#(hes not a superhero but he is a clone of a villain!)

[wxdragonghoulxbart]

and here's that joel loser if I was niceys, everybody else be nice to him he's like 13

[vennavibes]

I haven’t been on this website properly in a LONG while and I really want to get back into it so I figured I should start by catching up on posting stuff!

This here is a character design I made for a superhero RP I did with some friends!

Speaking of- that’s who it is! I made a sheep hybrid for the blue sheep Friend. His power is duplication, so he can make clones.

Which he desperately needs because he’s a busybody who finds the need to fuss over Wilbur.

I hope you like him!

[demonic0angel]

DC x DP Prompt: Jack and Maddie are not the best parents, but they love their kids! (Even the clone one they just found out about) And so they end up at a support group for the parents of super heroes to get some tips on how to improve.

“— so we’d like to learn how to be better parents to support our children,��� Maddie said, sounding sorrowful. “They didn’t tell us secrets for so long because they didn’t trust us.”

She and Jack were currently sitting across from their laptop, where an online meeting was being held. No one showed their faces, since this was a meeting for parents of superheroes and metas, and secret identities still needed to be held.

There were some agreeable hums from the other participants. The head counselor said, “That’s good that you want to change. It’s a good sign. What are you specifically worried about?”

“Well, we recently adopted our youngest child, but we discovered that she was actually a clone of our youngest son. We worry because we don’t know how to deal with her. She’s such a sweet child, but this is so new, y’know?” Maddie explained.

“…. Wouldn’t it be better if you just ignore him— I mean, her? She’s not really part of your family, after all, she’s just a clone. They’re not created like living beings,” one person said. His icon showed a picture of a pair of glasses.

Maddie and Jack immediately scowled.

There was silence. And then the head counselor said, slowly, “Okay, well, I don’t know the circumstances, but I do know that he’s absolutely wrong.”

There was a snorted burst of laughter from another person who had an icon of a bat, before he quickly went on mute. The glasses icon person went silent.

The counselor continued, “No matter what, that child is still just that— a child. They need to be taught and loved and cared for. You’re already doing great by acknowledging your connection to her.”

Jack and Maddie beamed.

“No matter what, the best thing you can do as parents to children who are stronger than you and want to help others is support them. Lord knows just how many villains we could’ve prevented if only they had more support in the beginning.”

Jack nodded. “Rightfully said!” He and Maddie shared a look and smiled. For the sake of their children, they would strive to be better parents.

[soarrenbluejay]

Supervillains for a community. (Well, except those jerks over in Gotham, insular lot, but they’re they’re one problem) Of course they do- supervillains are a group defined by strong opinions and a willingness to see them through, often with a healthy dash of societal failures and trauma as a catalyst.

The fentons, while not active even on the online message boards, are well known and explosive when they do show up, full of fascinating insights and hours long rants on mad science on hair pin turns courtesy of that ADHD attention span. Bit of the cryptids you feel honored to bump into kind of deal. Besides, like a good quarter of the community as it aged, they’d settled down and had kids (not necessarily in that order) and taken it very seriously! Out in the middle of nowhere, where even the most fearsome government outpost members, the local branch of the IRS, quake before them in fear. Out of the way.

Reveal gone okay-ish, Danny moves to Gotham still to get some air bc now things are Akward and he landed that engineering scholarship which is loads better than any other college would give him with his track record. So- the mysterious Fenton children are finally crawling out of hiding! Everyone is psyched! And roll in to Gotham en masse to witness the fireworks!

Except Danny is Determined To Be Normal. He’s had enough of the throwing himself into harms way shit for a lifetime- he wants to be free to peacefully built Rube Goldberg machines and unintentional increasingly complex bombs to his hearts content. JAZZ, on the other hand- the coveted token Normal One, has finally snapped! She’s watched her baby brother she practically raised throw himself into danger over and over and could do nothing, and now that she’s exposed to this whole network of superheroes outside of small town Amnity, some of those uglier emotions are coming out. And boy is she pissed! And can’t afford to show it much while filing the paperwork to have Arkham legally razed to the ground!

See I love this idea of like, niches in superhero society. A villain the heroes know they can plop their kiddo down with for an exciting afternoon brawl while they take care of a particularly grisly case and come back to a few hours later ranting about some new life lesson and a new move they really want to try. A villain who has a functioning moral compass despite their somewhat batshit long term goal and you can contact to fuck with another villains’s plan so they can laugh at them and you can have an easy afternoon. One who pries up hostile architecture and fills in pot holes, idk man. Get creative here, there’s such potential!

So Jazz becomes a Training villain- someone the heroes know their sidekicks will walk away from in a fight 100% of the time, usually with some new lesson to ponder and only a couple of bruises. Sometimes even snacks!

She also absolutely ambushes mentors to check that they’re worth the kiddo, which they appreciate once they get over being jumped in a dark alley by a 7 foot Amazon trained force of nature. They are not used to being on that side of the jumping, it’s a little unnerving.

(Yes, she low key adopts Shazam upon checking in with him on cursory ‘is the main hero of this city and asshole’ checkin. Yes, the super clones get yoinked out from under Superman’s negligent thumb to go have a blast with Ellie. What about it?)

This however only encourages more assorted weirdos to crawl out of the woodwork. It’s not often one of their own forfeits their potential spot for the running of the coveted Most Normal I Swear prize, but when they do it’s bound to be good! But jazz is off hounding various heroes and punching the faces in of pedophiles and shit whenever there’s no cape within easy reach, and so is a mite bit harder to contact than Danny, who has innocently gotten an apprenticeship under a clockworker for access to their workshop and is gleefully going about doing nerdy shit with great abandon.

Plus this is Gotham. No one gives a shit if someone in the Mad Alchemist uniform and still smoking from their latest experiment pokes their head in a window to bother the local shrimp teen- none of the usual social rules apply, everyone’s crazy here! So everyone drops any and all attempts at masking and just acts their genuine unhinged selves, much to the alarm of the Bats and frustration of Danny.

Bc he cannot get these mfers to go. Away. Even liberal use of the creep stick has little effect when the interloper is calibrated for an opponent with super speed or laser vision or whatever, and he’s trying to maintain his guise as a Normal College Student Do No Investigate.

So he calls in the big guns. He’s not super active in the supervillain kids group chat ever since things in amnity calmed the fuck down post becoming King and then immediately using a loophole that says he will not take the throne until he is grown, as defined by finishing learning his trade a la the medieval standards Pariah set up. So he can just take his sweet ass time with his graduate degree and out of inter dimensional bull shit that much longer! Point is, he hasn’t taken the chance to rant over there in a while, so his Crazy friends are getting a lil worried.

The change to come over and shout at their batshit crazy but (mostly) well meaning parent AND see Danny? Score!

The bats, however, are getting awfully suspicious about this one kid that villains from all over the country are flocking to, especially young and upcoming ones as of recently! And he’s acting his engineering course- all the worst rogues are known to have flown through their PhD studies prior to Cracking. They seem to have a real problem on their hands with this Fenton guy.

[starry-songs-canvas]

Yes, I’m a Clone, Just Not Your Clone

Another Dp x dc demon twins prompt for the win! This time, featuring Ellie!

The bats found out about another Cadmus facility near Gotham, so they go to destroy it and find a female clone of Damian. This clone is kind of goopy, so they take her back to the Bat cave for medical treatment. But when she wakes up, she has blue eyes, not green, and is saying she’s not a clone of Robin, but someone else.

Ellie swears she didn’t mean to get so close to Gotham. But Metropolis was just across the way, and she wanted to at least see Superman in action. Unfortunately, during that time, she seemed to get the attention from another billionaire frootloop, and he somehow knew she was a clone? Do all frootloop billionaires have like a villain group chat or something? Anyway, so this frootloop manages to knock her out, and for the last week some weirdos have been trying to figure out how she’s stable, which has unfortunately managed to destabilize her (again, ugh). When she suddenly wakes up in the cave of the one superhero Danny said he definitely didn’t want her to meet. At least Batman is letting her use the phone to call Danny.

[hylianengineer]

I have discovered the Batman wiki and become overwhelmed with the absolutely insane things that are canon in this fandom. Vampires, for instance. Also Gotham is canonically cursed because an evil warlock was buried under it long ago. The main universe is called Earth 2 because I guess the comic writers want to be confusing. There is an entire list of evil alternate universe Batmans who have teamed up to attack Earth 2 for some reason. There's also a Man-Bat and a messed up Batman clone named Batzarro and frankly probably lots more I don't know about. There are multiple contradicting timelines, some due presumably to writer error / carelessness and others that are definitely due to Time Travel Shenanigans. So, so many villains have origin stories that are like 'fell into mystery chemicals, gained superpowers and/or insanity.' There are canonical people with names like Ichabod Crane and Jim Kirk and as far as I can tell they have nothing to do with who those people are in other fictional universe. There used to be a hero named the Gay Ghost but he's not homosexual, he's from before gay meant that, and he got trapped in an alternate dimension and now doesn't want to come back because he's embarrassed about the new connotations of his superhero name. He IS really a ghost though.

[starwrighter]

Haven't posted a prompt in a hot minute, let's fix that.

We all know the DC universe is pretty complicated compared to the Dp universe (I'm trying to find a place to start reading the comics but theres 80 years of content to filter through lord help me 😭)

DC has hundreds of heroes and villains running around while DP only has a few.

Let's toss that DC into Dp >:)

Imagine how shellshockingly horrifying it would be for any of the DC crew to travel to the DP universe? Like they've seen post apocalyptic universes, how is this not one of them??

Imagine the world's greatest detectives seeing the utter miracle that is "Phantom's secret identity" they pin him as Danny Fenton immediately as would anyone with experience with the concept of revival.

Let Superman get chased by the Giw. While Clark Kent and Louis lane tear apart their shoddy, biased research as the best journalists the DP universe has ever seen!

Have Danny have a grudge with this random reporter because his article on explosive burger sauce got his favorite restaurant closed. While Clark is desperately to boost Phantom's reputation after the smear campaigns wrecked it.

Let Vlad get torn apart by every flavor of superhero for being an all around creep. Dani/Konner bonding over being clones.

Have danny be an avid fan of Damian, not because he's Robin but because he chased down Dash after he tried to shove him in a locker!

Constantine trying to scam ghosts without the bargaining chip of a soul. Danny and the rest of the trio cackling because it's working and the ghosts are pissed.

Danny's rogues are getting bullied left right and center because both villains and hero's are shooting snarky comments with twice the venom as Danny.

Spectra going after Tim and Damian because she thinks they'll be easy targets due to their seemingly hostile relationship. They team up to tear into her the moment this random therapist tries to insinuate that Dick said he wished the two of them were never brought into the family.

Desiree catching so many people off guard and ruining so many days with her monkey pawing until they turn her wishes around on her.

Have the DC heroes be competent and smart enough to outplay ghosts that are stronger than them.

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Danny has gotten a severe case of wanderlust, frankly he blames his clone. He tends to pop into different dimensions every so often and only returns to the ones he likes.

And he likes this one.

Or more specifically some of the people in it. This world was filled with superheros and villains and while there were still no halfas here he felt like he belonged here. If fact the sense of belonging was so strong he almost wondered if this was secretly his home dimension. He shook the thought out of his head. There was no way that could be true...right?

Danny, Sam, Tucker and Jazz were all dressed up in full Storm Trooper gear for a convention when freaking Nightwing crashed through the centers skylight. They turned off the safety for thier blasters and set them to "stun" before running over to where Nightwing was trying to get up. The guy was pretty badly injured and it was clear he was having a hard time moving.

Tucker and Jazz got to work helping a very confused Nightwing out of the way as the big bad jumped in through the destroyed skylight. Danny and Sam began blasting them into submission before Jazz started asking him the concussion questions and swatting away Dicks protests that he was fine and they were in danger and should leave this to him.

Eventually the storm troopers won both the argument and the fight before promptly rushing out an emergency exit just before the other bats appeared.

The videos from the event went viral

---

Alternatively the bats have been taken hostage and are bearing witness to the summoning of "The Deathless Lord and God of the Undead"

No one expected a small group of Storm troopers to appear in the circle nor for them to have real blasters and fight back against the cultists. They even used real Empite military lingo while doing it.

The bats are convinced the cultists managed to summon actual Storm Troopers from the Star Wars universe and have no idea what to do with this information

[grunklestanofficial]

I’ve been given the chance to properly page through the Dogman series while on my job and man the amount of layers you can read into what’s happening in here is wild.

-Base layer, you got a man with a dog head fighting crime with his plucky kitten sidekick, and this mostly results in them fighting giant sippy cups and claymation cheesesteaks. They eventually just turn him from a cop into a superhero because Dav Pikley says ACAB.

-The exact same time this is happening the former main villain is having an entire redemption arc exploring his deep-rooted past traumas and the results of restorative vs. punitive justice, kickstarted by inadvertently making a clone son that proved that he wasn’t intrinsically born evil.

-In the meta-textual level, this is all being written by a pair of fifth graders who are able to convey these things at such a young age, and these stories must also be read through the lenses of their own personal thoughts and experiences of under supported ADHD kids finally getting a supportive teacher. I grew up with Harold and George and I’m so, so proud of them. They fought carnivorous robot toilets and brainwashed their principal last year.

[cryptocism]

Since I think about clones like I’m getting paid for it, I've been rotating those alternate universe "what if Bart and Thad were actually raised together" scenarios in my brain, with Thad either post-redemption-arc or pre-villainy. Because adjusting Thad's character to fit an ally role while still keeping true to his core motives and personality is so so fascinating to me.

Like I think there's an immediate first instinct to slot Thad into a "bad" twin category: ie rebellious and prickly, doesn't get along with people, mean lil shit. And obviously it's not wrong bc we're outside the realm of canon, but the reading still feels a little left of center.

Because Thad is mean and prickly in canon. In the Impulse comics he belittles Bart and Bart’s friends/family constantly in his appearances. He loves to goad, and monologue about his own superiority and intelligence. He’s very Not Nice, and he causes many problems, and he even does it on purpose.

But, I think it’s important to consider the context. From the jump Thad knows very little about anything except which team he’s on and who he’s playing for. He gets his orders from an unseen authority and he carries out his tasks because success means his team wins.

For all his self-aggrandizing talk, everything he does is in service of an end goal that doesn't actually center him. He's trying to get revenge for grievances he's never personally suffered, retribution for actions never committed against him. Everything he does is on someone else's behalf.

Thad sees in black and white, us or them. Up until the final few issues of Mercury Falling, Bart and co. are Thad's enemies, of course he's not going to be nice.

So Thad's motivation seems pretty simple: Thawne Supremacy™.

But it’s in Mercury Falling where this starts to fall apart, and the real core of his motivation gets revealed. Thad pretends to be Bart and suddenly Helen is nice to him. Bart’s friends think he’s funny. Bart’s teachers are impressed with his grades. Max ruffles his hair and gives him hugs and tells him he’s done a good job.

If he was actually an inherently mean and standoffish character, if Thad actually had significant personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict, the weight of such tiny acts of kindness wouldn’t completely break him the way that it does in canon.

Thad thinks his goal is superiority and revenge and Thawne Supremacy™, but he's chasing validation. Thad doesn’t have a personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict. He wouldn't get much satisfaction if he actually destroyed Bart and his family. Thad's personal victory would be the recognition after the fact: the praise and attention from the other Thawnes (a group of people he has literally never met) for his success.

He wants validation. That's basically it. And the fact that he gets it so easily from Bart's family and friends doesn't align with how he's told himself things are supposed to work.

Actually tangentially, Bart and Thad’s respective relationships to authority is so diametrically opposed and tbh kind of subversive in a superhero narrative. Where the hero is the one carving his own path without regard to social or societal rules, no fucks to give what anybody thinks of it. And the villain is a chronic people-pleaser.

Just based on Thad’s reaction to simple praise and affection from Max I really think Thad’s motivation has more to do with the response he gets than whatever the details are of any given task. He has no actual personal convictions beyond getting positive attention, and whatever he did have crumbled as soon as Bart’s friends laughed at his joke one time. Which of course leads into the core of his whole conflict at the end of Mercury Falling. He cares too much about Bart’s friends and family now, he doesn’t want to kill them, but worse than that, he’s faced with the sudden realization that he’s on the wrong side.

The Allens gave Thad everything he actually wanted and needed, but his conception of himself is inexorably tied to the Thawnes: who gave him jack shit. These two facts are in opposition to each other, and he can’t reconcile the reality of it.

Anyway all this to say, in an AU where Bart and Thad are raised together or Thad gets an actual redemption arc etc etc, I think my personal take on Thad’s personality whether it be pre-or-post-villainy would be one that is extremely socially conscious. He is much more of a people-person than Bart. Whether he's actually accurate in assessing people's feelings and how to respond to them can be hit or miss, but he wants to behave in a way that gets people to like him.

Pretending to be Bart isn’t remarked upon as, like, a difficult task for Thad. In his internal monologue he’s literally bragging to himself about how easy it is. But what’s especially notable to me is where his act differs from Bart's typical MO. Everyone notices, and lots of people comment, and presumably if Thad didn’t have the excuse of Max’s illness to “motivate” Bart to do better he would’ve been found out immediately. And those things are, specifically: paying attention in class, doing his chores, staying on task, and being helpful around the house. The one thing about Bart he chooses not to emulate is Bart’s rebelliousness.

Thad wants to prove himself, constantly, to whatever authority he respects (probably Max in this scenario) and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In contrast to Bart, who only listens to authority when the shit they're saying actually makes sense to him. It’s excessively difficult to convince him to go against his own interests. (And I think a key part of that is Bart’s security in knowing that no matter how much he fucks up or doesn’t listen, the people he loves will always love him back.)

Thad’s got the people-pleaser in him that has to deserve whatever he’s given. It’s why he’s happiest when he’s given a clear goal or objective to complete, because it gives him an opening to prove himself.

All this to say that if we are quantifying Bart and Thad as a "good" or "bad" twin, in the eyes of every authority: Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the bad twin, Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the one who doesn’t care about school and whose grades vary wildly depending on his personal interest. He’s the one who goes off to do dangerous shit for fun and gets in trouble constantly and doesn’t do his chores and is thoroughly unconvinced by any authority figure trying to sell him bullshit. 

Thad is the one who needs to know all the rules just so he can experience the joy of following them. Relentlessly obedient. He'll put all his effort into doing all the right things that’ll endear him to whoever he wants to impress - meaning he’s the asshole who reminds the teacher about the assigned homework. Bart might be the most popular boy in school, but Thad is a pleasure to have in class.

Like Thad can (and should) still be high-strung and short-tempered and sarcastic and edgy and mean, because he is. But he can’t be doing all that without rhyme or reason. Colouring every interaction has to be that one-zero binary of ally or enemy. He needs to have somebody he’s proving himself to: a team he’s on and a team he’s against. He’s not an inherently rebellious character. He can go up against The Enemy, whoever he deems as such, but it has to be in service of a hypothetical future in which somebody eventually tells him he did a great job.

And in the interest of continuing to beat a dead horse, it connects to their respective upbringings. Thad and Bart were both raised in VR, but Bart’s experience had the side effect of basically hard-wiring him against insecurity. His world was a playground tailor-made for him, and he was never made to feel bad or insufficient about any aspect of himself. His first interaction with a real human person was Iris moving heaven and earth to save him, without him knowing her, without her knowing him, with no reasoning for the act needed beyond Being Her Grandson. Which is probably a significant factor in why Bart moves through the world with frankly atomic levels of autistic swag.

Thad’s VR upbringing installed self-consciousness in his psyche before any other personality trait. As in: he is immediately made conscious of himself and his relationship with everyone he will ever encounter. He’s told two things: he’s a clone of someone else (inherently derivative, lesser) and that he was made to be superior (a status to achieve). Which is such an instant clarifier for Thad’s everything. Where superiority is a condition that everyone either has, or does not. It’s the one-zero binary again: are they better than me or am I better than them. Being above others is mandatory, and if his superiority is ever challenged by hard evidence or god forbid nuance Thad’s brain physically cannot take it. He needs to be better, to be worse is unthinkable, and there is no other way to be.

And this status of better or worse is, crucially, not up to Thad to decide. He needs The Authority to validate him. Bart never tries to prove himself because he has nothing to prove. Thad’s entire identity hinges on the self-worth he gets from doing a Good Job.

It is such an inherent part of his motives in the Impulse comics canon, which is why it always feels a little off when he’s interpreted as a jackass indiscriminately.

Like I don't think he needs everyone to like him. But I do think he has either one person or a set of very particular people that he needs to like him. Everyone else is either in that circle or outside of it.

(Which is why Bart is such a great foil for Thad tbh. There is no set of words or behaviors that’ll change Bart’s opinion of Thad, because Bart is unaffected by obedience or charm. So ironically Bart is probably one of few people that Thad doesn’t bother to put on even a little bit of an act for.)

While Bart goes with his instincts, his personal beliefs and convictions at all times, Thad is hyper-conscious of big-picture goals. They balance each other out that way. Thad's keeping track of whatever expectations he has placed on him, and how his actions reflect on him and the team beyond short-sighted solutions. He's a team player. AND he's an asshole.

[suckinitup]

i wanna think about something soft now and i keep turning back to tide and tidalwave. i think yeah of course he’s slept in other people’s beds before he’s hot and a superhero. people would KILL to jump his bones. but i think that theres something really novel to him about like. the idea of sleeping in someone’s bed just to be near them in like… a romantic way. the trust, the comfort, the wanting to be near your person who also wants to be near you. yea this stuff can also be platonic (hi ghostkicks) but tide i think would really yearn for that fairytale romantic sweetness. he hasnt had that before. related—i dont think tidalwave would be explicit with labelling what they are or what they mean to each other yknow. its something that would sneak up on them. theres sexual attraction, ofc, and that’s what tide chalks everything up to at first. Mark looks at him too long while hes making dinner? its because hes checking him out. Tide’s hand lingers against Mark’s when he passes him a pen? obviously its because of the skin contact. Mark stops tensing every time Tide enters a room? well, okay, thats different. Thats just built up trust. theyre more friends than enemies now. and its obviously just the sexual attraction and residual Villain Alertness that made Tide look at Mark often enough to notice. tide can feel the relationship changing all the time. He isnt stupid. he knows its important when mark drags ashe to the hall of elementals after a storm knocks out the power on their street. he knows it means something when theyre up late at night talking about some threat or the kids or some bullshit and when mark gets up to get coffee he brings tide back a mug. its important how mark takes a sip from each mug before handing tide his, but it’s not important because of safety, anymore—its important because its routine, because its something mark does without thinking even when tide doesnt need that proof of safety. its important because when tide makes dinner mark will mock him for the beef stroganoff or whatever other meal that tide doesnt make as well but mark doesnt seem to think of asking tide to eat from his plate anymore. they wont turn on each other—not like that. Their dynamic is changing, and tide knows its changed when they fight (about the kids or mark’s clone bigotry or WATCH or remnants of overlord’s organization) and though the air crackles and Mark is shouting—tide can see Mark hesitating to genuinely fight him, fists shaking and clenched tight at his side, so tide hesitates too and neither of them throw the first punch.

imagine william fucking around and making the wisps fly through everyone’s hair and is especially fucking around with mark’s and tide keeps laughing. he’d be worried, but he sees the crinkle in mark’s eyes beyond his scowl, laughs harder for it and his heart feels so big and warm. (ashe giggling quietly behind his hands but later that night hes like. “….guys i think my dad has a crush on your dad” because he’d been able to see the softness in that scowl when mark looked at tide)

where am i. right. tide snd mark spending more time together. spending more time in each others spaces. Slow to acclimate into the other’s personal bubble, but making constant, glacial progress until they can sit comfortably next to each other on the couch, practically squished together to make room for the teens who sprawl wildly during movie night. imagine mark starts talking about his wife more. not much, and only to tide, and only in little references (plucking a flower caught on tide’s locs after a battle, quietly noting “she really liked these” before tucking the flower behind tide’s ear). imagine tide, also trying to open up, talking about the lab and his family and. yeah. okay. maybe he Is a little mad about the way he’s treated as a clone. just. something growing between them at such a slowburn pace that william and vyncent have to gag and then bribe dakota (who has suffered ENOUGH from ghostknife) to stop him from shouting “JUST KISS ALREADY” at the top of his lungs.

somethinf something. Imagine a big fight. lasts all day, multiple moving parts, everyone is exhausted. for some reason they cant go back to the hall of elementals—maybe its damaged or something. they go back to marks house, the teens collapse onto the sofa and tide drifts, dizzy, almost dead on his feet into the kitchen to make some coffee. He sits at the table, puts his head on his arms while he waits for the coffee to brew, and is half-conscious enough to register mark coming into the room a few minutes later but Not conscious enough to actually greet him. mark puts one hand on his shoulder. “hey. come on. youre gonna hurt your neck if you sleep like that.” and tide mutters something nonsensical so mark sighs and tugs at him, half-bullying half-pulling tide to his feet. tide stumbles, so mark lets him lean against him as he guides him from the room. they pass the living room and tide sees all the kids passed the fuck out on the couch and something alert and afraid in his brain finally shuts off and he just. he feels safe. and he doesnt think much, but then there’s a warm bed and a soft pillow and he’s so relieved to finally actually sleep.

he wakes up again in the middle of the night pressed against mark’s side, clinging to one of his arms like a koala bear and one of mark’s legs is thrown across his own. theyre close enough to share a pillow—mark’s shoulder practically is tide’s pillow, and mark’s gentle snoring is strangely soothing. unfamiliar, but tide kind of wishes it wasnt. he starts to drift back to sleep but not before he thinks that, maybe, he’s already living in something like a fairytale after all. just one made for a superhero snd a supervillain and their very super children. he smiles and squeezes marks arm a little tighter and goes back to sleep

the next day mark goes and hides in the bathroom for like twenty minutes because god DAMNIT he was so caught up in the thought of tide in his bed fhat he forgot about the MOTHERFUCKING AIR MATTRESS. its deeply embarrassing. ashe will fucking Know. and this isnt a physical pain or a villain thing but it feels like he has to hide it all the same so he starts concocting plans to hide the air mattress or throw it out or tear it to shreds so he can claim he couldnt find it.

tide smiles really sweetly at him over breakfast. and hey, thats weird, and it makes mark’s heart flutter in his chest but he’s been dealing with this stupid crush for a while now he’s just gonna keep on dealing. but then tide asks mark if he can show him something, and mark is confused but like. okay. (he’d almost spat out his coffee because tide had said it so weirdly it almost sounded like a proposition, but then he’d gotten a look at tide’s face (a little shy. Eager. but nothing seductive or indicative of that thought-line) and thought Welp at all the feelings that stirred up before putting them in a little box in his brain. hes too busy to make this thing with tide weird)

anyway tide takes mark to the lake by marks house. lures him into the water. mark is a little baffled but like. Okay. tide makes a bubble for them underwater and they set off, sitting next to each other in this little bubble of air. they talk a little—mark is like woah. powerful. thats hot. hes a little on guard but he cant help but appreciate the way the light flickers over tide, the way it shines in his blue blue eyes. its nice and they talk a little and its one of those intimate moments where its only intimate because they know each other so well. but they finally arrive at a certain point at the bottom of the lake and tide is like. this is where i woke up after the kids threw me in here to protect you. do you remember that. they wanted to put me somewhere that you couldnt reach. and mark is like oh. and theres something to This that is bigger than he was expecting and he’s struggling a little bit and he struggles even more when tide takes his hand (tides hand is warm), lowers their air bubble, and presses the palm of marks hand to the cold (dry) sand. tide says quietly, now youve reached it.

oh. mark says again. and like an idiot, he asks if thats what tide wanted to show him. tide hesitates, then says, even quieter, that no. what he really wanted was to see if mark would let him do this. and he starts to lean in for a kiss.

mark’s fingers curl into the sand and without thinking he puts his hand on tide’s arm. tide stops and mark panics and says, a little breathlessly, “really heroic to proposition a guy when you control all his air.” and tide fucking. panics. rips himself away from mark and goes OH SHIT NO WAIT—

but mark is an asshole and he feels better now that tide is off kilter too, now that theyre on what feels like level footing and he has a bit more control over the situation, and he doesn’t even really feel bad for laughing because when he leans forwards (using his hand on tide’s arm to pull him back) and kisses him, tide clings to him like theyll both drown if he lets go.

they still wouldnt talk about what they are. it doesnt matter, and it would give the teens more ammo to mock them. but they start sleeping in each others’ rooms whenever they go over, and tide gets to have his fairytale romance

[maxwell-grant]

Any thoughts on Doctor Sivana?

Nothing too extensive but Sivana rules in a way that doesn't really invite too much introspection. He's THE archetypal mad scientist comic book supervillain and he's more or less stayed as that, arguably the most influential of them after Luthor if not outright on par with him, because while Luthor is the comic book supervillain template, the pop culture image of a mad scientist (big head short body, ugly, big glasses, always with a labcoat, hunchback and big teeth optional) is pretty much taken from Sivana. But Luthor's status atop the ladder and position opposite Superman mutated him into varying kinds of villain and a complicated character over time, where as Sivana is Sivana and never really needed to be anything else, there's just a purity to him. They've tried to make him a Luthor clone and the movie ran with that, but who cares, we all know what Sivana is, you're not fooling anyone with that guy.

He's got a pretty great thing going as not just an evil scientist, but the evil scientist head of an evil scientist family, with children split in either looking exactly like him or looking like chiseled models who look brutally dissonant next to their dad, and he genuinely loves his kids (at least usually or in his own way), in fact he's even show loving the ones that don't support him and turned good. If he's going to be the arch-nemesis of the superhero who introduced the concept of a superhero family, he can't exactly be lacking in one of his own, and that familial aspect he has towards his children has become just as important to his characterization as the fact that he spends most of his waking hours trying to destroy a child and failing.

They get some mileage out of how ruthless he can be despite his image (and people's tendency to overlook how dark Captain Marvel stories could get), he has enough basic standards to not go as low as other DCU supervillains and Thunderworld establishes a Hannibal Lecter-esque Sivana to hammer in contrast with the main one finding him unnerving, but I'll never forget this panel:

Like I said, there's a lot of dark stuff in Captain Marvel/Shazam that gets forgotten, but I also like this about Sivana, that's the flip-side of that purity I mentioned. That he can and does have almost a Doofenshmirtz-thing going on, where he's playing such an over-the-top cartoon villain 24/7 that every mundane or decent thing he does becomes inherently funny via contrast, as is his loving relationship with his own family, but he is a guy who's very serious about taking over the world and very serious about destroying Captain Marvel even if that means killing the boy Billy Batson to do it and doesn't think for one second about that contradiction. Contradictions are for chumps. He may love HIS kids, other kids are just a thing in the way. Sivana doesn't need to explain himself, like some OTHER inferior bald guy who sold out to become a CEO or something, Sivana lets his deeds do the talking.

Besides, evil is his family activity, who's to deny the joys of it to him?

[jaxon-exe]

Who’s Clone are You?!?!

So stick with me for a sec. Imagine Batman finds a lab set up for cloning by (insert whatever villain/scientist u want)

After interrogating said person bats finds out that they did manage to make a clone but it died shortly after. When asked who’s clone the person doesn’t know, saying that the DNA came from a spot of blood on a batarang that was thrown into a wall as an intimidation move.

Now big problem because all the Batfam have 100% given themselves nicks from batarangs (those things are sharp as f/ck) even bats gets a small cut every now and then so it could be anyone. But whatever the clone is dead so shouldn’t be a problem…

…

That is until one of the fam meets a black haired, blue eyed kid, who jokes about death a lot and who Jason swears feels kinda like the pit…

Que the bats trying to get this ‘Danny Fenton’s’ DNA while Danny does he’s best to avoid both the bats and the Wanyes at all cost because god dammit he’s retired from the whole superhero gig and never going back, plus he already has one rich fruitloop to deal with he doesn’t need two thank you very much.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

You know, I was just thinking about the UA entrance exam.

Specifically, how terribly designed it is, but not for the reason they seem to give in the story itself.

Like, here's how it is: Aizawa is shown criticising the UA Entrance Exam once, during the Sports Festival. And the ONE criticism he makes, is that the use of Robot enemies during the exam would disproportionately affect people whose Quirk work against biological opponents, essentially.

His one criticism, is that the exam is not designed to also cater to people like him, and that's it. The way therefore it's set up, it'd be logical to assume he'd ask for a restructuring to the exam to remove the Robots and substitute them with live enemies, possibly Ectoplasm clones.

This is never brought up again, aside from maybe a stealth bring up during the mid term exams when they switch the exam from fighting robots to fighting teachers.

The exam is, and I just got to it myself while watching this video about how Copaganda paints police training and the relative risk police officers face on the job, set up in a very specific environment:

An empty town, where what is essentially a murder spree is taking place. The ONLY entities in the place, outside of fellow examinee, are robots that have been literally designed to attack everyone on sight, and that need to be destroyed to pass. The points granted from saving people are hidden, so they can be more "genuine" of course, and are, ultimately, also part of the problem.

Because here's the fucking thing.

When the fuck is that ever going to happen.

When the fuck, is a superhero, after their 5 years of Hero training in high school, then entering the work force without a need for a decree in higher education, ever going to find themselves in an environment where they can use LETHAL FORCE on civilian targets? With no restraint or care for collateral damage?

And where they are ENCOURAGED to kill as many criminals as they can, and NOT collaborate with other heroes? Because that's another thing, you need to steal points from other people to pass, by culling the number of limited robots, much like heroes are paid by the arrest and by popularity.

You do understand how fucked up that starts to sound right? The other, the enemy, is reduced as a caricature Droid from star wars, there only to kill and destroy, and against whom your only TWO methods of defeat are outright destruction or sneak attacks on their off buttons.

And here's the cherry on the shit too, because, AGAIN, when is that EVER going to be the case?

Do you know how many heroes show up in the first villain attack in BNHA?

Five.

Two are engaging a purse snatcher, three are doing crowd control, the Slime Villain, who may I remind you was guilty of robbery at a convenience store before he got the hostage, gets THE NUMBER ONE HERO, as well as those same FIVE heroes involved, of which only BACKDRAFT is actually doing anything.

Now, imagine you are a hero school, and you produce 40 heroes a year, just like every other hero school out there. How many of those heroes will see active duty, if the rate of crimes demand FIVE heroes to react to ONE criminal?

And people will say "but EDS, this mentality is later rewarded when All Might retires and it all falls to shit," Except NOT REALLY, because that's an externally forced situation caused by, and I can't stress this enough, a hundreds of yeas old NEET boomer who read too many Doctor Doom comics as a kid and decided to become a supervillain, the riots, the open air warfare, is only caused by AFO forcing the hand and inciting popular unrest, which is an unrealistic thing to expect off any society.

In one of the movies, Class 1-A is sent to open an hero agency on a small island with barely a village on it. 20 Heroes. Until the movie truly picks up, the best they do is help kittens from trees, and Bakugou, the sort of person for whom the Entrance Exam was designed, is useless, left in his tent like Achilles, the perfect cowboy cop who peeked in highschool and didn't realize just how much paperwork and dead time his dream job actually entailed.

So that's the ACTUAL Issue with the entrance exam. It take no account for any other mean to beat the robots but brute force, it takes no account for collateral damage, or the sanctity of life of your opponents, and it tests nothing but how good at ending lives you are.

Which is a problem when you're picking future heroes.

[faeriekit]

Chet is adorable

My beautiful TimKon clone baby, Chester Thomas FakeLastName!!

I also love him, which I'm sure is clear and obvious 🥰I like to think that he's got all of Tim's interests, but, like, Kon's stable parenting style and a healthy respect for boundaries. Which. Tim. Uh. Let's be polite and say he perhaps lacks the ability to hold back haha

Narratively, I'm also Pro:

Chet not realizing he has superpowers! He's eight! Kids can't keep secrets! They snitch on themselves constantly! A kid told me this morning after storytime that her mom's car had to go off the road and onto the grass because of another car, for no particular reason; no way Kon would tell him anything when they're on the run and off-radar, so he just...lies to the pediatrician a lot! It'll probably be fine...right? Clark survived to adulthood! 😅

Chet having a miniature "finding out who a superhero is by being in the right place and being smart about it" arc in the same way Tim found out who Robin and Batman are. Get wrecked, Clark; your grandkid can recognize you from a mile away. Literally. He's got his noise cancelling headphones on and can still hear you. Maybe he should like see a doctor or smthing that sounds unhealthy...

Tim introducing himself as the second dad 0.005 minutes after almost blowing himself up destroying the League assassins after them. I think Chet would be inclined to believe him. They look similar and Tim walks him through the steps to ignite homemade fertilizer explosives in a way you definitely shouldn't tell a kid, but Chet is genuinely interested and Tim doesn't understand age appropriate learning, so...

Chet regularly lying to Bats. Chet didn't grow up in Gotham. What does he care? So what if he's Batman; he's just some guy. He's going to say stuff to these weird people and see if they believe it. I think Kon would stop it if he sees it going down, but Tim would just sip and watch while Chet outlines a field trip he never took that got interrupted by villains he never met to a rapturously listening Dick Grayson. Dick is mentally filing away this villain under his 'new enemies' mental file and Chet is just making stuff up on the fly because he wants to see where this goes.

Chet being the creepy and quiet Super. He's not actually either, but compared to the more common Kent extreme extroverts...it's a very striking comparison lmao

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to ramble!!🥰 I sort of want to do a Tim+Kon+Chester reuniting scene, but I haven't fully mapped out how I want it to look yet...

[raaorqtpbpdy]

More Danny Phantom fans should watch Generator Rex tbh, because it’s basically everything we wish Danny Phantom was. (Link to pirate GenRex once you’re convinced and another link to the megs file if that’s what you prefer ; )

Snarky superpowered teenage protagonist? Rex has that in spades (like Danny)

Parents experimented on him? Check (DP fans wish)

A mysterious thing that no one knows much about but it causes unexpected changes in a person? (Nanites are like ectoplasm but scarier imo)

Main character abducted and used by a terrifying government agency? Providence got their grips in him when he was like 10 (they actually caught theirs, take that Guys in White!)

Smart but a little crazy older sibling character? Meet Cesar (our chaotic neutral Jazz)

Scary and powerful mentor figure with a hidden soft side? That’s Six (and he’s actually a regularly recurring mentor unlike *select ghost you wish was Danny’s mentor*)

Main character is part of a highly discriminated against group which is generally not considered human? Here we call them Evos (they’re like ghosts except death would be preferable)

Main character specifically and almost exclusively fights his own kind? Yeah, and Rex can actually cure them instead of just sending them away for two episodes.

Arch nemesis with similar powers to the hero? Van Kleiss walks in, blood-red flowers blooming in his footsteps. (Vlad could never)

We’re initially led to believe the hero is the only good guy in the discriminated against group until it’s revealed that that’s not the case at all.

Plus, there’s kind of a lot of body horror. There’s betrayal. There’s peril. There’s sympathetic villains. Theres a deeply terrifying and yet incredibly intriguing world. A crossover with another series about superheroes (Ben 10, though, not DC). There’s a pile of dead bodies on screen in the first episode—that’s not even hyperbole I’m being 100% literal with you right now.

It even has some inter-dimensional travel shenanigans including a town being pulled into a pocket dimension and leaving no trace. No cloning as far as I can remember though, but it does have a giant mutant rabbit, and the main character even sucks at basketball!

As an added bonus, it was targeted to 10-13 year olds and eventually taken off the air because it scared children : )

It’s everything your average Danny Phantom fan spends hours reading fanfiction about! I’m telling you! I cannot recommend this show highly enough!