#i need better posts to tag my best friends in

[detectivedarling]

As with all things in life, one fact builds on the other, and a lot stands behind the current situation. First, Danny counts in his head, ghost fights are hard to capture on video. Second, the few videos taken of Phantom not in a fight are carefully kept secret. Third, sending those videos over any form of internet seems more dangerous than it's worth.

It's why Bruce, two years after Danny told him about his previous vigilante life, still has only seen Phantom in the mostly low quality videos he could scrounge up from the internet. Which was, admittedly, a lot. Bruce is pretty good when it comes to that. Danny doesn't think Tucker would have been able to find everything Bruce has, and Danny knows for sure he himself wouldn't have found half. If even a third. Not that he was ever much interested in finding videos of himself, seeing his ass get kicked from a different perspective never sounded particularly fun.

But here he sits, next to Bruce, with a high priority, carefully cushioned post package. A simple USB and film card sits inside the many layers of bubble wrap.

Tucker jumped on new technology the second he was able, curious for all things digital, while Sam more often stuck to the old and 'better' looking devices. The film card is hers, from the years after she got a ridiculously expensive and old fashioned camera for her birthday and used it with dedication. It was nearly all aesthetic shots and poetic, environmental moments, but she had some special film cards for filming her life, her friends. She had an even more special card for filming when Phantom was involved.

She rarely did. The film needed to be hidden carefully, so no one sniffing through her stuff could find any hints to Danny's identity. Tucker's occasional digital photo or video were always copied to an equally hidden USB and scrubbed from whatever he used to film on. Danny, for all that his family had never once snooped in his stuff, didn't dare save anything.

Bruce starts with the film card because Danny asks him to. He sets up something compatible, and the film starts with a scratch and a laugh, Danny's breath stolen away as he looks at Sam's bedroom, from before she hung up the goth-ified star string lights Danny and Tucker had gifted her on her thirteenth birthday. Her TV is colorful, the image of a scoreboard for Mario Kart with flashing images of racers. Danny leans in to read. Sam is in first, he's in seventh, and Tucker just barely managed to claim eleven.

Which is why she recorded the video. Tucker covers the scoreboard with his body, just a little too late. I was distracted, okay?! His voice carries through the speakers as he yells at her, eyes pointed behind the camera. Sam as laughing, that fun middle ground of mocking and friendly.

"I'm injured," Danny mumbles, barely speaking over Tuckers ranting. He can't bear to cover the sound up. "Just- just a warning."

Bruce rubs a thumb over Danny's hand. He doesn't look away.

Sam almost giggles. Distracted, uh-huh, she teases and the camera turns to look at Danny beside her. At Phantom beside her.

It's a funny first video for Bruce to watch. Of all the (admittedly not very many) videos Danny's friends have taken of him as Phantom, the first Bruce sees is from the same day as the video Bruce was watching when Danny told him about being Phantom. It's the aftermath of a ghost fight.

Phantom is bleeding. He's sitting on a mess of towels, under and behind him to prevent any ectoplasm from getting on Sam's chair. His right eye is shut, the mess of blood splattered over his face during the fight cleaned away, but a thin trail of it still drops from under it. His left arm is sluggishly dripping blood and sucking it back up. It's cut off at the mid point of his forearm, grown from his elbow. It would take a few more hours before the hand comes back fully formed. His eye shouldn't take much more than one, at the time of the video.

His shoulders are shaking. Phantom is bleeding, injured and dismembered, but his shoulders are shaking from the laugh he can barely hold in.

Our seventh placer, everybody, Sam speaks to an audience that was never meant to include any more than the three of them. Danny can't imagine Bruce not watching alongside him. Not distracted like our dear Tuck.

Sometimes Danny would come out of a rough ghost fight wishing for nothing more than to grieve in peace. To lay and be in pain, to be alone or comforted quietly by his friends. Sometimes Danny wanted the room to be as somber as he felt. Other times he needed to be alive, even as he couldn't transform back before he finished healing, he needed to be present and distracted, he needed to be pulled away from the pain of being pulled apart. This was one of those times.

Phantom falls back against the cushion, laughing. It hiccups with the blood in his lungs, but it's happy and free.

Tucker groans. I wanna play Doomed

The camera turns down as Sam prepares to stop her filming. Build Danny a setup for playing one handed instead of whining next time. Until then, it's Mario Kart.

The video ends.

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[sofivison]

ੈ✩‧₊˚ fools gold — sophia laforteza

“I know the difference between what you say and how you feel

I know when it's real”

pairing ₊⊹ sophia laforteza x fem!reader

synopsis ₊⊹ two childhood best friends who fell for each other without knowing the complexities of love. you feel her pulling away and don’t know what to do, but you need her. you can’t lose her.

genre ₊⊹ angst, hurt no comfort

tags ₊⊹ not really gfs, unrequited love(?), sad ending

a/n ₊⊹ first post woohoooo hi guys!! starting off with a good angst (no happy ending sorry) my requests are very open so go fill up my inbox!

The first time Y/N realized she loved Sophia, they were twelve years old, lying on their backs in the grass, staring up at the stars. It was summer, and the heat still clung to the earth even though the sun had been gone for hours. Crickets hummed in the distance, the air thick with the scent of pine trees and turf.

Sophia pointed at the sky, tracing constellations with her finger. “That one looks like a dog,” she said, voice dreamy.

Y/N squinted. “It looks like a cat.”

Sophia huffed. “You just think everything looks like a cat.”

“That’s because cats are better than dogs.”

Sophia gasped, turning to look at her with exaggerated offense. “Take it back.”

Y/N grinned. “Never.”

Sophia tackled her then, their laughter ringing through the night as they rolled across the grass, wrestling until they were out of breath. When they collapsed again, Y/N turned her head to look at Sophia. Her cheeks were pink from the heat, her hair messy and full of little bits of grass. She was beautiful, even then.

Y/N didn’t have the words for what she felt at the time, but she knew, with a child’s certainty, that she wanted to be beside Sophia forever.

—

The beach was always their place.

Their parents took them every summer, and every summer, they raced to the shoreline the moment they arrived, kicking off their shoes and letting their feet sink into the sand. They built castles with moats deep enough to trap the tide, collected seashells in buckets, and dared each other to swim out farther than they were supposed to.

One year, when they were thirteen, a storm rolled in while they were playing in the water. It came fast, turning the sky dark and the waves rough. Their mothers called for them to come back, but before they did, Sophia grabbed Y/N’s hand and squeezed it tight.

“Don’t be scared,” she said. “I’ll hold on.”

And she did.

They ran back to shore, hand in hand, the wind whipping through their hair, the rain soaking their clothes. When they made it to safety, Sophia turned to Y/N with a wild grin. “That was fun.”

Y/N laughed, heart pounding. “You’re crazy.”

“You love it.”

Y/N did.

—

At fourteen, they camped in Sophia’s backyard, staying up all night whispering secrets under a sky full of stars. Y/N brought a flashlight, and Sophia stole her dad’s old radio, tuning it to some station playing love songs from decades before they were born.

Sophia curled against Y/N’s side, their arms brushing as she hummed along to the music.

“Do you think we’ll ever fall in love with people?” Sophia asked.

Y/N swallowed. “I think so.”

Sophia turned her head, her face close enough that Y/N could feel her breath. “What do you think it’ll be like?”

Y/N didn’t know how to answer without saying this. This closeness, this warmth, this feeling in her chest that made her stomach flutter and her head feel light.

Instead, she shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Sophia smiled like she already knew.

—

They had their first kiss when they were fifteen.

It was late, and they were in Y/N’s room, curled up under a blanket, watching some terrible movie they’d already forgotten the name of. Sophia turned to her suddenly, a look in her eyes that made Y/N’s breath catch.

“Can I?” Sophia asked, voice quiet.

Y/N nodded, and then Sophia cupped her face, and kissed her, soft and slow.

It was nothing like the movies. There were no fireworks, no dramatic music swelling in the background—just the warmth of Sophia’s lips, the steady beat of Y/N’s heart, and the knowledge that something between them had changed forever.

When they pulled away, neither of them said anything. They just looked at each other, eyes searching, waiting for something neither of them knew how to name.

Sophia smiled first, pressing her forehead against Y/N’s. “I love you.”

Y/N’s heart nearly stopped.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

They never talked about it after that.

—

The years passed, and they kept kissing. In secret, in quiet places, always just between them.

They said I love you more times than Y/N could count. In text messages, in hushed voices at sleepovers, in laughter after shared jokes. It became as natural as breathing.

But they never talked about what it meant.

And now, at twenty, Y/N was starting to think that Sophia had stopped meaning it.

It was in the little things—the way Sophia took longer to respond to messages, the way she pulled away first, the way her laughter didn’t sound quite the same anymore.

At first, Y/N told herself she was imagining it. That she was overthinking, being paranoid, reading too much into things.

Maybe I’m crazy.

But even a fool can tell the difference between pyrite and real gold.

And Y/N was no fool.

Sophia was slipping away, and Y/N didn’t know how to hold on.

But she needed to.

Because Sophia was the enormous sun, burning bright and untouchable, and Y/N was just a candle, melting away in the heat.

And now, that sun was dimming before the candle had even burned out.

It wasn’t fair.

And it didn’t make sense.

Y/N didn’t know when it started—when the distance between them became something real, something tangible, something more than just paranoia creeping into the corners of her mind.

Maybe it had been slow, a shift so small it could have been mistaken for growing pains. Or maybe it had happened all at once, sudden and irreversible, like a fire burning through everything they had built together.

Either way, Y/N felt it now, heavy in her chest, in the spaces where Sophia used to be.

They still saw each other. They still talked, still laughed, still exchanged I love you’s like they meant something. But Y/N could feel the difference. Sophia’s touch wasn’t the same—not as lingering, not as sure. She pulled away too quickly, smiled too easily, as if she were performing a role she no longer wanted.

Y/N told herself she was being dramatic. She told herself that if she just held on tighter, things would go back to the way they were.

So she tried.

She sent the first text. She made the plans. She reached for Sophia’s hand, even when Sophia’s fingers barely curled around hers in return.

She kissed her first.

Sophia still kissed back, but it wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t the same.

And Y/N couldn’t ignore it anymore.

—

One night, they sat on the beach, just the two of them. The waves rolled in gentle and slow, the air cool against Y/N’s skin. It should have felt like every other summer they’d spent here, but it didn’t.

Y/N watched Sophia instead of the ocean, memorizing the way the moonlight hit her face, the way her hair moved in the breeze.

Sophia was quiet, running her fingers through the sand absentmindedly.

“Do you ever think about when we were kids?” Y/N asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Sophia glanced at her, smiling softly. “Yeah. All the time.”

Y/N swallowed. “Do you miss it?”

Sophia hesitated. It was only a second, maybe two, but Y/N caught it.

“Of course I do,” she said, but there was something in her voice that made Y/N’s stomach twist.

It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either.

Y/N looked away, staring out at the waves. “Sometimes I wish we could go back.”

Sophia was silent for a long time. Then—

“Why?”

Y/N clenched her jaw. She could feel the answer sitting on her tongue, bitter and painful.

Because back then, I didn’t have to wonder if you loved me.

But she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t say any of it.

So instead, she forced a laugh, shaking her head. “No reason.”

Sophia didn’t push.

And somehow, that hurt the most.

—

Y/N spent the next few weeks trying to convince herself that things weren’t falling apart.

She clung to every smile, every touch, every fleeting moment that felt like before.

But the doubt never left.

Because now, every time Sophia said I love you, Y/N wondered if she meant it.

And even worse,

She wondered if she ever would again.

—

The sand was cool beneath Y/N’s fingers, a familiar comfort against the stark fear blooming in her chest. The waves whispered secrets to the shore, a constant, rhythmic reminder of time slipping away. Beside her, Sophia threw pebbles into the ocean, her movements fluid and careless, a world away from the turmoil brewing inside Y/N.

For twenty years, Sophia had been her sun. A radiance around which Y/N’s world revolved. Their lives were intertwined, woven together with shared secrets, laughter, and a love that was beneath the surface, never explicitly acknowledged but always there.

Y/N watched Sophia, the way the setting sun painted her skin gold, the way her brow furrowed in concentration as she aimed for a distant wave.

“Sophia,” she started, her voice barely a whisper against the roar of the ocean.

Sophia glanced at her, a small smile playing on her lips. “Yeah?”

Y/N swallowed, the lump in her throat feeling like a jagged stone. This was it. The moment she’d been dreading and obsessing over equally. “We… we haven’t really talked about… us.”

Sophia’s smile faltered. ”I mean… we never have.” She stopped throwing pebbles and turned to face Y/N, the ocean reflecting in her wide, uncertain eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Y/N struggled to find the right words, the ones that wouldn’t shatter the fragile peace between them. “I love you, Sophia. You know I do. But sometimes… sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who feels it this way.”

The silence that followed was deafening. The waves still crashed, the wind still howled, but Y/N could hear nothing but the frantic beating of her own heart.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” she rushed on, desperately trying to backtrack, to convince herself that her fears were unfounded. But Y/N knew, with a sickening certainty, that the gold in Sophia’s eyes was no longer mirroring her own.

“I just…” Y/N forced herself to meet Sophia’s gaze, the truth of her words a bitter pill on her tongue. “I feel like you’re not… here anymore. Not really. And it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. That I’m making you not love me.”

It was pathetic, she knew. Begging for love. Exposing herself so vulnerably, tearing down the walls she’d so carefully built. But she needed to know she’d tried everything. She couldn't face the years to come, wondering if a single conversation could have saved them.

Sophia was silent again, her expression unreadable. Y/N had to tell herself that it was Sophia’s fault. That something she did, not Y/N, was the reason for this shift. To think that she was the reason Sophia’s love was fading was too much to bear.

“Please,” Y/N choked out, tears pricking at her eyes. “Please, just… love me again.”

Sophia reached out, her fingers brushing against Y/N’s cheek. Her touch was gentle, but lacking the warmth it used to hold. “Y/N,” she said softly, her voice laced with a sadness that mirrored Y/N’s own. “I just… don't know if I can be what you want me to be.”

Y/N anxiety clawed at my insides. “What do you mean?” Y/N choked out. “What do I want you to be?”

"Someone who loves me the way you do.” Sophia’s hand retreated, leaving Y/N’s skin cold.

The truth hung heavy in the air, suffocating her. She was a puny candle, desperately clinging to the enormous sun, even as it imploded before her very eyes. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t make sense.

Y/N closed her eyes, the salty tears streaming down her face. She knew what came next. The goodbye.

“I… I need you, Sophia,” she whispered, the words a raw, desperate plea.

But Sophia didn’t respond. She just stood there, silhouetted against the dying sun, a beautiful, unattainable ghost.

“I can’t,” Sophia finally managed to say, her voice barely audible. “I just… I can’t.”

The words ripped through Y/N, severing the last thread of hope. She opened her eyes, staring at Sophia, trying to memorize every detail of her face, knowing this was the last time she’d see her this way.

“Okay,” Y/N whispered, the word a broken promise to herself. “Okay.”

She stood up, her legs shaky, and turned away from Sophia, away from the ocean, away from a future that no longer held the light she’d always known. She walked away, leaving Sophia sitting alone on the beach, a solitary figure against the expanse of the sea. And as she walked, she knew that the sun had finally set on their love, leaving her lost and shivering in the darkness.

[three-green-waterbottles]

need less posts about marriage and gf/bfs. rewrite your post about affectionate everyday things you do with your partner and replace those with best friend. hashtag aromantic

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Man if Marcy keeps ending up with like child protection services in all these fics over her parents being slightly distant then my parents should be in JAIL

[lemongogo]

j need to get back into life drawing post haste

[transgirltrish]

.

[ningningkittie]

maybe i should just be grateful he didnt full on block me everywhere

[spacespore]

HI TUMBLRR it’s me

[ceramicbeetle]

sonic and snufkin actually kind of feel like very similar characters to me. holding hands over “my personal sense of freedom and dedication to making decisions based on what I think is right is what matters most, and if you’ve built some idealized version of me in your head then that’s none of my business and it’s not my responsibility if the reality of who i am lets you down in some way”. also the deep connection to nature and all.

[lorephobic]

idk how to even like. put this pain into words and i would normally vent about this shit on twitter, but the person its about follows me on there so like. anybody have skills for coping with the crushing realization that the person u love most in this world and have built ur life around sees ur current situation together as a temporary hurdle that's preventing them from their truest and happiest self which. is separate from u entirely? anyone know how to deal with this?

[scionshtola]

i think it’s probably a big shock to cori when they get to rak’tika and shtola has lived a whole 3 years without them…

[windupaidoneus]

now some people may not like to hear it but even the worst people who exist are still people & there is no human being who has More right than others to decide whether others deserve to live or die (does not mean i personally condemn murder in self defense or anything of the sort or killing fascists or whatever i'm just saying as a baseline This Is How it Is) & this is why the death penalty is not a good thing no matter how good & trustworthy the people in any government might be. people on average also deserve the chance to learn to do better. & no, someone who's been forcefed propaganda their entire life will not let go of that deeply entrenched mindset so easily, it's not particularly unrealistic & it absolutely sucks to deal with but in the context of tangibly working toward world peace it's also not an issue to try & help such people both in material ways & in helping them learn better rather than cut them down or abandon them to a grim fate. all this to say that's why i don't think garlemald is written badly, as unpleasant as the experience might be. walks off the stage

[kenzan-kiwami]

same anon as before here. i find it refreshing that other people out there are willing to say out loud that all the kazumaji gets super tiresome. i enjoy majima a lot but find kazumaji totally overrated and so it is not fun out here lol. especially because the way fandom portrays the ship is almost never true to the characters at all (gaa gaa eyes, as you say). replaying the games is a good idea tho. i did that and my enjoyment for majima (and my other favorite side characters!) came back once i remembered what he was really like outside of fandom.

oh no yeah i totally get you 😭 i feel blessed to have known people from when i first got into the series who are as Over It as i am, but it still gets so lonely out here sometimes. i have some doodles and video projects i'd like to at least try to do at some point but i'm definitely going to replay y0 soonish (after gaiden maybe?) because it's been FOREVER and i'd like to have it fresher in my mind haha

dead souls is also a brilliant game for majima, people cry for a majima game all the time but i'm like dude we already have dead souls? he's in his fucking element throughout his entire gameplay segment, don't just ignore it because it has objectively terrible gameplay for the sole reason of "they tried to make a third-person shooter inside a brawler game"

[chiistarri]

what if instead of messaging me in the middle of the night about your stupid fucking girlfriend and your stupid fucking problems with her you actually act like my fucking friend and message me like how you message everyone else in our group

[pinkopalina]

as a huge batjokes shipper i want batman and joker to hate each other in the sense they dont really hate each other, they just have really different goals and see their own version of potential in the other and right now hate is the best word for their situationship. they both love the other for what they could be but neither of them wants to be what the other one wants, and that's equally as frustrating as it is necessary for them to keep existing in their current roles. they're deadlocked and that fate surrounding each other is kind of the point -- we both have to be like this, the opposite of what the other wants, for us to keep existing at all, and for giving me that gift i both love and hate you. it's an agreement. i think the hate that's there now is born from an intense underlying love.

i think batman "hates" joker for being so amazing and smart and cunning, for being able to create grand gestures and schemes, to pull people together under his charisma and make them all believe in something, for being as extraordinary as he is but batman hates that he uses it to hurt people. he hates that joker can't channel his energy into doing something good for the world, that he hurts himself and others just because he wants to be batman's greatest enemy. i think batman wants to help joker but also hates him at this point for joker exhausting him, constantly getting hurt both emotionally and physically by him, joker never trying to improve his situation, throwing away other people's lives, showing batman he loves him by lashing out and hurting him. batman hates joker because he loves his rogues, he wants to help them, and he knows they can do better. he wants to live in a gotham that doesn't need batman but he still needs to be needed, because when there's no batman, what is bruce going to be? without joker, he will continue being batman, but it's an empty crusade. some of my favorite interactions between harvey and bruce are the ones where harvey thanks bruce for "always being there for me, never giving up on me, my very best friend." even with someone like harvey, bruce can still hold onto that hope for his rogues, never give up on them, keep going for them, even if it puts them through the cycle one more time.

i think joker hates batman in the most toxic way possible, but it's still love. i just think he's selfish and doesn't want batman to think about anyone else but him, the same way he operates for batman, but if he must think about other people then joker will make it as amazing as possible! i think he hates batman for wasting his time on ordinary people, people who are so boring that batman claims he has to protect and serve and love them but joker thinks it's all surface-level. batman won't kill joker but he'll leave room for people dying in his crusade. it's a choice he allows, and even if joker knows that's a morally fucked up way to put someone in a box, he doesn't care. batman is the type of person to train himself mentally and physically for decades and dress up in a half-silly-half-menacing costume so that everyone can have an idea about him. batman himself is not normal, and joker knows that and loves that! why is he wasting his time trying to save people that use him, abuse him, don't want him to be the best he can be? i think joker's motivations for loving batman and lashing out as if he hates him lie somewhere in between extreme admiration -- like i truly believe in your cause and that you're the right person to do it, but i'm so angry at you for wasting your time on other people and i'm so hurt and jealous that you choose them over me, just so you can be a hypocrite and let them die if i want them to anyways -- and anger at his hypocrisy -- like it's easy for joker to dedicate himself to chaos and just being in batman's life by putting batman in situations that force him to be a better and better hero, but how can batman sit there and choose and pick what morals he'll uphold and who gets to live and who gets to die?

i want to be your greatest enemy because you are the greatest hero ever, and the only way you and i can keep being the best at what we do is if we do it together, because of what we both believe in.

[murder-files-old]

RECOVERED AUDIO CALL TRANSCRIPT

Individuals identified: Mikah Fitagerald (main suspect of case) and Charley Kingsley (supposed accomplice) Subject of call: Anonymous blog under the name "murder-files"

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CHARLEY: Hey, um. I did it. MIKAH: Did what? CHARLEY: The-the blog thing. I set everything up. Made it some weird rando trying to slander you, just like you said. MIKAH: Oh, good. Good... CHARLEY: I uh... also used the weird screenshots you took when you tried... blocking them. MIKAH: What? I told you not to use those! *Sigh* What else did you fuck up? There has to be more- CHARLEY: I uh... Also made the blog under your name... MIKAH: (LONG PAUSE) What? CHARLEY: Ahah... Yeah. I-I just... Wasn't thinking. I mean, I thought it would be funny for this weird anonymous blog user to use your name and then accuse you in the next sentence, ya know? "It's called a cruel irony" ey? God, I fucking love that movie- MIKAH: Don't tell me you used my fucking user too. CHARLEY: Kinda? As the blog title... But, that's not the actual name of the blog! MIKAH: Then what is it? What could it possibly be? CHARLEY: "murder-files". With a hyphon inbetween the words. MIKAH: (NO RESPONSE) CHARLEY: I know, it sounds stupid and cringey, but it was the best I could come up with since the blog is like "looking into the case," quote unquote. Uuuuh yeah. I can change it if you want! MIKAH: Ugh, no, it's fine for now. Just... I'll start maintaining it since it's under my fucking name. You better not fuck up anything else. Type me the password at least. CHARLEY: Sure thing man. And hey, I just... wanted to let you know that I'm still not mad at you. What happened happened, and if you say it was an accident, then it was an accident. I'll do whatever it takes, man. OK?

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