#this whole plot A+++

[ohtendril]

+ bonus

[thornrings]

36/64-1: art therapy?

[linkcharacter]

another one passes.

[spookberry]

[insert cute caption here]

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[collgeruledzebra]

the thing about trying to recommend fiction podcasts to someone who isn't familiar with them is that not only are so so many genres represented but also the level of production can fall anywhere from "basically an audiobook" to "major motion picture minus the pictures"

[starry-eyed-psychopomp]

You’d think that omegaverse aus would work really well for SVSSS, what with PIDW being a shitty internet porn series with 10,000 variations of sex pollen, but if you really try to rework the whole universe for abo you’ll find that it would actually crumble the very foundations of the series. This is due to the simple fact that the entire plot is spurred by Su Xiyan’s pregnancy, with her giving birth to Binghe alone while Tianlang-jun is imprisoned, but if the series was omegaverse there is no way in all hell that notorious dom sugar daddy masc Su Xiyan wouldn’t be the alpha to submissive and breedable omega Tianlang-jun. ANY other possibility is OOC on a world-breaking level. In this essay I will

[suntails]

true love

[finifugue]

Imagine being Jack Harkness, seeing the Doctor flirt and fall in love with a brown-haired, blue-eyed, cocky, sardonic american man from the future in period dress only in it for the money with a cool ship and a tragic backstory who risks his life to save his blonde female friend and gets left behind to die and being like. dude.

[fumifooms]

Omg guys he just genuinely likes bugs and mollusks and critters 😭💘💔 Forced to noble when he just wanna crouch and watch things skitter in the dirt…

[chaos-bringer-13]

Vlad, Dan and Dani move across dimensions to Gotham because of some bad stuff happening in their own dimension. Vlad has a lot of his money with him in cash, and they quickly get themselves fake id's as father and his two children. Vlad's plan is to keep low profile, wait it out and then return. Dan and Dani don't care about Vlad's plan.

Vlad is shady, Dan and Dani are causing shenanigans, and a bunch of coincidences leads to people believing that they're some sort of mafia family.

Some idiots try to rob Dani and she blurts out "Do you know who my dad is?". Dan emerges from the shadows, sends Dani off and makes extremely specific and detailed threats of slow and painful death to the would-be robbers. He finishes the speech by adding that they would be wishing for him to do all of that if his and Dani's father found out about the robbery.

Then Dan accidentally recruits a group of goons by beating up their boss and feeling kinda responsible for the henchmen.

Then Dani steals the talons.

Dan has a fight over territory with one of the smaller rogues.

Dani steals Scarecrow's chemicals.

All the while they keep convincing people that this is all a part of some bigger plan of Masters family. First it's just a misunderstanding, then they keep doing it to annoy Vlad. Some people think that Masters is just a surname, some think that Master is a rogue's name. After a while everyone knows that there's an up-and-coming crime family.

Vlad is entirely oblivious. He doesn't know shit. He ends up making a small organisation (restaurant? car repair shop?) to hire people who keep coming to him. He's not sure why his children tell all these people that he can help but they are in trouble, so he helps. And then helps again, and again. All the places he opens look like crime fronts.

Vlad is still unaware that he's a mob boss.

Maybe at some point Dan and Dani think that Vlad figured this out (because its obvious) but doesn't say anything because the police has bugged their house or because he wants plausible deniability.

Obviously all of this ends with the Bats deciding to confront Masters. It's also the perfect moment for Danny to enter.

Here, have a shitty meme showing the moment.

Danny: I left you here fOR ONE MONTH

Vlad: It's not my fault!

Danny: I figured. Dani, if I give you a candy, will you tell me what the hell you've done?

Dani: What kind of candy?

Danny, handing out a Yellow Lantern ring: A Ring Pop.

Dani, snatching it: We accidentally started a mob family :D

[egophiliac]

was gonna wait 'til I'd done all the poms, but it's been a day, so have Vil with a Salazzle 🍎

[hailsatanacab]

Family Dinners - dpxdc

"Holy shit, you're Bruce Wayne!" Danny gaped, jabbing a finger at the man sitting at the head of the table.

The bustling dining room goes silent as everyone turns to look at him.

"Danny, who did you think was going to be here?" Tim asks, disbelief plain in his voice and Danny feels his face flush red.

"Sorry, I, uh, I guess I just never put it together. Tim Drake-Wayne. Wayne Manor. It, uh, makes sense now." He laughs sheepishly and scrubs at his neck before slumping back down into his chair.

"Well," Tim says with an indulgent sigh, "at least I know you're not just friends with me for my connections."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry, I just never thought about it, I guess."

Danny sinks lower as everyone around him laughs. Come to dinner, he said, the food is the best, he said, ignore the family, he said. Danny really wishes he'd listened to Tim and just ignored them—almost as much as he's regretting accepting the offer in the first place—but... he's having dinner with Batman.

Ancients, that's so weird!

The last time he saw Batman was in the future and, suffice it to say, it was not going well. There hadn't really been time for family dinners there.

Wait. Family dinners?

He peers around the table, openly gawking at everyone as it all clicks into place.

"Everything alright, Danny? Now realising who everyone else is?" Tim asks with a roll of his eyes.

"Uh... something like that..." Danny mumbles as everyone laughs again.

From further down the table, the smallest Wayne scoffs and clicks his tongue.

"I thought you said he was smart, Drake?"

"So, you all do it, too, then?" he asks, ignoring the jibe. Danny's only a little bit jealous as he thinks of how much easier they must have it, how much easier it'd be if his family had been on his side, too. "You all work together?"

"Nah," Dick says from across the table with a brilliant grin. "Tim's the only one that works with Bruce, we all have different jobs. I'm a police officer in Bludhaven."

"Disgusting." Danny blurts out without thinking—because seriously, what kind of self-respecting vigilante would also be a police officer?—before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Sorry."

The whole table laughs again, the loudest being the blonde girl a few spaces down from Dick. Look, Danny wasn't really paying attention to names when they were all paraded in front of him. Dick only gets remembered because his name is a joke.

Come on, Danny, recover!

"That's, uh, not what I meant, though."

"Oh?" Dick asks, cocking his head slightly to the side. Is it Danny's imagination or does his smile tense slightly?

"Yeah, I mean like, you know, in costume. It must make it so much easier to have everyone together like this."

"Costume? What do you mean?"

Yeah, Danny's not imagining it, everyone tenses up at that. It's really only now that he's realising that this probably isn't how he should bring up that he knows about their... night time activities. In fact, he probably shouldn't be bringing it up at all.

"Uuhhh..." Danny looks wildly around the table as he continues making his stupid noise. Think, think, think! There must be a way out of this!

"Danny?" Tim asks, looking concerned.

"Oh, Ancients, this isn't how I wanted it to go at all," he mutters, slipping even further into his chair. He's almost on the floor now and he so, so wishes it could just swallow him up.

His real first meeting with Batman was meant to be cool! He had planned to be Phantom, maybe save them from a tight spot, prove his worth as a mysterious and powerful ally as thanks for the help Batman gave him in the future.

"Danny, what are you talking about?" Tim starts tugging on his sleeve in an attempt to pull him back up from his pit of despair.

Eventually, Danny relents and sits up straighter, hiding his face in his hands and whining all the while.

"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect him to be here and it threw me off so now I look stupid and it's so embarrassing!" he wails, flailing his arms wide. "Why wouldn't you warn me that Batman was your adopted dad, Tim? Couldn't you have let me know?"

"I'm sorry, what? Danny are you alright? There's no way Bruce can be Batman, look at him!"

"Yeah," the blonde girl laughs from the bottom of the table, "look at him! That's a wet noodle of a man! Batman can actually do things, B is incapable of pretty much everything."

"Thank you, Stephanie," Bruce sighs, massaging his forehead.

It's... Those are the first words Danny's heard Batman say since everything went down and it's enough to knock him out of his embarrassment.

It's really good to hear his voice again. Especially now, when it's strong and healthy and full of personality—even if that personality is little more than a tired father right now—far better than how it had been, at the end.

Danny sits up, back straight, and grins. He's got this. He remembers it perfectly. Some people count sheep to fall asleep, Danny repeats his mantra to be certain that he'll never forget it.

"Gamma alpha upsilon tau iota mu epsilon, 42, 63, 28, 1 colon 65 dash 9."

Once again, the whole table falls into silence.

"Holy shit..." breathes the other D name (Duke? Danny's pretty sure he's Signal) from opposite Stephanie. "Isn't that...?"

"The time travelling code." The littlest Wayne says stiffly. "We have met in the future?"

"That's not just the time travelling code, Dami." Dick says, looking between Danny and Bruce. "That's the family time travelling code."

Danny's grin freezes in place.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"1 colon 65 dash 9." Dick explains, still flicking between him and Bruce. "It means you've been adopted into the family and we should all treat you as such, no questions asked."

"Tell you what, I'm about to ask a question." Danny says, dumbstruck. "You just told me it was a code to identify time travellers, not anything about being adopted! What the hell, B?"

Bruce looks about as shellshocked as Danny feels.

"We must have been close," he says finally, after opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water a few times.

"No! Not that close!" Danny reels back, taking a deep breath ready to refute it all, but... "Well, I mean, you found me when I first got stuck, and you helped me get better despite being... And then we fought together against the, uh, bad guy, before he, um, he... before you couldn't."

An uncomfortable beat passes while they all pick up on what Danny tried so hard not to say.

"So, you're not from the future, then, you travelled there and came back?" Tim asks, breaking the tension and leaning forward with a glint in his eye.

"Yeah, it was a whole end of the world thing, but don't worry about it," Danny says with a hand wave, "It's all kosher now, won't ever happen."

"What did happen?"

"Seriously, don't worry about it, we cool."

"How long in the future was it?"

"About ten years? You were pretty spry for an old man, B," Danny laughs, wishing they'd get off the topic of what happened and get back to the adoption bit.

Everyone shares degrees of a cautious smile as they relax out of the shock, and Dick—whose grin is the biggest��says, "No wonder you got the family code, you're already riffing on him like one of us. How long were you there for?"

"A week, before I managed to get back to my present and stop him then."

"A week? Jeez, B, that has to set some kind of record, seriously."

"Oh!" Danny says, sitting bolt upright and blinking in surprise before pointing at Dick and bouncing in his seat. "You're Nightwing!"

"What?"

"That's exactly what Nightwing said when Batman told me the code! Makes so much more sense now."

Dick laughs and claps his hands, delighted.

"You were not formally adopted?" The grumpy small one—Dami?—asks, his face pinched.

"I didn't even know I was informally adopted."

"And your parents? Are they alive or dead?"

"Damian, stop—"

"They were dead in the future, but they're alive now." Danny says, looking down. He fiddles with the tablecloth, twisting the fabric around his fingers as he fights down the pang of sadness that he always feels when he thinks of them now. He forces a bright smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look too strained. "I just, uh, can't talk to them much, anymore."

"Damian," Dick warns, "1 colon 65 dash 9. Treat them as family, no questions asked."

"This is Damian treating him as family, the little turd has no manners." Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he gently bumps shoulders with Danny to knock him out of his funk. Danny can't help but send him a watery smile.

"I have the most exemplary manners, Drake, unlike some people." Damian spits, crossing his arms with a pout. "I was merely ascertaining his status to see how he could possibly fit into the family."

"I know this is all a bit sudden, Danny," Bruce smiles, ignoring Damian and reaching out to lay a warm hand on his arm, "for all of us. But if I felt strongly enough to give you that code after spending a week with you in the future, then you are more than welcome in this family, if you so choose it. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd like to get to know you a bit more."

"I know a threat when I hear it, Bruce." Danny snorts. "But, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry this is all so weird, it really wasn't how I wanted to find you again, but... I'm glad I did."

"So are we, Danny." Dick says, with a warm smile. "And formally or not, 1 colon 65 dash 9 means you're family. Welcome to the fun house! No take backs or refunds, sorry. You're stuck with us."

[sualne]

i imagine Mihawk doesn't know how to act around children.

(timeline)

[khattikeri]

another specific thing i love about mxtx's books is that they all have scenes that EASILY could've been romanticized rape if written by someone else, but she purposely avoids playing it straight.

we have the land of the tenders, a classic "aphrodisiac flowers" scenario. hua cheng (as hong'er) could've forced himself on xie lian in the name of "serving his prince." xie lian could've simply succumbed and forced himself on hong'er, or reluctantly asked him to "help." xie lian instead stabs himself and fights through the agonizing pain without touching hong'er at all, because hong'er was a teenage boy.

we have phoenix mountain, where wei wuxian is blindfolded and alone in a relatively deserted area, weakened unbeknownst to anyone else because he no longer has a golden core. and true enough, lan wangji pins wei wuxian down and forces a kiss on him. but lan wangji also immediately, viscerally regrets it. he runs away so furious with himself he starts punching trees. he never once does anything like it again until wei wuxian is resurrected and purposely, consensually provokes him into things like that.

finally, we have scum villain, and all its intricately twisted, overlapping power dynamics. i truly do mean the vast majority of the novel. there are SO many times where either shen qingqiu or luo binghe could've forced themselves on the other. and unlike mxtx's other books, scum villain does have a mutually nonconsensual sex scene where luo binghe is under the influence of dark, corrupt magic and shen qingqiu is unable to fight back because of system transmigration sci-fi shit.

however, unlike many other nonconsensual danmei sex scenes, this one is intentionally written to be extremely unsexy. the narration bluntly says it hurt for shen qingqiu. luo binghe, a fairly manipulative person, is sincerely distraught and in tears when he regains his senses. they both hated it equally and the story doesn't handwave that away. neither of them get horny over it. luo binghe especially loathes remembering it. after they get together, whenever shen qingqiu so much as furrows his brows during sex, luo binghe canonically stops.

the way mxtx plays around with and toes the line of consent tropes may not be comfortable for everyone to read, but i enjoyed her stories even more for it.

[tapeworrmart]

No fear 🔪

(commission for biker boot art inspired by the cowboy one I did last year :))