#my retired dads

[saskiaalonso]

[miscellaneousrenaissant]

Thinking about how Chilchuck and Laios started adventuring at around the same relative time in their lives

There are a bunch of similarities to their backstories - leaving home at a young age (14, 12), starting careers in exploring dungeons as young adults (19, 22), developing a complex about the first monster that killed them (Mimics, Living Armor), getting scammed or taken advantage of by other adventurers (succubus-hunting party, gold-peelers) - that they give me "past and future" vibes

Chilchuck is the older mentor to the less-experienced Laios. He joined Laios' party when Laios had only been exploring the dungeon for a year, and Chilchuck regularly gives advice based on his own 10 years of experience in an effort to support Laios as leader. There are several occasions of Chilchuck either teaching or wishing Laios would learn something in particular that he thinks would help with the job

Laios is a reflection of Chilchuck's past from when he was just starting out as a naive adventurer, while Chilchuck is an example of the future that Laios is striving towards as a seasoned dungeon explorer and leader

But also, they can represent missed opportunities and paths not taken for each other

An example for Chilchuck is that he isn't treated with the same respect as a tall-man because he is a half-foot. He can lead a union of half-foots, but leading a party of other races, many of whom would infantilize him, is unlikely. There are limitations to what he can do (physically and socially) compared to Laios simply because of how each were born, and it's partly why he's so hard on Laios to make him a good leader and not waste the opportunities afforded to him

Meanwhile as an example for Laios, who left his family and fiancée behind when going out on his own at 12 years old, who wasn't shocked that Chilchuck became a father at 13, and who even mentioned that some tall-men get married at 13, too...

If Laios had never left home, would he, at 13, have married someone from his childhood and also become a father of three?

[evansbuck-ley]

the first halloween that buck and tommy’s son is old enough to go trick or treating he is insistent in keeping his costume secret - well secret from one parent bc someone needs to pay. and unfortunately for buck he is the parent that is kept out of the loop. and even more unfortunate for buck is that this is the year that he had to work Halloween, so tommy promises to bring henry to the firehouse before he takes him trick or treating.

halloween rolls around and buck is basically vibrating out of his skin bc he just got a text from tommy to tell him their are on the way and he is beyond excited to see his boys. and suddenly there comes the world smallest firefighter sprinting towards buck with tommy not too far behind trying his best to keep up. buck takes in the sight in front of him. bc henry could have dress up as Dracula or Spider-Man but no hes dressed as buck. from the plastic helmet that sat wonky on his head and had “118” scribbled on the front . to buckley-kinard that was neatly printed on the back on his jacket. all the way down to his little yellow rain boots poking out the bottom of his turnouts.

and from behind buck he could hear hen and eddie cooing at the sight of the boy and he could see chimney come to stand next to tommy to take a million pictures that he knows is being sent to maddie - because yes buck we need pictures of everything he does, we need to fill his baby box!

then henry is jumping up and down in front of him so excited and he’s rambling. look daddy I’m you. do you like it? papa said that you would love it. i’m going to be a firefighter when I grow up daddy. can we go see grampy bobby after papa? I want to show him. and god, he is buck’s double and buck just can’t hold it together anymore. he lets a tear slip down his cheek and he scoops the boy in his arms and holds him tight to his chest. and in his head he is thanking whatever god out there that gave him this.

this family. this love. his whole world.

[pencilscratchins]

i have reached the part of the steddie hyperfixation where i make them domesticated men in their 50s. having a blast! (twitter) [ID in ALT text]

[girlsdads]

#ok it’s giving girl dad wearing his daughter’s handmade necklace special for him into work 🥺🥺😩😩

couldn’t stop thinking about this tag of mine, wrote a little smth about it 🥰

The stomping footfalls racing down the hall behind him could only be those of a toddler. Daniel turns and squats just in time for his tiny blonde projectile of a child to come barreling into his chest. The force sends Daniel falling back onto his butt with a surprised oof, his daughter giggling delightedly in his lap.

“Hey, Ellie-bug,” Daniel smiles. “Daddy’s gotta go to work, remember how we talked about it and you promised to be a big girl?” He brushes a strand of hair away from her mouth where it’s gotten stuck in a little smear of jam leftover from her breakfast. Daniel had shown Max how to make it just the way she likes—the pancake batter shaped in the silicone star mold, the silly faces drawn in jelly and jam.

Ellie’s head bobs up and down dutifully, but she makes no move to get up.

Max appears from the kitchen then, looking like a man who’s been fighting a losing battle with the second pancake. There’s a splatter of thick batter on his white t-shirt. He’s holding the spatula like it’s offended him somehow. Daniel looks at him over their daughter’s head, and loves him fiercely.

“She is of course the biggest girl,” Max says. Ellie grins proudly. “Why don’t you give Daddy your present now, then we will finish your pancakes.”

Daniel watches her grey-blue eyes light up like she’s just now remembering why she came running at him in the first place. She reaches a chubby hand into the bib pocket on her overalls, embroidered Enchanté script stretching as she roots around and produces a string of brightly-colored plastic beads. She holds it out to him expectantly.

Daniel takes the strand delicately in hand, wraps it around the backs of his fingers and rotates his wrist to get a good look. It’s a necklace, probably more of a choker given its relatively small circumference, the fat pony beads the only real indication it was made by a child. The powder pink and fuchsia beads are separated by interspersed pearlescent white orbs and clear sparkly stars. Smack in the center is a single number bead, a glittery pink three.

“Jeepers, did you make this for me? It’s beautiful!” Daniel says, and means it. He’s already been wanting to talk to his team about adding a jewelry collection to a future drop, and what better inspiration?

Ellie nods excitedly. “Papa helped me do a…,” she pauses, squints and tilts her little head, searching for the word, “��a pattern!”

“We made it the other day, while you were out with Blake,” Max chimes in. “For good luck.” He sounds almost bashful, like maybe it wasn’t their daughter’s idea in the first place. Daniel’s heart is so swollen it’s threatening to leak out through the gaps in his ribcage.

“How’d I get so lucky, huh?” Daniel muses, softly, mostly to himself. He stretches the elastic over his head, feels the smooth plastic three settle in the hollow of his throat. His pulse thrums evenly against it, grounding.

He flashes his biggest smile at his family. “How do I look?”

“Pretty, Daddy!” Ellie throws herself forward again, wrapping her arms around Daniel’s neck. It leaves him locking eyes with Max, who’s gazing down at the two of them like nothing else in the universe exists. Daniel can never quite get used to that look—still feels butterflies dancing up the back of his throat, his stomach dropped into a glorious freefall.

“Beautiful, Daniel,” Max says, reverent. “Always.”

[welcometogrouchland]

I've been binging Batman Beyond recently (Terry ily so much) and thought about how- bc of the JLU twist which I think isn't even canon to the comics BB verse but shhh bare with me- he'd technically be Damian's half brother??? Which is just so ridiculously soap opera to me. I need them to interact in a silly time travel adventure so bad you don't even understand (ID in alt)

[thissying]

Max about the baby and vacation, GP Abu Dhabi, 2024

[classical-bluess]

Happy birthday old man 🫶

[jessicas-pi]

So. You guys remember that AU I had? The one where Darth Vader kind-of adopted Inquisitor!Ezra as his son? Among other things? No? Ok yeah here's the link to the OG post

...

ANYWAY I HAVE MORE THOUGHTS NOW!

Shortly after arriving on Lothal, Sabine found Ezra some armor and painted it to match hers. Since they look pretty much the same and never take off their helmets when they're out vandalizing, no one knows who they are or even how many of them there are. People start calling them the Mad Mandos. Sabine thinks it's a lame nickname, Ezra thinks it's awesome.

When Vader shows up, Ezra insists he stay for dinner. Yes he knows Vader can't eat with the suit, but it's polite and he hasn't had a family dinner with Dad in so long...

Cue the most awkward meal of all time. Vader tries to make small talk. Sabine is silently panicking while Vader is making small talk. Vader is trying to figure out who the Mandalorian is (is she ezra's friend? is she ezra's girlfriend? did she kidnap him? did he kidnap her? was it mutual kidnapping? this is all very unclear and vader needs answers) without being too scary, for Ezra's sake, but frankly there's nothing he can do about it. He's terrifying. It's a fact.

Anyway. Ezra's happy. Sabine's freaked out. (She's so glad she took Ezra out of the bounty hunting profession because this would have ended so badly if he'd been hurt.) And then...

Actually, I have to back up and explain.

So, the Empire is in absolute CHAOS right now. Mostly due to the fact that the Emperor is dead.

Palpatine had been trying to get rid of Ezra for some time, seeing the boy as a weakness to Vader, so Vader offed Palps as soon as he had the chance.

Then Vader realizes oh no, am I the Emperor now??? Vader thinks quick, trying to figure out someone who he could appoint as Emperor. They need to be smart and responsible and able to deal with crazy people and...

Cody!

Vader makes Cody the Emperor, and immediately runs off to find his missing kid.

(Cody lasts two years as Emperor before abdicating due to how much he absolutely loathes the job. He departs from the public eye and instantly vanishes. No one can find him. No one knows where he is. He goes down in history as the least hated emperor of the short-lived empire. Legend has it that he can still be seen, now and then, drinking space margaritas on the beaches of Scarif.)

But with Cody's abdication and immediate vanishment, nobody is left in charge. Power struggles are immediate and messy, and in all that chaos, some of the regular protocols are forgotten.

Such as the one maintaining Vader's life support system.

See, Palpatine didn't want Vader being operational without him, so he had something built into the suit so that it would shut down if he didn't enter a specific code every week. Cody kept it up because it was just one of those regular protocols, he didn't even know what it did, but now with the chaos, it's forgotten about.

On Lothal, Vader collapses suddenly.

Sabine would rather do anything than touch the machinery of Vader's life support system, but he's Ezra's dad and he's dying and grrrrrrh FINE SHE'LL HELP.

With some quick thinking, she gets the most essential parts of the suit to work, pauses briefly to make sure Ezra's not going to have a panic attack, and then sets to work on restoring the rest of the suit.

Sabine is horrified by the state of Vader's prosthetics. This equipment is like... 10, 15 years out of date.

Project: Repair Ezra's Dad becomes her new hobby. Vader is a begrudging participant in this project. He's just doing it because she's Ezra's friend. Well... probably his friend? He passed out before he figured out what, exactly, she was.

But once he is awake and functional, it's not long before Vader comes to the conclusion that she's SEVERAL things to Ezra, including his ride-or-die best friend, his roommate, his partner in crime, his occasional parental guidance, and his substitute moral compass.

By means of incredibly unsubtle questioning, Vader does rule the girlfriend thing out. By equally unsubtle means, he also makes it very clear to Sabine that the girlfriend thing is completely off the table in the future as well. Like forever. Hands off his son.

(That was a dinner conversation neither Sabine nor Ezra would ever like to repeat.)

Anyway, over time, Sabine and Vader get to talking. No one--especially not Ezra--knows how it happens, but Sabine and Vader actually become friends. It's kind of a terrifying idea.

(Vader attempts, with his usual unsubtle means, to gauge Ezra's opinion on potentially acquiring a sister.)

(Oddly, Ezra doesn't seem too keen on it.)

(Vader, now worried, makes a mental note to reiterate to Sabine that under no hypothetical future circumstances will she ever be allowed to date his son.)

So, yeah. Time passes. Vader just kind of... sticks around. A couple Inquisitors show up and he yells at them for interrupting bonding time with his son but he doesn't Force-choke them because it makes Ezra upset when he does.

In fact, Ezra seems to be getting upset about several things Vader does that he used to be fine with before. Vader almost wants to be mad at Sabine for giving his son a conscience, but he begins to realize that he doesn't quite like doing those things, either.

(Without the outdated, barely-functional suit tormenting him nearly every second of the day, and on a planet that shines with Light, Vader's grip on the Darkness is slipping.)

(One day, standing amid the long grasses, watching Ezra trying to show off by climbing the rock spires, Vader smiles.)

(He has not smiled in fourteen years.)

But good things don't always last, do they?

One day, on one of their vandalism missions, both of the kids go missing. Vader, filled with rage, takes his TIE and chases their kidnappers down to one of the shanty-towns.

He is seconds away from going on a murder spree when Ezra's frantic intervention stops him.

Some intimidation and a bit of mind reading later, Vader uncovers the truth. These people, it seems, got Ezra and Sabine out of a scrape, and were genuinely going to bring them back home after their stop here--or, if that didn't work out, after they went on a brief mission to free Wookiee slaves.

Vader doesn't even really notice that they were going to be freeing Wookiee slaves from the Empire.

Ever since the oozing slick of Darkness started to be washed away, Vader has felt something worryingly like pangs of conscience for what he has done in service to the Empire.

Long before he was a Sith--long before he was a Jedi--Vader was a boy who had a dream about freeing all the slaves.

"I'm coming with," he announces.

"Dad, I'm not really sure that's a good idea--"

"This is not up for discussion, son."

Oh Force, Kanan thinks. Oh Force, this is definitely a Sith Lord. There is a Sith Lord going on this mission with us to fight the Empire. what the kriff what the kriff what the kriff---

What follows is the most awkward, tense mission the Spectres have ever undertaken.

It's also, without a doubt, the easiest mission the Spectres have ever undertaken.

Vader goes all Rogue One Hallway Scene on the transport full of Stormtroopers, which Ezra frowns at him for, and Vader feels a little tiny bit bad about it.

Zeb is slightly impressed by Ezra's ability to whack stormtroopers together by their helmets without even touching them.

"Hey, Kanan, kid's like you!" he says, without thinking.

There's a long, terrified pause.

"Cockroaches," Vader huffs, pointing at Kanan in something more like annoyance than anything else. "You're like cockroaches. Squish one and three more show up. Utterly impossible to kill."

"Da-ad!" Ezra complains. "You can't kill my friends!"

"I'm not going to kill your friends. I merely said they were difficult to kill."

"Well you made it sound like a threat! And you said you wouldn't do that anymore!"

"I know. They're just like this," Sabine mutters under her breath, giving Kanan a consoling pat on the shoulder. "You get used to it, after a while."

[overlyinvestedinlife]

What do you mean I’m losing them together at the end of the year??? What do you mean they’re taking my beautiful family away 😭

[sainz100]

📸 by Martin Trenkler

[saskiaalonso]

[tangentrina]

(My Yuri baby AU) Uncle Hong Lu had never received such a family gift before

[mirensiart]

i wonder how confused the Chain would be if one of them for example was missing a leg and for the first time had phantom pain.

all of them checking who's leg is in pain and it turns out the leg is literally gone

Hmmm 🤔

I used to know an amputee, he was a friend of my dad, he lost all his fingers but his thumb in an accident

He would tells us that he felt his fingers still, but as if they were a fist, he knew he didn't have fingers but he still felt them, and whenever he tried to make the "phantom fingers" move or uncurl from the fist, he would feel pain shot up his arm

So if say, wild post totk who's missing his arm after rauru's arm is gone, suddenly and unconsciously tries to move his phantom fingers or maybe move his phantom wrist (like he logically knows they aren't there but he still feels them, the nerves are still connected) it would send everyone sharp pain up their arms lol

The others eventually know it's wild's phantom pain, but they don't have the heart to scold him for it cause like, they know he can't help it, he just keeps forgetting he doesn't have it

[independent-fics]

Nathan Ford Being a Dad™ Parallels

Leverage (2008-2012):

04x16 The Gold Job

05x05 The Gimme a ‘K’ Street Job

05x08 The Broken Wing Job

[shannonsketches]

I don’t care if it’s boring I’m 10000% in love with the idea of Vegeta having a quiet happy domestic home life throughout the 7 year gap and as his end game.

He was raised in an intergalactic mafia and by an absolute miracle got out and was granted his life back. Twice. One of the two last men standing when an entire population gets wiped out. Twice (counting the Freeza Force, by the end of ResF).

His father stopped fighting on the front lines once he became king, to watch over his domain. Frieza didn’t personally get involved in battle (not wipeouts, but actual battle) until Namek. Vegeta was always (told he was) intended to take both their places.

Letting him grow into a protector has been such a great arc and imho it would be so beautifully wrapped by letting him finally get to go home and inherit his crown as the guardian of his new planet.