To the delight of Gotham's citizens, and the dismay of her criminal underbelly, the GCPD has a new specialized unit that ACTUALLY apprehends criminals and brings them to justice!
It's a relatively small squad of mostly young adults, who looked fresh out of their teens. But age didn't matter once they got the work done. And they did, as they've already got criminals like Penguin, Riddler, and Bane behind bars for what looks to be 'for good'.
No one besides Commissioner Gordan knows anything about the squad as they operate as a mostly separate entity from GCPD. It was rare to see any of them, and any photos taken were unusually blurry. They are also extremely secretive; if you exclude their social media which are usually just shit posts, memes, and thirst edits of the Wayne family.
They were a total mystery. Almost as mysterious as Batman.
But those who have seen/worked with the squad before all had the same thing to say about them. They were cool. They had an unusually effective method. And their leader is a menace. With his sharp teeth and pointed smile. And bright blue eyes that spoke to your soul. It was a pleasure to see/ work with him, it really was. But they weren't planning on doing so again for a long time.
That being said, Gotham had been quiet for a while. A bit too quiet if you ask anyone, especially the Bats. Strangely, it didn't feel like the usual calm before the shit storm. The instinctual pit in their guts that usually formed just wasn't there. This was different. This wasn't the calm before the storm. This was the ocean receding. But no one seemed to realize it yet.
Not until the tsunami came crashing down on them.
The GCPD special unit accounts that had been inactive for the last three months suddenly pinged to life. Everyone who followed them clicked the notification almost immediately. With this unnerving calm surrounding them, who the hell didn't want to see what batshit crazy statement they would make after three months of radio silence.
What they didn't expect, was to see a crystal-clear picture of justice finally being served.
The picture was a selfie, taken in an abandoned warehouse. In the middle of the dirty floor was the Joker. He was tied up and his head hung low. You could see how beaten he was, his clothes torn and bloody. His face paint was also coming off, revealing pale blotchy skin. Reminding everyone that, he was still human, just like the rest of them.
Behind him, all lined up with smiles on their faces, was Team Phantom. They were a bit bloody and bruised as well but overall in much better condition. They weren't wearing the normal GCPD navy blue uniform, but black and white ones. All stylized to fit the wearers taste. They all looked so young, but their eyes looked like old tired eyes, finally getting some relief.
From in the corner was their leader. Only part of his face was in the picture. One glowing blue eye, and part of his Cheshire smile. His hand making a peace sign next to the Joker. Even with only part of his being shown, everyone could tell he was relived as well.
And while the picture itself was shocking, the caption was what really got them. The top was what you would usually expect from the team. A big bold 'GOT EM' ' at the top. But at the bottom in small, almost unnoticeable text was:
"He will face his punishment. We will get our retribution. May we finally rest in peace."
Genuinely being a single woman in my thirties, living alone, is such a mixed blessing sometimes. I do love my house and when I'm here I literally never want to leave. But on the other hand, I do get tired of leaving to go hang out with people, even though I love seeing them. Especially because I have such a great group of friends but they live all over the place, geographically, and therefore most of them don't know each other. And I actually really love hosting? But I never have people in my house because logistically it's always more practical for me to go to them than vice versa.
But sometimes I buy new old dishes and wanna just have a little fancy wizard party, but all my guests are far away. Please may I have the teleport spell. Or a high-speed commuter rail system.
my art style is too simple for this but just know that when i draw post-ttt hunter, in my mind he has central pink-brown heterochromia. like this, kinda:
Jimmy: Basically, if someone, Lizzie, or anyone asks him (Joel) to do something and he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't do it. If I ask him to do it, like hang or something, he's always like "Yeah!! Sure let's do it man!!!" — and Lizzie always gets so annoyed? So for example if Lizzie is like, "Hey Joel! You wanna like, play some games tonight?" He goes "Aww nahh I think I got that thing I'm doing bla bla bla bla" and I'd go "Hey Joel you around tonight? wanna hang out play some games or something?" He goes "Yeah!! I think I could with you!! Sure!!!" and like, we're— *shrugs* and when I say he's my babe y'know what I'm saying? He my babe. I'm the one person in this world to convince him to do stuff and hang out. I am the secret weapon.
someone pointed out that milsiril sniffs the top of kabru's head like parents of newborns do with their babies, and i haven't been able to stop thinking abt it
Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
hey hey i forgot about this why didnt you just punch me in the stomach instead of whatever this is youre actually evil youre actually diabolical how could you do this to me im just a guy who misses his familia
🤍🌷 happy 1st birthday to what’s probably the fluffiest silliest most feel-good thing i’ve ever written in this fandom
nice to meet you, where you been?
aka. 12k of meeting again later in life schmoop featuring soft-ass steve, smitten trans!eddie, and hellcheer bestieism that is to die for
“Steve Harrington?”
Eddie would cringe at his loud voice or the sheer and absolute bewilderment that can probably be heard three blocks down, but he’s too busy rewiring his brain.
“Uh, hi,” Harrington says, pulling black nitrile gloves from his long fingers and dropping them into the bin before fixing Eddie with a mildly amused but definitely confused look. “Can I help you?”
No. No he can’t. Eddie cannot be helped, because apparently Harrington isn’t even here just to get tattooed, but instead— No. Nah man. That can’t be.
“What are you doing here?” Eddie says intelligently after a whole lot of staring, dumbfounded.
Steve looks around for a second, doing all those face gymnastics he always used to do in high school when he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“This—This is my shop?”
It should be insulting, the way he enunciates every word like Eddie needs the whole world explained to him in very slow, very easy words. Which, actually, he might, because apparently the world is a really fucking weird place in which Steve Harrington wears pastel sweaters and owns a tattoo shop.
Eddie is pretty sure he hit his head. Or stepped into an alternate dimension. Or both. Considering his luck on, like, an existential scale, it’s probably both.
“No way, man,” is all Eddie says, and this time Harrington is really leaning into the amusement, though judging by his face, he must also be wondering if Eddie requires medical attention. The jury’s still out on that one, though.
Harrington looks around his shop again, squinting at Eddie with that fucking smile still in place. “This… is not my shop?” Oh, he is sassy. Mister pastel-wearing sassy man Harrington, who is smiling at Eddie in a way that is entirely too contagious.
None of this makes sense and Eddie just sags, tearing his eyes away from the vision of Harrington in his bright clothes, the golden afternoon sun catching in his hair as a light breeze comes in through the window.
Eddie crosses his arms in front of his chest, because if he doesn’t, he would probably do something stupid like play with his hair or hide behind it. And Steve shouldn’t have that power over him anymore. They aren’t stupid teenagers anymore, and he does not have a crush on the golden boy!
“I might sound like a complete dick right now, but finding out that Steve ‘The King, The Hair, The Legend’ Harrington apparently inks people for a living was not on my bingo sheet for this week. Hell, even for this lifetime, I think.”