Continuation/blurb/snippet from this writing prompt.
It took less than a week to get custody of the Fenton children.
Oswald expected that it wouldn’t take long with his connections, but even that turn around is faster than what he expected. He'd anticipated pulling strings, greasing palms, maybe making some threats, but before he can even think of getting things moving to do so the paperwork is signed and a social worker is calling him to sort out the travel arrangements for the kids.
It's all done local, the judge, CPS, the witnesses and lawyers, each and every one calling the town home. Each and every one pushing the case through at a speed that Oswald didn't think was possible even in the most crooked of situations. He smelled conspiracy, but not - surprisingly - a malicious one.
Amity wasn't the smallest place in the world, but it was small enough. And the Fentons were public figures, though not in the way that Jack and Maddie Fenton obviously thought they were. How long had the people of Amity been watching things go wrong for the kids? How long had they been trying - in their own, limited ability - to help? Long enough to get desperate, seemed to be the answer.
The only resistance Oswald can find as he reviewed all the information he could get ahold of, was from the Mayor - Jazz and Danny's godfather, somehow more crooked than even Gotham's elected officials as far as Oswald could tell - and the Dr's. Fenton themselves.
The Mayor was summarily denied any influence of the case by the judge on the grounds of the long standing and publicly recorded ugliness of Master's relationship with Danny - which was something else Oswald was going to have to figure out. Along with all the…ghost stuff.
Oswald wasn't sure what to make of the ghost stuff.
Honestly he was leaving it for his people to figure out and wrangle into a reasonable explanation to report to him later. It was…something, a big something, and not - as he'd originally suspected upon initial cursory research into the town - a tourist gimmick or an overly high meta population. A later problem, provided he had to co tend with it at all once the children were officially in his custody in Gotham.
The biggest issue had been the kid's parents. Or really, the biggest issue had been the shady government agency backing the kids' parents.
The Fentons were the Ghost Investigation Ward's pet mad scientists. Creating weapons and genocidal plans - against ghosts - and generally tormenting the towns' living inhabitants just as much as the undead ones. The GIW had been protecting Jack and Maddie from any repercussions of their recklessness, and were willing to butt in on an unexpected custody battle in order to keep their maniacal golden geese happily working away.
From what Oswald had heard, a representative of the GIW had shown up to convince the judge to dismiss the case, but the judge had been faster. By the time the men in all white appeared - garish and tacky in their ill fitted, bulky suits - it had been too late of course. The judge had apparently anticipated their impending appearance and had made their ruling and had everything filed tidily late the night before. Courts did not typically stay running til three in the morning, but apparently an exception had been made.
There were a great many things wrong with Amity Park - wrong in a lot of ways they were in Gotham, wrong in ways they weren't - but the people that called the place home seemed to have come to a decision on one thing: the Fenton children were not safe, and unknown or not they were trusting Oswald to get them out of there.
It was strange and a little overwhelming, for an entire population that did not know him to see him as some kind of hope. Some kind of hero.
There were many, many things wrong in Amity Park.
He tried to assure himself when everything was said and done and the kids were packed and on their way that it wasn't his problem. He was officially Jazz and Danny's guardian, in a city half a country away that even with his - nominally- cleaned up act he held a great deal of power over. He was nearly untouchable within Gotham's shadow, and no one from some half-mad town was going to be able to do anything to change that.
He made preparations though, just in case. He hadn’t gotten where he was by being stupid. The Bat could use something to chew on that wasn't one of Oswald's entirely legitimate business ventures anyway. An ethically suspect government agency that was likely to come sticking their noses in Gotham's business sooner than later would do just nicely for that, and might even earn him some kind of grace from Gotham's brooding knight without getting him in hot water with any of the city's criminal element.
All that was left at that point was actually meeting the kids in person.
His kids.
He ignored the strange, bittersweet ache that touched his heart at that. It was, after all, entirely a means of improving his reputation in the city. The kids mean an end. He'd take care of him the same he did all his people, but not any more than that.
It was just business.
If he reminded himself enough, it might even be true one day.
He suspected though, as he laid eyes on them for the first time - shadow eyed and leery, haunted in a way that ghosts couldn't manage and looking not much at all like Oswald outside the fear and the pain he did his best to forget from his own upbringing - that the point of not caring had been passed the minute he'd gotten that first call.
*
Apologies if Penguin is out of character, all I know about him is what I vaguely remember from TAS, what I’ve absorbed from fandom and what I tried to put together from a wiki lol.
I did this instead of sleeping last night because I couldn’t get the initial idea out of my head (which slightly defeats the purpose of making it a writing prompt so that I could just read everyone else’s wonderful thoughts and writings on the idea instead of getting side tracked from my other writing projects - again lol - but oh well).
I don’t know if I’ll write anymore, and as with everything else I post this is open for anyone who is interested to run with.
Tag time!
@phoenixdemonqueen @justgray15777 @gin2212 @blankliferain @meira-3919 @lexdamo @hallowsden @derpygirl64 @thewondersoflebanon @amercurio @vythika96 @my-perfect-storybook-love @apointlessbox
3K notes
·
View notes
Have you taken any pottery classes or were you entirely self taught? I REALLY want to get into it but classes are quite expensive
I took some sculpting in undergrad, but it was in the context of casting and mold-making, not ceramics. So I'm fairly comfortable with clay as a medium but not so much with clay as an end product--not being able to do armatures and having to think about firing is weird. (If I had the opportunity to do bronze casting again, though, I would, no hesitation.) That puts me in the minority of my current pottery peers, who are largely self-taught or only learned in our studio.
I do pottery now at a co-op studio space, and technically that means that I'm taking classes there--but the classes are more like guided lab time? There's not really assignments or anything, and there's only a couple other people who sculpt, none of whom are in my class. Mostly the class just means that the person in charge demonstrates a technique or two once a week and then lets us do our thing.
Personally I think that shared studio space is the absolute best way to go. You spend less in startup costs (kilns are EXPENSIVE, running kilns is expensive, glaze is expensive) and it plugs you directly in to a group of fellow artists who can help and support you at whatever skill level you're at. Yes, classes are expensive--my class is $250 per season. But for me that includes lab space, 50 lbs of clay per season, almost all of the glaze I use, kiln time, and other people doing all the maintenance and kiln loading/unloading etc. Very much money well spent.
Artist-run shared spaces are often not turning a profit on anything with studio fees, just covering operations costs, so while it's pricey, it generally is just...what it costs to do that hobby. And it is sooooo much easier to be motivated when you're going to what is, basically, Grown-Up Art Club.
But if costs are prohibitive for you to do pottery via classes, and you want to learn to sculpt, then get some polymer clay and see what you can do. It's a different game than actual clay, but form is form, and the medium is secondary to figuring out how to translate an idea into reality.
Polymer clay is relatively affordable and doesn't require nearly the infrastructure of ceramics. If you can't spend the money on classes or a shared studio, then polymer clay is a great way to develop technique and an eye so that when you're in a position to spend the money, you already have the skills to make it worth what you're spending.
287 notes
·
View notes
do Arthur or his three boyfriends ever get jealous of each other?
definitely early on John would get unreasonably jealous and clingy with Arthur, more so towards Oscar than Noel (but that’s mainly bc he liked Noel more at first). So that understandably led to Oscar feeling ignored and left out cus John is nothing if not a petty bitch. they eventually work through that, John gets less afraid of direct confrontation with Oscar, and he in turn gets less afraid of uhm John in general.
Arthur has always and continues to get jealous when he’s deliberately being ignored because the others (but mainly Noel) think it’s funny.
122 notes
·
View notes