#the complexities of the good and the bad

[crypticmessengergoblin]

Hozier and that dang tambourine man

[deecotan]

i am an another anon, but maybe bruce wayne trying to take care of baby dick grayson? please :)

treat yourself with some batdad and his baby

this is more of a de-age situation rather than "bruce taking dick in as a baby" because, if taking account their canon-ish ages, i can't really imagine a freshly young adult bruce willingly adopting a recently orphaned baby while he himself is already in the path of becoming batman.

which gave me this idea of an elseworlds concept where bruce rejects the path of becoming batman in favor of taking care of baby dick and becoming a glorified teen parent instead.

[uncanny-tranny]

Fat people deserve mobility aids, too. No matter if it's connected to their fatness or not, because having a mobility issue that is connected to one's fatness won't change that they're still fat and still have the issue at hand. Fat people don't deserve to "tough it out" because fatness should be this divine punishment doled out to those who "deserve" it. Fat disabled people deserve to have the peace of mind that they can exist in whatever way is most comfortable and accessible to them

[egophiliac]

I loved your drawing(and I love your style in general) with Leia in your recent post! If/when you have time can we see more of her in your style? I get so happy whenever I actually see people mention/talk about her and she’s not just forgotten because we didn’t get to see much of her. 😭

thank you! 💙💙💙 Leia/Leah/Lea/whatever is fascinating to me. she is the ultimate unknown. what was she like? how involved (or even aware of any details of the invasion) was she? Silver's basically a physical carbon copy of his biodad, so what did he get from her? like, I understand why the two of them kind of have to stay as these super vague and mysterious figures -- the whole point of them is that their story ended 400+ years ago and they're not really relevant anymore (and. well. the more that gets explained about them, the less that can just kinda be handwaved as "oh the politics were Very Messy") (we can sit here and theorize all day but let us acknowledge that, ultimately, canon gave us almost nothing about them post-Meleanor and we'd just be making things up). I do still wonder about her though! RIP Lea, we never knew you and we probably never will.

actually you know what, as long as we're here, I think I WILL go ahead and just make some stuff up about what Silver might've inherited from her instead.

[triaelf9]

"how do you enjoy *insert fandom here* I hear they're the worst"

Find the ppl who enjoy the thing you like the way you do. Ignore, mute or block the ppl who don't.

Ta-Da~

[thechekhov]

Did you seriously reblog a post defending the sanctity of life of pedophiles?

You did not read that post.

I understand that it might be difficult, because of the knee-jerk reaction we all have when it comes to this topic. I admit I also had the emotional first-response of disgust. But I urge you to go back and try to read it again, when you are cool-headed.

Stating that 'murdering people we find disgusting is not the moral high ground it feels like', is not the same thing as 'defending the sanctity of life' of anyone.

And while it feels good to emotionally say 'we should kill all (people who do bad things that cause harm to others)' this does not actually accomplish what our brains think it does.

From the post:

denying the humanity of people who do horrible things accomplishes exactly three things:

give cover to people who haven't been caught yet by allowing them to use their humanity as "proof" of their innocence

silence any criticism of societal structures and institutions that facilitate those horrible things by putting the focus on individuals who are assumed to be so uniquely monstrous that the ways it was made easy for them are irrelevant

provide a shortcut to dehumanize anyone you feel like killing: simply accuse them of doing a horrible thing

Listen, to me, listen:

I know that we are all human and when we see someone committing evil things, we feel justified and good, and we want to use our teeth and claws to rip them to shreds. I KNOW it feels incredible to reply to pain and harm with equal violence.

But on an ideological level, if you EVER hope to understand how emotional manipulation and dehumanization on a social level works, you NEED to be prepared to unwrap this delicious i-can-murder-that-person-and-feel-rightous burrito.

You need to understand why it is not the swiss knife of justice that it feels like.

You need to know that it can and will be used to kill innocent people who don't deserve it, and you will not even notice.

Because if you can justify murder with a simple 'if you fit into this category you automatically don't deserve to live' then you are supporting an authoritarian regime, who can and WILL happily take the easier job of convincing you that some person that they need dead fits the description (of a person you've already agreed doesn't deserve anything but a swift and unquestionable death).

This is why, when they needed the gays to be feared and hunted, they labeled them 'pedophiles'. This is why they're now doing this to trans people. This is why dehumanization is a tool of oppression, not justice.

There is way to fix injustice in the world and protect children without becoming easier to manipulate and trick.

[raphmybeloved]

Not “good parent splinter” not “bad parent splinter” but instead “splinter raised four children with no resources as a survivor of horrific trauma and while he had better moments and worse moments. to simply divide his parenting as good or bad does a disservice to his character”

[inafieldofstarflowers]

ik we talk about how Neil’s an unreliable narrator in terms of leaving out details about his life & that’s true BUT it’s important to me that we acknowledge that he’s also deeply unreliable in the more traditional sense when it comes to his understanding of the people around him—it’s easy to overlook because the person Neil thinks about the most and in the most depth is Andrew, and he does understand Andrew incredibly well, so it’s easy to just trust he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to other people when that’s not necessarily true. Especially when it comes to Kevin and Aaron, who Neil has some pretty direct ideas about, but whose images in his mind are impacted respectively by Neil’s understanding of himself and his understanding of Andrew. To really understand Kevin you have to lose the idea that he only cares about Exy & is a coward for not standing up to the people who he fears will kill him for valid reasons. To understand Aaron, you have to acknowledge that Andrew’s view of events & their relationship isn’t objectively the “right” way to view it because that’s not how that works, and that, as much as Aaron didn’t understand Andrew or his motivations, Andrew didn’t underrate Aaron or his.

[huginsmemory]

Been thinking about how Bill legitimately had a horrifying reason (the literal progressive disintegration of the nightmare realm that erases whatever it disintegrates from existence completely) to move himself and his crew into a new dimension. Like that's terrifying. And yet he never utilizes this to his favour. He could have been honest about this with Ford, and you KNOW as long as Bill didn't mention plans of overtaking the earth, Ford would've made the portal for him, both out of Ford's own interest and because Ford when faced with these big moral questions will pull through. But this is a card Bill NEVER plays because although he needs to leave the dimension, he cannot lose face. He can't put aside his pride and admit to the humility that he needs to flee from his dimension, that he's not actually all powerful. And so instead he pretends to be a muse and when Ford figures out something else is going on, instead of being open and humble and saying that his dimension is unravelling, Bill focuses on that he's going to over take earth, that he's actually been a monster all along, surprise Ford!

And part of it is definitely because Bill's built himself up on power and violence and to grovel and earnestly ask for help, to admit that he cannot stop the unraveling of his dimension completely invalidates that; showing vulnerability? Can't do that, even under the guise of lying to get his way. And part of it makes you wonder if it's also a form of self-sabotage, because underneath his deep denial Bill is guilty over what he occurred; he sees himself as a monster and so he'll be that monster, and having people recognize that feels good in the same way that pressing a bruise feels good. But it makes you wonder what would've happened if Bill even just was open about his dimension unravelling and had lied about overtaking the earth.

It's also interesting because although Bill has SOME charisma and can manipulate people decently well (as evidenced by his cult, and pandering to people's desires with Ford, Mabel and Blendin), he refuses to be vulnerable, refuses to not be true to his off-putting self, even when if he was just vulnerable of pretended to not be himself, to put aside the (false) pride he has in himself he would've gotten a portal by now. and part of me wonders if it's because it's this false pride that built on insecurity and denial on who he is he cannot drop that mask.

Further thoughts on this!

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thinking about marriage/women's rights on Vulcan Some may think that T'Pring not being allowed to divorce Spock was because he was going through the pon farr but if she were allowed to divorce him at all she probably would have done that a long time ago, confirmed by T'Pol when she's speaking with Koss, who isn't suffering from the pon farr. She says that he can choose another mate (without invoking a fight it seems: note the difference between a 'mate' and a 'challenger') and after he makes it clear that nothing she says will change his mind about marrying her, she finally threatens to declare a kal-if-fee. It's clear that Vulcan women cannot divorce/refuse to marry a man they've been betrothed to under any circumstances if A) He himself doesn't consent to ending their marriage or B) She doesn't have someone else waiting in the wings to be given to in his stead. Though, if the challenger she selects fails to win the fight, she'll have to marry her betrothed anyway unless (again) he decides he doesn't want her after the challenge. That seems like an incredibly unfair system, heavily biased towards men. SNW is an alternate universe in many obvious respects but most egregiously in that T'Pring has a lot of non-canonical agency over her relationship with Spock. It's interesting to me that Vulcan society has women in many positions of power and treats women as equal to men from what I've seen despite these laws. We don't really see Vulcans exhibiting a misogynistic attitude towards women in general but in TOS (perhaps because of its general writing style but it's still interesting to note) both Sarek and Spock take on patriarchal attitudes specifically regarding wives. Amanda says that 'of course' Sarek commands her because "he is a Vulcan and I am his wife." It's worthwhile in my eyes to note that she specifies 'wife' instead of attributing this attitude to women as a whole. Again, with TOS' writing style it wouldn't be out of place for her to say "he is a man and I am a woman." Spock, while in a pon farr induced irritation, states that it's "undignified for a woman to play servant to a man that isn't hers" - again implying that there's something specific about being a Wife in Vulcan society which is different from being a woman in general and demands subservience to a husband. This could perhaps stem from the extreme sense of ownership that Vulcan law has permitted men to have over women. A woman legally cannot point blank refuse marriage. There is no option which guarantees she won't have to marry her betrothed other than death. When T'Pau speaks of T'Pring she refers to her as being 'property' and Stonn, before being interrupted, states he's made 'the ancient claim' - we don't know what this is because he gets cut off but it's obvious they're both using the language of Vulcan law. Men are permitted true freedom to choose. If a woman wants to choose someone else to be with there is no option available to her other than the kal-if-fee which might result in the death of the one she wants to be with. And, if her lover fails, her husband can still just decide he wants to marry her and she'll be forced to. T'Pring gives two scenarios: One where Spock 'frees' her and one where he doesn't - it's still ultimately his decision which is clear when he ends the conversation with "Stonn, she is yours." This again isn't just because of the pon farr as T'Pol also goes through this. Koss can choose another mate and when the option is talked about there's no implication that this would result in any sort of fight (both by the casualness of its mention and by the fact that there's no formal word for it unlike the kal-if-fee.) Also, the fact that Koss does eventually grant T'Pol a divorce and it's all fine means that T'Pol isn't lawfully required to have another man waiting if her HUSBAND doesn't want her. It's ONLY required if SHE doesn't want her husband. Tradition must take precedence over individual desire UNLESS!!! You're a man. Then it's fine. Like, your parents might not be happy but legally you're golden.

[bet-on-me-13]

Unknown, the Wandering Hero

So! We all know the typical Vivisection AU, right? Danny is revealed to his parents and they take it in all the wrong ways. They capture him, Vivisect him, and eventually he manages to escape with the help of his friends.

But what about his Rouges?

Sure, we all like to think of some of the more friendly ones like Ember, or Sydney, or Johnny 13 and Kitty, but he has WAY more Evil Rouges than good ones.

Without Danny there to reign them in, the Rouges spread out across the world to fulfill their obsessions, unhampered by the Heroes and Villains of the world that have no means to fight them.

And Danny? He feels responsible. He was the one to open the Gate, he was the Sacrifice, the one to let them through. And when the going got tough he just up and left? No, that won't do.

His Obsession is Protection for a reason, and nothing has changed. All he needs to do is expand his area of focus a little.

Danny, after healing up, starts wandering the world in search of the Ghosts who have escaped into the Mortal Realm. He battles all of his old foes, as well as many new ones who he hadn't met before.

His travels take him far and wide.

He defeats Skulker in Metropolis, as he is trying to hunt down the Super Family for their pelts. They are the last of their race after all, so he is inclined to try and hunt them. Honestly dealing with Skulker was easy, dealing with the Rich Asshole who was funding him was a nightmare.

He chases down Spectra in Gotham as she tries to feed on the misery of an entire City. (Thanks to @impyssadobsessions for the idea, this Prompt specifically). She is actually a very tough fight, especially powered by both the Misery of an Entire City as well as his Own Misery, but he manages.

He defeats Technus is Central City, as he tries to Raid Star Labs for their advanced Tech. It actually took a while to beat him after he amped himself with all that Power, and he did need help from the Local Hero to deal with him. He's just thankful Technus is one of the more "Harmless" ones.

After every Victory, he sends them back to the Realms using the Banishing Spell that Sam taught him a while back (the only bit of magic he ever really managed to master).

He knows they'll eventually find their way back out, but it's all he can do anymore. It's his eternal Punishment for unleashing them out into the World in the first place. He was the Catalyst for this Situation, now he was tasked with Fixing it, no matter how long it took.

...

The Justice League is caught in a tricky situation a the moment.

In the past few months, they have been encountering more and more of these Extra Dimensional Beings known as Realms Ghosts across the World.

Justice League Dark has had some success in battling them, but even they are getting tired of having to deal with every single incident alone.

They did get approached by a Government Agency known as the Ghostly Investigation Ward that seemed to want to help, but it didn't take long to realize that their main Aim was to Genocide the entire Race. The JLA had quickly cut ties after realizing that, and took what little Tech and Information they had been able to gather.

Still, it wasn't easy to deal with these Entities.

Thankfully, they have had some outside help. An Unknown Being has been routinely showing up whenever a Realms Ghost appears and defeating them, before using a (as described by Constantine) "Rudimentary Banishing Spell held together by willpower and luck" to send them back to their home Dimension. There's honestly no way it should be functional, but he did make it work either way.

They don't know much about this Unknown, aside from the fact that he seems to be the only one able to consistently damage the Realms Ghosts. His Powerset leads them to belive he may be from the same Dimension, or at least drawing his power from the same Source, but as he actively avoids the League and takes every opportunity to not talk to them, they know they aren't getting any answers any time soon.

Over the past few months, they had affectionately started referring to him as Unknown, creative they know, because they could never get his Real Name. Sure, some of the Realms Ghosts seemed to recognize him, but they always called him stuff like "Whelp" and "Punk" and "Usurper", which were not very good names to use when referring to him. Although the last one was a bit concerning.

They had only managed to trade a few quick words with Unknown in the past few months, but it was enough to get the Gist of it. He was just doing his job, sending the Realms Ghosts back where they belonged. There was apparently a Tear in Reality letting them through, but he seemed hesitant to reveal what he knew about it.

After a few months of sparse interactions, they eventually managed to convince him to at least take an Emergency Communicator. Just in case. They even let him take it apart to look for any Tracking Devices, which earned them a small bit of trust. They took whatever wins they could.

Fortunately, it seemed he never did need it. In fact he was getting more and more efficient with every battle, defeating his foes in half the time it would have taken before.

Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. One day, the Communicator went off, a distorted voice quickly saying, "Need backup, some of them decide to Team Up" before cutting out.

They quickly rushed to his location, finding an active battlefield with no less that a dozen Ghosts battling Unknown. And he seemed to be on the ropes.

With their arrival, the combined force of the Justice League and Unknown eventually managed to defeat the Group of Ghosts. Justice League Dark volunteered to work on the Banishing Spells while the others cleaned up the damage from the Battle.

One of them approached Unknown to make sure he was ok, and froze.

During the battle, Unknown's Mask had been Torn off, and they could finally see the face of the Hero they had been working with for the past few months.

And he was a Child.

[bunnieswithknives]

Oh I have to ask. In your Things That Crawl AU, what does Lyle think. I could see him having similar reactions to Hellen's. We know that even if it wasn't healthy, Lyle was the one who knew Sam the most, longer then anyone else, his constant stalking means he knew what Sam was like and they may have even actually worked together. I personally just can't see Lyle accepting this "New" Sam but I could be totally wrong, I'd love to here about Lyle in your au.

Oh yeah Lyle absolutely does not accept the new Sam

My first thought was that Lyle does what he always does when the going gets tough, and that's try to steal Sam's soul. I don't really like that idea though... cause either it works as both a cop-out and definitive answer to Sam's state of mind, or it doesn't and that's still an answer of some kind, which I don't want.

The alternative is really dependent on the extent of the powers I wanna give Visitor!Sam(? Idk if this is what I wanna call it but we're going with it for now) and how fucked up I want that to go.

POV: The benevolent god has an audio processing disorder and no idea what a human looks like

[nilgans]

My piece for the counter-pale resistance zine :D You can download it here, it turned out amazing! Many, many thanks to @de-fanzine-cpr-pale for organizing and assembling the zine 💖💖💖

[macbethz]

“Is doctor who a good or bad person” theyre the kind of person to fly in a little blue box and go weeeeee

[spectral-phases]

The Night Blüdhaven Exploded

I don't see enough people talking about what the Chemo attack on Blüdhaven must have done, as just everything was going wrong for Bruce and his boys that night.

For starters, Bruce is already fighting his dead/ressurected son who came back as a crime-lord villain who has been blowing up so, so many goons/criminals in Gotham for a while.

Then he sees Blüdhaven explode in front of his very eyes, and Jason then taunts Bruce, saying that Dick must be dead and insists on forcing Bruce to choose between killing Jason and killing the Joker not 2 minutes later. Bruce, as we all know, refuses to allow either, and stops Jason with a Batarang to the neck/shoulder, depending on your angst factor (or possibly aiming for Joker, but Joker moves and gets it to hit Jason on purpose/by accident ymmv).

(Batman 1940 #650)

And then, after all of that, the Joker sets off some explosives, surely killing Jason/the Joker (This makes the second explosion the Joker is going to no-clip his way out of, and Jason's learned that skill this time as well)

(Batman 1940 #650)

But wait! There's more! I know in the Batman comic they only mention Bruce being concerned for Dick, but Tim was living in Blüdhaven at the time too! Tim was fresh off of his father/girlfriend dying and didn't want to be adopted by Bruce, so he invented a fake Uncle Eddie (hiring an actor to play the role) and moved to Blüdhaven, where his comatose step-mother was being treated. Tim is only out of the city at the time of the explosion because the Titans came and said something was wrong with Conner, so they needed to leave to help save him. On their way out of the city in their jet, they only get far enough to avoid the blast, but not far enough that they avoid the resulting shockwaves as it renders their navigational systems offline, and likely their comms too. So not far enough that Bruce, who has been chasing Jason and Black Mask all night, could reasonably be aware of this fact.

(Robin 1993 #147)

So Dick and Tim very well could have been in that explosion and then Jason gets exploded! Amazing! That's 3 for 3 remaining Robins possibly killed in an explosion in one single hour.

We have no idea where Jason gets to, but we'll assume that he is unable to find the body because of the new no-clipping into the backrooms skill Jason must have (Jason was meant to die here, again. In another explosion set off by the Joker, so Bruce will have to assume Jason is dead even if he turns up alive later. How? Who the fuck knows).

Speaking of ol' Richard "Dick" Grayson, aka Nightwing, how is old boy wonder doing? Well, he's been having a rough go of it the past six months, between Blockbuster targeting him and destroying everything he cares about, Tarantula killing Blockbuster after successfully convincing him to just let her kill Blockbuster (while he walks away and has a panic attack...and...other things happen...TW: SA if you look it up), and then basically playing "suicide by cop" through the job following that and being a double agent of the group that just nuked Blüdhaven, uh...he is straight-up not having a good time by the time Chemo blows up Blüdhaven, and he's only getting worse. He tries to go to the center of the explosion, and Superman, fortunately, arrives on the scene to save Nightwing and put him up on the shelf to avoid dying (I love how Superman keeps trying to save Nightwing from himself in this era and Nightwing is just...no, thank you).

(Nightwing 1996 #116)

Unfortunately, this is the "Flying Grayson" himself, so no shelf is high enough to prevent Dick from going in there, and his mental state is so bad that certain death while saving others is probably more tempting to him at the moment than a deterrent. He "Duly Noted"s his way back into Blüdhaven, helps get the police to control the panicking crowds of survivors towards an escape route, saves the few remaining friends Blockbuster didn't kill recently, and goes directly into the most radioactive area of Blüdhaven to try and save some rouge who might have been there. We see Superman fighting Chemo's core in the background throughout his rescue attempts, so Dick's close the entire time to this heavy radiation. Dick notes that this is the first time he's able to breathe easy in months, saving people from the ruins. He's eventually taken out as a door explodes with the Chemo green gasses while trying to locate the rogue while reflecting on his recent failures.

(Nightwing 1996 #116)

I do think the appearance of Batman as Dick passes out isn't real, Bruce was in Gotham, either reeling from the explosion or looking for Jason or something. There's no way he got to Blüdhaven already, and the legs of Batman are hazy, blending into the smoke.

I also think after Chemo is stopped that Bruce probably still hasn't heard anything about Nightwing, because I don't imagine he took the time and resources to call the Veteran in a communications blackout (who has been historically trying to poach Batman's Robins, and nearly got Tim killed trying to convince Tim to leave Batman and join up his forces. Batman and the Veteran are not on good terms, is what I'm saying) just for Tim's step-mother and fake uncle.

(Robin 1993 #147)

By this time, he is talking about Tim as if he's alive, so he's probably gotten something from the Titans base confirming that Tim's alright, so he's gotta be taking the time and effort to call the Veteran for Dick.

Bruce, being Bruce, gets into a fight with Dick as soon as Dick is brought back to the Batcave and wakes up, while Dick is being treated for severe radiation poisoning/burns. I am willing to forgive this because he's had a time of it, even if he's being hostile and pissy and unsupportive. Definitely not winning the Father of the Year award for this, I'm afraid (Worst Father of the Year award is going to Deathstroke, for embedding a known radioactive carcingenic material into his daughter's eye, but Bruce is in the running for this and Jason).

(Nightwing 1996 #117)

I am awarding this to Bruce for trying to reassure Dick.

But. Anyway. Yeah.

Rough night for everyone involved. Absolutely everything going wrong all at once.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He was just being a silly little guy!

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