#was this even interesting or a good idea

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Welcome to the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger.

[starry-bi-sky]

i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.

He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.

And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.

And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.

Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.

Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."

There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.

It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.

Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.

At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.

"Do you like to do anything?"

Nothing. Just silence.

Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.

Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.

Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.

And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.

He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.

Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.

So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.

"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"

"Don't."

He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.

Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"

"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."

It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"

The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."

Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."

And they fall back into silence.

Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."

He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.

(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)

At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.

Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.

("Tucker told me once--") ("Tucker?") ("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")

(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)

(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)

It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."

The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."

The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.

When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.

Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."

When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.

Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.

[pixlatedvampire]

It’s been ten years since I finished a drawing so please enjoy these two idiots I drew all the way back in 2021 😭🤣

[otaku553]

I have an agenda.

Long hair teenage sabo.

[elfcollector]

I feel ill. All the fools and villains who ever fell for my ploys, they're — they're here!

[sysig]

“It could be that the loss of her children drove the Queen deeper into her darker desires...but, I don’t believe she was fighting against them that hard before that particular tragedy. No monster does.” (Patreon)

Bonus:

Hmm, wonder what he could cover those holes with :3c

[coddda]

thinking about L Change the WorLd vs DN Anime parallels again so here's a thoughtdump (basically just an extension of this because I do have more in-depth thoughts about these)

Just. The contrast between how they each react to the other's death. Ough.

When L dies Light is, frankly, a pathetic mess about it. I mean the funeral scene speaks volumes on its own but it's also about how despite the hatred and utter spite Light has there's also that almost petty respect he has for L when he meets Near, how pissed he is at this dude for basically being a "mockery" to L's legacy. It's contradictory. He hates this guy, he'll gloat about the man's death to his own grave, he'll stare off into space and still see his face, he respects him more than he did anyone else, it's a fucking mess.

Meanwhile in LCtW L is openly sentimental about Light's death from the start. Where Light was Coping and Seething while trying to destroy what's left of L's legacy L decides to keep Light's watch (a useless, broken watch, which is really just another one of Light's murder weapons) not out of spite or pettiness or a sign of victory but just for remembrance. He Knows that he was Kira, it's something that only a handful of other people know, just him and the taskforce, and he talks about Kira with some other people in the novel, about what he did, but he still remembers him and mentions him first and foremost as a friend. His only friend, even.

It's about the way they remember each other when they're about to die (if we're taking the anime version of death note at least)

Like, Light goes into the Yellow Box Warehouse thinking that this is it, this is where he'll finally destroy any trace of L that's left. His successors, his task force, destroy his name and title, destroy his role as a false detective and simply Be Kira but he ends up failing anyway. When he firsts realizes he's lost, he's flailing and panicking and running, and while he's running all he really has his regret. When he's laying on the stairs and after Ryuk writes his name, while the credits are rolling, he looks pained when they show the close up shots of his face. But in the last few scenes after they reveal the vision of L that subtly changes. He doesn't struggle in the last few seconds like every other character that dies in the show, or even the way he did in the manga, he just closes his eyes while seeing L stare back at him. In contrast to the way that he dies in the manga Light's death here could almost be interpreted as peaceful. Hell, the way he looks during the close-up shot of his eye is almost calm.

("That was like. The last 1/1000th of Light's life and it was spent on L lmao" - One of my irls)

Meanwhile L is (for the mostpart) far more accepting of his fate from the get-go. There's nothing left that he could take from Light, everything he'd built up as Kira was already being dismantled anyway, but even then L doesn't think illy of him at all. If anything he finds himself regretting the fact that he couldn't make Light see where he'd gone wrong, I think it's pretty fair to assume that he wished that Light didn't have to die at all (but L's still dying no matter what. so,).

And on his Final day alive he still decides to take the time out of his last day to go to the Yagami household and pay his respects to Light. Even in his literal last minutes alive he thinks of Light welcomingly. When he addresses him that last time it isn't as Kira, and he almost never goes out of his way to think of what he did as Kira unless someone else brings it up, instead he just thinks of Light, his friend that he hopes to see again. It's crazy.

It's This Shit (yes I put this in the first post but shh)

Fucking. L thinking of Light and Mu in his last moments and dying peacefully vs Light seeing L as he realizes he's going to die and dying in the most peaceful way he ever does in literally any adaptation of Death Note

It's about the way that they're both portrayed seeing the other's 'ghost'. I hate everything by the way.

It's about how they both feel lost in a sense after the other is gone, when they're finally unrivalled.

It's about the fact that L points out at the beginning of the series that he can tell that both he and Kira are childish and hate to lose, but at the end of the anime Light has to come face-to-face with the realization that he was still defeated by L, and in LCtW L concedes that, yes, he did ultimately fail to catch Kira, and was still defeated by him in a sense.

Just. Holds head in hands.

It's Light destroying anything L had left, still trying his hardest to do so until his own downfall vs L making the conscious effort to preserve the memory of who Light was (who he really was, because only the taskforce knows he was Kira, not even Misa or Light's family) and choosing to remember him even in his last moments. It's Light fucking cackling and gloating at his own victory at L's own grave vs. L having Light's broken watch around his own wrist for safekeeping vs. Light believing that Near will never live up to or replace L as the world's greatest detective vs. L still referring to Light as "his only friend" when talking about him to others. It's about L already coming to terms with his death and welcoming the world of nothingness with Light vs Light running at the end of his life still thinking he can defeat L, before seeing him after Ryuk finally writes his name in the Death Note. Idk the contrast is just. Holds head in hands. Like the fuck is wrong with both of them.

You know, the plot of LCtW takes place over the course of 23 days and starts in a short period after Light's death. In canon DN there is a 5-year timeskip after a short period after L's death, with little information about it other than Light joining the NPA. There's no flashbacks/forwards or anything that really happens like, at all during this time either, the story just fast forwards to Mello and Near making their moves. L spends 23 days solving his final case, reminisces about Light a few times along the way, sometimes fondly, sometimes painfully, pays respects to him, then dies peacefully. Light spends 5 years-- 1,826 days uh.... Living. I guess? Except there's nothing of any note about it, by the looks of it. Not a single interesting enough thing- except a footnote about Light joining the NPA, which he was going to do anyway, and another about Kira's increased killings, which is to be expected -for the reader to know about. That's 79 times the length of the plot of LCtW, and you know what Light Yagami probably spent the majority of that time. Bored. L is described as "lost and unfocused" when he defeats Kira, as he is finally, definitively unrivaled. Light becomes the "God of the New World", and what then? He won but there's no challenge left. There's this sequence in LCtW where L rapidfire solves a bunch of cases from all over the world, yet he hardly seems to care about it at all, he just marks them done and then moves on like none of it meant a thing. Just. Yeah. orz these guys are Miserable do you get what I mean

I fucking hate them. And they're like this in every fucking universe (Don't get me Started on the jdrama). Thank you LCtW for ruining my life :thumbsup:

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[turtleblogatlast]

One of the biggest things that makes me see Leo as trans is absolutely the size of his carapace in comparison to his brothers’.

And I’m not talking about height! I’m specifically looking at his shell here, because when you compare him to the others, particularly Donnie who is nearly the same height as Leo, it’s very clear that Leo’s carapace is much longer in proportion to the rest of his body.

Like - standing side by side, even though Donnie is shorter his carapace ends noticeably higher up than Leo’s does. And I like this not only because it really helps push the idea that Leo could very likely be trans (or intersex!), but it’s also just a fun design difference between them.

(It also lends way to future scenarios of Donnie eventually getting taller than Leo, but sitting down still has Leo being the taller one haha.)

[imaybe5tupid]

Traveling alone is quite dangerous for a girl.

(my toshiro overcompensating trans man hc)

bonus 1

bonus 2 ft. toshiyuki (middle brother) grown up a little but still a menace

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[untherapized-eddie]

i have to say in general it bothers me a little the idea that any love interest having any issues with buck & eddie's relationship (or buck's relationship with the whole 118 for that matter) would make that love interest wrong or immature or whatever. everyone is different, has different emotional needs, and i think someone realizing they actually need more from someone than frequently being chosen second would be a totally valid thing and would not make them a bad person.

answer me this: would you be singing the same tune if buck was dating someone who consistently prioritized his friend(s) over him?

[puhpandas]

I love ggy so much how did they accidentally make the most intriguing hypothetical gay romance ever

[ctl-yuejie]

a taste

[ne0nwithazero]

Meet Button & Match

Characters in the Cable AU tend to come in pairs, duos or dichotomies, and Button and Match are no exception! :) Being the two game controllers that Kris and Asriel used to play with on their old TV, the twins have always been inseparable.

After the Divide, many darkners were left purposeless, and with their friend Tenna having gone missing, Button and Match were left out of use. Roaming the Channels and the City, causing trouble, picking play fights, and hoping to find someone who would want to play with them.

Though their idea of "playing" might be a bit too aggressive for the average darkner. Who doesn't like fighting games?

[sysig]

So much experimenting to be done, where to even start (Patreon)