#possible amnesia

[thearunadragon]

Context? Pffft. Who needs that?

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC The Invisible Bat

I've been listening to Alone Again by Weathers on repeat lately, so this post is inspired by it.

Rumor on the street says there is a new Bat in the flock. Yet, there is no proof - no one has seen them, no one has heard them, no one knows if that's true or not.

But, the thing is, every once in a while, a fight with one of the Bats is... harder than expected. A second hit, heavier than the first one, is delivered to the same place Batman's fist landed. Another bullet comes from a different direction than where Red Hood was standing. A cold edge of a blade is pressed to the neck just seconds before Robin's katana does the same.

Over the next few weeks, the rumor grows. Until, one day, someone calls it Invisible Bat, and the name sticks. The unnamed presence that follows the vigilantes gets its recognition.

Meanwhile, the Bats have no idea to who or what is following them. All they've been able to learn about it so far is that the Invisible Bat doesn't like the attention, registers as a vague cold spot in thermovision, and escapes without a trace every time they acknowledge it.

A month of fruitless attempts to either capture on camera or befriend the Invisible Bat later, Damian suddenly stops in his tracks in the middle of the Cave, like he's just seen a ghost. Then, he leaves to find Tim in a rush.

Two days after that, Nightwing finally catches their new team member on film. The old camera he borrowed from Tim on Damian’s insistence shows a picture of a boy with white hair, wearing what looks like a hoodie and jeans, with eyes bright and green, like Lazarus Waters.

------------

Is this Al Ghul Twins? Is this 'Danny escaped GIW and now helps the local vigilantes'? Is this some sort of amnesia prompt, where Danny only remembers his Protection Obsession? Is this de-aged prompt? Who knows.

I only wanted the irony of Gothamites calling Danny the 'Invisible Bat' while his first alias was 'Inviso-Bill'.

[batcavescolony]

I see a lot of people upset about William Kaplan being dead and no one mourning him cus Billy stole his body and I just don't see it that way. The kid in Wanda Vision is Billy Maximoff, The teenager at the Bar Mitzvah is William Kaplan, the Teen that got taken to the hospital after the wreck is neither and both Billy Maximoff and William Kaplan. That Teen went home with the abilities of Billy Maximoff, to the home of William Kaplan, with memories of neither and lived there for three years. He cares about Rebecca and Jeff, he lied to the to protect them from pain, they are his parents. He wants to find Tommy, he has magical powers, he wants to know who he is. All of these things are true. I wouldn't say William Kaplan is dead he just doesn't remember, like Agatha wasn't dead when he was Agnes, she just didn't remember.

[sysig]

Ah, childhood memories (Patreon)

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

I actually don't think I'm going to have time for drawing more dracula stuff anytime soon, what with all my comms and stuff, but here's another drawing from yesterday.

I understand that his death was a compliment to his character, but what if I LOVE HIM???? What about that huh??????

[goodtoembrace]

Not justifying Armand, but you don't get through that amount of physical, sexual, emotional abuse, brainwashing, isolation etc to the point of amnesia and dissociation since you're a human child until you're a centuries old vampire (and vampirism amplifies their traumas and emotions) without accidentally reprogramming your brain in a really messed-up way. Specially when you're stuck in a teenage brain forever. This is not someone that lived a safe and privileged life, not even a remotely decent one, and decided to be evil. In many ways Armand forgot or didn't even get to learn what is meant to be human and have a healthy lifestyle and relationships with people. Obviously, it would take him a long time to catch up with his humanity and even develop a sense of identity (one of his many issues too).

[goldflinches]

Thinking about age regression/deaging trope but very specifically:

Hob getting deaged but the curse was meant for mortal creatures - not for an immortal human.

It might be someone connects the dots, figures out his relationship with Dream, and tries to incapacitate him. Or just a random boobytrap Hob activated while poking around in a place he was told explicitly not to go poking around in.

Either way, Hob gets deaged by like a 100 years and is so, so surprised when his once a century stranger comes to rescue him, acts so warmly and treats him with a fondness so unlike their most recent meeting in 1889. Hob is extremely grateful but also very cautious because he doesn't want to scare off the man again - not before finding out his name!

Meanwhile Dream is having an absolutely shit time. He's trying to break the curse while dealing with this huge setback in his relationship with Hob (as friends? as husbands? as some yet-to-be-named nebulous thing between them?) and trying not to be too visibly losing his mind when he's with Hob. They end up having meetings just like before but Dream is the one doing all the talking for once - it's the most Dream has talked in centuries but if there's a chance of jogging Hob's memory, he's willing to try.

So while Hob is getting reacquainted with the 21st century with the great/dubious guidance of Matthew, Dream is in the background trying to undo the curse by menacing the local magical community while in the line of fire of Johanna Constantine's very pointed questions and Lucienne's knowing looks.

Toss up of having the curse being broken by

true love's kiss

some convoluted spell that puts Dream in danger and Hob is fiercely against it but Dream goes ahead anyway (because of course he would)

Hob slowly gains his memories because the spell wasn't meant to last long and there was no need to panic actually

So basically: much miscommunication, lots of patchy history lessons from a Raven, so so much of Dream discovering the depths of Hob's affections for him (centuries worth of it) just as much as Hob is rediscovering Dream's deep regard for him (even before their 1889 meeting).

[crimeronan]

there's ALSO potential for amnesiac timeline vee and camila to find out that luz has been sneaking down to see hunter bc at one point she just. falls asleep down there.

i don't think it would take her long to be unable to resist the impulse to touch him, so she's like, "....can i give you a hug??" and then he ends up clinging to her in a way that feels SO warm. and comfortable. and familiar. and she doesn't end up kidnapped or murdered, soooo....

luz keeps making casual excuses to lean against him or sling a leg over his or muss up his hair. she still feels insane and she's trying not to get his hopes up because she's like "all my instincts are responding to you like i'm, like. in love with you. but i don't want you to think i remember things i don't...."

one night it's extra chilly in the basement because the thermostat has stopped working, so camila's bought an electric blanket and a space heater. and as luz and hunter are going down a youtube rabbit hole, hunter is like, hey. you're shivering. come under the blanket with me.

luz ends up laying down with him on the couch, with her head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her to make sure she doesn't fall.

This Is A Very Dangerous Position.

she's asleep in like. five minutes. hunter fully intends to wake her up and send her back upstairs before anyone else wakes up, but first he wants to let her rest a bit. and then HE falls asleep.

camila comes into the kitchen to make coffee and sees the basement door ajar and immediately goes FLYING down the steps, because she's TERRIFIED that she'll find the basement empty.

instead she finds both hunter and luz still sound asleep. curled up together like a pair of snuggly cats. the laptop is 2 hours into an autoplayed 5 hour video essay about the latest mr beast controversy.

[bethanydelleman]

Me, constantly: Yeah... amnesia just doesn't work like that. It's almost impossible for a person to forget their name or childhood memories. The science just doesn't back up this amnesia plot.

Every writer ever:

Also me, constantly: Ou! He got hit in the head, I hope he gets some more memories back! Hit him harder!

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

Also it's not like we've never had anticlimatic endings to arcs before but that one was especially frustrating, right? I'm not the only one that kind of wanted more out of battling Mother Lauren, right? They put in more effort to get rid of Strex, I swear it was so.

Just oh yeah she's going to go now because...because Kevin said some vaguely hard-hitting things and then left.

And that's without factoring in the strange twist of 'Kevin is now his own father and is hinted at having kind of always raised himself this might or might not be a literal timeloop'. Although it being a literal timeloop is still not something I can get my head around, especially since people don't age in the DOW and the real Desert Bluffs is no more and Lauren isn't human any more and never will be again.

[sysmedsaresexist]

The box:

[fluffypurpleglitterdemon]

Ever since I learned that Xie Lian saved tiny child Qi Rong and defended him from bullies and that's where the little Qi Rong hero worship comes from I've been quietly losing it because it's just similar enough to Hua Cheng that he would hate it! There's quite a lot of differences, starting with the fact that Qi Rong did have other people (like Xie Lian's mom) and that his mom was able to leave her abusive husband before dying and go somewhere else where she had some support even if she still wasn't treated that great for a noble lady and that he was still a prince surrounded by riches and waited on by servants even if he was an outcast and laughingstock around his peers, and then even in terms of their choices after there's the fact that Qi Rong might say his violent behavior was defending Xie Lian but he barely listened to what Xie Lian wanted (Hua Cheng has also done bloody vengeance in defense of Xie Lian - 33 destroyed gods, 800 years of menacing and harassing fengqing - but now that Xie Lian is here to make these choices he isn't hurting people Xie Lian doesn't want hurt, even if they hurt Xie Lian terribly) and also there's the difference between "challenged 33 heavenly officials who actually physically hurt Xie Lian to a fight and then made them hold up their end of the agreement" and "tracked down and beat up the child Xie Lian went out of his way to save because saving them got Xie Lian in trouble" or " threw things at Xie Lian's shidi/servant for temporarily upstaging him at the performance they both planned out and worked on together". Most importantly is that Hua Cheng doesn't have Xie Lian up on a pedestal (at least, not one he can fall from), he doesn't have a perfect idealized version of him in his head, he's not getting disillusioned with differences between his idea of Xie Lian and the real thing - like Qi Rong was, and like he did, and that led to more and more fights between Qi Rong and Xie Lian until (presumably, I haven't actually gotten there yet) Qi Rong was disappointed with the reality of Xie Lian and the temple burning and kneeling statues and such came of it. (Somewhere in the first arc Xie Lian says something about that to Hua Cheng, about not having that level of devotion for someone you actually interact with because you might find out they were different than you thought, and I wonder if he might have said that thinking of Qi Rong specifically as much as the worshippers of Xianle as a whole.)

So it's not a perfect Dark Mirror situation, there's quite a lot of differences, but there's enough similarities it's pinging my parallel detectors... I think there's enough room to make a comparison there, or to call attention to some of those similarities, and that Hua Cheng would viscerally and immediately hate it if such a comparison was made. I can imagine and wonder about a situation where Qi Rong got de-aged, or hit by some amnesia curse or memory-stealer, or some other nonsense that'd lead to a Little Qi Rong running around, and wonder if that Qi Rong would look at Hua Cheng and approve xD Would he see Hua Cheng's devotion to Xie Lian and go "Ah yes, that's an appropriate way to act around Cousin Crown Prince! Finally someone else who's a normal amount of angry when Cousin Crown Prince is insulted!"? Hua Cheng would despise just absolutely all of that xD

[poisonousquinzel]

Thinking about how likely it is that BTAS Ivy grew old n spent all of that time fully believing that Harley died. That despite all her efforts and desperation to save her and get her away from Joker she didn't, she couldn't, and she lost her. That Harley died the same day that wretched man did and it became just yet another thing linking her to him for eternity.

thinking about how BTAS Ivy loved her So much and never got the chance to grow old with her, to see her heal and recover, to heal and recover with her

thinking about how much they deserved their happy ending but never got one. how we're seeing & getting their Less Platonic moments in the newer BTAS comics with the impending knowledge that the narrative has already decided it's a fate they'll never truly get to indulge in and savor, that it will always be destined to end in tragedy.

how for some universes a happy ending is given, growing old together is just the future we know is already there awaiting them... but not for them, not for btas harlivy... not the originals, for their story will always be a tragedy.

[angelsdean]

imagine if spn were an actual soap opera. imagine like 5000+ episodes. rewatches would take forever

[onethousand825days]

I feel like I need to cry for an extended period of time

[beaningeneralacceptance]

Love how Morden just leaves the player lying on the shore of dawn island for God knows how long to bury Tucker. Man just left the player to potentially drown or get hit by lightning to dig a hole that could honestly have waited thirty minutes or an hour for him to drag the player to shelter. He's lucky he didn't have to dig two holes, honestly.