#this was supposed to be short too

[verieriberries]

the girls definitely thought bruce was a villain when they used their x-ray vision the first time they stepped foot in the manor.

batonium had been going at this dating thing for a couple of months now and the girls are still on the fence about bruce. surely if he was another sedusa situation then it wouldn’t take months for his evil plan to unfold, right? they can’t deny that bruce makes the professor happy but the trauma from the sedusa incident was deeper than they realized. as much as they wanted to trust bruce, there was something within them that couldn’t, at the moment.

bruce was briefed by the professor about the unfortunate ‘ex’ cause utonium felt like bruce deserved to know. it’s not that the girls hate him exactly, they’re just super cautious. bruce completely understands and only works harder to earn the girls’ trust. part of his campaign was opening up more of himself to the little family of the man he’d grown to adore. well, as much as he could while still keeping the batman thing a secret and trying to unlearn his emotionally constipated ways. (he goes to therapy because he deserves and needs it)

and so, what better way to open up more about himself than to open up his home to the utonium family? of course, he picked a day where most of the batfam were busy. only dick and alfred were in the house, which is basically the best combination bruce could think of when introducing a prospective partner who has children of their own.

alfred and dick were wonderful to the girls and it was heartwarming to see how content it made utonium feel. bruce felt like he could get away with wrapping his arm around the professor’s waist and it turned out to be true when he only got a glare from buttercup and no demands to unhand her dad.

on the girls’ part, dick and alfred were effective persuasion to start sort of warming up to the idea of boyfriend bruce. granted, it would take some time for them to actually start trusting the man but it was a start.

bruce was giving the utonium family a tour of the wayne manor, dick tagging along with them and supplying an inane story that happened in every space that they walked through. it was great entertainment for the girls and utonium as well. the batfam is nothing but rambunctious to say the least. buttercup was starting to think that damien might be her favorite of the bunch (oh how wrong/right she was).

they eventually reach the study that had the secret entrance to the batcave and blossom just suddenly has this niggling feeling. she’s an intuitive girl and her instincts have never steered her wrong before, no matter how young she was. deciding to trust herself, she uses her handy dandy x-ray vision and could see what she could only assume was an entrance to a secret villain lair. she wasted no time flying to her father’s side and her sisters were close behind despite their confusion.

utonium immediately chastised his daughters while bruce and dick momentarily paused before looking at each other.

“dad, we told you! he’s a bad guy!” blossom yelled causing her sisters to gasp and glare at bruce. dick couldn’t stop the loud cackle that pushed through his lips even if he tried. bruce looked confused.

“now what makes you say that?” utonium asked as he kneeled down. it had already been a few years since the science accident that created his daughters and while they were steadily growing, they were still quite small compared to his tall stature.

“he has a secret entrance to his villain lair behind the clock! bubbles and buttercup can look for themselves to prove that i’m telling the truth.”

after doing as their sister said, they flanked the professor with their assent that yes there IS a secret entrance to an evil lair there, we wouldn’t lie about it!

utonium knew his daughters had no reason to lie for something quite as serious as this so he could only look towards bruce for answers.

of all the ways that bruce could’ve revealed the batman to the professor, he didn’t expect that it would be like this. he had wanted to wait a bit more, maybe a year, before telling. and even then, he was hesitant about revealing the vigilante thing entirely. he was content to keep it a secret because he didn’t know how he could deal with utonium reacting negatively. it was only with the combined intervention of all his children and alfred that he even began to consider divulging his and his family’s alter egos to the utoniums. bruce couldn’t enter a relationship that he had hopes of lasting if he couldn’t share the single most important thing about him as a person.

he was really hoping that the moment he tells utonium would be under his own terms in which he had control over the situation but the girls just. poof. made all that hope go down the drain. he’d already been told by the professor that the girls were superpowered and that they had a range of abilities but it seems like he’d be putting x-ray vision into the list.

glancing at dick who was barely stifling his gighles, bruce sighed. “i’m not a villain or a bad guy. i’m. . . batman.”

now, utonium has heard of batman. who hasn’t? and ever since living in gotham, he’s been hearing more and more about the guy and he’s made an opinion. batman is good, though his slightly violent methods seem to suggest otherwise. gotham needs someone like the dark knight to keep things in check, and something that a lot of the public didn’t notice is that he was a lot more compassionate than they realized. why else would he send a gaggle of rogues to a psychiatric institution if not to give them the means to heal themselves? (utonium would feel differently about arkham whenever he finds out about the abuse and neglect that was prevalent in the facility.)

so when he heard buttercup say that the batman sounded very much like a villain name, utonium chuckled. and so, everyone’s attention was suddenly on him. his girls looked confused, wondering how he could laugh about this like it’s a light matter and he found himself smiling softly at them, silently wishing they’d stay this innocent for a little while longer.

“girls, remember how i told you about how townsville was before? how bad guys would always do bad things and that the people there would be too afraid to even go out of their homes?”

“yeah!” exclaimed buttercup. “but then you made us and we beat up the bad guys!” she looked very proud of that statement, as did her sisters. when utonium glanced at the waynes still standing in front of them, they both looked confused. utonium sighed.

“yes. you beat up villains so that they’d go to jail and everybody would be safe. it’s the same for batman.”

“oh.” they still looked unconvinced, but the professor always told them the truth. it was only dick’s comment, that batman was friends with superman, that made the girls release the tension that was holding them up. their shoulders relaxed as they regarded bruce with a curious look. bruce nodded at them, confirming everything that’s been said about him.

“so… you won’t hurt us mr. batman?” bubbles hesitantly asked and isn’t that heartbreaking, that the thought of bruce harming them was at the forefront of their minds

bruce kneeled on one knee to be eye level with utonium’s daughter. “i promise you, i would never harm you, your sisters or your father intentionally. if i end up being mean and hurting you guys, you have my explicit permission to beat me up.”

bubbles giggled, the most trusting of the three, and held out her pinky finger. “pinky promise? and you can’t break it ever.”

since they were still at the age where pinky promises were sacred, blossom and buttercup also held out their pinkies with determined looks. bruce’s lips quirked into a small smile, bringing up his own pinky to seal the deal with each of them. “i pinky promise.”

dick, when recounting what happened to the rest of the family when they arrived back at the manor and bruce was driving the utoniums back to their apartment, had a lot of to say about how adorable the girls were and how funny it was when they called bruce a bad guy.

jason had to interrupt him. “wait, what do you mean they beat up criminals in their hometown? aren’t they like, 3 years old?”

it was at that point everybody realised something. sure, damian was also young when he started as robin but that was mostly due to the hellish and dangerous training that he was put through under the league at such a young age. was it the same for the girls? what it they were being forced to do it? sure, they had powers but they were still children.

although they expected to feel excitement about meeting the utoniums soon, now they could only feel a small sense of dread.

[otaku553]

Quite frankly still obsessed with the three of them

A little procrastination doodle

[wasyago]

hmm....

[sygneth]

game of deduction

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

how about that uhhhhh Fantasy Julie. she gets her sword <3 no one can take it from her <3

rambles:

SIKE you get an extra, lower quality doodle

SIKE AGAIN here's the rambles

yeah... i caved and gave her a tail... I'm Not Sorry! it's cute! i wanted to stick with her sorta flower motif - it's stronger in her princess look, since I imagine that when she was part of the royals she was very blatantly flower power based. it was her Thing!

but a Julie free of her noble shackles... she deserves her big sword. like yeah, she has flower magic, but who needs it when she has a Giant Blade??? on the royalty vein, and if we're classifying "rainbow monster" as a species, i feel like horn size/curve would be a status symbol of some kind. maybe Julie would have kept her horns filed short. but if she ran away from that life... longer horns! i like to imagine that they'll keep growing until she has a pair of Extra Weapons attached to her head! curved forward like mammoth tusks maybe!

i imagine that like Frank, she goes with minimal armor - range of movement over protection, yk? some scale mail over her front, a thick leather flower over her chest w/ scalloped leather pauldrons, wrist armor and metal knuckles! i'd think that the faux-suspenders include a back sheath for her sword... i wish i'd thought of that Before i finished the little ref! i don't feel like going back and editing!

i imagine that she was forced to cut her hair when it got caught in something (a gelatinous cube, mayhaps). it didn't look good! don't let anime and Mulan fool you! cutting your own hair with a blade will not look nice! but someone - Eddie, probably, he's good with scissors i'd assume - cleaned it up for her. and hey, it didn't look bad! plus, Julie probably liked being able to just tuck up her long strands into her hat when she's feeling a bit more like a Julius than a Julie!

it's been a fun challenge transforming their canon outfits into a similar variation with fantasy flavoring and twists! i want them to suit the setting but still maintain Themselves! Julie's was tough i gotta admit. i was messing around with the princess look and the fighter look side-by-side. it worked better when i sat back and thought "fighter Julie is Julie unrestrained. that version would be more aligned with her canon look"

i wanted her princess form to look Restrained! she has to be a ~delicate flower~, a noble woman, pristine and poised and very much a princess. soft colors, poofy clothing, bright white gloves that are not to be sullied. carefully bundled up hair! jewelry! that dress must be Heavy and hard to move in! her tail must be so cramped under there!

but Julie Unleashed? violent pinks! rose gold accents! short skirt so that she can sprint and Kick! fun boots that she can be active in and delight in watching them get dirty! her hair is free to whip in the wind and get caught in things! fun straps and Deadly Accessories! a sword that she stole from the royal armory on her way out the window! she has forearm wraps both to match Frank and to support her wrists!

[celluloidbroomcloset]

I've been thinking about this exchange between Izzy and Ed in "Discomfort in a Married State":

"For years I've followed your every whim, I've managed your increasingly erratic moods, I've massaged this crew when they were worried about your judgment—"

"Mm, sounds stressful, Izzy."

"It is."

Izzy has assigned himself the role of "managing" Blackbeard, but it's quite obvious, both in Ed's response and in the way he says it, that Ed has never wanted or expected him to. And he continues to try to manage Ed, even when Ed clearly tells him not to.

Both Ed and Stede have that word "whim" thrown at them by people who don't really understand them - Izzy and Mary - and both at first resist the word (Stede even says "I object to the word whim"), then internalize it. It seems what are being called whims by outsiders are actually expressions of deep desires that neither Ed nor Stede have the verbal or emotional language to describe.

It's not a whim that has Stede running off to a be a pirate - it's all the frustration and loneliness and repression - and it's not a whim to go back to Mary - it's a result of guilt and self-loathing. It's not a whim that has Ed following the Revenge to meet Stede - it's wanting to find someone who might be a kindred spirit. But neither of them can openly articulate those feelings, either to the people who are calling them whims or fully to themselves. Stede goes further than Ed does because so many of his desires are located in his repressed homosexuality, and once he's able to articulate that - with Mary's help - he understands his feelings. He still believes that he's "whim-prone" in other ways, but not when it comes to Ed.

Ed is especially leery about his own desires, which have been managed by other people for so long, and about Stede's. His idea to "run off to China" is a whim in a certain sense, but it's expressing a desire to leave behind their old identities and form something new together. His desire to "take it slow" is about his own healing independent of Stede, but it's also built on a fear that Stede is going to disappear again. After they have sex, Ed again falls into the fear that it was a whim, but it's not his whim - it's Stede's. He's scared that what meant so much to him doesn't mean as much to Stede, or not enough for Stede to be able to let go of piracy and fame. He's worried that piracy wasn't a whim, but he was.

Both of them have been managed most of their lives, in different ways and by people and structures that they never wanted to manage them in the first place. It was all about keeping them in settled, socially acceptable places where they can't escape, and casting doubt on the legitimacy of their desires. (I don't think Izzy, and certainly not Mary, consciously think of it in these terms, and Mary especially has had to subsume her own needs as much as Stede has.)

In the scene with Izzy, Ed's evidently pushing back at the management, and he probably has been for a while. But this is likely the first time where his desires are getting more articulated, after his conversation with Stede, and are the same moment when Izzy starts trying to exert even more control over him.

His finding the letter is a mirror to Stede's conversation with Mary - the realization of who he is and who the man he loves is, and that the feelings he's experienced not just for but from Stede are not whims but bone-deep love.

[emry-stars-art]

You know when babies are so tired that they’re fussing too much to sleep until you put their head down on your shoulder or something and they pass out immediately

Baby shark has been swimming for a long time with no way to take a break. Hello Whalemack 🐋

(More on Whalemack here)

[britcision]

Hey by the way if anyone tries to deny Kabru is a judgy bitch I’ll send you the panels of him calling everyone worthless

Respect his duality he’s a good boy who genuinely wants the best for everyone but also thinks he has to do everything himself despite being the Least Qualified Ever because no one else lives up to his standards

He doesn’t even want to look at monsters but oh well every single other person is a piece of shit let’s go get my friends killed over and over again

He’s interesting BECAUSE he’s not one dimensional Good Pure Boy all the time, he’s a judgy manipulative little shit who will eat monsters if it gets him towards his goals, which are “nobody should be killed by monsters actually” and “i want to know what the fuck is going on”

He coulda had ONE honest conversation with Laios and known literally everything about him, Laios has never met a filter

But Kabru was raised for a good chunk of his life (6-18) by Milsiril, and for all he believes elves can never understand short lived people… he picked up the whole “I must be secretive and always conceal my own motivations”

He only breaks under literally the most intense high pressure situation he’s likely to see in his life, which along with being the potential goddamn apocalypse is also a rehashing of All Of His Personal Trauma oh and also Every Suspicion He Ever Had About This One Guy

He’s not more honest because he’s an honest person, he’s more honest because he forgot how sentences work when he finally caught Laios and doesn’t have the bandwidth to play the constant 4D chess in his head that underpins his EVERY INTERACTION WITH EVERYONE EVER until Marcille takes the lion

Kabru’s a pretty good person, with extremely good motivations and goals.

He’s a manipulative son of a bitch who will do anything, anywhere, anytime, to meet those goals, and spends a solid chunk of his time and energy on reading people so he can be someone they like… regardless of his own feelings.

He’s the living The Good Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few, and solidly puts himself in with “the few” by doing shit he hates because he thinks it’ll help.

Isn’t that more interesting than “oh he would never manipulate anyone, he’s so nice and good all the time”?

[hyakunana]

"Son, please— we're having a moment here."

[mushimoom]

hello foolish tag its me agai- *instantly gets splatted by tomatoes*

[shoccolat]

benrey want smooch

[puppyeared]

adhd is when you shoot for the moon but you forgot the rocket fuel and by the time you realize it everyones already on the moon and then you panic and crash into the sun and it explodes

[purplegori]

malevolent is wild because the two main characters are literally Everything all at once. they're a queerplatonic relationship. they're romantically married. they've been thrice divorced. they're constantly learning about each other. they barely know each other at all. they argue every fucking minute. they have an undying loyalty to each other. like i'm SAYING man it just never ends

[haeoflii]

it's the sillies!!

this drawing has been gathering dust in my gallery for months now but I keep forgetting to post it😅 please ignore how messy it is since I was too lazy to draw properly that day

(drawing w/o text below)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

what kind of favour do you require in exchange for an equineswap jiang yanli

I will fight god if that's what it takes.

No favour required! These guys were in the original doodle dump!

[solarpunkani]

Psst, hey.

Hey you.

Come closer.

Listen to what I'm about to say good and well, alright?