"Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you're done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation."
– Hao Jingfang, "Invisible Planets," in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, tr. & ed. Ken Liu
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Bring your sidekick to work day!
Inspired by the "What if Question was the one who saves Danny from GIW?" post that I made awhile ago.
Bring your sidekick to work day!
It was a tradition that started around the time multiple superheroes were taken on sidekicks. Everyone in the league knew why they'd bring their sidekicks to work. Their sidekicks get to socialize with peers their own age and they could properly introduce themselves to other heroes.
So it was a surprise when The Question, the league's faceless conspiracy theorist, offhandedly mentioned that he'll be bringing his sidekick to work while telling them about what new information he's found about Cadmus and another new government agency he thought they should start looking into.
The heroes found it hard to believe.
Question has a sidekick.
Surely they must have misheard.
No way that guy would want a sidekick, let alone get a sidekick.
When "Bring your sidekick to work day" arrived everybody was prepared to see the heroes and sidekicks.
Superman with Superboy
Batman and his 10+ kids
Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl
Flash and Kid Flash
The list went on
The heroes all mingle before realizing that they haven't seen Question. Maybe they did mishear the man? Or Question got his words mixed up?
That was until the computer announced the arrival of Question and a guest that was unidentified.
They all turn around to see the faceless trench coat wearing investigator followed by a tinier faceless trench coat wearing kid. The kid was practically a clone of Question, except...tinier.
"This is my sidekick. Who." Question points to the faceless kid
Flash: Who?
"That's me!" the kid says pointing to himself.
"Why don't you acquaint yourself with the others." Question tells his sidekick who just nods and goes off to introduce himself with the others kids.
Batman: I didn't take you one for having a sidekick.
Question: I could say the same for you. And the sidekick thing just kind of happened. The kid wouldn't leave me alone and I couldn't let the kid get himself into any trouble.
Batman: Understandable
Meanwhile with the sidekicks.
Everybody's asking Who various questions about Question and how he met the man. They barely know anything about the guy.
Question 1: What's the deal with your name?
Who: It's a work in progress. Since my mentor's name is Question. I figured my name should be like a question.
Question 2: How do you eat?
Who: I shove food into my face
Question 3: Where's your face?
Who: Wouldn't you like to know
Question 4: Do you know about his conspiracies?
Who: Of course I know about his conspiracies! I'm one of them
Other sidekicks: What?
After some talking, the sidekicks get along with each other very well. When they reunite with their mentors the computer rings stating that John Constantine was coming along with a guest.
The heroes then all watched as a girl with white hair and green eyes wearing a trench coat and was dragging John Constantine by his sleeve. She grins and introduces herself as Dani with an "i" and that she's John's apprentice.
Dani then spots Who and they immediately do the Spider-man point at the other meme
Who (Danny): you got a trench coat mentor too?!
Dani: Where's your face?!
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While I'm on my disruptive Tolkien opinions kick:
Yes, obviously, he was a conservative Catholic and this was really important to his understanding of the world and pervades his work and so on and so forth.
But I'm a bit "..." about reducing everything he thought and felt about the world to that. Like, yeah, there's a tradition of conservative pastoralism that meant the context of his environmental opinions was not inherently progressive in the way it can mistakenly seem in 2024. Do I think he was Like That about trees because of conservative pastoralism, or his Catholicism, or that the particular form taken by his TREES TREES TREES #OLDMANWILLOWDIDNOTHINGWRONG TREEEEEEEEES ethos much resembles most of his contemporaries' feelings?
Not really.
I mean, he would never have said it, but I kind of doubt whether his very sincere and deeply felt veneration of the actual figures of his religion was truly comparable to how he felt about things like That One Oak on the Corner That I Liked Got Chopped Down by Evildoers. I've read other conservative British writers of this era who have their own forms of pastoralism and most of them are way less intense about it. I truly don't think Tolkien loved trees the way he did Because Catholicism or whatnot. I genuinely think he just really loved trees.
Basically, I can imagine some alternate universe in which alternate Tolkien ends up with really different beliefs about religion, about politics, about all sorts of things. But I can absolutely not imagine a universe in which any version of Tolkien did not take the part of trees against all their enemies.
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how do you clone a fey? that's trick question; and fey love those!
@the-navistar-carol (<333) brought up a good point while I was talking about my changeling danny au with her -- Dani! How would she exist in this au? Danny's a changeling - a fae. How would Dani, a clone of him, be created? How do you make a fey? Not through any means that Vlad is doing; you can't make a fey through unnatural means, considering the Fair Folk are nature. And Vlad's not a fey himself -- he's a halfa, even if he could make a fey, it's not in his best interest too. He's a powerful ghost, but even the weakest fae can overpower the strongest ghost. He won't want a clone of Daniel to be more powerful than him.
(In a three tier hierarchy it goes Ancients -> Fae/Mythos -> Ghosts. They all live in the Infinite Realms, but on different Planes. The fae live above the Ghost Zone in the Fey Wild, while the Mythos live beside the Wilds or down in the ghost zone depending on where they are. Places like the Frozone, the Athens Acropolis, and other such large islands climb throughout all three Planes.)
(While Ghosts can travel into the Fey Wild, its generally advised against as the ectoplasm tends to manifest differently there due to close contact magic. It can make it rather disorientating for a ghost, and as human spirits, the Fae living there would jump them faster than they could blink. So unless you're willing to play mind games with 'steal thy name eat thy face' fae, most ghosts keep out of the way of the Wilds. Fey can travel down into the Ghost Zone, they just don't bother.)
That's of course, not taking into account if Vlad even knows Danny's a fae himself. Vlad doesn't ring me as someone who really cares much about ghost culture or the going ons of the GZ. He might be aware that fae exist, but the moment he realizes he can't use them for personal gain he just doesn't bother with them. The risk is greater than the reward, and he'd rather not get eaten. But lets assume he's aware by now that Danny is fey, and has to take that into account while cloning him.
So, how does Dani exist? Good question! Honestly; i'm not sure. She might not exist at all, or if she does, she's more halfa than fey. Vlad would need a lot of human dna and ectoplasm to balance out all that fae magic. He manages to steal DNA from Jack and Maddie to do it, and since Jack's fey ancestry is very dormant its much easier to use alongside Danny's DNA.
In turn, it results in a little girl whose more human-ghost hybrid than clone. With that little extra boost in fey magic making her not a fey, but still relatively powerful. Dani is less of a clone and more of a lab-grown little sister. It's a rather tedious, complex process that has Vlad tearing his hair out trying to figure out. But he does eventually figure it out.
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The thing that gets me about history and humanity is that you never know what is immortalized, and the things that will be immortalized are things you would never think.
I saw a person sharing a new tattoo, and it was one of Onfim's drawings. A boy who lived so long ago he is barely a blip now, but his drawings meant so much to people that somebody is now permanently marked in their skin with one of those drawings. Do you ever look at the things you make and just sit there and wonder if this is the thing that future people look at? Do you ever look at your art, your writing, your schoolwork, or anything that is yours and just wonder who will find it, who will fall in love with a piece of your humanity and become overwhelmed with emotion over? It's not unlikely. It's not totally unlikely that somebody will find a piece of you in the distant future and devoid of any other context of who you were will still love you because you were here. You were here, and you are still here, even hundreds or thousands of years later. Treat yourself with the same love that so many have for dear Onfim.
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a list of people (and non-people) who know Imogen and Laudna are dating as of episode 72 (two months after the kiss)
Chetney
Paté de Rolo, Laudna's dead rat familiar
Ulli, a skysailing instructor from Zephrah
Deanna, because she has absolutely scryed on them and put two and two together
F.R.I.D.A., because Deanna was very excited and told them
Zhudanna, because she thought they were a couple this whole time
Bruda, a cursed pirate skeleton lady with a gambling problem
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