#and make sure nobody sees...

[starry-bi-sky]

I am loudly pushing the batdad agenda i am loudly pushing the— DPxDC Prompt

“Woah. You look like shit."

Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.

The man -- tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall -- whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.

"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says its what always gets me into trouble."

And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation -- with blood blossom extract running through his veins and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.

The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and probably concussed. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.

If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; he's always been able to hide himself in it. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.

"You look hurt." The shadows says, blurring together around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.

"I am." He says, "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, so all he feels is half-awake and dazed.

"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You-- you're a hero, right? You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most costumed people I've met." Maybe it's a poor bar to judge someone at, but he's already established that Danny's not in his right mind.

The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that it's hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape -- stretchy, but almost soft under his fingers.

He looks up blearily into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't-- I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean- I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."

There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.

"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."

Danny's mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." He rasps, and grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. Please--"

"Daniel? Is that you?"

His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of his eyes narrow, and the cape whirls around him before Danny can blink. Soon swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.

[themortaldraw]

echoes of wisdom zelda as the wikipedia can stacking autism baby

[the-bitter-ocean]

Hi isat fandom. Points at the sign.

[inkyrainstorms]

Forwards, Beckon, Rebound

Based on chapter 9 of @aroace-get-out-of-my-face’s fic! I read the chapter and was humming this song to myself later that very day, and it was like two neurons connected in my brain to form a single coherent thought. I simply had to make this.

E. Have fun man.

[iteratorsex]

I don't think iterators know what void worms are btw

[fear-no-mort]

favourite thing: his new habit of saying uhuh/mhm and also this

[casscainmainly]

There's something so beautiful about Cass' belief in people. Not only is it consistently rewarded, but it's often the very thing that allows people to change:

Batgirl (2000) #36 / Detective Comics #972

Her belief isn't enough for her, but it's enough for so many others.

[crowleyholmes]

"I'll never leave you. I'll never leave you again."

[arathejedi394]

my brain's been flopping around between chilaios, stucky, and bagginshield, so have a bagginshield thought + some mpreg <3

thorin: from the moment i first saw you, i loved you bilbo: well, the moment i first saw you, i thought you were a conceited, stuck-up prick. i still think that sometimes. thorin: i love you so much bilbo: hmph. i will allow you to wed me and put one (1) baby in me. i tolerate you enough for that. thorin: [fist pump of victory]

ten years later...

bilbo: [kicks down the doors to the throne room] bilbo: WHERE IS YOUR DAMN KING all the dwarves: [point to their damn king with zero hesitation] thorin: i sense i have done something incorrect dwalin: no shit bilbo: [now brandishing a pair of scissors] THORIN OAKEN-FUCIKING-SHIELD IT IS TIME FOR YOUR WINGS TO BE CLIPPED thorin: ??? bilbo: I SAID ONE (1) BABY!!! bUT GUESS WHO'S PREGNANT FOR THE EIGHTH FUCKING TIME!!! THORIN!!! thorin: [looks at the scissors] thorin: my beloved,,, what are those for bilbo: y o u r b a l l s thorin: [flees from the throne room] bilbo: [running with scissors like everyone says not to do] GET BACK HERE YOU HAIRY LITTLE SHIT IT'S TIME FOR YOUR STONES TO GO BACK TO THE STONE random guard: are we... are we going to save the king? dwalin: no? did you not hear the consort? this is the eighth time. the king either has to learn to pull out, or get his pipes snipped. nori: besides i pinched the scissors. not for thorin's sake, to be clear. bc you should never run with scissors, and if we lost the consort, the whole mountain would fall apart. bilbo, ten corridors over already: heY WAIT A SECOND WHERE DID MY SCISSORS GO thorin: oh thank ma- YOU WERE RUNNING WITH SCISSORS??

oin is the first dwarf to perform a vasectomy. the king under the mountain is his first patient. the next dwarf to get a vasectomy is not born for nearly a thousand years, since dwarves rarely mate outside their species and have a very low birth rate to begin with. bilbo does not talk to thorin for like two weeks. eight times, he asks you. and yannow what??

three of those times. were multiples.

[leverage-ot3]

I’ve talked about this before but imagine what it’s like for someone in a country/place where eliot is Top Most Wanted and then your tech guy finds a breakout star baseball player on their visual scanner that looks EXACTLY like spencer. but…there’s no way that’s him, right???

and then the next year it happens again but this time it’s some one hit wonder country singer kenneth crane that has like 78 tween-run fangirl blogs dedicated to him. you see a grainy video of him being chased by a horde of screaming teenage girls and ??? no way Eliot Last Thing You’ll Ever See Spencer is a country singer star just. signing pictures of his face right…?

a few months later your intern shows you footage of an eliot lookalike who is in san lorenzo talking about how there is dog fighting in the presidential palace and you just. sigh. because of course. a scant few days later the political geography of the country changes drastically and damien moreau is imprisoned. …interesting

and then a year of silence goes by. he still shows up as blips on the radar but he must have a good hacker working for him because his tracks on the internet are expertly erased.

every time you ask through interagency channels some random interpol guy talks in (condescending?) riddles at you and it also somehow feels like he’s threatening you

and then your friend who recently got into foreign hockey teams sends you a dropyourgloves video of someone called jacques the bear. you immediately get a headache (and watch some more videos because even you can admit this guy is a good hockey player)

and you know he’s a Bad Guy but it’s been admittedly a bit entertaining seeing what claim to fame he will come upon next. and his most recent actions over the few years make you wonder.

a few months later your phone pings because multiple heads of state evacuated from DC. the reason? eliot spencer was in town. you hear two days later a bioterrorist was taken down by… the report was redacted. your hacker tells you spencer and two teammates were behind the successful operation. which, huh.

not even a full year later it is released that spencer is dead and… you don’t know how to feel.

[somegrumpynerd]

-Okay but some of the fears that Color has are in fact the same fears that Nightmare has when it comes to Killer.

Like, Color is worried that Killer's so blindly loyal to Nightmare for whatever reason that he wouldn't even think of complaining if he hated it. And at the start that was something Nightmare probably expected. His henchmen should be loyal and obedient and not ask questions nor complain. But now, after years of learning and bonding and softening up significantly he wonders sometimes if that's still the case.

Nightmare knows Killer well, perhaps better than most, but he's not exactly an open book. Especially when it comes to his own wants or needs. More often than not when he makes a request it's intentionally silly or unreasonable for laughs, like asking if they can take Dust to the nearest pet store and try to trade him in. Very rarely does he want something strong enough to make it known, both to himself and others, like asking to keep the first cat he found.

So.

If he hated this. If he truly struggled and fought and agonised with himself about the position he's in and the work he's doing and the life he leads.

Would he say it? Would he realise that was how he felt? Would he even consider saying no was an option?

If Nightmare asked him to do something he really genuinely did not want to, would he just do it anyway because he doesn't believe he has a choice in the matter?

The only way of finding out (besides making a blatantly difficult request of him, which Nightmare is not willing to do) is to simply wait and trust that Killer will tell him if something is wrong. Which... is not exactly foolproof or easy.

But it's part of why Nightmare hates to be around Color too much, because deep down he's more than a little worried that Color could be right and he doesn't know how to fix it.

[aroaceleovaldez]

having been in the fandom for awhile, one interesting shift I remember seeing was around when BoO came out and people realized solangelo was implied to be a future thing, people were kind of scrambling to remember literally anything about Will cause of how minor of a character he had been up until that point.

And one of the things they were looking at with Will was that previously to BoO, people thought Will was a lot older. Because he was a cabin counselor (and generally how he was usually interacting with characters like Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse - all 16+ish, or Leo - 15/16), most people assumed he was closer to 16 at least, if not actually older than Percy. It wasn't uncommon to see HoO!Will being 17 or so (this is also why there's a decent amount of hcs of him being at CHB pre-BoTL despite not existing until TLO). After BoO happened, it wasn't uncommon to see Solangelo content with a significantly older Will.

Like, it has always been implied in the series that Will is on the younger side (since Michael Yew joined CHB in SoM and Will is younger than him/would have joined BoTL at the earliest) and it's just the entire Apollo cabin keeling over in TLO that made Will counselor. But I just think it's interesting to remember that for awhile Will was not confirmed to be 13 in HoO/14 in TOA when solangelo first became a thing/people started paying attention to Will, and the fandom very widely thought he was older.

[vlasdygoth]

watch it

[barrencelenny]

coldflash fics 2024 wrap up!

I spend too much time hanging around in the coldflash tag on ao3 so here's some data I gathered on the fics published this year!

a total of 171 works published/updated by 87 writers (+orphaned and anonymous authors). it brings the total fics in the tag up to 4991 fics, we're almost at 5000! this is a total of approximately 2,924,914 words, which is over 1.5 times the entire ASOIAF series lol (technically this is an overestimate because I didn't bother excluding word counts of longfic chapters published before 2024 whoops)

34 people published a coldflash fic for the first time this year! welcome, we are very happy to have you :)

14 people published fics in a language other than English (5 Russian, 2 French, 2 Spanish, 2 Chinese, 1 Hungarian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Czech)

16-ish cross over fics (obviously this ship has way more crossovers than usual because len goes over to the legends so I didn't count those, but I DID count those highschool/college/groupchat/watch the show au's where every arrowverse/dcu character is chucked into one fic as a crossover) (my post my rules lmao)

1 podfic, 1 fic set in someone else's fic, and 2 translated fics! the transformative works are getting transformed :D

8 gifted works. much generosity, very wow

most fics: 🥇Lady_Meg_666 with 20 fics 🥈SoftBoyDepot with 10 fics🥉BeauregardsTaxicab with 7 fics

highest word count: 🥇 BeauregardsTaxicab with a total of 519,382 words 🥈alex_jude with a total of 155,458 words🥉MK_Morreaux with a total of 95,957 words

longest fic (began prior to 2024): 🥇Arrowverse watching arrowverse with 381,534 words 🥈That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm with 233,199 words🥉Just for a Second with 118,757 words

longest fic (began 2024):🥇Mr. Blue Sky with 268,722 words 🥈There Are Some Strings on Me with 124,404 words 🥉 This Is What You Came For with 107,485 words

oldest fic writers: 🥇 moriavis first published 25 December 2015 and published 07 February this year 🥈coldflasher first published 28 September 2016 and published 17 December this year 🥉n_a_feathers first published 02 October 2016 and updated 12 May this year

funniest tags goes to "Canon is an Ecclesiastical term and I am a heretic," "Slow Burn but just the feelings part they're having sex the whole time," and "Barry Keeps Learning Things About Himself"

least funny tag goes to "no beta we die like Leonard snart" WHY WERE THERE TWO FICS WITH THIS STOP I'LL CRY

most use of taylor swift lyrics as titles goes to alex_jude with three fics. literally no one else is competing in this category lol

thank you to all the fic writers who kept me well fed this year love you <3

[beanghostprincess]

Sanji and Usopp during The Sabaody Incident™ won't leave my mind.

Usopp standing in front of Sanji protectively because he is wounded and he can't fight, so Usopp will do it for him ("I'll do what you can't do").

There is just something about Sanji's expression when he realizes he might actually lose Usopp. This is my interpretation, at least. He is literally frightened.

Usopp helping Sanji stand up to run away. This is crucial for something I want to point out later: Sanji needs help to stand up. (Also, Brook disappears trying to protect them both and saying he will do anything to save them even if it costs him his life. I am feeling sick).

Sanji being self-sacrificing and blaming himself for not being able to protect them/act sooner is not new. But he does manage to gain the strength to fight when Usopp is the only one left with him and the possibility of losing him is even more real now.

The thing that I love the most about this is not Sanji sacrificing himself for Usopp, because he does that. He is like that. But Usopp not running away or moving in the slightest because he refuses to leave Sanji on his own.

Something I'd like to point out too is that Sanji actually touches Kuma before Usopp disappears. He tries to fight and protect him and Kuma could've easily sent Sanji to Momoiro Island right away, and yet Sanji was just sent flying far from the scene and forced to see Usopp disappear in front of him.

And I am not saying that "not being able to protect both Brook and Usopp (especially Usopp) is needed for Sanji to realize he has to become stronger and find more reasons to go back with the crew" but not being able to protect both Brook and Usopp (especially Usopp) is needed for Sanji to realize he has to become stronger and find more reasons to go back with the crew.

Not to mention that we can't deny (right after Water 7/Enies Lobby) that Usopp is one of Sanji's strongest bonds within the crew. This specific scene focusing on them both is more than enough to prove it.

Sanji seeing Usopp disappear in front of his eyes without being able to do anything to save him.

Remember what I said about Sanji needing help to stand up seconds ago? Well. This is him the moment Usopp disappears. What adrenaline and the power of love do to a mf.

They are so "I can lose everything, but not you. Oh God, not you" shaped.

[calware]

i'm used to the "hal cannot be anything other than 13 and there is no room for nuance on this matter" argument but the other two statements are so confusing to me. what