#YES I SHIP THEM WHAT ABOUT IT

[lucabyte]

you dream of devouring your friends whole

[quadrantadvisor]

Pairing Off, in which the Waynes meet the Fentons, just not all at once. 2,443 words

-

Damian feels less than positively about the new girl in his grade.

Danielle Fenton has already garnered a bit of a reputation. Her uniform is clearly second hand, and rumors abound about whether she has joined them at Gotham Academy on a merit scholarship or as “one of Wayne's charity cases.” Neither is true; Father has offered no fiscal support to the Fentons, and yet both she and her older brother attend the Academy, leading Damian to believe they've somehow paid their own way.

Her lower class status and midwestern accent ought to make Fenton a target, but her response to being cornered or talked down to by other students was an unsettling combination of cheerful and aggressive. She is now mostly left to her own devices, despite her notoriety. 

Damian has no interest in the girl. While it is true that she excels in both mathematics and social studies, her performance in English and science are unremarkable, and she poses no challenge to his rank at the top of the class. If he finds himself pushing harder in certain classes this semester in order to maintain the edge, it's no one else's business.

Now if only she would leave him alone.

Damian preemptively slams his sketchbook shut, just as a brash, inconsiderate, annoying girl hops up to sit on his desk. “Hey Dami, what're you drawing?”

“It is none of your business,” Damian seethes. “Remove yourself from my personal space before I-” he isn't allowed to threaten classmates with bodily harm, imply that he has brought weapons to school, or use words that are derogatory to women “-do so myself. By force.” He would avoid her altogether if he could, but Fenton is annoyingly (suspiciously) sneaky. He can only ever seem to sense her when she's just about on top of him.

Fenton merely laughs, high, bright, and joyful, and Damian grits his teeth. “Did you draw me yet?” she asks, and doesn't move an inch.

“No, I have not drawn you. I never said I would, and I have no plans to. Stop asking me.”

She shrugs and kicks her feet. “Maybe you'll change your mind. Can I see what you're working on?”

Damian pulls the sketchbook a tad bit closer to himself (a protective reflex that shows his weakness, he should be better than that by now.) “Never, imbecile.”

Fenton sticks her tongue out at him like a child. “Mean,” she says, still smiling. “I wanna see your art. It's so good!”

Damian tilts his nose up at her. “Of course it is, plebeian, I have standards-” he starts, but is cut off by the teacher entering. Fenton slides off his desk and heads to her own seat. Damian stows his sketchbook in his bag and tries not to think of the unfinished work inside, featuring a girl with dark hair, light eyes, and a mischievous grin.

-

There's this brownstone on the outskirts of Crime Alley, an old townhouse recently converted into commercial space. There's a coffee shop on street level, a tattoo parlor down the stairs, some sorta wine emporium on the second floor, and on the third, a little second hand bookshop

It's outside the border of Jason's territory, but he feels sorta responsible for it, given that he frequents the place.

It's a little out of his way, but the atmosphere is nice, alright? Clean, with soft lighting, but not sterile or corporate like the bigger places downtown. The owners are an older couple who Jason has met a couple of times, and they seem pretty happy with the new location. They're collectors, really, who run the shop to make ends meet.

Mostly, Jason talks to their employee. Jazz.

Jazz works in the afternoons and evenings, after her classes. She goes to Gotham U, double majoring in pre-med and psych, on top of a full time job, because she's almost as insane as a bat. She assures Jason that she does alright, gets a little downtime to study on her shifts.

She always makes time to talk to Jason.

Jazz is an interesting person to talk books with. She cares less about plot and literary themes, and more about diagnosing every character with their own personal malady of the mind. She dissects their thought processes and behaviors, ruthless in her analysis.

She's gonna be a brain surgeon someday, open people up and see what really makes them tick. Jason doesn't doubt it for a second.

So maybe Jason is a little bit in love with her.

It's not a big deal. Obviously it's not going anywhere. It's just nice to have something normal, to talk to someone normal, about normal stuff like books and college and sibling antics.

Jazz's stories about her sibling, Danny, rival Jason's own, and his family is fucking disastrous. Jason isn't actually sure if Dan is older or younger than Jazz is, or, for that matter, what pronouns he should use for them, since Jazz mixes it up pretty regularly. He knows that Jazz absolutely adores them, though, and it's heartwarming, the way she smiles as she talks.

All of that to explain why Red Hood is keeping an eye on a brownstone that technically falls outside of his territory.

There's a girl inside that he needs to keep safe.

-

“Hey bud, late night?” Dick asks the man lying prone in an alley, a block away from the Iceberg Lounge.

The response is slurred with sleep and muffled by a cheek pressed hard into asphalt. “S'at you, Dick?”

“Sure is. We've got to stop meeting like this,” Dick tells him, and means it.

The guy's name is Dan. No last name offered, which was fair, since Dick hasn't mentioned his.

What was weird was that Dan didn't give Penguin his last name, either, when he signed his employment contract. Just Dan.

Penguin has been trying to expand his influence into Bludhaven, and Dick's been trying to figure out why. Cobblepot is a very Gotham sort of gangster, all wrapped up in the city's ideas of style and respectability; Dick honestly would've thought that Blud was beneath him. He needs to figure out who he's contacting and what they're offering him, and he needs to do it before Penguin can get a foothold on his turf.

Running into Dan was a side effect. Dick didn't mean to keep doing it. It's just that Dan has this weird habit of completely disregarding trivial concerns such as his own health and safety, and doing weird shit like, as a random example, getting tired, laying down, and passing out. In the middle of the street. In Gotham.

The main part of Dan's job seems to be bouncing at the club. It makes sense—if you wanted to hire a guy as muscle, you couldn't do much better than Dan. He's at least 6 and a half feet tall, with a chest wider than Jason's. 

But Dick has also seen Dan traveling with Penguin before. Add in the fact that it's almost impossible to dig up info on him, and that tailing him is somehow even harder, and a picture starts to come together. A very vague, very suspicious picture.

It's too bad that Dick sort of likes him, and that he's incredibly hot.

Dan has removed his face from the alley floor, and is in the process of pushing himself up. “Not your business, man,” he retorts. “What are you, a cop?”

Dick can't help a wry chuckle at that. “Not anymore.”

“No shit?” Dan asks, hauling himself to his feet. He towers over Dick like that, but it's hard to be intimidated by a man whose cheek is red and pockmarked by little bits of gravel. Dick is legitimately embarrassed that he finds it charming. He needs to get better taste in men. “Yeah, no, that makes sense,” Dan continues, looking Dick up and down. “No way they could keep your ass on the force.”

“Oh yeah?” Dick asks.

Dan snorts. “I can smell the idealism on you from here.” He starts walking, heading straight past Dick, who falls into step beside him. “You remind me of this kid I know.”

Dick gives an interested hum, hoping that if he doesn't interrupt, Dan will elaborate, but no dice.

“So, where're you taking me this time?” the big man asks, still leading, and Dick stifles a grin at how silly the whole thing is.

“Maybe if I take you out for coffee, you won't faceplant onto any more concrete,” he says, reaching up to brush off some of the little rocks. Dan stutters to a stop as Dick touches his cheek, letting him, then strides off again as soon as he's done.

“Don't care, as long as you're paying.”

Dick stops him with a tug to his arm. “Coffee shop's this way,” he explains, pointing, and Dan doesn't hesitate, pivoting to take the lead once again. Dick rushes to keep up with his not-date, a criminal who he literally picked up off the street and who has no idea where he's going. He can't see his own smile, but he knows from experience that it is both delighted and a little manic. He admits to himself, begrudgingly, that he likes his men with something wrong with them.

-

The biggest reason that Tim played so much Doomed with Ghost_Boy, a couple of years ago, was that they were the only player he knew who kept hours as weird as his were. There were worse reasons to form a friendship. Ghost_Boy was a great player, and was always funny in chat. They were upbeat when things went well, and they were sarcastic but not bitter when things went poorly. Playing for the game's sake eventually changed to booting up the game to hang out with Ghost_Boy. They talked about how different their lives were, with Ghost_Boy in the midwest and Tim in the crime capital of America, and they talked about the things they had in common, like falling asleep in class. It was Tim's favorite form of stress relief, back then, when being Robin was new and overwhelming.

Then Tim got busy. No, that wasn't true—Tim had always been busy. More like, Tim's life fell to shambles, over and over again, and he stopped making time for stress relief when the very concept seemed out of his reach.

That was over dramatic. Tim fell off the game, and didn't keep in contact with his friend. That's all there was to it.

That was all there was to it, until a few nights ago, when he booted up his old Doomed file for nostalgia's sake and found a message from Ghost_Boy, sent a couple months back, that said he was planning to move to Gotham and, if Tim wanted, he'd be happy to meet up.

Tim immediately replied in the affirmative, and then he freaked out that he'd done that and started cyber stalking the guy. He couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be embarrassed by this behavior. He knew who he was.

Daniel Fenton was, in fact, a real teenager from a real midwestern town (Amity Park, Illinois.) He had moved to Gotham right when his message said he would, and lived with his older sister, Jasmine (who had custody over him,) and his younger sister, Danielle.

And that was where Tim was planning to stop his research, for the sake of his friend's privacy. Once he confirmed that he wasn't being catfished by either a supervillain or a run-of-the-mill creep, he was going to stop looking.

But Danielle Fenton's situation was incredibly weird.

Apparently, she had never lived with Daniel, Jasmine, and their parents before. Instead, after she was born, she'd been adopted by the kids’ godfather, eccentric billionaire Vlad Masters, and he was still her legal guardian. It was only after the Doctors Jack and Madeline died that she moved in with her siblings and started attending Gotham Academy, states away from her adoptive parent.

Vlad Masters was a man of eclectic tastes. The stories about him in the news were always covering some weird investment he had made, like purchasing a cheese castle in Wisconsin, or buying up property in Green Bay just to have a stake in the Packers, or pouring money into experimental forms of alternative energy. He was always refined in his public appearances, but he had the desperate edge of new money wanting to fit in with the old. Tim knew of him, but had never given him much thought before. He'd never made a move into Gotham, after all.

But the whole story was bizarre. Masters had gone to college with the Fentons, the three of them creating their own field of study in “Ectology,” before Masters had been contaminated in a lab accident, bedridden and unable to finish his degree. Jack and Maddie had continued their research, garnering just enough interest in their work to receive the funding needed to keep afloat, until some sort of breakthrough a few years ago added validity to their theories. They were practically celebrities in the niche forums Tim skimmed through. Masters, meanwhile, stopped working directly in the sciences and instead turned to networking, gaining some generous help from the friends he made and playing the stock market like a fiddle, until he was one of the most well known and lucrative investors in the world. He owned a few companies publicly, and managed some others under the table (Tim had to snort at the ridiculous naming of Dalv Co.) 

And then the Fentons had kids, and they raised two of them (seemingly quite happily, if the photos on their memorialized facebook accounts meant anything.) And then, for some reason, they named the third one nearly identically to their second child and gave her straight to Vlad. Masters raised the girl in Wisconsin, until suddenly relocating to Amity Park and becoming the town's mayor. There he stayed, until the Fenton's recent passing in a lab accident of their own.

Tim doesn't know what it all adds up to. But there was something going on, with both Vlad Masters and the Fentons, and if there's something nefarious in Masters’ actions or his wealth, it could be entirely possible that Daniel was a plant—a way for him to get an in with the Waynes. Tim has to be cautious, and he has to get to the bottom of this.

That's why Tim is waiting in a coffee shop, pretending to be engrossed in his laptop while keeping an eye on the door, waiting for the appearance of a teen with black hair and blue eyes.

Tim idly thinks that Bruce had better not adopt this one.

[whaliiwatching]

one in a million admirers…

based on ofc this prompt

[bvckbiter]

fandom talks too little about hylla and reyna. reyna killed her father when she thought he'd killed hylla. hylla dragged them out of puerto rico and found them sanctuary and employment on circe's island AND became one of circe's favorites. then when they got captured by blackbeard hylla also got them out of that situation by out-pirating literal immortal pirates. then in a span of three years, they split up, found their own ways to the amazons and cj, and became the leaders of their respective factions. when hylla's queenship was being threatened by otrera in son, she plotted a counter-coup and defeated an amazon queen who couldn't die two nights in a row in one-on-one combat, THEN led her cavalry to camp jupiter. (ik this woman slept like a corpse for a week afterwards). hylla used reyna as an absolutely ruthless bait-and-switch to capture orion, and all reyna said in response to that was, "bet." reyna carries insurmountable amounts of both guilt and gratitude towards her sister. even though they havent seen each other in a while, hylla still drops everything and does everything in her power to save her baby sister when she knows reyna needs her.

[ghostinthegallery]

Having now finished MTMTE/LL (spoilers coming) I can pretty definitively answer the question I asked myself in this post about Ratchet, and how someone can "retire" from always being rational and on point with the consequences of failing to do so being People Die.

And the answer, at least in one version of events, is HE DOESN'T. He doesn't "retire", he doesn't even really recover. All the wear of that constant tension eventually just kills him. Slowly and subtly, but I feel like there's a reason Ratchet was the one space robot to die of old age.

Except he got one silver lining that remained until the end of his life and that was Drift. Loving partner yes, but the way that Drift loves him is significant. Because Drift isn't the only character to love and care about Ratchet (far from it) but he is the only character who really takes care of Ratchet. Who looks after him and protects him, despite Ratchet usually being the one to fill that role.

Even back when Ratchet specifically doesn't even like him, Drift does everything he can to protect him. Delphi, Overlord (and a quantumly failed attempt to save Ratchet from the DJD, then the events of Empire of Stone). Basically anytime anything even looks at Ratchet funny, Drift is there with three swords and a willingness to overkill. Drift helps him when he falls, checks on him, runs to the medbay when the alarms go off. No one else does this! And why would they? To most people, Ratchet is The Guy With His Shit Together, so he doesn't need that kind of help.

Just look at Luna 2 where Drift isn't there and Ratchet has a Very Bad Time. He's literally torn apart, put back together, watches his friend get murdered, and First Aid actually yells at him for getting them dragged into his mess. Yeah Ratchet gets through it, but nobody bothers to ask what happened to him much less if he's okay. He has to watch out for himself and others and he's good at it but it isn't a good time!!

But then once he and Drift are together again, Ratchet has someone to lean on. He and Drift hold each other. Ratchet let's himself be vulnerable. Drift is the one he calls for when he's sick or scared, and just the fact he is calling for anyone rather than always being the one called for is a change. And he had that for the rest of his life, Drift never left his side.

He never recovered but at least he got relief.

[rin-sith]

Ages ago, I promised a sequel to my Ruthlessness sketches with my new Poseidon design, and well... See, I had a very specific vision for this, my beloved 🫶 favorite song in the whole entire musical. And I guess I was finally brave en- I mean, found the time to bring it to life. Enjoy 🙈🌊🔱

@glisten-inthedark look at what I've done now

[therantingsage]

The concept for the Loopdile fic I'm writing was initially just "Loop gets used as and subsequently warms up to being Odile's reading light as long as they have an excuse to be close to someone" but like uh

Now it's evolving into "Odile is on purpose not asking Loop any questions because she knows that they know that's weird for her, in the interest of getting them antsy and impatient enough to spit out a single honest fact about themselves instead of lying and redirecting like they do when anyone else asks them questions" and also "Odile notices that Loop is touch-starved in the same way Siffrin is and manufactures situations for Loop to be close to her if they so desire because they're clearly not going to ask anyone on their own and she's already invested in her hands-off approach and wants to keep close by to see if it works" and finally "Loop is losing their MIND about this actually"

[randomsufff]

You know what I really need in fanfics? More confession scenes where one person drops the confessions then runs, fast as fuck, in the other direction.

Like, obviously they’ll meet back up eventually and talk about it (which is hilarious in itself that they would have to sprint to catch up while yelling why they’re like this) , BUT THINK ABOUT IT!!! It 1) give the other person a chance to gather their thoughts so the person confessing doesn’t have to sit in anxious silence and 2) allows the confessor to get it over with quick and overcomes that anxiety over confessing. Also it’s just fucking hilarious.

Like imagine your fav paring or whatever, they get to that part where one (or both idk) realizes their feelings for the other but they’re just anxious to be vulnerable like that or they fear rejection, whatever. One of them suddenly goes, fuck it, and they turn to the other. (Maybe they’re on a sidewalk, maybe they’re in a park IDK endless possibilities here) and they go:

“ok I’m about to say something, it’s nothing bad (I hope) and I’m willing to talk about it after I say it. I’m 100% serious, this is really not a joke. But I’m going to say this and run to (relevant location). Ok? Ok…. Don’t freak out… iminlovewithyou” *Cue maniac SPRINTING as fast as humanly possible in the other direction* (Bro I’m cracking up just typing about this)

AND THEN!!! You get to chose how they react after a few stunned seconds. Do they sprint after them? Do they shout to bring their ass back over to them? Do they race like hell to beat the other at the determined location??? I don’t know, but it’s hilarious as fuck and can transition seamlessly into heartfelt feeling talk.

(Thinking about this with specific ships is funny as hell too)

Idk I think of more fics had this trope we could all have a grand ol silly time instead of accidentally speed reading through confession schemes because the stress is too much then having to go back and re-read it to fully process it, as one does. You know?

[serotonin-dose]

AsaDen x Metaphor Re:Fantazio

[helaenadream]

the hotd fandom’s reaction to gwayne hightower has been nothing short of baffling to me so far. it’s no secret that people’s love to hate criston cole has been prone to making them miss the point in a major way but this to me is kind of a new level. the idea that he is “slay” or “serving cunt” or even that he legitimately sees through criston and resents him for being a bad person is a stunning misinterpretation of what the show is obviously saying. which is that gwayne hightower is racist. he talks to criston that way because criston is brown. and poor.

[a-most-beloved-fool]

tbh I want to see more DS9 polycule stuff centering on Kira. Like, "This is my girlfriend, Jadzia (she's also Worf's wife), and my girlfriend Odo (who is also Quark's boyfriend), and my boyfriend Miles, who is married to my girlfriend Keiko, and they're dating Julian (who is really just my metamour, but he DID get me pregnant with Miles and Keiko's child), and my boyfriend Shakaar, and my boyfriend Bareil, and my boyfriend Damar, and this is Gul Dukat, who I want to kill, but is the father of my adopted daughter-"

[snarkylinda]

Derek putting Spencer aside and telling him he loves him but restraining himself from actually saying it because Spencer knew what he meant and he could just showcase it later vs Derek outright saying it when they part ways a few episodes laters because he realized he wouldn't be there to show it every day anymore and he needed Spencer to stick that single phrase to his memory until they met again.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

No but Astarion wanting to be valued for more than sex and seen for something that's not just sex regardless of who romances him and Wyll wanting a chaste and genuine romance with sincere and committed courtship with no sex regardless of who romances him is insaneeeeee. I know everyone's talked about this before but everytime I stop to think about it I lose my mind. They couldn't be more narratively bound I'm clawing at the bars of my cage

[ultimate-marysue]

Guys, just as a concept: not every ship has to be composed by someone who is 100% a top and someone who is 100% a bottom. If that's what you want to do with the ship, all the power to you! But like, if you want them to switch they can actually. Don't limit yourself!

[s4ndg3m]

hear me out on scag x split guys. they both start with "s" it's practically canon.

[ethanharmonia]

Pokemon doodles but i got a bit too silly (Volo my beloved)

Man with his kids bro

Is this trainwreckshipping yall cuz i dont see them wrecking a train while kissing

(this is how i see them in my au / in general if they ever met)