A Curious Sort

[hushman]

I like tough, badass characters that secretly have a soft side but I LOVE tough badass characters that openly have a soft side.

Don't give me a tough as nails fighter that just defeated 20 people at once but secretly likes hot fudge sundaes.

Give me a tough as nails fighter that just defeated 20 people at once and then proudly orders a hot fudge sundae and gets excited that they can get extra sprinkles free of charge.

Have them gush over the fur baby that they adopted and named Mallow Puff. Have them show me at least 3 pictures of Mallow Puff being adorable before they head off to fight 20 more people.

And if Mallow Puff turns out to be a monstrous looking creature that could rip a grown man's arm off but loves belly rubs and nose boops, THAT'S EVEN BETTER!

[hushman]

Jason: Damn it, hating Dick is like hating puppies. It's possible but there is no way to admit it without looking like a massive jerk.

Dick: (teary eyed) There are people out there that hate puppies?

Jason: That is not the point I'm trying to make.

Damian: (sword drawn) Give me their names

[hushman]

I have come to the opinion that pretty much the entire batfamily has difficulties with impulse control but in different flavours.

Dick and Stephanie have major "what's this red button do?" energy.

Jason is pretty much ready to start a fight with anyone or anything to irritates him. Damien is the same but with added adolescent impusivity.

Tim has severe wiki walk syndrome when he's not actively working on cases. What's starts with him wanting to fact check someone saying that wombats poop is cube shape ends with him becoming so well versed in Australian flora and fauna that he right several unrelated doctoral thesises on the subject.

Barbara tries to reign in the others but is still prone to rebel against anyone telling her what to do and do the opposite to spite them.

Cassandra is well disciplined but when a full bowl of candy is placed in front of her it won't stay full for long. Barbara once tried the marshmallow test on her. Not only did Cass eat the marshmallow straight away she also stole the rest of Barbara's marshmallows before she could be stopped.

Duke somehow gets himself in weird situations and he doesn't quite know how.

Despite appearing to have an iron will, Bruce is incredibly impulsive but he covers it by calling it "instinct" and by committing to it so thoroughly that anyone that isn't Alfred will believe that it was a well thought out plan.

(Bruce is thinking up contingencies to take down the justice league)

Bruce: So Supermans most obvious weaknesses are magic and kryptonite. Magic isn't readily available or reliable so best plan is to develop a subtle why to administer controllable doses of Green kryptonite.

Bruce's brain: Make his skin transparent so that he overloads on solar radiation

Bruce: ....

Bruce: I feel like the kryptonite administratoring system would be simpler and far easier to adapt to different situations

Bruce: ....

Bruce: How would I would even begin to turn his skin transparent?

[hushman]

Stephanie: You really need to address your poor impulse control.

Damian: You're seriously lecturing me on poor impulse control?

Stephanie: Hey, my poor impulse control is the kind where you end up looking back and laughing. Yours is the kind where you end up standing in front of a judge pleading not guilty on grounds of temporary insanity

[hushman]

So it's a pretty much accepted that being a member of the batfamily member means becoming a pretty decent detective but rather than simply having Batman be the worlds greatest detective and the rest of the family having the honour of being "almost as good as Batman" I would love to see stories that highlight how different members of the batfamily develop a unique style of detectiving.

Bruce is a Sherlock Holmes style detective. He relies on the physical evidence. He breaks down a crime scene, picks up the details others have missed, and then uses science and forensics to find the answer.

Dick is a Hercule Poirot/Benoit Blanc style detective. He relies more on reading people and understanding human nature. He can style use physical evidence but he is more interested in working out the people involved and making sense of their actions.

Jason is a Dick Tracy/Noir style detective. He understands the criminal underworld intimately and knows where to apply pressure to get the information he needs.

Barbara (especially as Oracle) is an information broker and cyber savant. She gets into systems noone else can and connects dots in ways noone else can see.

Tim is another Sherlock Holmes style detective, albeit one still honing his craft and someday will take over the mantle of the worlds greatest detective.

Damian is a combination of both Bruce and Dicks styles whilst still developing his own style.

[hushman]

Sort of self indulgent but part of me really wants to see Dick Grayson go back to being a cop. Though to be clear, I don't want an edgy, Grayson trying to fix the system as the one good cop within a corrupt police force, style story or an angsty trying to make peace with having to carry a gun despite his mentor's belief.

I want fun, mostly light hearted antics of Dick Grayson as a beat cop and all the shenanigans that can come from it.

I want a training officer who's utterly perplexed at how competent Grayson is, despite the fact Grayson is trying to fly under the radar and underplay his abilities.

I want the bat family and Titans to constantly find ways to tease Grayson for being a cop.

I want Damian to ride in Grayson's cop car and to pretend to be indignant but secretly wanting to play with the sirens.

I want Selina and Jason to see how close to the line they can get with Officer Grayson before he is forced to arrest them.

I want Officer Grayson to give Bruce Wayne a ticket and it becoming a running joke.

I want Stephanie and Cassandra to swap out all of Graysons uniforms to a size smaller, leading to Officer Grayson to trend online as "Officer Sexy" (they regret nothing).

I want super heroes trying to keep a straight face whilst giving Officer Grayson their statement.

I want Dick to slowly realise just how bizarre the DC Universe is from the perspective of law enforcement.

I want B tier villians developing an inferiority complex when they get taken down by Officer Grayson without needing to call in any super heroes.

I want Dicks attempts to fly under the radar to be regularly foiled and needing to find ways to resolve matters in the least Nightwing way possible.

I want Grayson in situations where he is forced to go full Nightwing and then needs Oracle's help to clean up the mess and protect he's secret identity.

Barbara: What is it this time?

Dick: I swear, this was just supposed to be a noise complaint.

Barbara: And what has it turned into?

Dick: 27 unconscious gangsters and an illegal weapon shipment.

Barbara: *groan*

[hushman]

One angle I would love to see explored more often is Dick Grayson/Nightwing being this source of strange and obscure information just as a result of the company he keeps and the truly insane life he has lived.

Like training under the worlds greatest detective explains why he has a near encyclopaedic knowledge of forensic and deductive techniques but isn't the reason he can identify Amazonian crafted steel by smell and Alpaca fur by taste.

Dick has travelled the world repeatedly, spent extended periods in space, literally been to hell as well as multiple different dimensions and if you were to make a resume out of all the jobs he has canonically held, either genuinely or as a cover, it would probably read as a phone book. Plus he is like the DC universes Kevin Bacon in that he probably has 6 degrees or less of separation from any hero and villian in the entire universe.

If there is something he doesn't know personally he has two or three contacts that he can ask for information no matter if it is translating a 14th century Biyalian tablet, finding a recipe for a south eastern Kondaq variation of Baklava or finding out which high ranking demon will barter for a first edition copy of Pride and Prejudice rather than his soul.

He also would probably lose every single game of "Never have I ever".

[hushman]

I imagine that one of the reasons DC super heroes tend to get along better with Nightwing than Batman is that Nightwing takes an interest in people's personal lives not just their super hero lives.

He'll ask Clark how Ma Kent did at the county fair last week.

He'll ask Oliver how his reelection campaign is going.

He'll ask Dinah about her new florist business.

He'll even ask Barry about his new bread baking hobby.

Batman meanwhile doesn't ask because he already knows.

He knows Ma Kent's apple cobbler remains undefeated 5 years in a row.

He knows Oliver is polling favourably in general but his current focus runs the risk of alienating key suburban demographics.

He knows Dinah's florist business had a strong financial year and with the right injection of capital could be ready for expansion.

He knows Barry is underfeeding his sour dough starter.

[palezma]

Pearl saying 'there are a lot of things you don't know about me Steven' has such 'half of my war stories with your mom are too R rated to tell you' energy

[thewoollyviking]

Pearl’s like a protag from an R rated war movie that’s now in a magical girl anime about her late wife’s son.

[palezma]

This is so so true

[hushman]

Amethyst: Did you ever poof a gem and then force feed her to another gem so that when the first gem reformed the second gem then got poofed?

Pearl: Good heavens, why would you even think of me doing something so deranged and sadistic?

Garnet: Pearl

Pearl: ...

Pearl: I've done that three times

Garnet: Pearl

Pearl: Five if your definition of feeding isn't restricted to using the mouth

[palezma]

Homeworld putting Pearl on Trial for assisting Rose

[hushman]

Amethyst stands up dressed as the defence attorney

Amethyst: Your honour, I move for a round of high fives on the grounds that that's what she said.

[palezma]

[hushman]

My first thought

This is adorable and I love how proud Rose is of her T Shirt

My second thought

Rose: Hey Pearl, wanna see me make the wives kiss each other.

Pearl: With every fibre of my being

[hushman]

Something that has been on my mind is my conflicted views is reverse age robin AUs. These are AUs where Damian is the first one to be Bruce's sidekick (and is the oldest) and it goes in reverse order ending with Dick Grayson as the newest and youngest member of the bat family.

On the one hand I don't think it works narratively, so much of what makes Robin is reliant on Dick Grayson having done it first. The name and the aesthetic that carries across all who wore the mantle relies on the legacy that Grayson created. There is an ingrained flamboyance and showmanship that only makes sense for fun loving performer Grayson to have started. Damian would be far too “serious” and would demand a “serious” code name and costume.

On the other hand, the idea of having a bat family consisting of 3 different flavours of edge lord and a twenty something year old Tim Drake who feels too old to deal with everyone's nonsense suddenly having the personification of sunshine and rainbows that is a pre teen Dick Grayson dropped on their laps is just too wonderful to not love XD

Alfred meanwhile would be stuck between being thankful not to have another angry gremlin in the house and wishing Master Dick was a little less prone to acrobatic shenanigans.

Dick: (guiltily standing beside a mangled chandelier) Would you believe it was like this when I got here?

Alfred: Was it like this when you got here?

Dick: ……no

[palezma]

A Knight's Tale SU AU

Pearl is William

Count Adhemar is Holly Blue

[hushman]

Rose as Jocelyn tries to do the "if you truly love me you'll go against your nature and lose" but changes her mind before Pearl's first joust when she realises Pearl might get hurt. She instead passes on the message telling Pearl "just be the glorious knight I know you are". Pearl then proceeds to kick so much butt that tournament that the other knights genuinely start to fear competing against her

[honestlyprettychill]

[hushman]

This is beyond adorable. Seeing this really made my day ^^

[palezma]

Rose here demolishing stereotypes. She has plenty of suitors but does that stop her from ALSO being a crazy cat Lady? No!

Live your dreams

[hushman]

I like to believe that Rose wanted to try out being a crazy cat lady cause it sounded like fun but didn't realise that it meant "domestic" cats as opposed to all cats. She ended with lions because they were the only big cats she could find that didn't mind being in a group

[palezma]

Broke: Only Greg knew the real Rose because only he treated her as an equal. That's why Rose chose Greg over Pearl.

Woke: Rose hid parts of herself from EVERYBODY. Including Greg and Pearl, in some ways she probably felt very free around Greg because he didn't know about her past, but in other ways Pearl knowing her better is what kept them close. That is why she loved both of them.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Rose literally had multiple secret stashes, inside OTHER secrets. She did not even fully trust herself. So the trust she gave Greg and Pearl to be that close to her? Massive.

[palezma]

This Guy Roses

[hushman]

I like to think that part of the reason she didn't let Greg and Pearl in on all her secrets is because of how much she cared about them. She feels the immense pressure and guilt of those secrets and does not want to place that burden on the ones she cares for.

Pearl already carries the pain of the unspoken part they played in war and corruption of the other crystal gems. Rose doesn't want her to also have to deal with the knowledge that their good friend Bismuth is alive and locked away because she became dangerous, for instance.

How could she subject Greg to these secrets when they hurt so much. She can't take away Pearl's pain due the secrets she already knew but she didn't want to add to Greg or Pearl's pain.

I'm not saying this is a rational or mature response but Rose was not always rational or mature. She was well intentioned and loving but also highly emotion driven and didn't always know the right way to approach something.

[palezma]

What would Pearl give Rose for easter

Chocolate

A baby bunny. It makes Rose cry.

Voting ended onApr 1, 2024

[bellamyistired]

I wish we could know more silly details about Rose like her opinions about food. Did she eat garbage like amethyst or would it be like the dynamic in ratatouille between remi and his brother? Would she hate bitter tastes or would she appreciate the bitter and the sweet? WOULD SHE HATE TOMATOES???

[palezma]

Pearl, about to punch someone: SHE SAID NO TOMATOES

[hushman]

Pearl, finding out that Rose hates tomatoes, launches a one gem war against the fruit. She returns home, fists and arms stained red from the foes she vanquished. Face grim but satisfied for the ones she made pay for their crimes.

Later on the news will report of a state wide tomato shortage and footage of a yet unknown person smashing tomatoes with her bare hands