#it builds character I swear

[copy-trolls]

Onirii Sapnii, a dumb little rustblooded albino currently on the lookout for her lusus.

judgement time by a completely normal troll

i figured this’d be a good way to expand expressions. plus its just fun seeing her being a little freak.

for now only 2 rbs per blog. also only 18+ muns. warning that if ur muse has something “unique” about them, tetrae is probably gonna be weird about it :)

[shrimpalbuspotter]

Scorpius is so much like Astoria that it kinda shocks Draco. He sees his wife in him every day, and instead of him slowly becoming more like his father, he just seems to becomes more similar to his mother. Draco gets to see the love of his life everyday, even after her passing, in the thing thats most important to him. Their son.

Because Scorpius is kind in a way that Malfoys aren't used to, soft in a way that the Greengrass lineage can't fathom. He doesnt talk in the way you'd expect a respectable pureblood to. He stuttersz rambles, and stammers, and hesitates. Scorpius doesn't even carry himself in a way you'd expect a respectable pureblood to, because he stumbles, shuffles, and skips, and prances.

Scorpius wouldn't be found sitting in a boring meeting, blathering on about politics. Its unnatural, its not supposed to be. Scorpius can be found sunning in the garden or with his nose deep into a book. He can be found writing owls to his bestfriend and practicing potions in the manors laboratory.

Scorpius is extroverted. He loves talking, he loves learning, he loves making friends. But he's alot to deal with, and he has a bit too much love for most people to handle. Scorpius life is a tragedy disguised as a coming of age romance story, in a way that parallels Astoria too much for Dracos comfort. He worries, that the curse may affect Scorpius. He doesn't want his son to hold any more burdens, doesn't want to even think about the rumors that would come around if he did. Draco worries. And he worries because of how different his son is. He doesn't have that natural Malfoy stubborn and charisma, that would get him out of a tricky situation if he so pleased. Draco doesn't think his son can defend himself and that terrifies him, because he knows Scorpius is being tormented and there is nothing he can do about it.

So he thinks about what Astoria would do. In a perfect world, Astoria would still be here, and she'd sit in the fields with her child, and hold him to her chest, and run her hands through his hair while humming some made up song. And maybe then Scorpius would be happier, because maybe all he needed was his mother's soothing touch. Soothing in a way Malfoys nay Greengrasses are. Soothing in a way Draco doesn't think he can replicate.

But he trys, Merlin he trys. And it won't be as sweet as it would if he was Astoria, but he knows Scorpius doesn't care. He knows his son is happy just being held by his father, getting shapes traced onto his back until he eventually falls asleep. It's kind. It's soft. And isn't it so wonderful how children rub off on you?

[ophernelia]

a cute boy and a cute home.

[iphyslitterator]

Objectively I think fewer spoilers is good. I even think not spoiling Tommy's involvement, if any, in the opening disaster is good. Emotionally, however, I have not seen my man in almost four months and i am unrRAVeling, where IS HE, LET ME SEE HIS FACE!!!!!!!

[starry-bi-sky]

Childhood Friends Au: Danny's in Gotham Again

when the wool is off your eyes you'll stop counting sheep at night cause you'll eat your fill of them during the daytime

A few weeks after Danny’s visit to Gotham, he buys an apartment in the city. It’s this little thing, a studio apartment on the same street he grew up in. In Crime Alley. When he tells his parents, they protest heavily. They don’t think it's safe. They think he should reconsider. There were plenty of apartments and places to live somewhere else. And what about college? 

Danny doesn’t think he’ll go to college. He isn’t sure what he wants to do, now that being an astronaut is off the table. It’d be a waste of money to go without a goal in mind, he thinks. He says he’ll take a gap year and apply at one of the community colleges funded by the Wayne Corporation, possibly. It just wasn’t in the cards right now. 

“If things get tough,” He says at dinner that night, “then I can talk to the Waynes. I’m friends with the family, remember?” He ended up getting Bruce’s number in his phone again before he left, and in the process got Tim’s as well. They don’t talk much, Danny isn’t sure what to say. But he sends Tim memes whenever he comes across one and thinks he’ll like. Tim sends memes back in return.   

His parents do remember. They remember. They also remember the horrified shriek that echoed through the house when Danny learned of Jason’s passing. They remember running up the stairs and bursting into their son’s room and finding him sobbing into his bed, curled up like a little kid, like he was in pain. He lost his voice that day, stuck between screaming out his grief and sobbing it. 

They’re still not sure if they should let him go. 

In the end, Danny wins them out, and he lets them help him search for an apartment. They take a break from their lab work to help search for cheap furniture to buy. They may have more money than when they were in Gotham, but that frugal part of you never fully goes away. They all agree that they don’t want Danny to be seen carrying in nice-looking furniture when he moves in. 

He ends up with a basic furniture set, all mismatched, and in the warm summer of June, his parents rent out a u-haul and drive him down to Gotham to move in. They meet the landlord when they arrive, a skinny and frail old man with wispy white hair and a wrinkled face. He gives Danny the keys and tells him what apartment number he is, and then he leaves. 

His parents help him move in. They help him carry his heavy furniture up to the second floor, where his apartment is. Danny isn’t sure if he wants them to help. His mom and dad are strong, but they are getting old, closer to their fifties now that their children are grown. His dad’s hair is slowly beginning to thin, and rather than the white eating at the sides of his head, it now streaks through his hair like salt-and-pepper. His mom’s hair is graying out too, and there are more lines in their faces than he remembers there being. 

When he voices his concerns, his mom laughs spiritedly and says that they may be getting old, but they are still as spry as when they were in their twenties. Danny isn’t sure if he believes them or not. He can see his dad struggle a bit when they return to get his bed frame, and they have to take a break before they go back down for the rest of their things. 

Five years ago, his dad could do this without breaking a sweat. It forces a heavy thing in the back of Danny’s throat. (He is less afraid of his own death than he is of his loved ones, and while he has always felt rocky with his parents, he still loves them more than anything else.) 

Danny’s apartment is exactly as he would have expected it to be: shabby and worn through. The entire room smells like stale cigarette smoke and weed, nicotine stains the wall with poorly covered bullet holes, and stains in the carpet that are a color he can’t discern. The fridge has a broken light and when he tries to turn on the gas stove, it click-click-clicks before lighting, fire fwooshing out while the smell of gas fills the air. There’s rat droppings in the cupboards and the closet-like bathroom is just as bad. 

The ghostly part of him can sense the heavy stench of death in the room; people have died in this room. People have died in every room of this building, he thinks. They have died on the streets outside and in the alleys squeezed between them. He can feel it like a heavy fog in the air. 

It is painfully nostalgic, a bittersweet feeling in his chest that he grimaces to. 

When the last box is placed in his apartment, his parents offer to help unpack. They are hesitant to leave and Danny knows it, although he doesn’t know if it’s from empty nest syndrome or because it's Gotham. He thinks it might be both. He is their youngest child finally leaving home to a city known for its danger. 

“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay behind, sweetie?” His mother asks, a frown she tries to hide settled in the creases of her face. She fiddles with her hands, a nervous habit Danny has since noticed when she feels truly unsure and doesn’t need to hide it. Hesitancy looms over her like a heavy cloud. 

His dad jumps in hastily, splaying his hands and smiling painfully wide to hide the glistening in his eyes. “You’re mother’s right! We can help you get everything set up, champ. I could probably do something with that stove of yours to make it faster!” He says, his voice still booming like it always does even if there’s a stumble in his words. 

It makes his heart squeeze, knowing just how much they care. It was hard last summer, telling him that he was the Phantom. Terrifying, actually. They couldn’t comprehend it. He hadn’t felt his heart beat that fast in years when he stood in front of them at the kitchen table and told them he was a halfa, begging them to believe that ghosts weren’t inherently evil. 

His parents were people of science, however, and after much, much shock, they slowly came to terms with it. How could they not? The evidence was right in front of them. Their son was dead-alive, alive-dead. Somewhere stuck in the between. The tears they shed that night could fill a river, moving from the kitchen to the living room as Danny explains how he died. 

(When Danny tells them that he died after a week Jason did, his mom and dad look horrified. His mom covers her mouth when he adds that it was his idea to go inside it, his dad looks ashy pale, gripping his pant legs so tight that his knuckles turn white. There is a conclusion coming to their minds that he can tell they don’t like.) 

(“You’ve always hated our inventions, Danny.” Mom says in a hushed voice, and Danny winces at the wording, sinking into the back of the cushions in shame. He never thought that his parents noticed. Mom quickly grabs his arm, “No, no, there’s nothing to be ashamed of Danny. We were… perhaps too careless with our inventions, too enthusiastic. You had every right to hate the things we made when they had a tendency to… to malfunction.”) 

(Malfunction is a delicate way of putting it, when Danny remembers every time they had to evacuate their old apartment complex because whatever half-baked creation his parents made inevitably blew up into ash and smoke. There were soot marks permanently stained into the ceiling.) 

(Her hand slides down and grabs his, and she cups it in both of her hands, squeezing tightly. He forces himself to look up, and there is a look like her heart breaking when he looks into his mother’s eyes. “You’ve always avoided the lab after we moved, Danny. And you had every right to, so why on Earth did you ever think about going into the portal?”)

(Danny struggles to come up with an adequate answer, a way to verbalize what came over him that day five years ago. The answer is there, hanging in the air like a knot in a noose. He opens his mouth, and then closes it.)

(Finally, with a tongue made of lead, he shrugs lamely and looks away. “I didn’t know there was an on button inside it.” He mumbles, and despite being the truth it feels like a lie. But that is the truth. He didn’t know there was an on button inside it. So he didn’t care what happened.)

(Something dulls in mom’s eyes, like she thought of something else that Danny hadn’t said. Her eyes shimmer, and she squeezes them shut, breathing in so deep that it shakes. And then she pulls him into a hug, a hand burying into his hair and pressing him close. “It must have hurt so much, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”)

(It is something that Danny doesn’t expect her to say, like missing the last step of the stairs. It startles him so much he laughs this short, bark of a thing. He feels his dad press against his back and wrap his big arms around them, his nose pushed into his hair.) 

(Because yeah. Yeah, it did hurt. It hurt more than anything else he’s ever felt before. It had torn him apart and sewn him back together again, only to rinse and repeat. The pain was nothing he ever spoke to Sam or Tucker about, and it was something they never brought up. No, that’s not true. If they ever brought it up, Tucker would call it a zap. As if Danny only experienced a mild static shock. Like it was painless. It’s a pretty lie that Danny lets him and Sam believe.)

(His eyes sting and water immediately wobbles into his vision, coming up with such a force that he doesn’t even need to blink before it spills over. “Yeah.” He forces out, voice unexpectedly rough and cracking. “Yeah, it- it hurt. A lot.”)

He tells them about fighting the Lunch Lady a month later. He tells them about finding Jason. It comes spilling out like a waterfall. “I found him, mom.” He says, holding onto her tight while she keeps him tucked under his chin like a little kid. The secret of Jason being Robin stays hidden under his tongue, it is not his secret to tell. Not his identity to expose. He grips her tighter. “I found him, mom. Right there in the Ghost Zone, and he was my Jason. He wasn’t an echo or a— an imprint of him.”

Mom is silent; quiet and attentive, and so is dad, who rubs his large hands up and down Danny’s spine in an attempt to soothe him. It only works a little. Danny breathes in like a gasp as the urge to cry overcomes him again. He always avoids talking about Jason, his grief is like a never-healing scab that can be picked off at any time. It is ingrained into his core. 

“And then I lost him.” He forces out, a sob layering under his words that he chokes on and swallows. The hand on his back stills, and he can feel mom and dad breathe in like a question. He turns his head and pushes it into mom’s shoulder. “He disappeared, mom. Just— just gone.”

“And he didn’t move on.” He says, voice snarling like teeth biting before his mom can ask, because he knows that’s what she was going to ask. It’s what Sam and Tucker asked when he came to them in tears hours after he found Jason gone. It’s what Jazz said when he finally told her about it. It’s what every one of his ghosts asked when he told them about it and begged for their help. 

Danny grits his teeth and tries not to dig his nails into mom’s clothes as a fresh wave of tears run down his face. “His haunt is still there. If Jason really moved on it would have disappeared with him. That’s how it works. But it’s still in the zone, so Jason’s out there I just don’t know where.” 

(Sam once asks him why Danny didn’t just move on from it a year after Jason’s disappearance. She asked him why he didn’t give it up. Danny nearly saw red, and nearly bit her head off for it. It was incomprehensible to him to just stop looking for Jason, to give up. Not when he was out in the zone somewhere. Because he had to be in the zone.)

(Danny once tried to take Jason through the portal with him, and much like what happened to Kitty, it didn’t work. Jason was too tied to the ghost zone to leave.) 

(Some bonds are just unbreakable, he thinks. Bonds forged through blood and time and trust, and when you’re on the streets of Gotham, you hoard what little trust you have in someone like a dragon with its gold. It is scarcely given and fiercely kept.) 

“I’ve been looking for him.” Danny whispers when talking becomes too hard for him, when it runs the risk of him crying. “When- when I’m not fighting ghosts or, or in school or with my friends, I’ve been looking for him.” He has explored the Ghost Zone in every reach he can. He has met so many people. He’s met the ghosts of aliens from planets in every corner of the galaxy. He has met gods or god-like beings and their disciples. 

He’s met famous scholars and writers (he’s gotten the autographs of all of Jason’s favorite writers). He has found entire cities that have so much life in it that it's been permanently etched into the ghost zone, like a mirror version of itself. 

He’s visited the ghostly vision of Gotham so many times, and he avoids the imprint of Wayne Manor like the plague. There are ghostly newspapers that he reads. There are the ghosts of Martha and Thomas Wayne in many of them. 

Jason’s haunt connects to Wayne Manor, but it is also the street they grew up in. It is a small brick building with a door that leads to Jason’s room. A ghost knows when someone enters their haunt, it alerts them like a doorbell in the back of their mind. A foreign ecto-signature in a place drenched in your own. 

Danny visits it every time he goes into the Ghost Zone. It’s always his first stop. 

He tells his parents all of it. He tells them of the ghosts he’s met, of the places he’s seen. And when he feels brave, he tells them about Rath and the terror that his future self brings him. He keeps some details hidden, the ones that he can afford to keep without muddling up the story. 

(Rath is a tall, spindly thing, like a funhouse mirror version of Danny himself. He has arms that are much too long and legs that are much too tall, with skinny fingers that extend into claws.He wears his suit the same as Danny does, with it partially undone and the sleeves wrapped around his waist.)

(There is a black hole in his chest that is much bigger than Danny’s own. It takes up his chest cavity and drips the same, viscous black liquid as the tears falling from his eyes. Danny never forgets his voice; a scraping, quiet thing like he’s screamed himself hoarse. Rath has a voice like goosebumps, and it haunts Danny like a bump in the night.) 

Danny speaks and speaks and speaks until he can’t think of anything else to speak of. He is tired and sad, and it feels like his heart has been ripped out and rubbed raw again. And yet, he also feels so much better. Like a long heavy weight has been taken off his chest. 

Yeah, last summer was hard. His parents walked on eggshells around him, and they forced themselves to unlearn their bias of ghosts. It was more than Danny could have ever dreamed of, and when they felt ready for it, they asked him more about the ghost zone.

He smiles sadly at his dad, “I think fixing the stove can be a priority another time, dad.” He says, watching him wilt and his smile fall. Jack Fenton was always so good at making himself look like a kicked puppy. “I can handle unpacking by myself, I promise.” 

His parents still look so unsure, like they want to argue. Danny watches his mom purse her lips tightly, confliction running across her face like a datastream. She takes dad’s hand, squeezing their fingers together despite the droop in her shoulders. 

“Oh, alright then, I suppose.” She relents, her hand placing on Jack’s arm. “I guess we could go, we’re just going to miss you so much, Danny.” 

Tears seem to have won over his dad, and Jack Fenton sniffs back before he can cry properly. “Our little boy, all grown up.” He says, voice wobbling. It makes Danny laugh, and it makes his heart pang. His smile grows impossibly wider and so much fonder. “You’ve become such a kind, wonderful young man, Danno. We’re so proud of you.” 

Danny laughs again, and it cracks. “You’re gonna make me cry, dad.” (He feels a welling of guilt in his gut that he ignores — he doesn’t feel like a kind man. He doesn’t feel like a good one either. Not with what he plans to do.) 

His father holds out his arms in hopefulness, “One last hug for your old man before we head out?” He asks, mustering up a smile on his face. 

Danny barrels into him, nearly knocking his dad over with an oomph. He’s as tall as him now, but he still feels little in his bear hugs. With arms wrapping around his middle, Danny hugs his father tight and breathes him in one last time. 

“Careful there, Danno.” He laughs, patting Danny’s back roughly. “You’ll break my ribs with that ghostly strength of yours!” But he holds on just as tight.

Out of spite, Danny bends back and lifts him off his feet, laughing when Jack tenses up and nearly scrambles out of surprise. His mom laughs with him, stepping back to give them room for the few seconds that dad is in the air. 

When it’s his mom’s turn, Danny has to hunch to hug her. Something bittersweet to him as she plants a kiss on his forehead and says that he’ll always be her baby. “Even if you do have that horrid smoking habit.” She adds on with a disapproving eyebrow raise. 

Danny turns red in embarrassment, and walks them back to the GAV. Gothamites of all kinds slow to stop and boggle at the monstrous, road-illegal thing that is parallel-parked next to the curbside. In the past, Danny would have died with mortification to be seen with it. Now it just makes him laugh. Before he goes back into the apartment building, he buys a newspaper from a nearby convenience store.  

The first thing he does when he gets back up to his room is one: make a mental note to buy a bicycle chain lock for the door. The locks jiggle and there are splinters along the side that show signs of it being broken into in the past. The second thing he does is pull his cigarettes out of his pocket and light one. 

Danny starts to unpack with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, placing the newspaper he bought onto the counter. He has a cheap loveseat that he pushes off to the side, and he moves the boxes into the kitchen. It’s a matter of organization that Danny has to think about before he does anything. 

It’s as he’s pushing the sofa up against the wall facing the windows that his phone rings a familiar tune: Sam. The phone is fished out before he can think about it and when he stares down at the screen, he realizes it's a facetime call. 

He presses answer and walks over to prop his phone up onto the counter. The smiling faces of Sam and Tucker greet him, rather than just Sam. Immediately, Danny grins. “Hey Danny.” Sam greets, smiling a dark-painted lazy thing. From the background it looks like they’re in Tucker’s room. Sam is in Tucker’s desk chair, and Tucker is behind her, leaning against it. “Have you moved in yet?” 

Danny pulls the cigarette from his mouth and huffs, a cloud of smoke following his breath. “Yeah! It’s a shithole.” He grins lopsidedly, and his feet carry him off to the side to allow Sam and Tucker view of his apartment. He lets thirty seconds pass, allowing the both of them to really see the rest of the room. And then he steps back into frame. 

Sam and Tucker both look like they’re trying not to look judgemental, like they’re trying to hide a grimace that Danny sees anyway with the small turns at the corner of their mouths. He grins wider, mirth filling his lungs. “I know, it looks awful doesn’t it?”

“It’s— it’s not so bad.” Sam says with a strain in her voice, a forced smile on her face that tries to be reassuring. Tucker nods along readily, and he looks just as unsure as Sam does. Danny stifles laughter behind his teeth. 

“No, no, it looks bad,” He takes a drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. “You can say it, I won’t get offended. It’s a fucking apartment in crime alley. Of course it looks bad.” 

Sam remains silent, a rearing of her stubbornness showing itself. Tucker takes a different approach, and heaves a dramatic sigh of relief, slumping like a weight. “Okay, you’re right. It looks bad.” He frowns, “Sorry, man.” 

While Danny snorts, Sam sighs. “Yeah, it looks bad. What even are those stains?” She asks, and both she and Tucker lean closer in tandem to the screen, eyes squinting at the floor behind him. Danny glances at the floor, and shrugs. 

“Blood, probably.” He says, and while years in Amity Park have accustomed him to a clean environment, the desensitization of Gotham still remains. Tucker and Sam both make faces and lean away, as if the stain itself was capable of passing through to them. “Yeah, there are bullet holes in the walls.” 

“Are you sure it’s safe to be there?” Tucker asks, a furrow appearing between his brows. He adjusts his glasses and leans against the chair. Sam is frowning heavily, and Danny can already see her thinking up of a new way to fix the problem. 

“Oh, I never said this place was safe.” Danny tells him cheerily, taking a last hit of his cigarette before placing the dead stick onto the counter. He itches for another one. Instead he walks over to the shelf his parents brought in and starts moving it. “It’s Crime Alley, Tuck. Safe isn’t even in its vocabulary.” 

Tucker and Sam look like they’ve both swallowed a lemon.

“But it’s where I want to be right now.” He says, grunting quietly when the shelf is against the wall he wants it to be, near the short hallway leading to the front door. He can push it in front of it if someone tries to break in. “And Crime Alley’s apartments are the only ones I can really afford right now without mooching off my parents, and I’d rather not depend on them.” 

He can hear the disapproving hesitance from where he stands. And he ignores it. 

Danny walks back into frame, lifting up a box onto the counter. He hums lightly, fingers run over the tape keeping it shut. “Why do you even want to be in Gotham, Danny?” Sam asks, and she sounds genuinely perplexed. Danny stills. “I thought this place only had bad memories for you.” 

His blood turns cold, and like a dime being flipped his slow heartbeat fills his ears. “It does.” He replies automatically, before he can think. Shit, shit. He knows that Sam or Tucker would ask that question, and yet he still feels unprepared for it. His heart pulses quickly against his ribcage, knocking, asking him what he’s going to tell them that isn’t the truth. 

Danny stammers, “I mean— I just— I guess I felt nostalgic.” He says, and it sounds like a weak defense. He looks away, finding himself instinctively scratching his jaw. A new tick of his when he’s nervous. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sam and Tucker both narrow their eyes at him. 

He cannot tell them the real reason why he’s moved back to Gotham. He can’t tell them of the little secret and vow he told himself five years ago, the one that’s been left to fester and burn like an open wound close to his core. The one that, if he thinks too much about it, sends a searing hot electricity through him, filling him from crown to toe top-full of direst wrath.  

(Danny was always the angrier one in the duo of Jason and Danny. He was always the one with glass in his mouth, cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world around them. His knuckles had more blood and bruises on it than skin, once upon a time. All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He has grown from it, that fury has turned to a small simmering candle.) (But sometimes, sometimes it rears its head, and electricity will buzz under Danny’s skin. There is lightning before the thunder, the second before a fist pulled to punch lands, the spark before it becomes a blaze.) 

He stumbles over his words, and then sighs long and low, drooping his head. “I… was thinking that I can’t avoid this place forever.” He says, and the best lies always have the truth in it. Because it’s not a lie, not completely. But it’s not close enough to the truth either. “And that maybe if I came back, I’d be able to do something about those bad memories. Make them better or make it hurt less.” 

Like wool over their eyes, it fools Sam and Tucker. Their narrowed eyes soften, and Danny feels like a snake is in his lungs as they both adopt their own versions of gentleness on their faces. “Oh, Danny.” Sam breathes out, and the snake squeezes, “Of course, we understand.”

Tucker nods, smiling at him. “Yeah, bro, that’s really brave of you. I know it can’t be easy coming back.” He says, “Maybe you can reconnect with the Waynes again, you always thought well of Mister Wayne whenever you came back from visiting.”

Danny smiles weakly, the gesture cutting into his cheeks like a knife. Perhaps he could. He was still upset with Bruce for hiding Jason’s killer from him. But he doesn’t hate him. Maybe five years ago, he did, when the death of Jason was still fresh in his mind and freshly bleeding in his heart. Now he just doesn’t know what to think of him. He was Batman. Jason was Robin, and the Joker killed Robin. 

It would need to be something he’d have to speak to Bruce about in person, he thinks, in order to resolve it. To hear his judgment on it and make an opinion from there. Danny has learned in the last five years, much to Jazz’s smug delight, that talking to people about something he was upset about did make him feel better. 

The conversation slips on from there into something more light, more breathable. And while they talk, Danny unpacks. He sets up his bed in the corner of the room, adjacent to the windows, and unpacks his cheap TV and table stand. It’s directly across from the couch, in front of the windows. He puts up knicks and knacks he’s collected over the years on the shelves.

When he puts up the curtains, he notices that more than one frame jiggles loosely. Sam makes a comment on the musty stains permanently dyed into the glass, and Danny talks about getting something to fix the cracks. Gotham winters can get brutal, and even if he can withstand the cold, doesn’t mean everything else in his apartment can. 

“Oh, watch this.” He says halfway through unpacking, and pulls out a stick of thick white chalk from a box. “This is something I learned from Clockwork a while back; I think he knew I was going to move to Gotham.” He grins sillily, popping into the camera frame to show them. “I wonder how?” 

Sam rolls her eyes, smiling while Tucker huffs. “It’s not like he’s the Master of Time and can see all past, present, and future.” Tucker snarks. 

Danny hums lightly, curt like he isn’t sure he believes Tucker, and walks to a piece of bare wall not yet blocked by furniture. He starts to draw on it. The chalk shimmers with faint ectoplasm on the wall. 

“Uhh…” Tucker’s voice cuts through, “Are you sure you should be doing that? Won’t you get in trouble for that?”

“There are bullet holes in the plaster, Tucker.” Danny retorts dryly, arching his hand to make a big circle. “I don’t think the landlord is gonna care if I get washable chalk on his walls.” Inside the circle, he inscribes the symbols of the Infinite Realms. “I don’t think he’d be able to see it anyways, he was really old.” 

When he is done, Danny steps back to admire his work. It’s not bad, he thinks, for a lack of practice. He tosses the chalk off to the side, it lands on the couch and rolls back into the cushions. Ectoplasm heats under his hand, slowly glowing from his fingertips before stretching down the rest of his palm. 

Danny’s fingers press against the wall, into the center of the circle. The result is immediate, ectoplasm is siphoned off his hand and into the circle. It glows, and then swirls. He steps off to the side for Sam and Tucker to watch its transformation. The circle fills with a swirling pool of ectoplasm, like a smaller version of the basement portal, and then it warps and stretches. 

It fills out a rectangular shape, shifting like taffy being pulled this way and that, before settling into a solid shape. It solidifies, and instead of a wall there is a glowing purple door, warped in nature and seemingly shifting like a trick of the eyes. He can hear the gentle hum of the zone standing next to it, and can see the carving of the circle in the wood. 

He gestures dramatically, grinning from ear to ear. “Ta-da~” He sings, “A door to my haunt! For whenever I feel like visiting it.” He pats the wood, making a strange thunk-thunk sound. “And then watch this.” 

Danny touches the circle again, and the door twists and recedes like water going down a drain. The circle flashes bright green, and then fades into nothing on the wall, invisible to the naked eye. “I can hide it whenever I want! So if I ever invite someone over—” which he doubts, “—I won’t have to worry about them asking, ‘Hey Danny? Why is there a creepy fucking door in your studio apartment?’”

He gets a pair of laughs for his efforts, and Danny grins wider. 

Sam and Tucker have to end the call when Danny is nearly done unpacking, leaving him alone with only his thoughts and the Gotham ambience outside. There were only a few boxes left, and they promise to call him tomorrow. He tells them that they better keep that promise. 

The silence that follows after they leave feels somberly, as if the reality of moving in has finally set in and filled the air with its loneliness. With its change. Finally, Danny lets the strangeness of moving back to Gotham hit him when he reaches the last box, and he stops to take another smoke break to let it settle. 

It feels so strange to be back in Gotham, he thinks. He’s all grown up, or almost grown up. He can vote and pay taxes, but he doesn’t feel much older than he was at fourteen. There’s a disconnect that makes him feel sad. 

There are cars running outside, driving by. He can only catch glimpses of them, his apartment faces an alleyway. There are dogs barking in the distance, strays he bets. It’s already dark out, and he wonders if he looks out the window he would see the bat-signal shining through the night and staining the permanent cloud that hangs over Gotham. 

Bruce would be so disappointed if he learned the reason for Danny’s return to Gotham. But Danny’s not here for him. He’s here for someone far more important. And like that, the simmering anger that has tucked itself into the furthest corners of his heart starts slipping through. His heart has teeth, ready to strike and snarl and bite. 

He crushes the cigarette in his hand and throws it away. When he opens the last box, it is with hands that tremble and with a face of stone. With a delicateness he does not feel, he reaches in and pulls a corkboard from the box. On the corner frame is a small, near inconspicuous carving of another ghost rune. 

Danny hangs it up on an empty space on the wall, out of sight from the window. It’s plain, and he has nothing to pin to it. He presses the small rune on the corner, pushing ectoplasm into it. Unlike the door, it does not twist and warp and shape itself into something new. Instead it bursts into green flame, eating away at the board and revealing the same thing underneath it, just in dark blue-black-purple. 

Now this board, this board Danny has something to pin to it. The newspaper he bought earlier sits abandoned on the counter, and Danny unrolls it with something like viciousness in his chest. On the front page is an image of a damaged street, and above it is titled: “JOKER STRIKES AGAIN, 3 DEAD AND 27 INJURED”

Danny rips out the first page, he rips out every mention of him. His hands shake and threaten to crumple the paper as he turns back to the board, there is hot blood pounding in his ears. There is an impending sense of finally in his chest, like a setting sun giving the stage to a starless night. There is a stern set in his jaw, five years of festering rage rushing forth like a tidal wave, threatening to make his vision swim. 

It would be so easy, he thinks, to go out as Phantom right now and hunt the clown down. It would only take a night. All it would take is a night, and then he could sink his hands into the Joker’s chest and rip out his heart where he stood. It would be so easy. 

The thought alone forces Danny to stop as he is hit with another rush of fury, really making his head and vision swim. Thorny vines wrap around his throat, making it hard to breathe. He stares at a spot on the wall until the shaking passes. 

If he wants to be discreet about this, then he can’t do it now. Even if he wants to. He doesn’t want witnesses. He doesn’t want an audience. He made a mistake, telling Red Hood about his plan. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all. But he can only hope that the Hood hasn’t mentioned it to Bruce. He knows it hasn’t been long since they started working together. He hopes that the Hood has already forgotten about it. 

He pins the newspaper clippings onto the black-blue-board, and stands back. It’s bare now, but it won’t be forever. 

He presses the circle again, and the pinboard reverts back to its original blank state. 

-----

Was I expecting to make a third part?? No. No I was not. I was also not expecting to make an entire google doc filled with summaries for short story ideas about this au that all tie into each other so that way if i DO continue this i have a skeleton pathway to follow rather than making everything up from scratch and potentially cornering myself

you can find this on ao3 or on tumblr 1 2 :)

[justaz]

lance as the blue paladin (former or current, doesnt matter) being a black widow. lance swallowing/killing his pride and letting himself be seen as nothing more than a flirt, an airhead, a blonde bimbo. lance being the teams secret weapon during meetings with planets to get them to join the coalition. lance sniffing out the right guard or advisor or royal that knows everything, getting them wasted and flirting for hours to get them to spill all the dirty secrets. lance being able to alert the team ahead of time if a planet is truly interested in joining the coalition or if they have an agreement with the empire and they lured voltron there as a trap.

lance swallowing/killing his pride and letting himself be seen as weak and stupid. lance playing up the airhead persona so their enemies don’t view him as a threat, them taking out the rest of the team first in their order of who would pose more of a threat to them and them always leaving lance for last bc they underestimate him. lance annihilating their enemies bc he actually is smart and strong and capable.

[almostharmon]

rosylien silverdusk, my baby shadow priest

original date: april 2023

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Part 5 - dare not preach

Dp x DC AU: Regent!Jazz & Vigilante!Jazz

Masterlist Part 4

"And If I had the answers I'd have written them out so I could tell you what to do and what this thing is about. But all I've ever learned comes second-hand and I dare not preach what I don't understand." -Make A Move by Icon For Hire

//////////////////////

Content warning: briefly implied child abuse (Vlad is not a good guy by any definition),

Time was lost in between bouts of consciousness, flashes of pretty eyes and fire hair,  soft muttering and gentle caresses against his skin soothing his aches. 

Jason was caught between heaven and hell, wracked with agony behind his ribs one moment and healed with persistent warmth the next, a never ending cycle. 

He wanted to scream. 

One bout of semi-clarity was of some citrus concoction on his tongue, gentle murmurs of a woman by his ear before she kissed him again, forced something down his throat again. 

He both loved and hated that woman. She felt familiar in a way that made his bat-honed paranoia rear its ugly head, the instinct to survive in his gut a heavy weight, but she brought him peace in the same moment she could damn him. 

He caught his name once, his real name, spoken by her as he swallowed dutifully, a spike of want in his heart almost a welcome change from the pain by that point. 

————————————————

Jazz spoke with the Lady frequently as the Red Hood, Jason, healed in her bed. 

The elder spirit, regal in mannerisms and aura, demanded the Regent to aid this one vigilante, this one knight and Jazz had finally figured out why. 

It was so obvious when she had all the puzzle pieces, the depth of occult knowledge both in her brain and at her disposal should have been her first resource used to dig deeper, but she’d allowed Danny and Frostbite to assume (and let her assume) that the Red Hood was an awakened Liminal who was recovering from corrupted Ecto in his system. 

The Red Hood had been Jason Todd-Wayne, the second Robin- bright light of Gotham- and he’d been murdered by the Joker. 

Unburied in my soil. 

Jazz groaned in self-contempt as she paced the graveyard of Gotham’s Crime Alley. It was decrepit and uncared for, not like the higher class cemetery of Gotham proper where the Rich and powerful are buried. She what’s spent the better part of three days researching her new bedmate roommate once he’d been stabilized enough to be on a consistent schedule for ecto-infusion. He’d be unlikely to regain full consciousness for another month or so, but he would recover fully. 

That was, if he understood what he had become in his near-fatal collapse. 

(Thanks to Jazz and her rash actions.) 

The Lady had been cryptic when speaking of Red Hood at first, but with his recovery and development of a strong proto-core Lady Gotham was eager to aid the Regent in making her once Robin adjust to a world-changing consequence once again. 

(At least this time he would have support.) 

Not only was Jason a Liminal with an indisputable death-claim, he had been a- a Revenant whose continued existence was a mind boggling happenstance of circumstance that was one in a infinite chance of ever happening again. 

The Lady claimed him. The Lady gave a bit of herself to resurrect her bright Light, the one who shouldn’t have died so young, not while he deserved happiness for the hope he brought to so many. 

(Damn it all.)

He clawed himself out of his own casket, to be found by Talia Al Ghul of all people… then survive the Lazarus Pits in body, with only Pit Madness to show for it? 

(It was a callous way to think about it, but Jazz knew that it had also given him his freedom in many ways, that Jason wouldn’t have if he was still just a Revenant.) 

(Did the Al Ghul know what she had found that night in dreary Gotham?) 

(Was she aware she had given Jason Todd a third chance at life- however much of one being death-claimed by Lady Gotham could be called a life.) 

The Lady, wistful once assured in the Regent’s anger having passed, swore an oath that Jason would never be forced to be a Knight again. 

(Jazz reveled in the understanding that Batman, Bruce Wayne, was destined to be Gotham Knight for his mortal lifetime- possibly beyond.) 

(Had he sworn his fealty by accident in his grief? Or had his donning that ridiculous gimmick been enough of a bind to tie his soul to the Lady?)

(Regardless, for his inaction, Jazz privately reveled in the satisfaction of the true consequences of his choices.) 

Jazz, who’d been pacing a strict line in the uneven row of headstones, came to a rest at the grave of the once-Revenant who now lay in her bed. 

Jason Todd 

He’d been only a year older than her little brother when he’d been murdered by the Joker, buried under a name that was half-complete. He was a Wayne in life, but not in death? How hypocritical of the old bat, to not give him the courtesy of giving him the hyphenated last name if he wasn’t going to bury him in the Wayne cemetery. 

What would it have been like if Danny had a grave, complete with a stone and inscription? 

(The portal was his grave. He’d died there and the house was his graveyard.) 

Would it have been up to Jazz to choose the words to describe her little light, the brightest star in the galaxy, the one reason she had for getting up in the morning… or would her parents have cremated him and put him on a shelf to prevent a corpse from ‘piloting’ his corpse? 

(Jazz still had nightmares about Danny’s death scream. The portal ripping him apart in the same moment it fused him back together.) 

(Into something different, something more.) 

(He was her little brother, the same one who she spent her birthday money on to get those ridiculous glow-in-the-dark stars.) 

(They’d spent hours forming constellations on his ceiling.) 

How does one paraphrase a life? 

Would Jazz start with his name, his preferred name, or with his date of birth? 

Would she put down ‘dearest brother’ or ‘missed’, ‘Be at peace’? 

No. Jazz knew she’d give the most important pieces of what made her little brother the brightest star in the sky- 

Danny, per aspera ad Astra.

Danny had an unconventional memorial tucked away in the remnants of the Fenton lab, underneath the debris of what was once a strange machine to a world unseen. 

The portal was built into the wall with ample access space in the rear for intended maintenance, though it was not required once the portal was completed and functional. 

Jazz left flowers for Danny in that maintenance space three days after she first saw his transformation, yellow tulips, though she didn’t know the impact the action would have later in life. 

Once a month, Jazz would return to replace the dried flowers, dust away the cobwebs, close the door, rinse and repeat. 

Christmas was particularly complicated in the Fenton household, but the first year of Danny’s half-life was the worst Jazz could recall up to that point. 

It wasn’t the eerie lack of ghost attacks (thanks to her not knowing of the Truce then), or the winter storm being harsher than any other Amity Park had faced in previous years… No, it was that Danny had died, while nothing and everything changed. 

Jack and Maddie still screamed their arguments about Santa Claus, loud and proud for the world to be privy to. 

Jazz had extra tutoring to take up for Christmas presents. 

Danny… Danny still had to fight a ghost. 

Ghostwriter wasn’t a malicious ghost in nature, far from it in fact, but he was never a fan of her little brother. 

Jazz overheard Danny tell his friends about his ‘storybook adventure’ and she had to sleep in the access space for the night, just so she didn’t wake anyone with her crying. 

It wasn’t right. 

That thought repeated on a never-ending loop in her head as she tucked her growing limbs into the cramped space, eyes shut tight and the darkness shrouding her in safety. 

(That had been the first nightmare of her own death to come, fingers frantically searching for a pulse as she woke in the dark.) 

Perhaps she should have never left that darkness. 

Because then the anger that had been building inside of her would never have been unshackled after the release of the tyrant king. 

Jazz had been a patient girl her entire life. It was a necessary evil when raised by scientists to follow in their footsteps, though she had no intention to make her life into any imitation of her negligent parents, she learned those lessons at the knee of Maddie Fenton, who had given her life to the pursuit of ecto-science. 

(Built a very strange machine to a world unseen.)

When Jazz failed to achieve something, she observed and struck when the opportunity presented it. That’s how she’d survived ghost attacks for so long, escpecially when it was her own dinner- that and the ingrained knowledge to strike hard and quick when it was required. A paradox of a hunter and a hunted, but that was Jasmine Fenton’s upbringing in a nutshell. 

Jasmine knew Vladimir Masters was a bigger predator than she was capable of hunting as a young girl. 

(Jazz was just a little girl when Vlad became obsessed with her and her mom.)

(Only the dead truly knew what an older man could do to someone so much smaller.)

It was a waiting game that morphed as she grew, bones sturdy and teeth sharper as Ecto-contamination finally settled into her molecules- Death-claimed, Liminality. Vlad was a false halfa, just as he was a false friend to her parents and a false business man, but as long as he stayed out of her way in caring for her little brother than she would not destroy him. 

(She was a patient hunter.)

Pariah Dark was the final crack. 

(It needed somewhere to go, all that anger, all that rage.)

Jazz had been patrolling the outer limits of the ghost shield now that Amity was returned to the Living Realm, anxiety in her gut as Danny had yet to show from his battle against the tyrant king. 

He had obviously won if they were all safe, right? The mech suit would boost him enough, but could it really kill what was already dead? 

Hidden in the embrace of familiar shadows, Jazz witnessed Plasmius carrying an unconscious Danny over his shoulder and a…crown in his right hand. 

Not only had the bastard released the King for the Crown of Fire, he’d damned them all for the same item he’d stolen in the aftermath.

Jazz’s next actions weren’t borne from Vengeance, they were unfiltered rage.

Vlad had died that night, Jazz believed wholeheartedly, he died before she locked him in his casket- a since soldered shut Fenton Thermos. 

Thing was, Jazz didn’t recall what happened between them- all she could really remember when thinking of that time frame was a green haze that was so similar in color to the damned portal. 

One moment, Plasmius had Danny and the Crown. The next, he was a beaten man in his human form with no rise and fall of his chest to convince Jazz he was alive. 

Was it concerning? Of course. Jazz never wanted to hurt anyone, especially not in a blackout rage state. 

(How times have changed.) 

Would she ever mourn Vlad? No. He deserved a far worse fate than a second death. 

(His sins were numerous.) 

If his casket would later be given to Pandora, the trusted Mentor of the Boy King’s Regent…. Well, where better to keep a body hidden than with a Matriarch who understands the sins of man? 

(Pandora had always believed in Jazz, the Regent’s soul was far too bright to be snuffed out without a war.) 

Within the Infinite Realms, the Regent was called many things- titles that held little meaning to the one in question, but offered weight to her authority. 

The Lady of the Acropolis, for her mentorship with Pandora and position of respect among the populace. 

First Knight of the Star King, would be granted once her Regency was over and Danny was crowned. His epithet as ‘Star King’ was a beautiful homage of a lost dream. 

Death-Claimed Champion. 

It made the Regent grit her teeth when addressed as such, especially when she lived in Gotham presently- the city of Lady Gotham’s Knights… her Champions. 

Jazz had survived to adulthood as a highly contaminated Liminal, no patron to claim as her- Not even Pandora counted even though they shared a teacher/student relationship. 

Would Jason, Red Hood of the Alley, be able to handle managing his territory without the backing of a patron claim? The Lady did swear that the once-Revenant was no longer bound to her service, which meant he could pack up his gear forever if he wanted to.

Though that was highly doubtful. 

Jason was a strong willed man to lay claim to his haunt so quickly and hold fast for so long. Jazz shared her haunt with Danny, but that was only because he was the powerful Halfa and future King. His Haunt would never be challenged by a competent opponent, not in Gotham at least. 

Perhaps Jason would be willing to unite their haunts? 

It was a common tradition for older ghosts to allow weaker ones to share their haunt for protection, but that didn’t translate well to the Death-Claimed. 

(Jazz had a hunch that Jason was so in tune with his haunt that he instinctively knew when she or Danny stepped foot across his boundary.) 

(They tried not to linger, out of respect of another’s haunt of course.) 

Then again, Jason was the Baby Liminal between the two of them. Danny and Jazz should be offering him to share a haunt for protection. 

(Jazz couldn’t help but wonder what Jason looked like as a child.) 

(She would bet almost anything that he was an adorable kid.) 

(Would their kids be so cute?)

There was a slight lilt of sadness that lingered over the daytime hero, Signal, that Danny almost choked on his Death Wish. 

The coffee, that is. 

Little late on the literal bit. 

Gotham (city, not the Lady) was an ever-gloomy fruit basket full of ghastly vibes. You see it and you know you’re in for a bad time, but that’s typically at night. 

So what was up with Sunshine Child? 

Yeah, he was clearly human and allowed to have off days, duh, but for it to hang like a shroud of storm clouds over Sunny? Yeah, no. That shit needs to be gone, like yesterday. 

“Hey, Sunshine!” Danny called out with a false cheer. It was too damn early in the morning for real cheer, are you mad, but Signal didn’t seem to notice as he approached the lawn chair the Halfa had decided would be his new throne. 

(At least Jazz would find it funny.) 

“Hi Danny. Can I help you with something?” 

Danny took a loud sip of his coffee before he went straight for the throat, “You’re doom and gloom this morning, Sunny. Whose bones do I need ‘ta steal?” 

“No, no, it’s fine. Just…” the meta Hero trailed off, voice tired as he let himself relax for a moment in Danny’s presence. 

(That’s right, Danny’s just a friendly civilian teenager with anger issues, right?)

(Oh he would be cackling at that lie when he had a moment to himself again.)

“My brother is missing.”

Danny blinked. 

“Your brother? One of the birdies?” He tried very hard not to pull out any of his jokes about traffic lights and Stabby Robin, but at least he didn’t sound condescending? 

“Sorta. Red Hood… he went off grid about a week and a half ago.”

(Yeah this isn’t something Danny should be privy to.) 

(Like at all.) 

(It’s not like he was housing the guy in his home right?) 

(Oh wait.) 

“Yikes, Sunny. That sucks, ‘m sorry.”

Signal sighed, “Yeah, thanks Danny.” He paused again, studying the canonical adoption bait that was Danny Fenton before he dropped a bombshell. 

“Batman thinks he’s dead.” 

(Danny almost cackled in manic glee at that statement.)

(Overshot the mark there, Bats. Yikes.) 

Danny happily waved goodbye to his meta friend, a dorky salute with his coffee cup in commersiation of a shitty hour of the day to be awake, before he leaned back in his lawn chair and yawned. 

“Oh, what drama. Jazz is gonna kill me all the way if she finds out.” He said out loud to no one in particular. The occasional shade that kept him company didn’t bother to move at the sound of his voice now that Signal had left, but it did let out a mournful trill that made Dannny chuckle. 

“Yeah, yep, you’re right- when, when, Jazz finds out.” Danny laughed again, “Worth it.” 

A/N:

Yeah, I wasn't expecting so much angst either, but apparently, that's my jam, because I literally cannot write anything else. Well, anything that doesn't sound like two robots trying to mimic humans at least.

This was supposed to be a more upbeat entry and look how epically I failed. I had to put a content warning up top because I wrote/heavily implied that Jazz was abused by Vlad due to his obsession with Maddie.

In other news, I have a playlist now for what songs I listen to while writing this. It's called 'Guns & Sword: Jazz on' 'cause 2am me thinks she's clever.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

shitpost dispatches from guanyin temple - incorrect but plausibly canon quotes edition [2/?]

[leucoratia]

Kraz, royal healer

Kraz (Razzy if they like you(but they like everyone)(except Jerry)) is a human (?) mage who voluntarily exiled themselves to the underground to follow monsterkind during the war. They are later appointed royal healer by the king and queen and has devoted themselves to the betterment of monster society ever since. They are the only human the royal scientist ever tolerated (although would you call sharing lab coats and beds tolerating or...something else?)

Information

-Species : mage (half monster, half human)

-Age : older than the barrier. As long as they will to live, it appears that a mage cannot age.

-Gender : apparently born a female, although it is unclear how sexual dimorphism develops in mages. Kraz does not specifically care.

-Soul : Green

-Height : 1.99m (6'5)

-Hair colour : Black (somehow iridescent ?)

-Eye colour : deep dark brown. Their sclera is grey as well.

-Build : sickly thin, actually skin and bones. They never eat much of anything, claiming that they do not need a lot of food. It worries people quite a lot, especially Toriel, but they have been like this for hundreds of years so... at least they're not dead ? Still, they scare the kids.

-Personnality : a sweet, calming presence. They exude an aura which makes anyone around them feel at peace. Although they are quite akward and generally anxious, they smile easily and brightly. Kraz is very friendly, caring, and kind to a fault. has quite an outdated manner of speech. A jokester. Always does their best to please people around them. Deeply devoted. Probably has some sort of attention deficit. Easily fascinated. Suffers from chronic bird behaviour (will bring you trinkets??).

-Likes : gardening, playing the piano, cooking, puzzles, collecting shiny trinkets, science, herbal medicine, cultivating bacteria, gift giving, late 1800's fashion, dark spaces, funny socks, Gaster.

-Dislikes : loud noises (especially clamoring crowds), being watched, sudden movements, bright reflective surfaces, small enclosed spaces, bitter foods.

Backstory

Kraz was born to a human mother and a monster father during the war, as mages often are. Abandoned by their mother, who could not endure the shame of their birth, they were taken under their father’s wing and raised amongst a small monster village. Early on, they manifested an extremely intense green soul and spectacular magical power, even for a mage. Although unequipped and unprepared to nurture such potential, the monsters in Kraz's community did their best to encourage the toddler's magical prowess, such as having them heal cuts and bruises, or speed up a few carrots' growth. But as war progressed, human armies swept through monster territory and eventually raided the child's village, pillaging and slaughtering everyone in their path. In these times mages were rare, being the product of monster-human relationships, but extremely sought after by humanity, who could only manifest minor magic potential. Stumbling upon the young Kraz and recognising in their physiology the traits of a "hybrid", human soldiers immediately identified them as a mage and took them away to be raised amongst humans. Their father, if he ever survived the attack, never stopped looking for his little bird until his dust settled on the ground. And so Kraz was raised in human war camps and settlements, amongst soldiers and other mages. Being so young, they only ever had vague memories of their time amongst monsters and soon put them to rest. As they grew, their healing powers grew with them, and it was soon clear to the commanders that Kraz may as well be the most spectacular healer that they had ever known, capable of rising men at death's door back on their feet and ready to fight in mere minutes. Suffice to say, as one of their greatest asset, they were sent from battlefield to battlefield, from division to division in order to rise the almost dead and reinforce the dwindling human forces. But they had a fault. Kraz, at their heart, was kind. Compassionate. Caring. And oh so, so young still, no more than fifteen. And the pain, the suffering inflicted by and to monsters broke their soul into pieces. See, despite all the propaganda, they could never quite bring themselves to hate monsters. Hate half of themselves. And so in the midst of the battle's confusion, in secret, they would slip a hand or a green bullet towards a bleeding frog here. A dusting lion there. They wished they could just run to them and pour their whole magic into the wounded, but the human soldiers watched them. Always. But eventually, as war was nearing its end, temptation was too great. They could take it no more. And so during a bloody battle, they slipped away from the soldiers surrounding them and ran to a fallen monster, who was already dusting away. A skeleton. The young mage fell to their knees, reaching for the monster's broken face with magic already at their fingertips and reassurances spilling from their lip, and poured everything they had left as the soldier tried to struggle and speak. He barely was able to call to them, in a language they didn't know, his bones just starting to reform, but fate is oh so cruel. Kraz could only slip their guard's attention for so long, and just as life started to flicker back in the man's face, they were torn off his bloodied body and promptly covered in his dust, their work undone by the fall of a sword. As the soldiers dragged the teen away, they could only claw down at the dusty floor to rack up the dust, and a nametag. Dingbats.

"Traitor", they were deemed. "An error of nature", "a freak", they were called. But a valuable freak nonetheless. Their magical abilities were still wholly unmatched through all of the land. They were needed. And so Kraz was beaten down, corrected, whipped back into shape. Into following orders. Royals spoke of banishment. Of a barrier. And they needed mages.

Finally, monsters were defeated. They were to be sealed underground. Kraz and the other mages assembled, staring down at a beaten monsterkind, a sea of eyes and bleeding hearts crying out at them as they chanted the words.

They couldn't do it. They couldn't.

They ran to them.

As the barrier rose up, this child fell to their knees in front of Asgore and Toriel and begged them to let them stay. To right this wrong. To help. They did.

And so Kraz poured their heart out. It wasn't easy, getting monsters to accept human help, even though they shared some physical traits. They slaved away for nothing in return, growing crops magically in dead ground and never taking even a grain of wheat for themselves. Endlessly imbuing water with their energy to create remedies for everyone. Only accepting the bare minimum of food to stay alive, even though they felt as if they were tearing this food away from the hands of the needy. They tried so, so hard to repair humanity's sins. Clear their name in the eyes of monsters.

And eventually, it somewhat worked. Instead of frowns, they were faced with smiles. Children stopped crying when they saw the healer's incomplete beak and started to spare them a smile. The elderly stopped refusing treatment from them. And even though they still had to face a seemingly unclimbable wall as they began further studies in medicine, biology and microbiology, chemistry, agricultural sciences, magical studies, anything to broaden their knowledge and help, they made it. (No thanks to the shy, awkward, standoffish and straight up rude engineering-chemistry-physics student which whom the king and queen pushed Kraz to hang out with. They said that it would "help the both of you, you kids would work beautifully together". Not that the mage minded, as a matter of fact they quite enjoyed his presence and always did their best to be agreeable and overall lovely company; but the skeleton never quite seemed to get over his absolute loathing of humans. Oh well, no matter. They'll keep trying anyways.). Eventually they did succeed and ascended to the position of "tolerable fellow student who I regularly hang out with" in the eyes of their adversary. When Kraz got their first doctorate, in medicine, WingDings even cracked a smile. And as the two completed their studies, the now mage-doctor was promoted to "acceptable collaborator". A win for the ages!

Kraz finally moved out of the derelict place they were practicing medicine in since the war to a more acceptable place (which was, well, their newly furnished house, courtesy of the royal family for their friendship and as a congratulatory gift for their doctorate) and kept working as always. But with an official title to strengthen their position, and what some may call a reluctant friend, things seemed lighter. Monsters were flocking to their office, business (which was still free but their patients insisted on leaving little somethings) was booming, their ties to their fellow "collaborator " deepening, and the doctor became sincerely appreciated in their community. Maybe not in all monsterdom yet, memories of the war never quite fading, but it was progress. Things were going well.

But it seemed that fate had other plans.

One day, plague broke out. The illness decimated monster populations, entire families perishing from an unknown condition.

And Kraz, oh Kraz, tried everything. Every spell, every potion, every cure they could think of. Nothing worked. They asked for help to the other healers, consulted with other scientists, even asked the engineers if they could think of something, anything. Nothing worked. They could only watch as the malady swept through monsters, powerless to watch them die, just like they did during the war.

No. No.

They would not stand for it, they would not STAND FOR THIS !! They will find a cure. At any cost.

They locked themselves in their laboratory.

One day. Two days.

Three days.

Six days.

Eight days.

Their colleagues had tried banging on the door, shouting at them to come out, to go home, they would not answer. They called for the doctor’s friends, to no avail. Eventually, it was WingDings Gaster, the royal scientist himself, to be at their door threatening them to “kick their feathery ass if it’s the last thing he does” in order to get them to open the damn door.

No answer.

But the royal scientist was a stubborn man. And when words failed, he proceeded to take the door’s security system apart and barge into the lab, only to be taken aback by the stench. He covered his non-existent nose with a sleeve and bit back the urge to let last night’s dinner see the light of day again, ushering the doctor’s worried coworkers away. It reeked of illness. It reeked of plague. The skeleton, being the only one without lungs and hence immune to all airborne diseases, made his way through the mess of papers, vials and…patches of blood and hair…to the form bent over his friend’s table. Kraz was staring straight at him with their big, beady dark eyes which seemed to be glazed over. They looked even paler than they usually do, which is to say whiter than snow, and seemed so frail that they could snap at any moment. Their face was also swimming in what seemed to be bloodied spit, over a mountain of papers scribbled with words that made no sense. Suffice to say, they looked like death itself. They looked dead.

It was as if Gaster’s bones were made of ice. Barely thinking, he grabbed his friend’s limp body, by Asgore were they TALL, and zapped away somewhere safe. Somewhere clean. His place, apparently.

He cleaned Kraz. Changed them. Laid them in bed. Listened to their delirious babbles, relieved that at least they were alive. In a moment of clarity, the doctor pleaded him to retrieve some instruments from their lab and conduct a series of tests on samples of their blood, which he was urged to collect daily.

“I need to help them Dings. Please. Please, I beg of you, do this for them. Or else I would have done this for nothing. Please.”

Eventually, the unthinkable happened. They got better, the little colour their cheeks normally had returned. As soon as the healer could walk again, they were out of their friend’s house and back in their lab (ignoring everyone’s admonishments). Barely a week later, there was a cure for the seemingly incurable plague.

Monsterkind was saved.

And everything was truly fine. Kraz was promoted to Royal Doctor (a fact they endlessly teased Gaster with, because Now you can’t boss me around anymore mister science man), was granted a whole department in the Hotland labs, and was now revered though the kingdom! Their promotion to head doctor was also accompanied by another, to the exclusive rank of “beloved special stupid idiot who gave themselves the plague” in the soul of a certain someone. They weren’t going to live that one down anytime soon. But well, when the royal scientist’s coworkers noticed that his lunch was packed daily in the common room fridge with “Do not forget nourishment today dear, I will see you tonight at our usual, -A stupid idiot “stuck to it, let’s say that the air in the Core labs was decidedly more pleasant. And Alphys, a young intern that the Doctor befriended during one of their numerous visits to their collaborator-friend-lover(?),  could barely contain her gushing to anyone that might listen.

Yes. Times were good.

Until a human fell.

[maliciousalice]

Hear me out (or don't... it's fine I'm just venting and mean) yeah um I don't believe Chakotay was saved in Prod*gy s2.

[phoenixcatch7]

The thing with stories of any type is that everything is a translation. Sometimes literally, from the author's own head, from another language, from book to TV.

Then there's things like visual metaphors, props and fake backgrounds, set pieces, onomatopoeia, paragraphs of description that everyone will visualise slightly differently, animated contortions, unrealistic but helpful sound effects, camera angles to emphasise mood.

In fantasy or scifi settings you can't even assume they're speaking the language you do. That their culture is exactly what's shown and nothing more.

So much of what makes up good world building is shorthand, is making it work to the audience, is using something in the right context rather than digging up every detail that would make or break the illusion.

A character in a magical world, or even simply a non English speaking country, would not use the same curse words. Leather could be presumed to be cow but could just as easily be any number of bizarre creatures. Booking a hotel could require a very different system to one we're used to. Champagne, the word, wouldn't exist without France but it carries the meaning of expensive alcohol for celebrations and parties, the readers would understand what it means.

Tolkien did it with LOTR and it was a masterpiece. The prevalent themes of dark and light being mere shorthand for expansive good and evil, used to convey the messages it needed rather than entirely new words the readers wouldn't intuit? The characters not even going by their actual names? A whole entire conlang that never even gets mentioned in the actual story??? That's a man who has a grasp on how tightly interconnected the world, history and culture all reflect each other. I mean of course he did, it was his job, but what he did was nothing short of fantastical.

All this to say, I believe this is the root of all world building. Cohesive, well balanced, feasible, detailed-but-not-too-much, no words that'd break a reader's/viewer's immersion, expansive enough, realistic, resonant, coherent, believable. All of it, whether fantastical or realistic, stems from one thing.

Is this a good translation of what you had in your head?

[imtrashraccoon]

Whew! I did it! I finished a section of Chapter 6 that I had been struggling on and I think it turned out perfectly. I'll have to rework some dialogue for sure but it feels good. I still got it!

Baggs is tricky to write... He's such an interesting little guy who's hiding so much. Maybe for those of you who've read R&R, you're very familiar with his character and so know what I mean. For those of you who aren't, I hope you'll check it out as I wouldn't be including him in my fic if I hadn't fallen in love with him as a character.

See you soon...

[mlady-magnolia]

Behold, Acheron the Storm Serpent, priestess of a Guardian Naga, Circle of Storms Druid, and also minor domestic terrorist

I’m not sorry @i-am-a-fan for blowing up that building.

[minamill]

thank you guys so much for the love on my first actual story post <33

[maplefield]

finally started honkai impact 3rd. can someone please explain to me how anything works. i'm confused