#they give him shovel talks but when they're over it's basically 'our kid now'

[redsray]

i do love the idea of the wayne kids giving bernard shovel talks about taking care of tim and all that but also give me batfam who are just as protective of bernard as they are of each other.

give me bernard, attending his first wayne gala as tim's significant other. having a suit custom tailored and funded by bruce even if bernard insists it's not necessary because he already has one. arriving at the gala anxious because of course he is, it's a goddamn socialite event, but being protected from every side by the wayne kids even when tim is dragged away.

Socialite: Oh, and who might you be?

Bernard: Oh, um, hi. I'm Bernard Dowd, nice to meet you.

Socialite: Dowd? I've never heard of your family before. Who...?

Bernard: I'm not here with my family, miss, I'm here with my boyfriend.

Socialite: ... Boyfriend?

Bernard: Yeah, I'm here with Tim.

Socialite, frowning: Tim... as in Drake-Wayne? He has a boyfriend?

Dick, coming up next to Bernard: He sure does! Bernard here is practically one of ours now, aren't you? He matters to Timmy, so he matters to us.

Bernard: Dick—

Dick: C'mon, let's get you back to Timmy. Farewell, Mrs!

Bernard: I could've handled that.

Dick: All the rules that apply to my siblings during galas apply to you too. I'm sure you could've, but you shouldn't have to. I've got your back too, now, yeah?

Bernard: ... Yeah. Thanks, Dick.

Jason, coming up to Bernard at the bar: Not to freak you out, kid, but there's a guy starin' at ya from the other side of the bar. Y'know him or should I encourage him to look away?

Bernard, startled: Huh? (looks around) Oh. No, I don't know him. Why... is he looking at me like that, actually?

Jason, scowling: 'S just how the slimy fuckers at these events are. Can't keep their eyes off anything that's small, young or pretty. Disgusting. I'll deal with him— where's your annoying other half gone, inferior blondie?

Bernard: Tim? He got pulled away for quote; 'something important' by some lady. He said he'll meet me here after he's done, so I've been waiting.

Jason: Huh. If I see him I'll point him yer way. Hey, don't be 'fraid to ask any of us questions or for help if ya need it. We know the best how daunting this shit can be.

Bernard, genuinely touched: ... Thanks, Jason.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Don't tell Timmers I said that, though, he'll call me a loser.

Bernard, laughing: I won't.

Bernard, being talked to by several people at once and a bit overwhelmed by the attention: Uh— I'm—

Damian, stepping between him and the socialites: Dowd. I require your assistance.

Bernard: Um— hi, Damian— with what?

Damian: You will see when we get there. Follow me, Drake's more tolerable half.

Bernard: Okay... so what do you need from me?

Damian: Nothing. You seemed to dislike the attention from all of the nosy adults over there. It was the most efficient way of extracting you from the situation.

Bernard: Oh. Thanks, Damian.

Damian: Tt, don't thank me yet, Dowd. I am still criticising your choice in romantic partners.

Bernard: Didn't you threaten me with a katana to not dampen Tim's mood in any way shape or form?

Damian: Slander. I said quote 'if you make Drake more annoying by breaking his heart I'm going to maim you.' I don't see how you got the message you did from that.

Bernard, grinning: Sure, Damian. Sure.

[blacklegsanjiii]

wait ohmygod imagine lusan in warlord!sanji au. luffy goes through so many shovel talks that stop midattempt bc all the warlords are very protective over their kid but they can tell without minutes of meeting luffy that hes the best there can be. luffy has no idea theres a shovel talk hes just happy to talk to ppl who have sanjis baby pictures and embarrassing stories. tho i guess this kinda scenario works with other ships too

Two different anons with the same energy I love it.

God that'd be hilarious. I feel like Jinbei wouldn't even try honestly after seeing WCI. And he is talking to the others. They all coparent someone who is so reckless and willing to die. It's like they kidnap the seraphim and go to Karai Bari where the warlords are all at because Jinbei called ahead and is like "I HAVE NEWS I WILL TELL YOU WHEN WE GET THERE!"

The Warlords and the Strawhats are all staring at each other as Boa tries not to swoon for Luffy. The seraphim are with them and looking at them all like they're dumb. Jinbei is so excited as he looks at his other coparents who are looking at mini versions of themselves and to the pirate crew and then to Jinbei specifically. Buggy is so confused and scared. He knows that Sanji is the kid of his "lieutenants" and the other three warlords but like honestly, he's scared.

"What the hell are these?" Crocodile asks.

"Seraphim is what Vegapunk called them. Look at them! It's us!" Jinbei says excitedly. "I know I've been unfairly having too much time-"

"You're in the crew!" Boa yells with a finger. "Of course you get a bunch of extra time with them!"

"But now with these you can all have a child again as well!" Jinbei grins and Mihawk just crouches down in that "Oh no God why me way" as he looks at their kid. Basically. Sanji is gripping their hair which Jinbei tries to get him to let go of. Doffy strings Sanji's hands to get them to stop. The Crew is ready to fight.

"Calm down, it's fine, I wasn't going to kill them this time." Doffy laughs.

"Oh but you would have last time?!" Sanji yells at him.

"If it came to it." Doffy shrugs with a grin and Sanji just starts yelling at him in a foreign language. Doffy is just laughing and then Sanji's legs light on fire and Mihawk groans. Crocodile sighs while Boa runs forward and holds Sani in a bear hug and squeals about no one mentioning that! She has Sanji in the air and spinning. Sanji is yelling at her now as Doffy laughs his ass off.

"What is going on?" Usopp asks in despair.

"He's our child, duh." Boa says.

"Well I'm their boyfriend so can you let them go?" Luffy asks. Nami chops Luffy's head, Zoro is screaming at Luffy for saying that and Mihawk for hiding it.

"So just to be clear, our child can set themself on fire, is dating their captain, Doffy almost killed them and would have if it came to it." Crocodile says.

"And they can sky walk." Jinbei nods proudly. Boa screams in delight and swings Sanji around more as they screams in another language and just losing it at his crew but Luffy blanks out.

"Sanji. Family meeting. Buggy, entertain them." Mihawk demands.

"Why me? Are you taking those things?" Buggy screams gesturing at the seraphim.

"No." And all the parents leave and Sanji is being carried by Boa as he's still yelling.

After the meeting Doffy, Crocodile, and Jinbei agree it's not worth trying to give Luffy a shovel talk. Boa and Mihawk on the other hand are going to give their child's captain a deep, deep, shovel talk. Also everyone is asking about the fire and Boa and Crocodile are picking apart his outfit which Boa and Sanji say Croc doesn't really have a leg to stand on there.

When they filter out of the tent where said family meeting took place they see Buggy and some of his crew members doing circus acts for the Strawhats and Seraphim. Luffy immediately rockets to Sanji and saying he's hungry and Sanji nods and invites everyone to the Sunny for dinner.

"Wait, so did you know Sanji before us?" Usopp asks Robin.

"No, I had heard of them but by the time I joined Sanji was already working at Baratie." Robin answers.

"How come you never told me the cook was your kid?" Zoro asks Mihawk.

"Because that would include explaining this convoluted mess and Sanji would have told you if they wanted to." Mihawk answers. "Strawhat found out at Marineford."

"What'd I find out?" Luffy asks.

"That we are Sanji's parents. Although there was quite a lot going on so I don't blame you for forgetting." Jinbei says with a pat to Luffy's shoulder.

"How did five warlords even end up with a kid?" Franky asks.

"Mihawk got me and Zeff off the rock and I went with him. Didn't want to leave me alone on Kuriagana so I went with him to meetings." Sanji shrugs. "The first few times I went with the others was because he had a job and then I just started getting passed around."

"You were so tiny back then!" Boa wails as she grabs Sanji and holds them close. Franky sets up the barbeque outdoor counters and Sanji frees themself and mutters the whole way to the galley to start gathering ingredients and supplies. Boa saddles up next to Luffy and starts to try the shovel talk but then she watches Sanji start chopping and slicing as the grill heats and just watches Luffy watch Sanji with the softest eyes. So instead she thanks him for getting Sanji back from Germa.

"Well yeah, he's my cook." Luffy says like it's obvious and suddenly to Boa it is.

Mihawk tries when Sanji drags Zoro to go do dishes with him saying it shouldn't take too long. Luffy is playing with the Seraphim who seem interested but confused. Luffy doesn't have a lot patience but he does have a lot of perseverance so he takes to teaching these things easily. Mihawk simply nods at Luffy who smiles widely at him.

When Sanji comes back out Nami wraps an arm around them and with a devilish grin.

"So how many drinks do I have to give out before I start to hear embarrassing stories?" Nami asks sweetly.

"Please don't." Sanji says.

"One time I took Perona and Baby 5 to Baratie and Sanji almost died five times!" Doffy calls from where he's perched next to Crocodile.

"Perona knew!?" Zoro yells.

"Yes, but she would only go to Kuriagana. I spent a lot of time painting nails." Mihawk drawls.

"Oh, I forgot to mention on our previous phone call but Sanji did kick Saint Jupiter." Jinbei nods proudly.

Mihawk pinches the bridge of his nose and groans as Doffy laughs. Boa is once again swinging Sanji around, Crocodile nods his approval at their child. Sanji is then pulled to their captain as the parents tell about Sanji's childhood. Boa coming through with photos she had marines take at warlord meetings of Sanji and their parents doing their absolute best or worst depending on the photo.

[h4zardousch3micals]

I've been pondering the udea of a dhmis swap au for a while now and here's my thoughts:

So the basic idea I came up with was swapping the webseries teachers with the tvseries episodes of the same number. As in - swapping dhmis 1 and jobs, dhmis 2 and death - you get the picture.

The main 3 are swapped aswell so maybe I'll do a post about them too

Swap Sketchbook (Teaches Jobs)

- Now just a regular notepad, probably with some scribbles and a ring of stained coffee on them

- Creative spirit broken down and forced to conform energy, exhausted and miserable all the time

- Only half-heartedly sings the songs, and doesn't seem to care at all when Swap!Red gets his hand chopped off and is just like "lol"

Swap Tony (Teaches Death)

- A sleek black and blue casket with one of those windows old-timey coffins had incase they buried someone alive

- Decided that Swap!Yellow is the one who's dead and eventually gets stabbed with a shovel by Swap!Red

- Gives the remaining two the Apple that "rots over time" instead of the make a friend kit

Swap Shringnold (Teaches Family)

- You know where this is going, the whole "were like family in this cult, I mean, organisation" thing

- Swap!Yellow and Swap!Duck are not buying it and leave pretty quickly but Swap!Red gets roped into all the cult nonsense

- Probably has an army of near identical pigeons and caterpillars hiding somewhere to tear apart those who doesn't want to join the family

Swap Colin (Teaches Friendship)

- A sort of amalgam of every bad guy in the internet safety cartoons I was made to watch as a kid, will sell you all of the drugs and pirated films

- Low-key a yandere because if anyone remembers the Sketchworld AU I absolutely adore Sketch!Colin from that

- Hyperfocuses on Swap!Red and is only twarted after Swap!Yellow punches them Scary Maze Game style, called a loser and blocked

Swap Healthy Gang (Teaches Transport)

- "This is our grandpa Steak Guy he was every disease"

- Take the main three on a trip to go for a picnic but seem to have no idea what they're doing or how they're getting there

- Eventually they throw Swap!Yellow out the window and reality flickers out as Swap!Red tries to retrieve them

Swap Lamp (Teaches Electricity)

- Actually pretty sane and chill at the start of the lesson (though he does go on a tangent about conspiracy theories) then gets his batteries taken and starts acting like his usual drowning puppets in oil self

- Teaches the wrong ideas about where electricity come from, says the council made it and stuff like tha

- Dunks swap!Red in oil which makes him no-clip into the void and encounter Roy.

Swap Breifcase (Teaches Creativity)

- One of those big suitcase shaped packs of art supplies I loved as a kid

- Really cheerful and bouncy, keeps jumping between different different kinds of art at a speed that the main 3 can't keep up with

- Unemployed Brendon is an orange

Swap Coffin (Teaches Time)

- A big tall longcase clock

- Talks about "history", but it's really just the parts where people die horribly (black death and stuff like that)

- Ends the lesson by subjecting the main 3 to iconic historical ways of dying: Swap!Red gets ran over by a motorwagen, Swap!Yellow gets rabies and Swap!Duck is beheaded.

Swap Lily and Todney (Teaches Love)

- Two cherubs in a trenchcoat on a mission to please Malcolm by recruiting new members

- Drag all 3 of their main trio to their weird cult basement, Swap!Yellow leaves after ruining some sort of initiation game and Swap!Duck gets stabbed with a cupid's arrow and passes out

- Then Swap!Red gets subjected to the horrors but wakes up and they just kind of disappear lol

Swap Warren (Teaches the Internet)

- An extremely literal computer worm

- Pressures everybody to go on the dark web and buy drugs and stuff. Then hacks into Swap!Red's mind because he's a cyborg and mucks everything up in there

- Swap!Duck shuts the internet off to make him stop

Swap Transport Man (Teaches Food)

- A shopping trolley, he makes the main three go to the supermarket lol

- Less actively malicious and more senile old man can't read the labels so he's just tossing everything into the cart

- Does the whole cannibalism thing but this time it's even more obviously cannibalism because what they're eating looks humanoid

Swap Electracy (Teaches Dreams)

- Girl straight up looks like an ai generated image oopsie

- Preferred method of tormenting is the electric chair as opposed to drowning in oil and gas a big wide smile the entire time in a super creepy way

- Swap!Duck starts messing with the controls and it makes them pixilate into something else and start singing about something totally irrelevant, little freak

And that's all I got for now sorry

[pbandjesse]

Today was a much better day. Emotionally I waa much happier. And that lead to a much better day.

I still wasnt thrilled to wake up. But I felt cute. And James made me a sandwich and packed me a muffin. Made me feel loved. But I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to be home. But Marcus messaged me that he was staying home. So I could not. I needed to go. It would be good for me to be there with the kids.

I got the bus after a nice bike ride. And got to work on time. I spent the morning doing a little painting for our mural. And then down to see the kids.

Emotionally I could feel myself being better today. So when i had the kids sitting down for yoga, both little kids and big kids, I explained to them my feelings, and how I may have been harsh yesterday. And so i apologized. Because they should hear that adults can own up to mistakes and ackowlege bad days. And we had a good yoga time. The big kids enjoyed ballet. At least most of them. It was still nice.

Art time was fun. I walked around with Bob the lizard on my shoulder. Which freaked all the adults out and made the kids laugh. And we painted and me and Tiffany worked on cleaning the room. The kids who were done helped organize. We sorted paper by color for next weeks project. The youth workers washed containers and fixed up our water color pallets. It was a productive morning.

We had some good times in reading. Lunch was good. At recess poor Bre'Asia rolled over her foot on the skateboard and there were a lot of tears. But I talked her down. I felt bad that she got hurt but I felt proud that she calmed down and we got some ice and worked on some breathing. She was limping a little but she'll be okay.

First time with the big kids I decide we were finally actually going to do some math. Mostly because one of the boys had have jokingly complained that we had only done science Technology and Engineering. Fair. I'm not very good at math. But what I am good at is budgeting. So that's what we did.

I reduce the concept of Economics to the kids. What is an economy. And then we figure it out how someone survives everyday. I asked the kids if any of them ever had a job. I had someone who said that they had mowed lawns or shovel snow. So they were landscapers. We had people who were babysitters. We had someone who had sold something at a bake sale so they were Baker now. We also had trash collectors. Because that's something that I have discovered is a thing in Baltimore. People who pay kids in the neighborhood to clean up. And that's really nice. So I made up prices. Or salaries. We went by the hour first. But before they found out what the pay was they all had to pick a job. They got an index card and they had to write down one of those for jobs on their next car. I didn't want them to pick the job that pay the most. So my landscapers made the most. And my babysitter's made the least. Trash collectors were up there as well and Bakers had two different pay scales. You were either an owner or you work at the bakery. It was only a $5 difference.

Once they had all chosen that we had to figure out what our daily pay was. They took their hourly rate and they times 2 by 8. And then once they have that we had a big r weekly. So they times that by 5. And then we got to figure it out monthly. So we did it by 4. Lot of math.

Then we talked about once and needs. What is a want and what doesn't eat. I basically gave my speech that I give at The Company Store at the BMI. And then I signed prices two things. You spend $200 a month on food. You can spend $50 to $100 a month on clothing. And then you got to choose if you live in a house or apartment or mansion. You chose if you rented or owned. And then I told you how much you paid.

At the end are trash collectors had a good amount of money left over if they own to their house and only spent $50 a month on clothing. No one who had a mansion have any left over money. Most of them were negative $2,000. Whatever babysitters have $50 left over and one had five. It was really interesting to see how they would choose to spend to their needs budget and what they would have left over for a want. I think it kind of opened up their eyes a little bit and that was cool. But we didn't talk about taxes in our math. So we talked about what is attacks why do they take 35 to 45% of our paychecks. Talked about how it pays for public school and the roads and the fire department and homeless shelters and services. How taxes are not a bad thing even though they can feel annoying. Let me talk about minimum wage. I had all of the people that we're getting paid on our board at base level Maryland minimum wage and then it only went up from there. But then we talked about what federal minimum wages. How it hasn't changed since I had my first job in 2009. How even though they're talkin about raising it to $15 an hour it's going to have the same spending power as $7.25. And why that sucks.

People always complain that I never learned how to do a budget or pay taxes in school. Never really learned all taxes were. And I think that's fair. So it was good to be able to talk to my kids today even though they're only between the ages of 10 and 13. I think it was good for them to start thinking about it.

I went took my break after that. Mackenzie was very upset about something so she came inside with me. We both just laid on the couch has listen to her headphones. The day was over. I finished up with little kids. Handed out snacks. Cleaned the room. And then I took everyone downstairs to go home.

James texted me that the landlady for the apartment that we want finally got back to her. The holdup has been that his apartment is not answering her phone calls. She's trying to get some background information and get some contacts on him and they're just not answering. I'm not shocked because they don't seem to answer for anything. The hole-in-the-wall, leaking shower. Annoying but I think she is going to try one more time and if she doesn't hear anything back she's probably just going to go off of my stuff and jobs and things like that. And it's not definite but I think we have the apartment. I told James I'm not going to believe we have it until the keys are in my hand. And if we don't get it I'll be sad but that just means somewhere better is out there.

I took the bus home. I stopped for Chipotle. I got it without sour cream so that I could more easily packet for tomorrow on our field trip. I got back here and I ate my tacos. And packed away the food. I did some sewing. The quilt is almost finished. There's a couple places I'm going to have to hand sew because of where the beads are. But most of it's complete. I only cut myself on sewing needles four times today. I worked until my back hurt. And then I hung out for a bit.

James is at a dinner with all of his boyfriends. I hope he's having a good time. I had a panic because sweet peas mouth is still very swollen so I tried to give him a Benadryl and he started foaming at the mouth and crying and I thought he was choking it was really upsetting. But he's okay. I gave him some milk to get the taste out of his mouth. And I took a bath and tried to calm down. And now I'm going to work on my backpack for the field trip tomorrow. We are going to a ropes course. We're driving almost all the way to Virginia. I think. I'm not entirely sure where we're going. But I'm very excited. And it seems like only about half of our kids are actually coming so it maybe it'll just be like a nice chill day. Love a chill day.

So wish me luck. I am terribly afraid of heights so a Ropes Course in the trees is terrifying. But it'll be a good time. I love being in nature. But I love being with my kids. So it should be good. I hope you all have a great night. Sleep well. Be safe. Send Good Vibes.