Turning off the reblogs on this. At the time I wrote it, it felt like what I needed to say. There's not as much activity on the post now, but when there is, I feel...sort of hollow. We're so far past the point where this even means anything.
Y'all remember "cops aren't supposed to kill guilty people, either", right?
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to die beneath the rubble of their homes.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be shot with expanding bullets that cause massive tissue damage leading to amputation.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to have their flesh burned away with white phosphorous.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve their fishing boats blown up.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to see their husbands and fathers executed in front of them along evacuation routes.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve an anonymous phone call threatening to destroy their lives and families.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be detained for years without charges.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be tortured, starved, and sexually assaulted in prison.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be deprived of water.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve their olive trees to be uprooted while they look on.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve sixteen years of blockade.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be prevented from traveling for lifesaving medical care.
Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve this genocide.
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The way that I’m brainrotting over a DCxDP crossover with a Danny who’s a vengeful villain rn
Like, let’s just say that the GiW finally get into contact with the JL. They need help neutralizing a threat, you see, and they’re on their last limb trying to keep civilians safe.
They have video evidence! They have studies to back their claims! The JL have to help them!
Unfortunately, the JL believe them. They join a fight against Danny, and defeat him due to being far more experienced than he is. Danny is locked away and experimented on by the GiW.
That would CHANGE a person. Your heroes turning against you and seeing you as a monster, being experimented on for who knows how long, not knowing if your friends and family are safe.
Danny gets out due to a simple mistake on the GiW’s part; having Blüdhaven as part of their transport route.
Of course the trucks were attacked, they’re government property!
So now, whoever decided to raid the government transport trucks (the Penguin or something) has a ton of experimental weapons with no idea how they work, and a heavily traumatized teenager.
Danny knows how they work. Danny can be useful! They won’t throw him out if he’s useful! And so, now Danny is working for the Penguin, altering the ectoplasm weapons to make them work on humans.
It’s a good deal for both parties. Danny gets to neurotically imprint on the Penguin like a small baby animal, and the Penguin gets a brilliant mind who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
But eventually, Danny finds out what happened to his family in his absence.
Jazz is in Arkham. Not as a psychologist, but as a “patient.” Apparently, she snapped and completely destroyed the house, leveled a few blocks of Amity Park, and conducted organized attacks on government bases (mostly GiW) for months.
Sam and Tucker helped her, eventually splitting once Jazz was captured. Sam travels to areas of extreme pollution, completely overgrowing them with her plant powers. Currently she’s in the Amazon rainforest, engaging in an ongoing feud with logging companies. Sam is winning.
Tucker faked his death, and Danny has no idea where he is. He only knows that the death wasn’t real because of a code that the three of them made together, just in case.
Ellie’s trapped in the Infinite Realms. Danny had a failsafe in place so that if she was ever cornered by the GiW, she would be sent to her haunt in the GZ. However, with the portal destroyed, she can’t come back. Danny just hopes she’s okay.
His parents are now top GiW scientists. They’re traveling the country giving speeches. They’re working on a battery powered by ectoplasm, but apparently started “having difficulties” around the same time that Danny escaped.
None of it is fair. None of it is right.
The Justice League destroyed his life, the lives of his friends, and they’re doing as good as ever. The GiW is respected, and his parents are happily working away for them.
Danny takes up some of his more experimental weapons and breaks Jazz out of Arkham. She’s a little different now, colder and more quiet, but she still loves him all the same. It’s an unimaginable comfort to him to see his sister again.
He can’t use his powers anymore. He’s so used to associating them with pain that even transforming into his ghost form is enough to take him down for hours.
However, he understands ectoplasm more than anyone else in the world. He knows how to use it in virtually everything; how it can become a weapon, how it can be used as a supplemental ingredient in poisons and nerve agents, how it can twist and distort the mind if applied correctly.
He doesn’t care what happens to him. He’s going to take down the GiW, and destroy the lives of the JL members who helped lock him away, just as they did to him.
No matter the cost.
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"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."
This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.
I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.
Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)
His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:
A) a short lived person
B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.
The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.
But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".
So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.
Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.
The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.
Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.
Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!
Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!
On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.
That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.
The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.
And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.
And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.
Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.
Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.
Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!
I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.
Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!
and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.
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Stop Having a Concussion and Get us Home!
Tim works as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Tim has a secretary, and then he has another one to help her because holy shit, the amount of crap Tam puts up with is insane and she needs an assistant of her own.
Tim's second secretary is one Danny Fenton.
Tim, Tam, and Danny are the last ones in Wayne Enterprises, as the building had to be evacuated due to Superman being mind-controlled and targeting major corporations.
Superman targets Wayne Enterprises.
Tim looks out the window as he his secretaries make their way towards the emergency exit, and there he is.
Floating there.
Staring at him.
Tim swears he can see his Uncle Clark sobbing as his eyes heat up.
Then Danny grabs him, yanks him into the stairwell, and just as the building starts to crumble around them, shoves both Tim and Tam into a glowing green portal.
Danny takes a blow to the head.
They land on a floating island, in a swirling vortex of green, and the one who got them there is unconscious on the ground with a nasty headwound.
Meanwhile, after the Justice League manages to snap Superman out of it, the man throws himself at Batmans feet and just...sobs.
Breaks.
They get the story in bits and pieces.
Tim was in the building, still. The burning, twisted wreckage of Wayne Enterprises.
And Clark can't hear his heartbeat anymore.
@simplestoryteller
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