"Stillborn? No, no, still born." -- DPXDC AU
Based off a comment I saw where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy in the earlier comivs, and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.
Instead of Damian, that baby was Danny! Meet Daniel Brown, the 14 year old foster kid whose been living with the Fenton family for the last two years. He's about two years older than Damian.
His last name, "Brown", was a generic surname given to him because the note he came with didn't have one on it. It just had the name "Danyal" on it, but albeit 'Daniel' was the one that had been put into the system for, I'll be totally frank here, racism reasons.
(I looked it up to make sure, and it's generally not permissible for foster parents to change the names of their foster kids even if it's a permanent residency, and for that reason Danny doesn't have the last name "Fenton".)
Danny's got ✨~issues!~✨ He's been through a handful of homes growing up, most of them terrible for a variety of reasons. Which has, as a result, left lasting scars. He's generally a very sweet kid, just very distrustful and jumpy. He's got the signs of a kid suffering from PTSD, and a handful of other issues including attachment and insomnia. His inferiority complex could rival Damian's, and that's going to make for an interesting mutual hatred for when they finally meet.
(something I'll get into later)
He still has the blanket he was found in. It's made of a very high quality material and is a beautiful emerald green with little golden thread accents, it's high quality as a result has Danny clinging onto a desperate hope that his bio family might be out there, and the only reason they gave him up was because of some outside factor. It's been taken a few times in old foster homes, and he's flipped out each time.
While he still calls Jack and Maddie by their names, he likes them well enough. The bar isn't that high though, and while they're some of the better foster parents he's had, "better" doesn't equal "safest". Their laboratory malpractice. Basically, C- Fenton Parents. They're negligent by virtue of being engrossed in their work, but they do care equally about Jazz and Danny. So he doesn't hold it against them that much.
He kinda prefers it that way, their loud affection is overwhelming and Danny doesn't know what to do with their attention, even if he craves it. It's a bit of a complicated situation.
They took in Danny because they genuinely wanted another child, but didn't want a big age gap between them and Jazz. It was actually Jack's idea to foster, and they discussed it with Jazz beforehand. She was all for the idea. Thus, a handful of weeks later, a ton of paperwork, and inspection later, and Daniel Brown entered their household with a trash bag in one hand and eyes like shards of stained glass.
His relationship with Jazz is kinda strained, but that's by virtue of her constant psychoanalyzing and helicoptering. Like with the parents, Danny's overwhelmed by the attention and also just, straight up doesn't like the fact that she's telling him that there's something wrong with him. He knows that, thank you. He pushes her away when she does this.
Other than that though? When Jazz isn't smothering him and is acting like an actual sibling and not a third parent, they're pretty close, and Danny really likes her. They've hung out a few times on their own volition, and Jazz showed him how to take better care of his long hair.
His school situation,, pretty similar to canon with the bullying, albeit with a few more instances of him blowing a fuse and lashing out against his attackers. He's a rather angry kid, but it's quiet. It builds up, piles on top of itself, until eventually, like a volcano, it erupts and burns everyone within radius.
Danny's got a fire core, not an ice core. Phantom's hair is made of white magma; thick and heavy, setting itself on fire when his anger runs hot. When he gets angry, his skin begins to char and split open to reveal pulsating lava underneath, and he crackles and pops like a raging forest fire.
I haven't decided yet on how he meets the batfam -- i've got two ideas but they're both in opposition to each other, and drastically alter how the rest of the plot goes. But I do know that him and Damian hate each other in the beginning. And it has nothing to do with inheritance or "being the blood son" -- although their blood relation absolutely plays the major role in their disdain for each other.
Simply put, they're jealous of each other for the same thing: thinking that the other was wanted.
Damian hates Danny because, unlike Damian, Bruce knew about Danny since conception and wanted him from the moment he heard about him. He had a whole nursery set up, and still does. He never took it down -- just locked the door. Damian was thrust upon Bruce without warning, and he feels like he forced himself into the family. And while on some level Damian knows and understands that Bruce wants him and loves him as much as his other children, that doubt and feeling of inferiority still remains. He looks at Danny and sees him with what Damian always feels he needs reaffirmed.
Meanwhile, Danny hates Damian because he looks at him and sees him with everything Danny's ever wanted. He hates him because Damian grew up knowing both of their parents, with one of them for most of his life, and then moved over to the other. There was never a moment where Damian was (seemingly) left to doubt his place within the family. Damian was raised with the very same woman who left Danny on a doorstep, with no clue to his identity beyond a little green blanket and a note with only a first name. Damian was wanted everywhere, and Danny was wanted nowhere. Damian is Danny's replacement in his eyes.
(It's the little revelation that Damian grew up with their mother that elevates Danny from being quietly envious of Damian to downright despising him. What did Damian do, that Danny didn't? He could live with Damian living with Bruce -- Bruce didn't know Danny was even alive. But him living with their mom? Are you fucking kidding him?)
Damian never outright attacks Danny physically, but it's not like he hides that he didn't like Danny. Meanwhile, Danny, in all his repressive anger, quietly despised him from a distance until finally one wrong snide side-comment has him blowing up and it becomes a screaming match. They're both just enough similar to each other that when they look at each other they really just see a mirror.
They'll work it out together, eventually. But it'll be ugly and cruel and explosive, and they'll start mending the bridge to become brothers in more than just blood relation in the end.
But yeah, stillborn Danny has... a lot going for him.
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Character relations/opinions!
Alright before I post any more Battle Addict stuff I should probably explain what a League Council is. Here's a summarized diagram:
A Pokemon League is a region's network of specialized skilled trainers. It is run by the League Council, which includes finance, HR, marketing, PR, and other managing departments which are divided into different branches depending on who they work with.
This is all to say that everything gets messy very quickly when news of the diagnosis spreads through the network. Originally the diagnosis was supposed to be private information for only the Battle and League departments, however certain higher ups felt it was a safety risk and notified gym leaders as well in the event of future collaborations.
The network is mostly divided into people who are positive/neutral about the news, and people who feel negatively about the twins as a result. Coworkers who were already familiar/close with the two tend to be positive, or at least supportive, whereas those who didn't know them got another reason to avoid them. Some people think they should go on leave for "recovery", but some are more forward and want them terminated.
If you're wondering where Cynthia falls in this, she's a foreign top league worker (Sinnoh Champion) who is hosted in Unova. Basically she has dept. employees assigned to help her connect to people around the region and get different services if requested. She's basically watching everything unfold from the sidelines, with every interview about her opinion boiling down to "lol if you're scared of people stronger than you then get good". She does also bring up historic accounts of CM/HCCM though, mostly to clarify that CM is not a new or scary thing. She's not for or against the twins, rather just hoping to use this as an opportunity to teach others.
I didn't end up drawing her because I got tired but Elesa got the news too!! She actually got it before everyone else since the twins decided to go tell her beforehand. The general scene basically had Ingo and Emmet deliberating in the car, Ingo telling Emmet it's not too late to turn around and go home while Emmet was hesitant but adamant that they needed to tell her first. She probably took it the worst out of everyone but that's mostly just cause it caught her off guard that her friends would just randomly drop in to deliver the news. She's still rooting for them though, mostly trying to support the Subway with more collaborative events to make the twins look better after the hit from the media. She also tries to rework Emmet's restraints where possible, usually trying to make them look more cohesive with the rest of an outfit or trying to make them less visible (cause as much as Emmet says it's not a big deal it's still the first thing he looks at in his reflection).
Here's them in alt clothes :7
Man is cuffed under there (T_T)
Can't really think of too much to say so hope you guys like the art and see you later!
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Okay, but like. There's the whole joke about Bruce recruiting children to be his sidekicks, but honestly there's only really one that fits that.
And it's Jason. And the whole story there is, frankly, unhinged. Aaaaand then he died.
(I'm specifically talking about "first post-crisis origin stories" here because Jason and Dick, in particular, have both had multiple major retcons and revisions over the years, and some of them dramatically change how things happened.)
Like okay. Going backwards, you've got Duke who joined/led a whole Robin-based gang at a time when Bruce wasn't even Batman. You've got Damian and Cass, who were both literally born into the world of masks and capes and heroes and villains, so they weren't ever really not going to be part of it. Steph might have taken inspiration from previous heroes but she made her own identity and repeatedly refused to stop involving herself in the vigilante lifestyle. Tim, obviously, basically strong-armed Batman into letting him be Robin, despite Batman's protests.
Dick's a little more complicated just because there's so many versions, because that's what 80 years of comics and multiple universe reboots will do, and there's kind of a general trend that earlier pre-crisis versions were more of Batman being like "hello, child, would you like to be my sidekick" and later versions have leaned harder and harder into the idea that Dick was absolutely going to do this anyway, regardless of what Batman had to say about it. But even in the first post-crisis version, the flashback in Batman Year 3, Dick says he wants to find a way to keep people like that from hurting others again. When Alfred questions Bruce's offer to train him, Bruce says that Dick should learn to do things the right way if he's going to do it. It's not hard to extrapolate that, much like later versions of the origin story, Dick was going to get himself into this one way or another. (Batman (1940) #437)
And then there's Jason. Whose backstory has also had a lot of (sometimes major) revisions over the years (remember when his adoption was, like, some kind of Joker-originated long con? Fucken Nu52, man). But the original post-crisis version is pretty straightforward. Steals Batman's tires, gets caught and sent to Ma Gunn's Secret Criminal School, intervenes when Batman goes to investigate, immediately gets offered the chance to be Robin based entirely on that.
Which is itself kind of unhinged. That Bruce saw this kid who was living on his own stealing tires and went "Hey you would make a good Robin" as his very first instinct.
But if you've never read Jason's post-crisis origin, or it's been a while, it's honestly even more unhinged than that because that arc starts with Dick getting "fired" as Robin specifically for the reason that he got shot by Joker and Bruce freaked out about how the Robin identity has too many enemies and therefore Dick, a legal adult with approximately a decade of training and experience, should not use the identity anymore.
(And it's specifically about the Robin identity, in this version, because when Dick says he's not going to stop the crime fighting thing Bruce's response is basically "I know and I didn't expect you to". Honestly I could also say a lot about this version of the Robin/Nightwing transition vs. later ones and how this one definitely feels like the Heavy Hand of DC Editorial in the fact that they had no contact for so long afterwards, because the interaction really doesn't feel like it warrants that in this case compared to some later versions, but that's a whole other too-long ramble.) (Batman (1940) #408)
And then a few weeks later Bruce turns around and picks up a random kid, a literal child, and goes "Hey you would make a good Robin!"
And I think a lot about how fucking wild that is. And it's not like the people writing just didn't notice. Dick's big argument with Bruce when he finally comes back to Gotham and meets Jason isn't about the fact that Bruce took in another kid, or even necessarily about Dick feeling proprietary over the Robin identity, the thing he's angry about is that Bruce said it was too dangerous for him, an adult, someone who has trained with Batman for a decade and was already highly physically trained before that for his whole life, to be Robin, and now Bruce has turned around and painted that target onto some random new kid. He pushes, repeatedly, trying to get Bruce to justify himself and this absolutely irresponsible decision, and Bruce gives a lot of answers about how Jason was on a bad path and needed this outlet and eventually just admits that he missed having a partner. (Batman (1940) #416)
And like. Dick's right, is the thing. He is 1000% in the right in this argument. If he can't be Robin anymore because of the danger, how in the hell is it anything like a good idea to hand it over to someone way younger, way less trained, way less experienced, and expect that that wouldn't end in tragedy?
And then it did.
And yeah, Bruce, it is kinda a lot of your fault.
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The Maranos are ready for Edgewave!! 🎸
For @salemssimblr's Edgewave Crowd Call! 😉
Thanks to a random burst of inspo, I had to submit these two to be a part of the Edgewave crowd, especially if it involved the amazing Alice + the Madness. It was so fun to give them "music festival outfits" too, the funniest part is how Ada's outfit is her signature "orange shirt and blue denim" 😆
A little bit of backstory/info just for fun: Ada and Mory have grown up bonding over music. After getting into several of the same metal and rock bands in high school, they started attending concerts together. Eventually, this became a tradition for the siblings, and even though Mory's more often than not off travelling the world, they still meet up for their annual favorites.
Download Link 1 (Mory Marano [left], Google Drive)
Download Link 2 (Ada Marano [right], Google Drive)
^ Note: I have no idea if they'll work this way but it's the only way I know how to share files so lmk if it doesn't work... Or if there's another way! 😁
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