#it is so much worse than you think. like yeah its in bw but it is still so so so upsetting. just don't.

[uncleardyn]

i know soooo much about the newspaper reports on jack the ripper now.

also did you know that the police photo of mary kelly's body is just fucking up on the jack the ripper wikipedia page. like i kinda get it but also for the love of god that needs to be like. spoilered or some shit. give warning at least. legit went and heaved in the toilet for a bit after seeing it.

[diminuel]

In stinky child au

Do Crocodile still try to take control of the Alabasta Kingdom?

Or he ended up in Impel Down for an another reason?

I've talked about Alabasta a couple of times, but of course my blog is still a mess so I can only find this post here.

Keeping my answer under the read more!

Also, as always, people are welcome to add their two cents! It'll be a while until I get there/ will write a fic dealing with this.

The short answer is that no, he isn't trying to take control of Alabasta. He has no interest in being its king. It is the strategically safest location for him, he's nearly invincible and the pirates coming through either know how to avoid him or aren't strong enough to pose a threat.

Also, he knows about Pluton and wants it. Other than Dragon, Crocodile has always been a "solve problems with violence" kind of person. He thinks it's quicker and more efficient than what Dragon was trying to do. He has known Dragon since his Freedom Fighter days, before Dragon decided what he needed was an army that could fight. And Crocodile provides a lot of the funds and the weapons for it - big portions of the money he makes with the casino benefit the RA.

However, he feels that it's not enough. He thinks he has to find Pluton and he thinks its in Alabasta. He knows that he can't just ask Cobra about it because even just knowing about this and inquiring about it could bring the World Government down on their heads. So he's looking in secret, slowly, slowly.

That said, dissent has existed in Alabasta before he arrived. Droughts are frequent issues and often lead to localized unrest. He might cause some issues because his sandstorms when he's looking for hidden ruins etc might actually bury some towns and make already existing issues worse. But he's not actively out to cause harm. However, issues that keep the palace distracted suit him well. The less eyes on him as he's investigating, the better.

And then the Dance Powder incident happens. I'm playing with the idea that it wasn't his choice. But that Alabasta, particularly the Nefetari family, is a thorn in the World Government's side. So they bring Dance Power into the country.

They expect Crocodile to understand the message: do something with this. If you fail you're our perfect scapegoat.

And he's a pirate, he's selfish, he's too close to his goal, he must be. He can't stop now. So he lets it run its course, letting Cobra take the fall, like intended (he does tell Dragon about it, he maybe even can get away with warning Cobra that he has to take this seriously.) And even when civil war is imminent and Vivi wants to stop it, he knows that this is the best case scenario for him. With this kind of chaos he might get away with searching the palace or maybe even putting pressure on Cobra to tell him about it. The WG wants him gone, he might as well show Crocodile where the Poneglyph is, so someone can fight them.

I haven't fully thought it all through but yeah, Stinky Child AU Crocodile isn't really that much of a dick, just enough of a dick to put his interests above the ones of the Kingdom that has been his home for so long.

And he ends in Impel Down because he takes the fall for wanting to topple the monarchy by causing a civil war, he was the leader of BW and he knows too much. Straight to Level 6 with him.

Thoughts? Protests?

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Have you done any watches of the pokemon arcs and talked about them? Someone I'm mutuals with discussed doing that for AG arc. I'm considering doing it for the DP arc since I still consider it my favorite arc in the franchise.

Aww, sorry, I was a child getting into fandom when AG was starting in Japan, social media was at its infancy too... i didn't even have a livejournal yet. I don't do full series rewatches either. But I am very fond of the Contest arc, Haruka/May and Masato/Max, the humour, and the warm and tropical colour palettes. I also adored the hoso specials (the Side Stories that got dubbed as Pokemon Chronicles, although the dubs for those were... infamously much worse than the TV series in script quality and accuracy), I used to downloa the specials and watch them in Japanese while slowly learning Japanese bit by bit because no subbing group took Pokemon seriously enough to sub it outside of banned episodes, specials, and movies...

It was a unique time, I think!

Rescue Ralts! Hurry, Masato!/Do I Hear a Ralts? remains one of the best episodes of the anime, period. The Wishing star of Seven Nights: Jirachi was my old favourite pokemon movie before Lucario!! I love that the dub kept KAORI's singing for May and part of Chiisaki Mono in Japanese.

AG is criminally underrated, despite introducing concepts popular in fandom, like Hadou/Aura. Satoshi apologizing to Lucario after seeing his memory of apparently being abandoned by Aaron was the turning point for me where I truly felt Satoshi mature as a person and become much kinder and more patient. He was so prone to fighting people, he was much more of a (pint-sized) hotblooded shounen protagonist before that, but I adore the all-loving hero he grew into. How he helped Hikozaru/Chimchar heal in DP, how patiently he dealt with both Shinji/Paul and Shootie/Trip being jerks to varying degrees compared to the way he was before (solution: run screaming and throw himself at whatever problem exists, fists flying), the growth I personally cared about was visible even in the first episode of BW! where he's annoyed or exasperated by what he encounters, but keeps his temper in check and just makes faces in disapproval, fff.

He can still, of course, fight those who deserve it, like Largo's bullies and Sauboh/Faba.

So, yeah, I loved AG! It also has one of the only battles to ever excite me (anyone who knows me, knows I HATE Pokemon battles, they make my eyes glaze over... it's just not interesting to me unless a fight has, like, swords or something—I really do watch Pokemon more for the cute friendship stories, ships*, and idealized humans living in harmony with nature and other non-human creatures setting)... it was Haruka VS Shuu in the kanto Grand Festival! I was literally on the edge of my seat. I loved seeing her surpass him and his little look of approval and smile before she went from concern to happily celebrating with Wakashamo/Combusken. They had a beautiful story arc going from him looking down on her (while gifting roses like he's harboring a secret crush, fff), to respecting her as an equal, even dropping the -kun honorific he used to use after her name, when he saw her as a kouhai/underclassman and himself as her senpai/upperclassman, and moved to calling her just "Haruka"... after she saved his life, I believe!

I feel like that was Pokemon's best written romance amongst th main characters, it didn't overtake her story arc, it added to it and she still had her goals outside of that, it only added to her growth and story. ^^ It was innocent and sweet.

I am convinced that "for Agehunto/Beautifly" line is how Satoshi saw through Kasumi/Misty's lie in the final series.

I also adore the episode were Haruka and Nyasu/Meowth go back in time and save a man's life and improve a whole town (?) by doing so. It was a fun, moving episode.

The dub harmed this a bit with music choices and voice acting, but from the look of things, people still found it quite emotional (I still vastly prefer the original, no contest!), so Arbok and Weezing's release episode. Interesting that poacher Ryo/Rico was one of the last criminals shown using a real world gun and modern day weapon... maybe also because it doesn't look familiar to a lot of people as a real firearm...

*I got into Pokemon and Sailor Moon via a Rocketshipping fanfic set in the Silver Millenium when I knew nothing of both series and was used to only reading Harry Potter fanfic as an 11 year old! The secret backstory, pffft. So I watched for TR. ^^

I used to review Best Wishes! episodes, the earliest reviews were on my livejournal ( http://inkedfeathers.livejournal.com ), later mini reviews were on my now deleted tumblr blogs, but some reblogs exist... some DP episodes too! BW! was my favourite.

[doux-amer]

Okay, so I no longer have the energy to discuss Marvel stuff at length, but I enjoyed Black Widow, to my surprise. I went in with low expectations, but it ended up being solid. Was it a groundbreaking movie? No. But I’d rank it as one of the best MCU films and it felt like a nice change of pace from your standard MCU fare. The film avoided prioritizing action over character arcs and didn't interrupt the story with unnecessary and often distracting humor.  It's become increasingly obvious over recent years just how much the MCU has started to suffer from what made it unique and innovative in the first place—an interconnected cinematic universe. Everything feels like it's a stepping stone to some big event (hah, in that way, it's emulating the comics well), with characters's stories hastily and sloppily pushed aside for The Main Team Event TM. 

And that's why Black Widow worked. It didn't have world-ending stakes. It wasn't about one Big Bad (the big bad in this story, much like in CA:TWS, is the system which is why the "main boss" didn't have to be impressive and intimidating on his own). The story felt quiet and contemplative in between the action scenes. It was very intimate and the story benefited tremendously from that. What happened in this movie was something that would mean very little to anyone other than the people directly involved and would go unnoticed. 

This isn't something that the whole world will know about and praise her for, and no one treats it as such, both in terms of the characters and the people behind the film. With the exception of a few lines and moments, this film isn't cringeworthy, in-your-face, and ultimately shallow GIRL POWER GIRLBOSS OMG FEMINISM which Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (and that one stupid as hell scene in IW) both leaned into and imo, were either hindered by or even suffered from. This story is very much one about the patriarchy, misogyny, agency, etc., but it tries to see what the personal ramifications are and how sickening and even banal it all is. It’s about how the world works and treats women, no matter who they are. It’s about how Dreykov, for all his power, is a dime a dozen. The world made it possible for men like Dreykov to exist and do harm. The world goes on without him there, and in the wake of his death and the destruction of the Red Room, his victims still have to deal with all the pain and figure out what they want to do, how they want to do it, and who they want to be afterwards.

Obviously, we also got to see more of Natasha and who she is, what makes her tick, and how her past formed the person she is now. And yes, I dislike Scarjo so I was ready to not care about the movie, but god, I love Natasha and miss her so badly. I ended up unexpectedly crying when the film started and didn't stop until the opening credits ended, not even because something was sad but because that was Natasha! When kid Natasha whipped out her gun and shielded Yelena, I recognized both that skill and heart instantly and it hit me hard. You got that repeatedly throughout the film, and it knits together all the little pieces of Natasha we got throughout the decade. It gives her consistency and strengthens what we already know drives her: her desire to atone and protect and her yearning for a family.

The supporting cast was good too. You could tell they had fun and you could tell they had the acting chops. I get very leery of actors who go over the top in the MCU because almost all the time, it ends up backfiring and undermining their character, but David Harbour had a lot of fun with Alexei and it never bothered me. And I think that's because, behind all of the bombast, there was real emotion behind it that he took seriously and the others did as well. Rachel Weisz...I mean, I don't think I need to say anything more. You expect her to be good and of course she was. And Florence? Yes, this might not be 616 Yelena in many, many ways and I can see how that's upsetting to people (this applies to the Taskmaster as well), but if you see MCU Yelena as her own person, man. Florence overshadows Scarjo which, well, isn't surprising considering her brilliance, but I will say, though, that part of it is because Yelena is a much more energetic character whereas Natasha is more introverted and even a little awkward and shy at times. 

I loved the relationships and they all felt real to me. When they said they were a family? I believed them. When you saw them grapple with what they'd done in the past and what they did to each other and to other people? That felt real too. 

And the action scenes! Wow, did I miss actually good fight choreography after three horrible shows full of goofy af fight scenes that had bad choreography and were terribly shot (the less we talk about Loki, the better, though TFATWS, which probably should have had the slickest shots had by far the worst cinematography). The fights were engaging and you really sensed the urgency and danger in every fight. I felt like Natasha was in danger, that she would get hurt. The hits HURT and you could tell how painful that walloping was (with the exception of the ridiculous scene where Dreykov punched her repeatedly in the face and there was no sign of impact). Everyone felt very human and very easy to break. 

The flow was great and maybe it was slow for some people, but I liked that. I liked that the story took its time to unfold. I liked that you didn't sense any impatience or panic. Everything happened in its own time, but it never dragged for me. There was a great balance between emotional, quiet moments and bursts of action, and neither felt like they undermined the other, a frequent issue I have with MCU works (yet again, one of the best examples and most recent ones is Loki; I hated the fight sequences because they felt so unnecessary and they truly disrupted the flow of things).

Were there things that I wish we got more of or thought could have been tightened up better? Yeah. I wish we got to see more of the Widows, for one thing. I also think it would have been interesting for Natasha to mull over the brainwashing she had versus what Yelena went through; what Yelena went through was much worse and similar to what Bucky went through, but Yelena has the excuse of being a victim with little to no free will whereas Natasha? She was psychologically messed with, but she wasn't being mind controlled. It would've been interesting to see that explored more in depth. I wish we got to see more of the Taskmaster. Etc. etc.

More than anything, though, what left me sad and disappointed after my initial joy and feeling of enjoyment dissipated, was the fact that this came too late. This is a movie that should have come right after CW, and we should have gotten a Black Widow movie right after the Avengers and before TWS or at least after TWS. This is, by far, the most unanimous take and it makes me wonder how everyone at Marvel feels about that, that this is, more than anything, the opinion that's being echoed consistently amongst reviewers and moviegoers alike. And it will never ever ever ever ever fail to piss me off that Markus, McFeely, and the Russos didn't know the Black Widow movie was going to even happen and they ended up offing her. That's a massive decision and I don't know, MAYBE you should have had some more communication! Maybe if that happened, Natasha wouldn't have been fridged (she shouldn't have been in the first place, and one of the things I deeply appreciated about this movie was that it pushed back on the wrongs that male directors and writers have done to her (e.g., Whedon's awful approach to her forced sterilization in AoU, the Russos and M&M saying Clint couldn't die because he had a family as if someone who isn't a parent is less important and less deserving to live and as if Natasha's relationships didn't matter)). Maybe we would have gotten more solo movies with her. We can still get more BW movies, sure, but Natasha herself deserved more. 

And that's why, despite thinking this is one of the best movies of the MCU even if the story itself isn't particularly sensational and not being blown away by it (again, I didn't think it was impressive, but I thought it was very solid), despite being pleasantly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed a MCU movie which is rare for me and walking away with barely anything to be disappointed about let alone upset about, despite thinking that this is the story Natasha deserved and being relieved and happy that this is what she got and this is how she's going to go out, I was still left sad for what could have been and what she deserved. 

[aproblematicpanda]

IF YOU ARE BORED I WILL APPEAR: the 100 for the in depth fandom questions 💖💖

Excellent timing, I just sent you an ask, too! :D Thanks babe. <3 I feel like I have so much more to say than I just did but the inspiration seems to have bailed on me. Oh well. If you have any follow-up questions hmu!

Top 5 favorite characters: Octavia, Echo, Lexa, Lincoln, Murphy Other characters you like: Gaia, Raven, Emori, Monty, Harper, Diyoza Least favourite characters: Clarke, Abby, Kane Otps: Octavia and Lincoln, Lexa and Clarke, Bellamy and Echo Notps: Bellamy and Clarke, basically anything involving Abby Favourite friendships: Murphy and Raven, Monty and Jasper Favourite family: Spacekru Favourite episodes: 4x10, 5x02, probably more but I can’t really think of anything else right now (I appreciated 7x02 but I’m not quite sure yet if I’m gonna call it a favorite, that will depend on how the rest of the season turns out) Favourite season: Season 2 Favourite quotes: “We’re back, bitches!” “I don’t choose pain. I choose life.” “Not everyone. Not you.” “ You're the most beautiful broom in a broom closet of brooms.” “ I can't change the tide if the moon won't cooperate. It's basic physics.” (I’m including this last one because of an amazing Monty/Jasper gif set I saw once.) Best musical moment: Ehh... Well I stll tear up basically every time I hear Cloud by Elias, the song that played during Lincoln’s death scene. It’s an amazing song and anything related Lincoln’s death still gets to me, not just because of the characters but also because of everything that went on with Ricky and everything he was put through, it’s just... it’s a very loaded moment in the series as well as behind the scenes. I’m not sure ‘best’ is the right word here but it’s the moment I’m going with. Moment that made you fangirl the hardest: When Octavia became Skaikru’s champion. I found it rather poetic that a young woman who had been spat out by her community simply for being born was their only hope for survival. Plus, she looked incredible. When it really disappointed you: It’s not just ‘a moment’ but I’ve been really disappointed by the show’s treatment of Octavia and how its hypocrisy concerning other characters who have done way worse shit than Octavia yet they are patted on the back and protected for it by the narrative. It aggravates me. I’m not mad that Octavia has had it rough, when a character gets everything handed to them on a golden platter with no real consequences, that’s boring. But it makes me mad that she’s the only one who has to pay for her mistakes and none of the others have to, and the way the characters are now comfortable joking about what has been the most traumatizing, horrifying and scarring thing anyone has ever had to go through really pisses me off. Octavia deserves so much better, the show really dropped the ball here. I’m also extremely disappointed by the way the show handled Lexa’s death. Octavia survived a sword through the gut and falling off a big ass cliff, but Lexa can’t take a stray bullet in the presence of someone who is meant to be a doctor? I mean I get that this was supposed to prove that we’re all vulnerable and that even Lexa, Heda of the thirteen clans can’t escape death, but come on. Also the way Jason treated the Clexa fandom was gross. Saddest moment: The moment Bellamy called Octavia “the queen of cannibals”. Up until that point I held onto hope that things would get better, that the show would still turn things around, that everything Octavia had been put through would be put into perspective when she could tell the one she loved the most about the horrors the bunker put her through. But when Bellamy called her that, it was made clear that not only did he find out about the most traumatizing part of his sister’s life (and it’s not like it lacked trauma before) but he also didn’t care. It was the moment where I had to give up hope that they could ever get to a place where I would respect and care for their dynamic again and it made me sad, because Octavia deserved so much better. Most well done character death: Oh god, this is a difficult one, because I have issues with most of the main characters’ deaths lol. So I’m gonna go with Nia for this one, because I really liked that Lexa recognized who the real threat was and took matters into her own hands and did what she could to maintain the coalition. I can’t think of another death that I didn’t hate. Favourite guest star: Probably Jessica Harmon Favourite cast member: Marie Avgeropoulos Character you wish was still alive: Lincoln, hands down. So many things would be different right now if he had still been around. One thing you hope really happens: I hope Bellamy and Echo are endgame and not just that, I also hope that the show will allow Bellamy to treat Echo with the love and respect she deserves. Because so far the show hasn’t really shown their relationship much respect and most of the effort is coming from Echo’s side and I don’t care much for that. Bellamy clearly loves her a lot, so I hope the writers will let him show and prove that to us in the final season. Most shocking twist: I don’t really think the 100 is good at shocking twists? You see most of them coming from miles away lol. When did you start watching: When it came out, basically. :) Best animal/creature: Helios! Favourite location: Ehh... I’m gonna go with the dropship or Arkadia, not because I love those places so much but because they’re where the show’s best seasons (one and two) basically happened. Trope you wish they would stop using: BYG One thing this show does better than others: Pissing off its fanbase! :’D Funniest moments: Most of Monty and Jasper’s interactions in the earlier seasons, those two were amazing. Couple you would like to see: I wish the show would make Niylah and Octavia a thing even if I don’t passionately ship it. I also became a huge fan of Clarke and Gaia! Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: I really don’t know anyone for this question... I’m a big fan of Kristen Stewart so I’d probably be thrilled with that, but it’s not something that I actively want or anything. Favourite outfit: Ehh... As much as I hate to say this, Clarke does get the best outfits and I think I’m gonna go with the dress she wore early in season 6. I’m also a huge fan of Octavia’s grounder look bw. Favourite item: Lincoln’s diary Do you own anything related to this show: Nope What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in: Well I don’t know which one I would be in, but Spacekru or Trikru seem like the most fun so I’d want to be a part of one of those! Most boring plotline: I never really cared for the City of Light although I will admit that storyline had a lot of potential, I’m just not sure the show really handled that well? Most laughably bad moment: The fact that Clarke just becomes anyone’s leader anywhere while not doing anything for it. And how fast she was forgiven and integrated into Spacekru in season 6 while doing the bare minimum to work for their forgiveness and showing no signs of remorse or wanting to change. Best flashback/flashfoward if any: I really liked the flashbacks of Octavia’s childhood, they did a good job of portraying what life had been like for her and it helped us understand her character better, even if they were short and limited to one episode. I also really enjoyed watching Octavia during those ten years in Skyring, but I’m not sure those qualify as a flashback and I do have some issues with them, still, so I’m gonna go ahead and stick with 1x06. Most layered character: Octavia, hands down Most one dimensional character: Oh god, how do I answer this... Of the core group I guess I would go with Raven. And that isn’t because I don’t love her, because I very much do, it’s the show’s fault for not really digging into anything that’s related to her. She’s just in the background until they need her to fix a problem they’ve been having or until they need someone to be tortured, or lately when they need to make Clarke look less horrible. She just doesn’t really get much else to work with, we don’t know what motivates her, we barely see her feel a type of way about the things she’s put through and when she does get a voice, it’s obviously meant to create sympathy for other characters so... yeah. Scariest moment: I don’t find it a very scary show hahaha. Grossest moment: The graphic scene of Lincoln’s execution, it was in such poor taste, especially considering everything that had been going on with Jrot and Ricky. Best looking male: Murphy Best looking female: Octavia and Echo Who you’re crushing on (if any): Octavia and Echo Favourite cast moment: Ehh, I don’t really keep up with the cast so idk? I did love Marie calling Echo Octavia’s sister-in-law though. Favourite transportation: None I think, I don’t really care? Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The one that comes to mind right away is the one of Octavia swimming towards the surface after she ran into the anomaly, it’s just such a pretty shot. Other than that, well, The 100 is shot in a beautiful environment so a lot of their scenery is gorgeous but I just immediately thought of this one. Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Jason’s blabbing about the damn worms. The way 3x01 felt completely disconnected from everything that happened in 2x16 also still bugs me. And how it feels as if the new writers never really saw the previous seasons and instead just read character descriptions, I feel like they didn’t really grasp the relationships and stuff like that in season 6. Best promo: Ehh, I usually just watch the episodes so I don’t really have an opinion about this. Loved the uproar the one for season 7 caused, though, because I’m a sucker for drama hahaha. At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: As soon as I met Octavia, she’s my baby and you will have to take her from my cold. dead. hands.

Send me a show/fandom and I’ll answer

[justapayneaway]

Okay so the video had some shit that I could potentially understand from an outsider's point of view but hell this is just plain stupid. The Harry situation was clearly a joke. Yeah I guess how he said it might have stung and made people question his thought but he was clearly joking. (1/?) (This is about that video with the hateful remarks of Liam, I thought maybe I should rant about it. Pay in mind it was late and I already had a crap mood so I'm pretty not okay during this rant)

The girlfriend situation, don't even start with it. Yeah she's 18, that girl ain't 19 and even if she was, internet really did her wrong by finding ways to show she aint. That situation fucked up Liam even more and idc if he loves her or whatever but it clearly didnt do him justice and I wish they never made it public, even if it's a stunt or a "real" couple. Like that made people hate him more. (2/?)

The merch is people's choice. I hate the hoodie but I like the t-shirt. He has the rights to sell whatever he wants. His album might be expensive online but its cheap af in stores. It costs 15$ cad here which is nothing compared to the others's album (Louis doesn't count). (3/?)

Mr. Boring" was given by hateful people because he looks like that jock guy that wants to fuck you and leave you like a rag but we dont even know him. Nobody knows any of the boys so this is just a wrong thing. This could be his persona or the real him but what does that do you? Y'all really love to make him look bad with any ounce of being you have. This boy is much more than Mr. Boring but all of you fuck him up constantly so of course he comes of different. (4/?)

I wouldn't blame him, if people always told me I was the worst or boring, you will try not to be or shut everyone out. Cringeworthy lyrics? OH GOD YES! But some of his tracks on Lp1 aren't as much. Stack it Up sucked balls and I wish its death because it was horrible. Strip that down is that generic song you find in clubs which is fine. All his songs lack something for sure but they are still very good. (5/?)

Lyrics wise he said he didnt have inspiration to write which honestly I don't blame him, maybe he ain't a wordy person to open up and ask people to write shit for him and I dont blame him. He gave what he could and I'm proud of him. Yeah some lyrics are problematic af and I wish they worded it better or made it look less crappy but what can we do? (6/?)

A lot of artists write like that but no! LIAM JAMES PAYNE has to be hated on it as if he is the only one who does those kind of lyrics. Some artists have the same intentions but some aren't as straightforward but still, it's all the same. Plus, Rude Hours and Both Ways are like 2 songs and he gets dragged on repeat for it when there are good songs on the album. (7/?)

I hate his team for making 3 different albums with the target one with 2 bonus and the Japanese one with 3 extra bonuses and that sucks. His features should've been out of the album and have those 5 beautiful bonus songs in instead. The Christmas one should have been off the album. Stack it up was a failure from the start. (8/?)

I just wish people would stop hating on him and always drag him down. He is much more but I see what those people see because Liam ain't himself and he didnt give his 100% but he seems okay enough to have this album out and seems pretty proud so just give him some rest. This album ain't as bad people make it to be. People hate those 2 problematic songs and wont even listen to the other songs. (9/?)

And not everyone has the same music taste. I like "sexual" pop music and rock. His music are those generic sex songs and that isnt a bad thing. If he likes doing it, who is to tell him to not do that? Y'all really compare him to 1D Eras and the bandmates but they are different. Liam maybe likes these 'popular' shit and what does that do you? Liam is human. Liam is Liam. We cant do shit and he lives his life. Give him a break jeez.. (10/10) [sorry for this rant, you can hate me if you want to]

__________________

Okay anon I don’t hate you at all! This is well thought and I do agree with a lot of point you made here. I’ll try making a few comments by ask since this is big lmao

BTW SUPER IMPORTANT: don’t watch that video and don’t spread it! Report it if you feel like doing something about it. 

1. But what even is the Harry situation? Him saying that they aren’t best friends? Or that they have much in common? Because that’s understandable. Or is it the “harry’s clothes” comment of 2017 that harries keep bringing up when you can clearly see that Liam was just joking?

2. I do agree with you! The situation with the teenager just made things way worse for him. It added a lot of hate and it was completely unnecessary, especially how they keep bringing her up every single time and how she is always there!

3. I actually like his merch. I think it’s simple, but the white t-shirt is amazing. Sure the hoodies could have been more elaborated, but they’re super cozy! The thing I appreciate most about his merch is that it’s actually affordable. Btw I agree that it’s personal taste. His album is kind of cheap compared to other albums I've bought. 

4. But the thing for me is that Liam was never boring. He is smart and has a brilliant dark sense of humor. I think that some old 1d fans didn't like him much because he was always the spokesperson and had to say the shit nobody wanted to be said. People don’t seem to want to get past that to be honest with you! 

5. I agree with you! I really prefer Liam to shut up these fucking people with his success and what he wants to do that being an underwear campaign. Sure, some of the lyrics aren’t poetic shit, but there are others that are really deep and have some dark themes behind them. The songs aren’t bad at all in my opinion. SIU should have never been released, but I think we can all agree with that one!

6. I do think that Liam wasn’t 100% inspired, but I also feel like these are the songs we were supposed to get last year. They aren’t current if that makes sense, so of course some lyrics aren’t worded okay. 

7. I never thought it was a bad thing to use lyrics written by other people. That’s literally why songwriters exist! And a lot of people don’t write their own lyrics, but apparently it’s only bad for Liam to do it. I do agree! He is getting dragged for two songs. 

8. I don’t understand why they made three different albums. I understand wanting to keep the old songs because in terms of certifications/streams it gives him an advantage, but the extra songs are so damn good! They deserved more than this and he actually wrote on them. With the whole thing of the album I really don’t understand why AIWFC was added! 

9. I think you say it all with this part “This album ain’t as bad as people make it to be”. That’s the truth! I like the album and sure I'd do thing differently, probably. But I think people are judging the album based on BW and they are just going along with the hate. This album is exactly what Liam said it was going to be! A mix of songs that felt like a playlist with different genres.

10. It’s a personal taste thing again! I consume all kinds of music, I’m eclectic. I’ve been like that since I was a kid and learnt to play music. It isn’t bad that Liam is showing what kind of music he did and experimenting with different genres. For me it makes him a more complete artist to be honest with you! I really hate that they keep comparing them. Just let them all be whatever the fuck they want!!

In conclusion, I don’t understand the hate and I wish it would end.  

(Hope this answers you and don’t feel bad about ranting! It’s good to let it out.)

[octerminal]

how do you think ramona's class/background influences her relationship with kaidan?

Oh, anon…you have NO idea the monster you have just unleashed, lmao. I’m so sorry in advance.

I have thought a lot about this! It’s one of my favorite things to think about! Because I think it influences a lot! My Shepard is Earthborn/Sole Survivor/Infiltrator.

Let me start with the one that I’m still puzzling out myself, which is Sole Survivor. On the one hand, I do like Sole Survivor. On the other hand, I think BW dropped the ball with them. And to a degree I understand why, because there’s only so many variances they can account for without getting the story sidetracked. But, like, here’s the thing: Akuze was orchestrated by Cerberus. That’s a thing you find out in ME1. So ME2 for SoSu Shep in particular has to be fairly…upsetting, to say the least. This is both a strength and a weakness. A strength because it makes ME2 that much more interesting, but a weakness because the game only acknowledges this, like, twice. First with Tela Vasir in LotSB, and then in ME3 during the Cronos mission. Every other time is swept under the rug, and Shepard’s made to defend Cerberus or, at best, softly condemn them. A lot of “They used to do good work, but…” or “I never saw this coming because they used to do good work, but…” and it’s just frankly sloppy because there’s no believable reason for me to think SoSu Shep would ever think that way. Cerberus is personal for her in a way it isn’t for War Hero or Ruthless.

So now add in Horizon and its aftermath. Horizon is by far one of my favorite parts of the trilogy. But…if Cerberus is personal for SoSu Shep in a way it isn’t for War Hero or Ruthless, so is Horizon. Shepard is alone in ME2 in a way she never is in the other games; she might have people by the end of the game, but it doesn’t start out that way. She’s trapped and she knows it. Yeah, she gets Garrus early on (the only one in the beginning that she can immediately trust to not be in Cerberus’ pocket since she has prior dealings with him), but Garrus has his own demons in ME2, and anyway, he’s only one person versus an entire ship full of Cerberus. Even the ship itself is Cerberus. So enter Kaidan on Horizon, and mix in a Shepard who’s feeling cornered and wants out of Cerberus’ grip but who’s been alienated from every other available avenue that could help her fight the Collectors, and you get…well, You Know.

My Shepard in particular is not very emotionally open or honest - like, for example, the first time she finally tells Kaidan she loves him is at the beam run, despite knowing she’s felt that way since Horizon. (This, and the fact she’s renegade leaning in general, have to do with her Earthborn background but I’ll get to that part later.) The idea of being vulnerable in that capacity with someone is terrifying to her, but on Horizon? I have her specifically ask Kaidan to join her. She’s desperate and she needs someone like him, and so she extends herself in a way she never would normally…and Kaidan rejects her in no uncertain terms, lol. He questions her alliance with Cerberus, pokes holes in all the defenses she tells herself to make herself feel better. (“I’m not working for them, they’re just giving me resources!”) He tells her that she’s changed (a sore spot, given her own insecurity over Lazarus)* and then…leaves. Like, ouch. I’m of the opinion that Horizon - including the confrontation with the VS - was orchestrated and intentional, and TIM’s desired outcome** so that Shepard would be pushed further into Cerberus and further alienated from the Alliance (because the VS would be their closest ties to it at this point in the series), and I think that’s something my Shepard recognizes, too. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less, particularly when you consider that again: she’s alone, she’s desperate, and she made herself vulnerable in a way she never would normally.

But at the same time, if Kaidan had agreed to join her…she would have been extremely suspicious, lol. Like, that’s not the Kaidan she knows! A dude willing to abandon his post and work for a terrorist organization just because she’s supposedly leading this particular cell? Nah. If Shepard had been in Kaidan’s shoes, she’d have reacted the exact same way. She knows that too. But it’s still a complicated situation and I don’t think it’s sufficiently addressed in canon because the SoSu element makes everything so much messier. For comparison, while Horizon hurts my War Hero (Shiara) and Ruthless (femShepley) Shepards because they care about the VS (particularly my Ruthless one, obviously), it’s not the same. They have no prior trauma because of Cerberus; the extent of their interactions with them would just be the ME1 missions. In those cases, Cerberus is just another enemy to tackle. It’s not personal. Political, maybe. But not personal.

So yes, I absolutely think that Sole Survivor and Kaidan would have to handle Horizon and its aftermath in a different way than what’s presented in canon. Not, like, dramatically so or anything…I just think it’d take different words or more talks or something, but I just don’t know what yet and that’s the problem. It’s enough to where I’ve considered dumping the Sole Survivor background because it’s frustrating trying to think of solutions, but altering that would change a lot about my Shepard that I’m not willing to part with. Like, Sha'ira’s gift of words sum up how I view her perfectly:

“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong. That strength is what kept you alive when everyone else around you was dying. You alone survived. You will continue to survive.”

But if I changed that to Ruthless (the BG I’ve considered switching her to), it would instead be:

“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong. You never hid your strength, either. It serves you well. Terrifies your foes. Few will dare to stand against you.”

And…that’s just not her. And yeah, I could disregard this - it’s such a tiny part of the series that’s never touched upon again - but the EB/SoSu combo validated every image I had of my Shepard when I created her, so I’m very attached to it and determined to make it work, lol. Like I said, it’s the part about her and her relationship with Kaidan I’m still figuring out the most. 

So what about the other parts of her background? Let me do the Earthborn portion next because I already know that’s going to be very long. I have put a lot of thought into Kaidan’s family, his parents, and his upbringing…not all of it is to relevant to your question though, so I’ll try to restrain myself lol.

So it’s never outright stated as much in canon, but I’m under the (very fair, imo) impression Kaidan’s family is fucking loaded. Here’s what we know about them:

They have an apartment in English Bay (ME3)

They own an orchard that makes wine in the B.C. Interior (ME1, ME3)

Kaidan owns a strip of land on the Sunshine Coast (ME3) (it’s unclear to me though whether this is either of the above, or something different)

Kaidan has a cousin who owns an agriculture business (ME1) (This one doesn’t necessarily point to Kaidan’s family being wealthy, although it does seem to imply they have ties to agriculture?)

Kaidan’s father is former military and he retired before the First Contact War (ME1, ME3) (Again, doesn’t necessarily point to wealth)

I’m not Canadian, let alone a Vancouverite, but I do have a friend from that area (and also, like, Google exists) and it’s my understanding that…English Bay is a very ritzy area. Like, I looked up real estate and a lot of the price results were in the millions. Considering that Mass Effect takes place in the future and Vancouver has only become even more of a metropolis (I believe it’s canon that it’s merged with Seattle to form a mega-city?)…I find it hard to believe that those prices haven’t risen even more than they already are now.

So if Kaidan’s family can afford an apartment in an area that expensive, uh, they can’t be hurting for money. Then factor in the other stuff I listed. Making wine? Owning an orchard to make said wine? To be honest, just the fact they’re able to afford at least two different properties*** is enough for me to think they’re fairly well off, especially when there’s this from the codex:

“While every human enjoys longer and better life than ever, the gap between rich and poor widens daily.”

Like, this isn’t some utopian age for humanity. Poverty still exists, and it’s clearly just as bad if not worse than it is currently. So that’s to say: it’s kinda two extremes with an exceedingly rare middle ground. Kaidan’s family very clearly does not fall on the less fortunate side if they have an apartment with an ocean view and make wine in their spare time.

Okay, I promise there was a point to all that. The point being that Earthborn Shepard comes from the exact opposite spectrum. She grew up in extreme poverty with…nothing, not even a family. She’s seen the worst humanity has to offer long before Cerberus shows up in her life. She’s seen - lived - the ugly parts about Earth the Alliance doesn’t like to broadcast. She’s had to do things that would frankly offend Kaidan’s “sometimes the way a thing goes down does matter” ideal, because things like integrity have no place in your life when you have nothing and no one and you’re fighting just to survive to the next day when no one but yourself cares about you seeing it. And that’s a way she had to live her life for eighteen years - it’s not something she can just shut off, particularly not when the skills she learned living that way are what helped her survive Akuze. (Remember Sha'ira’s words?)

These are things Kaidan can’t truly relate to, not even in his capacity as a biotic who’s apart of a society who doesn’t understand him at best and hates him at worst. Because there’s a difference between Kaidan’s situation, and being so much of a faceless nobody that it wouldn’t even be news if you went missing. Kaidan has a family, and one that presumably loves him. He has money. He’s never had to fight to survive in the way Earthborn Shepard has, not even if you HC that his time between BAaT and joining the Alliance took him away from his parents and their wealth (which I do). These are also things that shape a person so completely, to ignore them would be to ignore what made this person into who they are today. 

(I do, however, think Kaidan can sympathize because of his unique position in society and because he regularly puts himself in another’s shoes, anyway.)

Earthborn Shepard isn’t still living in poverty by the time the trilogy comes around. She’s actually made a name for herself - which in and of itself has to be very confusing for her, because I envision Earthborn Shepard as someone who suffers constantly from imposter syndrome - and she has funding. A lot of it. Like, an exorbitant amount. Shepard has to spend so much money throughout the trilogy if she wants better equipment for herself and her crew (and even for her ship) which is kind of a necessity if you want to, you know, survive and be competent and stuff.

I think she reconciles all of this with the fact that yeah, this is necessary, she’s not being frivolous - but there’s always going to be a part of herself that feels guilty, because that’s just something that’s beaten into you when you grow up that way. Spending money feels bad.**** There might be moments she doesn’t care. There might be times where, in the moment, it feels good. But at some point, however fleeting, there’s always going to be that guilt. These aren’t feelings that are easy to get over, even if you objectively know they’re irrational.

Contrast this with Kaidan. I see Kaidan as someone who is considerate and not particularly wasteful. (That doesn’t stop me from making jokes, though.) I also see him as someone who is not interested in spending his parents’ money and would rather depend on himself alone, so if he’s spending money it’s out of his own paychecks that he gets as an Alliance marine. (This scene from Crazy Rich Asians is pretty much exactly how I envision Kaidan on this subject.) All of this is to say that I don’t see him dropping thousands of credits on every new toy he wants with no second thoughts (and I do think he’d pause at big price tags, particularly because I feel like living extravagantly is something the Alliance would discourage)…but the fact remains is that he does have that safety net and he always has. He’s never truly had to worry about being homeless, and if he’s had to worry about starving it’s because he’s a biotic, not because he doesn’t have the money to support himself.

There are also other behaviors that would be borne from growing up in poverty, like Earthborn Shepard being unwilling to part with old equipment until she absolutely has to (the Alliance makes being a hoarder rather difficult) because what if she needs it later? What if she can get some more use out of it somehow? Yeah it’s broken but it’s hers, she still needs it, go away. Kaidan would hang onto certain things (omni-tools, amps, weapon mods) longer than most people would too, but it’s because he’s a tinkerer and likes tech stuff.***** My Shepard is too, but it’s more than that and it’s that “more” that’s different.

When it comes to this difference in their socieo-economic class, I don’t think it’s something that’s particularly noticed or brought up during the trilogy. The only times I can think of where Shepard might get the realization Kaidan is different from her in this regard is in the Pinnacle Station DLC if Shepard win’s Ahern’s bet and gets his apartment on Intai'sei, or during the Citadel DLC. But even then, I feel it would a very brief realization she pushes to the side because it’s frankly not important right now and they have more important things to worry about. Like, you know, Reapers. So I think this is something that would only come to a head post-war, but it is definitely a source of tension on her end that they would need to tackle at some point.

Otherwise…remember how I said the reason my Shepard is renegade leaning and emotionally closed off is because she’s Earthborn? Let me bring back Sha'ira’s words:

“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong.”

This is what she says specifically to Earthborn Shepards. Colonists and Spacers get something different. And really, this is how I see Earthborn Shepard. She’s someone who’s had to survive things - not a singular great tragedy, but a lifetime of hardship - and she’s someone who’s never had a support network. She’s the way she is because she’s never known any different. She’s not renegade leaning and emotionally closed off because she thinks it’s badass; she’s renegade leaning and emotionally closed off because being any different would have gotten her killed before now. I think this is a very, very important distinction Kaidan has to realize to make their relationship work, because otherwise I do think Kaidan would have a hard time being in a (successful and long-term, anyway) relationship with renegade leaning Shepards. Integrity and stuff like that is too important to him; if he feels like Shepard follows no moral code and is unabashedly selfish, why would he want to associate with them more than he has to? I can’t see him wanting to.

It is a very hard and long process for my Shepard to learn that it’s okay for her to be vulnerable sometimes. This is the greatest source of conflict within how I play Kaidan’s romance. Shepard is unyielding and only gives Kaidan’s scraps - remember how I said she doesn’t tell him she loves him until the beam run? Yeah, Kaidan doesn’t deserve that. No one deserves to be strung along in a relationship where they’re the only ones putting themselves out there, but that’s what Kaidan does for a lot of the trilogy. I don’t play it that way because I think it’s romantic or because I think Shepard is in the right; I play it that way because I like the idea of someone learning that it’s okay to be loved and to love in return, particularly when they don’t feel like they are lovable. But like I said, it’s a long process, and the only reason her and Kaidan’s relationship doesn’t burn out and die is because Kaidan consistently puts himself out there so that she doesn’t have to. This is why it’s important to me that Shepard’s the one to propose post-war, because I feel like it’s only fair she put herself out there that way for a change.

(For the record, I don’t think Kaidan takes all of this lying down. I know he has no way out when it comes to Shepard, and it’s for that reason I think he’s willing to put up with a lot more than he knows he should, but he still knows that…well, no, he doesn’t deserve this and that Shepard has to do better. He has to become really adept in Shepard-speak by the end of the game, and I think that helps a lot - he knows Shepard is trying and that she loves him even if she doesn’t say it, it’s just…messy. But it’s definitely something they talk about post-war, along with the socio-economic stuff.)

So now how do their game classes interact? Well, because so much of Shepard’s experiences are a mystery to Kaidan, I wanted Shepard to be on that end for once. Yeah, Shepard’s lived through things Kaidan has never had to - but likewise, Kaidan has lived through things Shepard has never had to. She’ll never understand what it’s like to be a biotic and just what, exactly, that means. I feel like Earthborn Shepards in particular would be exposed to a lot of anti-biotic sentiment growing up since they’re, well, Earthborn, and I think a lot of negative post-spaceflight sentiments (alien xenophobia, biotic discrimination, etc) would be concentrated on Earth because it’s the homeworld and they’re the least exposed to the rest of the galaxy.

But anyway, to get back on topic. L2 biotics build up static electricity. That means that it’s likely that if you touch them, you’ll get an electric shock. Imagine having to be conscious of that fact, and having to be constantly aware of your surroundings so you can unload that built up static electricity into something inanimate so you don’t accidentally shock someone. Little things like that are something someone who’s nonbiotic would never think about. Then there would be Kaidan’s post-mission regimen. He literally has a port on the back of his scalp that’s connected to his brain, or at least near it. He has to keep that clean, and you fight some really gross things throughout the trilogy. Thorian creepers? All that gunk? He has to be careful that his port never gets contaminated in a way nonbiotic Shepard never has to, because like…your omni-tool getting gunked up is way different than a port that’s literally inside of your head getting gunked up. (I also imagine this area in general is a sensitive area for biotics, like, not the kind of place they like anyone casually touching.) These are all things that would be frankly alien to someone who’s not a biotic. As an N7, I think Shepard would’ve worked with more biotics than the average marine like pre-Normandy Ashley and pre-Fehl Prime James, but she’s still not a biotic herself and has a lot of learning to do.

(I have several moments I consider landmarks in their relationship, and I think one of them is in ME3 when Kaidan is completely fine - comfortable, even - with Shepard touching anywhere near his port, when he wasn’t in ME1. It’s a massive sign of trust for him that’s not lost on her.)

None of this is even getting into the social treatment of biotics, either. This is something Shepard has to figure out for herself, which I think she does in ME1 with the Rahna story and stuff. Kaidan’s the way he is because he’s a biotic; you can’t separate that fact from him. You take away Kaidan’s biotics and you take away a lot of who he is as a person and why he’s that way. (…She probably can relate to that sentiment, though.)

They do have to have some things in common though. I don’t like the idea of them only bothering to talk to each other because they think the other is attractive and then it forms into something deeper, lmao. So that’s (part of) why my Shepard is an infiltrator******. Both she and Kaidan are unabashed tech geeks. You know how in ME3 if you bring Kaidan along to Tali’s mission, they have that argument about omni-tools? Yeah, my Shep and Kaidan have talks like that all the time about, like, everything tech related. They’ve also had the omni-tool talk because her preferred one is Savant, which he thinks is pretentious because I love the idea of Savant tech being seen as The Snob Tech of the industry because it’s so expensive and its users frequently insufferable. But I HC it’s the only omni-tool that can handle an infiltrator’s needs without overheating, including running the tactical cloak.

So that’s the common thread that gets them started between all the differences and the bad first impressions (she is renegade leaning, after all). I don’t think the way I play Kaidan’s romance is particularly popular, but that’s fine with me. I like a little conflict. I like the idea of two people not being inherently or instantly compatible, and having to work to form an understanding of one another. I like the idea of their relationship being something that they have to work for and keep working for, because while they love each other, sometimes love isn’t enough. You need communication, too. And that’s what I like, so that’s how I play them. (And also because I like angst - to a degree - and mutual pining, of which I think there would be A LOT of when you play Kaidan’s romance this way.) Obviously after a certain point things do become easier simply because they’ve been around each other long enough to develop a banter (”I’ve been thinking…” / “Oh, no. Okay. Hit me with it.”) and a better understanding of how the other person thinks. But you still need communication and I’m not interested in things ever being “easy” just because they’re so in love and that magically cures everything.

This was very, very long, and I know I apologized in the beginning but I’d like to do so again. You just managed to ask the exact question that I have put a lot of thought into and it was very hard for me to resist going full word vomit, lmao. Thank you very much for the ask!

(Also addendum, it’s so weird hearing her referred to as “Ramona”…I know that’s what I have down on my character page but I actually haven’t settled on a name for her yet despite her existing for like, almost 3 years at this point. Naming Shepard is singularly one of the hardest parts of Shepard-building for me, I don’t know why?! So for reference, Ramona and my “ch: nadia shepard” tag are the same character. Who knows if I end up sticking with either, but they are what they are for now lol. Also, you had absolutely no way of knowing this, I know. I actually assume no one reads my character pages, ever, so this ask is a welcome surprise!)

*This is another big thing with my Shepard, but it’s only tangentially related to Kaidan so I didn’t bother bringing it up in the main post. But particularly since she has the renegade scars? Oh, yeah. “Maybe I’m just an advanced VI that thinks it’s Commander Shepard” is putting how she feels about herself post-Lazarus mildly.

**I have a giant meta post that’s been sitting in my drafts since April about exactly this. Like, about Horizon and its aftermath and how it was allowed to happen to start with, and how the VS is uniquely and repeatedly manipulated against Shepard as a means to hurt them. I should really finish that post, because damn, I love Horizon.

***Specifically on Earth; owning land on colony worlds probably isn’t as much of an indicator of wealth

****To be fair, I think in ME2 this is alleviated somewhat because it’s TIM’s dime and spending his money on useless shit is one of the only way she can rebel without showing all her cards

*****I read a HC once that said because Kaidan’s an L2, it’s probably a lot harder for him to find L2-compatible biotic amps, so I can see him being very protective and hoard-y when it comes to his amps

******Also, sniper rifles. It’s offensive to me as a lesbian that femShep has twig arms when those sniper rifles weigh A TON; there is no way her biceps wouldn’t be out of this world. It’s doubly offensive when you consider the fact Kaidan’s buffer than she is despite being a Sentinel. (I ignore this and pretend it doesn’t exist, much like a lot of Kaidan’s ME3 appearance.) 

[estuarries]

baby’s first liveshow commentary

hello lads i have decided to attempt doing @nihilist-toothpaste​ inspired video commentary/write up/review thingies!!!! welcome to ramble-y fun time

phil’s liveshow on august 10, 2017

his smile in the first minute makes my heart so happy i love him so much

i love the eye-tongue-eye emoji stop being mean to it

he’s a bit late bc he just finished filming a new ap vid!!! it took him longer than he thought it would to finish filming bc he was rambling. this is a #relatable brain thing

“i just said goodbye and now i’m saying hello again!” wrt filing and then doing a liveshow makes me rly happy bc i wouldn’t have thought abt it that way. i love phil’s brain

new vid clues: paper bag(?) and bubble wrap. amazingphil asmr part ii??

dan’s not joining the liveshow bc he has a headache but phil’s gonna hop into dan’s next one

closed eyes and happy gesticulation whilst telling sleepy-morning “unexpected window cleaning man frightened me” story

phil’s fight/flight/freeze response is freeze

“imagine if i had decided to make breakfast naked! ...if i was that kind of person…” its okay m8 we know u like to make nakey bro brunches w danyul

are the emoji pants the only pair of graphic pj pants he has now ??? why are they being featured so prominently lately ???? phil IS an emoji is the only phnnie conspiracy i can support now

in the ap vid phil did SCIENCE and REACTED TO THINGS (chemistry . reaction . hehe :3)

he’s out of tv shows to watch ….he and dan have watched so many series together over the years ..... i am emotional

phil hasnt watched in a heartbeat EITHER !! BLASPHEMOUS BOYES!!!

re: rick and morty. i strongly agree and it makes me so nervous that rick burps all the time i cannot focus on whats happening in the show bc rick gives me so much anxiety

he misses the cherry blossom tree in thehowlter’s front yard and they are hopefully going to put it in when they have money

“you’re all like dan! not everything has to be symmetrical!” thank u for these affirmations that not everything has to be perfect thank u for being chill. a chill phil. 

“i dont mind a little bit of wonkiness!” “i’m at a bit of a wonk!” “is the entire house wonky?” the only real phil branding is ~WOnKy~

phils hands are so beautiful???? i love them?????? @ 8:50ish

him trying to figure out his best side and saying “one? or two?” as options like at the optometrist when ur getting ur eyes checked. 

someone in the chat: “both!” phil’s cheeky grin/”don’t flatter me!!!” response

someone in the chat: “side three!” i snort laughed along w phil this is truly Good Content. dark!phil RISE

phil doesn’t think he really has a bad side and his easy neutrality wrt his physical appearance is dreamy. i love him and i love that he’s comfy w himself like this

phil had an eye infection and this is the first day he’s been without glasses…… why does he glasses-bait us like this …..

it’s really hard for him to concentrate with dilated pupils so that’s why he was being a wee bit wonky in the last liveshow

his eye is no longer infected and is “white and ready to see!”. the tone of his voice, his accent, and the phrasingof that reminded me so much of my british grandma who i havent seen in a few years and now i want to call her i miss her

wicked was “as the kids say...Wicked.” I SNORTED AKLHFAEIHKF

also i cannot believe that he and dan used the same silly phrasewhen talking about their opinions of wicked. is it still #copyrightinfringement if its your bf blatantly enterprising ur intellectual property?

phil was feeling a bit meh going into wicked but now he’s converted and a fan

he loved defying gravity :(

phil: every audience is important! me: crying

phil loves coming-of-age/college/highschool aus … Me Too

phil remix: the top fans to the tune of mad world “all around me are familiar faces...lillyphanstuff, joteleena…”

he’s had “mad world” and also that fuckin. ditty song stuck in his head

“...is one thicc bih - NO!” is the best thing ive ever heard

im so sad that phil hasnt experienced the joys of ditty. apparently he doesn’t have it downloaded and doesn’t really know what it is

14:07 is my new ringtone (he sang the ditty tune in “doot doot doot”s)

“bandicussy” IM DEAD

phil thought it was a good family activity to see dunkirk but it made his parents very emotional bc his maternal grandad was in the war

making your entire family cry is apparently the phil way to entertain

neither he nor dan understood the timelines of dunkirk upon first watch

after filming his ap vid he sanitized using vanilla cupcake hand sanitizer

he watches zoe’s bath and bodyworks candle/lotion hauls??????? ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

apparently b&bw has some ~priiiicey~ candles. phil is the coupon clipping, consumer reports reading dad

he said that livestreaming games on dapg would be “dope”. i am reminded for the millionth time that he is a 30 year old white man. i am moderately uncomfortable.

jk it was someone in the chat who said it he was just reading the comment

“hi to the ‘phan’s moving boxes’ group chat”

facterino according to the nature man on tv: in england nature has decided that it’s autumn already. this is evidenced by blackberries coming out in august. because fall isstartingso early they’re expected to have a harsh winter but its fine bc he is excited for snow!

some climate change discourse

he’s not a big doctor who fan but his fav doctor is david tennant

he’s excited for the “lady doctor” and i’m uh. not a huge fan of that wording

23:02 pre-sneeze noises and hand motions are Delightful

apparently it’s southern england peeps who pronounce scone with a hard o (scOHne) and northerners pronounce it with a soft o (scAWn). phillu doesn’t know which pronunciation he uses

my mom grew up in cornwall (and moved to america when she was a teen. i’m american btw!) and pronounces it the northern way. we’ve had the scohne vs scawn debate!! lots of #britishfamilythings in this liveshow

philly homework motivation song @ 24:52

his first response to ppl being sad about school starting in a week is to calculate how many seconds are in a week so they can re-frame their time left in a way that feels more plentiful. i love this ???

i also really love how he tries to read premium messages from different people every time. idk that’s just really thoughtful and as a fan i really appreciate it

he knows that black makes him look good …. GOodBYe

today is world lion day!

phil is the one who puts the funny/random holidays on the dnp calendars. of course it was but im still so happily surprised  

doinganap’s sicth/sixth discourse

he’s reading people from the chat’s bdays and telling them what funny holidays are on their birthdays! i love how he finds different ways to get ppl in the chat involved every liveshow. i appreciate him so much !like yeah i know its a marketing thing but let me pretend its solely phil’s care for us

he wants to go back to japan

he can’t read or edit and listen to music at the same time! me neither

someone asked what a good pet would be and phil went on a lil tangent about how it’s important to have enough time to take care of the pet you choose!! dont get an exotic pet or a breed of non-exotict pet that requires a lot of time, money, or energy to care for it if you’re not at a point in your life where u can take care of it to the best of your ability! <3

hedgehogs are one of the most common animals in the uk??? what the heck?

he can’t remember whether or not he’s seen a hedgehog irl so he texts mum lester to ask <3 why is this the sweetest thing in the world . like seeing a hedgehog irl would be an experience that his family facilitated or even if he was moved out when it happened it would have been so exciting that he def would have told kath about it. so any way it happened she would know about it. my heart is Warm.

he’s not a huge summer candle burner but as soon as it’s september he’ll be on the pumpkin spice train

mum lester texted back and apparently his grandparents had a family of hedgehogs in their garage and his granddad built them a little hedgehog house to hibernate in :( wow!

phil might play shelter 2 … with dan. No Thank You. let us have some phil-only time plz 

shelter 2 is more of an autumnal game so he might do it later when he can cozy up with some cocoa and herd the badger babies

he feels a coffee buzz after five (5) chocolate-covered coffee beans. r u sure u even drink coffee phil????

rye bread is worse (in phil’s opinion) than regular bread and is ”claggy”. i busted out laughing and texted my mom IMMEDIATELY bca LOOOONG time ago we were at a family christmas party with my dad’s extended family and all of the Adults were playing scrabble. my mom ended up spelling claggy and everyone else was like THATS A MADE UP WORD WHAT THE FUCK!!!! and my mom was like ???? no its not? my dad’s family is from the eastern us and had never heard the word claggy before and i remember my dad giving my mom shit about it for YEARS afterward because she caused such an uproar. idk if it was a regional thing or if americans just don’t say claggy but REGARDLESS. my mom and i had a good laugh over this description of rye bread and we both love phil

he’s nervous abt what dalien is going to look like and become as he grows up. phil’s general reaction to dalien has been one of caution and nervousness and idk ?? someone more thoughtful analyze that please

his advice for making the most of the last bits of summer: do something you haven’t done before! immediately after bestowing upon us this Wise Advice he giggles and becomes self aware of his parental tone. Our Dad Is Becoming Self Aware

he doesnt swear around his parents?????? my mom says fuck all the time :0

2018 calendar and season two pastel plushies are in the works!

he’s singing another song to list the top fans. suggestions include toxic, the ditty tune, and the tetris theme. he goes with the ditty song and starts laughing in the middle of it so makes a seamless musical transition to toxic

if everything recorded properly with his new vid we should see it in the next few days!

he hopes that we have a lovely weekend and that whatever we end up doing brings us a bit of happiness :( i love him thank u phil

tiny little bonus song after he covers up the camera. schrodingers phil.

all in all i love phil’s liveshows and this has been the highlight of my day. thank u for reading!

[nevospitanniy]

Rambly Teen Wolf/Big Wolf On Campus meta

Preface this by saying I didn’t expect to actually get into TW. This show kicked me in the teeth, balls and every organ I do and do not possess. If I’m going to be any degree of helpful, I need some structure up in here. Fair warning, it’s just like my opinion man.

1. Characters

Tommy is Scott. A werewolf with a heart of gold that cares deeply about people around him. It’s explored much more in depth with TW, duh - they had more seasons, more money and a higher age rating, using more drama and angst. But the outline is definitely there: they are both introduced to the fantastic world of lycanthropy by their extremely knowledgeable and helpful buddies (Merton/Stiles respectively), can be shitty to their best friends (Tommy throwing Merton under the bus to save his popularity/Scott abandoning Stiles for Allison multiple times), take on the role of the designated savior of the town from supernatural threats, prefer non-lethal methods, are Alphas (Tommy’s status could be contested, I guess, but the show never put an actual emphasis on pack dynamics, probably they thought it was too odd of a concept to start explaining because then you have to get to the whole omega part and that is c o m p l i c a t e d), fight organized evil!werewolves, had two main love interests, none of which held up (yeah, weaksauce, but I thought I’d still put it out there), kinda subpar in academics but good athletes. Scott gets so much more actual character development it’s not even funny, while Tommy just sort of meanders in what he has and gets dumbed down a lot for seasons 2/3.

Merton is Stiles, no shit. A nerd best friend, a friend in need more importantly, a loyal (mostly) spastic (very) companion. Dynamic between sciles and tommerton (platonically) is quite different because of how their backstories differ - after all, Scott and Stiles have known each other since forever, while Tommy pays attention to Merton only after being bitten, when they become friends almost out of necessity. But there is no denying that all four of them, in their respective duos, are joined at the hip, oftentimes with an inclusion of a girl to break up their awesome bromance (Allison/Lori and Stacy). Merton/Stiles go unappreciated for their efforts a lot, especially if you consider they are human and yet get into the same exact shit as fast and durable werewolves, surviving by wits, last ditch effort loyalty change (Merton) or a fear override (Stiles) and saving the day half of the time because they actually do research. Both seem to have a penchant for magic (unsubtly implied but never expanded upon for Stiles), both are comedic reliefs, even if in slightly different ways as commanded by the genre, both are excellent students, both are mostly unsuccessful with women and ambiguously bi/pan/omni, if you consider the technically non-human options. Complicated family relationships. Both have abandonment/commitment issues, both room (jury is still out there for sciles because of 6b) with their best friends in college. As for notable differences, Stiles undergoes a massive character transformation, a monumental shift, I’d say - not exactly doing a 180, but inching closer than any other character to actual plot relevant growth, and not for better, which is a rarity. Merton’s personality also changes for the worse, but it’s a result of clumsy writing and forced female presence in the shows plot as a romantic crutch. It would be interesting if fan meta on Merton’s less ehh flattering moments was expanded upon and explained in the series; what I wouldn’t give for an actual quality heart to heart between Tommy and Merton Ike every show nowadays seems to have in abundance, where they call each other out on their issues.

Women are more complicated. There are no exact parallels, barring the very basic archetypes, which would do no justice to any of the four, namely Allison and Lydia for TW and Lori and Stacy for BWOC. But yes, Allison is close to Lori - a fighter, someone who can take it and dish it out. Problem with Lydia/Stacy comparison is that it breaks down as soon as Lydia gets a sliver of character development, because at first, her queen bee status definitely resonated with Stacy, but while she was put on a bus without any real involvement in the show’s plot, Lydia becomes downright plot essential.

2. Writing

BWOC had an incredible season 1, with select episodes of season 2 being very good and, well, we don’t talk about season 3. Point being, even with the constraints of a cheap Canadian show for kids it managed some genuine brilliance, I’m sure in a big way thanks to the chemistry between cast members (specifically the two of consequence). Monster Of The Week format certainly seemed to work well for them, and I will forever mourn the loss of all the potential arcs and plot twists that never saw the light of day. TW had the privilege of, despite a mediocre display in season 1, becoming popular enough to spawn 5 more seasons, and I think they definitely had very strong moments, most of them carried on the back of Dylan O'Brien, like void!Stiles, relationship between him and his dad, and yes, his relationship with Derek, which turned out to be largely inconsequential to the plot (writers queerbaited the f u c k out of its audience and then just did nothing of worth with the pairing, BUT THATS HARDLY RELEVANT). I don’t know whether Peter Knight is just that good or the innocent nature of BWOC lends itself to less complicated plots and finished stories, but most BW episodes were microcosms, closed systems that had little bearing on any overarching storylines. They provided closure, well-defined villains and good guys, which is a very appealing quality, if a touch simplistic. I admit, I would’ve liked to see something with more “depth” and conflict, but the restrictions of the channel/network/rating are nothing to sneeze at. TW on the other hand ties almost every episode into another, weaving a continuous storyline. Personally, I think they should’ve done more one off episodes to break up the monotony of waiting for action set pieces. You need some hella witty dialogue to keep people watching while fuck all is happening and they sort of failed at that (again, Stiles carried most of the comedy). Almost everyone in BWOC is uniquely likable; TW has a much bigger cast so they definitely had ups and down as far as character writing was concerned.

Main problem with this whole disjointed comparison is how you can’t compare things that aren’t on the same level. It’s not a dig at quality or anything, but TW had 6 seasons and a huge budget, while BW barely got 3. TW and BWOC kinda started in a similar vein, but boy do they differ. That being said, I have an inkling that BW may have ended up looking a lot like TW in different circumstances - if it was made at a later date, on another channel, with a different rating/audience in mind. But then again, a lot of good things BW is liked for are a direct result of these aforementioned “hurdles” - all the double entendres would never fly for a tv-14 rated show, its generally cheerful and uplifting tone was probably required by the network and being a child of the 90s it carried a lot of charm that would be borderline impossible to fabricate now if they wanted to keep the ~aesthetic. So I can only compare real TW with hypothetical BWOC that got a bigger budget and more screentime. But doing that makes NO SENSE, so imma just finish with some general thoughts about the direction show might’ve gone.

I genuinely think that in different circumstances, Merton could’ve had a wonderfully dark character development. He’s a non-violent character, but does have this morbid curiosity that could’ve put him eventually in a position to cause grievous bodily harm to someone. He seems to get off on power play (both having power over someone and surrendering it), and that’s a slippery slope for an emotionally tender and damaged character. Tommy is his rock in a number of ways, his human connection outlet, a more teen oriented show would, of course, use his ‘scars’ to carry the narrative of overcoming tragedy. Merton does the same for Tommy, being his emotional support, because how liberating it must be to not hide his werewolf side and he could do it literally with 1 (one) person before Lori came into focus. Queerbait aside, their relationship was great, a deep involved friendship, and with Tommy being so resistant to evilness and Merton being so easily corruptible, they could’ve played off this contrast in a way more interesting than what we saw in s3.  

I also would’ve loved to see some female characters that aren’t barely two-dimensional; Stacy was, in one word, confused - we know very little of her actual personality, aside from her feminism rhetoric and an allergy to committed relationships. Lori was ‘the action girl’, and she got a slightly bigger piece of pie, but still not nearly enough. Fuck, I don’t even know if the show passes a Bechdel test. TW showed us actual fleshed out female friendships that weren’t toxic or competitive, would’ve been nice to see something of the sort in BWOC.

[lusilly]

streets of gotham: secret origins

finally a complete introductory fic for the Streets of Gotham 2 team: Colin Wilkes (Abuse), Ellen Nayar (Ember), Nell Little (Spoiler), Jordan Joyce (Jabberwock), and Niloufar Ghorbani (Seraph). (lucas comes later lmao)

Since Jordan’s got the most complicated backstory, xe has xyr own intro fic you can read here. The SoG2 team is featured heavily in Fiat iusticia and in Wheel in the Sky.

This fic was an exercise in Mark Waid’s advice on how plot is nothing more than setting upon which to hang emotion.........and that was Tough lmao. extremely unsatisfied with the ending. Relies heavily on story from Batman: The Black Mirror. Damian is about 16 here. My fav part of this is damian beating the shit out of a joker stan. Enjoy!

NAME:  Damian Wayne ALIAS:  Robin DATE OF BIRTH:  5 September 1996 (approximate) BLOOD TYPE:  O-  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT:  BW, DG AFFILIATIONS: Teen Titans, Team Ember EVAL: [File Encrypted] NOTES: |Robin| Eval needs to be de-encrypted. Any information contained therein cannot possibly be worse than not knowing |Nightwing| Yeah thats kind of a dick move B. Lol |Batman| Notes are to be relevant to the file in question not a space for airing personal grievances |Red Hood| Im airing my personal grievances here just to spite you. You suck |Batman| If this continues I will remove editing privileges for all of you |Red Hood| You still suck Editing on NOTES is locked

----

           Damian got up early; patrol had ended before two AM last night, the city quiet and still in the early winter lull. A cold snap had settled across Gotham this past week, creeping in from the bay. Though it did not snow, the clear skies brought the temperature to well below freezing, which led to slow nights on patrol. The heat of summer pushed people outside relentlessly. The cold, on the other hand, made criminals lethargic and cautious, preferring to stay inside with their families.

           So Damian rolled out of bed around nine in the morning, the sunlight shining into his window through blinds he had forgotten to draw last night. The first thing he did was take his phone from its perch on his bedside table and scroll through any new notifications. Both Iris and Lian had texted him. He responded to Iris’s but not Lian’s, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Not ten minutes later he was in the drawing room downstairs, where Titus slept before the great brick fireplace, which was empty.

           Damian patted his dog on the stomach, whistling through his teeth. “Come on,” he said, getting down on his knees and drumming his hands on Titus’s sturdy body. The dog lit up with energy, reaching up to lick Damian’s face, tail wagging furiously as he got to his feet. Damian scratched him behind his ears. “You ready for a run, boy? Come on, let’s get some exercise.”

           Alfred appeared, hot coffee in hand. “Good morning, Damian,” he said. “Taking the dog for a walk?”

           “Yes,” answered Damian, glancing around. “He’s been indoors too much lately because of the cold, he needs to stretch his legs.”

           “You too?”

           Damian offered Alfred a little grin. “Me too,” he agreed. “It’s slow out there.”

           “And here I thought that was a good thing.”

           “It is.” Titus bounded across the room excitedly, chasing his tail, ready for a walk. He started to paw at Damian’s leg, and Damian only held up one hand to indicate Stop. “Down. One moment, alright?” To Alfred, he asked, “Do you know what time my father got home last night?”

           Alfred gave sort of a shrug. “Not long after you.”

           “Oh,” said Damian. “When he wakes up will you tell him I’m heading to school later today? I’ve got an exam at three.”

           Alfred made a face of enthusiastic pride. “Your first university exam,” he said, sounding impressed. “In which subject, may I ask?”

           “Multivariable calculus,” Damian answered, kneeling down to rub Titus’s big head. “It’s simple stuff. A pre-req for applied math.”

           “Not finance?”

           Damian flashed that grin at Alfred once more. “I’m just testing out my options,” he said. “I have time.”

           “Indeed you do,” agreed Alfred, with an approving nod. “In any case, good luck and I shall inform your father as soon as he wakes. Which,” he glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway, and took a disapproving sip of coffee, “should be quite soon. He’s quite worse than you, isn’t he?”u

           Damian opened the French doors to the back garden. With a wave to Alfred, he said, “We’ll be back,” and he whistled for Titus to follow him, then took off jogging past the flowerbeds. Coffee in hand, Alfred watched him go.

           The morning was brisk, but Damian felt warm and alive underneath the early wintertime sun. Taking it slow, he scrolled through his phone, searching for an appropriate playlist, then tucked earbuds into his ears and his the phone itself into a holder at his bicep. Whistling once more at Titus, he took a wide berth around his vegetable garden, knowing that Titus was prone to digging around in it sometimes, upsetting his crops. From there he stayed close to the tree line, heading out across the Manor grounds. The route he liked to take eventually led to a field and a set of rolling hills littered with public paths; he preferred, however, to take a less intuitive path, slightly different every time and designed to get the most out of the slope of the hills.

           Damian took great joy in his morning runs with Titus: it was productive and refreshing and outside, instead of careful training in the facilities under the Manor, which, though state-of-the-art, could feel a little claustrophobic. It was good, he thought, to get out of the house for a little while, out from under his father’s watchful eye. This was the same reason why he’d been spending so much time with the Titans lately.

           Cutting through the edge of the woods, where the trees were sparse, Damian suddenly realized that Titus wasn’t following him anymore. When he glanced around, Titus was nowhere to be seen. He came to a stop and turned around, tugging his earbuds out.

           It was mostly quiet, except for the wind shuddering the tree branches. Damian whistled. “Titus!” There was no response. Muttering an oath under his breath, Damian jogged back down the path he’d just cut. “Titus!” he called again, searching between the trees on either side of him. “Titus, come!”

           His heart jumped as he heard suddenly a piteous whining, as if Titus were afraid of something, cowering in fear; with a little more urgency he headed into the woods, following the source of the sound. “Titus!”

           Off the beaten path, obscured by some low underbrush, the scene Damian found jolted his stomach, making him feel immediately sick before his well-practiced professional instinct took over. “Titus,” he hissed, approaching the dog, who laid whining beside the ugly sight. Grabbing Titus’s collar, he tugged the dog away, retreating to a nearby tree. Titus whined as Damian took out his phone, but Damian just said, “Sit. Titus, sit,” and the dog did so, albeit reluctantly.

           In Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne’s personal cell phone, which sat neatly in a charging device by his bed, started to ring.

           Bruce, raised his head groggily from the mess of sheets and limbs in which he typically slept. Narrowing his eyes at the screen of the phone, which displayed an close-up selfie of Damian’s annoyed face that Dick had assigned to his civilian contact, Bruce started at it for a moment before reaching out and plucking it off the charger.

           “Damian?” he said, masterfully masking his confusion.

           “Father,” replied Damian shortly, heading back to the path by the edge of the woods. “Did I wake you?”

           “I – where are you?”

           “A few miles away from home, almost at Brentwood. I took Titus for a run.”            This was not unusual, but it was unusual for Damian to call home halfway through. Unsure what was happening, Bruce began, “Is…everything all right?”

           “I found a body,” he said bluntly.

           Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “You what?”

           “Well, Titus found it, really. It was sort of tucked off the main path, we never would’ve seen it had I not decided to loop around past the Kai estate. A boy,” Damian informed his father automatically, pausing to bark, “Titus, come,” before continuing, “maybe my age or slightly older. Wearing a Brentwood uniform.”

           “Signs of assault?”

           “No,” answered Damian. “Dead for a few hours now at the very least, but I can’t determine COD. Suppose we’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report.”

           Sitting up in bed, calm and alert, Bruce began, “All right. Bring anything you’ve gathered back here and we can look into it tonight. Good work so far but for now the best thing to do would be to call the police-”

           Damian interrupted him. “I already did,” he said. “Father, I’m sorry, I think you may be misunderstanding me? I wasn’t actually calling about the body, I’m calling to ask if you can come pick me up.”

           Bruce blinked in surprise. “What?” he asked. “Why?”

           “Because I already called the police and they’ll be here any minute, and I’ll have to act all traumatized because of the dead body, and anyway you know I don’t like civilian encounters with police without you.”

           This more or less made sense, but it wasn’t what Bruce had meant. “What do you mean you aren’t calling about the body?”

           “Oh,” said Damian, as if he hadn’t even thought of this. “Well. It’s by Brentwood.”

           Again, Bruce did not immediately understand. “So?”

           Almost apologetically, Damian said, “A five mile radius beyond campus limits…isn’t your jurisdiction, Father.”

           It hit Bruce then with the force of a freight train: he, like a goddamn amateur idiot, had ceded actual turf to Damian’s pet side team made up of Gotham natives and sometimes headed by Damian’s closest friend in the city, Colin Wilkes, who boarded at Brentwood Academy on a Wayne Enterprises scholarship. The agreement itself had been a bit of a farce meant to keep the team out of trouble, given the specific area the Batman had permitted the team as their responsibility was located in the richest neighborhood in Bristol County, slightly outside Gotham city limits. He had not imagined that any terrible crime might go down five miles away from a wealthy private school, but in retrospect, of course it would.

           “Damian,” said Bruce matter-of-factly. “I appreciate your loyalty to your friends,” he didn’t want to legitimize it by saying your team, and besides the Titans were more Damian’s team in any case, “but even you need to admit, this is out of their league.”

           “This is one dead body,” answered Damian skeptically. “If that’s out of their league, they shouldn’t be doing this at all.”

           “Well, perhaps that’s a fair point-”

           “No,” said Damian shortly. “It’s not. You wouldn’t have given Ember her uniform if you really believed that.”

           This was true enough, but frankly Bruce thought Ember was the only member of that team capable of joining the fight, and ideally he’d absorb her into the Batfamily at large before she got too committed to her own team. But this was not a conversation he wanted to have over the phone, so he shoved the sheets off the bed and said, “Don’t move for now, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

           “Will you hurry, please?” Damian asked, sounding bored and slightly annoyed. “I hate calling the cops.”

           Getting out of bed, Bruce reminded him, “You should be used to it, it’s half of what we do on patrol.”

           “Yes,” muttered Damian, hearing the distant wail of sirens. “But I’m not exactly in uniform at the moment, am I?”

           Feeling a little awkward at the reminder of the constant presence of race in Damian’s life which Bruce could never really fully grasp, Bruce assured his son that he would be there very soon. As soon as he hung up Damian sent him a pin dropped into a map at his location.

           Bruce arrived not long after the police; a detective was talking to Damian, taking down notes. Titus got anxious around people he didn’t know, so Damian had his fingers hooked around his collar, keeping him close. The detective – a rookie who Bruce didn’t recognize on sight – had a few questions for Bruce, then patted Damian’s shoulder reassuringly. Taking Bruce aside, he recommended considering having Damian speak to a professional about the trauma of the sight he’d just witnessed, and Bruce nodded in what he hoped looked like naïve paternal concern.

           Damian coaxed Titus in the backseat of the car, then got in himself. Titus hung his big head in between the two front seats, panting from exertion and excitement.

           On the ride back to the Manor, Damian mercilessly mocked the police. “Now, this is so traumatizing, but you’ve been awfully brave – for Christ’s sake, it’s like none of them have ever seen a dead body before.”

           “Well,” said Bruce fairly, “most sixteen-year-olds haven’t, Damian.”

           “It’s not as if it was violent,” Damian pointed out. “There wasn’t even any blood or anything.”

           “Which is…curious,” said Bruce thoughtfully. “No external evidence of foul play. Suicide?”            Phone in hand, Damian replied, “I already sent photos to Colin, he should be able to identify him and pull his school records. We’ll check for a history of depression or mental illness, but my gut tells me a Brentwood student wouldn’t stagger into the woods to kill himself unless it was going to be uglier than that.”

           Bruce nodded; this made sense. “Could’ve been an accident. Alcohol poisoning, or an overdose.”

           “I’m leaning towards overdose personally,” answered Damian, texting something on his phone. “Colin’s files should have any record of drug activity at the school. I’ll meet up with him and the others tonight and we’ll get started.”

           There was an awkward sort of pause. Bruce began, “You know, if you or the rest of the team ever require any help-”

           As the car came to a stop in the Wayne Manor garage, Damian shook his head, interrupting his father. “You’re micromanaging,” he pointed out. “I told you, they’re never going to get better if you keep stepping in and taking over their investigations.”

           “I understand that,” replied Bruce, turning the car off. “I’m merely remarking upon the fact that they lack experience, and therefore could benefit from guidance.”

           “Namely, me,” said Damian, watching his father. “I’m their guidance.” He waited for a moment, eyes on Bruce, as if expecting confirmation. Little tink-tink-tink sounds came from the car’s engine as it cooled. “Right?”

           Bruce began, “You already have a team-”

           “You have, like, four teams,” Damian countered. “Not to mention whatever secret society you’re funding this week.”

           “A murder is serious business.”

           “You don’t even know if it’s murder yet.”

           “If it were-”

           “-then you still wouldn’t be in any position to take this from them. Just,” Titus stuck his head forward again, whining, and Damian reached out to scratch his face. “Unclench, alright?” Damian asked his father. “I can handle this.”            Bruce didn’t reply to this, so Damian got out of the car and opened the door for Titus, who happily jumped out and followed him back into the house.

           Later that day, Damian drove to Princeton for his first college exam. He finished early, and called Colin on the drive home.

---

NAME:  Colin Wilkes ALIAS:  “Abuse” DATE OF BIRTH:  9 December 1996 BLOOD TYPE: AB+  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Jane Brown LSW, Caseworker AFFILIATIONS:  Team Ember EVAL: Behavioral history of paranoia and violence in multiple foster homes, though likely a result of instability in childhood rather than pathological root. Experimentation by SCARECROW led to increased physical abilities through transformation which includes augmented strength (no evidence senses are affected) as well as moderate invulnerability. Venom appears to have had long-lasting effects on body chemistry despite its degradation.

Decent field skills complemented by extreme strength. Only cleared for patrol if transformed. hand-to-hand and weapons training negligible. Defense training and development of damage-resistant uniform necessary to compensate for tendency to take fire. Precision training vital for development of fine offensive skills.

NOTES: |Robin| Consistent attitude improvements since enrollment at Brentwood. Some instability with transformations likely due to a mental block, have seen improvement past 2-3 months

---

           “You’ve got to get a permanent HQ,” said Damian, in full Robin uniform, standing before a laptop computer in an empty Brentwood Academy classroom.

           “This is good though,” Colin insisted. “This way we’re close to the action, right?”

           “Well,” Damian replied, trying not to hurt Colin’s feelings. “Yes, though it really isn’t worth the lack of security or tech resources. Batman operates almost solely out of the Cave, and you know that’s a bit removed from the city.”

           Colin said, “I don’t have a house to stick a secret lair underneath, though.”

           “I mean, yes,” Damian admitted, nodding. “But the point stands. Besides, most of your team has trouble getting all the way out here. Spoiler’s bike can only hold two people.”

           “That works fine anyway, Jordan doesn’t need a ride.”

           With a long-suffering inhalation, Damian gently corrected, “Jabberwock, Abuse. Jabberwock. We use codenames in the field.”

           “Oh, yeah,” said Colin, clicking through some files on the computer. “My bad. Anyway.” He gestured towards the screen. “This is what I got so far.”

           “Aren’t we going to wait for the others?”

           “Oh, should we?”

           “Ideally, yes, we should. But if you’ve any sensitive information to share with me first,” he gestured at the screen, “by all means.”

           Colin hesitated for a moment, watching Damian. Then he began, “Well, you know how I was kind of sort of maybe dating Ethan a while ago? So it turns out-”

           “Abuse,” interrupted Damian loudly, holding up a hand. “I don’t mean – I meant sensitive information related to the case. You can call me and update me on your social life any time, so let’s try to avoid it while in uniform, yes?”

           A little hurt, Colin replied, “This is related to the case. The dead kid is Joey Fremont, OK, and his roommate is on the wrestling team with Ethan, and so a while ago Ethan asked me to go to one of the wrestling team parties after the meet, and I didn’t go ‘cause he was being weird cagey about us and I could tell he wanted to go as ‘friends’ and it was annoying because like I asked him out and everything so it’s not like he didn’t actually have like feelings-”

           Softly, Damian reminded him, “The point, please.”

           “OK, OK, so – Ethan heard from Joey’s roommate that he was dealing in some shady shit.”

           A frown creased Damian’s brow. “Define ‘shady shit.’”

           “Dealing,” Colin emphasized, as if that had made it obvious. “Like, drugs.”            This seemed a little far-fetched. “Joseph Fremont, seventeen-year-old trust fund baby, was a drug-dealer?”

           “Yeah. Some shady stuff.”

           There it was again, shady, Colin’s favorite ambiguous descriptor. Damian felt a migraine coming on. “We’re still waiting on the tox report,” Damian told him. “But it’ll be easier if we know what to look for. Do you know what he was dealing?”

           “Drugs,” said Colin.

           “What kind of drugs? Cocaine? Heroin?”

           “What the fuck, you think I know? I didn’t buy any shit from him.”

           This was going to be harder than Damian thought. “Do you know anyone who did buy it?” he asked. “Maybe Ethan, or someone else on the wrestling team?”            Offended, Colin told him, “Bitch, Ethan isn’t a fucking junkie.”

           “Right, since you have impeccable taste in guys.”

           “Wow,” said Colin, even more insulted. “That’s fucking rude.”

           Damian was saved from trying to apologize for his completely correct and true reading of Colin’s limited dating history by a knock on the window. “Cavalry’s here,” he said, heading to open the window.

           Ember and Spoiler slipped into the room. “We weren’t sure if we were supposed to use the door,” Spoiler explained. “We thought there might be cameras and stuff.”

           “Abuse disabled them,” Damian said. “And we’re far enough from the center of campus that security doesn’t patrol here.”

           “Oh, cool,” said Nell. She waved behind Damian. “Hey Colin.”

           Before Damian could correct her, Colin impressed him by chiming in. “Abuse,” he said, grinning at her. “Only codenames.”

           “Oh, shit, sorry!”

           “It’s OK,” murmured Damian, going back to the laptop. “Is Jabberwock coming?”

           “I haven’t heard from her,” answered Ellen, shrugging. “But I imagine if she was, she’d be picking up, um,” she gave a pointed pause, “you-know-who on her way over.”

           “Who?” asked Damian.

           “Voldemort,” said Nell, giggling.

           He looked around at Colin, expecting an answer. Colin made a beckoning gesture with one finger, and Damian went over to him and leaned in. “Niloufar,” he whispered.

           Damian pulled away, frowning. “Niloufar?” he echoed.

           Colin took great pleasure in going, “Shh! Codenames only!”

           “I don’t know who that is,” said Damian honestly. “Do they have a codename?”

           “Not yet,” answered Nell, taking a seat on one of the desks. “She said she liked Angel or something, I think.”

           “No, it wasn’t Angel,” Ellen said thoughtfully. “It was something Muslim I think. I can’t remember right now.”

           Damian hesitated for a moment, then said to Ellen, “Whether or not Jabberwock brings her, can you send me her information later? We’ll do a background check.”

           Ellen watched him for a moment, but beneath the scarlet mask her expression was indecipherable. “I can relay it to Oracle, if that’s what you mean.”

           It wasn’t exactly, but it would do. He nodded. “Now. Let’s get to business. Abuse, would you brief your teammates on the case?”

           Quickly, Colin got back to business. He did a decent job, though Damian interjected a few times with details that seem to have slipped Colin’s mind. Nell, in her caped eggplant-colored Spoiler costume, sat on one of the desks, whereas Ellen, her crimson-and-black uniform, took a seat, leaning forward over the desk thoughtfully. Her body language was tight and measured, inscrutable. When his mind wandered Damian found his gaze occasionally drawn to her, though it wasn’t really in attraction so much as curiosity. He still wondered exactly what she had done to prove herself to his father, who trusted her far beyond any other member of this burgeoning team.

           The specifics of the case were this: Joseph Fremont, seventeen years old, white male, five-foot-eight inches, approximately a hundred and ninety pounds, had according to his roommate never made it back to his bedroom on the night of November the thirtieth, and had the following morning been discovered dead one-point-eight miles away from campus. They were still waiting on the physical evidence, but Robin had called them all together tonight so they could hit the ground running. Colin’s revelation that Joseph Fremont might have been dealing was kind of disappointing to Damian, as it suggested that the kid might’ve just been sampling the product and accidentally overdosed. Not that he wished a murder had occurred or anything, but a good old-fashioned mystery would’ve been perfect training for the young team.

           When Colin told Ellen and Nell about the drugs, sparing them the details about how he knew, Ellen spoke up. “If he was dealing and there were no external signs of a struggle, don’t you think he probably just OD’d?”            “Perhaps,” said Damian, chiming in from his spot in the shadows behind Colin. “But we have to consider all the possibilities.”

           “What if his tox results come back positive for a shitload of heroin?” asked Nell.

           “Then we’ll rule it an overdose,” Damian told her, feeling like he was talking to a bunch of infants, “unless we find evidence that suggests otherwise.”

           “But what if it’s an actual murder but someone just like coerced him into taking a shitload of heroin so he died?”

           “That’s why we look into anyone who might have motive,” said Damian. “Even if this looks cut-and-dried on the surface, if there’s someone who would benefit from Joseph Fremont’s death, then we tug on that string. Tug hard enough, and something always unravels.”

           “The Fremonts are Wall Street money,” Ellen commented offhandedly. “I’m sure a lot of people would have motivation to target their family.”

           “Right,” said Damian. “Ember, you look into potential suspects. Colin, dig into the drug connection. Maybe something went awry with his supplier.”

           Nell asked, “What can I do?”

           “Stay plugged in to our contact in the coroner’s office,” Damian told her. “We need to know what killed Joseph Fremont. Until we have that, there’s only so much we can do.”

           “So you’re saying all we can do now is wait.”

           “No,” said Damian coolly, turning to Ellen. That blank red mask was starting to bother him, making it impossible to read her. “I’m saying you can look into potential suspects so we can get ahead of the game.”

           She watched him for a moment. “So you do think it’s a murder, though?”

           “I think it’s suspicious that our victim wound up two miles away from campus, in the middle of the woods,” Damian told her. “And I find it unlikely that no one knows any specifics about what occurred. Our job is to apply pressure until the cracks become evident, and then plug the leaks when we find them.”

           Ellen ran her hands down her long braid. “I think that’s a mixed metaphor,” she said.

           It wasn’t, though it admittedly was kind of clumsy. He ignored this comment, turning instead to Abuse. “I’ll find somewhere more secure to use as headquarters. In the meantime, collect your research. Remember to keep it all under secure encryption using the tech I gave you.”

           Nell raised her hand. Damian looked at her, then did a double take, then Ellen reached out and pulled her wrist downwards. “You don’t have to raise your hand,” Ellen told her.

           “Oh,” said Nell. “OK, sorry, but sidenote, are we allowed to use the computers you gave us for like, other things?”

           “They’re yours,” said Damian. “Use them for whatever you need. All of your encrypted files go to a drive that Batman and I can access, but other than that you can do what you want with it.”            “OK, cool,” said Nell. “I was just asking because I use it for homework.”

           Colin threw his arm around Damian’s shoulders, hanging onto his neck. Poking him in the ribs, he told Nell, “Just ask Robin for another separate homework computer, that’s what I did.”

           Though Nell’s eyes lit up, Ellen spoke before she could. Leaning back in her seat, she said smoothly, “I’m sure Robin doesn’t have the time to play sugar daddy to all of us, Abuse.”

           “No,” agreed Damian. “Fortunately Batman plays the part very well for you, doesn’t he, Ember?”            There was a silence so deep they could hear a pin drop. Damian felt belligerent and annoyed, and didn’t immediately regret the comment. He knew the grants and the scholarships and the job offers that had been extended to Ellen Nayar, and he didn’t think she had any right to sound so dismissive of his family’s generosity.

           Though Damian could not Ellen’s gaze behind her mask, she turned her head away from him first, indicative of breaking first.

           When she and Nell left, Ellen did not say a farewell to Robin.

---

NAME: Danielle Little ALIAS: Spoiler DATE OF BIRTH: 29 June 1997 BLOOD TYPE: O+  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Rhonda Holmes Little, Mother (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Batgirl (Formerly), Team Ember EVAL: Promising but untrained. Investigative instincts are excellent, but more practice is necessary. Very young and inexperienced, though a strong devotion to local community and neighborhoods is a good foundation for future efforts. Potentially a place for her in the Batman Inc. hierarchy whether as an official agent or otherwise.

NOTES: |Robin| Not ready for patrol |Batgirl| She’s just as ready for patrol as I was when I first started |Red Robin| Yeah cause that turned out so well |Batman| Notes must be relevant to the file in question or I will suspend editing privileges

---

           As dusk arrived the next night, Bruce sat in front of the computer in the Cave as Damian worked on some complex tech designs at the workstation below the computer hub. There was a comfortable quiet apart from the usual whir of machinery and fluttering wings of the bats in the eaves. All at once, the silence was broken by a gentle beeping notification coming from both the computer and Damian’s phone.

           Not a moment later, Damian was skipping the stairs two at a time, practically sprinting to the locker room area where his uniform was kept. “Oracle,” said Bruce, hitting a button on the panel before him, “get Jim on the line.”            Damian emerged, in full uniform except for his mask though his cap was only half fastened and his boots weren’t laced yet, while Bruce was still on the line with Commissioner Gordon. “I’ll look into it personally,” he was saying. “I’ll be in touch.”

           Bruce closed the line and turned around in his seat to look at Damian, who stood there defiantly. He pointed at Bruce with one accusatory finger, then began, “You promised-”

           Stoically, Bruce replied, “This could be very dangerous, Damian, and it would be irresponsible to let a bunch of inexperienced teenagers deal with something of this magnitude.”

           “You promised,” repeated Damian stubbornly. “You told me this would be our jurisdiction, and that you would allow us freedom to pursue this mission on our own time.”

           “Us?” echoed Bruce mildly. “So as soon as the mission interests you, it becomes us rather than them?”

           Rolling his eyes, Damian headed down to the garage below, where his motorcycle was kept. Raising his voice to be heard, he called, “I’m their leader, so-”

           “Ember’s their leader.”

           Damian stopped on the staircase, then went back up so he could look at his father. “I’m their leader,” he said again, offended.

           Bruce shook his head. “This team is designed to be closer to the ground than we are. You don’t have their experience when it comes to the city itself.”

           “I patrol the city every single night,” Damian protested. “I know it just fine.”

           “That may very well be true, but you still don’t have their urban expertise.”

           “Urb-?” Damian broke off suspiciously, watching his father. Then he leaned against the rail of the stairs slightly and asked, “Is this a race thing?”

           Bruce glanced around at him, an eyebrow raised. “A what thing?”

           “Are you being,” he paused, didn’t know what else to call it, so went with, “…racist?”

           “What are you talking about?”

           “Urban is just one of those dog whistle words that means people of color,” explained Damian; he was taking a sociology class at Princeton, and he’d just read a chapter of a book about this. “And since this team is mostly that, you emphasizing that their street smarts and inner city experience feels almost as if…” he trailed off, feeling suddenly uncertain under his father’s gaze. “I’m just saying,” he said, unwilling to admit his doubt. “You may want to…think about the way you talk about them, is all.”

           Bruce watched his son, surprised. Despite the fact that Damian’s words weren’t exactly flattering, he felt an odd stirring of pride. He nodded. “Alright,” he said. “I will.”

           There was an awkward sort of pause, and then Damian headed once more down the stairs. Though it was just barely dark outside, he took his motorcycle to the hidden entrance to the Bunker, where he did some minor rearrangements and set up what basically amounted to parental controls on the computers. Satisfied, he alerted the entire team that they would be meeting beneath Wayne Tower tonight.

           This time, Jordan and Niloufar were there first. “Ms. Ghorbani,” he said, holding out his hand to the girl in the headscarf, “a pleasure to meet you.”

           Niloufar shook his hand warily. “We’ve met before,” she told him shortly. “One time you and Batman saved a school bus I was in from tipping off a bridge.”

           When in uniform, Damian got comments like that all the time. Though a school bus falling off a bridge was far more memorable than most of the everyday encounters he had with citizens of Gotham, it still didn’t ring a bell. “That sounds like us,” he told her, with a killer smile. She just watched him suspiciously.

           Jordan, who had been using her powers of flight constantly since they manifested, floated near the low ceiling of the Bunker. “I don’t like it in here,” she said. “Feels cramped.”

           “It’s merely temporary, Jabberwock,” Damian informed her, heading to the computer. “It’s not an ideal location for your team, but I needed some place with the technical capabilities to fill you in completely on the status of your mission.”

           “Our mission?” Jordan echoed. “You mean the dead kid from Brentwood?”

           Damian nodded, typing something into the computer. “Joseph Fremont.”

           Niloufar asked, “Is this about the results from the tox report?”

           The file on the computer unopened, Damian stopped and turned around to face her. “What do you know about the tox report?” he asked her.

           “I’ve heard things,” she said shortly.

           He eyed her, then began, “How do you-?” but before he could finish, the doors to the garage opened and Ellen arrived with Nell and Colin.

           “Hey,” said Nell breathlessly, her laptop underneath her arm. “I might have to leave early, I have a lot of homework to do.”

           “That’s fine,” Damian said, looking past Niloufar and Jordan at her. “There’ve been some new developments in the case and I just need to make sure we’re all on the same page about it.”

           “Hey,” said Jordan, floating upside-down, her ponytail hanging down from the back of her head, “I have a question.”

           Suppressing a roll of his eyes, Damian looked at her. “Yes?”

           “This kid OD’d, right?”

           “Yes,” repeated Damian, “and I’m about to get into the specifics of what exactly he-”

           “But like. Why should we care about him?”

           The silence that followed this comment deepened considerably, broken only by the hum and whir of the high tech machinery surrounding them. “Jabberwock,” he said, “if you have to ask that question, then maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

           Before Damian had even finished this sentence, Jordan was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “I mean like, specifically him. There’s a dozen cases of this same thing every day on my block, and no one’s investigating that shit.”

           Damian explained, “This death occurred in your team’s jurisdiction-” but Ellen interrupted him.

           “She has a point,” she said, glancing at Damian. “It does seem a little biased that we suddenly care about an overdose as soon as it happens to a rich white kid. And I have wondered before why Batman decided we don’t get jurisdiction,” she framed it in air quotes, “over our own neighborhoods, especially because Jordan’s right, this kind of thing happens all the time in the city.”

           “OK,” said Damian, trying very hard to exercise patience, “well. When one of your neighbors overdoses on recreationally-developed Joker Venom, then perhaps we can look into that.”

           A frisson of excitement went through the Bunker, eyebrows raising in surprise. “Joker Venom?” echoed Colin, sounding almost delighted. “Joey got offed by the Joker?”

           “No,” said Ellen, a slight frown on her face. When she watched Damian as intently as she was doing now, he could almost tune out the scar, imagine exactly what she might look like without it. “Robin said – recreationally-developed? You think this kid was using Joker Venom to get high?”

           Damian nodded. “It gets worse.”

           Seated at one of the specimen analysis desks, her laptop computer already open, Nell asked, “How could it get worse than the Joker?”

           Damian pulled something up on the computer screen. “A few years ago – back with the previous Batman – there was a case that involved a drug called diaxamene which was reverse-engineered to attack the part of the brain which controls emotion, blunting the ability to feel empathy.”

           “Turn them into sociopaths,” Jordan said, sounding almost impressed.

           “Psychopaths,” Damian corrected. “But, yes. Essentially.”

           “Diaxamene,” echoed Niloufar, her gaze far away behind her thick glasses. “That sounds familiar. Didn’t it have something to do with a baby formula recall?”

           Clearly surprised that Niloufar knew this, Damian stopped short and looked around at her. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “The perp claimed to have dosed baby formula, though no evidence could confirm this. There was a recall just in case, though, which led to a shortage.”

           “Yeah, I remember,” said Niloufar, nodding. At Damian’s curious look, she finally added, “My younger brother was a baby at the time. I remember formula got really expensive.”

           Without replying to this, Damian nodded, then looked at her for a moment longer.

           Then he returned to the computer screen. “It looks like small amounts of Joker Venom were added to the reverse-engineered diaxamene. Because Joker Venom produces effects similar to psychopathy before resulting in death, diluting it with the diaxamene can reproduce the same feeling while decreasing its lethality.”

           “He still died, though,” Nell pointed out.

           Damian nodded. “It’s called an overdose for a reason, Spoiler.”

           “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

           “The modified diaxamene is a pharmaceutical, though,” said Niloufar, considering this. “It’s supposed to function long-term, not for a temporary high.”

           “Exactly,” said Damian. “For a young person like Joseph Fremont, the mild Joker Venom would have a slight narcotic effect while the diaxamene, if he even knew it was part of the drug, would be – nothing more than a placebo. At first.”

           Ellen nodded. “So what his death tells us,” she began, “is that this drug is on the market. That people are using it, and the more they use it, the more psychopathic they become.”

           “Yes,” said Damian, feeling an odd rush of pride at how quickly the team put this together. “That’s the real problem here. Someone’s pulling the same stunt as the baby formula plan, but aging up their demographic.”

           “Why not cut it with coke?” asked Jordan, seriously. “Or dope or something?”

           “’Cause it’s Joker Venom,” Ellen said, looking over at her as if this were obvious. “It has sex appeal.”

           Nell giggled, and Colin asked, “What about the Joker says sex appeal to you?”

           “Ember’s right,” said Damian, shutting the others up. “How many of you have seen firsthand some result of the Joker’s crimes?”

           Everyone except for Niloufar raised their hand without hesitation, but Niloufar eventually followed suit, making a noncommittal kinda sorta gesture with her hand.

           “Joseph Fremont never lived in the city,” Damian continued. “If you live in the wealthy suburbs your whole life, the Joker is something of a myth, and as a result anything with some proximity to him has a certain thrill to it – like forbidden fruit. It’s the perfect new drug to introduce to a privileged private school like Brentwood.”

           “Plus rich white boys are already a little psychopathic,” Jordan added.

           Damian decided to give her that one. “And that.”

           Despite this, Ellen didn’t seem fully satisfied. “But no one bothers to do a full tox report on a bum who OD’d in an alley in Midtown,” she pointed out. “This drug could be way more rampant than we thought.”

           Considering this, Damian answered, “True, but we haven’t seen the resultant wave of crime or violence you’d expect from that.”            “That’s assuming the drug has been out there for long enough. And Gotham streets are always full of crime and violence. How would you be able to tell the difference?”            He shook his head. “There’s no difference on patrol.”

           “You haven’t been on patrol all that often lately, though,” Colin said fairly, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “You’ve been with your other team a lot.”

           Inwardly, Damian cursed Colin’s lack of filter. Ellen’s eyebrow cocked, but it was Nell who asked, “What other team?”

           Jordan grinned at him. “Are you cheating on us, Robin?”

           “It’s the Teen Titans,” he said stoically. “Yes, I am frequently away with them. But Batman and Oracle keep a careful record of nightly criminal activity, which has not shown any major spikes lately.”

           “What’s Superboy like?” asked Jordan, legs crossed, sitting in air. “Just like a mini Superman?”

           Chris was in fact very dissimilar to his adoptive father, so Damian replied, with a hint of annoyance, “No, actually. Now if we can get back to business-”

           “What about Arsenal?” asked Nell, from her computer. “She seems cool.”

           With a knowing grin, Colin added, “Not as cool as Impulse, huh, Robin?”            Damian shot him a dirty look. “Let’s try to focus, shall we?”

           “Ohh,” said Nell, laughing. “Wait, Robin, is she your girlfriend?”

           For fuck’s sake. As he opened his mouth to shut this down for good, Ellen mercifully came to his rescue. “Come on,” she said, sounding sympathetic. “Don’t tease him, Spoiler, that’s mean.”

           Which, naturally, set his blood boiling again. “Ember, please,” he told her. “It’s fine. Now. Back to the case?”

           She gave him a wry, enigmatic smile, but nodded all the same, gesturing for him to continue.

           His face felt warm, and he felt stupid for allowing himself to feel even the slightest bit self-conscious. “Some excellent thinking happened tonight, team, so thank you for that. Now that we all know where we stand, it’s time to get serious about this case.”

           Doubtfully, Colin asked, “We weren’t serious until just now?”

           “I mean we have a lead,” said Damian quickly. “That’s all. Niloufar, Jabberwock, I want you two looking into other recent overdose cases throughout the city, see if we’re missing something.”

           “Seraph,” said Niloufar.

           Damian blinked. “I’m sorry?”

           “Seraph,” repeated Niloufar. “That’s my codename. I mean, it was Hafaza, but then we figured that was a little harder for people to remember and the key to a good codename is its memorability, right? Like, branding.” She paused, a little awkward. “So. Seraph.”

           He watched her for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Seraph, then. Usually the codename is accompanied by a uniform, though.”

           Apologetically, she admitted, “I’m probably not…super useful in the field.” At Damian’s expressions, she explained, “I failed P.E. last year.”

           Damian only had the vaguest notion what P.E. was, but he waved it aside. “Fine,” he said. “If you do need a uniform, Batman and I can help. Abuse,” he said, turning to Colin. “Have you dug up anything else at Brentwood?”

           Colin shook his head. “Not really? I think Joey’s roommate was clean, actually. He wasn’t dealing anything hard, just weed. I lit up with him the other day and he told me everything. He’s kind of fucked up over it actually, it’s kind of sad.”

           “Great,” said Damian. “Generally I would request that you try to avoid partaking in illicit substances, but otherwise, sure.”

           “Robin,” said Jordan, with a grin. “C’mon. It’s just weed.”

           “OK,” said Damian, ignoring this. “Keep pushing, Abuse. If you need backup, call me.”

           “Or me,” offered Niloufar. When Damian glanced at her, she added, “I go to Brentwood too. So I can help with that.”

           This was a relief; Colin was competent enough in the field, but his investigative work was still spotty. Damian had been considering an undercover mission in Brentwood himself to get the intel they needed, but if Niloufar also attended the school then she might be able to bolster Colin’s mission. “Perfect,” he said. “Seraph, you get double duty – work with both Jabberwock and Abuse.”

           Niloufar practically glowed at the extra responsibility.

           “Ember, Spoiler, you’re going to be investigating the Joker connection,” he continued. “Ember, I understand you have some familiarity with Arkham? This is your chance to demonstrate that. Meanwhile, I’ll-”

           Just then, he realized Nell’s hand was up in the air again.

           “Spoiler,” he said tiredly. “I’ve told you this a dozen times, you don’t need to raise your hand to ask permission to speak.”            “Oh,” she said, lowering her arm. “Sorry! I didn’t want to interrupt.”

           “It’s fine,” Damian told her, waving this away. “What is it?”

           “Would it be possible for me to sit this one out? I’m failing geometry.”

           Damian blinked at her. “You’re failing what?” he asked.

           “Geometry,” she repeated. “Tenth grade math.”

           Damian, who had mastered geometry when he was seven, felt suddenly and abruptly out of his depth. “Oh,” he said. “Yes, of course. That’s fine. All of you, never hesitate to tell me if you feel like you’re taking on too much. It’s fine. Civilian responsibilities come first.”

           There was an awkward sort of pause.

           Then he restarted, “Ember, I suppose that means I’ll be with you. We’ll also look at the previous case regarding diaxamene, but I’ll need a few days to round up my resources on that. I’ll contact you when I’m ready.”

           “Fine,” said Ellen. “Anything else you need to update us on?”

           Thoughtfully, Damian looked back at the screen. “No, I don’t think so. We’re dealing with a high tech trafficking ring by the docks again so if any of you find any unfamiliar weaponry or anything let me or Oracle know. Oh,” he said, turning around to face them again. “And I suppose I should warn you about something.”

           They all leaned in a little, as if intrigued by the hint of danger.

           Almost regretfully, Damian informed them all, “Batman is likely going to try and edge in on this case. He takes everything involving the Joker very personally, so I can almost guarantee he’ll try to take over. At the very least he’ll try to insert himself in an observational role.”

           “That’s not so bad,” countered Jordan. “Batman’s welcome to observationally roll me whenever he likes.” Colin laughed, obviously in agreement.

           Damian tried to keep his expression level. “My point is,” he restarted, “this is your mission and you all can take care of it perfectly well without his help. Don’t let him take this one from you.” He paused, looking around at them. “So. We’re all clear?”

           “Super clear,” agreed Colin. “I’m gonna head back to school and get a jump on this.”

           “Hold on,” said Niloufar, her gaze swiveling around towards him. “That’s not fair, I don’t board at school so I won’t be able to help out until tomorrow.”

           “Um, I just said get a jump on it,” Colin pointed out. “I didn’t say I’d solve absolutely everything so you don’t have anything to do.”

           “Abuse is right,” added Damian. “He can probably get a lot more done after hours than you can during classroom time. I’m sure he’ll fill you in on any developments in the morning.”

           Niloufar shot a glare towards Colin, but he shrugged and relented. “Yeah, for sure.”

           “We’ll get started, then,” said Jordan. “If we find anything out we’ll ping you or share it on the vigilante cloud or whatever.”

           “Thank you,” said Damian, as Jordan and Niloufar began to leave. “Good luck.”

           After them Colin headed out to return to Brentwood and Ellen, the only one of the team cleared for patrol on her own, also took off. Damian went over to where Nell still worked on her laptop. “If you need a tutor,” he said, peering over her shoulder, “I’m happy to help.”

           “You kind of already are,” she told him distractedly, focused on her work.

           He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

           Glancing at him, she explained, “I’m going to the Neon Knights center in my neighborhood for tutoring, so it’s cool. I guess I meant your family’s already helping out.”

           Damian stared at her for a moment. Though he knew rationally that the entire team had enough information at this point to deduce Batman’s identity and therefore his own, it was still a new and unfamiliar feeling, like danger. It set him on edge, despite the fact that they never would have let Nell or the others into the game in the first place if they didn’t trust them enough to be discreet.

           “Sure,” he said, straightening up. “Though I shouldn’t have to remind you not to talk like that when we’re in uniform.”

           This seemed to confuse her, as she finally took pause to glance up at him. “But…nobody’s here.”            “I know, but it’s a matter of developing a habit. If the mask is on,” he pointed to his face, “then I’m Robin. Only Robin. Do you understand me?”

           She nodded. “I got you.”

           “Good.” He hesitated, then added, “If you’d like you can stay here to do your work. I can program everything to shut down and lock up after you leave.”            This too drew her gaze away from the computer. She looked at Damian with big eyes, surprised and a little touched. “Wow,” she said. “For real? That would be super great.”

           “OK.” He shrugged, feeling a slight twinge of self-consciousness he normally only felt around Iris. He tried to push that out of his mind. “It’s no problem. And again, let me know if you need help.”

           “Yeah,” she said, beaming at him. “I will.”

---

NAME: Jordan Aguilar Joyce ALIAS: Wonder Girl / Jabberwock DATE OF BIRTH: 17 March 1995 BLOOD TYPE: B+ (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Maya Aguilar, Sister (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Wonder Woman, Team Ember EVAL: Flight, augmented senses and strength from Themysciran heritage. Will follow-up with Diana. Deeply resistant to authority, but loyal to team. Need to develop discipline before regular patrol is instated.

NOTES: |Robin| Wonder Girl should not be listed as an alias nor WW under affiliation. Jordan has made it clear where she stands where it comes to the Amazons |Black Bat| Shes nice |Red Hood| How come cass doesnt get the Relevent to File in question spiel |Red Robin| Cause shes the favorite |Black Bat| :)

---

           “So Abuse and Seraph managed to get a lead on the Brentwood supplier – turns out a few of the older boys had been recruited by someone called the Dealer.”

           “Not very creative,” replied Ellen through her commlink, peering down at the city from the corner of a tall roof.

           “Yes,” answered Damian, “particularly because we dealt with someone using that name a few years ago, around the same time as the diaxamene case. In fact, the man who reverse-engineered the diaxamene actually bought outdated Joker Venom from the Dealer.”

           “Oh,” said Ellen, a little taken aback. “Then – that should sort of blow the case open, right? It’s the same guy.”

           “Impossible,” said Damian grimly. “The man in question has been locked up in a mental facility for years.”

           “In Arkham?”

           “No. I believe it’s somewhere in Chicago, far away from here. Besides, the version of the Joker Venom found in this new drug isn’t old or decayed at all, it’s very new, something we haven’t quite seen before, impossible to build up a resistance to. Enough of it would probably poison even the Joker himself.”

           “If our guy can reverse-engineer a prescription drug, I’m sure he could figure out how to update Joker Venom. And if he’s not at Arkham why are we even going there in the first place?”

           “Because,” Damian answered shortly, “sometimes you have to play with vermin to sniff out a rat.”            This was cryptic and annoying, and beneath her mask Ellen rolled her eyes. “OK. I can meet you there in an hour if-”

           “No need,” he said, just as the sleek and quiet hum of an energy-efficient stealth motorcycle came buzzing down the alley beneath the building on which Ellen stood. Robin stopped the bike, got off, and waved at her.

           She let out a sigh, then made her way down on the fire escape, jumping the last few feet. “How did you know where I was?” she asked, as he got back onto the motorcycle.

           “The tracer Batman put in your suit,” he answered; when she gave him a look, refusing to get on the bike with him, he grinned a little and added, “I’m kidding. But only a little. When you’re on a direct line, Oracle can pinpoint your location. If you toggled a private line or turned off your commlink, we’d lose you.”

           “Wouldn’t want that,” muttered Ellen, finally relenting and climbing onto the back of the motorcycle, behind him. She sat further back than was entirely necessary.

           They went most of the way in relative silence. They’d worked enough together – Damian had spent enough time training with her – that it wasn’t particularly awkward, but there was an odd degree of discomfort that neither of them were used to. When they made it to Arkham, stowing the bike in the woods behind it, Damian asked, “That reminds me, when are you going to get a motorbike of your own? You can’t rely on rides from Spoiler and Abuse and me forever.”

           “I don’t have my license,” she explained. She wanted to add, And I can’t afford one, but she knew that he would offer and insist and that would be unfortunate.

           “Oh,” said Damian, as if this hadn’t occurred to him. “Well. You don’t really need one, in our line of work.”            “Thanks,” she said, though her smile was not visible beneath her mask. “But I’m already toeing the line as is. I’d prefer to break as few laws as possible.”

           “She says,” he added, grinning slightly as they headed towards Gotham, “as we break into a private mental facility in order to interrogate a patient.”

           “He’s a criminal,” she replied smoothly. “Not a patient.”

           Damian shrugged. “They all are.”

           This wasn’t true, and Ellen wanted to fight him on it, but this wasn’t the time or the place. With the help of Robin’s gadgets and expertise, making it into Arkham was easier than it had ever been for Ellen – he did it with such nonchalance and finesse that it seemed positively casual for him. That sort of annoyed her.

           They made it to the Wayne Ward, which is where the most dangerous criminals were held, cut off from the rest of the world by thick steel doors. Somewhere in one of the cages, someone sang a children’s song. “Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hopping through the forest…”

           Another inmate moaned, “Shut the fuck up.”

           Damian brought her to an unmarked cell that looked no different from any of the others, and put his hand on the door, behind which the Joker still sang. “Scooping up the field mice and boppin’ them on the head…”

           Quietly, he asked, “You ready?”            She nodded, but didn’t speak. Looking away from her, he punched a series of numbers into the keypad by the door, and it slid open.

           He gestured for her to enter, and she did. He followed behind her, and the steel door clanged behind them.

           A pale man in an Arkham uniform sat cross-legged facing the wall across from them. “Down came the good fairy, and she said…”

           “Joker,” said Damian.

           The Joker’s head lolled back on his shoulders, his dirty green hair hanging down from his scalp. He did not look around.

           “Ah,” he began, his voice sickly sweet. “It’s my second-favorite little birdie. You’d be third favorite,” he said, almost reasonably, “but the dead one came back, and that’s no fun.”

           “Joker,” repeated Damian. “What do you know about a new version of your Venom?”

           Though he still did not turn around, the Joker made an unpleasant sound in the back of his throat, as if displeased. “None of that faker stuff. I’m no street corner dealer, little Robbie! I only have big plans, big shows, big-” he threw out both arms theatrically; in his left, he held a crowbar stained with blood, “-drama.”

           Without hesitating, Damian moved forward and grabbed hold of the crowbar, kicking in the Joker’s elbow as he did so. As Damian inspected it, the Joker started to laugh, then collapsed and rolled around on the floor so he was facing the door.

           “Where’d you get this?” asked Damian stoically, raising the crowbar.

           “Beirut,” answered the Joker.

           Damian shook the crowbar. “Whose blood is this?”

           “Yours,” answered the Joker. “Robin’s. Doesn’t matter which one, best not to get attached,” he looked past Damian, as if addressed Ellen directly, “they’re just gonna break your heart and move on. They always do.”

           Uncertainly, Ellen glanced at Damian, who only stared at the Joker.

           He raised the crowbar, and hit the Joker across the face with it. Again, the Joker laughed. “What do you mean that fake stuff?” asked Damian. “So you know someone’s dealing.”

           “Everyone’s always dealing,” Joker answered, with a shrug. “You know, dealing, coping, the human condition.”            “How do you know about the drugs?”

           The Joker lunged suddenly, throwing himself at Damian, grabbing hold of the crowbar tightly. Ellen instinctively moved to help, but Damian dodged, gripping the crowbar tightly and wrenching him away so that the Joker lost his balance and fell, half laying on the ground, still clutching the crowbar. He laughed and laughed.

           “The drugs?” he screeched, ecstatic. “You mean the Xanax? Oh, no, you mean the painkillers? Or are you talking about the meth, because that was what really made her spiral, huh? Just took a little while to get there, step by prescription step, and then all of the sudden bam!” His laughter turned higher, more frantic. He held up one hand in the gesture of a gun and pointed it right at Ellen’s face. “Right in the kisser!”

           Horrified, Ellen stared at him, frozen. It took Damian a moment to realize what was going on, and then he kicked the Joker square in the chest, sending him reeling back to the floor. “I miss Divya!” he called, as Damian, turned around returned to the door, taking Ellen’s wrist in his hand as he did so. “She was so much fun! Good stories! She missed you bad you know, she missed her beautiful son, her beautiful little-”

           A name came out of Joker’s mouth that Damian didn’t know, but he could guess what it was. “Come on,” he murmured to Ellen, who said nothing, her face obscured and made unreadable by her mask. As the Joker laughed and laughed and laughed, Damian led Ellen out of the Joker’s cell, ensured the door was closed tight, and they retreated out of Arkham. After a while Ellen pulled her hand away from Damian’s. He said nothing until they were outside.

           In the darkness, he turned to her heavily.

           “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought you in there.”

           “No,” said Ellen, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I had to meet him eventually.”

           “I don’t know how he knew that about you.”

           “It’s fine,” repeated Ellen, with a little more urgency. She tried to smile at him from underneath the mask, but obviously he couldn’t see it.

           Damian watched her cautiously for a moment longer, then suddenly jerked his head around, obviously hearing something at his commlink. Then his gaze lengthened past Ellen, behind her, and under his breath he muttered, “For fuck’s sake-”

           Despite the fact that Batman, from behind Ellen, should not have been able to hear this, he growled, “Language, Robin,” and Damian resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

           Ellen turned around uncertainly; she had only very infrequently been in the presence of both Batman and Robin, and didn’t really have the hang of their dynamic yet.

           Batman stood impassively before them both, watching them. “Are you here to talk to the Joker?” he asked, as if reserving judgment.

           “We already did,” Damian told him. “He didn’t have anything useful to say.”

           Thinking this was underselling the encounter a little, Ellen added, “He seemed to know a version of his Venom was being used on the streets,” Damian gave her an urgent look, like betrayal, so she continued, “but Robin’s right. He didn’t sound like he was involved in or even really approved of its production.”

           Batman gestured at the crowbar in Damian’s hand. “What’s that?”

           “A crowbar,” answered Damian.

           Batman only watched him.

           Damian held it up. “A man known as the Dealer tried to auction off an item just like this a few years ago,” he said, almost defiantly. “Nightwing brought it home, but he never entered it into evidence. He just got rid of it.”

           “Why?” asked Batman.

           “So you wouldn’t find out,” said Damian, “for obvious reasons.”

           Ellen wasn’t sure what that obvious reason was, but she just glanced in between Robin and Batman, sensing the tension there.

           Stubbornly, Damian continued, “The Joker was a red herring last time and I believe it’s the same thing this time around. We should be focusing our efforts elsewhere.”

           “Hn.” Batman headed past them, towards Arkham. “I’ll talk to the Joker.”

           As Batman passed, Robin reached out and physically took hold of his arm. “No,” he said. “You won’t.”

           Batman twisted around to look back at Damian, and there was a moment of deadly, pin-drop silence.

           “It’s my case,” insisted Damian.

           Batman glanced up at Ellen. “It’s her case.”

           Beneath her mask, Ellen’s eyebrows shot up. Reluctantly, Damian let go of Batman and turned to her. “Fine,” he said. “Ember. What do you think? Do you want a second opinion on the Joker, or do you think we should be able to proceed on our own from here?”

           There was no expression on Batman’s face, but then again Ellen didn’t think there was ever really any discernible expression on Batman’s face. Once more she glanced in between Batman and Robin, before finally admitting, “I…think we should be OK.” To Batman, she said, “I’ve studied your case files and I don’t really think this fits the Joker’s M.O. Right now selling drugs to rich kids sounds a lot more like this Dealer character, or maybe, um, what’s his face, that guy who poisoned the diaxamene.”

           Damian winced slightly when she said this and she suddenly feared she’d said too much; maybe there was something he’d been trying to keep from Batman. Though she didn’t really think that was all that smart – Robin’s pride be damned, this was about solving the case, not who got the glory of figuring it out.

           Batman watched her for a moment, then nodded. “I expect a mission report,” he said.

           “Of course,” responded Damian sourly.

           Without looking around, Batman added, “I meant from Ember.”

           Damian looked almost ready to blow a gasket, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded. Batman lingered for a moment longer, then swept away.

           There was an awkward sort of pause. Damian turned and headed back to where the motorcycle was stowed in the woods. “C’mon,” he said.

           She followed him, secretly a little pleased at this indication of Batman’s trust but also not wanting to push Damian at all. It was a weird place to be, staying quiet for fear of hurting Robin’s feelings – but then again, he was only a kid, at least a couple years younger than her. There was no need to be cruel.

           A minute or so after he revved the bike and they started heading back towards the city, he asked, “Are you hungry?”            His words came through clearly on her commlink, and yet she was still certain she had misheard. “Um. Sure?”

           “I know a place,” he continued, taking a sharp left. “Up by Amusement Mile.”

           Amusement Mile meant carnival food of some sort probably, which was fine by Ellen. Late at night as it was, the boardwalk was still all lit up neon, but Damian avoided that, heading instead for the less touristy area. There was a little shop – not much more than a booth – where he ordered falafel. Ellen got a kabob. The woman working there spoke warmly with Damian in a language Ellen didn’t know, but eventually she picked up that the woman was refusing to accept payment when Damian tried to pass it over the counter to her. He just grinned and stuffed a twenty dollar bill into the tip jar, and the woman laughed.

           They sat together on the rail of the pier, which was already closed for the night. She lifted her mask to eat, then took it off completely, leaving only a domino mask around her eyes.

           “Hey,” she said, nudging him a little. “Are you OK?”

           He looked around at her, confused. “What? Why?”

           “Your dad was kind of harsh on you. He didn’t really need to be, I know you have more experience at this than I do.”            For a moment he said nothing, just watching her. Then he looked back down at his falafel wrap. “You shouldn’t refer to him as my father when we’re in the field,” he said. “Things like that are supposed to stay in a civilian context only.”

           “Mmm, be careful about that. Everybody knows Robin is either Batman’s son or something a whole lot less wholesome, so I really think you should take what you can get.”

           She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, only looked at his wrap unhappily.

           When he didn’t reply, she too looked down at her food, picking at it. She hadn’t been that hungry, but would’ve felt stupid turning down free food.

           Softly, she asked, “How do you think he knew all that about me?”

           Damian glanced at her. “Who?” he asked. “The Joker?” She nodded, and he considered this for a moment. “He knows everything about everyone. Don’t take it personally. He knows how to get under everyone’s skin, we’ve all been there.”

           “He knew my…” she trailed off. “He knew my mother’s name.”            He gave a shrug. “She was in Arkham, right?”

           “Yeah, but – not in the Wayne Ward. Not with him.”

           “No?” asked Damian, with mild interest. “What was she in for, then?”

           Glowering, Ellen muttered, “As if Batman doesn’t have a file with all the sordid details.”

           “He doesn’t,” answered Damian. “Or at least not one I have access to.”

           For a while, so long that Damian didn’t think she was going to answer, Ellen said nothing. Then, her eyes fixed out across the black water of the ocean, waves lit by moonlight, she said, “She…was transferred. For the Wayne Enterprises drug rehabilitation program.”

           “Ah,” said Damian, nodding. “Yes. I understand that whole project was – a massive PR disaster.”

           “You could call it that,” Ellen agreed. “It’s what happens when rich people throw money at problems and expect results. At any cost.”

           “We didn’t know it was going to go as badly as it did.”

           “I know.”

           “Arkham’s always been a mess. We really did want to reform it into something good. Something productive.”

           “I mean, it was productive,” said Ellen, her voice sharp. “Lobotomizing addicts did help them kick the habit, it just also had the unfortunate side effect of, well, I mean, lobotomizing them.”

           There was a short silence. Damian asked, “Is she alright?”

           “Kind of,” answered Ellen shortly. “She’ll be in assisted living for the rest of her life.”

           “I’m sorry.”

           “It’s fine. Probably not even your fault. She OD’d a couple times before, so she wasn’t in great shape to begin with.”

           “This can’t be an easy case for you.”

           “Why?” she asked, looking at him. “Because it has to do with drugs?”            He returned her gaze, then gave a little shrug.

           “If I couldn’t handle an overdose now and then, Batman wouldn’t have given me the mask.”

           “Why did he?”

           Ellen leaned forward slightly, setting aside her food and holding the blank scarlet mask in her hands. She shook her head. “When you figure that out,” she said wryly, glancing at him, “let me know?”

           When they finished their food and headed back to Damian’s motorcycle, Ellen nudged him again. “Hey,” she said. “Thanks for not asking.”

           He didn’t know what she meant. “Not asking what?”

           She gestured across her face, at the diagonal scar there. “If this was what she was in for.”

           Damian had of course assumed this, but he had been pointedly trying to ignore the scar at all costs since he met Ellen, so he’d avoided saying it outright. For some reason the scar across her face reminded him of his own hidden scar down the length of his back. How he got that was a sensitive story, and he didn’t imagine Ellen’s was any less sensitive.

           He took her back into the city, and they parted ways for patrol.

---

NAME: Ellen Nayar ALIAS: Ember DATE OF BIRTH: 26 August 1993 BLOOD TYPE: A+  (Relevant Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Kiran Kaur Nayar, Grandmother AFFILIATIONS:  Green Arrow II (Former), Team Ember EVAL: Mastery of basic defensive techniques at a young age provides a solid foundation for future training. Has a tendency to fall back on defense when cornered, relying on tools to compensate. Capable of much more but struggling to balance training as well as other civilian commitments; requires more investment both in and out of uniform. Significant pain tolerance. Easily identifiable due to the scar and also hair/body type, any uniform designs must compensate.

Strong field skills, hand-to-hand improving and introduction of nonlethal weapons going well. An apparent preference for the staff though she lacks martial arts training in that area. Sharp mind and eye for puzzles. Potential for leadership role assuming increased confidence in her abilities. Imperative to firm up her loyalties or risk alienation. Family history of addiction.

NOTES: |Robin| Hand to hand is fine but she needs to work on weapons and tech. Uniform needs an upgrade, face mask restricts breathing |Red Hood| She smokes

---

           “I have good news,” said Oracle, on the screen, “and bad news.”

           “Good news first,” said Nell, at the same time Damian said, “What’s the bad news?”

           They looked at each other, and then Damian gestured for Nell to continue. She beamed at him and asked, “Good news?”

           “We got a lead on our guy,” said Oracle, a big globular green head taking up the screen in lieu of her real face. “The one who reverse-engineered the diaxamene.”

           Ellen sat up a little straighter, alert. “I thought he was in some mental facility somewhere.”

           “Yeah,” continued Oracle. “That’s the bad news. I, uh – had a friend in Chicago drop by to see him.”

           “Oh?” interrupted Damian, with a tone that sounded unlike him. It was half intrigued, half snide. “Interesting. What kind of friend?”

           “Just a friend,” she said snippily.

           Damian just made a face, but didn’t protest. Ellen glanced at him, wondering what that was about. “What’d he have to say?”

           “That’s just it,” Oracle told them. “It wasn’t our guy, just some decoy checked in under his name.”

           “A decoy?” asked Niloufar, a frown on her face. “For how long?”

           “Presumably since he checked in,” said Oracle darkly. “Which means James has been out this entire time, no doubt plotting his next step for years.”

           At the name, Damian lifted his head slightly, as if surprised she would use it. He leaned against the wall of the Bunker, a little away from the others, his arms crossed over his chest. “James?” asked Colin. “Is that his name?”

           “Yeah,” sighed Oracle. “OK, confession time, you guys.”            The green icon which represented Oracle disappeared from the screen, replaced with blackness and then suddenly a crystal clear image, as if a window to another room. An older woman with ginger hair and glasses on sat before them, computer glare lighting her up.

           She waved at them. “Some of you have met me,” she said, “but I guess it’s time to make this official. My name’s Barbara, but I’m still O in the field, OK?”

           Nell and Niloufar looked a little starstruck; even Colin seemed impressed. “OK,” said Jordan, glancing with what may have been a tinge of jealousy over at Niloufar. “What does that have to do with our case?”

           With a look that was tight and worried, almost apologetic, Babs continued, “The guy we’re looking for – his name is James Gordon, Jr. His dad is Commissioner Jim Gordon of the GCPD.”

           Everyone’s eyebrows raised in surprise, except for Damian. He watched as Jordan asked, “Gordon? The cop?”

           “Commissioner,” Damian corrected, echoing Babs.

           “Didn’t he retire?” asked Ellen, glancing around at Damian, who shook his head.

           “He was on leave a few years ago, that’s all.”

           “Yeah,” continued Barbara, nodding. “He took some time off after what happened with James the first time. I mean,” she paused, adding, “first is relative, but – anyway. Here’s where it gets personal. Jim Gordon is my dad.”

           In a little bit of awe, Nell asked, “So this guy is your brother?”

           Making a face, Babs said, “Kind of.”

           “Kind of?” echoed Jordan derisively. “How can it be kind of-?”

           Abruptly, Damian noticed Niloufar; she kept glancing in between him and the screen suspiciously, as if she was just putting something together. “What?” he barked at her.

           Again, her gaze flickered in between him and Barbara. “You’re Robin,” she said, then pointed at the screen, “she’s Oracle. Aren’t you two…?” she trailed off. “Does that mean Commission Gordon is your…dad…too?”

           Damian just stared at her for a moment, arms still crossed over his chest. Then he pointed at the screen, and asked doubtfully, “Do I look like I’m related to her?”

           “You could have different moms,” offered Nell helpfully.

           Rolling her eyes, Jordan said, “Come on, Nilou, everybody knows Robin’s dad is-”

           Both Damian and Babs said, “Jabberwock,” and even Ellen added a scolding, “Jordan.”

           At these reprimands, she threw her hands up in surrender. “Nevermind.”

           “OK, so,” said Nell, turning back to the computer screen. “If we’re pretty sure it’s this James guy, then we at least know where to start, right? When was the last time time he was in Gotham, and did he have any favorite haunts? We can start there.”

           A little taken aback by Nell’s sudden professionalism, Damian snapped his gaze away from her and back to Babs. “Spoiler is right,” he said. “We’ll dig into all the leads we have on James Gordon Jr.”

           “This is the guy who poisoned the baby formula, right?” asked Ellen doubtfully, glancing around at the group of them. Returning her gaze to Babs on the screen, she added, “Of course you know more about him than I do, Oracle, but somehow that kind of crazy complicated scheme just doesn’t seem to fit the M.O. here. Why would he downgrade to selling to rich kids?”

           “Actually,” piped up Niloufar, “we went through a couple overdose cases in the city over the past few months and came up with three positive reports for the same Joker Venom-diaxamene hybrid that was found in Joseph Fremont’s body.”

           “We?” echoed Damian sharply, watching her.

           Instead of shrinking under his gaze, as Damian had expected, Niloufar turned to look directly at him, straightening up slightly. “Me and Jor- Jabberwock.”

           Damian watched her for a moment, then his eyes flickered over to Jordan, who nodded.

           “So it’s not just Brentwood,” said Ellen.

           “But it’s still a valid point,” said Babs, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “James is more psychological than that. I don’t really see him getting off on handing out drugs like some kind of common pusher.”

           “You think he’s working with someone,” said Damian.

           It was Colin who spoke up then, from where he was leaning against one of the specimen analysis tables. “The Dealer,” he said earnestly. They all paused and looked around at him, and he returned their gazes, nodding slightly. “It’s gotta be this Dealer guy,” he continued, “the one who’s been selling to the older kids at Brentwood? That’s his partner.”

           Babs considered this, twisting her lips thoughtfully. “That would make sense,” she admitted. “James can’t exactly hang around the schoolyard, but he could manipulate someone younger into working for him. He manufactures, the Dealer distributes.”

           “Then that makes things a lot easier,” said Nell. “If this Dealer guy’s younger, then he’s more inexperienced, which means he’s more likely to slip up.”

           “Exactly,” said Babs, nodding. “I think the important part now is to split up-”

           Behind everyone, Damian cleared his throat loudly.

           When the others looked around, he seemed a little apologetic. But on the screen, Babs hesitated for a moment before letting out a short sigh. “It’s your team’s case,” she admitted. “This is really important, you guys. Batman’s really taking a leap of faith by trusting you with this one.”

           “They’ve earned it,” said Damian, in protest.

           “Yeah, but.” Babs shrugged, her empty hands turned upwards. “This is Batman we’re talking about. It took him about ten years to even start trusting me.”

           “Well,” said Jordan shortly, shooting a slightly too-friendly grin up at Babs, “all that means is that Batman’s one stupid motherfucker.”            “OK,” said Damian loudly, moving forwardly to the computer. “Thank you, Oracle. Send anything you’ve got our way, we’ll get ahead on this.”

           Before she said anything else, something else seemed to occur to Oracle, and she said, “Oh, one more thing. Which one of you keeps saving your math homework to the encrypted file database?”

           There was a beat of pause as Damian turned to glance around at his team. Nell was staring up at the screen with her mouth in a little ‘o’ shape; Ellen nudged her. “That – might be me,” she squeaked, obviously humiliated. “I’m sorry! Robin said we could use the computers he gave us for homework!”

           Damian tried not to roll his eyes as Babs explained, “You absolutely can, but you don’t need to put it in the encrypted file drive. Just leave it on your desktop or something so it doesn’t get uploaded to our databases.”

           Mortified, Nell nodded. “Sorry,” she said, again.

           “It’s fine,” Babs told her. “Anyway, I’m here if you guys need anything. Keep me updated.”

           “We will,” promised Damian, and then the screen before them went blank. In the white glow of the Bunker, he turned around to face them all. “Jabberwock, Abuse, Spoiler,” he began, with no hesitation, “you three need to fan out, comb the city for James Gordon Jr. He’s got to be hiding somewhere. Take a look at the information Oracle sent, and then head out. This is our top priority for the time being. Ember,” he added, turning to her, “you’re with me.”

           Snidely, Jordan muttered, “Wow, what a surprise.”

           Glancing at her then back at Ember, he explained, “We need to figure out who this Dealer person is. If he’s dealing in Gotham, then it can’t hurt to check in with Red Hood.”

           Already, Ellen was shaking her head. “Hood doesn’t let his people deal to kids,” she told Damian. “If the Dealer’s been selling to Brentwood students-”

           “Based on Seraph’s intel, he’s been dealing on the streets as well. Anyway, I’m not saying Red Hood will know who the Dealer is, just that he may be able to point us in the direction of any suspicious activity lately.”

           Ellen considered this, then nodded. “Is he in town?”

           Damian nodded. Earlier that week the entire family had gathered to celebrate the final night of Hanukkah; Bruce wasn’t particularly religious, but as he grew older he started to take every opportunity he could to gather everyone under one roof. This had been the first Hanukkah celebration at the Manor Jason had attended since before his death. He had spent most of the night messing around with Damian and Cass, more or less refusing to talk to Bruce directly. All things considered, it went well.

           Anyway, Damian knew that Jason was still in Gotham because he’d been in a group chat with him, Cass, and Stephanie since. Steph, offended that she hadn’t been invited, had been alternatively demanding all the details and simultaneously assuring them she wouldn’t even have gone anyway.

           Instructing the others to review Oracle’s information then spread out across the city, he made contact with Jason before riding out into the dark streets with Ellen on his motorcycle behind him. “Hey,” she said, her commlink transmitting her voice clearly into Damian’s ear despite the rushing wind, “what’s your deal with Red Hood?”            He didn’t answer right away. “What do you mean?”

           “He’s, like. One of you guys, right?”

           “Oh,” said Damian, taking a sharp right turn that nearly scraped the side of their legs against the street. He had thought she was speaking emotionally, as if she could detect faint strains of annoyance he thought he’d gotten past. But Ellen knew his identity and that of his father, so he wasn’t shy about admitting relation. “He’s my brother,” he told her, his voice a whisper in her ear. They entered the old block of Midtown, edging into Red Hood territory. “Adopted brother, actually, not that it really matters.”

           Ellen knew vaguely of Damian Wayne’s adopted brother, but she hadn’t realized he and Red Hood were one and the same. “Damn,” she said. “The papers would have a field day if they realized the founder of Neon Knights was a drug lord on the side.”

           This took Damian by surprise; he glanced back at her, confused, and then realization dawned on his face. With a laugh, he slowed the motorcycle, drawing close to their destination. “No, not that brother. Red Hood is older than him.”

           After a beat of hesitation, Ellen asked, “I thought the other guy was Nightwing?”

           “He is,” sighed Damian, pulling the motorcycle to a stop in a tight alleyway. Getting off, he explained, “Not very many people know this, but I actually have four siblings. Three brothers and a sister.”

           “Oh, shit,” said Ellen, impressed. She too got up, slipping off the bike. “And I thought you were an only child.”

           “In fairness,” he said, shooting a grin her way, “I do act like one sometimes.”

           There was a loud thump before them, and a red helmet shone in the darkness as Jason Todd descended from the fire escape above. “Sometimes?” he echoed, teasing. “More like all the damn time.” He jerked his thumb at Damian and to Ellen, he said, “Kid’s insufferable.”

           While Ellen gave Jason an uncertain smile, Damian got straight to business. “You heard about our case?” he asked, his voice low.

           Jay gave a shrug, shaking his head slightly. “Rumors, mostly. I heard some evil assclown is selling Joker Venom pills to kids.”

           Damian nodded. “We’ve pursuing all the leads we’ve got, but we’re trying to pinpoint a distributor. What do you know?”

           “Nothing, really,” admitted Jay. “Nobody on my payroll goes anywhere near kids, definitely not all the way out to the suburbs. Besides, I have kind of a,” he paused, and though Ellen could not see his face behind the helmet, she imagined she could hear him smiling, “thing when it comes to the Joker, so most of my people know not to touch that shit with a ten-foot pole. Sorry,” he said, and he sounded genuinely apologetic. “Wish I could help more.”

           “It’s fine,” murmured Damian thoughtfully, taking this in. “Have you caught anyone selling to kids lately? Maybe this is someone you dismissed?”

           But Jason was already shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “My reputation is pretty well-known by now, Robin. People don’t usually try and test me.”

           Glancing in between the two heroes, Ellen moved slightly forward. “Is there anyone who left your operation lately, maybe for unrelated reasons? I don’t think a street pusher goes straight to working for a supervillain, if you know what I mean – it’d make sense if our guy had some exposure to you and yours before he ever made it to where he is now.”

           Jason considered this for a moment.

           And then he let out a very small groan. Though the helmet obscured his expression, Damian’s pulse quickened, sensing and impending revelation. “Yeah,” said Jay, nodding ruefully. “Now that you mention it, yeah. There was this one kid – I didn’t exactly, like, kick him out, ‘cause he never really did anything wrong, but he was just…” he paused for a moment, as if searching for the word, “…creepy. Not like, in a big-bad-supervillain anyway, but he was just kind of a creep. A lot of the women who worked around him had…complaints. He never did anything,” he added mildly, “but they just got weird vibes from him. Women’s intuition, huh?” Ellen heard the grin in his voice, and imagined he may even have winked her direction.

           “Anything else?” she asked.

           “Yeah,” answered Jay, his voice turning serious once more. “This guy – his name’s Scott Morrison, he’s maybe your age, Ember. But I caught him following me around on patrol a few times. Not following,” he continued, qualifying himself, “but – showing up in suspicious places. Like he memorized my route, which is weird enough, but then he’d start asking if I ran into any of the Big Bads. He asked me about Joker maybe once before I put my fist through his front teeth.”

           Disappointed, there was a reprimand in his voice when Damian began, “Hood-”

           But Jay just laughed and held up his hands. “Wasn’t that bad, li’l wing, just scared him a little. Anyway, haven’t seen him since then.” Damian nodded, but before he could say anything Jay added, “OH! I almost forgot – there was this one time, super fuckin’ weird, I kind of tuned it out.”

           At this, Damian and Ellen exchanged looks. “What happened?” she asked.

           “OK,” he began, leaning in slightly and lowering his voice. “Now this is super weird, and don’t tell your old man, Robin, ‘cause it’s the kind of thing he’d whoop any of our asses for – but one time, I got, you know,” he mimed gunshots with both hands, “beat up, a little, and I was bleeding all over the place try’na find somewhere to hang out and lick my wounds, and I swear to you this guy – I caught him, like, on his hands and knees on the ground following me with a fucking sponge in his hands.”

           Both Damian and Ellen stared at him. “A sponge?” Ellen echoed, with a hint of disbelief.

           “Yeah,” said Jay, nodding his head. “A fucking sponge. Blood is literally dripping off of my body, and he’s on the ground sponging it up. It was like, the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

           More heatedly than Ellen really thought was necessary, Damian demanded, “And you just let him take it? Why didn’t you tell Batman about this?”

           “Because,” answered Jay, rolling his head in a way that suggested he was also rolling his eyes, “no motherfucker’s dumb enough to try and clone me. You and your dad-” he broke off, glancing at Ellen, then corrected, “-I mean, the Big Man, sure, but me? Nobody gives a shit.”

           “It’s protocol,” said Damian stubbornly, but Jason shook his head.

           “Believe me, this guy wasn’t smart enough for anything like that. He was just fucking creepy.”

           There was a suspicious pause, and then Damian asked, “When did this happen?”

           “Like, maybe a month ago? But he quit working for me before that, maybe half a year or so.”

           Ellen glanced at Damian. “That fits,” she murmured. “Our first recorded overdose was almost four months ago. That leaves time for recruiting and initial distribution.”

           “Right,” said Damian, with a nod. The expression on his face was still severe. “Hood, we’ll need all the info you can get us on this Scott Morrison character.”

           “He used to have a place over in Midtown,” Jay said. “I think it was a motel or something, nothing permanent. Riverview, or something?”

           “Riverview,” repeated Ellen, with an urgent look towards Damian. “That was on Oracle’s list.”

           With a nod, Damian touched the commlink at his ear. “Thanks,” he said to Red Hood, and then into his comm he said, “Spoiler, come in.”

           Returning to Damian’s bike, they headed back through the city. By the time they reached Riverview Boarding House, Spoiler was waiting for them in Room 7. “I talked to the owner,” she said, as Ellen and Damian entered the room. “Somebody’s kept up-to-date on payments, but he hasn’t seen anybody come in or out for a couple weeks now.”

           “Probably since we started investigating,” said Ellen, as Damian moved forward to search the room. “He knew we were on to him and wasn’t about to get caught with his pants down.”

           “Robin,” said Nell, watching him search the walls for hidden compartments. He glanced around at her, and she jerked her head towards a door in the wall. “The closet.”

           For a moment he did not move, only stared at her. And then he turned to the rickety wooden door, and he opened it.

           Peering in behind him, Ellen made a face. “Gross,” she said.

           Damian said nothing, taking in the sight before them: a veritable shrine to the Joker, littered with newspaper clippings and amateur art and low-res photos printed from the internet. In the center, there was a small Robin action figure, the kind of thing sold at tourist traps in Gotham. The plastic Robin’s limbs and his head were all removed from his body.

           Gravely, Damian said, “He’s a Joker fan.”

           “That explains why he’s working with JGJ,” offered Nell, from behind them. When both Ellen and Damian glanced back at her, she clarified, “Uh, James-Gordon-Junior. He needed a snappier name.”

           Looking back at Damian, Ellen said thoughtfully, “It does explain the connection. Gordon used the lure of Joker Venom to recruit Morrison as his Dealer.”

           Still staring at the shrine, Damian’s brown skin had gone wan with disgust, and his lips were pressed tightly together. “I don’t understand these people,” he said lowly, then he stood up, getting to his feet. “The Joker is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people. He’s a criminal. He’s not funny, he’s not interesting, and I don’t understand people who find him compelling.”

           “Yeah,” agreed Nell sympathetically. “I mean, the guy’s basically a terrorist.”

           Ellen caught the brief flicker of emotion across Damian’s face, a momentary tell that betrayed how much Damian disliked that word. Still; Ellen didn’t think Nell was wrong. “This is good, though,” said Ellen, to Damian. “It means we can bait him.”

           Damian paused, then, very slowly, he turned around to look at Ellen.

----

           “No,” said Bruce, shaking his head.

           “It’s an hour, tops,” Damian insisted, leaning against the computer’s control panel in the Cave. “The entire team will be on top of him the whole time. It’ll be fine.”

           “No,” repeated Bruce, shaking his head. “You are not removing the Joker from Arkham custody for any amount of time. He is in solitary confinement for a reason, he’s too dangerous-”

           “A hour,” Damian repeated, practically begging his father. “Tightly contained and surveilled. It’s the easiest way to smoke out the Dealer.”

           “The easiest is not always the wisest,” said Bruce shortly, “and I will not permit you to play games with a dangerous criminal. He always has a plan, and he’s bested you before.”

           “But the entire team-”

           “My answer is final,” Bruce told his son. “Harleen is out on parole, perhaps she may be of some help.”

           As if disgusted by this suggestion, Damian began, “I’m not retraumatizing Doctor Quinzel on the off chance that she completes Scott Morrison’s Joker fantasy. Most Joker-philes like him think she’s a meaningless distraction anyway.”

           “I’m afraid I cannot allow the alternative, Damian. It’s too dangerous.”

           “We’re so close.”

           “Then find another way.” Bruce’s voice was not unkind as he said, “I believe in you, and I believe in your team. But this mission has already exposed you and Ember to that monster enough. It isn’t going to happen again.”

           For a moment, there was silence in the cave except for the constant whirr of machinery and the far-off drip of slowly-forming stalactites. There was a profound tension between father and son, thick enough to slice; Damian was once more angry that his father was blocking the team’s ventures, and yet Bruce would not budge. There was no compromise here.

           On the specimen analysis table, unceremoniously contained in a plastic box, the crowbar remained. Bruce had not been sure what to do it, and so as he ran his tests he had kept it there in full view for all to see. Mercifully, Jason had not ventured into the Cave the last time he was here.

           A part of Damian wanted to tell Bruce about Scott Morrison, known Joker fanboy, on his hands and knees, sponging up blood. He wanted to tell him that he’d dug up records that someone fitting Scott Morrison had made a clandestine visit to the Joker’s cell in Arkham, presumably leaving him with a gift. He wanted his father to know that the crowbar was a complete plant, and if the crust of bloodstains on its curved end matched Jason Todd’s, it wasn’t because this was the weapon that had been used to kill him.

           But Damian was still a sixteen year old, and he was still petty. Perhaps Bruce was being especially strict because of this painful reminder of his own failure at the Joker’s hands, but Damian was just spiteful enough to keep this small knowledge from his father anyway, let him simmer in his own guilt and shame.

           “Fine,” Damian said curtly. “Then any further deaths due to this Dealer character are on your conscience, Father.”

           Later, he updated Ellen on the situation via commlink while on patrol. She sounded somber. “So that’s it, then?” she sighed. “That plan is out.”

           “Hm? Oh, no,” said Damian, leaping from one rooftop to another, his boots absorbing most of the shock of impact. “We’re still going to do it. We just need to keep it a secret from Batman.”

           “What?”

           He fiddled at his commlink. “Ember, can you hear me? I said we need to keep it as secret from Batman.”

           “No, I heard you, I just – that’s impossible.”

           “Not impossible,” he corrected, “merely difficult for the inexperienced. Luckily you have me, and I happen to be extremely adept at keeping secrets from Batman. You have to learn that kind of thing,” he told her, offhandedly, “when you live in a house with him.”

           “Breaking the Joker out of Arkham is a little different than sneaking out to meet your girlfriend, Robin.”

           Without hesitation, Damian said coolly, “That’s not what I meant.” It had been, actually, almost exactly what he meant. “All I’m saying is that I know him well enough to anticipate where he’ll be watching. We do this quickly and effectively, and it’ll be over before he knows it.”

           “That’s…optimistic.”

           “I have been told I have a very glass-half-full demeanor, yes.”

           Ellen laughed, and despite himself Damian caught himself grinning. “If you say so. When’s it going down?”

           Good question. Damian considered this, standing above a stone gargoyle, scanning the cold city streets below him. “The longer we wait, the more drugs the Dealer gets out on the streets.”

           “Fair enough. What’s the plan?”

           “Meet the others at the Bunker. I’ll explain everything there.”

           When all was said and done, it did take a little more time than Damian had anticipated. The first phase was dependent on the speed and inertia of rumor, which was spread both throughout Brentwood via Colin and Niloufar and throughout the rest of drug-dealing Gotham by Jason and a select few on his payroll. The rumor spoke of an anniversary: the birth of the Joker, or the rebirth, rather, when a man was swallowed by acid and spat back out as something else. It was a trap, designed to target the biggest Joker fanboy who frequented those circles, who, of course, naturally knew the apocryphal location of that fateful warehouse.

           All they needed was one night. It had to work perfectly, smooth as silk, precise as clockwork; but Damian had faith in his team. Well. Ember’s team.

           Ellen herself was stationed at the warehouse, staking it out. Colin and Nell were off on the other side of the city, waiting for their cue; Niloufar was spearheading operations out of the Bunker, and Jordan was with Damian, her speed, strength, and flight, a necessary part of his plan.

           Hidden inside the bowels of Arkham Asylum, Jordan hovering slightly above him, Damian watched the seconds tick by on his mask’s lens display. For a minute or so, there was nothing but tense silence.

           And then Damian touched the commlink at his ear. “Abuse, Spoiler,” he said, “you’re good to go. Seraph, how are we on security?”            “All disabled and looped,” came Niloufar’s voice, without hesitation.

           “Perfect,” he replied. “Ember, Jabberwock’s on her way.” He nodded towards Jordan, then took the lead, expertly navigating through the high-ceilinged halls of Arkham, avoiding guards.

           In his cell, the Joker was still singing. “Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hoppin’ through the forest…”

           Disabling the door’s security, Damian gestured for Jordan to take over. “Go.”

           She did so, wrapping her arms roughly underneath the Joker’s shoulders and heaving him up and out, shooting back the way she and Damian came, disappearing into the night. The Joker’s fading laughter echoed in Damian’s ears as he locked and secured the door once more, then slipped away, hoping no one would notice Joker’s sudden silence.

           As Damian headed back out to where his motorbike was stowed, he checked the open channel; the shit had, to put it delicately, apparently hit the fan, and Batman was barking orders at other Gotham heroes following an incident on the other side of the city, which meant he was far away from Arkham and from the docks where their plan was about to go down.

           It took him almost twenty minutes to make it to the warehouse. Leaving his bike some ways away, as he approached the empty, abandoned building he was certain he could hear that faint, familiar laughter. Their trap was lain.

           He found Ellen and Jordan in the rafters, high above the walkways which crisscrossed above vats which were now mostly empty. Jordan had dropped the Joker in one which had a foot or two of (probably?) nontoxic sludge at the bottom, and his laughter was so manic and so loud that its reverberations started to hurt Damian’s ears. He activated the dampeners in his commlink, relying on his teammates’ comms to hear them.

           “Nice work,” he told them both. “Abuse and Spoiler gave us an hour, tops. After that Batman resumes his normal patrol around the city, but we caught him as far away as we could, so it should be at least another hour after that before he realizes there’s anything amiss.”

           Though Ellen’s face was obscured, the sound of her voice betrayed her concern. “So Morrison better show up in the next two hours.”

           “He will,” said Damian, watching the dark and empty walkways below them. “He won’t be able to resist the lure of legend, and there’s no way he’ll stay away once he hears that.”

           “No kidding,” muttered Jordan, following his gaze.

           “That’s still leaving an awful lot to chance,” Ellen added, sounding uncertain. “The timeline seems kind of arbitrary, and I’m still not completely sure why we needed the Joker himself for this anyway? Seems to me we could’ve just used, I don’t know, a recording of his voice or something-”

           “Ember, please,” said Damian shortly, waving away her concerns. “I know what I’m doing.”

           “Yeah, OK,” she replied, maybe a little insulted. “I don’t doubt that, Robin, but I’m pretty sure Batman said that this isn’t your team, it’s mine, and part of me is starting to think the only reason you wanted to go get Joker in the first place was because your dad told you not to-”

           But before Ellen could continue or Damian, suddenly livid, could open his mouth to defend himself, Niloufar’s voice echoed in all of their ears. “Someone’s approaching the warehouse,” she told them, via commlink. “Good luck, you guys.”

           They didn’t reply, because at that moment they heard the big sheet metal door to the warehouse creak open. All at once, the Joker’s laughter suddenly stopped.

           Scott Morrison was not at all what Damian had been expecting. He was somewhere in his twenties, tall, slim, good-looking. His blond hair was gathered into a topknot, and he wore wide-brimmed glasses which appeared to have no magnifying effect on his eyes, and so therefore were probably only worn for the aesthetic appeal. Both he and Ellen shifted uncomfortably at the same time, perhaps coming to the simultaneous conclusion of, Oh no, he’s hot.

           “Hello?” he called into the vast warehouse, which Damian thought was a pretty stupid move. He went to the stairs which led to the walkways above the giant but now-empty vats, climbing them slowly, cautiously, peering around. “Joker? Mister J?” he called, which caused Damian to cringe slightly and Jordan to whisper, “Yikes.”

           Morrison continued, making his way across steel catwalk, his hands on the railing on either side. “I heard you laughing,” he called. “Are you here? Joker?”

           A low, sickly chuckle emanated from one of the vats. Morrison’s eyes went wide behind his fake glasses, and he darted across the walkway, leaning over the railing.

           The Joker leered up at him. His voice was low and frightening, like a purr in the back of his throat. “Who’s asking?”

           “Oh, shit,” said Morrison, in obvious excitement. “Holy fuck, OK, oh my God, Mister Joker, woah. Hold on,” he said.

           Morrison dug into his pocket, and Jordan muttered, “Oh, Christ,” as he took out a phone and literally posed for a selfie.

           “Oh my God, Mister Joker, big fan,” said Morrison, once he’d taken the picture. “Like, holy shit, I can’t believe this is actually happening-”

           Ellen gently nudged Jordan. “Go,” she whispered, but then Damian held out his arm.

           “Wait,” he said.

           In disbelief, Ellen blinked at him. “We have him,” she whispered angrily at him, “he’s right there, if we don’t move now then the Joker could tip him off to this whole operation-”

           But Damian was already shaking his head. “Wait,” he said again.

           This infuriated Ellen. Jordan just gave her an apologetic look and a shrug. Knowing Robin was the most experienced vigilante between the three of them, she forced herself into silence.

           In the vat, up to mid-calf in a thick yellowy-gray sludge, the Joker just stared up at Morrison, unimpressed. “Big fan, huh?” he echoed. “What era?”

           Morrison stared down at him. “Uh, what was that?”

           “What era?” repeated the Joker, sounding as petulant as a child. “Nicholson, Ledger, Leto? Who was your favorite?”

           “Um,” said Morrison uncertainly, “uh, no, sir, I think you misunderstand me, I’m just saying that like, you know, out of Batman’s whole rogues gallery, out of, you know, out of everything in Gotham that makes up the soul of this place – I mean, you’re it, man! Your presence is stamped into the very fabric of Gotham City! You’re everything!”

           There was a silence. The Joker stared up at him. “Not very funny, are you?” he asked, his lip jutting out in a pout.

           “What – I mean, no one’s as funny as the Clown Prince of Crime! But, like, I do have some stand-up material, if you like, want to hear?” He paused anxiously, then began, “OK, so, like, here’s one – why does Batman’s sidekick keep getting younger and younger?”

           Sounding bored, the Joker drawled, “’Cause the older ones keep dying.”

           “No,” said Morrison, “but – that’s funny too. No, it’s ‘cause – ‘cause he’s Robin the cradle. Get it? Like robbing?”

           There was a long, tense silence. And then the Joker let out a chuckle. “Hey, kid,” he called up, “that is pretty funny.”

           Beside her, Ellen could feel Damian tense, his entire body coiled tightly. He was aching to jump into action, she could tell. She didn’t entirely understand why he hadn’t already.

           “Hey, kid!” Joker called once more. “Why don’t you come on down here, and tell me a couple more of those funny jokes you got there?”

           A flash of uncertainty crossed Morrison’s face. “Oh, I – I don’t know-”

           “Aw, come on,” said the Joker, kicking around at the sludge under his feet. “Hey, wanna hear another one? What did Batman say to Robin before they got in the Batmobile?”

           Jordan leaned over and whispered, “I know this one!”

           “Get in the car, Robin,” said Joker, and then he wheezed with laughter, breathless in his own hilarity. A grin spread across Morrison’s face. Once more he dug into his pocket for something, then pulled out a plastic baggie full of pills. He snagged three or four out of the bag, and stuffed them into his mouth, swallowing them down.

           Then he climbed up on the railing, and he jumped down into the vat below.

           He hit the bottom with a sickening crunch, and let out a yelp of pain. “Got him,” muttered Damian, but once more he stopped Jordan from moving. “Wait.”

           The Joker stalked towards Morrison, who misinterpreted this as intent to help him up. “No!” he barked. “No, no, no! This is good! Pain is good, it’s freeing, like chaos of the mind!” He let out a loud, manicured laugh, as if it were something he practiced in the mirror. “See, Joker, man, I get it! I get you, the big joke behind everything, the ultimate gag! Laugh in the face of an indifferent universe! It doesn’t matter anyway, so why not try to burn as many bridges as you can on your way out, right? We all die in the end!”

           “That’s not very funny,” said the Joker.

           “It’s all funny!” insisted Morrison, as the Joker slowly neared him, like a shark stalking his prey. “That’s the point! It isn’t real! It doesn’t matter! That’s what makes the joke so damn funny-”

           The Joker grabbed Morrison’s topknot; his wide grin, usually so gleeful, was downturned into a comical frown. Though the slimy sludge at the bottom of the vat was only about a foot high, he shoved his face into it, sticking a knee on Morrison’s back to keep him down. Morrison started to struggle wildly, his shouts unintelligible as the ugly goo slipped into his mouth and nose.

           “It’s like babies in bathwater,” the Joker said, cocking his head, watching Morrison struggle. “Never understood it! You leave the kiddies alone for two minutes and suddenly they’re floatin’ on their bellies like a bunch of goldfish. How do they drown in that!” He let out a guffawing, belly-deep laugh, which sent a chill down Ellen’s spine. Pushing Morrison’s face deeper into the sludge beneath him, he roared, “It’s not that deep!”

           At that, Ellen disregarded her orders and moved. She leapt onto the steel walkway, sprinted down towards the vat, and jumped in, her feet landing squarely on Joker’s shoulders, knocking him off his feet. As Morrison lifted his face and gasped for breath, the Joker turned around to see her, and his face lit up. He laughed maniacally, gleeful.

           “Look who’s back!” he screeched. “How nice! How soon! Tell me, how’s Mama?”

           Ellen drew her fist back to throw a punch, but in a split second, the Joker had disappeared; she glanced up to see Jordan spiriting him away, presumably back to his cold cell in Arkham. There was a squelching thump behind her, and she turned around to see Robin glaring at her. As Morrison coughed, Damian said, “I had it under control.”

           Pointing towards the pathetic figure on his hands and knees, Ellen said, “Joker was going to kill him.”

           “He was going to scare him,” replied Damian pointedly. “Nothing like a healthy dose of trauma to cure you off your obsession with a criminal like the Joker.”

           Still wracked with coughs, Morrison’s head swiveled towards Damian, sludge dripping down his face. “S’not a – criminal – he’s an – artist-”

           Damian turned around, looking only mildly interested. He kicked at Morrison’s torso with his boot, and the man toppled over. “The eight-year-olds finger-painting at Neon Knight Centers are artists,” he told him. “The Joker’s just a two-bit con man who somehow stumbled into mythologization.”

           Gasping for breath, Morrison refused this. “He’s the – beating heart – of Gotham City! He’s Batman’s binary star! He defines the Batman!”

           Damian grabbed the man’s collar and swung a leg over his head so his feet stood on either side of him. His gloved fist connected solidly with the front of Morrison’s face. “He’s not that interesting,” Damian said shortly.

           “Where would Batman be without the Clown Prince of Crime?”

           Again, Damian punched him. “In better mental health than he is right now, that’s for sure.”

           “Who would he be? He’s the Batman’s greatest match! His greatest foil! The only other man he’ll ever truly understand!”

           His fist connected for a third time with Morrison’s face, and Damian looked over his shoulder to address Ellen. “People use that one a lot,” he said, sounding genuinely perplexed. “It really says something concerning about how people interpret empathy and intimacy in male relationships.”

           Once more Morrison attempted that terrible, overly-practiced laugh, and Damian turned around again to hit him in the face again. It was then that Ellen moved forward, placing a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “As satisfying as this may be,” she told him, sympathetically, “we’re here to get information out of him, remember? We need to know about Gordon.”

           “Gordon?” echoed Morrison; there was incredulity in his voice, even through the blood running out of his mouth. “J-James Gordon?”

           “That’s the one,” said Ellen, turning to him. “Junior, that is. Is he the one who’s been supplying you with the modified diaxamene?”

           “Diaxamene?” he repeated, but Ellen was already digging through his pockets for that plastic baggie full of pills, which she quickly found and removed. “I don’t know what the fuck diaxa-what is, that shit’s diluted Joker Venom!”

           “Yes, we know,” said Damian shortly, clearly still irritated. “You’re the one they call the Dealer, aren’t you?”

           “I – I don’t know, man, James just said to tell people that!”

           “James,” said Ellen, seizing hold of this. “He’s your supplier, isn’t he?”            His whole body trembling, he tried to nod, but it came out looking more like a seizure. Spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth, and his skin was quickly draining its color, turning pale. Quickly Damian pulled open one eyelid, inspecting his pupils. Tightening his grip on Morrison’s collar, Damian asked, “How many pills have you taken tonight?” Morrison started to shake violently, his eyes rolling back into his head, and through his teeth, Damian snarled, “No!” Removing one hand from Morrison’s collar, Damian flipped open a compartment on his utility belt, popped the cap off a tiny syringe, and plunged it into Morrison’s neck.

           “Anti-Venom?” asked Ellen. Damian nodded as Morrison’s shaking subsided, and he grew limp in Damian’s grip. “Robin,” she said, lowering her voice. “You can OD on diaxamene too if you take enough of it. The Anti-Venom may not work.”

           “Maybe not,” grunted Damian, “but it’ll give us more time.” He shook Morrison bodily by the collar, and the man’s head lolled on his neck, his eyes blinking out of sync. “Scott Morrison,” he barked, “we know you’re the Dealer, and we know you’re working with James Gordon, Junior. Listen to me. Tell me where he is, and I’ll do my best to save your sorry life. If you have nothing to give me, then I will leave you here, and you will die alone in a warehouse where no one will find your body for weeks, if not months, and you’ll go to your grave knowing that Joker himself thinks you’re not fucking funny. Now,” he said, his voice calm and collected. “Where is James Gordon Junior?”

           Something was catching in Morrison’s throat, making it impossible to reply; Ellen had a suspicion that it was vomit, his stomach protesting against all the poison he’d swallowed. Incapable or unwilling to form words, he merely lifted his hands, and he pointed out of the windows which lined the walls, just below the ceiling.

           Damian paused, then he twisted around, following the direction of Morrison’s finger. Ellen did as well, but she didn’t understand: all that was visible out of the window was the night sky, stars faded above the lights of the city, and the shooting spire of the tallest building in Gotham City – Wayne Tower.

           Grabbing Morrison’s hair, Ellen hissed, “Is this a game to you?” but Damian had already let him go, shooting his grappling hook out onto the walkway above.

           He touched the commlink at his ear. “Seraph!” he called wildly. “Seraph, come in!”

           Something dropped into Ellen’s stomach as she understood. Following Damian, she sent out a 911 call with Morrison’s location and status, then quickly followed Damian onto his bike. Niloufar had never responded to Damian’s call, and when he tried Jordan, he heard nothing from her either.

           As they raced through Gotham, Ellen asked, “You think Gordon knows about the Bunker?”

           “Maybe,” murmured Damian. “I know he knows about my family, and he knew about Batman back when we were based out of the Bunker. It’s a tease, Ember, don’t you get it? The diaxamene, the Joker Venom, the dead child so close to the Manor? He’s been playing us this whole time.”

           “How?” asked Ellen, confused. “What do you mean?”

           The bike shot into the secret entrance to the Bunker, and Damian was off of it immediately, sprinting into the main computer hub. “Seraph!” he called, looking around wildly, but there was no one there. “Seraph!”

           Before them, the computer screen glowed a blank white. Something blared on both Damian and Ellen’s comms, Batman sending out an emergency signal for something going down at Arkham. “Jabberwock,” said Ellen to Damian, fear tight in her voice. “Something’s gone wrong-”

           For a moment, Damian did nothing. On either side of him, he squeezed his fists tightly, gloves still stained red with Scott Morrison’s blood.

           Then he turned to Ellen and said, “We can’t leave. Gordon’s here.”

           “Where?”

           Damian gestured for her to follow him, then took her through a set of doors she’d never seen open; he peeled his mask off his face, then lowered his eye down to a retina display. It blinked green, and an elevator opened. He held out one hand as if to say to her, After you.

           “Where are we going?” she asked, unmoving.

           He shrugged, then stepped into the elevator first. “The Penthouse,” he said shortly. “It’s where Nightwing and I lived back when he was Batman. If I’m right, it’s where Gordon’s set up camp.”

           In disbelief, she finally boarded the elevator with him. “And how is it possible that none of your fancy security features ever picked up on anything up there?”

           “I don’t know,” said Damian shortly, pressing his mask back onto his face. The elevator moved so rapidly with such sudden force that Ellen almost stumbled. “But it’s stupidly obvious – where’s the one place we would never look? Right under our noses, of course.”

           Ellen glanced up at the ceiling of the elevator. “Or – above our noses, I guess,” she mumbled.

           They emerged in a hallway; Damian jogged to the door and took off his glove, pressing his thumb against a scanner, and then he said aloud, “Voice recognition, Damian Wayne,” and the lock of the door let out a little click.

           Lowly, Ellen asked, “If your security’s so tight, how’d he get through?” but Damian ignored her, pressing his gloved hand against the door and pushing.

           The Penthouse was dark, but a light was on down the hallway, coming from the kitchen. When Ellen and Damian entered, a voice called, “In here!”

           With a wary glance at each other, they followed the source of the voice. Turning the corner into the big modern kitchen, they found James Gordon Jr. sitting at the counter, glasses on his face, a spoon tucked into a pot of yogurt.

           “Hi,” he said, waving at them. “Hey, it’s nice to finally meet you, Damian.” To Ellen he said, “I don’t know who you are,” then continued, “Nice digs, huh? Dick could’ve decorated more probably, but personally I like it.”

           “Where is Seraph?” asked Damian, his voice flat.

           “If you mean the girl downstairs,” James answered, scooping up a spoonful of yogurt, “she left a while ago. Probably to help her friend with the Joker.” Blandly, he looked at Damian. “Really nice of you to break him out and everything for me, Damian. I didn’t even have to lift a finger.”

           “You’re done, Gordon,” Damian told him. “Your operation is shut down.”

           “What operation?” asked James, looking mildly interested.

           “The drugs.”

           “I don’t have any drugs,” said James, innocently.

           Damian stared at him, his expression stony and unreadable.

           “Go ahead, search the place,” James continued. “Not a lot around here except some personal mementos. Sorry for squatting, but, hey, life’s tough when everyone thinks you’re a psychopathic murderer, right, Damian?”

           Color dropped out of Damian’s cheeks, then suddenly rushed back in, flushing his brown skin. Sensing they had to take control of this situation, Ellen stepped up. “We’ve got you, Gordon,” she said simply. “We got the Dealer, too. We know what you’ve been putting out on the streets.”

           “I haven’t been putting anything on the streets,” James said smoothly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

           Feeling a surge of anger, she suddenly sympathized with Damian’s fury. “Scott Morrison-”

           “-OD’d,” said James flatly. “Right?”

           Damian and Ellen exchanged a look. For all they knew, Morrison had died before the paramedics reached him.

           “Scott Morrison was a crazy man with a Joker fetish,” James said, with a shrug. He ate a spoonful of yogurt. “Nothing to do with me.”

           “The diaxamene-”

           For the first time, a hunt of frustration entered his voice. “Any idiot could’ve gotten ahold of that. Haven’t you heard, Miss Nayar? Prescription pills are all the rage nowadays. Oh,” he added, picking up a remote from behind him, pointing it at the television on the wall. “Would you look at that.” A Breaking News broadcast played, informing viewers that a potential catastrophe at Arkham Asylum had narrowly been avoided, and the Joker, who had mysteriously vanished from his cell, was back in custody.

           James smiled at Damian and Ellen.

           “All according to plan,” he said.

           Damian’s eyes were glued to the screen, slightly in shock as the news showed shaky video footage of a slim figure shooting into the sky, holding someone else in their arms. It was obviously Jordan, and it looked like she was carrying Niloufar, who had covered her face with her headscarf against the cameras. Despite himself and the absurdity of the situation, he somehow found himself taken by surprise that they had managed to solve the situation on their own, without his help.

           James Gordon Jr. did not fight back. He did not protest; when the police came, they arrested him, but found no evidence of wrongdoings in the Penthouse except, obviously, trespassing. Later, into his commlink, Oracle informed Damian that they were holding her brother temporarily, but they may not have enough solid evidence to put him away.

           Meanwhile, Ellen got a quick status report from the other members of the team, then checked on Scott Morrison. He was alive, but comatose.

           As the late nighttime hours began to bleed into the impossibly early morning, Damian and Ellen sat on the rooftop of a building, their legs hanging down over the side.

           “I know – technically – we won,” said Ellen, peering down at the city streets below them. “So why does it still feel like we got played?”

           “It usually feels like that,” Damian told her dully, without looking around at her. “Especially with filth like the Joker and Gordon, Junior. It always feels like there’s something we missed.”

           “We didn’t need to take the Joker out of custody.”

           “No,” agreed Damian. “I…suppose I just hate it when people think the Joker is bigger than he is. He’s a lowlife criminal. I wanted Morrison to understand that.”

           “I think that’s the problem,” said Ellen, glancing around at him. “It…strikes me that you really can’t take these things personally in this business.”

           Damian didn’t answer for a moment. Then, slowly, he got to his feet. “I understand that,” he announced, with some finality. “But…I don’t think it’s right to remove your own feelings out of these kinds of situations. I think that’s how you end up like Batman.”

           “And that’s a bad thing?”

           “It’s the worst thing,” he told her, his gaze flickering over to her. “A terrible option. The bad ending.”

           “I don’t know,” she challenged, with a shrug. “He took care of this city for a long time before you came along. Maybe he knows something you don’t.”

           This obviously troubled Damian. He bade her farewell, and then he made his way back to Wayne Manor, arriving in the Cave just as the very first edges of dawn began to break. His father was already there, seated in his throne before the computer, as always. Damian noticed the crowbar was gone from its place on the specimen table.

           He removed his mask on his way up from the garage, passing his father at the computer and heading in the direction of the stairs that led up to the house above. Before he reached them, though, he paused, and he turned around.

           “Father,” he said.

           Bruce moved only slightly, glancing over his shoulder.

           “I’m sorry,” he admitted, like pulling teeth.

           For a moment, nothing happened. And then Bruce turned back to the computer, his fingers clacking away on the keyboard. “What are you apologizing for?” he asked. “You won.”

           “The Joker-”

           “Is back in Arkham.”

           “But I-”

           “Maybe you made mistakes, Robin,” said Bruce, still facing the screen, “but your team was there for you, and they took care of it. I was impressed with Jabberwock and Seraph in particular tonight. Jabberwock should do very well on patrol, though I believe Seraph would benefit from a more permanent headquarters.” On the screen, Bruce flipped through a series of safehouses he’d long kept on reserve. “The Haven, perhaps?”

           Damian gaped at his father. “Headquarters?” he asked. “Patrol? You mean to say – this is it? You really trust them?”

           “I trust you,” said Bruce, “and I trust Ember. That’s got to be enough for now.”

           Still, Damian felt discontent. “Father,” he began, “I still think – if we had just-”

           “Ifs and should haves are poison, Damian,” said Bruce, without looking around. “You won. Red Hood and some of his contents are working on getting Gordon’s drug off the streets, but without a supplier, it should dry up on its own.”

           “And Gordon?”

           “From what I hear of him, he’s no criminal mastermind. He just likes toying with people. If he can, his father will put him away.”

           “His father,” echoed Damian, trying to ignore the obvious parallels suddenly rearing his mind. “I imagine you might be feeling some…empathy, for his situation.”

           “None at all, Damian. None at all.”

           Damian rolled his eyes, then turned to head up into the Manor, taking the stairs two at a time.

----

NAME: Niloufar Ghorbani ALIAS: N/A / Seraph DATE OF BIRTH: 16 October 1996 BLOOD TYPE: O+ (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Nazanin & Mahmoud Ghorbani, Parents (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Team Ember EVAL: Observe for further development of metahuman abilities

[meggannn]

andromeda review

I finished the game Monday night so I’ve had a few days to think over my feelings. No major plot spoilers in this post but putting behind a cut anyway.

I want to rip the bandaid off, so I’ll get the bad news out of the way first.

THE BAD

It’s clear what influence Frostbite -- and by extension EA -- has had on Andromeda, and it’s not always good. It’s a big world, which was kind of what they signed on for by setting the stage in a new galaxy: if it wasn’t big, people would complain we never got to “really see” Andromeda. So they made it big and pushed the exploration thing. It’s not as big as Inquisition, thank god, with not nearly so many pointless fetch quests, but there are still enough sidequests to deter the average player and don’t really move the plot further. I’m actually the kind of dedicated idiot who actually doesn’t mind collecting pointless shit across seventeen maps if it actually gives me more information about the lore or characters, but when it just comes with XP and a check mark, it irritates the living heck out of me. Andromeda has a fair amount of both types.

In the long run, this is a very minor complaint, more about what Bioware doesn’t put in the game than what they do, but I was let down in the lack of… creativity? In the new Andromeda species. After finishing the game however, for plot reasons, I can see why there are several reasons why they would keep the bipedal humanoid alien design, but it’s still a little disappointing. Lore-wise, I think traveling to a new galaxy would be the perfect stage to design more mind-bending aliens like the Leviathans or rachni (the Reapers controlled the direction organic life evolved in the Milky Way, but not Andromeda, right?). Aliens with different types of societies! Aliens that are bigger or smaller in scale than us! Aliens that have different ideas of the word ‘intelligence’! And we got only two sentient species, one of which actually has some form of settled home in Andromeda, the other of which we try to slaughter when we’re within fifty meters of each other.

For people who have played the original trilogy, it becomes kind of obvious they’re retreading familiar ground, and sometimes it gets predictable. Not just with their themes -- which I expect -- but their plot twists. I’ll avoid spoiling too much. There are also moments it feels as though they’re trying to ‘top’ the trauma Shepard went through in the original series by putting Ryder through worse, so much so that when Ryder’s in serious danger it feels a bit like they’re crying wolf. They somehow managed to do this without making Ryder feel like ‘the new Shepard’ -- which is a good thing -- but still, it’s a bit odd and disconnecting. It’s like you can see the talks at the tables when the creative director said “and then we’ll do THIS” and nobody considered if it was, um, logical.

With the writing, there was occasionally a lot of -- for lack of a better phrase -- telling and not showing, or in some other cases, stretching the limits of lore believability just to create conflict for the player to fight. I tend to hate when people use “show don’t tell” as a criticism because I think they’re usually overlooking something, but this is a common theme with BW games and in Andromeda it happens pretty consistently. We are constantly told that the angara are always “free” with their feelings and rarely if ever hide their emotions from the world, yet aside from Jaal’s consistent emotional vulnerability (who I thought was great btw), angara mostly tend to speak and talk and walk exactly like us. Having a conversation with an angaran NPC felt exactly like an asari or human NPC, except, you know, in how they looked.

((MILD PLOT SPOILERS: If you’ve reached Aya you’re probably fine to read)) I’m obviously relieved Bioware didn’t go in the colonization direction -- something I didn’t want to have to worry about the first place -- but instead there’s an undeniable white savior (or “human savior”) theme instead. (It became especially prominent later in the game.) This is difficult to document exactly because it’s not as explicit as other classic examples -- in MEA, Jaal has a large presence and is actively involved in protecting and saving his people; the Initiative/Ryder has to work their ass off to prove their intentions are peaceful and even then the angara are portrayed to rightfully still be skeptical -- but at the end of the day, the angara are a POC coded culture and ~only a stranger can save them~. The angara have also become Mass Effect’s elven equivalent from Dragon Age, in terms of how much and how often the story throws them into the mud. At least unlike the elves, they don’t argue that it’s the angara’s fault, but after a while it feels like slow and cruel torture of a native species that’s already been through hell.

The Chosen One narrative is how Bioware operates, I get it. But I’m getting tired of people treating the Pathfinder/Inquisitor like a hero-in-the-making before they have the chance to prove they’re even a person. (Sorry to keep bringing DA2 up, but this is why I liked Hawke so much -- you worked to Championship from the ground up, and everyone knew it.) What is so freaking special about the symbol of Pathfinders that makes everyone flock to you when you first step onto the Nexus? Did the Initiative really pin all their hopes on scouting landscapes and settling colonies in hostile or extreme environments on the shoulders of four people?

The disappointing LGBT romances are already well-documented, but I have to give a particular call-out to how they handled the only mlm’s storyline, because it was terrible. (It’s honestly astounding how it passed the desks of multiple people and nobody thought to say hey, maybe this is offensive?)

After watching Jaal’s romance… I’m still not convinced aliens should ever be straight in any circumstance, but I don’t think just a patch would solve this one -- I think Jaal’s romance employs a lot of you’re-the-girl-of-my-dreams tropes that were meant to specifically appeal to women, so swapping Sara for Scott in this case might feel lazy or contrived. Liam’s romance, though -- which I LOVED and I highly recommend people watch if they have a few minutes on Youtube -- is completely free of any sort of gender stereotypical tropes and would work just as well with any Ryder.

Okay now onto the good stuff, which was fortunately most of it.

THE GOOD

Despite all of the above, I really, genuinely, enjoyed this game and think both old and new Mass Effect players would enjoy it. There are some growing pains -- Ryder asks a few dumb questions for exposition that most ME fans know by heart and other times an NPC comments on this or that lore reference that new people wouldn’t understand in the slightest, but it doesn’t ruin the experience. I finished at around 75 hours and 97% completion with most of the remaining activities the ‘no lore included’ fetch quests I was complaining about earlier. And despite my whining about the sidequests, I actually did genuinely like them, for the most part. They gave me more information about each of the worlds and how people live there, often because the same people would give me multiple quests, or reference each other, so the locations felt like real places that people lived in.

The companions and their relationships -- including romances -- are really good. Like, not to call it leagues better than Inquisition, because Inquisition had great companions, but unlike the Inquisitor I actually felt like Ryder had a place on the ship. I knew what their job was, sure, but I also know who they were when they interacted with people, even allowing for the freedom of player choice. The Initiative isn’t military, and neither is your ship, though plenty of the squad have professional firearms and crisis training, which is a great shift from Shepard and the Normandy -- it comes with more casual banter, but it also has its downsides, because there will be fights on your ship between people, because many of them are not professionals, just highly skilled expertises, and they aren’t used to working with others. It sucks because you have to mediate the arguments, but it’s also realistic.

The animation is fine, and yeah the CC sucks and I wish it were better, but it’s hardly the end of the world. Mass Effect always did better with aliens than it did with humans, so it’s hardly a surprise, and personally I think if people are going to throw a fit over their PC not having the right kind of eyebrows or a glitch where a character holds a gun backwards that happens once in a 70+ hour game, and that ruins the entire experience for them… they might want to pick another hobby.

I’ve seen people complaining that the writing is shit, and it’s true that occasionally I’ll hear a cheesy line and think a fifteen year old could’ve done better, but the largest majority of the time, I wonder what those complaints were smoking. The writing is great. I feel like these are all real people -- and I especially feel Ryder is a real person, a real sister/brother, a real twenty-something thrown into a million problems they’re unequipped to handle.

I was surprised to actually be… impressed by the way they handle angaran relations. The white savior thing is still true and will always be true, but I appreciate that Ryder has to work their ass off to prove they’re trustworthy, and even then, the angara that still openly distrust aliens aren’t wrong for it, and Ryder has to respect that or risk their respect. They’re wary, and they have every right to be, and the story doesn’t punish them for it. (Even the Roekaar are slightly sympathetic in a way, because a majority of them are fighting because they’re scared.)

Open world games are usually something I dread, but I didn’t mind the open landscapes for the most part, because the Mako -- I mean Nomad -- gets you around pretty fast, you’ve got banter to listen to in the meantime, and the upgrades really helped whenever the terrain became challenging. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s really too much, but for the most part, I honestly didn’t mind, and I was surprised I didn’t.

The journal prioritization system reminds me of DA2 in a good way; compared to previous ME games, and even Inquisition, MEA makes it a lot easier to tell which quests are worth doing/plot relevant, and which would just amount to my dicking around in the wilderness for XP or loot.

The combat is excellent -- not to rag on the original series’ system because there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but I can definitely see major improvements in creativity and flexibility. It’s fluid, much more mobile, and the jumpjets let you get so much more creative. Letting people mix and match powers is a little far-fetched, but you can handwave a lot of with SAM’s profile implant, so I don’t really mind. The only irritating thing is that you’re limited to three powers at once, but since you have about a million powers available to you in the first place and can equip four favorite profiles at once, it seems a fair trade. (I’ve found a way around this anyway -- instead of bringing up the HUD and going to favorites, if you pause the game in the middle of combat, you can fool around with your skills AND change profiles and resume combat with no cooldown.)

It felt like ME1 in all of the best ways. Like I mentioned above, it’s true they’re sort of treading familiar ground in their themes and plot twists, but there were certain parts of the final mission in particular were most definitely purposeful references to/love letters to the original trilogy. It makes it feel like the start of a new journey; I told a friend when I finished that I felt exactly like I had when I finished ME1 for the first time, excited and scared and pumped to start playing sequel.

My overall experience was a great one; I’m planning on starting my second playthrough as soon as I can, probably tomorrow. It was familiar to old fans who loved ME1 for its newness and strangeness, it’s friendly to new players, and I think it’ll be remembered strongly in the future if it is the beginning of a new series like I expect it to be. (LBR, if it isn’t “part one” of a new story...... it makes no sense. It’s practically screaming for more.)

[otnesse]

Reply to BringsYouWings

Responding to BringsYouWings regarding her reply to my reblog on Together Forever.

Did you see how massive her gym got? She’s doing a great job as Gym Leader with lots of Water Types to train– being a Pokemon Master is a very undefined goal! But getting close enough to a Water Type to Mega Evolve has gotta be bringing her closer to that.

Yeah, I saw that, and I also knew about her mega-evolving her Gyarados before that as well thanks to the Televi-Kun bit. Heck, part of the reason I'm really looking forward to her gym battle with Ash is because hopefully she'll restore honor to herself and to all Gym Leaders as well especially after what the idiot writers did with them in AG.

Unfortunately, after how Hoenn and Unova's Gym Leaders got the whole reputation of Gym Leaders being skilled trainers irreparably tarnished, and how even Sinnoh's Gym Leaders, who definitely were somewhat competent, only got to be competent by a downgrade in Pikachu and Ash's competency where they lost to them despite their having beating a freaking Regice beforehand, I'm very cynical about the Gym Leader profession in the Anime as a result, and especially regarding how Misty's Water Pokémon Master goal most likely won't be fulfilled while she's Gym Leader.

To explain exactly what's driving me to think that, let me bring in an anecdote regarding, say, Team Rocket. In particular episode 3, the second episode they were in. Jessie, James, and Meowth managed to defeat Ash's Pidgeotto, blindsided Pikachu, and they had the advantage in EVERYTHING, even if they didn't resort to two-against-one in a cheap match against Ash. The only Pokémon he has left is Caterpie, which aside from being completely inexperienced, but was also weak enough to be captured without even a fight, and more importantly was near-DEAD thanks to earlier events (it had only one battle under its belt, the aforementioned Pidgeotto which nearly got it killed and eaten for breakfast due to Ash's complete idiocy). By contrast, Ekans, Koffing, and Meowth were a LOT more experienced than Caterpie (at least in the dub of Island of the Giant Pokémon, they were under Jessie and James' team for a whole year before the events of the anime), had the type advantage, and even managed to take out the pokemon that gave it trouble earlier. And in Meowth's case, he was probably with them for even longer than that. Despite all of that, Caterpie not only beat them, it utterly, completely humiliated them easily. Thanks to that loss, Team Rocket got a reputation of being grossly incompetent trainers not only among the fanbase, but based on some barbs by Misty and some other characters, even in-universe, and this was despite their first appearance having them be formidable enough to actually have wanted signs requesting their capture.

You might be wondering, okay, what does that have to do with the Gym Leaders, and by extension Misty? Well, thanks to that so-called Fresh Start for AG, Ash started using completely rookie-based teams against the Gym Leaders of each region after Johto, exempting Pikachu (which is a whole other issue in itself thanks to the writers loving to do pointless level resets on him, with BW being the worst of them). It initially started out a bit well, as Roxanne at least lost to Pikachu, a confirmed veteran, and Brawley managed to completely beat Ash and Ash winning on a retry (the only Gym Leader in Hoenn to ever do so if I might add. I'm not counting Norman, because they needed an excuse to force Ash to go the route of the games, especially when he obviously isn't Ash's father unlike Brendan/May). As soon as they got to Flannery, however, it completely fell apart as each and every single one of the Gym Leaders started losing far too easily to his rookie team (and in the case of Wattson, both Ash and Wattson seemed to outright cheat during the fight, the former with Pikachu being supercharged, and the latter with his using a robotic Raikou.). That reminds me far too much of what happened to Team Rocket in Episode 3. I could tolerate it with Team Rocket, since I am sort of expecting that bit even if I don't like it. I CANNOT tolerate it with Gym Leaders, however, since they're supposed to be leagues above that kind of mockery. DP does slightly better, where Ash actually DOES have to work on actually beating the Gym Leaders with various retries, and tying in one case, with his rookie team. Unfortunately, while it does allow for good development for his Sinnoh-Mons, it came at the cost of shafting Ash and especially Pikachu themselves, considering Pikachu ends up losing to the gym leaders considering that same Pikachu managed to completely wipe the floor with Brandon's Regice, so, while a slight improvement, it's not enough to truly redeem them. Then BW came along and proceeded to turn Ash into a huge-scale idiot that even made OS Ash seem like a bona-fide genius by comparison. That bit, alongside them redoing the whole "let's have the rookies trash most of the Gym Leaders like they were tissue paper" plotline for all of them, save for the infamous Palpitoad gym match, made the Unova Gym Leaders out as being even WORSE than the Hoenn Gym Leaders. And the Hoenn Gym Leaders and how they were depicted was an ESPECIALLY sore point for me because of the fact that this was right after the writers callously forced Misty to abandon her goal by having her sisters completely irresponsibly leave the gym to her while they went on a cruise, since it seemed to imply that they are thinking, "Misty's so weak we should make her a gym leader and be a punching bag to a bunch of rookies! Ha ha ha!" This is a really disgusting treatment for even a decent trainer, much less one who explicitly wanted to be a Water Pokémon Master in the OS.

This is in direct contrast to the Original Series Gym Leaders where, Misty's sisters aside, the gym leaders (even Team Rocket in their brief stint as Gym Leaders) were complete and utter beasts on the battlefield (Brock was formidable enough that Ash had to supercharge Pikachu just to even have a shot at winning after beating him with minimum effort. Lt. Surge managed to wipe the floor with at least sixteen trainers prior to Ash in a month, and did so with such viciousness that many of his opponents had to be sent to the Emergency Room afterwards. Sabrina's psychic powers, let alone her skills, were such was that even challenging her is essentially commiting suicide, and Blane, a trainer who was largely apathetic, actually managed to completely trounce Ash with his Magmar, and overall ALL of them gave Ash a complete run for his money. Heck, even Team Rocket, who ordinarily are joke characters since Episode 3, managed to take a level in badass when they became Gym Leaders temporarily. Even in Johto, Ash mainly got his easier wins via veterans such as Charizard, Bulbasaur, and Pikachu, showing them to still be very proficient at battling.). In fact, of all the series after the Original Series, the only one that actually comes close to restoring a Gym Leader's honor was in XY, where many of them managed to trounce Ash without Ash or Pikachu looking bad as a result, and even the one who did lose on the first try against his Kalos Pokemon had an explicit handicap.

So yeah, now you know EXACTLY why I'm not happy with how Misty's a gym leader, and why I want her to pursue her goal again. And even ignoring that, let me point out that there's a whole argument made by DBZ Fan on how, even ignoring all of the above, being a Gym Leader won't get her far in her Water Pokemon Master goal in the long run, as you can read here: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=336960 Long story short, you'd need to be an Elite 4 member or even Champion level before you can come close to becoming a Pokemon Master, or even a Water Pokemon Master (and we know that's the level since Misty fangirled Lorelei, an Elite 4 member, in the Orange Islands). Besides, did Ash become a Battle Frontier brain? No he didn't, and he certainly never settled down to become a Gym Leader either.

Hopefully, I've made things far more clear this time around, at least enough to not question why I think she shouldn't be held up in the gym anymore.

[sage-nebula]

Hey, I saw your post about the Gladion hate and I totally agree! So uncalled for. But on that, how do you feel about Cameron from BW? Out of all the people who beat Ash in the League, he's probably the most reviled by the fandom for it, but I think most people hate him for other reasons as well. Do you think he's a well-written League Rival who gets undeserved hate like Ritchie, Tobias, etc. or do you think he's the exception? I'm interested to hear what you think. (Also, nice new banner!)

Hah, well . . .

First of all, I’m kind of bemused that you mention Ritchie and Tobias when talking about “well-written League rivals,” but you don’t mention Alan, even though the post I made yesterday was about Alan and the vitriol he receives just as much as it was about the fact that Gladion is already receiving hate (and even though Alan is the best written League rival we’ve had to date). I mean, not to upset any fans of Tobias’ (since I have seen at least one fan of his before), but he’s not well-written. He’s barely even written. Tobias was introduced at the very start of the Sinnoh League, and the bulk of his “characterization” (if it can be called that) is that he’s mysterious and over-powered. He was a godmod introduced for the sole purpose of booting Ash from the League. And I don’t really mind that, per se, because Ash had to lose the Sinnoh League one way or the other, and that is a way to do it---but that doesn’t mean that Tobias was a well-written character, because he wasn’t. He has no real characterization, his motivations are never explored. He’s a piece of sentient cardboard when compared to other characters in the series. He’s not well-written in the least because, in all honesty, he was barely written at all. So to list him as a “well-written League rival” instead of talking about Alan, who had four special episodes dedicated solely to fleshing out his character and showing his backstory in addition to the main series appearances he had prior to the League (and everything in the Flare crisis, et cetera) is . . . kind of bemusing to me, to be honest, haha. I know I could be accused of bias due to my unyielding love for Alan, but part of why I love him is because of how well-written he was. He’s certainly better written than Tobias could ever dream of being.

Setting that aside, though, to address Cameron specifically---

I’m a bit dubious over whether or not Cameron is truly the character most reviled by the fandom for booting Ash from the regional League, not because I haven’t seen hate for him (of course I have), but rather because I think the hate these characters receive has to be considered along with the general fandom consensus on the saga they appeared in. Cameron was the character who booted Ash from the Unova League, and while it’s true that he receives a decent amount of hate for that, it’s important to remember that BW in general receives far more hate than it deserves. Aside from contentions over the OS (which is infused with Discourse™ due to all the baggage it carries from fandom), BW is probably the most widely hated saga of the anime. Again, it’s completely undeserved; while there are some things to criticize about it, there are things to criticize about every saga, and BW’s strengths and good points are (in my experience at least) purposefully ignored by its ardent haters in favor of bashing it and every character in it outright. As a result, any negative opinions or hate extended toward characters in BW is magnified, blown up into a far bigger deal than it needs to be not because those characters are actually terrible, necessarily, but rather because hating BW with all the fire of a thousand suns is still, for some reason, the thing to do in some circles.

So with that said, the vitriol that gets sent Cameron’s way needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because had he appeared in a different saga instead, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t be as hated as he is. General fandom opinion toward BW tends to be so overwhelmingly negative that a simple “yeah, Cameron wasn’t my fave” gets turned into “CAMERON WAS THE WORST AND ONE OF THE BIGGEST BLIGHTS ON THE ANIME,” particularly since this is the internet, and being dramatic on the internet is simply the way of things. So it’s hard for me to say whether or not he really is the most reviled, especially when you compare the hate he gets to the hate Alan gets, when Alan came from one of the more popular sagas of the anime, and is still being bashed and vilified to this day, to the point where he is the point of comparison people are making when they’re talking about new characters they want to hate. I mean, it wasn’t “the new Cameron” that Gladion got called. It was “the new Alan.” When people were making salt memes for movie 20, Alan was regarded as one of the biggest disappointments / betrayals. Like, you could say that perhaps it’s just that Alan is newer than Cameron, but I’d say that Alan is loathed far more than Cameron at this point. Not only does Alan not have the pall of an already hated saga hanging over his head, but he beat Ash in the League finals, which people had deluded themselves into believing Ash had a shot at winning. Considering that Alan is still being treated like a villain and bashed to this day, I think he has it way worse off than Cameron. (And, as stated, is a fantastically written character to boot . . . /sigh)

All of that said, with regards to Cameron’s writing: Eh. He’s no Alan, but I don’t think he’s any worse than Ritchie (and he’s better than Tobias). Cameron at least had the benefit of appearing before the League actually started, establishing him as a rival earlier on than when the League kicked off. So in that, he has a leg up on Ritchie. He also has really strong characterization, given how immensely disorganized and energetic he is. He has a memorable personality, and one that has the potential to create some interesting stories surrounding him. That said, his scatterbrained personality could very well be what contributed to people’s ire over him defeating Ash at the League, given that he comes across as a complete mess, and yet he still managed to win anyway. I will admit that it’s a bit hard to believe that someone who is such a hot mess could achieve things like that . . . but at the same time, I feel like the trope “bunny-ears lawyer” applies here. Cameron might be a scatterbrained mess, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad trainer. He’s just bad at everything else in his life, but this one thing he can do. :P

So yeah, I’d say Cameron’s probably on the same level as Ritchie. He’s very middle of the road. Not the worst, but not the best. Just average.

(And thanks! ♥ Honestly, the thing that always comes to mind whenever I look at it is “have you ever seen anything so pure your entire heart melted” because honestly . . .)