#everyone has trust issues

[supernova3110]

Tags i get when pressing a certain letter on the keyboard

[dcxdpdabbles]

Heya! I love your works! You always manage to turn tropes on their heads and make them anew! I was wondering, are you going to continue The Audit? I loved the dynamics of the Bats interacting with Danny, and Damian and Danny's relationship was downright delightful!

Damian rarely got nervous because of the tension in the room. It wasn't in his nature, having been born with Father's ability to keep a cool head.

But watching the stare-down between his Father and Uncle Daniel was very nerve-wracking. He was still determining who was winning at this point. Father had retreated fully into Batman, locking away all and any emotions behind his persona, which was bizarre to see on his maskless face.

Meanwhile, Uncle Daniel's emotions are displayed for the world to see in the heavy set of his jaw, the down pull of his lips, and the ice in his gaze.

Between the two men sat a pile of paper with various red markings. Damian hadn't gotten the chance to review the documents, but he knew there was a lot, and most of it had not been good. He likely failed the audit.

His uncle had stayed at Wayne Manor for three days, despite the many attempts by the Bats besides Damian to get him out. He had been silently observing everything that happened within the manor's walls. Uncle Daniel took his position as an observer in the literal sense.

He did not speak or interact with anyone besides Damian and often ended up scaring his adoptive siblings since they didn't notice him in the room. Damian personally thinks it was their own fault for being frightened. Obviously, they needed more training if they were unable to detect his uncle.

It's not like the man was hiding; he is good at entering rooms as silent as a ghost. Damian knew all other league-raised children could sense when Uncle Daniel was about, so really, people trained by Batman should have caught him miles away.

Todd and Cain were an honest disgrace for failing to notice Uncle Daniel until his pen clicked to write down what he observed. Damian attempted to improve things by presenting the best of Wayne Manor, but he knew the more he tried, the more Uncle Daniel used the red pen.

He only thought he did well on the audit by showing off his various animal friends. Uncle Daniel seemed very taken with Batcow the most, and after helping Damian milk her, he had finally switched the color on his multi-pen to green.

"I will not repeat myself again, Mr. Wayne," Uncle Daniel hissed, snapping Damian from his thoughts. Father's eyes narrowed.

"You deemed me unfit for my son."

"I deem you unfit for all your children."

Father's face remained impassive, but Damian knew him well enough to see the displeasure rolling off his body in waves. "I try my best for my children."

"Not nearly enough." Uncle Daniel reached for the papers, flipping through the handwritten notes to a page, taking on three lines. When Damian leaned over to read, Uncle Daniel's hand shot out and he pushed his head away.

"No, Little One. These are your sibling's personal files. You can not read them." It's mostly because he respects his uncle greatly that he did not throw a fit for being excluded from the conversation. And the fact that his uncle switched over to their native tongue.

It had been startling to realize how much he missed hearing his language. And how warm it made him feel to use it here in Gotham.

Father pulled the paperwork to him. His blue eyes rapidly moved over the words before he flipped to the next page, the next, and the next. Each time, his actions became more frantic until he reached the end.

Then he just stared at the audit his uncle had written with a strange blank look in his eyes. Damian felt very unnerved.

"Damian, go wait in your room," Father said softly, gaze still not lifting from the report.

"What? Father-"

"Now, Damian."

The boy turned to his uncle for help, but the other man merely smiled. "It's alright, Little One. Your father and I will settle this."

It was ludicrous to remove him from the room to discuss his future. Still, Damian knew he would not be able to convince the two most important men in his life of this, and while Uncle Daniel was a pacifist, it didn't mean he was weak in any way.

He would have Damian removed, and walking out with dignity was better. The young ninja huffed, strutting out of the room, down the hall, and up the main stairway to his bedroom. He ignored the various Wayne-adopted dolts that were trying to eavesdrop on the conversation.

None of them had learned that if Uncle Daniel did not want anyone hearing his conversations, then no one would hear a thing. This was one of the many mysteries surrounding Uncle Daniel.

No one in the current League of Assiaians knew much about the First Son, mainly because no one had lived as long as he and Grandfather, but they all knew he had extraordinary powers.

Drake is a fool who thinks he can record all of Uncle's abilities when he hasn't even scraped the suffering of everything Uncle Daniel could do.

And he never will. A nasty voice whispers in his mind. Damian opens his bedroom door, taking one final look around, trying to fight off the wave of sadness. He can not say his stay here had been easy, but he had grown attached to his life at Wayne Manor.

It's a foolish attachment. It didn't matter.

He had failed the audit, and Uncle Daniel would have him moved. Damian's eyes burned slightly, making him blink rapidly as he began packing his room.

He had been able to adjust to the sudden move from the league to Gotham; Damian could do it again. He was halfway done getting everything of value stored in his suitcases when his Father appeared at his door.

"Damian? What are you doing?" The man's voice sounds crushed, and Damian refuses to meet his gaze. He needs to leave through the Wayne Manor doors with his dignity.

"I am sure it's quite clear what I am doing, Father." He says, folding his shirts in the military style Pennyworth had shown him. It saved the most space, and the idea that he will never learn more little tricks from the age bullet makes the burn in his eyes stronger.

A few traitorous tears fall, landing on his blue-gry shirt and turning a few spots into a dark blue.

"I won't let him take you," Father promises, strutting towards Damian and hugging him. The child stiffens at once before more tears silently fall down his face.

"You can not stop Uncle. He can take all of us away."

"I know," Father admits. "That's why I have agreed to his terms."

"Terms?"

"Mr. Wayne and I have agreed on a trial period. He will go to therapy to improve his behavior and communication skills with his children. I will be living here and monitoring the progress. It will be one year." Uncle Daniel says suddenly, right next to their hug, his cold arms warping around Damian and overlapping Father's.

Father's face was spammed at the contact, but Damian had never felt so warm or protected.

He sinks into the hug, watching Uncle Daniel's warm, soft gaze stare down at him. Then, his gaze hardens into disgust as Father leans on Damian's hair. Uncle Daniel quickly leans onto the other side of Damian's skull, trying to comfort him.

Relief crashes into Damian. The audit was not over; he still had a year to prove to Uncle that he should live here with Father. He will not be moved.

But it will take a miracle for his father to change that drastically. His uncle would remove him unless Damian could show him that there was something here worth staying for.

He needed a plan, a goal, an appeal to Uncle Daniel's more gentle, idealistic views. But what? He could try to become more brotherly with his adoptive siblings. That could buy him a few more months.

I need something more. Something more binding. Damian thinks, pressing his face into the two men's arms. He does not need comfort like a child, but being held like this is.... pleasant.

"Oh! Family Group Hug!" Richard screams from the hallway before the man is sprinting into the room. Father makes a face but Uncle Daniel opens the hug, leaving a gap for Richard.

The man barrels in with a shout of glee, squeezing the three almost desperately. Damian would make a face, but he understands just how great Uncle Daniel's hugs can be, and added to the fact Father is not one to show displays of affection, this is Richard's best chance to-.

Wait.

That's it! Uncle's one weakness is being there for children who need him. Damian realizes, a plan forming in his mind, as Brown, Drake, and Cain run into the room. They pause at the sight before all three are invited into Uncle's hug. Brown leaps in for her hug, and Cain hesitantly approaches while Drake stays safely away, eyeing the group with distaste.

Uncle Daniel locks eyes with the teenager by the door, offering a sad smile, and Damian can see that he genuinely wants Drake in this hug but will not force him.

He respects Drake's boundaries because, to Uncle Daniel, adoption means family. He considers Drake to be Damian's brother, so he would treat him with the same care and love as he does for Damian.

Usually, that would bother him greatly, but Damian is too proud of himself for thinking of such a great plan.

There was no way Father would change enough in one year to satisfy Uncle into thinking he was a good fit for raising children. That's fine.

All Damian had to do in that year was convince Uncle to stay at Wayne Manor to do the child-raising himself. This way Damian could remain in Gotham, no matter the audit's results.

How does one trap a man in child-raising when none of the children are his biological? Simple. They get them married to someone with children, and Father just so happens to be without a paramour.

Damian has to get two men to fall in love in one year. It should be simple. With Uncle Daniel's protective core and Father's determination to save Gotham, there may be enough common ground between them to spark romance!

"I love you guys!" Richard crows, squeezing everyone he can reach.

"Hn," Father grunts, while Brown and Cain both inform Richard they care for him as well. Damian softly mutters, "I care for you too," which is much better than Father's.

Uncle's snaps.

"Your son said he loves you, but you don't even respond? You are a brute, Mr. Wayne."

"And you are a leech." Father hisses.

Damian winces. This will take a lot of work. Good thing he's never cowered from a challenge.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

willingly unloved

[farshootergotme]

Hot take, anyone who thinks Dick Grayson has a persistent case of anger issues just doesn't know what anger issues are.

Does he get angry? Yes (I sure would hope so since he's a human being). Would I call it anger issues? No, not really.

[mephoj]

taco and mephone have fascinating parallels more people could explore if taco haters weren't biased cowards

[welcometogrouchland]

Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.

Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).

Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**

That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???

I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.

Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.

(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)

*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench

**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious

[mikakuna]

the absolute horror and offence in his face at alfred taking away his dinner is perfectly captured

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

[mobblespsycho100]

the best phrase to describe kabru is "hate the game, not the player" i think. like yeah

[toxictoad]

I can't find the original post but I keep seeing screenshots of the one person who made their tav basically the party's dad and I love that. I love making old tavs that look at their companions and go "Whelp, I guess I have seven unruly children now" and by the time Jaheira joins in she sees basically one elderly adventurer juggling a vampire spawn, a (formerly) explosive wizard, a tiefling who only recently stopped being on fire all the time, the 24-year-old blade of frontiers, a murderhobo githyanki who was betrayed by her goddess, a recovering Sharran who was betrayed by HER goddess, a Drow who was literally an Absolute general like two days ago, and Tav is just like "My kids :)" While Astarion is pickpocketing people and Minthara is poisoning dinner and Lae'zel and Shadowheart are knife-fighting (Flirting)

[riyo-soka]

Me last week: yeah the Omega & Crosshair dynamic is cute and all but it feels like the writers don’t quite know how to give it focus without majorly downplaying or sidelining her existing relationships with other characters

This week’s ep: I hear you man. How about we banish Echo to the shadow realm again and send Hunter and Wrecker on a wild goose chase fighting Space Gators in Space Louisiana with Fennec Shand while Crosshair and Omega meditate on a beach

[supernova3110]

Tags i get when pressing a certain letter on the keyboard

[fallen-flier]

urge to write ffxvi time travel fic,,,

ANYWAYS, here are the fic ideas that have been circling my mind.

Barnabas and Clive (maybe Jill) travel back in time, probably to Phoenix Gate.

Barnabas destroys Sanbreque’s army and just takes Clive to Waloed. Everything is thrown into disarray. Barnabas looks like an absolute creep of a king (always was, but still.)

Nobody has any idea what Clive and Barnabas’ dynamic is supposed to be. Ultima is incredibly angry but Clive has him blocked, so. Cid has no idea why this kid with extreme trust issues trusts him so much.

Clive is a terrible liar and the revelation that he’s the second Dominant of Fire basically blows everything up. He’s even worse at hiding the fact that he’s Mythos, since he’s used to fighting with all of the Eikon’s powers.

Clive somehow gets away with using Mythos’ powers against Barnabas so his family just believes that Clive primed as Ifrit and Barnabas just took him away to gain another Dominant in his ranks. Barnabas finds this vaguely amusing. It’s not very funny to Joshua or Elwin.

If Jill has traveled back in time, she and Clive have a cute teenage romance where they make Barnabas look even more like a creep and put flowers into each others’ hair.

Clive travels back in time to Phoenix Gate as his 33 year old self and basically cuts through Sanbreque, saving his past self, younger brother, and father.

Annabella mysteriously disappears under the chaos. Joshua registers older Clive as his brother and Elwin claims him as his younger cousin.

Essentially, older Clive becomes a mysterious new Rosfield and well-known as the second Dominant of Fire. In reality, older Clive, now going by Ifrit or some other alias has magically become perfect Mythos/ Logos/ vessel to account for younger Clive, meaning he’s no longer Ifrit’s dominant, but purely balanced in terms of Eikons.

In one world, Clive spends thirteen years trying to find and kill the second Dominant of Fire. In this world, Clive looks up to his older brother/ self as a protector and a powerful Dominant. Clive is trained by Ifrit and when he first primes, it’s a moment of pride awash with exhaustion, not pain and trauma.

Joshua loves his two older brothers and never has to grow up raised under a cult that worships him, never has to distance himself or put the weight of the world in his chest.

Ifrit starts destroying Mothercrystals using Ramuh after Cid defects. It would be funny, if it didn’t completely confound and stress Cid out.

Barnabas starts taking extreme interest in Rosaria. It’s not a good thing.

[aliveaudiencegang]

alex should’ve stayed besties with all those kids of billionaires

next time he sees yassen on a mission, alex is like whatever they’re paying you i can double it if you stop whatever from happening.. and maybe kill your employer

(he just texts the squad; emergency 10 millions pounds needed to stop nuclear war. and because everyone is so great in my hc they find away to get that money from their parents)

[phuljari]

Edit: Keep Reading

[enough-spider-noir-stuff]

*slaps noir and hobie* this bad bitch can fit so many issues