Mr. Wayne himself?) to meet whoever he was interviewing today.

Not knowing the layout of the city was what probably made Clark on obvious target. He should've memorized a map of the city before coming here.

He knows that there are three parties at work. Red Hood, who not even Batman pushes the boundaries of; Signal, who covers the entire city during the day; and Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Spoiler, Black Bat, and Oracle who cover the night shift. Sometimes, Nightwing joins them from Bludhaven, but that's only sometimes. It's safe to assume, though, that Red Hood and Nightwing are the two outliers. So long as Clark doesn't draw the attention of those two or Signal, he should be fine. A quick in and out and he'll be home free!

"Mister Kent?" the receptionist asks when he approaches her desk.

"Yes," he clears his throat, nervous for some reason he can't place, "That's me." What's wrong with him? It's just a routine interview! He's done hundreds like it before!

The receptionist smiles at him. "Misters Wayne are both waiting for you in Mister Wayne's office on the tenth floor."

He nods his thanks and goes to the elevator. Doesn't this building have like...thirty floors, though? Wouldn't the CEO's office be on the top floor?

Regardless, Clark uses the short elevator ride (complete with smooth jazz as the provided white noise) to calm himself down. He's met hundreds of big shots. Mister Wayne, whichever (or both?) he's meeting with today will be no different.

Maybe.

Probably.

Hopefully.

The elevator dings, the sound an odd harmony of several notes on the C Major scale instead of the single tone bell that is common through everywhere else. He gets off on the tenth floor and finds exactly four offices. He knocks on the door labeled 'Bruce Wayne'.

"Come in!" is called from inside, though the voice sounds too young to be Bruce.

Clark opens the door with an easy smile, taking in stride the fact that he is meeting with both Bruce and Tim Wayne. Oh, dear. "Good afternoon, Mister Wayne, Mister Drake-Wayne."

"Please," Mister Wayne has on the smile he always wears for the public. "Call me Bruce."

"And call me Tim," Tim shakes Clark's hand after he stands from his seat. The door clocks shut behind Clark.

Ah. Now he knows why he's so nervous. Batman usually only has bad things to say about Bruce Wayne. On the other hand, Tim Drake is a complete mystery to him.

Clark takes a seat on the couch opposite the two men when he's prompted. They go through pleasantries they all know are ingenuine before Clark opens up the notepad he brought with him. "Now, Mister Wayne, Mister Drake-Wayne, what made you decide to buy The Daily Planet?

Storyboard

#the timeline is messes up but i don't care #canon isn't real #not canon compliant #canon is my bitch #dc means disregard canon right? #dc #dcu #dc comics #detective comics #justice league #this is a lot longer than planned #part two in a few hours i guess #i gotta try and get some sleep

[commonratmiraculous]

Daminette Soulmate AU - Idea/Prompt?

Yes, I know that not everyone likes Daminette in the fandom, mostly because they don’t like Damian, or crossovers, or the salt that generally comes with these fics (though I plan to keep this salt free). Which is fair.

But Daminette Soulmate fics tend to have similar starts to explaining the specific soulmate type that Damian and Marinette have that is so rare seemingly no one else has it. This is a twist on that.

The “ultra-rare” versions that I’ve seen picked are always something kind of dramatic, I guess? Swapping bodies for a period of time as an example. And sure something like that does fulfill the general understanding that the League of Assassins might not look favourably on soulmates, as Damian wouldn’t want to have a physical mark if you’re going down that route.

But I saw a Soulmate prompt that’s far subtler and kind of perfect if you’re the kind of writer who likes to play things for comedy purposes. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it goes something like:

Everything you can do, your soulmate can also.

This would go someway into explaining how Marinette can just become a superhero in minutes, what with the necessary fighting skills and battle strategy. Sure her mother was introduced as being a trained martial artist in Troublemaker but there’s no evidence that she did teach Marinette - she’s only now learning Mandarin after all (though Marinette probably would know Mandarin since it’s likely one of the languages that Damian speaks: little baby Marinette speaking random Arabic) Not to mention the idea that Ra’s and Talia accidentally taught a random French-Chinese infant how to be an assassin with no knowledge they were doing it.

Damian has mentioned a lot about the things he can do beyond fighting and language skills of course. Like being able to drive by the age of ten, hacking into NASA at six and finding it easy, he’s mentioned that he could have had a Geometry Degree (by what 13?) had his mother not killed his tutor. He’s a great artist, and he’s also able to perform magic (which he doesn’t persue despite his interest in doing so).

Of course the art and the magic could be explained in this AU as having come from Marinette. And his training and tutoring both goes some way to explaining why Marinette is almost two years younger than some of her classmates (Alix, Adrien, and Nathaniel have their 15th birthdays while Marinette is thirteen though she gets her 14th towards the end of the school year, the last timeline I saw had Befana placed in June) as well as the aforementioned fighting skill.

(When it comes to the fighting aspect of MLB I’m acknowledging that we’ve actually seen Gabriel teaching Adrien Kung Fu (?) in the Felix episode, as well as his Fencing skill. NOT writing him off completely)

But with Damian, imagine he’s now at the Manor and things have settled down into the fanon batfamily dynamic (canon batfamily has no place here and DC fans on this site have accepted that) and all of a sudden they find out that Damian can bake. Their reaction to that has nothing on finding out that Damian can make his own clothes. Of course Damian being Damian doesn’t mention not knowing where these skills came from to his family members because he already thinks it’s weird. He’s definitely not mentioning it to them after he’s convinced into playing Mecha Strike V with his siblings - the first time he’s even played a video game - and just trounces them all.

Marinette doesn’t get the luxury of being able to explain away her quirks to her family though since she’s raised by them. I’m entertaining the idea that neither Tom or Sabine actually know for sure that it’s a soulmate bond giving M the weirdest skills (though she’s never been raised to think that violence is the answer so they’re probably not as worried as they should be). Perhaps though, the closest they got to being told was a conversation with Andre the Ice-Cream man, whose advice they disregarded because he’s an ice-cream man. So Marinette definitely doesn’t know that this is abnormal.

Until, she’s in the middle of a fight as Ladybug and her miraculous starts beeping despite Lucky Charm not being called because Damian called it by accident.

He could have:

a) actually needed whatever the miraculous gave him at the time, or

b) been in an argument with a sibling about cereal (since Lucky Charms is an American brand of cereal)

Tikki tells Marinette what’s up, to her anger and frustration (and also giddiness because she’d thought she never had a soulmate - a topic that Chloé definitely bullied her on as children and Lila probably can’t comment on without the class getting defensive because of said history on the topic - and it turns out she does.)

A magic user on the League, or Wonder Woman, tells Batman. Who immediately tries to figure out who Ladybug is (this isn’t a JLA ignored Paris’ call for help fic since it plays with both LB and CN being more capable then one would assume - the miraculouses do balance each other whether you like the Love Square ship or not, and it’s not like Adrien isn’t the child of a supervillain being trained by said supervillain, I’m whether he knows it or not) only for the magic to stop him. But Damian might know.

And if Damian does know you have to entertain the thought that he also knows the rest of the Miraculous Team barring Chat Noir. Just imagine for a minute the rage he would have over his soulmate apparently not knowing who her partner in the field is. The fact that Marinette doesn’t know the identities of everyone in the Justice League until they’re standing right in from of her can be explained as her having no interest whatsoever in finding out who they are. Which would be an interesting way of showing that just because they’ve got the same skills that does not mean they’re the same people.

#dc #mlb #miraculous ladybug #crossover #daminette #damian wayne #marinette dupain cheng #robin #ladybug #soulmate #soulmate au #prompt

[northoftheroad]

What’s in a retcon, anyway?

The more I think about, the less I believe that comic book writers feel compelled to be bound by earlier writing. Unless an editor is keeping them under their thumb to get coherent writing – and if DC had that, things wouldn't be such a mess – it seems to me they are happy to blend their personal variant of a canon backstory. I will present a number of examples to support my hypothesis.

Pre-Crisis, Marv Wolfman wrote Dick saying he was Robin from age 8 (New Teen Titans #39, 1984), and he’s about 19 at the time. 

New Teen Titans # 39. By Marv Wolfman, art George Pérez. (1984)

When Crisis on Infinite Earths reached Batman, Jim Starlin wrote the retcon that said that Dick was Robin for six years, presumably from age 13 to 19. (Batman # 416, 1987). This version also included that Bruce fired Dick from Robin, but more on that later.

Batman # 416. By Jim Starlin, art Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. (1987)

And then Marv Wolfman wrote Batman Year Three (Batman # 436–439, 1989), and all of a sudden, it was ten years since Dick's parents were killed when Jason had recently died. That has to imply that Dick was Robin for longer than six years, right? And that Dick was about ten when he came to Bruce.

The following year, 1990, Dennis O'Neal wrote an illustrated short story about Dick's origin where he was ten when his parents were murdered. (The Glimpse. In Secret Origins vol 2 # 50, 1990)

Dennis O'Neal, by the way, was the editor of Batman # 416 and co-editor of Batman Year Three (Batman 436–439). He should be the guy to keep track of details like this, shouldn't he?

Then we have Chuck Dixon's version of Dick's origin in Robin vol 2 Annual # 4 (1995). This retcon includes that Dick spent time at a youth centre before he came to Bruce (the "juvie origin"), but his age is never mentioned. He doesn't look old enough to be 13, in my opinion.

The next decade, Devin Grayson had Dick say, in at least two different issues, that he was orphaned at 8. (Batman: Gotham Knights # 21. By Devin Grayson, art Roger Robinson and John Floyd (2001), and Nightwing vol 2 # 76. 2003) Just as in (the Pre-Crisis) NTT # 39.

Nightwing vol 2 # 76. By Devin Grayson, art Mike Lilly and Andy Owens. (2001)

Does that mean Devin Grayson also intended to rewrite other retcons that came after the Crisis – so that Dick wasn't fired from Robin and/or Dixon's "juvie origin"?

It’s difficult to say, since she never did write her own version of Dick’s origin. I can't remember her Nightwing run mentioning either how Dick left Robin or what had happened before he moved in with Bruce. (Actually, I can't remember any writer, besides Chuck Dixon himself, referencing the "juvie origin".) But Devin Grayson wrote Dick talking about being left in an orphanage in Gotham Knight # 21, in a context where he surely would have said “left at the youth centre” if she had ment to stick with Dixon’s version. 

Batman: Gotham Knights # 21. By Devin Grayson, art Roger Robinson and John Floyd. (2001)

After Flashpoint, in the new origin story, Dick was 15 when he was orphaned. (Nightwing vol 3 # 0, 2012) But in Rebirth Batman # 54 (2018), by Tom King, Dick is drawn way younger in a flashback, and he’s been shown younger in the Nightwing title too. 

Two more examples of canon jumping all over the place are Jason Todd's origin and how Dick left Robin to become Nightwing. Dick originally left by his own decision, because he felt Robin was the junior partner to Batman while he had outgrown that, but the Post-Crisis on Infinite Earth retcon was that Bruce fired Dick. First, in Batman # 408, because he got scared when the Joker shot Robin. Later, in Chuck Dixon's version (in Nightwing: Secret Files and Origin, and Nightwing Year One, Nightwing vol 2 100–106), Bruce fired Dick at ostensibly because Robin wasn't available enough when Batman needed assistance.

Again, after Dixon, I can't remember any writer referencing that Dick should have been outright fired as Robin.

Jason Todd was introduced as a strawberry blond, circus kid Dick Grayson clone but after Crisis on Infinite Earths he was a black-haired street kid. And when Dick originally left Robin, it was his choice to let Jason become Robin. Post-Crisis, Batman made Jason Robin – and while Dick might not have been on good terms with Bruce, he did accept Jason as Robin.

Fast forward to the 2010s. When Grant Morrison wrote Batman, and Batman and Robin vol 1, he re-introduced Jason Todd with red-blond hair – but not his Pre-Crisis personality (the Dick Grayson clone.) 

Morrison's era Jason Todd was the street kid and he had always liked trouble which made him "a juvie" (Batman and Robin vol 1 # 23, 2011, written by Judd Winick). In the same issue, there is a flashback that shows that Dick was on good terms with Bruce and working with Batman and JasonRobin – as if it were the Pre-Crisis version. 

Batman and Robin vol 1 # 23, by Judd Winnick, art Guillem March and Andrei Bresson. (2011)

In the very last issue of Batman before Flashpoint and New 52 (Batman # 713, by Fabian Nicieza, 2011) a flashback seems to confirm that it was Dick's decision to leave Robin.

Batman # 713. By Fabian Nicieza, pencillers Steve Scott, Daniel Sampere, Andrei Bressan. 2011.

The Morrison era Batman was, very much, built on a mix of Pre- and Post-Crisis material.

Pre-Crisis, by the way, Jason Todd was the first boy that Bruce adopted, and that was still the case when he was killed Post-Crisis. But he's been referred to as his ward in Batman: Gotham Knights # 44 (2003, written by Devin Grayson), as well as Batman and Robin vol 1 # 23 (2011, written by Judd Winick). (I'm sure other writers/other issues have put Jason down as adopted son...)

Batman and Robin vol 1 # 23, by Judd Winnick, art Guillem March and Andrei Bresson. (2011)

Neither Devin Grayson nor Grant Morrison wrote, as far as I can remember, a "visible" retcon where their ideas of the character's backstories are laid out. But it's nevertheless clear that they did not work with the same version of the character's history as writer/s who preceded them.

Then there's Robin Dies at Dawn from 1963 (Batman # 156), where Batman took part in a psychological experiment. That was canon and the unnamed doctor, who seemed pretty harmless at the time, became a major adversary, Doctor Hurt, during Grant Morrison’s run. Doctor Hurt has also been active as a Nightwing villain in Rebirth.  

Batman # 673. Written by Grant Morrison, pencil Tony S. Daniel, ink Jonathan Glapion and Sandu Florea. (2008)

Nightwing vol 4 # 19. By Tim Seeley, art Javier Fernandez and Minkyu Jung. (2017) 

Another recent example of cherrypicking is Tom King who, in his Batman/Catwoman mini series, uses the character Andrea Beaumont/Phantasm from the DC Animated Universe (she was created for an animated film in 1993). Of course, she's far from the first character who has been created in the animated universe and made their way over to comic book canon.

Tom King also used Hush in Batman vol 3 # 80 (2019), even though the man was last seen being killed in another universe (Batman: Prelude to the Wedding, Nightwing vs Hush, 2018). 

Batman: Prelude to the Wedding. Nightwing vs Hush. By Tim Seeley, art Travis G Moore. 

Sam Humphries, who wrote Nightwing vol 4 for a short period – I don’t know why he left early – had plans to use Dick’s Uncle George, whose one and only appearance was in 1944, in Batman vol 1 # 20. This is from an interview on Batman-news.com: https://batman-news.com/2017/11/27/a-nightwing-before-christmas-an-interview-with-sam-humphries/

SH: I will… I will say that’s a very intriguing pick.  I’ve not thought about that.  I do have a list of characters I want to bring in on the run, most of which I’ve gotta keep close to my chest.

JY: Sure, sure.

SH: You know, I do… Dick Grayson has an uncle, George Grayson, and there’s a story I want to tell about him that I’m really excited about.

In conclusion. It seems to me that official comic book writers are just as prone to pick and choose from earlier canon and disregarding whatever retcon they dislike as us ordinary fans... 

#Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Robin #Jason Todd #Red Hood

[nabtime]

Our Empty Graves I

Fandom: Danny Phantom / Batman: Under the Red Hood

Pairings: Danny Fenton/Jason Todd (Dead on Main)

Rating: Mature

Tags: batfamily, hazmat AU, Nobody Knows AU, Mute!Phantom, potential ghost king danny, slow burn?, DC means Disregard Canon, AU means AU nothing is exactly the same, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, more than canon typical violence, danny is a Halfa and also a Fetch, no beta we die like basically everyone

Summary: They say that Red Hood has a loyal mutt. The man rules his territory in Crime Alley with an iron fist and a guard dog at his side. They say that Hood calls him Fetch, sometimes Fetcher. No one's ever heard him speak. Anyone who's ever seen him says he looks like an experiment gone wrong, that Hood picked him up somewhere unspeakable. They say he'll do anything Red Hood asks of him and he'll do it well. That he's strong and fast and probably inhuman. The girls say he's sweet; quiet but charming in his own way. Rival gangs say he's vicious; that he'd sooner rip your throat out than let you go.

Jason just wants to help him.

Chapter 1: im sorry mom ive got to go (I dug this grave I call my home)

Chapter Notes: title from Lonely by Palaye Royale Links: AO3 // Chapter 2

Danny stared down the barrel of his mother’s gun.

“How dare you,” she said, voice hoarse and barely there. Her hands were shaking. He knew, though, as he looked into the toxic green of the blaster, that her aim would hold true regardless.

He said nothing. Even if he was physically capable of speech in this form he would have nothing to say. He was exhausted, on all levels. He couldn’t do this anymore. His parents were the last of the stubborn Amity Parkers that refused to leave and there was no avoiding them when he was trying to defend what was left of his haunt, trying to defend the portal so that any ghosts causing mischief would steer clear. For their sake and his. The GIW had been in rare form lately and he wasn’t ready to find more ghosts strapped to a table.

He didn’t know how long it had been since the town was pulled into the Realms, stuck after he’d defeated Pariah with no way of sending everyone back to the material plane. But it felt like a long time now. He’d lost track of the exact date since he’d given up on being human.

“Where is he,” she snarled, shoving the gun closer, feet away from his face. “What did you do with my son?”

He could give nothing but a rattling echoey sigh, distorted and piercing. A smaller version of his ghostly wail and about the only sound he could make without mass destruction.

He was tired. Exhausted from his latest fight with Skulker. The hunter would not rest until he’d gained the rarest pelt of them all. Phantom’s. The child ghost. The Halfa. The Fetch. The ultimate prize. He didn’t have anything left in him after getting Skulker to leave, fighting for what was left of his life and winning by a hair. He couldn’t just dump the ghosts in the Ghost Zone anymore, not when he also lived there. They were either put in time out in the thermos or fought off. Everything within his body ached. Everything within his soul ached. He didn’t think he could survive this confrontation with his mother and he almost felt like… he didn’t want to.

He lay limp where he’d fallen after battle, resting against his own empty grave. His dad and Jazz had insisted on having the funeral after his first full year of being missing. His mom had gone off the deep end and refused to believe he was dead. She was only half right.

“You’re sitting on his grave,” she yelled, voice cracking with tears. “Where is he?”

He shook his head. He’d long since given up on returning to his family. On ever being human again. He died in that accident and pretending otherwise, no matter that he somehow wasn’t a full ghost, would only hurt everyone in the long run. He’d already hurt them so, so much.

His mom and dad were the last ones left in Amity and they needed to let go. They were already reduced to staying at a hotel for a good majority of the time, unable to stay within the Realms with their puny human bodies for long. They needed to move out, permanently. He couldn’t bare to see them waste away here. One Fenton haunting the Zone was enough.

After a few good beats of silence she drew closer- her gun drew closer. Her steps crunched in the dead grass around them, cast a sickly green from the glow of the neon sky.

“You wear the same HazMat my husband and I designed,” she said quietly. “You showed up the same time Danny had his accident.” The barrel of the gun made contact with the tinted shield that hid his face. “I need answers!” she screamed.

He knew his mother wasn’t dumb, however willfully ignorant his parents seemed at times. She was so close to connecting the impossible dots, but knew she would never make them. She didn’t want to. She wanted her son back and all that was left was a monster.

He could see his reflection in her goggles. The bright green pin-pricks that counted as eyes. The inhuman shape of the suit swallowing him. The face shield blocking any recognizable features and the entire ghostly glow that surrounded him. Maddie’s own face was hidden behind the face shield of her suit, but if he looked close enough he could see the fear and denial within her once familiar lilac eyes.

He pulled the gun closer and held it to his head. He was so, so tired.

“I watched your fight with Pariah, you know,” she whispered. “I saw how you Ended him.”

A jolt of surprise and fear flooded down his spine, his grip on the gun tightening. He hated being reminded of what he’d had to do to Pariah. Hated the blood on his hands and the feeling of the core he’d crushed within them. But this was another level. She saw him End another. His mother had witnessed him become a murderer.

“I could End you too, you know,” she said, a deep sadness in her tone. The fear within him spiked. She reached out a gentle hand and cradled his head. “End my little boy’s pain.”

Breath he didn’t need caught in his throat, a strangled sound erupting from his core. Inhuman and full of terror. He’d already been willing to let his mother shoot him, to let her take out her pain on his aching body. But she could actually End him here. She could End him knowing he was her son.

Pain like nothing else ripped through him, his emotions growing erratic and effecting his form. Everything warped and he dropped the gun like it burned as he scrambled back against his headstone, trying in vain to gather enough energy to fly. To get away.

“Hold still for me, won’t you, dear?”

Panic built within his chest, his core (his fragile, tiny core) rattling against his ribs. His arms and legs felt impossibly heavy as he clawed at the dirt to move away, digging and digging as he tried to hoist himself up over the headstone.

Here Lies Daniel J. Fenton Beloved Son and Brother Gone Before His Time June 13th 19XX – August 16th 20XX

And wasn’t it funny, somehow? That he’d be dying, forever and fully, over his own empty grave?

He could feel the heat of the blaster warming up for the killing blow. Sense the necrotic scent of rancid ectoplasm building behind him. It would take more than one shot to End him, to cleave him open enough for her to snatch his core. To crush it.

“It won’t hurt too bad, baby,” his mom cooed. An edge to her voice he couldn’t identify. “Just like getting a shot at the pediatrician’s all over again.”

He couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He was tired but he didn’t want to End. Not here, not now. Not at the hands of his mother. He couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t let her shoulder that awful, awful guilt. He needed to get away. He needed so, so desperately to leave. Amity had long since emptied. There was no one left to protect within his Haunt. He needed to leave.

Something gave way beneath his leg, dirt folding into empty space with a horrific lurch. His face smashed into the ground as he unbalanced.

She shot him in the leg first. The one not buried in the dirt and hanging into nothingness.

A shattered wail was building in his core, as close to a scream as he could get. He was trying to gasp in as much air as he could through the clumps of dirt and fetid rot that surrounded all graves. He could feel the leak of warm ectoplasm leaving his burning limb. The more he lost the more it would take to recover. And the more it would take to get away.

She caught an arm next. It felt like she was toying with him. Pinning him down like yet another specimen to examine on the table. He could feel bone crack with the point blank range shot, his skin partially melting with the heat and bleeding even more toxic green ooze. He used his other arm to claw further into the depths. He didn’t know what was beyond this, but if he dug in enough maybe he could fall through. His hand hit something solid and he cried, desperate to break through and escape. It was his only option. He kicked at it with his leg, steel toe of his boot just barely scratching its surface. His hands were closer to whatever shape it made under the dirt. He punched instead.

She shot the base of his spine and he could feel his nerves twitch and writhe uselessly. She shot him again in the same spot and they fell still. He couldn’t feel them anymore. His digging and punching grew more frantic. He used his broken arm despite the pain, just needing to get away, away, away.

Cuts and bruises from his fight with Skulker were making themselves known in the frenzy, screaming and burning with his hurried movements. The knock to the head he’d gotten wasn’t helping things either. Everything was going blurry with panic and it hurt, hurt, hurt. He was sobbing without sound and the shaking of his core was constricting his lungs and making his chest heave. He was an animal caught in a trap, eating away at its own flesh in order to flee. To live.

Bright green broke through the ground in jagged lines, crackling with power as he felt his bleeding knuckles shatter whatever barrier had lain under the empty space. Everything gave way and the last thing he could hear was his mother’s screaming as he plummeted. Sweet relief overcame the dread as black filled his vision.

═════ ◈ ═════

He woke, sometime later, on another man’s grave.

Here Lies Jason P. Todd Beloved Son and Brother Gone Before His Time August 16th 19XX – June 13th 20XX

#naps fics #dp x dc #Our Empty Graves #dpxdc

[nightwingmyboi]

Tim is the fandoms sad white boi fav, which is why there's so many ppl rushing to defend him over every other character😂. Like idk if you read fic but I can't look thru any batfam character tag w/out tripping over 500+ ~uwu sad boy tim~ fic's abt how the entire family is SO mean to him, everyone ABANDONED him, +a weird focus on how insecure he is, how much he ~doubts his place~ when like. . . He was pretty full of himself in Canon??? Idk but Tim stans r wild 😖

lmao...i really don’t want this blog turning into a tim drake hate blog i promise! Because there are things that I like about his original character, like how he wasn’t really naturally athletically gifted so he had to train a ton and work really hard and use trickery/cunning to even out the battlefield for himself, and he really holds his own. (Not that I’m trying to say he is incompetent, just compared to the superhuman level of the batfam and the hero community, he doesn’t really have a natural aptitude and I like how his hardwork has paid off). 

But. I’ve seen so many posts talking about Dick, Jason, and Damian’s flaws (people are constantly harping on Dick’s temper, etc. and everyone acknowledges that Damian was/is a brat and that Jason goes around killing people sometimes and isn’t exactly stable, but we all love these characters anyway) but I have seen like. Practically no one criticizing Tim, and even on the posts that I see taking Tim down a peg or two, the majority of the notes are just people explaining his flaws away (there are of course exceptions to this I assume, I’m just talking about what I’ve seen in my little corner of tumblr dot com). 

So yeah, what I’m saying is that Tim is very condescending (and with that condescension pretty sexist [x]) and sometimes, he sees people more as chess pieces for him to use and disregards the fact that they are people with feelings and emotions (like Bruce in this way). He spends a lot of his time as Robin trashing Jason in his head for being reckless as Robin (to be fair, DC really had an agenda to try to take the blame for Jason’s death off Bruce and put it onto the victim for some reason and Tim was a convenient mouthpiece, but still. Tim was very consistent in his thoughts towards Jason) and saying that he’ll do better. Which doesn’t exactly scream insecurity. He goes around having a girlfriend while also kissing Spoiler/Stephanie multiple times, which is a pretty freakin messy situation that no one talks about huh? (yet neither of these girls find out so once again Tim escapes any actual canon punishment). 

And with the Damian stuff, people like to act like Tim is totally in the right, but I can’t get over the initial stuff with them. Like, Bruce tells Tim that Damian was brutalized and brainwashed in the League and deserves compassion and love and Tim flat out says ‘he should earn it’. (This is just meeting Damian, before any physical confrontation). Damian is like 10 in his first appearances and I just can’t get over how much Tim lacked any sense of empathy for Damian here. A lot of their rivalry is Damian instigating, true. But he is a ten year old who doesn’t know any other way of life. Tim is freaking college age and he always seems to scoff at Damian’s progress and disregard his feelings (like with the whole putting him on a contingency list in Red Robin). 

Look, sorry to really go into Tim like this, I know he has good qualities and his own traumas too. You could make a list of bad choices/decisions for any character (and people have for all the other people in the Batfam). But it is frustrating how fanon and even canon don’t hold Tim accountable for any of his mistakes or flaws. Like, Dick acts like Batman and everyone is calling him out for it. The Titans, Batfam, and even Tim explicitly tell Dick to stop acting like Bruce/Batman a ton. But Tim acts like Batman and everyone gives him a pat on the back. Why. I think that Tim is and would be a much more interesting character if we took his flaws into account and let him struggle with them, like we do with Damian’s superiority complex. Like, the reason that Tim can sometimes come off as a bland Gary Stu is because they don’t let him have any flaws or let him make any mistakes. So yeah anon, those are my two cents on the situation.