For all that the 1800s etiquette guides are--obviously--derangedly sexist from a modern perspective? They're also mindblowing in how casually they will assert things that MODERN DAY CONSERVATIVES would scream and cry and shit their pants about.
"People back then always married young it's natural!!!" Every single 1800s guide I've ever met casually mentions that, of course, you really shouldn't get married before you're at least 20, and waiting until 25 is usually better.
Or, like. Okay here's a long segment:
Just firmly going "it is crazy sexist to blame The Wife for overspending when thirty seconds of asking questions will immediately establish that her husband was outright lying to her about how much money they had. Talk to your wife like a normal person."
Or--okay, here. A section on being honest and not writing love letters in secret, because that's usually a good sign that there's something untoward going on....
....except that he then immediately acknowledges that sometimes, the reason you're hiding this from your parents is that your parents suck. That there are parents who frankly have not earned the right to approve or disapprove of your partner.
(I realize the phrasing there sounds a lot less strong than my summary, but--trust me on this. When you're familiar with the narrative voice of these kinds of books, this passage is downright radical. The mere acknowledgement that if you treat your kids badly, it's your own damn fault when they don't talk to you? I've genuinely never seen that before in this genre.
Don't freak out over "properly trained", either. It's just a linguistic shift--at the time, "training" was used the way we would say "raising" a child today. )
I’m gonna need you all to get more obsessed with Supergirl 2026. It’s literally every single sarcastic, messy, depressed, grieving, male lead from recent media that accidentally adopts an angry, young girl (also grieving) which forces him to confront his self destructive behavior and realize the impact he can still make. But she’s a girl. This is the character you all love in every piece of media. I’m begging you all to adore her the same way.
Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol
a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:
NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.
Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.
YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.
DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.
SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.
As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.
(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)
Tim, dragging Bernard into the Manor by the front of his shirt: Okay, I really wanted this to be a more grand affair, but you forced my hand. I am officially introducing you all to my boyfriend!
Bernard, looking around the room then up at the ceiling: Wait, I don't see Conner here.
Tim:
Bernard:
Tim: *Takes out his phone and starts scrolling through his pictures*
Bernard: Whatcha doing, babe?
Tim: Just reminding myself how hot you are with your shirt off, to stave off an impeding irritation induced migraine.
Jason, peeking over Tim's shoulder: The fuck, Timmy? How did you land such a hottie?
Love this one. The number of funny submissions is off the walls. Adult Heroes and Puppy Dog Eyes (Real challenge against Nightwing and Deathstroke). Batman & Emotions. Batman & The Foster System…
that trope where the parents of a ship meet before their kids do to show how the ship is destined to be together but its lex luthor and janet drake running into each other at a gala and HATING each other immediately
like jack is talking with bruce stuffing his face with shrimp meanwhile janet is running level 10 corporate espionage trying to bury lexcorp so well no one will remember them
and lex luthor is getting the kryptonite out because someone who pisses him off this much CANNOT be human. clark’s reporting on the gala wondering if it’s weird to be kinda jealous.
then, years later, when timkon ends up together, lex is this close to just moving. metropolis is obviously too close to gotham.
I think it would be funny to write a murder mystery where not only did every single character involved have an obvious motive to kill this mf, they were actually all attempting to murder him first, but the murder attempts all cancelled each other out all except for one. Two people tried to poison him but the poisons just happen to work as antidotes for each other, and instead of killing him only gave him the shits, and due to having the shits he couldn't go hunting that day like he had planned, foiling the plans of the one who had conditioned his favourite hunting horse to panic and bolt at the cue of a whistle, and the other murder attempt of tampering with his gun so that it would have exploded his whole face off.
The whole mystery isn't about who could have done it or how, but who was the one who got lucky and actually succeeded.
When I was in high school a friend of mine would host murder mystery dinners once or twice a year. They were the kind you could buy as a kit -- I don't even know if they exist anymore -- and everyone was assigned (or chose) a character, then received a booklet of clues to share. The idea was to spend an evening in a one-shot LARP designed like an Agatha Christie novel.
I was a year above most of them at school so they threw a "goodbye" murder mystery for me just before graduation, and about 2/3 of the way through the game we all realized that everyone had at least attempted to kill the victim. The game then shifted from "whodunnit" to "who succeeded in dunninit" which we all felt was not only super fun but above the usual level of narrative complexity for those games.
After we solved it, we discovered that the game wasn't from a kit -- the host had written it herself and meticulously printed out the booklets in replica style of the kits. It was the best going-away party I think I could possibly have had.
The Odyssey but retold as a low-stakes modern adventure of one guy out with his girlfriend leaving the bar with his buddies to do just one (1) simple thing real quick, it'll take like 15 minutes tops, he'll be right back, but then some bullshit happens and the trip keeps getting more complicated as more bullshit keeps happening while he just tries to get back to the bar because he promised his girlfriend that he'd get back and he knows that she's still there because she told him she'd wait there.
And by the time he finally gets back it's almost 3 am and the bar is about to close while she's sitting there stone cold sober, surrounded by 5 drunk guys unsuccessfully trying to convince her to give up on waiting for him and go home with one of them instead. And the guy shows up to proceed to beat the shit out of them before explaining himself to her like hey sorry bullshit kept happening, my phone fell into a storm drain and my wallet got stolen when I was trying to find someone who'd borrow me a phone so I could call and
His girlfriend had been fending off the 5 drunk guys for most of the evening by explaining that even if she was going to ditch her boyfriend, she can't possibly leave without finishing her beer, which she is keeping perpetually full via careful sleight of hand where she's just pouring it back and forth into and out of the pitcher.
However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.
That buys her another hour or so and then, finally, her boyfriend makes it back. He looks like shit, hair down and just a mess, he's wearing an entirely different jacket that he got from an alley, and barely recognizable—especially to 5 guys who've been drunk for hours now. He lurks for a minute, finds out what's going on, and proceeds to pull off the trick shot first try. Throws the jacket off, fixes his hair with a hair tie his girlfriend lends him, finally looks like himself again, and THEN beats the shit out of them with the pool cue.
I just saw a video title on YouTube that said something like “Why is glass transparent?” And that’s an interesting question and I’m sure it’s great that the video exists but my first thought was like “Because glass is terrible, obviously.” Because it’s unwieldy and let’s out warmth and needs to be heated to hundreds of degrees to be shaped and turns into hundreds of tiny daggers if you drop it. Why the hell would we bother with that if it didn’t have some magical quality like being totally transparent despite being solid? Glass is transparent because if it weren’t, we’d use something else.
If you’re still curious we did not start working glass for its transparency. It was most likely started as a sanitary concern. Glass is easy to clean with soap and water, once it’s cleaned out you can use it again for anything and no germs or flavor from the previous meal or drink will remain.
Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it. That would leak out seemingly at random no less. Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.
Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness. Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation. Also beads. Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.
The fact that it could become see through was a side benefit.
Migraine sufferers will be like "it's not like I'm disabled or anything, it's just that if I do any of these normal everyday things other people do all the time, my head explodes. But I'm fine honestly, as long as I avoid doing anything ever and my environment and the weather never changes, then my head explodes a little less"
The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op
The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.
He jumps headfirst into romantic relationships often, and is quick to return the moment someone he previously dated implied they might be interested in a rerun. He meets a pretty lady that is fully capable of kicking his ass and suddenly his heart beats for her. Just as easily, he will fall for the next man that he finds his empathy reaching a little too far for.
It’s even easier with kids. He holds a baby, waiting for the baby’s parents to return from being checked over by medics, and he’s imagining them growing up, decorating their nursery in his mind, picking out colleges that’ll more suit different interests - if the baby wants to be a lawyer, then this school would be better; if a little artist in the making, then this other school is the best of the best. And it all goes through his head in the ten minutes that the parents are held up for. He saves a toddler from a burning building, and sees himself taking the kid for walks and building Legos with them. He finds a teenager in trouble, and he’s already imagining helping them with their homework.
Usually, it doesn’t go anywhere. He brings the kid somewhere safe, usually reuniting them with their parents, and then mopes about the loss of that potential future for a few days before it leaves his mind again.
But sometimes, sometimes, a child sticks in his mind. Dick was the first of those children, quickly brought into his custody but not quick enough.
Next was Tim, a bright little child that Bruce noticed before he’d ever adopted Jason. Tim was the first child Bruce had to learn restraint for, telling himself that he couldn’t monitor this little kid who looked at Bruce like he hung the stars in the sky. Still, he couldn’t help but to keep an eye on the little Drake during galas and gatherings. Tim was Bruce’s son before he was ever Robin, no matter what Bruce had said and done in his grief.
Jason was very quickly adopted, Bruce hadn’t even needed to use his hard won restraint for that one. The moment he’d seen those defiant blue eyes glaring at him in the darkness, he’d emotionally adopted the boy. Mentally adopted him shortly after, with the adoption papers filled out and turned in quickly after.
The only child Bruce would find himself counting when doing roll call only to be disappointed had barely been in Bruce’s presence for five minutes. The little boy Bruce found himself thinking often of, wondering how he was growing up, whether he was going to see the stars as an adult like he’d claimed, hoping Bruce might even see the little boy applying for Wayne Enterprise’s Aerospace division. Danny Fenton was a child that crossed Bruce’s mind often despite not being, on paper or by blood, Bruce’s child.
But to Bruce’s heart and mind? Danny should’ve grown up with him.
“Daddy!” Bruce looked down as a small weight hit his leg, stunned to see a small child there. “Look! Shtarsh!” A small lisp, as the child turned a gap-toothed grin up at Bruce. Bruce followed the little boy’s pointing finger, noting that there was indeed a display of stars, the infographics claiming a better way to fuel rockets was such-and-such method over the common-
Wait, had this child called him-?
“It sure is, bud,” Bruce agreed, kneeling down to be closer to even height with this… four-year-old? “But what are you doing over here by yourself?”
“Mommy d’ere,” the little boy pointed towards a woman in a teal… hazmat suit(?), focused intently on the display in front of her. In her hands was a leash that led down to an abandoned backpack.
Bruce’s face twitched at the fact that she hadn’t even noticed, and he didn’t know how long the child had been free of the backpack. Long enough for it to look like it’d been dragged from a different exhibit.
Bruce looked back at the little escape artist, “May I pick you up, chum?” The little boy’s eyes brightened, excited.
“Rocket!” He bounced a little on his toes, hands held up excitedly.
Bruce was disappointed, himself, that he had no clue what this boy was asking for, “Not right now, but maybe later.” Bruce was quick to tack on the last part as the boy deflated. Propping the little boy on his hip, he made his way over to ‘mommy.’ “Excuse me, ma’am- ma’am?” It took several calls, and even waving his hand in her eyesight, to get the woman’s attention - and Bruce’s displeasure with the woman steadily increased the longer it took. “You appear to have misplaced a budding astronaut.”
She barely even glanced at the little boy before negating his statement, “no I didn’t, he’s right-“ finally, she noticed the childless backpack, her head snapping back to Bruce, “Daniel James Fenton! I told you to stop taking your backpack off!”
“But- but shtarsh, mommy!” The little boy indignantly argued back with the woman, and Bruce had to quickly school his face to not smile at Daniel’s attitude.
“That doesn’t mean you can wander off, Danny,” the woman huffed, before reaching out to steal- retrieve her son from Bruce. “Thank you, sir.”
Throughout the rest of the convention, Bruce caught glimpses of the bright-eyed little boy with his mother and father, who was a man that Bruce could feasibly understand the young child confusing Bruce for… if he weren’t wearing an eye-piercing orange hazmat suit, and Bruce a tailored three-piece.
When it became clear that Bruce’s attachment to the little boy didn’t fade with time and distance the way it normally did, he allowed himself just one day in a year where he would indulge, letting himself use the resources available to him to check on the little boy. Last Bruce had seen, little Danny, who had just turned 14, - only a couple years older than Damian now that he thinks about it - was doing well in school and was on his way to becoming an astronaut.
So why…?
Why was his little boy standing before Batman in dirty, ripped up, bloody clothes and an unnatural green light in his otherwise dull eyes?
Like this is giving Freshly-Post-Accident vibes, which that is its own horror, but also…
I can see this dragged out some more…
Just…
Batman stares at the screen with the displayed grades and their incomprehensible slide. Danny was doing well on last quarter’s report card, yet now this quarter’s report card shows that he is almost failing.
But that bright little astronaut…
Bruce’s first thought is that something happened at school, but a quick poke into more records shows that there are no incident reports with Danny’s name. Alright. Then perhaps struggles at home. Financial difficulty? A death in the family? Teen rebellion? Drugs and alcohol? Or- just like that day at the museum -oblivious parents that allow accidents to happen?
He’s debating on hacking into hospital records when the voices enter the cave. The arguing bounces off the stone walls, setting the distant bats rustling in annoyance.
It’s Damian and Duke, arguing about which of them needs help with their homework first.
Damian is 14- not that far away from Danny’s age -and this is his first year of high school (although he is already taking all honors and AP classes). Duke is 16, going on 17 soon, and this is his third year of high school; he has started looking into colleges, or doing a gap year to work or study abroad.
Bruce has already closed the windows he had open on Danny and turned the chair to face the approaching boys.
“Father, Duke says that-“
“Yeah well you can’t just-“
“Lads, it’s alright,” Bruce interrupts. He stands, putting his hands on their shoulders and giving them a reassuring squeeze. “Let’s go upstairs and I can help both of you. Maybe Alfred will even set out a snack for us.”
Although Duke and Damian both try to hide their satisfaction, they begrudgingly agree and lead Bruce back up to the manor.
With a final look over his shoulder at the darkening batcomputer screen, Bruce tries to tell himself to focus on the boys in front of him, not the one several states away, no matter how much he wants to return to investigating the sudden downfall of grades.
After all, Danny isn’t his son.
No matter how much he wonders about the lad and peaks at school records.
No matter how much the lad’s real parents accidentally or intentionally ignore him.
No matter how much Bruce’s heart squeezes with worry.
So he goes upstairs and sits at the table between Damian and Duke, switching between calculus and chemistry as Alfred sets down a plate of cookies and a pot of tea.
But it will only be a few weeks until Batman comes to really regret his lack of action.
~~~
Danny drums the fingers of his left hand against the table, watching has his parents putter around the kitchen. Jazz has her nose buried in one of her school books, utterly oblivious to the plate and silverware placed at her elbow.
Which means that they are all oblivious to the way that his left arm spasms.
Oblivious to the way his fingers go transparent and slip through the solid wood of the table.
Glancing around, Danny pulls his hand into the oversized sleeve of his sweatshirt and tucks his hands in his lap. His translucent, intangible fingers are cold and tingly where they brush over his own skin.
It’s fuckin’ weird and he just wants it to stop already.
“Hon, are you done tinkering?” Dad asks. “This chicken looking delicious and ready to be carved!”
“Mhm, yes, one moment,” Mom mutters, still elbow deep in a contraption of some kind. “This is sure to catch that pesky Phantom next time we see him.” She starts rattling off a report of some kind to which Dad responds with pleased comments, but Danny tunes them out.
Because of course they’ve been oblivious to the new white scar that spears his hand, a mark that may or may not coincide with the portal that activated several weeks ago. A mark that may or may not coincide with the appearance of ghosts in Amity Park. A mark that may or may not also be present on one pesky Phantom.
Which means that Danny just has to keep it all under wraps.
“That’s looking great!” Dad goes over to Mom, a spatula still in one of his hands. “Phantom won’t know what hit him!”
“Can you guys keep it down? I’m trying to read.” Jazz scribbles something down in her notebook.
Danny should try to get some homework done too. His grades are really suffering now between all the power flare ups and ghost attacks.
Figuring out all this Ghost Stuff sure isn’t as fun as his parents seem to think it is.
Mom, perks up, slipping her goggles up to her forehead and setting aside her soldering tools. Her words drown out the mechanical voice of the device. “I just want to turn this on and-“
Maybe he should have seen it coming.
Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised.
After all, this isn’t the first device that has started locking onto him in the last few weeks.
But now there is a burn on his shoulder.
He doubles over and grits his teeth against the pain, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth as his hands flying up to press against the bubbling red and green that’s seeping through the shoulder of his hoodie, or is it actually eating through the fabric and his skin, he can’t tell.
Oh.
Okay.
So that’s what the device had said, ‘Ghost detected. Target locked.’
His vision is tinging green at the edges, pain and panic clawing their way up his throat with that familiar ghostly chill. His flight or fight response is pushing against his ghost transformation.
But not here.
Not now.
So he pushes it down.
Locks it away.
And meanwhile, all around him, the kitchen is exploding into more chaos as Jazz, Mom, and Dad jump into action.
“Danny!” they all cry in alarm and worry.
Dad scrambles for the first aid kit.
Mom throws her new creation down the basement stairs.
Jazz rushes to Danny’s side, urging him to sit back in the chair so she can see the wound.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie, I don’t know why that happened. Here, let me see, we’ll get you patched up in no time,” Mom soothes.
“That happened too with the Fenton Finder,” Jazz scolds, “You’ve got to be more careful!”
“Here! I got it!” Dad bounds back into the kitchen, the first aid kit looking comical in his hands. He sets it on the table and opens the lid, but he doesn’t grab the gauze.
He grabs a glowing red tube instead.
“Perfect! This will nullify the ectoplasm immediately, you’ll feel better in seconds, my boy!”
As soon as the tube is uncapped, Danny feels woozy.
“Disintegration is the solution. Rejecto that Ecto!” Mom sings.
Jazz some how manages to frown even more. “Is that even tested for human skin?”
“Of course! Now, this is gonna feel a little tingly, Dan-O.”
“Wait maybe we should slow dow-“
Danny’s words cut off into a scream.
His whole body jerks in reaction to the red liquid being poured over his wound. The green of his vision closes in. His jaw drops, his vocal cords trembling to continue his wordless scream even as his chest shudders in an attempt to draw in breath.
It’s not just neutralizing the ectoplasm from the blast that hit his shoulder,
It’s neutralizing his ectoplasm.
It’s eating him.
There’s even more chaos around him now. But none of that even matters. His burning from the inside out, his left shoulder being ripped into bloody, bubbly, burned shreds.
The green takes over his vision.
There’s no way for any of them to miss the obvious glow of white light that swoops over Danny’s form.
Light that dissipates to reveal Phantom’s form.
While he may not need to breathe when he takes on the shape of his ghost, it’s still a motion that feels natural to Danny.
Or at least, it’s supposed to.
But his breathing is thready and stilted, gasps punctuated by pain as each rise of his chest jostles his corroding shoulder.
“What?”
“Phantom!”
“Danny..?”
Not wanting to take in the bewildered and confused and panicked looks of his family, Danny would much rather take care of this god awful fucking wound!
So he does the next best thing.
He flies away.
~~~
And idk now. I’m tired. I was thinking that maybe there could be a chase? Jack and Maddie trying to get Danny back and/or hunting down Phantom for replacing their child? I was thinking that Danny could try to hid away and get the disintegration solution off his shoulder (aka: his cloths getting more dirty and ripped up) before his parents find him again and then he runs out of town to find Batman
Or maybe he just dips town immediately after getting exposed to them.
But also, since this is set so soon after the accident (forgive me I don’t remember the time line off the top of my head and so I’m imagining Vlad isn’t in the picture yet) where would Danny go? Why would he go to Gotham?
Is Batman the first person Danny thinks of to ask for help? Why?
Okay, okay. Let's make it a little worse and make this a Nobody Knows au. I'm thinking Sam still dared Danny to go in, but he refused. Only, her and Tucker kept razzing him about at school, so like a week later he goes in to check it out, only for the Absolute Worst to happen. And then, cut forward a month and he's running from his family, who have just discovered his secret.
Everything hurts. His shoulder burns, and his blood feels like it's melting, which makes no sense, because blood is already liquid. Danny wishes he could go home. But home is the place he's running from, because his parents know and Danny knows exactly what his parents do to ghosts.
He never thought he'd be the one they're hunting. Houses and streets fly past, on the street below, but Danny is hardly paying attention, until suddenly he's face to face with familiar blue siding.
Tucker.
His friend, who's no doubt sitting down to dinner right now with his family. Tucker, who he's hardly spoken to for a month now. Tucker, who's still not talking to him, after their fight last week.
A fight that started because Danny lied to him. Not that he could even begin to explain why. Not when there's no reasonable explanation for your body randomly slipping out tangibility.
Not when he shouldn't even be alive anymore.
The squealing of tires alerts Danny to the approaching vehicle, but he only has enough time to turn around, before his parents ghost assault vehicle is bearing down on him like a massive beast.
"Explain yourself, ghost boy!" His mother is shouting from the open window. He blinks, staring stupidly at the massive launcher in her hands, and he doesn't know what it does, but he knows he can't let it hit him.
Danny flees again, frantically flying down streets, dodging and weaving, but the GAV doesn't waver in its course. It's almost like the thing is attached to him by a tether and-
Trees.
Amity Forest is rising up to his right, and the GAV may be able to navigate streets with minimal damage, but surely weaving around trees would be harder.
Danny dodges to the right, ducking into the tree line and flying as fast as he can, into the deepest parts of the forest. He's exhausted and he hurts something terrible, but he can't stop now.
Only, suddenly his powers are flickering and suddenly Danny's falling instead of flying. He tumbles through branches, feeling each moment as they cut and scratch at his face, his arms, his clothing. And then, suddenly, Danny's thudding into the earthen ground.
For a moment he just lies there, struggling to breathe. But then he hears the sound of shouting in the distance, and he forces himself up. His ankle hurts now, and his shoulder feels even worse, and each breath burns in his lungs, but he has to keep walking. He has to keep going until he finds somewhere safe. He has to find somewhere he can be safe.
I'm imagining he ends up lost in the woods for several days, miserable and in pain, and struggling with powers that don't want to cooperate at all. It's terrible, but also long enough for him to think, and by the time he finds a highway, he's had the idea of asking the Justice League for help, because they've helped other kids before, right? And maybe he can just hide the part where he's supposed to be dead. It wouldn't be that hard to make his parents sound crazy, after all.
Romantic relationships of course, and it’s easier with kids. To raise them, to help them grow, to protect them, to care for their hurts, to provide for them, to watch their futures bloom. Dick. Jason. Tim. Cass. Damian. Duke. And Steph and Babs when they let him.
He cares so much, he can’t help that he wants to help them.
Danny Fenton was a child that crossed Bruce’s mind often despite not being, on paper or by blood, Bruce’s child.
But to his heart and mind? Danny should’ve grown up with him.
And he needs no further proof than the wrecked boy standing before him.
Bruce would never turn his back on his children. He was happy that Duke and Damian interrupted him to ask for help with their homework. Or to be more clear, to ask for attention because they were already so clever.
But now… now he really regrets not returning to his yearly check in on Danny.
Not fully checking in on his son.
The evidence had been right there. The sudden downfall of grades between one quarter report and the next. The evidence had been there and bruce had only needed to dig for the truth.
He didn’t properly protect his son.
And now his heart is breaking.
Because his little boy is standing before Batman in dirty, ripped up, bloody clothes and an unnatural green light in his otherwise dull eyes.
“Batman… I….” Danny’s voice is reedy and thin, more like a whisper or a grimace.
Bruce is before Danny in an instant, kneeling on the gravel of the rail yard (because he’d gotten reports of a suspicious figure in the rail yard, but what actually must have happened is that Danny hitched a ride on a train to Gotham (on purpose, or by coincidence; did he choose that train, or did it just happen to take him here and away from whatever happened to him in Amity Park)). Bruce’s hands hover around Danny’s form, hesitant to touch even as his eyes take in every inch of Danny’s appearance.
“Danny, what happened?”
Bags under his eyes from exhaustion, how many nights without sleep? Blue eyes that are flat despite the dull shimmer of a weak green light. Thin and chapped lips from dehydration. Dirt skidded up his right side, like he fell at a high speed. And he only has one shoe, the sock on his other foot so worn that his big toe is sticking through.
“Please… Batman…”
But most horrific is the concave gap on Danny’s left side where a shoulder should be. Not just a blast wound, but like flesh and bone has been melted or corroded away. Danny is cradling his left arm so gently, body hunched over not only with exhaustion and pain but also to protect his failing limb. His baggy sweatshirt is soaked through with blood and… a green goo? Is it puss? He’ll need a further examination, a proper examination. It’s a wonder that his left arm is still attached at all.
“Danny, report,” Batman’s gruff voice slips out, and yet he can’t help the flood of Bruce’s worried questions. His fingers flex under Danny’s elbows, not yet touching him but ready in case he needs anything. “What happened? How did you get this wound? Do you know what it is?”
“An accident… just an accident… they didn’t mean it… they don’t have to know…” Danny mutters, his eye lids drooping as he wavers on his feet. “Please, Batman… please help…”
And then Danny’s trembling legs give out.
No sooner has Danny fallen against Bruce, face tucked hidden into the crook of his armor, that Bruce has swept the boy up into his arms.
“It’s alright, lad. You’re safe now.”
Bruce falls in love easily, and then he does not let go.
Bruce doesn't let go. He finds people that need — he doesn't even mean to, not really — and he does everything he can to help them. To heal them. To protect them.
Bruce sits beside the bed in the med bay, still in his costume. He watches the boy, breathing shallow and heart rate uneven. And he knows he's failed.
He had wanted to help Danny. Had dreamed of a day when he might be able to offer that assistance readily. Of a day when he was grown up, and nobody would question Wayne Industries taking an interest in a promising young scientist.
He had wanted to protect Danny. Had carefully returned him to his mother, so many years ago, so that no harm would befall him in the chaos of that showroom.
On both accounts he had failed. Had failed to help Danny, when he noticed the concerning signs last month. He had spotted the grades slowly dropping and had chosen to look away, to focus on things that were easier — that seemed more important. He had failed to protect Danny — and maybe he hadn't known he was in danger. There are dozens of reasons for dropping grades that don't involve danger at home after all, but even still.
Danny showed up here, in Gotham, begging Batman of all people to help him, to save him.
Danny had offered Bruce the opportunity to finally — finally — do what he's built to do. He had come to Bruce, had asked him for help, for protection, for healing.
And now that he had every opportunity, Bruce was failing at all three.
The test results light up the nearby monitor ominously, blinking back that dreaded inconclusive response. Danny's breathing stays shallow, his body collapsing under the weight of some malady Bruce can't comprehend.
The wound — that melting, horrible wound — shows no sign of healing, and every test Bruce can think of fails. He can't fix it if he doesn't know what's wrong. He can't run tests, when every sample he takes disassembles itself before the system can finish processing.
He can't ask for help if he doesn't know what kind he needs.
Medical texts lie at his feet, a desperate effort to find some hint of anything that could produce these results, but nothing makes sense. Whatever happened to the boy, it's frighteningly innovative.
And he can't even ask Danny, because the boy has yet to wake up. He'd explained almost nothing before he passed out, right in Batman's arms.
He has nothing to go on. Has no way to fix this.
He's Bruce Wayne, who loves helping people. He's Batman, who always has the answers. He's Brucie, who never wavers or lacks confidence.
He's Bruce, sitting beside the bed of a child he doesn't deserve, and he doesn't know what to do.
“Should we check on Father?” Damian’s voice comes over the com.
Dick slides to a stop on his patrol route, crouching on the ledge of a building while he presses his com. “He didn’t return to his route with you?”
“Negative.”
“Hmm, actually his tracker is back at the cave,” Tim says, his voice accompanied by the clicking keys of his keyboard.
“Of course B goes awol when I agree to help cover patrols,” Dick mutters.
Kori is patrolling Blüdhaven tonight and Dick is in Gotham while Tim covers for Babs’ night off. Normally Dick wouldn’t need to come in to provide extra cover, but Cass and Steph are sleeping off the last several all-nighters that they pulled to bring down a meta-trafficking ring. Of course, there’s also Batwoman, Batwing, and Bluebird, but they have their own projects going on too.
Which means that it is B, Damian, and Dick (and Jason in Crime Ally) out on the streets tonight while Tim covers coms and cams.
“Nightwing, you’re the closest to the cave. B won’t respond to my pings and I don’t really want to wake Alfred, Duke, or the girls unless we know there’s actually an emergency.”
“Copy that, Red.” Dick swings around and starts heading for the cave.
“Tt. Yeah. Sure. Just leave me all alone out here. Not like there’s a whole city to cover.”
Jason’s voice appears on the line. “Come on, baby bird, what am I? Chopped liver?”
“Ah, so you were lurking around after all,” Dick says over Damian’s dry mutter about Jason being “more like chum.”
“Just waiting to see if y’all need rescuing or are going to share any interesting tea.”
Tim snorts. “Nah, you’re only showing up because B left.”
“No comment.”
“Speaking of which, I’m closing in on the cave. Hood, why don’t you go give Robin some company while I check on the Big Bad Bat?”
“Tt. I do not need babysitin-“
“Robi, lets go get bat burger!”
There is a pause before Robin responds. “Fine. But we finish before Father returns to patrol.”
There’s another chuckle from Tim. “Bring some Jokerized fries to the Nest and I’ll send you money from Dad’s account.”
“Hell to the yes let’s gooooo,” Jason whoops.
Smiling, Dick turns off his brothers’ chatter and ducks into the cave, but his smile is almost instantly wiped off when he sees the trail of blood leading from the Batmobile.
That’s not right.
That can’t be right.
Bruce didn’t tell them he was hit.
If he’s hiding another wound, Dick is going to tear him from limb to limb and then get Alfred to scold him too!
Following the trail (whose path is a direct shot to the med bay, the blood splatters do not indicate that he was swaying from side to side), Dick steps over Bruce’s cowl discarded on the floor and moves into the med bay, prepared for the gore but not prepared to see Bruce clutching the limp hand of an unconscious teen.
Oh. Of course it’s a kid.
Another kid.
(Because Bruce loves easily.)
Dick really shouldn’t be so surprised.
(Where does Dad find all of them?)
All the words die on Dick’s tongue, so he’s left gaping for a moment before he manages to regain control of his voice. “Hey, B. Who’s that?”
Bruce actually startles slightly, his shoulders jolting the barest amount before he glances at Dick with such tired eyes that are ringed in worry-lines. Then Bruce’s unmasked eyes return to the kid’s pale face.
Right. The cowl is out on the cave floor like B had dropped it.
Why did he unmask in front of a civilian?
Why did he bring the civilian to the cave?
(Because Bruce loves easily.)
“Daniel Fenton, he prefers to be called Danny. He is 14 years old, born and raised in Amity Park, appeared to he living a normal and healthy life until about a month ago when his grades slipped and then he ended up here,” the report easily falls out of Bruce, his eyes never leaving the boy’s pale face.
(Because Bruce loves easily.)
This time, Dick is unsurprised. Of course B would already know so much about a kid that Dick has never seen before. “You found him in the rail yard?”
“Affirmative.”
Well then, it’s not hard to puzzle together that he must have hopped trains to get the hell out of dodge.
“How did he get that wound?”
Bruce’s shoulder’s droop. “He was too delirious to say. He only managed to ask for help before passing out. I took samples, but whatever corrosive element it is, it’s too unstable to get any conclusive tests. I’ve done my best to clean it and was about to call Alfred for medical assistance before you came in.”
Dick hums a bit in response, partially to communicate that he heard B, but mostly to keep from saying that B had been staring at the kid instead of doing anything.
Stepping closer— and trying not to trip over all the medical books scattered on the floor —Dick takes stock of Danny’s appearance.
It looks like his shirt or hoodie has been cut off and discarded, the bed sheet of the cot turned over his good side to only leave the gaping wound visible. It weeps slowly, a mixture of green goo and red blood and an almost orange-red like ooze. It’s like a scoop carved out his shoulder into a concave divot. Parts of the clavicle, scapula, and humerus can be seen, but it’s not like they are broken, more like they are melted.
Not to mention the angry red streaks of blisters down the kid’s chest and side, as if something had been poured over his shoulder.
Acid perhaps.
Or some type of similar solution that has left his left arm barely attached to his body.
It’s interesting to note that Danny hasn’t bled out from a wound like that.
His pulse is slow and thready, the heart monitor beeping infrequently. B’s also placed Danny on IV fluids and oxygen.
Exchanging his Nightwing suit gloves for sterile latex ones and picking up a pen light, Dick checks on Danny’s eyes. He opens the boy’s eyelid and flicks the light back and forth, Danny’s pupil dilating in response. That’s a good sign.
If the situation were any less dire, Dick would be far more amused. Wayne Adoption Bait indeed.
Danny’s eyes are blue, except for the faintest ring of green around the pupil. His wild and matted black hair is splayed out like a halo across the white pillow.
But it’s not about appearances for B, though it is fun to tease him about the coincidence. He just sees a kid, especially a kid in need, and he’s there. He’s there and ready to help them. With anything at all, he’s there. Because Dad wears his heart on his sleeve.
(Because Dad loves easily.)
Well, nothing to it then. They need their medic.
Nightwing presses the button behind the bed, the one that links straight to Alfred’s room.
The 70 year old butler and pseudo grandfather responds almost immediately (sometimes Dick wonders if Alfred even sleeps until everyone is home). “Yes? Who is hurt?”
“None of us,” Dick assures.
Brice grunts. “But we do have a concerning case that needs immediate attention. We’ve already done all that we can.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Dick releases the button and focuses on picking up the books, setting them on the other cot in the med bay and keeping them open to the pages that B had left them on.
Within moments, Alfred is there, doing his own assessment of the kid. He pours saline water over the wound repeatedly, giving the bloodied towels to Dick and ordering Bruce to bring in clean towels. Once Danny’s wound is free of green goo (puss?) and the orange-red ooze (the acid?), Alfred takes up a scalpel to clean away the corrosion and any of the contaminante that lingers inside the flesh.
“Doesn’t he need to be sedated?”
“We can’t risk anything that would further impair his breathing or heart rate. A local anesthesia will be best for now.”
So Bruce settles in to hold Danny’s hand and Dick packs gauze onto the wound according to Alfred’s directions.
Until Alfred sets down the scalpel and frowns. “If you want him to survive the night, then call Dr. Thompkins. He’ll need more help than what we have available here.”
And then he picks up a tool that Dick didn’t even know they had.
A bone saw.
Because Alfred was an army doctor.
Of course he has amputated a limb before.
~~~
Danny’s arm hurts.
It’s not the pain of melting flesh.
It’s the electric pain of nerves on fire.
It’s the pain of a red button and smooth metal under his hand, spearing lightning through him and anchoring his ghost to his corpse.
He doesn’t want to open his eyes. His eyelids are so heavy. He could just keep drifting. He hurts, but he also feels warm and safe. There’s a weight on his other hand, like when he’s sick and Dad holds his hand. He thinks there might also be another hand combing fingers through his hair.
Bone deep exhaustion drapes over Danny's body like a lead blanket. He's pretty sure his eyes are closed, but somehow he's still seeing; kaleidoscope colors dance before him in a confused haze. He watches it all, as half-formed thoughts drift by him but never quite manage to touch him.
His body aches. His bones, his muscles, his lungs.
His arm.
Danny frowns. His mouth doesn't quite want to cooperate with him, though, like his body is on a completely different plane than his mind.
Hell, maybe he finally died.
He considers the thought, slowly rolling it around in his head. Thinking feels like cotton, or maybe molasses. Or maybe it feels like thick winter clothing, muffling the sharp bite of winter even as it renders your movements awkward and clumsy.
It's not really how he imagined being dead would feel. He imagined it would be like an absence of sensation, adrift in a void of nothingness. Not filled with the vague aches of a body that's no longer his.
But then, maybe it shouldn't be that surprising. Maybe everything his parents said was right, and this last month had just been his spirit's desperate fight to keep hold of its body — maybe it was a fight he was always going to lose.
Maybe his mother had just sped up the inevitable.
That must be it.
It makes the most sense, really. Ghosts are just imprints of a life that once was, and no matter how hard his body had been fighting it, he was always going to lose himself to this weird haze.
He should never have stepped foot in that stupid portal. Should never have let Sam and Tucker's teasing get to him. After all, he'd been the one who'd had lab safety rules drilled into him for the last decade, not them.
He knew better.
But they hadn't wanted to let it go; had said his caution was ridiculous. And like a fool, he'd let it get to him. Had gone home, and set up his stupid phone to take a stupid picture on a stupid timer. And his stupid self had walked right into his own death.
And now his whole body aches.
No, it burns.
It burns like fire. Like the horrible strike of an anvil against red-hot metal. Like the searing pain that pulses its way through your body, leaving a hollow cavity of wrongness in its wake.
The more Danny focuses, the worse it seems to hurt. The ache sneaks its way closer, as if Danny's pulling himself back into his own body; piecing himself back together yet again. It flares and ebbs, driving him forward and back, in this space-that's-not-a-space.
He's not sure what he wants. Dying is one thing. It'd be sad, sure, for this to be where it all ends. But living? Continuing to cling to a body that may not even really be his anymore? Being that half-thing; that abomination that can't even control his own body.
He's so tired of falling through things.
It doesn't matter, though, because the pain is still creeping in, and beneath that, a new sensation begins to leak in around the hazy edges of his mind.
It's odd; a steady rhythmic sort of motion. Back and forth. Back and forth. Whatever it is, it's moving slowly, working its way down his shoulder in steady beats. Mostly, it doesn't feel like much. Maybe a distant sense of cold, or an odd kind of pressure.
And then it reaches his armpit and stops. Distantly, Danny registers voices. Frantic speech further away, and a soft murmur, much closer. Someone is holding his hand, too. Holding his hand and stroking his hair, and murmuring gently at him in reassuring tones.
A distant memory drifts up to him. He can't recall how old he was, exactly, but he'd been badly sick — body wracked with fever and chills, and his parents had spent two whole days taking it in turn to watch him; coaxing him carefully through the worst of it.
He remembers his father encouraging him to swallow even just a little bit of broth, his mother bringing him cold compresses and holding them gently against his head.
"Mom?" He mumbles.
Or, he tries to. The sounds that come out of his mouth are all wrong, and Danny frowns, trying to parse out the shape of the sounds in his mouth.
The hands at his side falter, and then a deep, gravelly voice replies.
"Danny?"
Danny groans, confused. He struggles, but after a moment, he manages to get his eyes open, and blinks up at the dark, imposing figure looming above him.
Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."
This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find
Some people get existential dread from this
Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating
@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn't that long when you're in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally
Source (non Aboriginal)
And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history
Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you're curious)
This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I've learned so many incredible things about Australia's past and it's been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.
My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.
The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.
