#like they're interchangeable

[starry-bi-sky]

I'm in A Mood™ (stressed) so im going back to my roots of melting two character together into one person. So bruce wayne!danny fenton. Danny Fenton who, for eight years, grew up in a beautiful gothic manor with his mom and dad under the name "Bruce Wayne". Playing piano with his mother, running around the manor with his father.

Then when he's eight it's ripped away from him. There's blood on his hands and pearls pooling at his feet, and both his parents are dead in front of him.

And he gets shipped off to distant relatives "the Fentons" shortly after, Alfred close on his heels because someone needs to take care of him, someone that knows him. Bruce goes to the Fentons for the safety of anonymity. Gotham's press wants to sink its teeth into him.

Danny misses his city even if it took everything from him. There are shadows in his eyes and he's pale as a sheet even beside his distant cousins, and they change his name to "Danny Fenton' because nobody should know that their newest child was illustrious orphan Bruce Wayne.

They call him Bruce behind closed doors. Danny prefers it that way, he clings onto the name -- the one his parents gave him -- like a lifeline. He makes friends with Sam and Tucker. Tucker takes one look at the willowy, morbid little boy standing in the corner like a shade, ghosts in his eyes, and drags him out into the sunlight, and takes him over to Sam.

When Danny is twelve, he's still not over it -- and he's a little obsessed with the Fentons' research, with the morbid. He has books upon books on death, murder, detective work. Anything he can get his hands on. And stars. He loves stars.

Alfred owns the apartment next to them and comes over regularly. Danny clings to him.

When Danny is twelve, he's still quiet, meek, a shy little thing prone to being bullied. Freaky little Fenton with the night in his eyes and too-cold skin even before he put one foot in the grave. in a sleepover in his room with Sam and Tucker, he tells them the truth. They're his friends, he trusts them.

"My name is Bruce." he murmurs, voice quiet as the breeze, always quiet. he's staring at his star-covered sheets.

"Like Bruce Wayne?" Tucker asks, a joking tone in his voice.

Danny smiles a little, lamb-like with insecurity. "I am Bruce Wayne." And he takes them down to the lab, disrupting Maddie and Jack, to prove it. Sam tells them of her own wealth then shortly after. They start calling Danny "Bruce" in private too -- its trust. Thats what it is. It's trust.

Sam goes to media functions and comes back with aching feet and complaints on her tongue -- and Danny soaks it up all like a sponge, splayed across a beanbag chair with Tucker in her room. He's not envious of her, he used to go to events with his parents and they kept him safe from the ugly of Gotham's Elite. For the most part. He's had comments made at him, he doesn't miss them.

Alfred returns to the manor semi-regularly, Danny goes with him. he wanders the hallways and helps Alfred clean, the last thing either of them want is for their home to fall into disrepair. He brings Jazz with him next time, then Tucker, then Sam. They all help him clean, and he shows them his room. The one across from his parents', it feels strange.

When Danny dies when he's fourteen, the first adult he tells is Alfred. He and Jazz go over to his house more often than they stay in the Fentonworks building. At least at Alfred's, the food doesn't come to life. Alfred sits at the kitchen table and weeps when Danny tells him, Jazz is upstairs, and its just the two of them.

Danny's ghost form wears pearls around his wrist and the gloves look stained with some kind of black substance. He looks like a child who died in a lab accident, but he also looks like a child who has shadows dripping off his shoulders, curling at his feet, hanging from his eyes.

because amorphous blob batman has my heart always and danny/bruce will not escape it even in death even if that IS the only reason im giving him Mild BatBlob Vibes...so far

when they go to the manor, alfred helps danny make a pile of stones between Martha and Thomas' graves, nobody but the two of them (and sam and tucker) will know what it means. (not even bruce's children later down the line, not for a long, long time)

danny dives into ghost fighting on shaky feet and not half as witty as he once was in one world. he's skittish, skittering between blasts from shadow to shadow and clumsily making his way through each battle. but helping people lights a fire in him. he still has shadows dripping off his feet but there's a purpose in his eyes.

and god help him, he's going to help people.

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[jesncin]

it's Lunar New Year today so I'll be resharing Private Interview tonight! As always please be kind, it's not a trans story- it's an immigrant story. If you want a trans immigrant story you can either pick up my graphic novel Lunar Boy or wait for me to do something to martian manhunter-

[klarsynt]

top or bottom means nothing to me, i need to know if your muses are sub, dom or verse

[pennumbra]

I thought it would be fun to try designing some coats of arms/heraldry for the Centaurworld characters! Here's the Mysterious Woman, the General, and the Nowhere King.

More thoughts on each below the read more-

Mysterious Woman: Probably the simplest, but I think that fits for royalty? Hers is split right down the middle to reflect unity and two halves. The yellow shape is actually the head of the Key in spear/staff form! Happy coincidence that it looks kind of like a lily or fleur de lis to me!

The General: I think the General would probably fight under the Mysterious Woman's banner and use her existing coat of arms, because he was a nobody before marrying in? I also think appropriating royal symbols would lend him authority, but I wanted to design something for him anyway.

If he did want his own crest (or perhaps a logo for his army?), I'm not sure if I could see him incorporating elk or deer in any way... On one hand, I don't think he'd want any reminders or association with his true nature/past. But I could also see him egotistically liking something that reflects the narrative he's crafted in his mind, symbolizing what he views as triumphing over the lesser part of himself.

The Nowhere King: He gets two because I couldn't decide which vibe I liked more. Especially in AU contexts, I tend to imagine the Nowhere King leaning into the 'King' part of his title and styling himself as a ruler over the minotaurs- viewing them as his subjects and trying to create a place where they can belong, legitimizing their 'kingdom'. A flag featuring their kind would make sense to me, but I also really liked the idea of a crest featuring his antlers, because they're so distinctive. I think the green leaves would only feature in a more peaceful AU.

[paperandpencilsandskips]

Ok I'm Rosa and I'm gonna make some big changes

[argentsunshine]

there are two wolves inside of me. one is mad about how hard sumi yoshizawa is pushed in marketing and in the game instead of giving more focus to characters who were already there and in desperate need of more development. the other is mad that the character being marketed is always really "kasumi"

[moghedien]

ONCE AGAIN REMINDING YALL THAT DOM AND SUB ARE NOT SYNONYMS FOR TOP AND BOTTOM

TOP/BOTTOM ARE POSITIONS AND JUST DESCRIBE WHO GETS PENETRATED/DOES THE PENETRATING

DOM/SUB ARE TERMS INHERENTLY ASSOCIATED WITH KINK. IF YOU ARE A SUB OR DOM YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN KINK AND YOU CAN ACTUALLY BE A SUBMISSIVE TOP OR A DOMINANT BOTTOM

STOP CALLING CHARACTERS DOMS AND SUBS WHEN YOU REALLY MEAN TOP AND BOTTOM

[bluebellwren]

A big thing that annoys me way more than it should is people acting like all Southern accents are the same. Y'all cannot just plaster whatever southern state you want onto a character with an accent and call it a day. Character with an obviously Texan accent? Not from North Carolina, I don't care if it's your headcanon, it doesn't work that way. There's a character that's supposed to be from Tennessee? Why do they sound like they're from Georgia?

[meownotgood]

I was wondering… have you ever thought about writing a machine herald fic, where he still has his organic pp intact? Idk, a lot of nsfw fics with men with mechanically altered bodies tend to have their man parts replaced with a robotic one. My horny ass likes to imagine Viktor who’s ofc done all these mechanical augmentations to himself, but has still kept his original dick, because he hasn’t denied himself sexual pleasure as his (probably) last part of his human side. This of course clashes a lot with his world view and his character, but hey, a girl can dream! Don’t know if this makes any sense but yeah wanted to ask you how you would feel about this. Have a nice day and happy new year, looking forward to your next fic! :)

yes!! thank you for reading my fics :D and okay for me I'm like. half the time I want to see what that mechanical dick can do. but the other half. there's definitely something so intimate about it when most of vik's body he's replaced with mechanics. in my last machine herald fic (forwards beckon rebound) I was attempting to imply he still has that part intact, he's kind of like more human than he is trying to appear in a way

it's definitely something I'd be inclined to write someday. the machine herald fic I'm currently working on probably (don't quote me) won't have any actual sex because in this one vik is implied to be much more mechanical... but... yes, I definitely see your vision anon

[hoperays-song]

[gaia-mix-nicolosi]

Have a Pomni I made yesterday. I'm not made for sculptures...

[moleshow]

calling liuna right-wing on the basis of one (1) endorsement in CANADA? way to show your ass comrade. tell me what is a PLA? Quickly.

[wikitpowers]

i just thought about how cute it would be if ty asked kit “why would i call you ‘baby’ when ur name is so pretty?” (ft. kit herondale B L U S H I N G like a damsel in distress) 😳

[makerofmadness]

In your au who's story was the hardest to plan

Were the beasts or heroes harder to right over all

Hmmmm, hard question tbh. Mostly 'cus of the whole "working on this for 2-3 months" thing XD (hard to look back through discord messages to reaffirm my memory when its In the thousands Even when I look up a character's name dndndndd)

but I think PV took a while to get the ball rolling on despite driftwood Really wanting to talk about him soon I just. My brain was a rock on that one getting the ball rolling just did not happen for a while while Goldie and Cacao came along pretty naturally before him djdjdjdjdd

I'd say that Flour also came pretty naturally. Spice took more thought I think but I'm not sure I'd call it a difficulty. And shadow milk's only difficulty right now is that I kinda have to wait until we actually get the next two beast-yeast episodes for us to have a full picture of his character, the reason I have as much on him as I do right now is only really because we Have met him so much at all smnsn

[sysig]

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