#sam being a really good friend

[wanologic]

sorry danny, sam will never think you’re cool

[starry-bi-sky]

i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.

He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.

And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.

And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.

Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.

Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."

There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.

It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.

Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.

At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.

"Do you like to do anything?"

Nothing. Just silence.

Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.

Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.

Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.

And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.

He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.

Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.

So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.

"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"

"Don't."

He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.

Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"

"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."

It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"

The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."

Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."

And they fall back into silence.

Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."

He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.

(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)

At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.

Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.

("Tucker told me once--") ("Tucker?") ("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")

(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)

(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)

It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."

The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."

The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.

When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.

Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."

When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.

Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.

[imavikingo]

I said this in tags on another post, but it’s relevant and deserves its own post (I should be reading my usual pre- sleeping fic selection, BUT! I had this revelation -being sleepy is useful once again! -)

They NEEDED Steve to disappear, to be gone. To never care about Bucky anymore. That way they could treat Bucky as they see fit, and that means treating him like shit.

Steve would NEVER accept or allow Bucky to make amends, he would NEVER let the government take care of Bucky or be part of his “rehabilitation” in any way shape or form. That’s why he became Nomad, that’s why Bucky stayed in Wakanda. He would had fight with teeth and nails for Bucky.

“He died already more than once! He was a victim! A prisoner of war. He saved the fucking universe. What the fuck do you mean with amends!”

He became a wanted criminal for that same reason, to not let them have Bucky (nor other people in a fucking watchlist)

They needed Steves relationship with Bucky to become bitter, to be nothing more than a memory.

Steve being in retirement wouldn’t have cut it and…

Bucky was always going to follow Steve, no matter what.

So they needed him to stay alone (or with a companion that didn’t really care as much as Steve, enter Sam)

This way they killed two birds with one stone in Endgame: Reinforcing Steves “love” for Peggy, because “he’s NOT gay, you guys!”, and the partial isolation of Bucky.

[aliusfrater]

subtle

[quietwingsinthesky]

if there was a torchwood/spn crossover, jack would get shot in the head so much. i know he already dies a lot, but he’s going to die so many times during this crossover. keeps getting bullets unloaded into him. they stab him with silver and steel and copper and none of it keeps him down. he’s gonna get squirted with borax and that one’s not gonna kill him but it is going to ruin his coat, which is materially worse for him.

[skeletalheartattack]

i love your art style so much, it's rad as hell. how long have you been drawing? :o

you mean the goofy little sketches i do from time to time? if so, that's really kind of you to say!!! that said, i wouldn't necessarily say they're the peak of my drawing abilities though, since i just draw with a mouse.

i use to draw a lot when i was growing up, though after getting Gmod for the first time, and subsequently SFM, i moved over into those programs to make my art, and kinda stopped drawing from that point.

i don't normally draw a whole lot these days, but when it comes to how i draw the stuff above, really i just find the messiness of using a mouse to draw really goofy, that and it's kinda nice to draw stuff without it needing to be perfect. it's just silly lines.

but regardless, thank you for the kind words, im glad you like my silly stuff

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[blujayonthewing]

had an unexpectedly visceral response to a haha funnie video of sam reich telling brennan about how he thinks nat1s are better than nat20s because failure is so much more interesting, and brennan, obviously, being like 'OH you like failure? sam likes failure?? I wouldn't have guessed?? do you like it so much you'd rig a whole gameshow to make winning impossible???? HUH. WHO KNEW'

and like man I dunno, just, something about the specific intersection of having spent my entire life trying as hard as I know how and it still never being good enough and failing everything I touch no matter how important it is or how much I care about it, but also what it's like feeling like you're getting singled out and then punished for being good at something, how frustrating it is in dnd when the DM manufactures a failure out of what should have been a clear success because, well, you're just too good at perception but I thought it'd be more interesting if that ambush happened anyway haha, how it makes me feel like a whingeing spoiled child if I point out that doing a good job and being rewarded with success just fucking feels good, how at a certain point if you're too smart or too good at something people will start getting lowkey mad at you for it

and like maybe it'd be one thing if it was just 'oh yeah I love it when trying your best is frustrating and unfulfilling and never good enough' OR 'hey if you know too many bird facts too many times then everyone's gonna be gunning for you to get taken down a peg about it you smug clown bitch' but man it had to be both

[hyperfixation-or-death]

A series of headcanons:

Victor Deslandes was a Gifted Child™ in elementary school, and hit burnout in middle school.

Sam Deslandes was a Gifted Child™ in middle school, and hit burnout in high school.

Bilal Belkebirs was canonically highly academically and professionally successful before time traveling back to save his friends. However, in the post-canon timeline, he experiences burnout in university due to feeling somewhat directionless.

Romane Berthauds, in the timeline she and Victor traveled back from, had no friends and decided to focus most of her time and effort into academic success. The Romane from Bilal's timeline also put a lot of effort into schoolwork, but after her mom died, her studying habits became really unhealthy and excessive as she tried to cope with the loss. Post-canon Romane does not experience academic burnout (she has sooo many other problems, though). However, the Romane from Bilal's timeline (who the show unfortunately doesn't acknowledge again) will have a midlife crisis at some point.

[brainfilehasstoppedworking]

Listen...

Chihiro and Sayaka, despite them being siblings in my AU, I think they'd be cute. If they weren't siblings in my AU, I'd make them a couple. Just. Idk. They seem like a really cute pair.

[loveandscience]

!!!! !!!! omg, I feel so Seen

[thewingedwolf]

having a group of gay friends where this is their first group of gay friends apparently means they don’t find my “our one token straight friend is like a little gay” jokes funny apparently aksjsjs or when i bitch specifically about the gay dating scene near chicago being dominated by annoying white ex theater gays, they immediately get into like “well there are messy gay poc” yeah i’m aware of that, i’m talking about a really specific issue with the gays in this area pls keep up

[quietwingsinthesky]

god the idea of a version of spn where uriel survives until the end is fascinating to me actually. i feel like part of the problem with castiel's character is that he's so disconnected, you'll get an angel a season there to work as castiel's parallel and then they're killed off and never brought up again. but uriel? the first one we see him with? who is so diametrically opposed to castiel in s4?

if he makes it to s5, does he team up with lucifer? he'd be the only angel that we know of who does. Abandon All Hope, but it's not castiel meeting a stranger, but Castiel also meeting with someone he considered a friend, who he would still consider a brother, and still having to tell him no. and Uriel throws his lot in with Lucifer, and that means he has to spend more time with demons? is there any part of him that looks at them and realizes that everyone on both sides is serving a god that doesn't want to look at them.

s6!! Lucifer lost!!! and that makes Uriel a traitor to Heaven so he can't go to Raphael, no matter how their goals may almost align (in the opening of the Cage, less so in who they're opening it for) and he can't go to Castiel! too much bad blood! too much betrayal! Where do you go during a civil war when both sides would prefer you dead?

Look, I don't know where this is going, but what I'm saying is, wouldn't it have been interesting to see Castiel and Uriel evolve as characters alongside each other. We know Castiel before Heaven gets blown to bits and falls, and that's why seeing the effects on him hurt so bad, the way he just loses more and more of what he tried to once save, uncovers more and more of how Heaven has been hurting angels. Just one other angel to react to that in a similar way but with a completely different viewpoint would have made it even more effective, and Uriel is perfect for that.

(I mean, in my mind, this ends as I always wish the whole heaven and angels arc in spn had, where those left over finally come together, look at the ruins that have been brought about, and take what they have been forced to learn to work together and build something better. rather than. you know. handing the reins to a three year old.)

[yay-depression]

everything that doesn’t portray sam wilson as the biggest fucking softie is lying

[starry-bi-sky]

FIRST OFF, this inspired me to draw more ras danyal so:

(that last one says 'someone left the (non)local teen cult leader unsupervised. now he has swords :)' for anyone who can't read my chicken scratch handwriting)

i know Ras Danyal isn't TECHNICALLY the LoA leader in his world (since LoA doesn't exist) but 'teen cult leader' felt much snappier and funnier than 'teen cult leader (but not actually)' did. Plus I think it'd be hilarious if one of the heroes saw Danny with swords post-finding out he's a Ras variant and going; 'WHY DOES THE TEENAGE CULT LEADER HAVE SWORDS.'

SECOND OFF: MAN this is so cinematic. Madly in love with it. Like!!! AaaaaAAAA!! I can totally imagine this shot being like, from the start of a movie. I can just imagine the camera panning from a wide environment shot to Danny racing through the streets of the town/village. Maybe if we're feeling bold it could be him hopping from rooftop to rooftop between the close-together buildings. Really fancy cinematic parkour stuff.

It gives us a good shot of the village, which is full of life and vibrant with people and plantlife. It's built into the side of a mountain so Nanda Parbat is pretty secluded from everywhere else, but it's so nice and pretty. Ras Danyal loves visiting Nanda Parbat in the summers, and he was genuinely upset that they missed going one year because of the portal. He has close friends here just as he does back in Amity.

The cinematic shot ends with Danny dropping down from somewhere into a roll, and then popping back up while laughing. He's down at the plaza-area, where the rest of his friends are, and he's slightly out of breath but grinning from ear to ear.

"There you are, Ras!" His friend Maryam calls, and he jogs over to her and the others. "You're the last one."

"Sorry, I was looking around." Ras Danny says, still smiling and not sounding all that apologetic. "Had to see if anything changed since I was last here."

And you're right, he probably DID say something stupid like that. Slung both his arms around his other two friends Rahim and Ahsan and said with a sly smile, "With everything going on in Amity? I'm planning for a quiet summer here in Nanda." and forgot to knock on wood.

Danny Is An Alternate Version Of Ra's Al Ghul And Flash Already Called Dibs On Adopting Him

Danny In All His Sleep Deprived Slightly Scuffed Up From A Fight Glory Is On His Way To Clockworks Tower To Hopefully Get A Nap And Maybe Some Homework Done When A Natural Portal Opens Up In Front Of Him And Proceeds To Unceremoniously Drop Him In The DC Verse Just Outside Of Central City Before Promptly Closing Leaving A Tired Danny Behind In A Run Down Abandoned Parking Lot.

It's Times Like This When Danny Regrets Putting Off Learning How To Make His Own Portals, Cause Now He Is Very Much Stuck For The Foreseeable Future And He Has No Idea Where Or When He Is. Luckily For Him However Central City Isn't Too Far Away, Unlucky For Him However Is That Once In The City He Realizes This Isn't His Dimension. He's Pretty Sure He'd Remember Something Called The Justice League.

So What Do You Do When Supernatural Bullshit Fails You? You Fall Back On Your Mad Scientist Roots And You Make A Portal Gun. So That's Exactly What Danny Plans To Do.

Unfortunately Staying Alive And Building Questionably Safe Portal Technology Requires Money And Supplies, So He Ends Up Wandering From City To City Doing Odd Jobs/Fixing Up Busted Tech For Cash Or Unwanted Electronics For His "Operation: Get Home" Needs. This Obviously Ends In A Few Superhero Encounter Shenanigans.

Though He Always Ends Up Back Near Central City, Both On The Off Chance The Natural Portal Will Open Up Again And Because Out Of All The Superheroes That Apparently Exist In This Universe The Speedsters Are His Favorite (Red Robin Is Solidly His Second Favorite Ever Since The Gotham Vigilante Gave Him A Large Coffee Filled With Enough Caffeine To Kill A Man).

Unbeknownst To Danny However Is That Every Hero/Vigilante He Has Encountered Has Come To At Least One Of The Following Conclusions; 1. Run Away Meta Who Is In Desperate Need Of A Good Meal/Adoption Bait. 2. Possibly Red Robin/Tim Drake Clone 3. A Good Kid But Could Possibly Be A Future Rouge If Left Unsupervised. 4. Did Bats Get A New Kid And Why Is He Here?

All Flash Knows Is That He Saw The Kid First And Therefore Has Dibs. Suck It Bruce.

Fast-forward A Few Months And Danny Gets Hurt During A Rogue Attack While Trying To Help Some Civilians Get To Safety (Old Hero Habits Die Hard (Ha Die Hard) And All That Jazz) And He Nopes Out Once Everyone Is Safe And When The Paramedics Are Busy With Other People Unaware He Left A Blood Sample Behind.

One DNA Test Brought To You By Paranoid Bat Concerns Of A Possible Red Robin Clone Later And They Find Out That Dannys DNA Matches One Ra's Al Ghul.

They Now Think Danny Is An Escaped Ra's Al Ghul Clone.

Memes For The Vibes:

[glitchdollmemoria]

actually. that post about how its important to have weird kinky queer friends. i think the same is true of really every type of ostracized person but in particular i wanna point it out wrt mentally ill people.

if you watch a movie villainizing DID or schizophrenia or something, and you think, "hey, this seems sort of like its based on what my friend has and theyre just a chill person, why are they making my friends condition seem threatening?" thats good.

if you see someone use narcissist as a synonym for abuser and you think, "what, no, im friends with someone who has NPD and i know theyre a kind person, this isnt true at all," thats good.

if you hear politicians try to frame addicts as violent criminals who should be locked up and you think "no, my buddy sam is just sick, their withdrawals are really painful and they dont have a good support system, they shouldnt be locked up for that," thats good.

being able to counter ableist rhetoric with "i know from experience thats not how these people are" is a good thing. like yeah obviously dont make friends with mentally ill people just for brownie points but also try to make the conscious effort to be open to friendship with people who have stigmatized mental health issues. and maybe even more importantly, be someone who makes it clear to others that youre safe to be open about these things with, because chances are youre ALREADY friends with mentally ill people even if you dont realize it, because a lot of us with more demonized conditions try to hide those conditions out of fear, and it helps a lot to know our friends are allies - and then we might feel safe discussing our experiences, IF we want to, and in turn that can help you better understand the realities and diversities of our situations and be less susceptible to ableist rhetoric.