#//will i pretty up/rewrite this post later? probably not

[mechahero]

//I said I was going to talk about this so here.

Lambda can't really wildly teleport all over the place (although he sure can look like it), he has to have a place to teleport to. And even then, he has to clearly visualize the place he wants to teleport to in his mind. Anything he can deem as a landmark to use as a grounding point does help a lot. Or having a picture of the place and focusing on that. However, even with that, it can be a struggle for him to go place to place.

Doesn't stop him from being a very effective killer though.

Places may be a bit hard for him to remember but people are not. Especially if it's someone he's chasing down. And since it's thought based (for the most part) teleportation, all he needs to do is think of the person he's going after and he'll be back on their trail in no time.

[angelpuns]

Kid Leo Au: "Bad Dream"

Part 1!!

I'm trying something a little different for this week's updates :) I'm gonna do two big updates instead of 3 smaller ones, and we'll see if that's a better fit for the main comic :3

This is the second mini arc before chapter 12, featuring Draxum and Leo! It's a bit shorter than the last mini arc, only 1 1/2 pages long, so it will be over pretty quickly :)

I've begun sketching Chapter 12 and have written a blurb to go off of, but I will probably end up rewriting and having a couple of drafts, so it may be later than expected. i was gonna take a week off between the last mini arc and this one, but I unexpectedly finished the first page pretty quickly, so I figured why not go ahead and post it :)

Anyway, spiel over, I hope you all enjoy this quick side story!

Kid Leo Au Masterpost | Next

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Broken Mind | Josh Washington x Reader

......

Another day, another Until Dawn rewrite by yours truly <3

I've got Rami Malek on the brain again so I decided to revise this old 2016 fic I wrote about Josh being accompanied by Reader in the shed (after his prank reveal). Changed a few things around and added stuff from the prologue, but all in all the plot's the same (except they're together)

Anyways enjoy!

......

"Hey, [y/n]. Got a special delivery for you."

Hearing the quiet giggles of the Washington sisters, you looked up from your phone and smiled upon seeing your boyfriend being held up by the two of them.

He looked plastered as hell and half-asleep, but his eyes were slightly open. The moment they landed on you, lopsided grin spread across his lips.

"[Y/n]...baby...?"

"Yes. It's me, Josh." With a chuckle, you put down your phone and assisted the girls in helping him lay on the sofa. You decided to let him rest on top of you, seeing as he already had his arms wrapped around your torso. "Jeez, so clingy, huh? How much did you drink?"

"Mhm...I forgot.." His words were slurred.

"Of course you did." Putting your arms around him, you lightly scratched at his scalp with your fingertips, hearing his hums of content as he looked to his sisters.

While Hannah left, Beth smiled back and took a picture of him being all cuddly with you, reminding herself to send to you later. After that, she finally left you both alone.

"They take good care of you."

"Yeah..they're..the best." Josh mumbled tiredly into your chest, hugging you tighter. "But 'm glad you're here...thank you for being by my side. I love you sooooooooooo much."

"Of course, Joshie. I love you, too." You chuckled, holding him close until he dozed off again, before you ended up falling asleep yourself, enveloped by the warmth of the cabin fire and the one you loved most.

He probably won't remember much of this in the morning, but that was fine.

For once, everything felt right in the world.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"[Y/n], honey? Baby? Sweetheart?"

Blinking, you returned to the cold and cruel present, looking to the man tied to the post.

"Yes, Josh?" You sighed tiredly, wiping the blood from the corner of your lip.

"I'm pretty cold. How 'bout we loosen these restraints a little and-?"

"I'm sorry, but...I don't think that's a good idea right now."

"What? I....I can't believe it. You would let those jerks do this to me?!! Your boyfriend? After all I've done for you?!!" Angrily, Josh tugged at his restraints, gnashing his teeth at you like some animal. "I feel hurt. Who does this to someone they love?!"

"First of all, I didn't tie you up. And second...you're not the only one who's gotten hurt tonight."

"If anyone deserves to feel hurt, it should be me! After what they did to my sisters..they had it coming."

As much as you wanted to snap at him for acting this way, you knew that he wasn't well, and getting angry right back wasn't going to make anything better.

Instead, you opted to look outside the shed, observing the snowfall while trying to ignore the sounds of him whining and struggling with the ropes.

Such sights used to calm your nerves, but now...it was nothing more than a grim reminder of how long and unforgiving this night has been, and how there's still a few hours until sunlight and rescue arrived.

How did you get here?

Well, it was supposed to be a reunion between friends.

You and Josh were still together after the horrible tragedy that befell his sisters exactly one year prior, and you were with him through the long days he spent trying to isolate himself, and the difficult nights he spent wishing he didn't wake up at all.

You stayed with him no matter what.

No matter how many times he tried pushing you away...you always stayed. And while he didn't express it as much as he wanted to, he appreciated it.

That's the only reason why he didn't subject you to the "prank" he had laid out for the rest of the group.

You knew his passion for film projects, having helped him with some small YouTube ones yourself. You knew that this year, he wanted to do something to "really bring the gang back together", and you let him be when he insisted on working alone.

God, why didn't you press him on what exactly this prank entailed?

Why didn't you pick up the signs that he was off his meds?

What he enacted was horrific beyond measure--a prank that you didn't even think he was capable of carrying out.

One that seemed so real that you were almost convinced that you lost him to a murderer.

When Chris came to you sobbing in remorse over how the "Psycho" tricked him into killing your boyfriend, you didn't know what to feel. You wanted to see the body to confirm it, but given his and Ashley's reactions..it wasn't worth scarring your eyes or mind over.

It left you unbelievably sad and numb, although you were left confused when through his blubbering, he admitted that the saw blade was rigged to kill Josh despite choosing to save him.

That was the first sign that you knew something was off.

You didn't know anybody that held a massive grudge against him to the point of rigging a trap to murder him only.

But only after Josh revealed everything to Chris, Ashley, Sam, Mike, and you....that's when it all made sense.

And you felt betrayed.

You couldn't believe he'd orchestrate this whole scheme behind your back.

How could you have been so naive and trusting?

You felt like you should have known what he was up to. The others gave you suspicious looks and even Mike wondered for a moment if you were an accomplice...but you weren't.

That was the truth.

You had no idea.

Now all you felt was lingering guilt and festering anger that this was Josh's twisted idea of "revenge" against the people who didn't even kill his sisters. Against people like Chris who didn't even know what happened until he woke up.

And in a way, you felt like it was against you for not waking him up in time to stop the prank that led to Hannah and Beth running out of the cabin.

No matter how many times he claimed you had nothing to do with it, you felt like he was punishing you, too.

So now, you, Chris, and Mike have taken him away from the others, to a shed where he couldn't hurt anybody. Apparently Jess was dead, and despite his insistence that he didn't kill her....Mike didn't believe a word he said, having seen her body firsthand in some mining elevator.

Then when he started making lewd comments about Chris and Ashley, both of the men were growing agitated, debating on whether to make him shut up by force or not.

Finally, you intervened before they could decide, offering to watch over him until sunrise. You're the only one who had a small chance to talk some sense into him and make him realize his mistakes.

Mike was reluctant to leave you alone with him, thinking he'll guilt trip you into letting him go, but you convinced him and Chris you'll be fine.

There were some...scary things you've seen out in the woods earlier, and the last thing you wanna do is leave Josh alone with them nearby.

Even after all the shitty things he did, even after faking his own death...you still loved him.

You didn't believe he murdered Jess.

That's not what Josh would do.

"Your sisters wouldn't have wanted this." You quietly said, looking back at the wide-eyed man. "I wish things were different that night. I wish they didn't get humiliated. God, I wish Hannah had talked to me instead. But this...all of this was wrong, Josh. What happened doesn't justify-"

"But it worked, didn't it? Listen, I...I-I didn't want anyone dead." He stammered. "I just wanted to see that same terror on their faces. And I got them good! I got you all!!"

"...did you have to give Ash a black eye, though?"

"Look, she stabbed me with scissors! And it still hurts like a motherfucker."

You just gave him an expression that read "well I would have too if a killer was chasing me", and he seemed to understand...given how his shoulders slumped with defeat.

"Baby, 'm sorry..this...was not how our night's supposed to go. But you know what? I'm glad I was the only one laughing! Because NOW THEY KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE ON THE OTHER SIDE!!" Tears of anger pricked his eyes as his voice unexpectedly rose.

You whole body tensed, but you stayed calm, knowing he's only lashing out. "Josh, I know they hurt you. And hurting them back might feel good..but you hurt me too by faking your own death and not telling me how far you intended to take this prank."

"..you would've stopped me if I told you." He mumbled.

"Well maybe I should've been more persistent." You huffed. "If I was, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have to talk about why Jess died and why you seem to be the prime suspect-"

"I swear to god, it wasn't me! I don't even know where she is!" Josh snapped, before he curled up, like a child in timeout. "Mike..he wouldn't explain the wheres and whens. He just kept hitting me, pushing me..telling me to shut up...but I didn't do it...I swear. Please, please believe me, [y/n]. I'm sorry that you got roped into this. I-It's..the..the last thing I wanted.." His voice softened. "I'm sorry I've been bad..."

Slowly, you could see bits and pieces of the Josh you once knew coming back. His mind wasn't all there, of course, but you've known him forever.

You should be thinking with your brain and not your heart.

But....

You still love him, and believe in second chances.

"Joshua."

He perked up, anticipating the worst as you pulled up a chair to sit in front of him. For you to say his name like that couldn't have been good.

Maybe you were gonna side with all the rest of them and spit on him.

Maybe you were gonna say that you're leaving him alone here, as Dr. Hill had warned would happen.

Maybe you were finally going to tell him what an unforgivable monster he wa-

"I believe you're innocent. You're not one to take a life. No matter what they say." You suddenly spoke, putting a hand to his soot-coated cheek

Almost immediately, his twitching stopped, and he stared straight at you.

It's like you put him in a trance.

"I'm not gonna leave you."

"..e-even though I've been..all messed up?" He asked cautiously. "I-I mean..I haven't been a good boyfriend lately..."

"That hasn't stopped me from being there for you before." You chuckled. "We're gonna work through this. Even if it's just you and I."

"............"

"I believe you when you say you didn't kill her. Do you believe me?"

It took him a few moments to study your expression, seeing the genuine care and warmth in your eyes. Despite all the horrors you've seen tonight, there was still a spark of hope in them.

That was the light he needed.

"...I-I do..I really do." He sniffled, resting his head on your shoulder, grateful that you didn't push him away despite being covered in dirt and fake blood. "'m sorry...I-I don't deserve you."

"Oh, honey..." You put your arms around him, sighing softly as you felt him tremble against you, tears slowly dampening your jacket. At this point, you knew you got him back, and you were so relieved. "We'll figure something out. Just stay with me."

"You don't think I'm a monster..?" He asked through his sobs. "I mean, everyone treated me like one...you've seen them.."

"....I know. Neither of us can change how they feel. But listen, the only monster here is-"

All of the sudden, a shrill inhumane screech echoed from somewhere outside, deep in the woods, interrupting the tender moment between you two.

Josh sat up with a start, his tearful eyes wide and terrified as he looked to you. "Wh-What was that?"

"That's the real monster I was gonna mention. They call it the Wendigo. Hang on." Crouching down, you managed to find a small pocketknife on his toolbelt, using it to cut the ropes binding him. "It's fast. But it's blind as fuck. We need to get out of here."

Nodding, he got up as quickly as he could, having no time to rub his aching wrists as you grabbed his hand.

The shrieks became louder, forcing you two to hide further inside the shed, sticking close to the back wall where the shadows were darkest. "Shit. Don't move a muscle, okay?"

His breath hitched as the wendigo dropped down in front of the entrance, creeping inside the small building to look for prey. But he took your advice and tried staying still.

You could practically hear you own heartbeat as you held your breath, thumping louder and louder as the creature wandered around. Josh watched it scrape its claws along the wall, creating a sound most unpleasant in an attempt to make him flinch.

It then made direct eye contact with you both.

While you managed to keep perfectly still, you could hear Josh's quiet whimpers, indicating he had a much harder time considering how jittery he was earlier.

All you could do was hope and pray it would leave.

Otherwise...both of you were dead.

Just when you thought your boyfriend was going to lose it completely, the distant snapping of a branch caused the wendigo to turn at blinding speed and sprint out of the shed, returning to the surrounding woods.

"Okay...thank christ.." Letting his hand go, you took a breather, only to see that he was still standing rigid. His eyes showed nothing but pure terror, as he began mumbling something like "was it real" under his breath.

"Josh? Baby?" You shook his shoulders a bit, and he blinked several times, coming back to reality. Relief immediately crossed his face as he realized you were still here. "It's okay. It's gone."

"Tha....That thing w-was real?"

"Yes. I know how to outsmart it. But we can't stay here. We'll be safer at the lodge with the others. We just gotta keep our heads down until then."

"But..what about the-?"

"Don't worry about them. Let's worry about getting out of here, alright?"

Wordlessly, Josh nodded, practically clinging to your arm as you both headed outside and down the snowy trail. He kept mumbling incoherent things, reassuring himself that he was safe with you.

Obviously, he seemed pretty shellshocked, considering the monster he just encountered was real and not a product of his imagination.

He didn't know whether that was better or worse.

Either way, you allowed him to hold onto you, knowing he needed someone--anyone--to lean on right now. And fortunately you were exactly the person he needed.

The only one who could help him come back to his senses.

You swore to never abandon him, and you intend to keep that promise even after all that happened tonight.

You still loved him, and he loved you.

That hasn't changed.

[silksongeveryday]

Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 600!

Here’s a quick 30 min doodle to celebrate! :D

Man time really flies huh

Thank you guys for 3.1k btw!!!

And big thank you to those who have joined me in this wild journey of daily doodles no matter how long you’ve been here. Truly did not expect what started as a joke to make it this far lol

(more stuff I wanted to talk about under the cut)

-A few updates-

General Stuff:

Well, life has been generally pretty busy. And while that’s made it a little more challenging to do daily doodles as of late, it’s been alright for the most part. Some of you may have noticed though that a lot of my daily posts have been showing up as much as 1-2 hours later than the regular time. Unfortunately with all the stuff I’ve been taking care of lately, putting a daily doodle/drawing on top of the pile means it’ll be late very often. I kind of have an unofficial job irl now so this stuffs hard to juggle sometimes.

Hornet’s Strange Adventures:

Initially I was hoping to get a lot of stuff done for this game during October but some recent job stuff is making that pretty hard to do. I probably won’t be able to make any significant progress on this game until very late October and into November. So if you were looking forward to big updates on progress, it sadly won’t be for a while, sorry. Outside of that though, I can at least say that all the routes have been thoroughly planned out from start to finish including the secret route. This includes rewriting some choices that have already been seen during the game’s time on ssed.

About Doodle Requests

I haven’t had them open for a while anyway, but I’ve finally come to the decision that I will no longer be taking doodle requests through tumblr asks/inbox. As fun as it was in the beginning, I often found myself trying to fulfill requests on the daily and that was stressful. That being said, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m stopping requests entirely. I just don’t really want to do them for free anymore. Since I’m on Hornet Journal Series still, it’s a long way away before anything happens, but there’s a likely chance I’ll only do commissioned doodle requests whenever they re-open. We’ll see as it gets closer though.

Thoughts on taking an actual break:

I’ve mentioned this a lot in the past both here on ssed and on my main blog, but I’ve been seriously considering taking a break. Like a real one. Not just a “I’m gonna stockpile a bunch of doodles and pick it back up when I run out” kind of break. Especially with the way life has been going lately (mostly positive at least), I feel as though I may have to retire from daily doodles somewhat soon if there is no official news by the time this blog hits its 2 year mark. Don’t get me wrong I’ve loved doing this for the almost two years that it’s been going but at some point I’ll have to move on from this whether I like it or not. Does this mean that activity on this blog stops altogether? No. I just won’t be doing daily doodles anymore. There’s a more likely chance it would end up being weekly, or possibly monthly. Just not daily anymore.

Whatever the case, that decision will be considered more when 2 years gets closer. Until then just enjoy daily doodles while they’re still here!

—————————————————-

I think that’s all I can think of to say right now. Might post more thoughts on my main maybe?? We’ll see

Thank you again to all the lovely people that have been here during this crazy journey, you guys are awesome :D

[bohnerrific69]

── .✧ naked (drabble/headcanon)

pairing: peter maximoff x fem!reader

words count: 1.0k | warnings and tags: suggestive themes (there's no smut btw), voyeurism, genitalia/body (peter) descriptions. english is not my first language (im still learning by self-thaught!)

⟣ masterlist | author's note: unbeliavable that the first thing of that i write AND post here it's just some quick silly headcannon/thoughts off peter horny behavior. 🫠 right now i have too many wips on the queue to finish, so maybe in the future i rewrite this as a oneshot properly! (enter my taglist here)

Peter is the kind of guy who, when reaching the peak of his independence having his own house, and when the summer arrives with its dreadful heat waves, would simply take off his clothes and walk around the house naked. Well, at first he got a little apprehensive of doing that, staying on his nice boxers for a few days - only two - till finally letting his body free as mother nature blessed.

Until a while later, a moving truck showed up at the neighbor's empty house and he saw a beautiful and hot girl, you, moving there. He even greeted and welcomed you to the neighborhood. At first he was unsure to talk to you all of sudden, but then it's not like he hadn’t started bumping into you on the street almost every week chatting with you and discovering how easy was to made you laugh at even the silliest things making every encounter more enchanting than the last one. I’m sure these quick encounters were pure coincidence... Unknowingly, getting Peter attracted into you even more than he thought.

But on another hot summer day, walking around the house naked, he came across something unexpected, he saw you through his open window… Well, that wasn't the surprise, you were his neighbor, it was quite common to sometimes see you by the window. The unexpected factor was... that you were looking exactly like him, perfectly naked just like mama gave you life. You was stand up distracted with some magazine in one hand and a lollipop in your mouth while listening to a song and moving your hips sensually following the beat.

And on rare occasions, this being obviously one of them, Peter stopped moving, stooding freezed there without moving a muscle with wide eyes and mouth dropped open, his face turning pink as fast as it could, stunned by the vision of that gentle girl with such an innocent smile and shy attitude when was nears him, to be honest seeing you like that baffled his brain, a thought of you being in that situation not even pass near horny Peter's mind, but certainly turned everything on him on fire.

Okay, it was her house and she lived alone, but with the window open?... Y-yeah, Peter wasn't the best person to talk about this topic now.

Everything in his mind and body was acting so fast, his heartbeat? Oh gosh if someone could hear, it would probably sound ticking so fast like a bomb ready to explode... But nothing made him move until you stopped looking at the magazine in your hands and saw him by the window too, the windows being at the same height and directed front to one another.

Your reaction was almost the same as him, freezing still while your brain tried to collect the informations of his pretty toned body that his lucky mutant genes (and too much X-Men training) blessed him. The jacked abs with pretty biceps too, the divine slutty waist highlighting his v line, the happy trail with silver pubes and-

Oh. Oh good lord... He was fucking turned on.

His dick was awaken and glued on his abdomen just by seeing you. Aforehand you could get on with your analysis, you notice his cock twitch slightly making you return to reality and your conscious remembering your situation right now. But before this could make you react, Peter got free of his trance milliseconds earlier than you, in the blink of an eye he was no longer there, his powers made him simply evaporate from there.

In the panic you just screamed and runned out of camp of vision from the window, dropping your magazine in hands and stumbling on some other ones scattered on the floor, making you fallen ridiculously on your bed, quickly getting into a fetal position and covering your face with the hands like that would help you protect yourself from the embarrassment, of course that not works and you just feels all your body be engulfed by a heavy shame and feeling your cheeks burns, you get one of your pillows and just screams and curses into into it.

After freaking out, you wanted to check out if he was still there, so still feeling the rush of adrenaline now with your legs trembling by the scare that you just got, you get out off the bed and crawled on the floor till were below the window and sitting on your own heels and pulled the curtains close. You sighed nervously, getting on your knees and hiding behind the curtains, you opened a crack into it so you could spy with one of your eyes if he was still there, and… Nothing.

His window still was open but there was no one on the room, you got away from the curtains and sit on the floor with the back against the wall looking at any point of your room, feeling a million thoughts running in your mind nonstop like “What the fuck just happened?”

While focusing on your breath, feeling your heart pounding on your chest, reasoning that despite the embarrassment that… You kinda of like it?... Liked that your cute neighbor that you find smokin’ hot attractive, but never had the courage to say anything, saw you like this and was being so affected by it, being fucking turned on, with his big brown eyes and pink flustered face looking at you so shocked but... admired? Quite hard to know, it was everything so quickly, but you hoped that it was, his dick was sending an obvious message.

Now focusing on what matters… Good god what was that perfect body?! If you could pull him, you sure that would be the luckiest woman alive.

Being weirdly satisfied you laid on the floor, covering your mouth with one of your hands and coming down from your high, starting giggling like an idiot and kicking your feets on the air so embarrassed by the situation but thinking how funny the life is and experiences are not individuals, like as walking naked in your own house because the weather was hot and run into with your hot neighbor by the window doing the same thing.

Well, let's not think for now off by the fact that he lived at the house by your side. And probably tomorrow you would have to say good morning to him.

— as it is my first "fanfic" thing that i write and post here, just tagging some mutuals to boost the post. sorry if i'm bothering! 🤎🦋

@lemoniiiiiii @fear-is-truth @jazz-berry @marchsfreakshow @silverzoomies @am3ricanh0rrorwh0re @acrosstheunivcrse @tiffysdeath @wcnderlnds @evvyyypeters-fics @evanpeterswifeyyy @evanpetersbf @frankenkyle19 @taintandviolent @enchanting-evan

[infamous-if]

So sorry for the delay! ! My VS Code program wasn't calibrated with CSIDE and in the indentions basically messed up. The prologue coding is so wonky that honestly if I do anything I end up fucking up 2839393 lines of code. If you've been following a while, you're probably well aware of much hatred for the prologue's coding lmao but we live and we learn.

Storyline wise, not much has changed. Scenes are largely the same, since I'm pretty happy with what I wrote a year ago. For this rewrite, I focused mainly on the big things like choices that will impact the rest of the story and O's gender selection. Some new things include:

you can now play with Orion or Oriana Quinn

you can now express if the band went through a musical rebrand after seven and what the old genre was (which will come up later).

you can now choose whether mc "changed" after seven and what change that was (there's 4, technically 2, options and a "default" vague option, im open to more options since I wanted to do this but couldn't really think of any believable ones beyond the four).

new mc personality: attached vs detached. your mc can have an extra attachment to the band for obvious reasons, or can feel the opposite.

coordinating outfits can now be exclusive to the band members. your mc can be the unique unicorn of the group since they're the lead singer (this is definitely not gonna bite them in the ass later)

adding to that, your mc's reason for fame can be due to wanting to keep the band together.

a new flavor text feeling about seven is now added which is basically "idk how I feel" instead of hating or loving them, you can just make it that MC's feelings for them is just a big question mark. REALISM!

stat changes: stern/playful -- same thing as humorous/serious I just wanted words that encompassed a wider range of behavior Leader/follower - whether mc takes on the leader role or not camaraderie - a band stat that measures the trust/morale/closeness of the band

u can probably see where im going with the stats huh....

smaller changes include:

more choices and options

prose changes + dialogue additions and expanded/ added scenes

The beta testers have not touched this yet, as I wanted to bring it out to collect some last suggestions, ideas from Patrons. Of course, as always, if you do catch errors, please let me know.

My main concern for errors: O's pronouns. It was a long process but I may have missed a few pronouns here and there. Please let me know if you catch any <3

PROLOGUE: 93K WORDS (for context, the old prologue and chapter 1 were 92k together. The prologue is a tiny bit inflated but :))) 

I will make a post about beta testers soon. I've been quiet on that front because I've been just prioritizing getting this out first.

Now available for Band tier! (6$)

[britcision]

FRIENDS IT IS HERE. As promised even! We are technically just under 20k for this chapter, but still not small enough that cutting it in half has stopped it from brutally murdering the app, so…. We’ll see how this posts! 😅

I did myself a whole honkin’ reread on the whole thing too, refreshed my lil reminders of what I named things and all the lil threads I was playing with… and hot damn it’s a beast huh?

The good news is, although we are getting into plot, we are getting out of the heavy stuff, at least for the next little bit! Back to our silly happy fun times with the boys 🥰

And, y’know, dealing with Jason’s death and first transformation and all. Totally all fine! Nothing to worry about! 😇

Today’s chapter is a lil Bruce-heavy in this front half because the main thing stopping me was that I got most of the way through before I realized I needed to rewrite Jason’s entire first scene, but I’m a lot happier with it now 😁

First Chapter and AO3:

Previous Chapter:

——————————

The Finished Core part 1

When it finally happened, Jason’s core coming in was pretty anticlimactic. For all they’d worried it might trigger a transformation, rile up the pit, or even have a physical shockwave… the event itself was almost disappointing. Buried busily in some paperwork for the library, Jason himself hadn’t actually noticed.

He’d already started feeling what he thought might be his core over the past few days; like a vibrating ball of energy, usually in the middle of his chest (although it wandered in all directions). Which would make the knot of tension that sometimes sat in his gut and sometimes went as far up as his throat… probably Pitty.

Not fun having a distinct sensation that went along with everything else the Pit was. Did nothing at all to ease his worries about what the hell would happen when they were both actually completed.

But when the day finally came… yeah, nothing. The soft, warm glow in his chest when he thought about the project had grown steadily stronger over the week and a bit he’d known Danny at that point, so he hadn’t really paid enough attention to notice a change.

They’d still been seeing each other every day, although now that the new school semester had started up it had slowed down to a couple hours in the evening. Jason had dived headlong into his restoration project both on Frostbite’s advice, and to keep himself from counting the hours. Which, apparently, worked?

The biggest disruption was actually Danny blasting in through the wall not a minute later, invisible until he dived through one of Jason’s freshly legal goons and almost knocked the table over. Luckily there were no actual Red Hood links lying around - Catherine’s name was staying clean, which was for the best since Jason still hadn’t thought of a way to bring it up.

Even now, back from another appointment with Frostbite to confirm all was well, Jason didn’t actually feel any different? It was official though; both cores were complete, and now all they had to do was wait until the pit matured enough to actually leave Jason’s body and do its own thing.

Now that he didn’t have any choice but to confront it, he couldn’t have said what he’d expected anyway, but… well, surely there should have been something? More energy? More corruption? Hell, even increased ghost senses or some indication that the powers would be coming in.

According to Danny, intangibility usually came with the pit dropping out of your stomach and feeling floaty. Accidental floating came with a head rush or feeling like falling. Invisibility just fucking happened.

All he felt was weirdly normal? The fancy ecto ice was working, and his little ghost succulent - that or all the time with Danny; even Pitty’s flares of emotion were manageable. The green haze hadn’t come back since meeting Lady Gotham.

And okay, maybe he was pushing that by going right back to the manor the next day, but listen. Frostbite had reminded him to do calming tasks, since Pitty should start being more aware of their surroundings now.

Baking with Alfred was as calming and soothing as Jason could imagine, without stapling himself to Danny in classes. And sure, he’d helped with Danny’s homework the past couple nights, but the guy would get sick of him eventually. Faster if they stayed attached at the hip.

(And that had been another “fun” tidbit Frostbite had dropped on them; if they were actually making their own ghost baby, they’d have been able to trade the core off between them. Jason hadn’t thought anything could make that idea sound appealing, but if he coulda just stuffed Pitty into someone else… well, he probably wouldn’t actually wish its corruption and constant tantrums on anyone else, but having a break woulda been nice.)

Now that his core was done, technically the daily hanging out probably wasn’t as necessary. So long as Jason had some backup plans to keep himself calm and in control. Which should mean that they could go from hanging out as a necessary chore to just… friends.

And since no one in the city wound Jason up like Bruce, if he happened to also be at the manor he’d have a trial-by-fire for his shiny new core. He’d kept his word and tapped out of patrol since meeting Lady Gotham (and apparently Harley had taken the manor in fire and glory the night after and locked Bruce… somewhere for two full days), so he’d not heard from B since.

According to Tim, Constantine hadn’t returned to Gotham at all.

The thought of their names only stirred angry bubbles from Pitty, and Jason absolutely wasn’t self destructive or a masochist, so he was just testing to see how far that’d last. How careful he’d need to be, and how aware the little guy was.

So obviously he wasn’t even all the way into the manor before he ran into the man himself.

Stopping short, Jason’s fist clenched more from force of habit than any actual desire. Sucking in a deep breath, he thought of his ghost succulent (which had started glowing faintly blue a couple nights ago, which was hopefully a good thing?) and carefully unclenched. Nodded a little stiffly.

This would be the first time they’d been alone together since… shit, he didn’t even know. He hadn’t seen the guy without the buffer of at least one other bat in months.

“Bruce,” he said warily, half hoping the man could just… be normal. For once. Nod, say hi, fuck off about his own business. He couldn’t still be on his anti-Danny crusade, could he?

The man actually flinched, face twitching through a couple of expressions Jason couldn’t even guess at. A sudden urge between his shoulder blades did nothing to help, distracting him long enough for everything to be smoothed under the usual masks.

If Bruce just had a damn aura… okay, that’d be one change with the completed core. All of his attempts to reach out with his own aura before had basically involved his whole body actually leaning in the same direction.

That… urge, itch between his shoulders, if that had been his aura trying to reach out, felt more like an entirely new muscle group. Curiosity won and Jason focused, trying to follow the urge and reach out… and wasn’t sure it had worked at all.

Because all he could feel was sorrow and regret, and that didn’t sound like B. At all. His compartmentalizing was out the ass, sure, but what the hell would he actually feel sorry for?

“Jason?” And from the sound of it, not the first time he’d said his name. Great.

Shelving the apparently-faulty aura for now, Jason frowned back.

“I’m here to see Alfred.” It wasn’t exactly a warning. Wasn’t exactly a threat, although it carried the possibility. Meant that if B pissed him off enough to leave, he’d face some British disapproval.

Bruce’s shoulders sagged just a little, and then he drew himself up, his face firm and resolved. Jason tensed automatically; if he actually tried to bar him from seeing Danny face to face, would he still be able to walk away?

That was why he’d brought the glacierfrost. Slipping a hand into his back pocket, he crushed a crystal quickly before the man could open his mouth. Wintergreen mint burst across the back of his tongue, another brief flicker of distraction that, for some reason, came with another pang of sorrow.

“I’m sorry.”

Jason nearly stumbled, and he hadn’t even been moving. Bruce looked… tired, all of a sudden. More tired than he could remember ever seeing him.

“Wait… what?”

Bruce gave him a sad smile.

“It’s been brought to my attention… multiple times… that you should have heard that from me alone first. And then I kept adding more and more to be sorry for. And I know you don’t want to see me, so now seems like the best time to start.” It was jerky, and awkward, and probably the most uncomfortable Jason had ever seen Bruce in a conversation.

Which only served to confuse him further. Bruce overplanned everything; he never acted without at least two layers of backups. It was why he had a million plans for every possible micro-scenario. He didn’t do spontaneous.

“What are you even talking about?” He asked, half exasperated, and Bruce’s smile widened a fraction. That only made it more self deprecating.

“There are too many things to count, but… Jason, I’m sorry I sprung the apology on you at the gala. I thought having the world as my witnesses would show you I meant it, but I should have asked first. I should have apologized first, to you. Alone. I’m… aware what it says about me that I couldn’t.” He was almost wearing one of Brucie’s self-deprecating smiles now, but the edges were raw. Unpolished. Certainly not camera ready.

Real?

Jason’s mouth opened and closed a few times, his brain entirely short-circuited. Of all the things Bruce could have said to him… of all the things the man might apologize for, he’d honestly forgotten all about the damn gala speech.

Forcing himself to focus, he folded his arms and regarded his former father figure warily.

“Sure, that’s a place to start,” he agreed, more sarcastically than he’d meant to. But he couldn’t take it back.

There was another moment of stiffness, and then Bruce’s shoulders sagged as well as he breathed out, still looking… well, so much more human. More breakable, more fallible. Or was that just from hearing him admit he’d been wrong?

“I do mean it, Jason. I did mean it,” he said softly, piercing blue eyes unusually gentle as he looked him over, and suddenly Jason knew what was bothering him.

The mask. The iron mask of Batman, the bumbling shield of Brucie. B always had a mask, over every interaction. Every situation, every possible scene, B always had a character to play. And he played them well.

That was what looked wrong about him. He wasn’t… intentional. His posture was open and unthreatening, his face lax in a way it never was while he held every muscle in check.

This was just actual, sincere B.

Jason wasn’t completely sure why that made him want to run or cry, but it said a fuck of a lot about him too.

More that he just couldn’t bring himself to return it.

Sucking in a sharp breath, seriously considering grabbing for another crystal, he nodded sharply.

“Okay. Now what.” Because that was the thing; Jason had never wanted B to be sorry that he hadn’t come for Jason. That he finally hadn’t been on time to save him from himself.

He didn’t want the apology, he wanted things to change. To be better. For Bruce to accept that it had happened, and Jason was who he was now because he’d decided to be, not the pits or Tallia or the Joker.

He wanted so many things.

Bruce was searching his face, eyes sharp even as he consciously kept the rest of the expression open. Jason could see the tick of muscle in his cheek. Fuck, was it that hard for Bruce not to put on the act?

After a moment, he spread his hands. A gesture of peace? Not holding a weapon, not tensed for an attack?

“That’s all. For now. I just… wanted you to know. I’m sorry. And I’m…” the expression pulled a little, becoming pained, “I have been told I am overreacting to the news from Amity Park as well. I should trust your judgement. So I’m pulling myself from the case to focus on the Anti-Ecto Acts.”

This time Jason’s jaw just dropped. B… Bruce never. Never pulled himself from a case. Not for broken bones, ruptured organs, not even if he’d died.

It was almost worse than the rage; all of a sudden he was lost at sea, the one grounding, immovable rock in his life swept away. Part of him was even angry at that - at B suddenly deciding that now, this time he was going to be reasonable.

When all Jason expected from him was judgement, antagonism, stupid overbearing demands and being held at arm’s length, now all of a sudden the Bat was human.

It was too late to pretend the moment hadn’t happened, to completely hide his shock, but he also couldn’t stop the bluster from rising. Not the way his eyes narrowed suspiciously, even when every part of him that had been Robin desperately hoped this was real.

“And what the hell brought that on?” Not the accusation in his voice, although for once Bruce didn’t rise to it. He just chuckled dryly, like he’d been expecting Jason’s reaction.

“Because you were right.”

And now Jason was fully on edge again, scanning the man more closely for any signs of hypnotism, mind control, that this was a clone or a replacement. A trap or a trick. Because B… Bruce would never…

Bruce raised both hands quickly, possibly expecting Jason to just… jump him. Which, to be fair, would have been a more normal interaction.

“You were the one who brought the Amity Park situation to our attention. And you’re right, that I can’t expect your doctor or any other ghost to come here to help you until it is safe for them to do so,” he added quickly, and Jason rocked back onto his heels.

Of course, the caveat. That made sense, bitter in the back of his throat as it was. Just an inarguable set of facts.

Not like he’d ever actually admit that Jason’s judgement was reliable or anything. Folding his arms again (partly to stop his fists from clenching), he gave Bruce a sceptical look.

“Right, so what finally yanked your head out of your ass about it?” He asked sharply. Bruce gave him that same wry smile.

“Diana. And Harley. And Alfred. And Selena. I have been… extensively informed I had my head up my ass. So. I’m sorry for that too. I just wanted to tell you before I left, since I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.”

And it shouldn’t have been funny that he actually looked more pained talking about this, admitting a mistake, than he had when nursing broken ribs in the infirmary. Than he’d looked during any of their fights, than when Jason had all but grabbed his face and forced him to see that it really was him, that his dear little Robin came back wrong.

But dark humour was a refuge for all the bats, and if Jason didn’t laugh he had a horrible feeling he’d cry. All that tension, all those days he’d worried about what he’d say or do when they came face to face again… he’d never have imagined any of this.

Could imagine another bloody battle before imagining Bruce saying sorry.

All of a sudden he was just tired. Ha. Dead tired.

Nothing drained the life out of him like dealing with Bruce.

“Great. So where are you going?” It was almost a rhetorical question; he didn’t really expect an answer.

Should have, though. Obviously B had to stick his foot in it again.

“Amity Park. As Bruce Wayne, not Batman,” he added quickly when Jason’s head snapped up, glare sharpening, “it seems the logical place to begin work on the acts.”

And alright, Bruce didn’t sound defensive. He never did; just obstinate, which meant so many things that guessing when it meant what was a losing game.

Jason groaned loudly, raising both hands to scrub down across his face. Because of course all that weirdness hadn’t changed a damn thing. B was gonna B, creepy and intrusive and all.

“And look into Danny.” He said flatly, locking eyes with Bruce in time to see his expression twitch. Was he actually gonna lie?

Apparently not. Bruce sighed and nodded.

“My focus will be on establishing a connection between “Brucie” and the Anti-Ecto Acts, and investigating the GIW. Danny has been involved in both, and Zatanna has requested the elder Fentons provide me with protection,” he said like it was anything but a weak excuse.

Jason stared at him for a long moment, and then figured fuck it. Actually telling them before he left was technically still an improvement, and Danny and Jason were both well aware that there was gonna be some nosy bullshit.

He’d warned Danny this was gonna happen, and Danny had said it was fine. That he didn’t care about anything Batman might find… and knowing just how badly the Justice League had fucked up was going to eat the asshole alive. Which he could have avoided just by listening.

About to just walk away, Jason hesitated. There was actually one thing… technically not a necessary for a halfa, but fuck it. Might as well get B used to some ghostly etiquette early.

“Have you asked Danny?”

Bruce stilled, giving Jason a complicated look that mostly felt like judgement. Like Jason should know better than to ask.

“I was under the impression that removing the Anti-Ecto Acts is a priority?” He said stiffly, all awkward tension again.

Jason really did roll his eyes this time.

“Sure, but you’re going to his haunt. You text Superman before investigating in Metropolis.” Which technically hadn’t even been true when Jason was actually Robin, but B did text Clark before getting caught investigating in Metropolis. By anything but Kryptonian hearing.

The protocol basically only applied whenever another hero wanted to operate within Gotham because only Batman cared, but it was on the League’s books.

Bruce had picked up the wording though, because of course he had.

“His haunt?” He asked carefully, that tiny tick between his brows that meant he was processing starting up.

Jason rolled his eyes harder. For emphasis. Had JL Dark actually missed this part of the briefing? He was so not writing up Ghost Etiquette 101 for the league. No way.

But. It. Might be kinda cool. To have for himself. Especially since it was gonna be increasingly relevant.

“He’s a ghost hero, B. He died there, he protects the city. He’s like, the only one who’ll actually get your territorial crap, because in his case it’s part of his makeup.”

Actually, might be part of B’s too. Danny hadn’t said how liminal Bruce in particular was, but it really wouldn’t surprise Jason if claiming a haunt was part of it. Or if Lady Gotham had already picked out a spot for him.

That thought stung, so he dismissed it immediately and turned towards the kitchen. Hell with the brownies he’d been planning, he was gonna need something much more complicated to keep his mind off the latest wave of bullshit.

Alfred liked soufflés. Jason could activate the house defences to keep the little gremlins out until they were done.

“Just fucking text him, B. Entering a ghost’s haunt without permission is declaring intent to throw down, and that’s a fight none of us need.” No matter how much he might like to watch B go up against the ridiculous power-set Danny was packing.

Sure, the Bat went toe to toe with the gods, but that was with plans, tech, and often, backup. Apparently he still didn’t know shit about ghosts, so it’d be fun to watch him try and adapt on the fly… especially when even Danny wasn’t sure how many actual powers were on the table.

**

Bruce hesitated for a long moment, looking at Jason’s retreating back.

That had gone… frankly he did not trust his own read on Jason enough to tell. Neither of them had yelled. He’d said what he was prepared to; he was still working on the appropriate format for the rest.

Jason… hadn’t reacted. Not with anger, which was a blessed relief, but not with anything else either. Except disbelief. Exasperation. Shock.

Not really any aggression, though. That had to be a decided improvement. And while part of Bruce suspected he’d been told to inform Danny so the boy could hide anything unsavoury….

He’d known that was likely to happen when he told Jason his plans. Jason would tell Danny; his allegiances there were firmly (and worryingly quickly) established.

Telling Danny himself… there was a chance that Jason had been serious about it being a matter of protocol. A formal request, for contact with an inter-dimensional entity.

Despite that entity being present and active in Bruce’s own city without so much as a nod to the Bat. But then, Batman was not a ghost, despite what the goons liked to suppose.

Firmly marshalling his own suspicions, Bruce pulled out his phone to message the youngest Fenton.

Stopped.

Bruce Wayne didn’t have the boy’s number. But Danny knew at least Nightwing’s identity; it was possible he knew them all.

He was going to Amity Park as Brucie Wayne, not Batman. But Brucie Wayne had no way to get the correct phone number. Unexpected contact from Batman was… well, expected, to an extent.

And his investigations would be handled and presented as Batman. Surely no one would challenge Brucie Wayne to a fight?

Mind made up, Bruce took his vigilante phone out and did a quick scan through his childrens’ updated contact lists. Most of them seemed to have been enjoying the company of the Amity Parkers; it wouldn’t be hard to get Danny’s contact information.

**

So. New year, new problems. Danny used to say it as a joke, but this year it was looking pretty darn literal.

Last year, for example, he hadn’t had to worry about his parents finding out about his supposed “love life” from a magazine (that Jazz must have sent them after they’d gone back to Amity Park, the traitor), and calling to hound him for details.

He’d managed to talk them out of driving the GAV straight to Gotham to threaten Jason into “treating him right”… which Jason thought was funny solely because he still didn’t actually know how large Jack Fenton was, nor how intense Maddie could be.

He still thought of them as civilians, and maybe a little less than competent, thanks to the database and their zero capture record.

Maybe Danny was cultivating that ignorance specifically so he could watch the moment of truth in person. Sue him, it was funny.

Unfortunately, since the magazine had also included that the gala they’d been “hooking up” at had been to celebrate Jason’s return from the dead, his mom had reached the halfa conclusion on her own. Danny had wanted to let Jason decide when to tell her, but that very first phone call the first words out of her mouth had been “Daniel James Fenton, have you met another halfa without telling us?”

And Danny had been so taken aback by them actually noticing anything (it was to do with ghosts, of course they’d noticed, he’d kicked himself for days after) that she’d taken his speechlessness as confirmation.

So.

They had that out of the way before they even said hi.

Despite Danny’s firm assurances that he and Jason weren’t actually dating, the papers were making the whole thing up (the photos hadn’t helped, but his dad seemed to buy that he’d been. Trying to help Jason fix his shirt. After the rogue attack, y’know), his parents had insisted on another call with Jason.

And Jazz. Because he had to introduce his sister to his new boyfriend too.

Jason had… taken it well? Hadn’t gotten much of a word in edgewise, around Jack Fenton’s boisterous laughter and insistence that he come around some time soon. He’d agreed with Danny that they definitely were not dating, which.

They weren’t.

They just weren’t.

They were just. Friends. Who hung out after classes in the evening. And texted all day. And told each other their deepest darkest soul secrets in like, a week after they’d met.

Danny’s mom had seemed a little more convinced by the end of the call, but still insisted Jason should come down to Amity Park anyway, to get to know the family.

Danny was still in denial about it being even a little bit helpful, but Jason had decided to drop the Fright Knight bomb right away. It was the actual real reason they were so close now, so it made sense as an explanation that wasn’t them being partners or whatever.

(Danny still hated it. Resented he couldn’t be trusted to just… have a friend. It always had to be something stupid and dramatic.

And he was totally offended by how immediately relieved his mom had been that he’d have someone “looking after him”. Like he wasn’t a whole ass adult for years already, and the king of a realm for longer than that.)

And now he was gonna have to call them back, and probably get a message to Fright Knight, because Danny’s newest problem was that Batman now had his phone number.

And was asking his permission to go to Amity Park to deal with the Anti-Ecto Acts.

(“Brucie Wayne” was officially the one going for the Acts, the message only said that Batman would be escorting the billionaire and gathering evidence separately, but Danny wasn’t fucking buying it.

And since Batman had his phone number and had used it, Tucker could technically get into Batman’s phone and prove it. Like Constantine showing up at Wayne Manor left a shadow of a doubt.

But noooo, Danny knew all about dramatics and billionaires and their sketchy underground labs. He could play along.)

Which, technically, might wind up solving one of his biggest problems.

It was also gonna completely ruin all the work he and Jason had done persuading the Fentons they weren’t dating; he could already hear his dad booming delightedly about meeting future in-laws. Because why else would Jason’s dad go to visit?

Not like there were actual laws on the books declaring Danny as a mandatory extermination target. Or like the Justice League might finally have gotten their thumbs out of their asses and want to check in.

Clearly Danny’s love life was the only thing that mattered.

At least he wouldn’t have to worry about that crap from Frighty; all the ghosts were gonna know all about Danny and Jason’s soul resonance (be still his beating fucking heart that was still ridiculous). He would have to let him know a superhero was gonna be in town though.

Actual ghosts weren’t likely to mistake Batman for one of their own and these days most of Danny’s rogue gallery was cool about not picking fights with humans without Fenton tech, but Danny figured better safe than sorry.

And.

Maybe.

Really wanted to see Batman and Fright Knight hang out. They were gonna totally love or totally hate each other, and either way he was a little sorry he was gonna miss it.

Unless he gave in and took time off class, kidnapped Jason from whatever work he did, and made the trip home… because he’d been direly warned that if he did show up without Jason, Jack Fenton would drive him back to Gotham personally. So, no. Nope. Not happening.

The long and the short of it was that instead of being blissfully free of his parents nagging him to visit until the summer, he was now fielding calls and texts demanding he come back home for March Break, at the latest. And bring Jason.

Mom wanted to “assess him”, which was fucking terrifying and the more Jason didn’t take it seriously the more Danny was tempted to actually make the trip. It would at least come with a defined end date. And force Jazz to take a break if she wanted to come too.

She at least had been less insistent on calling him every single day to bug him about it; probably because she was busy frying herself to death at university. She’d apologized for missing the group chat too, and the first family phone call, but it wasn’t a huge surprise.

Jazz had had the helicopter parent firmly knocked out of her by double majors, which Danny used to think was a good thing. Now he considered it might actually be a sign she was… not cracking under the pressure? But not taking care of herself.

Hopefully it wouldn’t return full force once she got some actual sleep and decent food in her.

Honestly, Danny wasn’t unaware that this was the most normal his problems had ever been. Just a few years ago he’d have done anything but wish to Desiree that his biggest problem would be “my parents think I’m dating one of my friends”.

Right now it was looking pretty good too, actually. Because at this precise second, Danny’s biggest problem was that he was running out of excuses not to talk to Nocturn.

***

Tim was beginning to think he had a bit of a crush on Tucker Foley. It was a surprise to him as much as anyone else; normally the kind of fawning adoration that tech geeks usually followed him with was an instant turn off. There was just… no point getting close to people who saw him as an idea, not a person.

And, frankly? The mere existence of Timblr probably would have been a red flag for anyone else. Sure, Tucker had closed it down, but it still existed - and Tucker Foley could have taken care of that easily.

The thing was… even under the hero worship he’d caught in Tucker’s eyes when they were first introduced… well, Tucker wasn’t exactly respectful to his heroes. That did tend to follow along with a friend in a teen hero career; everyone else was instantly less cool by association.

Tucker just plain wasn’t a good fanboy. He hung on Tim’s every word, right up until they started talking tech - the subject he most admired Tim for. Didn’t admire him enough not to cut him off half way through an explanation, call an idea “archaic”, or ask if Tim was serious.

(And okay, once or twice he hadn’t been; just testing his technical chops.)

The thing was, Tucker wasn’t only a genius with regular technology, he was a prodigy in an entirely new field of software and occult collusion, and he knew it. He was delighted to upgrade Tim’s systems (although Danny would still need to do the full ecto-infusions; Tucker could interface, but didn’t produce his own ectoplasm), and more than happy to point out everywhere they needed improving.

Tim genuinely respected his opinion, which wasn’t a distinction he gave to many people who’d never worn a cape; he’d already cc’d the other, Lucius Fox, into his and Tucker’s email chains. (Lucius was very enthusiastic about the oncoming apprenticeship - for him.)

And Tucker was funny, allergic to personal privacy, and… well, Tim was pretty sure he’d felt those first twinges when, as promised, he tagged Tucker in to help interrogate the Riddler.

Digitally, obviously. With Tucker’s classes starting back up and the New Years hangovers finally clearing the board, the next time they saw each other in person might be upsettingly far out. But Tucker had cheerfully hacked his way into Gotham PD’s systems and made himself comfortable while Red Robin and Batwoman waited for Riddler to be brought in.

Tim had so few pure pleasures in his life, but watching Kate try to keep a straight face when the interrogation room’s speakers began blasting what was essentially a stripper theme perfect for Eddie Nygma the second the door closed?

Riddler had been utterly baffled as well, talking over the beginning until they reached the chorus, where the singer practically spelled out his name. His stunned silence had given way to a burst of offended protest that was entirely undercut by the way his fingers kept time.

As the teen hero in the room, Red Robin was allowed to snicker at him, but Batwoman had to pretend to be an adult about it.

And when the first song ended, silence had fallen for what must have been a perfectly calculated fifteen seconds, and then the Jeopardy theme began playing.

Of course, soundtracking hadn’t been Tucker’s only contribution to the interrogation, just Tim’s favourite. Red Robin had the tablet from the gala back from evidence, from which Tucker had cheerfully admitted in Matrix style scrolling green text that he’d been the one back-hacking Nygma’s files… and locking him out of them.

And replacing every single link Nygma had clicked from the night of the gala to the day Batwoman hauled him in to a random page from Riddles.com, which Riddler had declared a new vendetta against every time anyone would listen. It was beautiful.

Robins were professionally annoying, it was part natural talent on all of their parts (except Damian) and part intensive training on how to disrupt thought patterns and push people into mistakes. Tucker could have led the class, and Tim had been overtaken by a powerful urge to kiss the smug grin he could feel through Tucker’s text straight off his face.

Of course, Tim had a boyfriend. And had been overtaken more than once by similar urges for almost every one of his friends, when they did something brilliant.

Steph called it oral fixation, Tim preferred positive reinforcement. Conner found the whole thing extremely funny, especially since Tucker still stumbled over his words if Conner was so much as looking at him.

Which made all of his siblings trying to tease him about Tucker’s “crush” on Tim look ridiculous, by the way. Tucker Foley was not a subtle man; he couldn’t even string a sentence together around someone he actually liked.

He could string plenty of sentences together around Tim, the two of them could finish each others’ half the time.

(He wasn’t upset about Tucker’s obvious interest in Conner either; Tim knew damn well his boyfriend was an incredible catch and he was lucky to have him. Tucker’s crush was just… peer review.)

Already he was counting down the days until March Break, when Tucker was going to visit in person again. Honestly, he might push to get a zeta put in nearer to MIT in the meantime.

It wasn’t like the institute was never targeted by supervillains, it would just be practical.

But Tim himself couldn’t suggest that now, because then all of his siblings would jump on the Tucker thing and he’d never hear the end of it. It was a dilemma… because even if Conner or Danny could just go and pick him up again, zeta was just faster.

It had nothing to do with missing time that Conner and Tucker were bonding, or being a puppy waiting for his master to come home, whatever Steph said.

(And honestly, Tucker Foley? Not exactly commanding “master” material. Until he was talking about his area of expertise. Then he was certain and confident and got this really attractive gleam in his eye…)

The quickest solution would be getting all of Team Phantom officially involved in the Justice League, of course. Then he wouldn’t even need to suggest it; close zeta access was vital for all of the heroes.

But Team Phantom couldn’t join the League until Phantom’s existence was no longer illegal. So they had to dismantle the Anti Ecto Acts. Bruce was investigating the GIW, and planning what he probably thought was a secret trip to Amity Park, but none of it was happening fast enough for Tim… because it probably wouldn’t be done by March Break. In two months.

He’d broken more than just the American government in two months; all it took was the right leverage. And a complete lack of self restraint.

So, y’know, Tim had a new side project in and around his other Gotham cases. All he needed was a house and then senate majority, and they could get those laws repealed the second the government came back from break.

Lois Lane was already working on the story, Clark would probably join Bruce in Amity Park (whether he knew Bruce was there or not) for interviews. There was only so much public pressure could do though, and that never worked fast enough either.

Not compared to Tim’s preferred methods. He liked the personal touch.

****

Fun fact, slower core formation? Had not meant slower ghost powers. Not in Jason’s case, anyway; not even a week after his core came in, a coffee cup had slipped straight through his hand and shattered on the floor.

He’d stopped handling Alfred’s good china that day, mindful of Danny’s many horror stories about the school lab’s glassware. Alfred hadn’t actually questioned it, although he’d gotten a couple of raised eyebrows when he slid a junk mug toward the kettle.

It was just a good thing he’d already cut down patrolling; he’d been planning to take a step back anyway for a while. Just until he got the balance right between being Red Hood and the newly resurrected Jason Todd.

He’d had to stop entirely, at least until he got the intangibility under control. Sure, becoming temporarily impervious to weapons would be convenient when he got to choose when it switched off or on. Phasing various limbs half way through solid surfaces and getting stuck though?

No.

Not a chance in Hell. That was not an acceptable risk.

Invisibility had started not long after, which had definitely complicated his trips to the manor; all the bats were good, but vanishing completely out of the blue? That would raise comment.

The good news was that the glacierfrost seemed to be helping there too; either because of the ecto in the ice, or just keeping his emotions regulated, which kept the powers from acting up. Jason wasn’t taking unnecessary risks, but he’d noticed that for at least a couple hours after a hit, he was in more control.

Intentionally turning the powers on was still a struggle, but apparently that’d just get better with time. And probably fighting - that was the common denominator under all his ghost problems.

Ghost Fight Club was officially starting the second he’d got the transformation down, but how exactly they were going to try and trigger that in a controlled environment was still… less clear than Jason would like.

They’d have to work it out soon though; the only other ability that was likely to kick in before he could transform was flight, according to Danny. Time was a-tickin’.

And… alright. It wasn’t like Jason was sat at home every night; that was what he and Danny were doing after school now that they’d cut back to at least a couple days a week. A little practice on budding ghost powers, with backup.

“Surveying his haunt” was what Danny called it, but it basically meant Danny going ghost and Jason putting on a domino he claimed he borrowed from Dick, and the two of them bouncing around the Alley. And occasionally Danny pushing him off roofs to see if flight had kicked in yet.

(It hadn’t, but he still had his grapples, and refused to let Danny rescue him from his own bullshit.)

Sensing the city’s natural ecto had gotten much easier with his core fully developed, and Danny was teaching him how to mark it with his own. Pitty’s ongoing corruption was fucking it up though; it was still producing corrupted ectoplasm, and actually more of it now that they were both whole.

(Jason had started sleeping with Frostbite’s ghost succulent next to his pillow. That was how he’d noticed the new blue glow, which he still meant to ask about. It was still firm and strong, and it… didn’t feel sick?)

Corrupted ecto reeked so strongly of that corruption that it was completely useless for anything else, apparently. So until they finally finished purging Pitty, what all their little adventures actually amounted to was tagging.

Danny made them special ecto-spray-paint, and they spent the nights finding weirder and weirder corners to spray a little mark onto. Jason would have liked to use something to do with Red Hood, for the symmetry, but. Well. He hadn’t worked out how to have that conversation yet.

He’d been making do with little ghost doodles. It had been years since he’d done any real graffiti art, but it was like riding a bike, and the ecto sprayed really well. A cartoon ghost wasn’t all that hard anyway; an elongated little blob, occasionally with little fangs or unattached clawed hands.

He’d been going for something like an Among Us bean, but Danny had declared that he was drawing Pitty, and well… it stuck. Doodling little Pit ghosts was the order of the day, ranging from cute little Pittys (modelling good behaviour, Danny called it) or vicious little bastards, depending on how both Jason and Pitty had been that day.

Because that was definitely one piece of good news, in with all the bullshit new ghost powers was causing. Before he’d felt surges of rage, the moments where the Pit was reaching out and trying to affect him. Universally bad, aggressive, and violent, pre-Danny.

He could kinda feel it all the time now, like a heated scarf draped over his body, or the constant breathing of a dog just behind his ear. It was quiet mostly, and he was beginning to suspect it had cost more energy than he’d ever expected for it to reach out to him at all.

For all that he’d worried about it being too much like raising a kid, it… well, the nice way to say it was probably that it wasn’t that bright. It could talk to him in ghostspeak, kind of; most of what he actually heard felt like emotional reactions, closer to speaking through auras than words despite how much it’d felt like it was crawling up his throat.

The Pit could handle basic concepts, recognised Danny’s name, but other than that? It mostly seemed to follow Jason’s emotional lead… and then dial it up to eleven. Which, yeah, was exactly what he’d been scared of when he thought it might be like, a whole ass person. Toddlers were terrifying little sponges.

Jason’s experience of kids wasn’t exactly what he’d call normal, sure, but Pitty was reminding him less of a kid and more and more of some kind of small and bitey animal.

Which, y’know, was a relief. Sort of. It wasn’t like he could fuck up an animal in the same way as he could a kid. Nowhere near the same level of responsibility.

Just. When he thought about the pit rage, the idea of it being attached to something which literally had fangs and claws was not exactly reassuring. Even at the size of a chihuahua.

A little impromptu art therapy while they marked his haunt wasn’t exactly helping with that part, but it wasn’t hurting. And he was trying to explain that feeling bad was not actually dangerous or harmful… via spray paint.

He was only about 70% sure that Pitty could see.

But it got him out and about, kept him in shape at least for swinging from roof tops, and gave him an excuse to hang out with Danny. It did involve actively avoiding anything he’d normally investigate (at least until he had a reasonable explanation… or brought up the Red Hood thing)… but it felt good. It was soothing.

Even knowing full well he’d made plans, prepared extensively, still had his guys making sure the Alley was safe and all was well, he still found himself itching to patrol on the nights he stayed in.

He could only assume that was part of the whole Haunt thing; he had good people working under him, and a couple of bright lieutenants that while he’d never let them wear the hood, he was comfortable giving them some solo enforcement missions to keep the fear of Red Hood in everyone’s hearts. All relevant parties, anyway.

Luckily he still had the library project as a convenient excuse for the bats. It kept them off his ass, and Jason could admit that it probably wouldn’t have taken much to persuade him to take a night run.

And get his ass stuck half way through some fucking wall somewhere, or lose a foot to a rooftop, and need to break himself free or call Danny in the fucking suit. Nope.

(He’d been tempted to let his family think he was saving his nights for Danny, which wasn’t even completely untrue; Danny wasn’t over every night anymore, not with his school schedule, but if he wasn’t over they texted.

Jason had begun saving a meme folder just for things to show Danny, which had quickly absorbed his full folder for death jokes and just kept going. Danny was going to be a very supportive “father” for their fake pit-kid, and had clearly been stockpiling dad jokes to send back.)

Honestly though, Jason was just relieved he’d already planned to slow the vigilante side for a while in the wake of his official revival; there was a lot that had to be done to come back from the dead, and a lot more he could do with official Wayne backing for areas of Crime Alley that Hood couldn’t touch.

He’d even let some of the bats in on those plans before Danny showed up; it wasn’t a surprise that he wasn’t patrolling. They were mostly leaving him alone about it, although Dick had offered to pop his Red Hood gear on and run a couple of patrols if things got too rowdy.

Jason had told him to fuck off, then got his street kids spreading the rumour that Hood was gearing up for something big. Let people think that the momentary quiet was just the first rumbles for an oncoming storm.

Hell, let them think Hood was in cahoots with Jason Todd-Wayne; that or preparing to run him out of the Alley. Let both of his lives work together for a while. The rumours shut half the fucking low-level dealers up; no one was pushing anything within three blocks of his territory, in case Hood was planning an expansion.

That’d boil over after a while and bite him in the ass if he didn’t go and kick something down, but for now it worked. He had so much to do for the library, for the new shelters from the Wayne foundation, for the soup kitchens. He actually was pretty busy, even on his nights in.

Fuck, he’d even taken time to hang out with the actual Alley kids, as Jason and Hood. The mouthy little shits kept him grounded, and maybe he’d tried it as a trial run for Pitty, but since that wasn’t gonna be the same problem he’d kept it up as a test of his own patience.

Which had. Very abruptly. Become the cause of one of his biggest concerns. Because the biggest change since his core came in had actually taken him a couple more days to notice.

Because now, Jason could see the fingerprints of the new entity.

That hadn’t been fun to work out; he’d been intentionally taking it slow until his core formed. Part of him had been sorta hoping to be able to just avoid anything that might set them both off until the Pit was ready to pop out on its own. Nothing related to the new case he couldn’t start, nothing related to the Joker or pits or any of that shit.

So when some of the kids had been showing up with some weird shadowy smudge on their clothes, he’d assumed it was the usual Gotham grime. They claimed not to see it, he threw them at the laundry room and cussed them out, it always came off.

Now the Curse, the Curse was staying out of Crime Alley entirely. He’d seen it during the day once or twice, a shadow attached where it shouldn’t be, a flicker over Damian or Tim’s shoulder. He always knew when the Curse was around now, a frosty fog filled his lungs whenever it was close.

(Danny had called it his “ghost sense”, which was lame but Jason didn’t have a better idea.)

And those smudges didn’t have the same kind of ozone-aftertaste that the Curse left in his mouth.

And then one of his girls, maybe seven years old, had come in with that same kind of smeared shadow sticking through soft black hair. He’d had some sharp fucking words with the older kids about that, he didn’t expect them to stay pristine at all times, but for fucks sake it was clumping.

Basic hygiene fucking mattered on the street, none of them could afford a proper de-matting or even a decent razor to shave their heads, so Jason had instilled the importance of bare-minimum finger combing in every one of them years ago. You could live with a fucking rug dragging at your skull, but it made absolutely everything harder.

He’d sat the girl on a stool and washed her hair in a bucket himself, while repeating the same fucking lecture to the other girls. Noticed half way through that while the sticky shit was indeed washing out of her hair, it wasn’t being broken down by the soap.

It was clinging to him instead, seeping into the creases of his fingers and under his nails. He’d tried not to visibly react, giving her a last rinse and wrapping her hair in a towel-hat that she didn’t stop touching for the next forty minutes, fucking it up a dozen times.

The smudgy crap had washed off his hands eventually, but when he saw Danny the next day he’d visibly backed up a few steps, then given Jason about six shots of ecto because his was apparently rancid again. No prizes for spotting the connection, and from there it was obvious.

And then he’d seen Harley the next day, that same smudgy crap a handprint around her fucking throat, and he’d seen red. Hot, angry, blood red, and it not being green had startled the life out of him.

(Harley noticed. Duh. It was her thing. And while Jason couldn’t just tell her some malevolent fucking entity made from her shitty ex was crawling through the city, he’d been as honest as he could be.

Harley definitely couldn’t see the smudges. Danny hadn’t had any answers or way to make it stop fucking touching people.)

Hypothetically, this was all gonna be good in the end. It’d make things easier, being able to see and track this shitstain’s work.

It did not feature in his “don’t get pissed off or think about work” plan.

It was just faintly possible that obsession, self flagellation, and a desire to be personally responsible for fucking everything might be more than just Bruce’s problem. Could maybe be a family affair.

Jason made more pies. Occasionally narrating what he was doing aloud, half for Pitty’s benefit and half for Danny’s when the little shit was crashing on his couch.

It was fine. He was coping. Another couple weeks, Danny reckoned, and Pitty would be out of his body and he could get back to his fucking life.

With a pet Pit ghost in tow, apparently, but if the worst came to the worst he could fucking soup the thing once it was outside him.

(He was also going to teach Danny to make soup. Proper soup. On principle.)

**

Preparing for his trip to Amity Park had taken longer than Bruce had expected. Not least because Alfred had finally run out of patience, and sentenced him to bedrest for the next 12 hours after he returned from the Justice League meeting lest he unlock the tranquilizer guns and give his children free reign.

In the old days, when he’d just become Batman, Bruce had assumed Alfred would never be able to catch him anyway. He’d been cocky and confident in his skills, and often ignored Alfred’s demands.

And yet the man always seemed to know, raising a disapproving eyebrow at Bruce every time he’d slipped back into the room just before Alfred made his rounds.

And then Steph came into his life, and Bruce learned all too fast that Alfred had merely been waiting for appropriate safeguards. That was three kids along of course, but by now Bruce knew exactly why it had been Steph Alfred had waited for.

His relationship with Dick was too tumultuous. While Dick never feared Bruce and was perfectly happy to join Alfred in nagging and bossing him around, by the time Dick moved out Bruce had half expected to only see his son at Justice League meetings, if at all.

They were different men, and Dick had always had an anger in him that Bruce couldn’t fathom. He’d mastered it, his control very rarely slipping, but… Bruce had trained Dick himself, and he was one of a very short list of people that Bruce had no concrete backup plan for.

Nothing but hope to make him cocky with the first attack, and pray the second caught him off guard.

His relationship with Dick hadn’t improved until Tim came into his life… and helped him get his head out of his ass.

Jason? Jason had been an angel. A scruffy, beaten down angel with badly bruised wings when Bruce first picked him up, but he’d flourished in Wayne Manor. He’d taken to Robin with joy and enthusiasm, but had more devotion to his studies than any of Bruce’s kids before or since.

He’d even stay in to study for tests, and if things had been different… perhaps he’d have been the one to break Bruce’s obsession with his night life.

But Bruce had begun taking that good heart for granted, pushed when he should have listened, and sent Jason to his death.

Tim had a hard enough time keeping Bruce from killing himself, along with anyone who stood in the way of his mission. He was a solemn, serious little boy from the start, and though Dick took a more active role this time around and declared himself a big brother (possibly to spite Bruce)… well.

It had to be Steph.

Steph, who would vehemently deny being one of his from whoa to go, was just like all of his children; a feral little gremlin. But Steph had that one more element too, the one which young Dick had had in spades but pulled back from with Bruce years before.

Steph liked to have fun.

Tim treated Bruce as a mission just as much as Gotham was Bruce’s, and Dick had never forgiven him for Jason. Or the fights that went before. Neither could pick up a Nerf gun and hunt him through the city in pure play in those days.

Until Steph gave them the guns, of course. Now any and every one of his children would happily take a tranq gun from Alfred and merrily stalk him through the manor and city at large, and even to the Watchtower if he tempted fate (and Tim).

Bruce was powerless against them, although pride warred with frustration every single time one of them managed to drug him to sleep. He’d trained them well. Well enough that they’d put what was right over what he wanted, that none of them were even a little afraid of him.

He’d planted the seeds of his own destruction.

So when he’d seen Duke and Dick hanging “casually” around the halls while Alfred escorted him to bed, he’d resigned himself to twelve hours of rest.

He’d slept for sixteen. And woke feeling much better, to his own chagrin. His head felt clearer, the migraine almost gone, and the sudden swoops of nausea had finally begun to pass.

He still had odd moments, especially when he’d been on the computer planning the trip to Amity Park for too long, but he’d reluctantly agreed with Alfred. He needed to fully recover from his concussion; that meant rest. And taking days and weeks instead of hours.

Amity Park would still be there, after all. He couldn’t get back the years they’d been late. He’d had to concede another two weeks.

Zatanna had also demanded an explanation for why he was suddenly interested in the town - luckily the Anti-Ecto Acts provided a sufficient cover. They were even most of the reason he was going.

She could also see the gravity of the situation, and offered to put him in touch with some local specialists who claimed to have tech that would keep him from being possessed. Specialists named “Fenton”. Because of course they were.

She’d offered him a ward as well, but mostly in jest. She knew how Bruce felt about magic, and had told him science was on the table almost immediately.

Bruce knew full well it wasn’t a coincidence. Formerly regarded as quacks, the Fentons had been featured prominently in all of their Amity Park news sources. Usually as menaces and a hazard to society, which aligned with what the Mansons had told him.

Still, their actions had nothing to do with the character of their son. Danny Phantom had been Amity Park’s protector for six years, although he’d not had many serious ghosts to fight for the last three.

As Foley had claimed, the ghosts seemed to have settled into a status of local nuisance that was oddly aligned with the Fentons senior; loud, intrusive, and often an inconvenience to your day, but not the threats to life, limb, or infrastructure that had characterised the first years after the portal opened.

Amity Park’s general consensus seemed to be that Danny Phantom had tamed the ghosts, won over the Fentons, and quite efficiently saved the day. He hadn’t been sighted there much in the past year, but that was because he’d been in Gotham.

In school. Finally being able to study and look towards his future.

His main heroic endeavours in the last three years of his career had involved the same GIW, the Ghost Investigation Ward that Foley had told Tim about. They unfortunately had not followed the general trend of de-escalation… although they had been rather subdued in the last year.

It felt different to Bruce, though. Incidents were less frequent, but those occurrences where they did find a ghost had become markedly more violent. The decreased frequency seemed to have lulled the townsfolk into believing they were also less of a threat, but the problem with pushing your enemies into a corner was how much more dangerous a cornered animal became.

There was something worrying happening with the GIW, that would have borne looking into even if he wasn’t also looking to understand Danny better. Preparing everything he’d need for the official investigation was most of what had slowed him down.

Of course, he was going to Amity Park as Brucie Wayne, not as Batman. Vlad Masters’ friendship was going to help him there; the man had been delighted to invite him down for the weekend when Bruce had reached out.

A little faked enthusiasm for football and interest in Vlad’s favourite team and he was a seemingly completely open book. He was more than happy to give Brucie the grand tour of his little town, and even promised a personal escort from the airport.

Bruce was beginning to suspect that getting away from the man might be more of a challenge, although he was another potentially useful source of information on the Amity Park situation.

Not that Masters was a particularly high priority source. But Bruce could admit he may have been hasty to dismiss his views on Danny as being biased, and as mayor he should know something about the GIW operations in his city… and given how many contracts with the agency could be traced back to his companies in the early days of the agency’s formations, he would be a much more serious subject for investigation than a source.

The good news was, everything was now in place. He had Danny’s permission and would be flying down to Amity Park in a matter of hours, and had already bought out the entire top floor of a local hotel, so he should have plenty of privacy to operate from.

With any luck, being able to set things in motion to repeal the Anti-Ecto Acts could also be a first step towards patching things up with Jason… and with Danny. No matter what conclusions Bruce came to in Amity Park, the Justice League owed Danny Phantom a serious apology, and the Infinite Realms some swift action.

Their negligence could have sparked an inter-dimensional war, and nearly had cost a young man his future. Bruce was self aware enough to admit that the guilt of that knowledge was a major factor in why he hadn’t spoken to Danny face to face again.

Yet.

At least Danny had given him permission to visit and explore his haunt. That had to count for something.

He was going to apologize. Probably after giving Jason the proper apology his son so richly deserved. Perhaps Jason would even be willing to help him work out how to properly apologize to Danny too; Bruce wasn’t good at apologies at the very best of times, but Harley had made it explicitly clear that he was going to be getting in a lot of practice.

**

Now, ya can call Harley Quinn a lot of things (and people definitely have), but one thing she ain’t despite the goofball act? Stupid.

Somethin’ was up in Gotham, somethin’ one heck of a lot weirder than all the weird shit that had marked her time in the city.

Oh, she’d gone an’ had another word with Brucie after Waylon told her how Jason’d had to leave through the roof after his talk with Constantine.

(She’d hunt Johnny-boy down later too, probably just after he decided she wasn’t gonna come for ‘im and stopped hiding, but odds on? Brucie’s fault, and Connie was just his unfortunate messenger.)

The thing was, he’d decided to sicc Johnny on poor Jason before they’d had their little talk, so by the time she caught him again he was already all downcast and shamefaced. Already admitting he done fucked up.

And it just wasn’t satisfyin’ to kick him while he was down, an’ while he was already tryin’. He’d even decided on his own to leave both boys alone for now, to let things cool down before tryin’ again.

Now, Mama Quinzel didn’t raise no dummy, she could see a million ways ol’ Brucie’s plan to go and try an’ fix Amity Park for Danny was gonna go wrong. But she wasn’t an expert at this ghost business, so she didn’t pretend to be.

She did exactly what she’d told Brucie to do; consulted an actual expert.

She asked Sammy and Jazzy, Danny’s big sis who was just a real darlin’, in their group chat (which had been popping off since Sammy was a lil sweetheart and set it up for ‘em; Jazzy-boo was of doin’ all kinds of neurological shit but she’d read some psych textbooks in her day, and Harley loved watching a self taught student grow). An’ then she hunted down Jason and Danny, to ask ‘em directly.

Which had been when she’d got her first clue that somethin’ was up; when Jason looked at her like she was still wearin’ a certain other clown’s paint, all stiff and locked up and full of anger.

See, that’d happened before. When they first met, him fresh outta the grave, her fresh outta Hell. When he’d asked if she and Joker were really through, an’ she’d told him hell yeah.

When he’d asked if she’d get in his way of killing the asshole.

That anger, all tight an’ tense an’ burstin’ had been wrapped around his throat then, chokin’ him on it. It was cooler now, more human, more like somethin’ the sweet lil sunshine child who could melt her heart with his tears could feel.

It still wasn’t, ya’know, in the vague vicinity of healthy, but she’d seen Jason Todd about to lose his shit before. An’ his hands shook when he touched her, when he asked what the hell she’d done to her neck.

Harley’d taken a good long look in several bathroom mirrors since. There was nothin’ she could see there, but Harley Quinn had been a short term guest in more than one Hell. There was plenty of shit she was all too happy not ta see.

Then there was ol’ Harvey. She’d run him down faster’n the bats, because she wasn’t also chasin’ Riddler, Great White Shark, at least three new plots from ol’ Pengy, or a suspiciously quiet and freshly escaped Scarecrow.

Two-Face had been all quiet an’ polite since his heist on the young Mr Todd’s party went tits up, so he’d flown under their radar.

Not hers.

Harley always made time for her old friends.

And Harvey had been weird too. Twitchy, on edge, jumpin’ at shadows. That happened if he thought the ol’ Bat was after ‘im, but he’d had no reason to think that. An’ for all he’d flipped his little coin and played up the bit, Harley knew when her friends were off.

Something had put Harvey on edge. Stuffed a bee up his ass and made him all snappy.

He’d even tried to pull a gun! On her! His sweet, darlin’, perfectly loveable and innocent Harleen!

So, ya’know, when she’d touched ground again an’ he’d run outta bullets, she’d knocked it outta his hands before he could reload and reminded him there were more than just Bats to fear. There was also her bat.

An’ by the time they were both all tired out and slumped against each other to order smoothies, he’d admitted he didn’t know why he’d decided to go fer young Jason. To attack their buddy Brucie’s boy.

Now, Harley wasn’t sure Harvey knew silly ol’ Brucie was the Big Bad Bat. She suspected he did, somewhere, in the part of him he hid from all the unpleasantness.

If he knew, he was repressin’ it real deep.

But he’d seen word of the gala, an’ something inside him went dark, and he’d flipped a coin. Got all sorts of plastic explosive of all things ready to really give Gotham a show they wouldn’t forget.

An’ then when it was time to roll out, nunna his cars’d start. An’ he’d flipped the coin again. And stayed home.

She snagged the detonators on his explosives on the way out, on principle. There were some rules after all, and while the Bats could certainly handle anythin’ ol’ Harvey could build, he shouldn’a shot at her.

Harley Quinn was officially out of the rogue game, but that had nothin’ ta do with shit disturbing. She was beginning to wonder though.

Somethin’ was weird in Gotham, a kinda energy in the streets that wasn’t the same black stubbornness she’d known and loved. Somethin’ that felt a little nastier. A little closer to biting.

Now, Harley Quinn was a lotta things. She also wasn’t a lotta the things everyone else thought she was.

She was no quitter. She was no fool. She was no coward to turn tail from some nasty vibes. She might still be a teensy weensy bit mentally disturbed, as you say, but she had her shit together.

An’ she knew when somethin’ else was tryin’ ta play with her head.

Much as she loved Gotham like a second home, she was beginnin’ ta wonder if she shouldn’t head back to Pammy an’ let their mystery of who was givin’ Coney Island a hard time sit with the Bats.

——————

The song Tucker’s playing for Tim and Nygma is here:

Tag List - @welcometosasakiworld @someonebored0100 @stealingyourbones @starkcravingmad @frostedthroughghost @akikkobara @rainbowbunny0159 @littlefeather345 @violet-catsarelife @serasvictoria02 @wolfjackle @blacksea21090 @secretdestinywerewolf @anime-hipster-the-amazing @undead-essence e @skitscratched @blackroserelina a @snoodly-boop @mayoota-blog @xysidhe @little-apricot-the-writer @chaoticmistake @the-legal-shipper @bun-fish @aroranorth-west @demon-cat-goes-woof @perfectwastelandcreation @onyxlightdragon @larks-and-katydids @peachesandcreamfemboy @jesus-camp-the-sequel @may-rbi @mothman-the-mothman87 @viyatrix @stargirl1331 @idfk-man10 @thedepressedrobin n @skulld3mort-1fan @rootsmudge @ravenshadow17 7 @cankoking @phantom-dc @mentalcarebear @magic-pincushion @redamancyardor @lyra689 @itsparadoxlacuna @alcorbearson n @asphyxia778 @why-must-i-be-like-this s @tkiesai @greenpyrowolf @frivolous-pastel @honeysuckletook @adorkable1291

IMPORTANT NOTE! Since about half the tag list no longer links to a blog, I will probably be retiring it for chapter 20, so either comment and let me know you still wanna be on it, or proceed on over to AO3 for alerts!

Part two:

[thebadjoe]

BAD JOE'S DRDT CH.2 CRIME SOLVING THEORY PART 6

Wow! It's been a long while, but it's finally here! DRDT Chapter 2 is back with part 2 starting since more than a week ago!

...Oh? What's that? There's some reveals that is damaging my theory and I should get to fixing? Awwww, man.... what a drag.... I am so doomed... nanchatte!

Anyways, hi! It's me, the dude who makes-overly-complex-and-ridiculously-long-theories-in-the-hopes-of-trying-to-solve-the-murder-case-that-not-many-people-agree-with-for-more-reasons-than-my-theory's-word-count. (Okay, the last part about the reasons is probably not true... yet!)

I am back yet again with some more updates regarding my theory.

NOOOOO!!! NOT AGAIN!!! PLEASE, I DON'T WANNA READ ANOTHER GODDAMN DICTIONARY LENGTH OF A THEORY POST!!!!

Woah! Calm down, imaginary self that is under the impression that some people were way too overwhelmed by my latest part of the theory post! You have nothing to worry about!

It would be silly of me to rewrite all of it again with some small changes. I will of course link up my part 5 later as source of reference, but really, all I'm gonna be doing here today is point out the newest problems with my theory ever since episode 12 and 13 and give my personal thoughts on those.

Also, to make sure that people hasn't forgotten what I've been all about since the beginning, I will do a short recap of my theory, displaying only what's most relevant to the murder case.

Besides, ain't no way I'm writing something this long ever again (except for maybe trying to solve the future chapters, but that's a matter for the far future).

With that said, I feel obliged to point out that this is spoilers for the fangan Danganronpa Despair Time Chapter 2, up until episode 13.

With that out of the way, let's get to it!

Hey look! I still remember how to use that show more button again, hurray! (I'm really sorry again to @1moreff-creator and everyone else who's been reading my very first posts last year that didn't have a show more button)

So, first things first, I'd like to apologize in advance because as amazing the episode 12 and 13 were, I will not be doing a reaction post of said episodes. I think I'm just too lazy to actually display my whole stream of consciousness through two whole videos and I think it is safe to say that practically all of us had a very similar reaction to those episodes.

What was the common reaction, you may ask? Well, it's simple, really... it went something like... OMG, THIS IS SO FUCKING HYPE! OMG!!! THAT WAS SO INSANE!!! THE DRAMA!!! DAVID BEING DAVID!!! THE LEVI REVEAL!!! THE FLASHBACK PART 2 SCENE!!! OMG, WHAT IS EDEN DOING?!! AREI IS HOLDING DAVID'S HANDS?! WE'RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT THE MURDER METHODS?!?! OMG, SO GOOD!!!

...right? Yeah! I thought so! :D

Although I may not be showing proper and precise reactions to these episodes, if you're interested, I'd definitly recommend reading @venus-is-thinking 's, reactions on episode 12 and episode 13, @1moreff-creator 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13 and @accirax 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13. They're pretty good reads (and no, I'm not just saying this because they all believe that Eden is the culprit, I swear!).

And for those who are totally blind or new to my shenanigans, yes, I do believe that Eden is the culprit behind this murder case.

There is indeed a few problems that arose ever since the latest episodes, so to make sure that everyone is up to speed with what I'm gonna be talking about, I'm now going to be doing a short recap of the events, according to me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

THE RECAP

DAY 1 : The day where everyone receives their mixed up secrets and explore the second floor. DAY 2 : The day where the attempted murder on Ace happened. DAY 3 : The day where Whit suggests David to chill for the evening in the relaxation room. DAY 4 : The day (morning) of the body discovery announcement.

Ever since Arei bullied Eden who then cried and exited the playground on DAY 2, that was what triggered Eden to decide to commit murder for the sake of escaping this hellish killing game. Knowing that her secret is that she kissed a girl, I deduced that she's probably trying to escape because she misses her beloved dearly.

So while she was off screen during most of that day, she spent time making plans for the murder set up and narrative, which is why she decided to share Arturo's secret (as seen in the flashback).

During the evening of DAY 2, Ace was working out in the gym, then he hears a conversation happening between David and Arei in the relax room. The conversation that Ace was quietly listening to did not happen in the evening of DAY 3, but rather the evening of DAY 2. Ace lied about when he was listening to that conversation.

At some point during the conversation or perhaps even after the conversation, Eden sneaks up on Ace and knocks him out with the turpentine that anyone could've gotten access to that day. Ace is Eden's chosen murder victim.

Sometime later, Eden eitheir used a letter or called out Arei's name to lure her into the playground or somewhere close to knock her unconscious with that very same turpentine. She then moves Arei's body into the relaxation room to lock her up inside because of the specific nighttime rules regarding that room.

Eden also brought old spares of clothing to cover Arei's body to make sure she doesn't get stained with starch from the water misting formula from the relaxation room.

During the night of DAY 2, she prepares the murder mechanism in the gym with some needed tools from the storage room and some wire that she took out from possibly a grandfather clock that she may have in her dorm. I deduced it as such because of Whit's description of everyone's dorms being suited to their needs.

I also deduced that there is actually a switch to turn on and off the fans, which is important since the attempted murder involved the fans. As Eden finished setting it up, as she was about to clear up with evidence, she heard someone using the elevator.

She hid in the dress up room, then Nico enters the second floor, looking for Ace to kill him. As Nico explores the gym, Teruko shortly enters the elevator to get to the second floor as well.

Teruko, looking for her spares, runs into Eden, who was hidden in the dress up room. After some talk, they heard a loud noise coming from the gym, which they both take a look inside.

Upon seeing this mess of a crime, Eden realised that her murder plan failed and that she needs to come up with a plan B really quick. So while she is taking time to "process this emotionally", Teruko was investigating.

Eden finally comes up with a plan B and figured that she needed to get her hands on the roll of tape ASAP. She managed to do so with a sleight of hand when Ace "suddenly wakes up", knocking Eden out of the way, distracting Teruko in the process.

Later that night, Eden proceeds with her plan B by making a murder mechanism in the playground. She also took the rope from the storage room. Once it's all properly set up, all's left was waiting for the relaxation to unlock at 8:00 AM on DAY 3.

In the morning of DAY 3, she retrieves Arei's unconscious body and proceeds with murdering Arei. Then, she proceeds to conceal the body somewhat behind the curtains in the relaxation room. She also grabs her glove, her monopad and the necessary materials in the dress up room for the next step of her plan.

She spends the rest of the morning to prepare her disguise trick. Then during lunchtime, Eden spends a short amount of time disguised as Arei to hide the actual time of death.

Once lunchtime is over, she returns to eitheir her or Arei's dorm to remove the disguise, spend time cleaning up, relax, power nap, etc. Then, during the evening of DAY 3, she spends time with Hu to fabricate her perfect alibi.

Later that evening, David explores the relaxation room. That's when he notices something wrong with the room and becomes the first person to discover Arei's dead body.

For some personal reasons, David brings the body back into the playground and hangs it by the swingset. Eitheir he or Eden (earlier in the morning) balls up the clothes and hides it in the closet of the dress-up room. Then, in the morning of DAY 4, David grabs everyone's attention to the fact that Arei is missing right before the secrets reveal. Then fast forward a bit, then we get the BDA of Arei

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And there ya go, that's my recap regarding how I believe the murder case happened. Pretty short, eh?

HELL NO!!! THAT WAS STILL PRETTY LONG!!! AHHHHH!!!!

Eh... I guess I couldn't really make it that shorter, my bad! If I tried to make it any shorter than that, it would've been extremely confusing.

Ah! Speaking of which, if you're confused in the sense that it feels like none of this should work at all, and there's a lot of contradictions and whatnot, then I would heavily recommend reading my actual theory post. I am not going to spend time refuting with people in the comments about points I've already pointed out in my previous post.

However, if there are things that are unclear to you, things that you do not understand and want to know what I'm talking about, please, feel free to ask away! I will help in any way I can.

With that out the way, I guess I can now start with pointing out the pr-

HAH! THERE IS A MAJOR ISSUE WITH YOUR THEORY!!! BASED ON EPISODE 12, THE MURDER COULD'VE ONLY HAPPENED IN THE MORNING OF DAY 4 BECAUSE OF THE BODY SWING! YOU'RE DONE FOR!

Ah... yeah... that! Of course! That's not a problem!

!!!

Let's talk about it first, shall we? :D

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AREI'S BODY SWING : CONFIRMED TIME OF DEATH???

I'd like to come clean with something, everyone. Ever since I came up with the theory that murder happened at a totally unexpected time, there was something that was constantly bothering me.

That's right, I was very well aware of the body swing happening during the BDA ever since the beginning.

HUH?! Then all this time, you wrote all of this despite knowing that?!

Correct! I'm really sorry about that, but please, understand that I had a very good reason for it. For you see... everytime I saw it, I was often under the impression that this was simply an eerie effect / animation, to give a more dramatic intensity towards the BDA, without meaning anything. I legit thought it could be a thing, I swear!

But despite all that... I couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. Deep down, I felt like that maybe there was an actual meaning to it, maybe it was an actual clue that I shouldn't disregard. But I figured that because of my theory beliefs, then it would be rather unlikely that it would be used as evidence.

But alas, I was wrong about that. The body swing plays a very important rule in determining what happened in this murder case. I cannot deny that fact, especially since Teruko brought it up, plain as day. Despite it seeming like it damages my theory, I'm thankful that the dev finally cleared that little doubt I had since then.

Then you admit it, the murder actually happened in the mor-

Oh, not so fast! Let's not jump to conclusions just yet, alright? Arei's body swinging by the swing set doesn't quite exactly prove that the murder occured during the morning of DAY 4. The body swing only proves that someone messed with the body by the swingset.

W-What?! That doesn't make sense! The murder clearly happened in the morning of DAY 4!

Nuh-uh, not quite. You believe it clearly happened in the morning because that's what the cast concluded on top of Charles pointing out that the culprit could've clearly fake the time of death by saving the fishes for later.

But unless we have decisive evidence that the murder happened in the morning, we can't be 100% sure that the murder happened in the morning of DAY 4.

From the looks of it, you just seem very desperate, if you ask me.

At first, when episode 12 released, I kind of was... up until I figured out a fairly logical solution to it. That's right! I have a way to explain who made the body swing and why.

You're not going to suggest that David did all of what he supposedly did in the evening of DAY 3, but instead in the morning of DAY 4, right?!

Nope! Not at all. Disregarding the facts that it wouldn't really make sense and that he'd have to move the body out of the relax room anyways before nighttime (because of the water misting rules), David actually has an alibi in the morning of DAY 4.

(As does Veronika too as she was with them in the cafeteria)

With all of these reasons mentioned above, as much as I initially wanted to make it somehow possible that David came back to the crime scene to mess with the body somehow, it just isn't possible.

So instead, someone else did it.

Then out with it already, you staller! Who is it?!

There is only one possible candidate that would make the most sense in that scenario : Eden. Eden is the person who messed with Arei's body in the morning of DAY 4.

WHHAAAAT?!?! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?! THAT'S SO RISKY!

That's what I initially thought at first, not gonna lie. But then... something hit me : Eden doesn't have an alibi for the morning of DAY 4 eitheir.

I thought that there would be absolutely no need for Eden to come back to the crime scene a certain short amount of time before the BDA, so instead, I needed to reverse my way of thinking.

What could she possibly aim to do that would prompt her to come back to the crime scene last minute?

Considering the facts (based on my theory, mind you) that she killed Arei in the morning of DAY 3, hid the body somewhere in the relaxation room, built up an evening to night alibi with Hu and that David was the first person to discover it during the evening, there is a simple explanation behind it.

Arei's BDA was meant to be triggered much earlier than the morning of DAY 4. The original intent behind this whole scheme was to have the BDA trigger during the evening of DAY 3.

That doesn't make sense!

No, that's wrong! It does make a whole lot of sense. Think about it. Let's say you were a participant in this killing game and were in David's shoes during the evening of DAY 3... you come across a dead body in the relaxation, what would you do?

!!!

That's right, you wouldn't just mess with the body and move it somewhere else, now would you? Aside from freaking out, the most natural and human thing to do would be to gather help.

If it were anyone else than David who discovered the body in that exact scenario, they would cry out for help, tell everyone that they found Arei dead inside the relaxation room, which would then result in a body discovery announcement.

But what if the person who found the body were to personally ask for Hu's and Eden's help, wouldn't that ruin her plan since it wouldn't trigger the BDA?

There's an easy solution to that. Eden could've simply decided to find more people to share the news to meet up with the corpse. This wouldn't ruin her plan in the slightest.

Quite the opposite, actually. If the body were to be discovered and trigger the BDA during the evening, it would solidify her air tight alibi even further as she wouldn't have any possible timeframe to commit murder in the evening as she was spending time with her friend Hu.

Ugh, so what? It didn't really happen anyways because of David being David! That doesn't change anything!

Actually, it does change things considerably. If you put yourself in the culprit's perspective where the whole intent was to have the body discovery happen in the evening of DAY 3 and that during the whole night, nothing happened, you would certainly find that very strange.

The culprit would be clearly confused, yet really curious to find out what even happened.

Couldn't she have taken a look much later during the night?

Perhaps, but she figured it would've been pointless. The reason why is that if she thought that nobody found the body, then the body would've still remained hidden in the relaxation room which would then be currently locked away because of the water misting.

So instead of checking it out during the late night of DAY 3, Eden decided to investigate during the very early morning of DAY 4, sometime past 7:30 AM.

But the relaxation room is still locked up until 8:00 AM! Why not wait until then?

It's simple! She just wanted to be there a little bit in advance to make sure she can enter the room as early as possible. And so... while she is waiting for the relaxation room to unlock, she probably figured that she should take a look around the other rooms, why not?

And thus, that leads to Eden finding the body being hung by the swingset, alongside fishes scattered around the floor for some reason.

To reconfirm, I still believe that David is the first person who discovered Arei's dead body in the relaxation room and that he's responsible for hanging her body alongside placing those fishes by the playground.

Okay, Eden discovers that the body has been moved to the playground? What now? Everything's already in place, so what could she possibly do with the dead body?

Well, since the BDA was not triggered on the evening of DAY 3, she figured that she may as well put Arei's monopad back into the corpse's pockets.

But what about her missing glove? Why didn't she return that as well if she wanted to return her monopad?

That's a good point, that's for sure. But there are two easy fixes to this counter argument. First one being that she simply forgot about the gloves. No one's really perfect, after all. She was so concerned about the body not being discovered yet that this completly slipped her mind.

The second fix would be that it would've been way too risky to try to retrieve the glove. Maybe initially, Eden, after she removed her disguise, she placed the clothes and the glove back into Arei's dorm. So if she wanted to retrieve the glove, she'd have to return to Arei's room, unlocking it with a monopad that isn't her own.

Would she really risk that again after making this much progress without getting caught so far? Like imagine if she tried to take that risk one last time only to get caught, that would be quite the devastating result, wouldn't it?

Ok, fine. Nevermind the gloves. Is that all she did?

Pretty much, yeah. She returned the monopad back into her pockets, which moved the body somewhat.

...

Well, it's also possible that she tripped and moved the body even more by accident. Or perhaps she felt like she was in such a hurry to avoid getting found out that she accidently bumped into Arei's dead body.

...Are you kidding me? There's no way that's gonna be enough to move the body for this long!

Well... maybe her being there at exactly 7:30 AM is not the exact time. She could've been there a couple minutes before 8:00 AM, which could make this possible.

But that's ridiculous! There's no way Eden is strong enough to make the body swing that way. To make the body swing for a good amount of time, she'd need more than just accidently bumping into the body! It needs considerable force.

And I'll stop you there. If you've read my last theory post, you should know by now that I'm a firm believer that because it's a work of fiction, anything that seems unlikely can become possible.

The main thing we should take from Arei's body swinging during the BDA is that at some point in time during the morning, someone messed with the body, proving that someone was there during the morning of DAY 4.

And there you go, that's my whole explanation as to how Arei's body was swinging during the BDA that doesn't necessarily mean that the murder occured during that exact morning.

If you're not quite convinced yet, there is a certain part of my theory that begins to make a lot more logical sense with this solution in mind. Take a look at this!

Thanks to the solution I suggested, these two lines become a lot more fitting to my updated theory. Here's why!

If Eden were to explore and find the body hanging by the swing set during the morning of DAY 4, she would know that at least 1 person found the body, but not who exactly.

Because of Whit's silly comment, Eden immediatly thought of the body in the playground and jumped to the worst conclusion : Whit is the person who found the body first.

So if they were to open the door to the playground, the BDA would not trigger since Eden is the culprit. So in a moment of panic, Eden uttered : "Teruko, wait--".

It is still pretty much the same as what I had in mind according to the previous part of my theory post, except that it works a whole lot better now that Eden personally saw the actual state of the dead body in the morning of DAY 4.

So there you have it. This seemingly major problem for my theory actually turned out to be very beneficial for my theory after all! Ah, the joys of making logical sounding deductions! My theory should be saf-

HAH! YOU THINK YOUR THEORY IS SAFE FROM HARM YET?! WRONG!!!! IN EPISODE 13, THEY ACTUALLY SHOWED HOW THE MURDER MECHANISM WORKED! NOT ONLY IS EDEN TOO WEAK TO OPERATE IT, BUT THEY PUT FISH WATER INSIDE THOSE JUGS! SINCE THEY REVEALED THAT MURDER METHOD, IT HAS TO BE THE SOLUTION. YOUR THEORY IS RUINED! GOOD DAY SIR!

Oh, you mean this?

Oh no, this murder mechanism is different from mine and this one requires a certain amount of strength that Eden possibly doesn't have! And the fishes! Since they brought it up, then there's no way my theory can work! Whatever shall I do??? It's joever.... just kidding!

I don't mean to alarm you guys, but the current proposed murder mechanism idea actually has flaws. Let's talk some more about the murder mechanism in the playground, shall we? :)

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TERUKO'S CURRENT MURDER MECHANISM IDEA : RIGHT OR WRONG???

Before I get into it, I'd like to remind everyone that just because we've been shown how the murder may have been done for the first time means that's how it actually happened. Let's not forget that they spent so much time arguing and discussing about the secrets that they barely ever talked about the murder case in itself.

So if anything, episode 13 is practically just them beginning their actual work! Mistakes are bound to happen. We shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. Besides, there is actually a problem with this murder mechanism.

I'll present it to you in pictures to show you what I'm talking about.

The taped up wrists. This was practically the decisive proof that this wasn't a suicide nor could it have been an assisted suicide. So now that they've introduced a murder mechanism in an actual episode... what's actually the point of the taped wrists in that scenario?

If the culprit used exactly this kind of murder mechanism, then there would be absolutely no need to tape up her wrists together.

Maybe it was to stop Arei from trying to struggle?

Nope. If that was the case, we would've seen much more signs of struggle coming from Arei. There may be scuffs on the ground, but there's absolutely no other form of injury on Arei aside from her broken neck.

Well, I saw a theory where the accomplice was Levi and he could've easily overpower her!

(I believe that was something that @1moreff-creator theorized, if I recall? At least, that was the theory pre part 2)

It used to be borderline possible, but not this time anymore! Thanks to the first two episodes of part 2 of chapter 2, it seems extremely unlikely that Levi wanted to work with the culprit as an accomplice.

Not only because of what we find out regarding his secret, what kind of character he is, but also because of something he said in episode 12.

I don't know about you, but this doesn't look like something an accomplice would say at all, right? If the culprit was someone who didn't have an alibi in the evening, it would be a different story, but the most fitting theory for having Levi work as an accomplice is to work for Eden, who happens to have an alibi in the evening as you already know.

So since we gotta take Levi out of the equation, then we don't really have much other possible candidates who could've easily overpower Arei to the point where taping up her wrists would've helped better on that regard.

Therefore, the most logical solution would be that Arei was knocked unconscious with the turpentine. But since that's the most likely scenario, then what's up with the taped wrists?

If the taped wrists weren't used to prevent any remote chance for Arei to try to get out of this situation, then it must've been used as part of the murder mechanism.

But since the murder mechanism as shown by Teruko doesn't explain the taped up wrists whatsoever, then this becomes a discrepancy. Therefore, that can't be quite the correct answer to solving the how this murder mechanism works.

And since this murder mechanism idea is flawed, it also means that there's no guarantee that the jugs contained fish water inside, they could've simply gathered water somewhere else or perhaps there jugs were already filled with clean water to begin with.

Because this murder mechanism idea is flawed, there's no guarantee that the culprit used this method which required some unknown amount of strength, but an amount of strength regardless (unless the author wants to pass it off as anyone could've done it since it's easier to do it by spinning it, I'm not sure).

Because of that flaw, my theory isn't affected by the murder mechanism idea that Teruko suggested since there is no guarantee that this is the correct answer.

So yeah, there's no problem whatsoever! Also, as far as I'm aware, since the release of the latest episodes, I have a very logically sound reason to explain the taped up wrists as shown in part 5 of my theory.

To give you a small reminder, it was for something like this!

(Whole murder mechanism not properly shown in the drawing because I'm lazy as heck, but just take a close attention to the arms)

By having Arei's arms go between the pillars of the seasaw, you can make it so that she can't get out of it by taping her wrists together, which plays an important role in the murder mechanism. Not going to elaborate further, if you want to know more, you gotta read the big post right there!

And there you have it! Those were the two main concerns that could've negatively affect my theory, but fortunately for me, it doesn't. In fact, it supports it even more than before.

Especially regarding the David / Arei conversation flashback (shown from David's memory's perspective). This conversation told us a lot more between these two, do you know what that means?

That's right! It means that Ace is full of shit! There's no way he didn't hear anything else. The only way he could've not hear anything else is if he gets snuck up from behind and gets knocked out with the turpentine, but it could've easily simply been Ace witholding that information to make David look more suspicious.

Therefore, if he lied about this, he could've also easily lied about when he actually overheard that conversation for his own selfish gains!

There's also a few couple other points that could further support my theory, but I don't feel like going over every single little detail as of now. I mainly wanted to solve these two issues and nothing else.

So, DRDTers, I need to ask you the following : Do you still believe that I am delusional with this overly complex theory of mine? :)

Thanks for reading another one of my big posts, as usual!

Edit : Go read the finale of my theory next, it's worth it!

[last-sprout]

Last Sprout Dev Diary - Nov 22, 2024

Hello sprout folks! I'm Valerie, or @oneominousvalbatross, and I've been working on Last Sprout since July, and I'm wildly excited to share some of the things I've been working on with y'all.

Ignore that Twiggs' hat falls off that's natural.

I'm aiming for a Dev Diary once a week on Fridays, and I'm just gonna be giving a brief look into making a game! I'm learning how to do a lot of this stuff live, so I'm sure there'll be a ton of massive rewrites and changes. I have probably a dozen huge systems that are already built that I'm not going to be getting into in this post, since I'm already half a year or so into development, but I'm sure I will find space to include them later!

XP

I spent most of my time figuring out exactly how we wanted to represent XP in the world. We were pretty certain that we wanted XP to exist physically as a substance you picked up, so I started with a system from a previous build.

In that version, we just created a bunch of XP objects and scattered them into the world, then had some code that scooted them around. Of course, that means that we're tracking an individual unity GameObject for every single instance of a point of XP which is, uh, slow.

This is what we call 'suboptimal.'

So obviously we needed to not instantiate an entire transform every time we needed to spawn XP. Even if we re-used objects that would just be prohibitively expensive for an object that really just needs a position.

I'm not going to go over each step in the process, but after experimenting with GPU instancing to just draw a bunch of XP objects at once, eventually I landed on extending Unity's particle system, since it has a lot of the settings I wanted access to.

To make the XP move how I wanted, I wrote a pretty simple process that iterates through all the little blobs and checks how close they are to a designated collector, then uses an exponential decay function (with thanks to Freya Holmér) to make them move towards Twiggs.

I think every game should have an action that can be best summarized by making the noise 'SHWOOOOOP.'

Parrying

Parrying was a good deal simpler, but it still has its issues. Essentially, all a parry needs to be is a hitbox and an animation, with some callbacks to enemies to let them react to the parry. Whenever an attack hitbox intersects with either a Parrybox or a Hurtbox, it checks its tags to see if it's interacting with the appropriate entities, to makes sure enemies aren't hitting or parrying each other constantly. If it passes the test, it calls GetParried() on the intersecting object.

GetParried(), idiot.

For the basic behavior, parrying just interrupts the attack in progress and knocks the enemy back by a set amount, but there's room in the system to add all sorts of neat effects, which I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of in the future. It's been a challenge to juggle the various kinds of hitboxes, but it'll definitely be worth it going forward!

Of course, between all these bits there were a ton of bugfixes and little experiments, but that's a topic for a later dev diary!

[harukamitsuki]

Okay... I am currently back on my Voltron bullshit and continuing my rewrite of Voltron. And I'm constantly reminding of HOW MUCH I HATE LANCE.

Don't get me wrong. I am still treating Lance fairly in my fic, making sure he gets screen-time and a proper character acr and stuff.

But by GODS. This man pisses me off so much and that's only made worse by his stans. I was scrolling through Keith's tag here on tumblr. I also have Kl@nce filtered out. I cannot see a single post without at least three pages of scrolling and then it's only ONE POST. AND IT'S STILL KLANCE BECAUSE IT HASN'T BEEN TAGGED CORRECTLY.

Anyway. Onto the actual things I hate about Lance and not just his fandom.

Lance is a fucking asshole. I mean that on the deepest level. Let's go through it chronologically because I cannot rank it from least to most assholery, because some things are on the same level.

1 - Allura wakes up from the cryopod and Lances catches her. She's confused and dazed and the first thing you should do is ask if she's alright. Oh, but Lance is above that. Instead, he flirts with her. Karma given immediately as she calls his ears hideous and puts him in a submission hold, which is why I kept that scene in my fic, but that was still wrong. I know it was played for comedic effect, but that doesn't make it not canon. It's canonically accurate that if you've awoken from a coma, Lance's first instinct is to flirt with you if you're pretty.

2 - Literally throws Hunk into the middle of a battle. I get that Hunk was supposed to leave the Lion anyway, but just shoving him out when there are lasers everywhere and Hunk has no protection? Yeah. So much for 'best friend'. Add on the fact that Lance never really treats Hunk like a friend. At all.

3 - Okay. Season 1 Lance isn't bad outside of those two examples, even if he has his dumb moments, so let's jump to Season 2. Starting shit with Keith for no reason. People can go 'oh, Keith obviously did something to him at the Garrison' but he DIDN'T. The writers themselves confirmed that Keith did nothing to Lance, he just started shit with Keith all the fucking time. Like accussing Keith of wanting Blue and cutting him off when he tried to explain what was actually happening, even though Lance is the one who was outraged initially that Keith had Red. Or how about Lance getting up in Shiro's face and screaming his head off about how Keith would rather kill people than listen to them, as if he knew Keith at all after bullying him the entire time.

4 - Okay. This one pissed me off the most and is the biggest reason I'm making this post. The fact that Lance used Shiro's death/disappearance against Keith. Keith outwardly expresses his lack of desire to become the leader and accidentally let it slip that Shiro wanted him to do it. To which Lance is all 'convenient that you say that when Shiro's gone'. What. What the fuck. Stans really say that Lance is precious but how the hell are you justifying that? A blind man could see how much Keith loves Shiro, and Lance has the fucking gall the say that Keith is USING his death/disappearance for a position he doesn't want? He didn't even apologise for it. He just told Keith to suck it up later on. This is one of the reasons I hated Lance as the Red Paladin, the others being explained in an earlier post of mine.

5 - Oh, yeah. We're not done. Because after Keith, it's Allura. Allur@nce is probably the worst ship that could have happened, apart from Kl@nce. If you wanted a straight ship, how about what was canon for the past Voltron series? Kallura? Anyway. Yeah, Lance treats Allura like a prize instead of a person. He's posessive in a way that he has no right to be because they were not together. He glares at Matt for flirting with Allura, something he only does once. He gets mad at Lotor and tries to stop them from spending time together, EVEN THOUGH LOTOR IS HELPING ALLURA AND BONDING THROUGH ALTEAN THINGS. HELPING HER KEEP IN TOUCH WITH ALTEAN CULTURE. In Season 8, he literally yells that it should be Lance and Allura?? What a fucking weirdo?? You can't claim that you're destined to be with someone without being together. That's not how healthy relationships work. That's how a stalker's mind works. Lance is constantly flirting with Allura throughout all of Voltron and she never once reciprocated until Season 8 where it's so obvious that Lance is just a rebound but the writers wanna make it so that it's 'true love' and they want Lance to be happier than anyone so they just gift her to him like some sort of trophy. Lance didn't care about loving Allura, he cared about winning her. At least Lotor actually cared for and respected her. I still don't like canon Lotor, but that's mostly because the writers didn't want to deal with gray morality. Cowards.

1 - Honestly the worst example of a leader. It's shown from episode one. Now, there is the argument of learning to become one, but Lance just never learns? He's never facing the consequences of his actions and, if he is lectured, he ignores it. Keith actually takes lessons to heart and tries to improve and he does. If Lance became the Black Paladin, the universe would have been doomed because he can't get over himself for a single moment to even bother listening to anyone else's advice.

So. Yeah. Those are the main reasons why Lance is an asshole. Now to make the Lance stans really pissed.

Reasons why Lance would have been a terrible leader and could never have been the Black Paladin.

Remember episode one? Remember how the hydraulic stabiliser was out in the simulator and Lance still tried to push on, even though Pidge and Hunk advised him not to? Totally great leadership qualities there. There's nothing better than a leader that refuses to listen to you. 'Oh, but Keith is stubborn and didn't listen--' yes he did. He's stubborn and unrelenting at first, but he eventually realises that they're right.

Remember episode three? Remember when Lance bragged about kicking, which made Voltron fall, then proceeded to try it again and failed again even when Keith advised him not to? Yeah. Lance does not make good decisions and does not listen to any advise. Even from the leader's right hand man.

Remember Season 1 Episode 12? Remember how they were waiting for Shiro and Allura to get back and then Keith saw someone taking quintessence so he decided to follow them? Remember how Lance said no and was ignored but did nothing more to stop Keith? He has no authority and no charisma to keep anyone at bay. Pidge herself mocks Lance for being the pinnacle for leadership. Sarcastically. Because he's far from it.

Pidge doesn't respect Lance as a leader, Keith never would considering Lance treats him like shit, Allura can't take Lance seriously with him hitting on her every ten seconds, and Hunk is always questioning Lance's decisions. If nobody respects you, you cannot be a good leader.

2 - Easily distracted. Yes, it's a very popular headcanon that Lance has ADHD, and I agree with that, but that doesn't make it okay. And he's distracted in the easiest ways. Just shove a pretty girl and he'll instantly get distracted and lead the entire team to doom. Remember Nyma and how easy it was for her to steal the Blue Lion? How he didn't even warn anyone that he was taking her out for a ride because he didn't want anyone contesting his conquest? Yeah.

Don't get me wrong. It's fine to have ADHD or get distracted easily. Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece is a great example of a leader who gets easily distracted, but the second he sets his mind on something, he blocks everything out. Lance just doesn't have the capability to do that, nor do I think he'd be able to learn how to.

3 - Gets jealous really easily. As in. Really fucking easily. He's jealous of Keith from the get-go, starting a one-sided rivalry that he's constantly on the losing side of because Keith doesn't care. He gets jealous of Matt when he flirts a bit with Allura. He gets extremely jealous of Lotor for having actual chemistry with Allura. He's constantly jealous and a good leader is only ever in competition with himself. A good leader will only strive to become better for the sake of the team, not to say that they're better than someone else, much less if they're someone that you are in charge of. It's a horrible trait to have.

Jealousy in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's when that jealousy overrides your logic and controls you, instead of you controlling your jealousy: which Lance struggles with a lot. And getting jealous over anyone who even looks at your crush is a very bad thing to do because you do not own your crush. It's okay to be jealous, but not posessively like Lance is. Not to the extent of trying to scare off any potential suitors.

4 - Nowhere near as skilled as Keith or Shiro. Sure, the writers may claim that he is better, but the proof is in the pudding. Keith and Shiro are fucking unmatched. I've defended Lance's skills in a previous post, but I also said in that post that, while he is skilled, he is nowhere near Shiro or Keith's level. I mean, Shiro was the golden child of the Garrison and set so many records. He was known as the best pilot. Keith beat those records and his flying capabilities are always, always noted. I haven't heard a single character comment on Lance's skills, other than to point out how bad they are. Keith was the only one who could have flew through the astroid field, he was the only one who could fly into the Marmora base which was in a blue star surrounded by two black holes, he was able to fly a Galra jet just by pushing the right buttons and knowing what the do, and he's the one who unlocks the warping abilities of the Black Lion. Shiro was able to connect with the Black Lion far before anyone else, able to see through Black and connect with Black to the point of his soul being saved by her.

Lance hasn't done anything spectacular. And, no. He was not 'done dirty'. He was given almost everything he wanted except the Black Lion. The writers claim he's the best pilot, but have not shown it at all. In my eyes, Keith and Shiro will always be the best.

5 - Selfish. Again. Nothing against being selfish. It's perfectly fine to be selfish, so long as it doesn't actively harm others. But for a leader? You should be as selfless as you can be. The team comes before you. And that's exactly what Lance isn't.

Lance is selfish and that's okay, but it's not leadership material. The whole reason Black rejected him is because he wanted the position out of selfish reasons. When he enters Black, he says 'Come on, Lance. You can do this'. In other words, he wants to pilot her because he wants to prove himself. He wants the acknowledgement. He wants the title of the Black Paladin and leader. Black accepted Keith, both at the start of Season 2 and Season 3, because he piloted her for purely selfless reasons. For Shiro.

Lance wants things for himself. Keith wanted things for Shiro. It was only after Shiro came back, (or so they thought), that Keith started focusing more on himself. Even then, he put everyone else before him. He distanced himself from the team so that Shiro could pilot Black again, and he was constantly risking his life for the Blades.

Lance just... isn't the type. He has put others before himself, but he expect things out of it. He expects a parade and acknowledgement. Nobody knew what Shiro went through to rid Zarkon of his connection to the Black Lion. Nobody knew what Shiro went through in his imprisonment because he doesn't want to burden anyone with that. Nobody knew what Keith went through to save Black and Shiro from Zarkon. Nobody knew what Keith went through when they were all mad at him for missing an attack. Lance doesn't withold that sort of stuff. The only thing he doesn't talk about is his insecurities, which he ends up spilling to the mice and Laika (the Yupper) anyway.

6 - Last one. Promise.

Nothing fucking happened. While Keith was gone, nothing of importance happened surrounding Voltron specifically. There was the Lion mind meld and Lotor joining, but all that served to prove was, with the mind meld, if Keith was there, he would have heard Shiro. And with Lotor joining, all it proved was how immature Lance was.

The second Keith gets back, things start happening again. Lotor gets outed as cruel and manipulative (still an ass-pull, by the way), Shiro gets outed as a clone, and so on. If Lance was leading, they all probably would have died ages ago. I'm talking Season 3 Episode 2, ages ago. Because Lance just isn't cut out for it.

So. Yeah. Those are the main reasons I hate Lance and why Black Paladin Lance is an awful idea. Screw the people who believe in it. It is awful.

Like I said, this won't affect my treatment of Lance in my rewrite, because I can fix those issues that come up. I don't have an issue with Season 1 Lance, it's later on that gets problematic. I just hate people building Lance up by bashing all the other characters, then claiming that Lance is the most traumatised, sad character when SHIRO AND KEITH ARE RIGHT THERE. NOT TO MENTION ALLURA, WHO LOST HER ENTIRE SPECIES, AND CORAN WHO LOST EVERYONE INCLUDING ALLURA AND NEVER GOT TO SAY GOODBYE TO HER.

Fuck. I hate Voltron so much but I can't help but love it.

[kookidough]

i know world tour rewrites are probably overdone by now but i wanna see an alenoah world tour rewrite where pretty much everything is the same but (predictably) it changes at/around i see london

so in this rewrite, pre-london, similarly to canon alejandro is flirting with other teams to get them off their game and eliminate them (cough cough bridgette, leshawna, etc) but he thinks it’d be a good idea to flirt with someone on his own team- not to throw them off their game, but to get a closer bond with them and hopefully a steady alliance once merge rolls around. after all, it’s easier to get closer to a team member than an enemy right now.

he’s weighing up his options and he Hates owen, izzy is Insane, and tyler serves no use to him, which leaves noah.. alejandro thinks he’ll be a good choice since while noah is weak he does somewhat try in challenges and he is very smart, so having him as an ally will benefit alejandro, also he genuinely enjoys noah company, viewing him as being on the same level as him in levels of wit/intelligence/humour, so boom it’s settled, noah will be his ally post-merge

anyway back to i see london, the episode goes the same up until the elimination ceremony, alejandro yaps in the confessional about it being unfair that chris let team amazon win since his team were the ones that actually caught the ripper-type guy. he also knows that since he was caught before the challenge even started, he’s probably going home !! so he needs to figure out a way to gaslight gatekeep girlboss everyone and stay in the game

he, like in canon, is of course irritated at noah for talking about him behind his back and thinks about eliminating him, despite previously thinking he’d be a good ally. this is where i diverge fully from canon and say he can’t really risk losing an ally here and maybe, without noah having the influence of anyone else, he’ll be able to turn things around with him. izzy is already gone so if alejandro eliminates owen, then noah will have no other allies and most likely be searching for one, so this is where alejandro can swoop back in and continue to ally with him (while definitely planning to use him for his intelligence and double cross him later as revenge for gossiping about him, and also because alejandro wants to win)

so with 2 votes for ale and 3 votes for owen, the big guy is sent packing and things are playing out the way alejandro wants them to. when he approaches noah for an alliance he’s surprised at how little convincing it takes, and he thinks this plan will be easier than he thought

hoooowever noah is also planning to double cross him and he approaches heather, despite disliking her, because he knows shes currently the only other one that can see through alejandro. he may not like heather but he knows she’s smart and a very capable player and hey, if things go south then it can’t be that hard to get her eliminated, because she’s literally heather

so just . AUFHHR i need this dynamic of noah and alejandro thinking they’re one step ahead of each other and they’ve got each other all figured out but they’re actually both just playing each other’s game and they have all the stupid flirty rival banter while they tango around their feelings for each other it’s great

and they dont even have to be final 2 !!! maybe their plans crumble and they end up voted off and get into some tense aftermath segment and have a very chaotic game of “truth or volcanic eruption” !!

[tblsomedoodles]

I

C R A V E

more Donnie VS The World content. It makes me vibrate and scream and wiggle like I'm off my meds. I would love anything, even a solid block of text, but your doodles/full artworks/comics are my favorite.

Please? All I've found so far is what we see in the donnieverse comic and the MVA/AMV (music video animatic/animatic music video). So many questions, like - is Casey (Sr) involved in any way, whethercas a fellow captive or rescue mission teammate? Is this the True Apocalypse or Averted Apocalypse timeline? If the latter, where is Casey (Jr)? How is Splinter handling it? (Is he even still alive to be Having Emotions About It?)

(Please feed me.

B L E A S E)

(If you don't mind, could you show/tell how Donnie escapes, one of his first Big Leads that gives him so much hope he cries, and/or the Big Reunion? One would be nice, two would be great, and all three would be amazing. If they aren't planned/are too spoilery, that's okay. Anything you can/are willing to give would be lovely.)

Thank you!! I'm glad you like it : ) I don't think I've answered many asked about this particular au, so i'm more than willing to talk about it! : )

I don't really have much up for it, mostly b/c it deals with a lot of angsty material that i can be a little uneasy about posting. I have a bit of old concept art, and an unposted fic i'm editing/rewriting (b/c it's the first fic i wrote for Rise and i did not have those character voices down lol.) I can probably post the first bits of it later this week. I did say at one point that i would once 'proud family tradition' was over, and it now is.

but yeah, here's the concept art, i'll put the explanation under the break b/c i'm going to be rambling lol.

So Donnie vs. takes place after the thwarted apocalypse (not-apocalypse future). They get taken by Bishop a few months afterwards, and it isn't until about a year after that, that Donnie gets free.

He's the last one still with Bishop at that point, and had been told/convinced through various means that his brothers were dead.

Bishop did a lot of experiments on him, leaving a lot of scaring. One of which was injecting him with Krang DNA to see what would happen. (the eye and veins thing. I think he has some side effects from that but i'm not entirely certain what they are atm)

The fic itself starts after his rescue, b/c i'm focusing on Donnie's search for his brothers (and his own recovery) Rather than the traumatic event itself.

The rescue itself, was certainly a rescue. April, Casey, and CJ worked together to get him out of there as well as gain whatever information they could before they were found out. (Casey went undercover and was able to get some incomplete files and help get donnie out before she was discovered and had to leave.)

donnies in...pretty bad shape at that point, mentally and physically. Physically, he's malnurished, injured, scared, the works. Bishop did a number on him in the year he had him.

Mentally, he's pretty much shut down. He's completely non-verbal, unresponsive most of the time, when he does respond it's very slow and seemingly difficult for him to do so. He describes it that it feels like he's behind several plates of thick glass. He can see and hear what's happening, interacting (or even just feeling anything about it) is very hard to get past the glass.

How he goes from that state to hunting down his brothers is fairly simple. One of the broken, encripted files Casey acquired was Leo's file. None of the three could open it, but they managed to get Donnie to try to do so. He manages it, sees the file, and for the first time in about a year, has hope. He doesn't even wait to show the other three, he just takes off while no one was looking, with April's laptop and CJ's coat (he steals a backpack along the way.)

I don't really want to say much past that. A lot of the rescues/reunions are pretty spoiler heavy, and i don't want to ruin some of the mystery of what's going on in the fic. But know this, he does get all his brothers (and family in general) back. Also, splinter is alive and is part of this, but again, that's spoilers for some things i don't want to ruin.

Again, i'll probably start posting this sometime this week. It's an interesting fic that i've put quite a bit of time into at this point, so i'll be excited to see what is thought of it.

Thank you!

[batxcastlesociety]

As a bit of a fan of the Class of '09 games, the way the Flipside was written compared to the first two installments really irked me. I had gotten so excited for a game about Jecka, and now what? And this is the final game in the series?? Hell no. Anyway, considering this game's easily avoidable flop to Fumbletown, I have decided to propose a few potential endings and plot points for it, in case someone wants to rewrite or have another opportunity to slander this mess of a threequel.

⚠️ Warning ⚠️

Spoilers of some events and endings of the Flipside, along with mentions of poorly-written video games, child abuse, suicide, and pedophilia.

Additionally, this post's intention is not to harass the creators of CO09 or anyone who enjoyed the Flipside. I'm here to just say my piece. Thank you for your understanding.

Class of '09 is a series of visual novels created by SBN3, with the first game being released back in 2021. You play as Nicole, a sociopathic teenage girl scraping by senior year in a horrible new school and (mediocre at best) neighborhood after her father's suicide, during – you guessed it – the year 2009.

The games themselves are all outrageous comedies with a few sprinkles of social commentary. I can't really describe the style of humour except the type of stuff that the Ghost Stories anime dub has. You know the one. Anyway, the series itself consists of three games: Class of '09, The Re-Up, and... The Flipside.

The Flipside, compared to the first two games in the series, offers a completely new perspective, with the main character being Jecka instead of Nicole, the former's best friend.

This is all an amazing setup, right? A beloved series featuring a beloved character, now playable? What wacky shenanigans will Jecka get into? What new perspectives and bitter endings will this installment have? Will there be any new characters? Will there be any nods to the earlier games?

...My hopes were too high.

Anyway, here are a few of my ideas. I really didn't like the way the Flipside handled Jecka or Nicole's characters, but all I have to put on this post are potential ways the routes can be fixed. Just... if you know, you know; if you don't, you're lucky.

First off; I'd honestly really like that if, instead of Jecka becoming a 'foot whore' for the majority of the game, she could have actual different job options, depending on her interactions. For example, she could wind up working at a Domino's with Ari if she talks to her enough, like how she worked at a diner with Emily earlier in the game.

I just feel like that would work a lot better, and just make more sense than Ari showing up one time in her work uniform, proceeding to fuck off, then a half hour later you get an ending because Jecka fucking ran over her, but that's probably just me.

Next up, I think it would be pretty interesting if there were other endings based on homelessness, like Nicole's homeless ending in the original game. It'd be a nice tie-in to the original game, and it would just give Jecka more options in general as well. Maybe she'd reject the opportunity to get a job and winds up on the street. Maybe she actually gets a job, but something goes wrong and she doesn't have money for rent, so Nicole has to help her out of a bad spot or something.

Speaking of Nicole, with a game like the Flipside, and with Jecka as the protagonist, I really thought that maybe the new stories would expand on Nicole's character as well, and how Jecka thinks of her and deals with her. After all, no better person to know about Nicole besides Nicole than Jecka, right?

However, SBN3 didn't do shit about that, and decided to screw both of the girls over. The way Nicole's character was handled was absolutely nothing like, well, Nicole. She was especially bitchy, and fucked Jecka over one too many times. How the creators of a character themselves managed to screw up her personality so badly, I don't know, but I really wish Nicole would have acted like... Nicole, you know? She was bitchy in the other games, but at least her bitchiness worked when it counted. Flipside Nicole is just an asshole to Jecka for literally no reason. In fact, everyone is an asshole to Jecka for literally no reason. They should have changed that, too.

Anyway, another idea I have is for Jecka's parents, particularly her mother. At the start of the Flipside, we're introduced to her father, and we never see her mother once, because the game starts off with the two getting divorced. First of all, Jecka's father's personality is incredibly flat and almost cartoonishly abusive. Not to say that he isn't horrible and disgusting, but he literally has 3 voice lines, recycled all the time with slightly different wording, if changed at all:

1: calling Jecka's mother a whore

2: Threatening Jecka to get a job and good grades or she'll basically end up a prostitute (who he'd gladly beat in public, might I add...???)

3: Threatening Jecka with violence

4: Switching up and being "nice" again only to leave Jecka overstimulated and terrified, occasionally throwing a few more insults in between

... I would at least like to know what his fucking problem is, honestly.

Adding on, I really want to know about Jecka's mother! Maybe instead of the game starting off with Jecka's parents divorced, she and Nicole could try getting Jecka to run away and stay with her mother and grandmother. It'd be a bit of a bittersweet ending, but honestly much better than literally any of the other outcomes that Jecka actually had in the Flipside.

To conclude, these are just a few silly ideas of mine, and my phone's at 9% right now... In short, let's all just continue to pretend that the Flipside isn't a canon addition to the series, okay?

Take care of yourselves. Catch you on the (hopefully better) Flipside! :)

[theamityelf]

(Most of this post was made before I finished the movie. It gets addressed later.)

"Does it really count as being a good person if you're getting a reward for it?" This movie has an interesting attitude toward the activity of goodness where hardship is inherently moral and nothing you do actually counts; only the circumstances around it.

We are encouraged to feel sympathy for Red and ignore any wrongdoing because of her circumstances, and we are encouraged to ignore anything Chloe does right because her circumstances make it easy.

Which...I mean, I guess it's not the worst exploration of Attribution Theory, but it sets up this world where the only lesson to be learned is that anyone who does harm has a good heart and a sympathetic reason, except high school bullies I guess. There is no reason to feel any sympathy for school bullies. They are bullies because they are fundamentally unkind, and you are being bullied because you are fundamentally kind. The worst thing you can be is a school bully, and the meanest adults in your life are probably mean because they were bullied in school. Good news; because you're unhappy now, you're morally in the clear to make someone else's childhood unhappy when you grow up. They'll feel bad for you when they hear about how hard you had it.

Ella had a bad childhood and made sure her daughter's childhood was happy. Her daughter goes back in time to meet a young version of Ella who feels disdain for her privilege. Not inherently a bad thing; just maybe a weird zag on the happy scene from the beginning. It's like they wanted to teach Audrey or Chad a lesson but couldn't, so instead they used her.

If they wanted to teach Chloe some moral lesson other than "You should feel bad for having nice parents," the line Ella gave Red about how her mother is kind when others are unkind to her would be a much better choice! Instead of showing us a version of Bridget who is this angelic being who tolerates all manner of mistreatment, make that Ella. Because that's the actual story of Cinderella?!

Let Chloe react to Red's rudeness with dislike, the way she already did. She was nice to Red, Red was rude, Chloe immediately formed a negative judgement of her character. She goes back in time, sees her mother constantly taking the high road with mean people, hears that line about how hard it is, learns a lesson. That's so much more coherent with everything we already know than making Ella really wry and condescending toward pretty much everyone and giving Bridget the halo.

But I'm not going to post this until after I've finished watching the movie, in case they turn it around. If you're reading this, I've finished the movie and I still agree with myself, lol.

Okay this is me after the movie, and they did manage to pull something together as far as Chloe's arc being that she abandons her legalistic view of the world to a more utilitarian morality. There are aspects of the execution that I don't love, like I feel like they didn't do enough to set it up before the payoff, but they definitely did something coherent with her character. I might do a how-I-would-rewrite for this one.

I will say, the vase scene is the one my mind keeps going back to. Chloe breaks the vase. She does accidental harm. She apologizes and doesn't seem to fully understand that apologizing isn't going to fix it, because she was raised in a positive environment where intentions matter. Ella, angry about the vase, basically explains that her intention doesn't erase the harm. Okay.

But neither does penitence. The resolution of this scene is "Let's give her some space because she's mad," not "Let's do anything to make things better for her." Maybe helping her with her chores later was supposed to count as that, but it more reads as a learning montage for Chloe than any attempt at atoning for the accidental wrong she did.

Bridget is wronged and turns that into a dictatorship and abusive parenting. She has no agency in the harm she does; she is just a machine where if you input "unhappy school dance" she will output "evil queen". I kind of thought that preventing this one thing from happening to her in her teens was going to prove an ineffective way to change who she became, and maybe they were going to address some deeper issue with her worldview that would resonate with one of the protagonists. Maybe connect her lesson to Chloe's, since they seemed like they wanted to connect Ella's situation to Red's.

But no, this one incident at a school dance turned her from a cheerful, nice person to an evil queen, preventing it makes her nice again, there is nothing else to it.

For the record, I'm not mad; I'm fascinated.

That was a first watch, so who's to say how I'll feel later, lol.

[awakentheeldritchabomination]

First off, I wanna say that I mean no disrespect to the artists who worked on Hazbin Hotel. It’s just that I’ve been seeing people make redesigns of Hazbin characters, and though I don’t usually participate in stuff like this (it seems fun, and you are all incredibly talented. I just feel kinda bad tinkering with someone else’s work like this), the show made me frustrated, and frustrated induced brain-vomit started sloshing around in my skull so noisily that it’s been keeping me up. And, well, I had to get it out somehow.

So…here ya go, I guess. It’s nothing crazy or new. It’s just a few disgustingly rough ideas for this very specific version of Charlie that I kept seeing in my head. They’re far from polished or anything, and they’re definitely missing some key details because I’ve been hyper-fixating on trying to get the face right lol. I might make a full body illustration later, but I have commitment issues so who knows how far this’ll go. That is to say, don’t expect any more of this or the other characters unless 1) my brain decides to torment me with more literal demons or 2) I, by some miracle, become a more productive person. Plus, Tumblr’s a new thing for me, and I don’t know what I’m doing with this yet other than posting art and then disappearing for years. Seriously, you have no idea. It’s a wonder that I posted for a second time.

Anyway, the direction of this design is pretty obvious. I went with the lamb/goat motif because I liked the idea of inverted/parallel symbolism. I was toying with a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” concept where they appear to be a lamb in this form but actually shift into a more wolf-like dragon sorta thing when prompted. Their wardrobe is supposed to be an extension of the innocent lamb deception as the ruffles and looseness are meant to be kinda reminiscent of fluff while communicating a sense of privilege (a white untainted by the grit of Hell… something that probably wouldn’t last long). I was also inspired by white goth and catholic goth aesthetics (I blame Ethel Cain) as well as those insanely beautiful ball-jointed dolls. I don’t know if I captured that well (to be honest, the more I look at those digital renditions, the more I hate them). I considered adding a pair of spectacles coz I thought it was cute lol, and because I thought it could be a way for them to try and seem more human.

If I were doing a rewrite (which I have ideas for, but I should probably focus on my actual original characters instead) then:

1. They would be agender and androgynous (I’d go the Good Omens route and make most angels/non-human entities largely genderless as gender is a human construction, one that most angels wouldn’t really concern themselves with)

2. They would be kinda elitist and naive but still sweet

3. Their intentions would not be entirely insincere, but they would not be acting without selfish goals

4. They would be an eldritch abomination

5. There would be possible exploration of their role as an antichrist as well as basically being a tool of war for their papa’s self-gratification

6. Their pops would suck

7. More horror

8. Like, it wouldn’t not be funny…but horror’s my genre so….

9. They would not suck at fighting, but death is traumatizing and so is being the cause of it (squeamish)

10. That being said, could make friends with Death??

And that’s all I feel like writing. Hopefully I update this lol

[nyoomerr]

Do you have any tips for finishing works and getting enough confidence to post them?

sure! just keep in mind that these are tips from my single perspective, and everyone's creative processes are different, etc etc all the usual disclaimers 🙈

↓↓ all advice under the readmore cuz it got pretty lengthy ↓↓

for finishing works, you'll probably have to start by identifying why you don't feel like continuing a particular WIP.

is it a time/energy thing? make sure you're staying physically healthy (good food, keeping hydrated, moderate exercise) and that you aren't forcing yourself to sit down and write at the end of a long day when you've already spent all your mental energy elsewhere. this is one of the lamest points of advice on the whole list but i am being so serious about it.

is it a lack of inspiration? try talking about the fic with a friend, using prompt generators, or thinking back to what originally inspired the fic to begin with. if you started writing the fic for One Specific Scene, go write that scene, regardless of how far out you are from it chronologically! you can always revise or rewrite it later if it turns out that the in-between scenes change some of the context or flow.

is it that you're struggling to get a scene written just right? skip past it and come back later, maybe leaving just a quick one or two line summary of what you want to happen in that scene so you don't forget later. if you can't skip past it, then tell yourself "okay, i'm going to rewrite this later," before trying to write it - if you have already decided that this will not be your final draft, then it can help you feel less hesitant to put imperfect words down.

for gathering the confidence to post a work, it's a bit more tricky...

i think most people want to post things because they want to receive external validation on it... so so valid and relatable 🤝 BUT this motivation makes it hard to actually shut out the factors that can cause nerves (i.e., advice like "turn off comments if you're worried about receiving criticism" is useless, because then you also don't get the positive comments you likely wanted in the first place).

one strategy you could try is starting with a small audience first - just send it to a friend you know will be your hypeman. if you're feeling more bold, you can try sharing it with a discord server or group chat - essentially, narrowing the audience down to people that you know will be supportive of your work, no matter what.

if sharing the fic with your friends actually sounds like the Worst Case Scenario, then i'd instead recommend posting it to an anon collection! if you end up not being happy with the response to the fic, you can pretend it was never yours to begin with - there's no shame in using the anon tool as it was meant to be used. if you end up feeling really proud of the work after the nerves have passed, you can always de-anon it later to tie it back to you!

regardless of how or who you share it with though, my top recommendation is that you sit down and identify every little thing that you're proud of in your work before you post it. write these things out so you don't forget! the people who are going to read your work will not have the same tastes, experiences, and desires that you personally had when you sat down to write the fic to begin with. if they don't like parts of it, it does NOT mean those parts are bad - it just wasn't for them personally!

that can be hard to remember when you're getting feedback, though, which is why it's important to have those things that YOU like about your work written down so you can go take a look at them to remind yourself.

if you try posting a work and afterwards go "oh, that isn't for me, i'd rather just create for myself personally," then that's totally chill! what would be tragic is if you posted a work and then felt so shitty after the fact that it tainted your enjoyment of the creation process itself. that's why, no matter what, please remember that you wrote this fic for yourself, and hold on to the things that you like about it!!

anyway that got pretty rambly but TLDR: 1) figure out why you're having trouble finishing your WIP and tackle that reason instead of blindly pushing yourself forward 2) ease yourself into posting in whatever way is least intimidating for you, no need to jump straight to having an AO3 profile linked to your writing 3) no matter what, make sure you remember the things that you personally enjoy about what you made, and celebrate those things!