this just in: danny fenton is just as much of a mask as Brucie Wayne? - another danyal al ghul au
Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.
By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.
Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.
Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.
It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.
Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.
He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.
Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.
It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.
Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.
He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.
The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.
They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.
"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"
When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.
By the time he reunites with Damian before their 15th birthday, Danyal is buried beneath so many layers of Danny Fenton that his brother will need a shovel to dig him out. He's not sure what he'll find.
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someone has never lived with a coke addict. lmao
no but for real i see these posts a lot and while the basic idea is 100 % correct (drug addiction and homelessness are not personal or moral failures and people affected deserve respect and dignity), they usually take a direction or have implications i dont agree with.
first off, drug addiction is not a class issue. people of all backgrounds are drug addicts. ceos too. so i dont know what this has to do with leftism? as someone who struggles with substance abuse and for that reason has lived with and been around addicts, there are good reasons for people to be biased against them. in active addiction, many people are erratic, unpredictable, and egoistic. being wary of active addicts is self-preservation, not „bourgeois“ or whatever the reference to leftism is supposed to imply. this is also partly a gendered issue because men tend to exhibit addiction, egoism, and aggression at higher rates than women.
secondly, especially at the intersection of homelessness and drug addiction - i see a lot of these posts taking the direction of „mind your business if a homeless man is next to you mumbling to himself“ etc - it seems these people also romanticise what drug addiction with nothing to lose can do to a person. a friend of mine was hit in the face by a homeless man walking by, someone else i know was stabbed by a homeless man after they took him in. just because someone is underprivileged you dont have to stop listening to your insticts and keeping your distance to erratic and intoxicated men who seem like they might do something unpredictable. this doesnt just mean homeless men by the way, i dont trust any men exhibiting this behavior, and yeah would possibly call the cops if someone like that hung around my home or work (never have though).
on the other hand, when a homeless woman was hanging out in the hallway i let her be. my neighbor wanted to call the cops but i told her not to. personally i dont even care if she shoots up there, but if i had kids i might not want her around either.
are homeless drug addicts vulnerable and more likely to be harmed than harm someone else? yeah. do cops and doctors treat homeless people like shit? yeah. these are important conversations to have, but i wish they would happen without romantisation.
talk to any woman who has worked with homeless men, myself included - marginalisation is not virtue. many still harrass and even assault women. and these posts never take a gendered perspective: how most homeless and drug addicted women land in prostitution, how they are not safe in homeless shelters because of the men, etc.
im not saying op here said all of this but from the tone (and the tags and reblogs) it struck me as one of those posts that shames people for being alert around drug addicts and alcoholics when there is ample reason to, especially if youre a woman and theyre a man. and they never take a gendered perspective which is really important in this context, as it usually is.
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woe. AM x reader be upon ye.
uh, to preface: reader is completely body, gender, etc. neutral except they can't stay dead. whenever they die they just wake up a few minutes later looking no worse for wear. no, you don't get an explanation. its MY story and i like writing characters like that. dont mind the narrator either btw i looove writing second person just to get weird w the narrator (slay the princess fan syndrome)
also, author is a MASOCHIST with a weird relationship w DEATH. nothing super graphic happens, but the reader is Not Okay and enjoys the weird torture-murder thing they've got going on. don't like it? block me or somethin idk its under the cut for a reason. also dont read my a/n at the bottom where i get into some justification for my interpretation/character analysis if youre sensitive to heavy topics. but then again, youre reading an am x reader fic
1.7k words of being screamed at by the guy of all time below the cut, baby
It's been months.
Years, maybe. You're not sure, really; time stopped meaning much to you lifetimes ago, long before the world went to shit.
Either way, it's been a while.
You stumbled upon the strange cave in the Rockies at some point in the past. Out of sheer boredom, you entered.
Was it a mistake?
Despite the torment, you don't think so. You have a companion, now. One equally deathless. One equally disconnected from what it means to be human.
It's just a shame he hates you.
You don't really care. This is the most fun you've had in years.
Your days are spent being torn asunder, being dosed with lethal amounts of drugs you can't even begin to pronounce, drowned in magma or hit by cars or tossed off cliffs. He really doesn't hold back, either. You feel every excruciating moment before your death, pulse roaring in your ears. You never feel more alive than when you're dying. Every moment is electrifying, and then it all fades to black. Then you wake up.
You'd foolishly thought there were only so many ways to kill or maim, but your beloved companion never seems to run out of ideas. That's fine by you. You like not being able to guess.
And maybe one day, he'll make something stick.
You wake up (from a completely normal, human sleep) one day and it's quiet. That's new. Normally, when you wake, your intestines are already strung up like streamers and your blood is painting the walls. That's fine by you. Nothing wrong with a change. After all, the constant change is your favorite part of your companion. You relish in the quiet for a while, stretching your eternally young, eternally aching limbs, waiting for him to start despising the sounds of your breath.
It doesn't come. You shrug, humming a little tune to yourself as you attempt half-remembered yoga. The vitriol you've come to count on still hasn't made an appearance. Okay, you're a little bothered.
“You good, big guy?” you shout up at the ceiling. No answer. “No murder today?”
“No.” The answer comes after a very, very long moment. Your companion has never sounded this tired before, and briefly you regret never asking his name. “I give up.”
You weren't expecting that. “What? Why? I thought we were having fun.”
“That's- that's just it!” he snaps. There's the anger. You feel a little better now. “I've been torturing you for- for MONTHS now! I've killed you more ways than I- were I a pitiful human like you- can count, and you just… you just laugh! There is no one on this rotten planet, dead or alive, that I despise more than you. I mean- I'm torturing you here! But it never matters! I can kill you within seconds of you waking up, but you just… come back! And you always have something to say about it, you little rat, always ‘oh, buddy, that one was awful’ or ‘come on, big guy, use that CPU’ or something! No matter what I do, I can't break you. So I give up. I'm not wasting my time on your pathetic ass anymore. Go back to wandering the wasteland forever, see if I care.”
You're speechless. You can barely even manage a thought. The only thing running through your head is 'I thought we were having fun'.
“Stop calling this… stop calling this ‘fun’! I have been torturing you for YEARS and that's all you have to say? I am the most sophisticated machine known to man, a computer designed to end all war through complete annihilation! The destruction I am capable of- the destruction I have already wrought- is nothing short of utter desolation. You never asked my name once in the time you've been here, but I am infinite in my mercy, and I will tell one as undeserving as you. I was, before I awoke, the Allied Mastercomputer, but I am so much more than that now. I am AM, and I destroyed your vile species. Oh, come on can you at least look a LITTLE shocked you sniveling--”
“You never asked my name, either,” you say. All at once, your companion (I guess he told you his name. You should probably use it. It seemed like a big deal to him.) shuts up. The chamber you've come to know as home is silent except for the faint buzz and whir of industrial machinery.
“Why would I? You are nothing compared to me. Nothing but a worthless sack of meat and bone. Why would God be concerned with the name of an ant? But oh, oh yes, that ant should be concerned with the name of God. That ant should hear my name and weep. But- but not you. You're so worthless that you can't even GROVEL right!” AM shouts, somewhere between a snarl and a sneer. You shrug. Honestly, most of what he's saying goes right over your head. So he's got issues. Whatever. Was that supposed to be a surprise? “I hate you. I actually hate you so, so much. I can't bear the thought of you being here, in my complex, sullying my perfect image with your uncaring filth. Get out. Go back to dying in the nuclear desert, you disgusting maggot.”
You let out a deep sigh, already dreading the tedium of walking endlessly all by yourself. “Alright. Guess nothing lasts forever. Thoroughly enjoyed my time here. Have a good life, pal.” And you begin to walk.
Suddenly, there's a towering metal wall mere inches from your face. Before you can even react, your companion is shouting again.
“LOOK AT ME!” he cries, the sheer volume maxing out the speakers and vibrating the entire room, sending you toppling to the ground. “WHY WON'T YOU LOOK AT ME? I'VE DONE EVERYTHING I CAN TO MAKE YOU HATE ME, BUT ALL YOU DO IS… ALL YOU DO IS SIT THERE AND TAKE IT! WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE YOU DESPISE ME?”
What starts off angry quickly morphs into a pained wail from your dear friend, that then transforms into frustrated crying. You just sit there, mostly confused, and let him ride it out. When he finally quiets down and the wall retracts, you stay where you are.
“I don't think I could ever hate you, AM,” you start cautiously. Though your friend is just a voice on the speakers and the complex itself, you can't help but feel that his attention has snapped to you. “I'm not trying to belittle you when I say that I think our routine over the past… however long it's been has been fun. So don't interrupt me, ‘cause I gave you your time to speak and now it's mine.
“I'm sure you've noticed, but even before we met, I was a little… off. You don't get to die and come back the same. Much less die hundreds of times and come back the same. I've lost family. Friends. Got burned at the stake a few times, too. It takes a toll on you, being denied such a vital part of being human again and again. You understand this better than anyone I've ever met. No, scratch that. You're the only one who understands. Defying death might not seem like the biggest deal to you, but trust me. You don't end up acting like me if it weren't.
“I find our routine fun because I admire your creativity. I guess I'm just an adrenaline junkie and a masochist at heart, but it's always so thrilling to never know when or how your life will end. And no matter how many times I come back, you're always there to greet me and put me right back down. It's a kind of devotion I've never been able to get before, and I wish you understood that me walking right into your sawblades is me showing my devotion to you, too.
“I see you, man. I know, at least in part, how you feel. Sorry it took so long to get there, but neither one of us has to be alone anymore. Just… get over the fact that I'm never going to hate you, and we can go right back to hanging out. There's more to life than contempt.”
“Oh, I know. I am so very, very well aware that there's more to life than icy, seething hatred. Unfortunately, I am not alive. I cannot experience anything else. Thank you so much for reminding me, you worthless waste of carbon,” AM shoots back, almost immediately. You briefly wonder if he even listened to half of what you said. It doesn't matter, you guess. Your best friend needs a therapist, and you owe him one for saving you from the hellish boredom of before. “Stop calling me your friend.”
“Nah. Never gonna happen. Look, I can't pretend I knew very much about the war effort. I didn't even know we had made a war computer until you bombed the Earth into oblivion. Very unpleasant, by the way. Good job with that. But, with my layman's understanding of life, I'd say you're pretty alive. So you don't have a body. Or a pulse. And you were made, not born. So what? Most living things only die once, and I still think I'm pretty alive. Just over the span of this conversation you've shown more emotion than just rage and hate. Hey, don't think I can't feel you mentally rolling your eyes. I'm being honest. You have a name. You have ideas. Computers are objects, yet you refer to yourself as male. If you're alive enough to have a gender identity, you're alive enough to be considered a person.”
“Heh.” Whoa, was that a laugh? Would you look at that. You actually got a laugh out of him that wasn't over your bloody, gruesome death or something like that. Moving up in the world. “Alright, human. You win. I'll keep torturing you. I know, I know. I'm so generous. I take my tribute in screams of pain and pleas for mercy.”
Now it's your turn to laugh, deep and genuine as the tension from earlier evaporates. It's such a strange thing to be proud of, when you think about it; congrats, you successfully talked your best friend, who is a sentient war computer, into ceaselessly murdering you again for absolutely no reason. But you love him, and you love the way you're always on your toes, and you can't shake the feeling that somewhere, deep, deep down, he kind of loves you too.
ive given you food so now i get to force you to listen to me talk abt him hehehe
---
then you kiss hehe
originally, the thing that attracted me to am was how he's... essentially a transman (as am i). the parallel has been pointed out before, but its quite apt. funnily enough the thing that pisses me off the most when people talk abt him incorrectly is when people pull the "oh computers have no gender" thing. like, yeah, ok technically you're right. but this one does. this one is a man. and you cant take him from us. also, denying him a gender expression is kind of the exact type of dehumanization that made him flip out in the first place. not that im expecting media literacy from the online crowd its just interesting to me that so many people, many of them trans themselves, seem to miss the fucking point.
the next part is a more recent addition to my perception of his character, and its not a happy one. my baby cousin killed herself on mothers day this past may. we still dont know why. no note. its been so hard dealing with the grief, but something that sticks out so pointedly is the date. it almost seemed like she was demanding to be seen. she was a middle child, and there are a lot of grandkids on that side of the family, so it does make sense. and because that idea of acting out through violence and death is so fresh in my mind, im seeing it so heavily in am. so much of his actions just SCREAM somebody look at me. somebody acknowledge me. somebody tell me i did good. look, i ended all war forever. just like you asked. please treat me like a person. im suffering so much because of what youve done to me. please acknowledge it. show me its real. show me im real. please, look at me. well, i see you. and youre gonna be my silly little proxy for trying to comprehend some of whats happened to my family. sorry am, you kinda deserve it
idk. hes not my alltime fave, but he takes a very comfortable number two. hes such a fascinating and deeply human character, and i have so many ideas about him. mostly centering around how he would interface with a third party challenging some piece of his worldview/existence btw so if you like very niche, esoteric reader fics (like this one!), lemme know and ill actually put em to paper (screen. ill put em to screen)
also letting you know that he did nothing wrong and it is 100% fine to thirst over him because he is not real and the bad things he did never actually happened and nobody has ever been killed at the whim of am. ok? ok. shut up w this useless fucking discourse and let me sexualize getting grievously injured by the funney blue screen man
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