#remade post because formatting was hurting my eyes

[kiragecko]

What's your favourite period of Batfamily dynamics?

What's the one that you're most interested about exploring through fanfic? Reading the comics for? Reinterpreting, so that it Actually Works?

This poll isn't interested in which period is best written. It wants the one that gets you passionate - either excited or furious - in a way that makes you want to go back to it over and over. (You don't even need to have READ the comics. Choose the period that makes the most interesting fanfic.)

It also isn't about which events were most interesting. It cares more about the relationships (including relationships with outside teams), how they changed over time, and which dynamics were most compelling to you.

Here are our challengers!

The Golden Age (1939 - 1960) - Alfred is a bumbling fool, Bruce murders people in the (very) early issues, Bruce and Dick need no motivation beyond 'it's the right thing to do' and 'we're AWESOME' (and why would they?) [22 years]

The Silver Age (1960 - 1980) - Dick gets fun Teen Titans friends, Bruce goes on space/time travel adventures, Alfred still didn't raise Bruce, and now we have BABS [21 years]

Early - Mid 80s (1980 - 1986) - Dick gets to be oh so melodramatic with his new angsty Titans friends in New York, Bruce says 'Chum' and 'Lad' as he ruffles tiny Jason's hair, Alfred raised Bruce and is his awesome self, Babs continues to be able to do anything, and they're an actual family [7 years]

Late 80s - Early 90s (1986-1992) - The Dark Knight Returns heralds a dark new era, Babs is crippled, and Jason dies. Tim is a new type of Robin - one who supports Batman. Babs rebuilds herself, no child needed. Dick and Bruce try, but mostly fail, to communicate. Alfred becomes the heart of a family that doesn't know it's a family. [7 years]

The 90s (1992 - 1999) - Dick and Tim are brothers. Oracle rejoins the Batfamily, while continuing her separate life. Dick moves from New York to Blüdhaven, closer to the Bats than the Titans. Bruce has 2 sons, even though neither realize he thinks that way. Steph arrives, and exists on the edges, only connected to the family through Tim. A variety of other people come and go through their lives - Jean-Paul, Helena Bertinelli, Harold, Sasha Bordeaux, etc. [8 years]

Early 2000s (1999 - 2003) - The family grows. Cass continues Babs' legacy, and Steph finally gets a friend. Babs and Alfred are in some ways joint centres of the family. Alfred and Bruce fight about how to raise kids. Dick and Tim get even closer. Tim starts Young Justice, and Dick is back with his oldest friends. [5 years]

Mid 2000s (2003 - 2007) - The era of death. Donna dies, Dick's team disbands, and Tim's team renames themselves the Teen Titans. Bad idea, many teens die, including most of Tim's friends. Steph dies. Tim and Cass get close, until Cass is brainwashed and kills a lot of people. Many, many people around Dick are murdered, and eventually Blüdhaven is exploded. Jason is back from the dead, and exuberantly contributing to the murders. Dick is furious with Jason, Jason is violent towards Tim, and Tim is far less forgiving than fanon pretends. Babs gets colder, Alfred gets older, and Bruce shuts down. [5 years]

Late 2000s (2007 - 2011) - The era of grief. Bruce, Dick, and Tim take a year long cruise to recover. Cass and Steph eventually return. But the scars run deep. Everyone's relationships are shaky. Babs leaves Gotham. Jason has a different motivation every arc. Tim is trying to clone people and being head-hunted by Ra's al Ghul. Damian shows up and topples the already unsteady situation. Bruce dies. Cass leaves. Tim fights with Dick and goes off to prove Bruce is alive. Damian and Steph both rebuild themselves in the ashes, while Dick tries to hope for a better future. [5 years]

New 52 (2012 - 2016) - The universe is rebooted. Jason has friends now! Dick spends some time as a secret agent. Damian continues his preboot growth. Tim ... exists. Steph and Cass don't. Babs is Batgirl again. Most of the past no longer exists. [5 years]

Rebirth (2016 - 2023) - Comics slowly bring in previous continuity. Alfred dies, Damian runs away from home, both Steph and Cass are back and being Batgirl, Tim is back with Young Justice for a while. Jason reintegrates with the Batfamily on and off. Bruce gets worse and worse at parenting. (I know this should be split up, but I haven't read ANY of these comics) [8 years]

[nonhumanresources]

Slithery Perfection

⚠ HEY REALLY BIG GORE WARNING HERE UPFRONT ⚠

Not following the regular formatting here because hey seriously for reals this one is not like my regular stuff at all. If you are squeamish about gore this is not the story for you. I will be putting all details under the cut for this one and marking it mature.

But! It's here. I wrote it years ago but it's in keeping with the season so I thought why not share it somewhere that isn't DeviantArt. No one reads these anyway so I figure it's not a big deal but hey, here it is.

Okay, with warnings out of the way, here we go. This story is for someone I knew named Trap-Cat. I haven't talked to him in years and had barely known him at this point; we were never great friends, but he was nice. He told me about a strange dream he had, and I offered to write it out as a story. When I went to post this, I actually decided to go back and do some editing, 5+ years later, to polish it up somewhat and make it both more and less palatable (extra gore oops).

I would like to specify that I do not actually have a gore kink; I mostly just like it for its narrative potential. However, while I am not generally an edgy person, I occasionally like to dive into something darker, and so here's one of those dives.

Summary: a man wakes up tied up in a strange space. He is remade through violence.

What to expect: this is a TF story, and contains tropey elements of that; however, it is also a gorefest. But also it's a naga goddess TFTG. So.

Length: 1.8k words.

Trigger warnings: while generally not very detailed, this story includes depictions of flaying, shredding, and general dismantling of pretty much the entirety of a person's body. I do not get into specifics on hands/feet/eyes/teeth/face/other, more common triggers.

Google docs link is here.

If you made it this far, I am impressed at the strength of your stomach, and maybe don't judge 15 year old me too harshly for this one. I was going through a lot at the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first thought that darts through my mind isn’t words. It’s a sensation of pain, somehow translated through more than just skin. It somehow twinges through my mind, skipping between neurons, making them sing with the wordless expression. 

And, of course, I bolt awake.

“Gyah!” I take in a deep breath, lifting my head up, eyes open wide. Luckily, the sleep had already adjusted them to the dark - otherwise I would have been almost blind. My wrists are chained and chafing, and I try to stand to give them some relief. It only sort of works, my feet barely able to reach the hard floor, forcing me to stand on my toes. It was actually my toes, too - my shoes and socks had disappeared, along with the rest of my clothing, other than a pair of tight boxers. I was freezing. 

The temporary lifting of weight helps some blood get flowing through my wrists again. My neck is sore, and as I stretch side to side I used the opportunity to get a good look at my surroundings. 

Directly ahead is a wall - or a figurative one, I guess. It’s just darkness, seemingly impenetrable by the weak light. It shifts and flows, tendrils trying to reach towards me, but being pushed back by the illumination. To the left and right of the darkness, there were only cement walls. Craning my neck, I saw that there was one behind me, with a single light bulb glowing with harsh, incandescent light. It hurt my eyes to look at and left bright yellow spots in my vision. 

Where was I? I had never seen this place before. Then again, it could be anywhere, considering all I had to go off of was cement and the dark. Had I been kidnapped for some reason? That made the most sense, but only just. It’s not like I was a spy or anything - I’m just some random guy. I try to think back. Maybe there’s something I did wrong? My last memory is of—

Something interrupts my train of thought. It sounds like a whisper coming from that darkness. It slips around my ears, indistinct and ominous. I think I can see something moving out past the light, but it’s nothing but an indistinct shadow. A mass of… something, that moves like a stalking predator. 

I start to panic. 

The whispers begin to grow. I can make out pieces of words now. Nothing more than fragments, meaningless on their own, broken bits of words that snapped before I could hear them. A vowel here, a consonant there - all disjointed nonsense. 

The first full word I make out is ‘are.’ 

The second is ‘I.’

The third is ‘you.’ 

I shudder. 

The whispers suddenly become clear - and with them, a hand reaches out of the darkness. It’s clawed, pale and sickly as death. The voice that is no longer whispering scratches my ears like a blunt knife. 

“You… are imperfect. I… will make you… perfect.” The arm attached to the hand drags the darkness forward, keeping the thing’s body cloaked. I see light reflecting off the tip of one of the claws. 

And it plunges into my chest. 

I cry out in surprise and pain. I pull against my restraints, but I can barely move, much less escape this thing. The claw twists deep into my rib cage. I fear that it will hit my heart. After a second, it actually does - but I… don’t feel it. The pain sears my body, contorts my muscles uncontrollably, but my heart beats on. It somehow hasn’t burst. I feel something entering it from the claw tip, but it’s impossible to tell what. 

After a few seconds, the claw slides back out, and the intensity of the pain drops significantly. I can hang still, sweating and bleeding from sores around my wrists. The claw is dripping a strange, green liquid that looks like poison. Was it putting that inside me? Blood and more of the liquid well from the hole in my chest, dripping down my abdomen in horrific streaks. 

As another clawed hand reaches out of the darkness towards me, I feel the liquid pumping through my body. It’s thicker than my blood - I can see my veins visibly swell as they begin to fill with it. How long until my blood vessels start to burst? I should be panicking, but I feel somehow… disconnected, through the pain. Everything still hurts - the bulging just added another layer to the torment - but it has overloaded my brain, sending me into unfelt spasms of agony. My limbs twitch, but I don’t writhe. 

The pair of hands begin to claw at my legs, gouging deep holes in them. A mixture of blood and green liquid spills out onto the ground. The claws continue their work, shredding my lower body to ribbons. My skin is long gone, thrown all the way to the cement walls in bloody pieces. I’m nearly torn in half as the monster claws almost everything away from my body below my waist. Huge chunks of skeleton are exposed as blood fountains out. 

The claws stop their attack for a few seconds, and I grow dizzy. I should be dying - shouldn’t I? That amount of blood… no one could survive losing this much. Yet, as the flow slows, my blood running out, the green liquid begins to drip from flayed arteries, increasing in volume moment by moment. How could there have been so much? 

The stuff coming out of my legs begins to… congeal. It slows its heart-beat spurting, building a thicker and thicker coat over me. It seems to pull the shreds of leg together, hardening around them, growing opaque. Soon, nothing human is visible through the solid mass of green. The light glints off of the surface, the outside growing rigid and formed. It looks almost like… scales? Whatever it is, it continues to grow beneath me, ever lengthening, stretching towards the back wall, sliding through my slick blood and viscera and touching its fading warmth.

I let out a shriek as the claws return. They make quick work of my upper body. They seem to have gotten into a better rhythm, now - it doesn’t take nearly as long to shed my outer layers up there. More blood, more liquid - the same process, really, though it is difficult to describe how ritualistic flaying could be simplified to a statement so nonchalant. Not only should I have been dead, I should have been convulsing and spasming as my muscles and ligaments bore witness to harsh light and cold air for the first and last time, drawn out like ropes, sinew like rubber bands snapping under the weight of mighty claws. The goring was horrid, and I know this, yet I could not participate as I yearned to in the disassembling of my very self. A silent witness to a ritual most dark.

Except… things started to take on other changes, as well. Something was affecting my mind. As the claws scrape across my chest, the strands of meat hanging from my ribcage fall strangely against my naked, skinned form. Relief replaced panic and expectation replaced despair. The changes work their way through my mind like worms in a rotting corpse, altering my thoughts, distorting them, eating away the unnecessary parts of me. That’s what it was, yes? Just… the parts I didn’t need. Of course. 

My arms and torso are pumping the viscous green something-or-other out, all over. I’m covered in it. It’s hardening quickly, re-building muscle, sinew, arteries, everything. It once again toughens into scales on the outside - my scales, now. Like leather curing, or skin drying in desert sun.

The liquid on my chest continues to pump straight from the heart, extending outwards in a smooth curve. I’m confused for a second, before the figurative worms in my head calm me down. It’s what is supposed to happen, they whisper. We’re making you perfect.

...Y-yes. Perfect. Perfect is correct. Perfect is wonderful, for one such as myself. 

The change speeds up, now that I’ve accepted it. The pain lessens - now, it’s pleasure. Or… no, it doesn’t lessen; I am deriving pleasure from my pain. Each gouge, my exposed nerves, my body destroyed, it all sends delicious rivers of pleasure through my spine and under my new scaled skin like trickles of ice water on heated metal. I bask in it, revel in the ecstasy of it. I can feel my new blood pumping through my renewed vascular system, strengthened tenfold to account for my superior form. My arms bulge, rippling with thick, reptilian skin and muscle, no longer about to burst. As my wrists swell, the metal confining them bends, nearly snapping. Instead, it begins to glow red hot, and a harsh rattling hissss escapes my mouth in amusement. The chains snap, leaving the manacles on me as I drop down onto meters of bloodsoaked tail. The manacles reshape themselves, becoming objects of power and magic in the presence of something as mighty as myself.

The change is nearly done. The claws begin to recede, back into the dark. The dark is receding, as well. Not because it’s leaving, but because I’m becoming part of it. The whisper comes back, for just a fleeting second. 

“You’re nearly perfect. So, so close…”

I cannot wait. 

My head is all that’s left. This should be easy. 

Using the claws budding from my own hands, I begin to tear at my face. As I yank away hair and skin, the skull underneath elongates, slimming out, growing a muzzle, more and more beautiful. Claws scratch deep gouges into the bone from the force, far more than necessary, frenzied with passion. I cannot help myself; I must rip the old away to make room for the new. The pain draws my tongue out, tasting my own shivering distress and pleasure in the air, seasoned with blood like a baleful sword stabbed through a betrayed compatriot. 

Behind me, my tail, several times longer than my body, smashes the light. I don’t notice. I’m too focused. 

My pupils slim into vertical slits as my irises take on the form of swirling galaxies, black scars running through their centers. My mouth is much flatter, curving up a little in the middle. I open it wide, strands of saliva and blood and venomous, hateful ichor clinging to each half. I let my long, split tongue hang out as I try extending my fangs. Green venom drips from them. 

I don’t need to look over myself. I know what I am already. My long, flowing tail; my arms, slender yet muscular; my chest, curved in a gorgeous circle, with belly scales below it accenting my form and colors; my head, such a pretty shape, angular and beautiful. I am a naga. These facts are mortal interpretation of form; only I know the true divinity of pain and rebirth that boils beneath the skin, the passion of death and dismemberment, the things that make me truly beautiful. 

I am perfect.