#i know sometimes the point of fanfics is just to play extreme barbie with your favs

[chewingbatmanlikeasqueakytoy]

All of this is so delicious and I actually really enjoy the prompts for Good parents Jack and Maddie, because some of the stuff I've read Bruce/Batman doing (and sometimes Alfred facilitating his shit) is absolutely horrific. The "they feel like evil alternate versions of batman" point is one I vibe so hard with actually, because they really do feel that way. Why the hell would anyone route for Batman at that point? Those comic lines in my opinion can only end 'happily' (technically more a hopeful ending) if it's about the kids escaping from Bruce bc JFC. Hell even the Joker/Batman dynamic can be argued to breakdown in those comics bc the joker is interested mainly in breaking Batmans 'goodness' right? Well what goodness does batman even have to break at that point?

I will add that I'm in a similar boat that my understanding of batman comes from the cartoons where he's fairly decent, at least in part bc those are the ones I grew up on but also massively because I'm not willing to spend my money and time on the worlds most depressingly abusive storylines. That being said i think in regards to Jack and Maddie being bad parents as a trope it's at least in part fear soothing/wish fulfilment/escapism (as is the point in most fanfiction really)

Realistically we spend a lot of the show watching and listening to Jack and Maddie talk about hurting ghosts, hunting ghosts, wishing very extremely vile pain and torture on ghosts, spending their entire lifes work on studying, inventing, and otherwise doing everything in their power to create things to trap, torture and straight up dissolve ghosts in the cases of things like the ecto-dejecto (even if that one didn't work and made ghosts stronger instead) While they clearly love their kids and details of that are scattered absolutely everywhere (they even have pictures of jazz and danny in their workspaces, which is inarguably adorable) the in your face loud and vocal portions of their character are 'ALL GHOSTS SHOULD SUFFER'

Not to turn everything Gay, but honestly the coming out analogy is like. Right There. Especially when you consider a lot of the fandom is old enough to have watched DP back when it was airing a full ELEVEN YEARS before equal marriage came in in force all over the USA.

I think it's fair to see a lot of the Bad Parent Jack and Maddie au's as a type of fear venting, Danny's life would be like having homophobic parents and you've just realised at 14 you're gay. The fear that your parents hate will outweigh their love for you is unfortunately not an unfounded one, Danny's situation is just a very weird type of coming out. Hell Danny actually tries to tell them in the first episode and is stopped by Jazz interrupting, considering Danny then spends a good bit of the episode wishing his parents could 'cure' him cough conversion therapy cough the analogies get only stronger imo. And really that would have been a massively different show if Danny had succeeded in telling them or could even make an interesting early days crossover, if someone comes across this 'meta kid' who's parents are trying/claim to have 'cured' him. Danny coming to accept his ghost half through the ghosts he gets to know only to find out neither he or they are all monsters would likely never have happened if he had managed to tell J&M about the portal incident early on.

So, basically my opinion is that Jack and Maddie get shafted to deal with the fear of parental rejection! RIP to them! So then why Good Parent Bruce? Bruce is an obvious choice in the DC to pick up kids, the guy gets mocked even in comics now for having an adoption issue because he Just Cannot Stop picking up disadvantaged but very capable children. If Jack and Maddie are for dealing with the fear of parental rejection, Bruce/Batfam could very much be seen as landing in the middle of the perfect found family and the hope that even if everything goes to shit and you loose everything you've ever loved and known, there's a light at the end of the tunnel (i mean goddamn how many isekai and other genre managa have literally this exact trope? Of everything going to shit but oh! suddenly! you live in a palace actually and everyone loves you and there's strife but there are people who love and support you and everyone magically makes it through!! You also probably marry rich!!✨✨✨!!!)

TL:DR Jack and Maddie probably get shafted in an exercise about healing the fandoms inner child from a fear of parental rejection, Bruce is a big shiny rich dad prize.

I decided to take a look-see over at what's going on with this DPxDC crossover stuff over on AO3 just to get a sense of the general vibe of the fandom over there. And just... Y'all be killing me with these Additional Tags.

Like, don't get me wrong, most of these I get. I can vibe with a Ghost King Danny AU. Everyone agrees that Phantom Planet was shite. But like... Bad Parents Jack and Maddie Fenton combined with Good Parent Bruce Wayne...? Why do you have to do Jack and Maddie dirty like that!??? Like, don't get me wrong, Jack and Maddie are far from being perfect parents. They can be forgetful or overenthusiastic about hunting ghosts, but they are genuinely trying to be good parents! They very clearly care about Danny and Jazz, try to be involved with their lives, care about their interests, and support them, while also giving them the space they need to grow and be independent as people. And most of all, they would never do anything to intentionally hurt their kids! As far as cartoon parents go, they're pretty alright! Why you gotta do them dirty like this!? And for what? So that Bruce can be a good parent in their place!?

Now I don't like it when the comic writers make Bruce a bad parent. I don't like how common it is for Bruce to be outright abusive with his kids. But as far as current comics canon stands, he is pretty damn horrific as a parent. What Bruce did to Jason in that recent Gotham War arc in Batman? Absolutely inexcusable. (FYI, he kidnapped Jason and exposed him to some chemical to make him constantly afraid any time his heart starts racing or he has an adrenaline rush. He did this to stop Jason from doing any more crimes. And it's FUCKED!) If I could have my way, I would want Bruce to be a flawed, but overall okay parent. Someone who is trying his damnedest to be a decent parent, but who will stumble and make mistakes now and then. Someone who is a good parent, all things considered, given his life circumstances, but can improve and isn't always great at it. But boy howdy is that not where Bruce is at in current canon! Because like... Where Jack and Maddie would NEVER even consider intentionally doing something that would hurt their kids... Bruce is the kind of character where he might if it gets him what he wants/needs...

Like, in general I'm on board with Good Parent Bruce Wayne, but why does it have to come at the cost of Jack and Maddie being okayish parents? Why not have both Bruce being a good parent and Jack and Maddie being okayish parents!??? Why not let Danny have 3 decent parents!???

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

charles+hawkeye, charles+margaret

I combined your first request with some others, but thank you for the additional one!! We love biodiversity <3 Ok so. CharMarg huh.

To get it clearly out of the way: Canon CharMarg Bad. Both because it was just atrociously quarter-assedly attempted in one of the most pathetic pseudo-storylines ever scraped together, an embarrassment to put into such an otherwise quality show, and more importantly because any attempt to make these two get together in canon would always be bad no matter what, because Ms. Swit and Mr. Stiers did not want to do that and if anyone tried to make either of them do something they didn't want I would kill that person and then myself.

But there is one thing worse than canon CharMarg. And that is fanon CharMarg. Because obviously basically nobody actually ships these two, but there are many people, particularly of the mainstream h*wkbeej variety (#notallh*wkbeejers and certainly none who would be in the general vicinity of my blog at this point, I don't think), who like the idea of Charles and Margaret in a lavender marriage.

I love the recent interest in lavender marriages in fandom recently. Now everyone can do the same Pair The Spares maneuver fandom has always done with characters it doesn't care much about, but now they can do it even when the idea of the spares being in love is completely laughable. And it sounds so much cooler, too!

Man I'm sorry I don't know why this irks me so, but alas! It does. The thing is, a lavender marriage would do nothing for either of them anyways, in terms of "playing at doing what society and family want them to do", which is after all the entire purpose of such marriages. Margaret already basically had a test run of marrying into a family like Charles' when she tried it with Penobscott and she HATED it and they basically rejected her for not being the perfect Aryan race anyways. And that's beside the fact that what Charles' family want from him more than anything is children, and Margaret is at the very LEAST extremely on the fence about having kids. So she'd be as miserable as ever, obviously. And with all this, it's fair to say that the Winchesters would be hardly any more satisfied with CharMarg than they would be with Charles just staying a bachelor, so what the hell would he be in it for either???

So it's a no for me on that. So why did I put down that it's "better in fanfic"? Well now we must discuss not canon CharMarg, not fanon CharMarg, but a secret third thing. Hypothetical CharMarg. Essence of CharMarg if you will. The CharMarg that exists only in slight little glimpses in scenes where I'm like you know what? If they hadn't forced it, if they hadn't tried so hard and so badly, if they'd done nothing at all, if they'd just given us all these quiet little moments of friendship and kindness and smiles and affection and never implied anything else and then I’d seen that last scene with the book.......... I’d have been like yeah. I see that. 

And then the fandom could have done Pair The Spares normally, without pretense. And the thing is, I actually always loved fandom pairing the spares, putting every set of characters in groups of two (or three or four, if we really wanted to have some fun and get silly with it) and never leaving anybody behind, making sure nobody was alone. Even if they didn’t care about the spares much, really. It was always hell on fans of those less popular characters, of course (been there!), but it seemed to come from a place of awkward, fumbling love. Nobody gets left behind.

(Aromanticism?? Characters not needing a relationship to be fulfilled?? What’s that lol this is 2014 era Tumblr. Romance shipping LOCKDOWN.)

But of course they did force it and they did ruin it and now it’s hard to even write CharMarg as friends, sometimes, trying to parse out what their friendship is really like when they’re allowed to be people instead of two barbie dolls smashed together. 

They’re still great together though. It is great whenever they’re on screen hanging out together and being narrative mirrors and trying to figure out how to have a friend for the first time in their lives. God I wish they’d gotten to talk about their fathers together, about expectations and never being good enough and having to keep themselves apart from everyone else and repressed anger and repressed love and repressed loneliness. I wish everyone would stop smashing them together like two barbie dolls and just let them be great together. 

In conclusion society would be fixed if Loretta Swit and David Ogden Stiers got everything they wanted forever