#and i need it to be long term

[lesbiannieism]

i need 7+ seasons of dead boy detectives specifically to see the long-term payoff of charles putting a jar of bees in his bag

[tawaifeddiediaz]

you know what boils my blood.

over the last 2 weeks, i've seen countless patients walk into my urgent care center, symptomatic for so many things, refusing to get tested for covid and flu, citing that they don't want to knowingly bring it to their holiday tables. i had a patient tell me, verbatim, "i don't want to test for covid, because i don't want to be the asshole who brings it on a plane."

i understand that - i understand that holidays are times where people look forward to meeting loved ones that they might only see once a year, or where they get a break from the hectic back and forth of their lives.

but here's the thing - whether they get tested or not, they will bring whatever they have to their holiday tables. it's pure recklessness to know that you're sick, and walk into someone else's house spreading the disease.

today, january 2, i saw 91 patients, many of them who have tested positive for covid and flu. many of these patients are the same ones who didn't want testing 3 days ago, until their events were over, and now, they will have to reach out to everyone they know to let them know that they were positive because they were showing symptoms well before their event.

the next week or two? we're going to see many, many more, all people with symptoms that started around christmas. these are the only two viruses we test for rapidly in our office, but they are potent and can be fatal in many people.

so here's why i wrote this post, and maybe it's a little late, but - if you care about your loved ones, please get tested if you know you're sick. it doesn't have to be at a clinic if you don't want it to, because the over-the-counter tests work just fine too (if you test within 5-7 days of symptom onset). just...please don't try to run from the knowledge that you might have covid, because immunocompromised people, elderly people, people with co-morbidities like asthma, pregnancy, diabetes, etc...many of them may not recover. and they may not be sitting at your holiday table in the future because of it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[starry-bi-sky]

i've mentioned in a few past posts about an au where Danny is a variant of Jason Todd. I haven't made a post about it yet because I need a good rhythm flowing however i've been listening to Gladiator by Jann and I have been having thoughts.

but first, let me set the au:

Danny Fenton is Jason Todd, or at least, a variant of him. A him from a universe separate to the major Batman timeline - but still Jason Todd, down to the structure of his face and his name itself. The only thing that changes, is who picks him up - and, that he follows old Batman canon, and was an orphan. Jason Todd steals the tires off the batmobile and wallops Batman with his tirejack, and then runs off. Shortly after, he gets picked up by the Fentons.

(Customary line break,,,, word count check: 5k)

And his name changes from Jason Todd to Danny Fenton. He doesn't care much for the new name change, it stems from his mute refusal to share his name to the people that picked him up; an attempt to make him untraceable should he get away from them, and to keep something of his to himself. So they name him something new. He grows to like it enough as he acclimates to his new family.

(He hangs onto the name Jason Todd like a secret - he may be 'Danny Fenton' now, but he'll never forget his time on Gotham's streets. He'll always be Jason Todd.)

(Jazz is the only one who he tells his name to in the family - she affectionately calls him Jay whenever she wants.)

He becomes friends with Sam and Tucker and deals with Dash and his bullying. And when Danny steps in during a fight between Dash and another student, Dash gives him a bleeding nose and mockingly says, "Do you think you're Robin just because you're from Gotham, Fenton?"

Jason looks him in the eyes and he bares his teeth, "Why not?" he asks, spitting blood, "being Robin gives me magic."

The nickname sticks. It's supposed to be an insult; Daniel Fenton is not Robin, he'll never be Robin. Not now, not in a million years. Jason Todd has always wanted to be Robin, so he takes the insult and wears it proudly. He buys a school varsity jacket and painstakingly undos the stitching of all the school's motif on it. On the breast of it, he embroiders in a black circle with the Boy Wonder "R" on it instead. It's not good stitching, but the next day Danny wears it down to breakfast and into school.

In normal au canon, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton (its a mouthful, just call him Danny) only meets the Waynes after he becomes Phantom - an event that leans more towards Daniel Fenton's accident than Jason Todd's death, but traumatizes him all the same. (Is it too much to want to be mourned? His best friends like to deny that he died - and Danny - Jason? - wishes they wouldn't, even if he did come back.)

(The accident embitters him, even more when his parents don't seem to pick up on it. He stops calling himself Danny Fenton - he's always been Jason Todd. It shows itself in his ghostly form. He doesn't want to wear the thing he died in, not in something that belongs to the Fentons, and his suit reflects that.)

In this timeline, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton, aged 13, meets Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne after a mishap with magic on the other end of the reality sends the three of them careening through time and space, and spat back out on the other end, in a world not their own. And together.

Danny is paired with a very confused Bruce Wayne and Richard Grayson. Luckily, there's a few heroes there to help them. Danny can hardly comprehend the idea that he's in another universe - he doesn't know why Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne are seemingly handling it well.

On their way to a secondary base with the heroes, Danny turns to Bruce Wayne and asks, "So, is it part of rich-person training that you're just totally chill with being sent into another universe, or are you just weird?"

Bruce Wayne huffs at him, rather than get offended, and he smiles that dumb lopsided billionaire smile that Danny's seen on every vogue magazine he's been in. "I'm not so worried with these skilled heroes here to help us get home."

Danny silently concludes that he's just weird. At least Dick Grayson is biting back a smile behind him. "Riiiight..." He says, dragging the vowel out dryly.

When they get to that secondary location -- a safehouse that one of the heroes had set up -- the three of them are sat in a living room-like room while one hero, Zatanna, goes and calls someone from the Justice League. The other two heroes stay with the three of them.

Within a few hours, Danny is face to face with Batman - someone who he hasn't seen since he whacked him in the stomach with a tire iron - and Nightwing. For a moment, Danny swears that the both of them look almost spooked by him.

Batman stares at him for a moment when he enters, and then he goes to speak with Bruce Wayne. Danny doesn't care enough to hear what they're talking about, he pulls out his phone as Nightwing goes to speak with Dick Grayson.

"Are you a fan of Robin, little man?" Someone says, and when Danny looks up he locks eyes with Dick Grayson -- who is leaning around Nightwing to talk to him, the both of them are smiling. And considering who Nightwing was, Danny finds himself turning pink to the ears.

But he will not hide his jacket. He forces a grin through his embarrassment, "Hell yeah, man, Robin's cool." He says, and pushes his arms down to pull out the hem of his letterman, showing off the emblem. "I made it m'self out of a school varsity after the A-Listers started callin' me Robin."

"A-Listers?"

"Popular kids," Danny corrects, loosing his hold on the hem and brushing invisible wrinkles out of the embroidery. "They didn't like that I kept stepping in when they were bullying. Dash asked me if i thought I was Robin because I was from Gotham."

Dick Grayson looks intrigued -- and concerned, and he leans forward onto his knees and raises an eyebrow. "What did you say?"

And Danny grins a shark-like thing, straightening back his shoulders with a burning sort of smug pride and all the sharpness of broken glass left in Crime Alley. "I told him being Robin gave me magic, and then I punched him."

Dick Grayson's smile widens, splitting into showing teeth as he leans back into his seat. Danny isn't sure why he's so delighted - but Nightwing looks incredibly amused, and he suddenly remembers that the Robin himself was there in front of him.

Danny's face burns anew and his arms fold themselves in front of him once again.

"I don't think I ever caught your name, Robin." Dick Grayson goes, his voice thick with laughter, and Nightwing steps off to the side as Batman and Bruce Wayne walk over to join them both. They're just close enough that Danny can see Bruce Wayne raise an eyebrow at them both.

"It's Jason." Danny says before he can think about it, and barely stops himself from frowning at himself for the slip. He amends himself, glancing over at Batman and Bruce as they get closer. "But everyone calls me Danny."

Dick Grayson's head recoils slightly, and he looks a little surprised. "Why Danny?" He asks.

"Why Dick?" He shoots back, and Bruce and Dick both smile at him, with Dick Grayson shrugging with an expression that looks like 'you've got a point.'

In the end, the three of them - yes, three - get sent to this world's Wayne Manor, and Danny is bewildered by that decision to include himself -- he's not a Wayne. Why not just send him to the Fentons?

Batman tells him that the Fentons don't exist in this world, and Danny falls silent. "Oh." He says quietly, a pit growing in his stomach with an ill-kind of dread. He can't keep Batman's gaze, looking away with unease.

No Fentons in this world. No Fentons. Where was he then, in the grand scheme of things? Where was he in this world? What happened to Jason Todd? Was he even alive? He can't keep the worry off his face, and he jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder. When he looks up, Dick Grayson squeezes him gently.

Dick Grayson is steadily beginning to remind him of his sister.

-

They end up driving back in the Batmobile. It's such a shock to Danny that he momentarily forgets the lack of Fentons. He makes a laugh sound, actually, and immediately he covers his hand with his mouth and stares at the car -- tank? with his teeth sunk into his lower lip.

"Jason?" Dick says, and hearing his name being spoken feels like someone touched him with a livewire. It's weird, it's foreign - he hates, in some way, that it's foreign - and it's so nice. Yes, that's me.

He drops his hand immediately. "Sorry." He says, realizing he'd stopped in his tracks, "I -uh, was just surprised."

"It's not every day someone sees the Batmobile." Dick agrees. Nightwing has his back to them but Danny swears he sees his shoulders shaking a little.

"Yeah," Danny nods slowly, dragging his eyes over the batmobile as Batman opens the driver's side and gets in. He thinks for a moment, of what he should say next - whether to admit that he's seen it before, or to pretend that he's seeing it for the first time. Snd as Nightwing opens the door for him, Bruce, and Dick, he chooses the funnier option; "The last time I saw it, I was stealing its tires."

To his surprise and unsurprise, Danny only gets two pairs of eyes on him. Nightwing gets into the passenger seat as both Bruce and Dick turn their gaze onto him; Dick's eyes big like they were going to bulge out of his head.

"You what!?"

So Danny tells an amazed Dick Grayson that he hit Batman with a tire iron after he stole his tires - something he is very proud about and also incredibly embarrassed about when he retells what happened in the backseat of the batmobile, with Batman and Nightwing listening in from the front seat.

(Bruce Wayne doesn't ever tell Dick shit, he's going to lord this over Bruce's head the moment they are alone.)

"Please tell me this didn't happen in this world." Danny groans behind his palms as he sinks into his seat. Dick Grayson is killing himself laughing on his left, and he saw Bruce Wayne stifling a smile before he obscured his vision with his hands.

Much to his luck, its Batman himself who speaks next, (Danny was being mostly rhetorical). "It did." He says, and his voice sounds like the rumble of the earth before a stampede. It will never not throw Danny off every time he hears it. "It takes quite a lot of spunk to steal the tires off the batmobile."

He can't believe it. Batman is making fun of him. Fucking, Batman.

He wants to die with embarrassment. He groans even louder as Dick Grayson's laughter crescendoes. Danny risks a peak through his fingers, he doesn't know whether to regret it or not because he can just barely see Batman smirk very faintly from his position in the middle.

(His world axis tilts five degree leftways seeing it; like someone dunked a bucket of ice water on him.)

"He ended up being adopted by the Bruce Wayne of this world."

Danny's hands drop with his jaw into his lap. Dick Grayson on his left chokes on his laughter and careens into a coughing fit. Bruce Wayne on his right chokes on air, and quickly recovers himself with a cough behind a closed fist.

"What?" Danny croaks.

-

Apparently, Bruce Wayne's family is much larger in this world than it is in his. Danny can barely wrap his head around the idea that he ends up adopted by the man, but now he has to learn that Wayne had several children in this world?

He's still not wrapped his head around it when the three of them wind up at Wayne Manor, finally, or even when he's standing in front of him himself. For his effort, Bruce Wayne does a good job at looking unruffled by it.

God, he's weird. Danny's starting to quite like it, actually. How human of him.

He still can't wrap his head around it when he meets the rest of Bruce Wayne's children, all of whom are already aware of the three of them. Danny thinks that someone from the Justice League might've alerted them before they got here.

It makes sense, he supposes.

It helps that they are just as weirded out as he is. A boy named Tim Drake sees him for the first time and blurts out; "Oh wow, you're tiny." In a tone like he's just seen a two-headed snake burst out of the ground.

Danny is still offended. He's still growing. It's not his fault he spent twelve years of his life malnourished. "I'm gonna be taller than you," he tells him seriously, "and when I do I'm gonna kick your ass."

Tim snorts at him.

The other Bruce Wayne -- Mr. Wayne's -- youngest looks at him up and down with a face of carefully controlled judgement. His name is Damian, he's Bruce Wayne's only biological son. Danny can't believe that there's only one.

If anything, Bruce Wayne himself looks surprised too.

"Todd, yes?" Damian says, his green eyes narrowed at him.

Danny feels like the specimen under his parents' microscope, he feels like he's standing on a platform that's being slowly spun by scientists. He looks over at Bruce Wayne in confusion, and then back at Damian. "I- yes?"

Damian Wayne nods, and then leaves.

Danny does not once see himself. That is unsettling in and of itself - surely Jason Todd would have been told about another version of himself in this world, wouldn't he? How old is he here? An adult, probably. Danny doesn't know if he wants to see him. What does he look like when he's grown up? He pulls his Robin jacket around him a little tighter, like a cocoon, like a shield.

"It's weird to hear them call me Jason Todd." He says aloud to himself, and it leaves a weight behind in his chest that shouldn't hurt the way it does. It shouldn't be weird to be called your name. It shouldn't cobweb up your throat to hear your name being said. It was his name. It was his.

-

Danny acclimates to the manor slowly. The house is big, massive. He's never been in a house so large before, he feels like a stray cat being taken in for the first time, again. He and Bruce and Dick Grayson are all given their own separate rooms - one of many inside this mansion - and the sheer size of his bedroom is bigger than his living room and kitchen combined.

it's daunting. Danny sits outside on the balcony and stares at the stars he can see - Wayne Manor is far enough away from Gotham that its light pollution doesn't obscure the sky here like it did in the heart of it.

Danny finds the constellations he can find and wishes he had his books with him. He finds the library the next day and buries himself in the back, curling up into a comfy armchair next and inhaling each book he can get his hands on.

Tim Drake wanders past him at some point, Danny would have missed him if it weren't for the fact that Drake stared at him strangely when he saw him. He walks away when he realizes Danny was staring back.

It's a rinse and repeat for the next few days. Danny doesn't go to meals, he sneaks food from the kitchen afterwards, and then buries himself in hundreds of books in the library.

Dick Grayson, the one from his world, goes and finds him three days later. Danny's eyes hurt with strain by then, but he is furiously halfway through a Jane Austen novel when Dick sits down across from him.

"Have you been here all day?" Dick asks, he drapes himself across the side of his chair, contorting himself into a position that Danny doesn't think is comfortable when he looks up at him.

Not that he looks up at him long - he hums absently and goes back to reading. Frowning when he realizes he lost his place on the page.

Dick Grayson raises an eyebrow, "Have you at least eaten anything?"

Danny hums. No, he hasn't, and he hadn't thought about eating all day. Until now that is, his frown ever deepening as his stomach pangs with a deep hunger.

"That's not healthy."

"Mhm."

"Are you going to eat something?"

"Mhhh."

And this gets Dick to frown. He straightens himself up, propping onto his elbows to stare at Danny. "Jason." He says strongly. And it's that that gets Danny to finally look up from his page, jumping like he'd again been poked with a live wire as he stares at Dick with wide eyes.

"Yes?"

"Put the book down." Dick orders, gesturing towards the side table next to Danny with a nod. "And come eat something." There's very little room for argument in his voice, he sounds like Jazz when she's trying to parent him, but instead he actually sounds authoritative. Not bossy.

Danny still frowns at him. "You're not the boss of me." He says, sinking back into his chair with a thumb bookmarking his page.

Dick gives him a look and makes a decisive noise, swaggling his head side to side while he does. "I'm pretty sure that for as long as we're here, me and B actually are the boss of you."

He's never really liked authority figures, not ones that tried to boss him around, that is. Danny doubles down, his lips curling into a shadow of a scowl. "Just because you're my brother in another world doesn't mean you can act like it."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"I don't want to go eat."

"It's not good for you to skip meals."

"Quit talking like Jazz."

"Danny."

Danny sinks his teeth into his lip and scowls darkly at him, shrinking into the back of his armchair in hopes that it'll swallow him whole. The idea of going into that large fucking dining room fills him with a dread that makes him completely forget his appetite.

"Your fucking- dining room is- it's too big." He grits out, finally closing his book and hugging it tightly to his chest.

Dick blinks at him. "What?"

"You heard me! It's too big. This whole place is too big. It's- what do you even do with this much space? I don't know how this- other me ever lived here."

Dick Grayson surprises him, and his expression softens. "Oh," he says, "I get it."

"You do?" The tension bleeds slowly out of Danny's shoulders

"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first moved in with Bruce. I lived with the circus for most of my life, but I slept in a trailer." He says. And he talks more.

The end result of their conversation ends with Dick Grayson offering to let Danny sit across or next to him during mealtimes, and that he can talk to him if he starts getting uneasy. But he can't keep skipping meals - it was making them all worried.

Danny agrees, and Dick takes him down to the kitchens for food.

"They look at me weirdly too." He grumbles as they leave the library, Danny's book returned to the shelf where it belonged. When Dick looks at him curiously, he scrunches his nose up. "The - your other siblings. They look at me like I'm- I'm someone else. S'weird."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Dick asks, "You are someone else."

Dany shrugs, staring at the ground with a heavy frown. "I don't know."

-

Danny seeks out Dick more after that. And vice versa. Dick reminds Danny of Jazz, and he latches onto the familiarity like a leech. If Dick is bothered by it, he doesn't show it, whether he's talking to his other world's self, to the Bruce's, or to one of the other Wayne kids.

Damian Wayne seems particularly keen to seek him out, Danny finds. He thinks it means that they're close in this world, and that Damian wants to see more of what a young Dick is like. That's what he would do, at least.

He takes up on Dick's offer of seating near him during dinner, and finds an open spot across from him. Unless he has something to show him, then he sits next to him.

("You can call me Jason." He tells him one day when they're in the Wayne's massive, fuck-off gym and they're both climbing over the jungle gym. Dick's showing him how to be more flexible. It's the most Danny's worked out ever, he likes the burn it gives him.

Dick looks at him in surprise, "Really?" he's doing a handstand on the bars and Danny's more than a little jealous at his balance.

"Yeah, dipshit," he says, rolling his eyes, "I'll even let you call me Jay, it's my nickname."

Dick happily takes him up on that offer, and much to Danny's embarrassment, starts calling him Jaybird. All because of his stupid Robin jacket.)

Danny has yet to meet his other self still, it's scaring him a little. Where was he? And matter of fact, how long until he could go back to his home dimension? The three of them hadn't gotten any updates since they arrived.

Speaking of, he was starting to talk to Bruce more, it was just... strange. Even stranger than talking to Dick. Bruce Wayne in another life would have been his adoptive father, Danny can't wrap his head around it for the life of him.

Whatever did Bruce Wayne see in Jason Todd that made him worth adopting? He's too afraid of the answer to ask. They start talking more after they run into each other late at night. Danny had been hit with a bout of insomnia and was going to the library.

He ran into Bruce on the way. He was just.. staring, out the window, with a faraway look in his eye. He didn't even look startled to see Danny standing there.

Danny asks him if he wants to go to the library with him. It was out of panic. He isn't expecting Bruce Wayne to agree, and they walk there in suffocating silence. Danny keeps looking at him from the corner of his eye.

("You're staring?" Bruce doesn't sound upset, Danny jumps anyway.

"Yeah, sorry." his voice sounds stilted, "it's just..." his jaw wires itself shut for a spell, "...you looked like you were about to disappear."

"Ah.")

When they reach the library, Danny leads Bruce Wayne into the science section and takes out books upon books about stars. He leads him over to the armchair and fire and they both sit down on the ground.

"When I lived in Gotham I would stargaze." Danny says, it's the first thing he can think of. Bruce Wayne looks at him quizzically. "Well, I would try to. The sky's too polluted for that. Mostly I would just watch the skyline and try and spot Batman and Robin, was the same thing."

That cracks a smile out of Bruce. It's a small one, barely there. "I hardly think the two are comparable."

Danny is still serious. "Not to me."

He goes on, talking about how after he was adopted he got his hands on every star book he could find. He loves english and he loves to read, but something about the stars drew him in like a song. He rambles about every star fact he knows with Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne surprises him by telling him facts he didn't know. Danny soaks it up like a sponge, listening intently to him speak. And when they run out of star books to talk about, Danny tells Bruce that it was his turn to find something for them to talk about.

Bruce Wayne smiles again at him, a sly little thing like Danny's challenged him, and gets up. He comes back with a stack of film books, and they spend the next few hours going through them. Bruce Wayne rattles off every single movie fun fact he knows, and there is so much that he knows.

Danny is in awe, and moves to press against Bruce's side to see the stuff he points at in his books.

"You're smarter than people give you credit for." He says at some point, when his eyes hurt from being open for too long and his head leans against Bruce's arm for support. It follows with a jaw-cracking yawn that he tries and fails to stifle.

"Thank you, Danny." Bruce says, his voice soft and soothing and not helping with Danny's weighing exhaustion. His eyes drift, and then jerk open. "Do you want to go back to your room? You look tired, chum."

He bites back a smile at the nickname, and fails to keep it bitten. "No, no, I'm awake." He mumbles, shaking his head slowly. "I wanna hear-" he yawns again, "-hear you talking."

Danny swears he can hear the smile in Bruce's voice as he speaks; "Alright. Now, where was I?"

In the end, Danny falls asleep on the floor of the library next to Bruce Wayne. He doesn't even realize it until he wakes up the next morning. But it's not to worry, Bruce Wayne fell asleep too, an arm thrown around Danny protectively like he was his own kid.

This becomes a thing for them soon enough. When neither of them can sleep, they go to the library and talk and talk about whatever comes to mind.

There comes the dreaded night after they've finished whatever book they were looking at when Bruce, the little shit, turns to Danny and goes; "You never mentioned what happened after you hit Batman with a tire iron."

Danny groans, big and dramatic, burying his head in his arms, and ignores the low chuckle. "I thought he was gonna chase me down for sure." He complains, his voice muffled by his arms.

"Why did you hit him with a tire iron?"

The look Bruce gets is one of pure disbelief. "If Mothman suddenly showed up behind you while you were taking the wheels off his ride, you'd hit him too!"

"Last time I checked, Mothman isn't real." Bruce told him amusedly, and Danny flops over onto his back to stare him down. His arms sprawl out like a starfish, intentionally hitting Bruce in the shoulder.

"You don't know that, Batman's a cryptid and he's real."

Bruce roars with laughter, and Danny preens like a bird.

That next morning when Bruce passes by him for breakfast, he reaches over and ruffles his hair. It's the same thing he does for Dick every morning. It's the first of many, and it gets many stares from the surrounding family.

Bruce has a newspaper tucked under his arm, and when he sits down Danny stands up and skedaddles over to him, leaning over the side of his chair to peer at the paper.

"Any cryptids spotted, Buzz?" He asks, getting a startled laugh out of Bruce, who looks up at him.

"Buzz?"

"Well, yeah," and Danny states it as matter-of-fact. He gestures his head at Dick Grayson. "Dick calls you 'B', and B is for bees, and I can't just call you Bees, that's dumb. So; Buzz."

He grins triumphantly when Bruce laughs quietly, his shoulders shaking imperceptibly. "I know," he tilts his head up proudly, "I'm a genius."

Now he's actually laughing, dropping his head into one of his hands and trying to quiet himself as much as possible. Danny is positively beaming, ignoring the stares of the other Waynes as he flounces back to his seat just as the other Mister Wayne enters the room.

-

When Jason Daniel Fenton Todd meets Jason Todd for the first time, they both just stare at each other.

Danny recognizes himself immediately in the library, and he freezes up. His tongue ties to the roof of his mouth, and he's unsure of what to say.

He doesn't need to say anything at all, because when Jason Todd looks up and they lock eyes, they both just stare. And stare. Jason Todd is a large, hulk of a man, built like a brick shithouse, with a tired, traumatized look in his eyes and a white streak in his black curls. The same black curls that Danny himself has.

He has no idea what to say. Or if he should turn back around and leave.

Jason Todd sighs at him, "I know they told me you and another world's Bruce and Dickie were here," he says, but it sounds like he's talking to himself. Even moreso when he mutters half-heartedly, "-but I was hoping I wouldn't run into you."

Danny feels small next to him. He doesn't know why. "Sorry." He says lamely, his one foot skips back, "I can leave if you want." It's unlike him to be meek, he thinks. Not after years of Gotham living and dealing with the likes of Dash and his Jerk Jocks.

But this also isn't the streets, and this isn't other kids being dicks. Jason Todd shakes his head, and gestures with one large arm for Danny to come over. "You don't need to do that, you were coming to read, right?"

He nods, and tentatively makes his way over. When Jason looks at him, he sees him cast his eyes over his Robin jacket - he wears it everyday. Danny sees him narrow his eyes, just slightly. But he says nothing.

It's... a strange conversation. Interaction. Jason Todd doesn't talk to him much, and if he does it's stilted and awkward, like he doesn't know how to treat him. Like he's holding him at arm's length.

Jason's getting tired of being treated like a ghost.

They talk about their books. They compare lives. Jason Todd was picked up a few days after he stole the wheels of the batmobile. He wasn't an orphan, he lived with his mom and his stepdad before he lived with Bruce. They both like to read, only Danny has an interest in the stars.

("What do your adoptive parents do?" Jason Todd asks him, one arm slung over the back of the armchair, he looks relaxed. He looks tense. Danny feels like he's back in Crime Alley again.

"They're 'ectologists'." He says, making air quotes over the word. He rolls his eyes, "Ghost hunters. They study the dead and all things afterlife."

Jason Todd makes a dry laugh huff, a sarcastic half-smile on his face. He doesn't explain why he does, Danny doesn't ask why. It doesn't seem like his business.)

Danny wants to ask him where he got that white streak in his hair. It doesn't feel right. It feels like his parents' lab, and that isn't right. Nothing ever feels like his parents' lab.

Jason Todd leaves first after giving him a few book recommendations. Danny isn't sure how to rate the experience. Being in Jason Todd's presence was like standing in a liminal space. An empty parking lot at night. When he leaves it feels like much the same thing.

He struggles to read his books afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of being haunted.

[yrsonpurpose]

He kisses Henry's knuckle, just below his ring. "I have some ideas."

[lavendorii]

long-term nuclear waste warning messages/subnautica

[rustedhills]

Disney, releasing Wish: "so it's all about legacy--the new generation surpassing the old, overcoming the evils perpetuated by them, relinquishing singular power... and there's an old man in a tower, uh... animal sidekick, i guess..., ah... magic...?

Miyazaki, just out of frame, sledgehammer raised:

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt #61 part 1

Danny didn’t like thinking about his old life. He was born to a family of assassins and as soon as he was out he never looked back. He had to fake his death and he changed his name, as far as anyone knew Damian Al Ghul had died on a mission to America. He was determined to keep this secret to the grave. Of course he knew who his dad was, Bruce Wayne was a prominent figure and he knew if we went there his secret would get out and he never wanted to be forced to be an assassin again. Once was enough. 

Danny knew he had a soft heart, his adoptive parents, the Fentons and Jazz had told him so. Jazz knew he didn’t have the greatest childhood or past but she never pried, she understood his business was his and wouldn’t let her own curiosity get the better of her. The only issue their family had was their parents obsession with ghosts. Damian never believed in ghosts, the entire thing sounded like a hoax. He probably never would have believed in them but then life happened. 

Danny believed, but it was kind of hard not too after everything that happened. When he had turned 14, his parents finished their biggest project yet. A portal to the ghost zone, of course it doesn’t work at first and his parents were very disappointed. Danny felt conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand he wanted his parents to succeed and he wanted them to be happy, on the other the portal was the reason he ate alone with his sister at night. He wanted a normal family life, something he was never allowed back at the league. 

He did something so stupid that night.

After his parents along with his sister were asleep, he crept down to the basement and stood in front of the empty hole in the wall. He looked around the outside of it first but nothing seemed to be out of place. Then he stepped into it and before he got too far into it something happened. He knew there were a lot of cords on the floor and thought he had avoided them all, but as he realized he was quickly being acquainted with the floor, he out of instinct held his hand out to catch himself on the wall. Right onto the ON button.

He didn’t remember much but pain after that.

A lot happened in the year after the portal was turned on but Danny thought he was taking things well. His sister found out about everything sooner than he liked but having someone to help him was something he didn’t realize he really needed until then. The ghost attacks were frequent and Danny was having trouble finding the time for school, friends, and fighting ghosts that the assistance helped a lot. 

Danny sat at as desk in Mr. Lancers class, who was going on about the play Hamlet. Danny was only half paying attention, he was preoccupied thinking about the latest conversation he had with Clockwork. Danny was recently crowned prince after his victory over Pariah Dark. He didn’t want the crown, ancients knew what Grandfather would do if he ever found out, but he had no other option but to accept. The conversation left him rather drained and it felt like every word his teacher spoke bled together. 

He eventually made his way to lunch and before he could make it to his destination a blue mist wafted out of his mouth. Sighing he ran out of the room to find a place to transform. Once he was Phantom he wasted no time finding the ghost. Of course it was Boxie. 

Before he had time to even fight though a portal opened up right besides Danny and he was kicked in by the Box Ghost. The world seemed to swirl around him until he landed harshly onto some pavement. The pavement was a roof and he appeared to be in a city. 

Not just any city he soon realized as he looked over to a bank that had the words ‘Gotham Bank’ brightly plastered on the front.

Shit… Danny wanted to avoid something like this, unfortunately the portal was already gone. 

After taking a moment to think about his predicament he decided the best course of action was to call Jazz.

He took a look around the rooftop he was on and when he didn’t see anyone he transformed back. 

Pulling out his cell from his pocket he pulled up his sister's contact on it and hit the call button. 

His sister took a bit longer than usual to answer but the hesitation in her voice caused him to pause, “H-hello?”

“Jazz, it’s Danny, we’ve got a code green,”  he knew setting up code colors with his sister would come in handy. Red meant he was gravely injured, yellow meant the ghost got away and he was in pursuit, blue meant he caught the ghost, and green meant he fell through a portal or something similar. 

There was silence on the other line for a moment and Danny was almost going to say something else but she spoke, “How do you know my name?”

Master Post:

Next:

[bluedeedeedoop]

i’m alive

and hi holy shit i’ve been slacking with providing for the barrissoka children but i swear i’m still alive and check the tag several times a day, i’m just slow with making art.

but enjoy Barriss and Ahsoka with their tooka kitty! (meila, based on @jedimasterbailey’s fic “The Padawans”)

[rowanthestrange]

A thing I think should be included with Ruby’s abandonment/attachment issues when we’re writing her, is that she was a foster sibling to a lot of kids. Like a lot of kids. She has effectively lost so many siblings and playmates and even babies/very young children she’s essentially had a hand in raising. Her entire life has been loving and losing. And for foster kids getting adopted or reunited with their parents under better circumstances, she will basically have been unable to grieve that properly because it’s a good thing they’re gone and they’re supposed to celebrate it. She’s clearly very loving and caring even after a whole life of that, even though each time they leave a piece of her goes with them.

No shit she’s going to end up with some attachment issues. Especially if she considers herself the lucky one, survivor’s guilt, Carla adopted her and none of the others, who have probably expressed that sentiment to her directly and asked why, in the hopes they could stay forever too, or just jealousy - what made you so special?

Foster children/youths in the UK also have to choose themselves to stay in-touch. Foster carers cannot directly contact the child once they have left their care. A “clean slate” approach is preferred. So if the child doesn’t request to get into contact — and sometimes aren’t told they would have to or are discouraged from doing so — that means losing contact immediately and for good. Does that remind you of anything? Sometimes it also happens very quickly - it is far from unheard of for a foster sibling to go to school in the morning and find out the child they’ve been living with for months has gone when they come back in the evening. Even with warning it could still often be only days. I think you could argue 73 Yards has more to do with Ruby’s experience as a foster sibling than being an adoptee.

And of course the continuous loss of loved ones mirrors the Doctor’s experience with their companions fairly often. Another thing that quietly binds them that most other people couldn’t understand.

[technovillain]

bobburger requests from instagram ^_^

[jeeaark]

And now my brain goes mad.

Greygold X Lae’zel X Emps?

Does Icarus fly too close to the sun? Do mortals not wish to wield the power of gods without consequence??

Can dreams really come true???

No one in this universe wants LaexGreygxEmps to happen more than Greygold. But Baby Steps. Right now, they'd be ecstatic if all three of them were in the same room without any blood spilling. Oh, the 19th century Victorian blush they'd have if they ever got to the point of hand-holding.

[genericpuff]

hate to be cynical on main but it really do be like this every single time a new "not like social media" art platform comes out of the woodwork and then people migrate to it in droves just to find out the only other people using it are other artists that they're competing with for any scrape of viewership from an increasingly oversaturated internet that didn't exist when we were teenagers in 2009

[littlespoonevan]

because i was rewatching 1x04 and was reminded that episode 4 of almost every season is an absolute banger of an episode. (also i know what recency bias might do to this poll so please take a second to remember the episode 4s of seasons gone by before voting askjdfh)

[possamble]

Like take for example how she treats healing Laios leg!! We *never* see someone who was healed have lasting symptoms from a heal. It *itches* terribly — Laios looks like he will scratch it raw. The itching implies an incomplete heal — you only itch that bad when something is being regrown or scabbing like when you get tattoos. There’s something that needs to finish healing. This scene always stood out to me— because Falin notices and *heals* it. And that brought up a ton of questions for me (We see her cast magic, was it to soothe the itching? A phantom pain? Why was it itching in the first place? Didn’t Marcille finish the job? Why was he having after effects we never see someone have any before?) and i’m breaking my brain over it because is this an sign of Marcille’s engagement with healing in general? Perfunctory—a means to an end? Morals? I feel like there is something there for us because that scene wasn’t necessary to the plot so why did Ryoko Kui add this interaction? I think how Marcille engages with healing was telling us a lot more than I previously realized because she was in a medical researcher position before coming into the dungeon however when we see how this was practically applied by her was really interesting!! She’s so divorced from feeling empathy for the pain of healing and i think that’s some sort of self-preservation instinct. Idk i just feel like her engagement with healing is so fucking fascinating when juxtaposed with her beliefs on death pls share thots if any

I think what gets hidden in the details about Marcille’s healing is that no, she’s not a talented cleric and healer in the way that Falin is. But Fantasy settings tend to relegate healing towards “holy” and “good” magic that never causes harm—

and Marcille is what you’d get if you put a doctor and a surgeon with a modern, more realistic approach towards medicine in a genre that doesn’t usually allow for that. 

Like, you’ll see surgeons or doctors secretly being incredibly efficient serial killers in TV thrillers everywhere—but a fantasy series with a cleric or healer that’s secretly great at killing is a bit more rare to find(though not nonexistent, admittedly). Healing magic tends to be painted as either a religious discipline that’s not accessible to those who don’t have a tie to a deity or some ineffable force in the universe, or a matter of accessing some natural “life force” that exists in all living beings. 

Dungeon Meshi, of course, loves bending fantasy conventions in the most incredible ways, so that’s not how it works here. The series allows itself to contend with the fact that healing a human body requires extensive and painstakingly detailed knowledge of that body.

The reason that Falin might appear to be a much more talented healer than Marcille is because Kui dresses her up in all the archetypal traits of a Caring Cleric, and that immediately clicks with readers expecting fantasy conventions in ways that Marcille's expertise doesn't.

This isn’t to discredit Falin, obviously. She is a talented healer, as attested to by Marcille herself:

But the interesting thing is that she does it all on instinct, so it’s not an exact knowledge. Furthermore, she uses the gnomish system of healing, which is implied to rely more on the judgment and knowledge of natural spirits (and therefore takes less mana). So it’s not hard to imagine that she would have less exact knowledge of how the human body operates than Marcille does as a medical researcher. 

And that in and of itself raises questions: In a world where magic can immediately re-attach a limb, why would medical research be necessary? But Dungeon Meshi makes it clear that healing magic isn’t perfect, nor “holy” magic—it’s simply magic, like any other, carefully tailored to operate within the confines of what a human body needs in order to keep living. It’s not able to cure everything, and it especially seems to have gaps in terms of being able to treat illnesses that aren’t immediately solvable injuries.

And that all ties into Marcille's attitude towards it: It's a scientific and magical discipline like any other that requires careful study. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it—it was made by people, for people, and what matters is how you use it.

So, Marcille was at the academy, studying the ways that illness happens in a body, and carefully writing new magic to counteract or at least mitigate it.

(How I interpreted this was that she was likely part of research teams dealing with complicated things like autoimmune diseases, cancer, and other things where the body isn’t technically injured by a foreign element, but erroneously harming itself due to internal reasons.)

For me, this kind of explains her approach to pain in healing:

Honestly, what this immediately reminded me of was that a friend of mine had to have surgery on their throat when they were younger, and part of the procedure was waking them up without anaesthesia right after the surgery to make sure that they could still feel everything. They told me it was the worst pain they’d ever felt in their entire life—but from a medical perspective, it was necessary to make sure that none of the critical nerves in the neck had been affected. 

Sometimes in medicine, pain is necessary because it’s not some uncomplicated and bad thing—it’s a response of your nervous system, and sometimes the only indicator that your body is still working the way it should. And I think this is the mindset that Marcille has, which is why she seems so blase about it—she doesn’t think that she’s actually hurting people, it’s just a necessary part of the healing process. 

And in some ways, she just sees it as a realistic downside of the fact that you have to recover quickly in dungeon situations:

Normal recovery would take months. Healing magic shortens that to a few seconds. The pain is a result/tradeoff of forcing something that would naturally take a long time into such a short timespan. This all makes sense and is Right and Correct and Normal in Marcille's mind. It's not that she lacks empathy and doesn't care enough about not harming her patients: she doesn't think that it's "harm" at all.

Not a shred of guilt in that face before causing extreme pain. Contrast this to her constant fussing over Izutsumi on the smallest things—it's hard to believe she wouldn't even be a little apologetic if she actually believed this would be hurtful in a way that matters.

I think this is overall, less indicative of any lack of empathy so much as her incredibly stubborn and sometimes ridiculous way of compartmentalizing things to her own internal rules. I’d even argue that this mindset is preferable in surface situations, where people have the luxury of time. Dungeon healing hurts because it has to be fast and instantaneous—but if you're just treating a broken bone that can be put in a cast with slower healing magic to help, wouldn't you prefer that over an instant heal with the chance to cause brain damage, no matter how minuscule the chance is? Shouldn’t your long-term health matter more than short-term recovery and some pain?

To touch on Laios’s leg injury—we actually do see this kind of reaction to healing magic later on in the manga. When Marcille is teaching Laios how to heal, she ends up bowling him over because her cut gets super itchy:

but then she reacts positively and tells him that it's supposed to happen, before trusting him enough to try it on Senshi.

So while yes, it was an “incomplete” heal, I don’t think it was particularly telling about her approach to healing. And honestly, judging by the fact that it only distracted him when he was relaxed enough to be cleaning his armour before bed, it looks like she connected all the major muscles and nerves enough not to cause pain or risk re-injury by moving, but just left superficial stuff for Laios’s body to naturally heal. 

Her mindset makes sense in context: She also had to heal Chilchuck and Senshi, while conserving enough energy to immediately start digging for Falin’s body and potentially do a very taxing resurrection spell as soon as possible. 

After that, Falin healed the rest of Laios’s leg injury in a situation where it wasn’t needed, but there were no other high stakes to discourage it. Also, she can’t bear to see others in pain. ambrosiagourmet already did an incredible analysis of how this empathy doesn't really signify perfect altruism so much as Falin's deep discomfort with having to witness pain, so I won't go into that too much—but the important part is, Falin isn't inherently a more caring healer than Marcille. They are both making decisions for the patient based on their own approaches to healing—it's just that Falin's approach is preferable for dungeoneering overall.

(In Marcille's defense, it seems that dungeons are an incredibly specific environment that falls way outside the realm of what's actually taught to mages in most schools. Being a combat-oriented mage actually seems pretty frowned upon.)

So, in a lot of ways, Marcille is both realistic about dungeon healing (mana conservation by not doing full heals when not necessary, thinking about pain as the condensation of the time it would have taken to naturally heal, etc.) and very unrealistic about it. What she doesn’t realize is that the pain matters: In a dungeon, people have to be up and ready to continue right away, over and over. If it hurts every time, that makes them very averse to being healed, stressed out about getting injured, and affects their performance as dungeoneers.

All that to say… I personally believe that Marcille is very passionate about healing people. Not healing magic necessarily, but medicine as a whole. It’s not just a means to an end—it’s her main area of study only second to her research into ancient magic. And sure, she might have gotten into it because of her fear of death—but what I think people don’t give enough credit to is that her motivations changed from when she was a child. 

You see it here, when she’s laying her dream outright to the Winged Lion: 

She might be kinda racist herself, hypocritical, and short-sighted (mostly out of ignorance, I’d argue), but at heart, she hates that people hurt each other. She hates that long-lived races look down on everyone else just because of lifespan. She has—arguably very correctly—identified the disparity in lifespans as one of the main causes of interracial strife, and she wants to get rid of it so that everyone can fully understand and relate to each other as equals. 

And in some ways, it’s not even that insane of a dream. 

Knowing that people used to live as long as she’ll have to, and something changed in the eons since, is it really that weird for her to want to change it back somehow? 

But all that aside—the most important part of this to me is that… originally, she wasn’t actually that hung up on completely equalizing lifespans. She got into medicine because she wanted to, at the very least, close the gap as much as she could in her very long life. 

She was realistic about it at first. She thought that, by studying ancient magic’s ability to pull from the infinite, she could harness that infinite energy in tandem with medical knowledge to give more life to the short-lived races. 

But as she says it herself, it changed when she realized that she doesn’t have time to gradually unravel it on her own. 

So, yes. She got desperate. She got crazy. In light of all she did as dungeon lord, it’s easy to assume that she never cared much about healing as a profession, and is just a self-obsessed little girl caged by her trauma and trying to change the entire world to make sure she doesn’t have to be hurt. 

And… she is all that. She's my blorbo supreme but I'll be the first to insist that she is very much a complete hot mess. But my point is that these were very extreme circumstances, and Ryoko Kui has given us all the understated evidence we need to know that she’s actually a very passionate doctor otherwise. This is the girl who freaks out if she’s not useful to other people and not allowed to help:

Did actually get excited about making safe dungeons for helpful purposes beyond just learning more about ancient magic to fulfill her dream: 

And in tandem with her own personal trauma—not in opposition to it or to obscure it—cared about making life more peaceful and equal for everyone in the world. Not to mention, she had to have done some insane work to be acknowledged as the most talented researcher at the academy and be allowed onto teams that were researching new healing magics.

TL:DR, I think she has a lot of empathy for people and passion for helping them, it’s just expressed in a way you wouldn’t expect in a fantasy because Ryoko Kui doesn’t fuck around with her storytelling and genre subversion. She might not be a good archetypal healer, but she's an extremely knowledgeable doctor with a point-blank and intense attitude towards healing and medical treatment (see: her strictness about physical touch when teaching Laios about healing).

For me, all evidence points towards her going back to what she was doing before the story on top of her duties as Court Mage, kind of becoming a sort of Surgeon General for Melini as the head of health and safety for the country and whatnot. 

PS. I will admit that there's explicit evidence she's not good at healing here:

But this was also like... chapter 3. Written years ago. I personally feel that everything Kui has said about Marcille's background since is enough evidence that it was just a one-off joke before she had an airtight idea about who Marcille was and would be, but I'll concede that it's mostly conjecture.

But again, as I said, I believe that while she might not be the best at the heal spell that's used in Dungeons, she's passionate about being a medical researcher and the field of medicine as a whole.

[iristial]

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