there’s this wasp whose scientific name is just ahaha
“Aha ha is a species of Australian wasp, named by the entomologist Arnold Menke in 1977 as a joke.”
Ah yes, best known for their classic chart hit Take On Bee
Stranger Things
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Mike Driver
No title available

Janaina Medeiros
cherry valley forever
sheepfilms

roma★

Origami Around

titsay
h
will byers stan first human second
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

JBB: An Artblog!
art blog(derogatory)
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz
d e v o n
Misplaced Lens Cap
KIROKAZE

seen from Canada
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Venezuela

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
@waspsarebetterthanbeesanyways
there’s this wasp whose scientific name is just ahaha
“Aha ha is a species of Australian wasp, named by the entomologist Arnold Menke in 1977 as a joke.”
Ah yes, best known for their classic chart hit Take On Bee
uuuh back at it again with these two
Last Chapter of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Slowed)
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
Read Chp 5 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86178581/chapters/227907841
⚠️ CHP 5 content warnings: self-harm, suicide and murder attempt, poisoning & food tampering
IT'S FINALLY DONE and I am admittedly sad. I think this fic in particular will always have a special place in my heart because of the themes it had, and also because the reception had been so kind. Thank you so much for sticking through with me!
Shout out to my beta readers @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for being great help in seeing this project through! Hugs and kisses, my dudes. You're amazing people.
Anyways, as I promised to literally just myself:
Author's Commentary below the cut:
Chapter 4 of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Cover) is out!
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
Read Chp 4 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86178581/chapters/229518636
No major warnings for Chp 4
Next update: Father's Day, Sunday @ GMT+8
The Stephanie-Bruce found familyisms that DC dares to deprive me of.
I have a whole thing with them not being "father-daughter", more specifically, I have a whole opinion and a half about found families to be more big-brained than the usual nuclear family dynamics. I hope to push this agenda with future works with Steph (and other non-Wayne kids who are still Batkids, wink wonk)
Anyways, once again, a huge thanks to @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for beta reading this chapter as well. They're absolutely amazing. Please send them all your love and check their works out for yourselves.
Chapter 3 of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Cover) is out!
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
Read Chp 3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86178581/chapters/229257036
⚠️ CHP 3 content warnings: implied/referenced.... csa (not between major characters), self-harm, suicide, child abuse, body mutilation
Next update: Tomorrow, Sunday @ GMT+8
PROTECTIVE BATKIDS ARE HERE!!!!!!!
Emotional fall-outs are such a fascinating thing to have to write and gosh I sort-of loved this chapter. Second favorite of all of this fic, possibly. Largely because: PROTECTIVE BATFAMILY!!
Thank you again to @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for betaing this chp!!! This chapter was so all over the place.
shang qinghua often mutters things in a random language none of the other peak lords can understand but they eventually disregard it as one of his quirks.
it’s only when a heavenly artifact is found and starts saying a prophecy in said language that it starts clicking.
shang qinghua is called and translates the prophecy before nodding and muttering how he already knew that and now he’d have more paperwork when he got back to his peak.
all the peak lords and their disciples now think shang qinghua is a god from the heavens sent down to help them? was he able to predict the future? was that why he claimed to have already known about the prophecy?
there is now a shrine on every peak dedicated to him and once mobei jun sees one he also builds one in his palace. now he only has to research how to court a god.
Okay even better, Huan Hua doses Shen Yuan with a truth potion for the trial but the truth potion forces the victim to tell the actual objective truths of the universe, no matter what the personally believe to be true. They ask him who perpetrated Shen Qingqiu’s various crimes, and every time Shen Yuan just points to Shang Qinghua as the perpetrator.
Batman: Dark Victory #7
Alfred’s first reaction on finding out Bruce was exposed to fear gas is that he needs medical treatment, even though the event in question was months ago.
Snorting this like cocaine. What good whump fodder. The implication that fear gas causes issues chronically. The possibility that all the bats might need to be medicated long term because they’ve been exposed.
Even the idea that part of the reason Gotham’s issues are so insurmountable is because a significant portion of the population has intense untreated anxiety. Even the bats can’t force people to be treated. And when people in Gotham think of the mentally ill (and / or therapists) they probably think of the various supervillains. There’s probably an even bigger stigma against mental healthcare in Gotham.
Just imagining a preteen Jon Kent who has only ever encountered the civilian batbros in relation to Damian one day hear his dad, who has never said worse than “shucks darn” in his presence, call Dick by his name:
Jon: Dad! That’s so mean, why would you call him that?!
Clark: because that’s his name?
Jon: his name is Grayson!
Clark: uh
Dick: that’s my last name, kiddo
Jon:
Jon:
Jon: What about Todd—
Dick: Jason
Jon: and drake—
Dick: Tim
Jon: where does the wayne fit in to all of this?
Dick: Bruce adopted us
Jon: you’re ADOPTED!? But you all look exactly the same
Dick: umm
Jon: your parents are dead?
Dick: yes
Jon: *visibly tearing up* that’s so sad
Dick: it’s okay! Don’t cry. Honestly, when I was little, finding out your dad was adopted really helped me—
Jon: MY DAD IS ADOPTED?!
Clark: *facepalms* honey, I’m an alien. You know this.
Jon: *lays on floor and sings the wizards of waverly place theme song to himself* everything is not what it seems
Hal and Bruce getting together after Hal comes back from being Parallax and then Spectre. It's slow, it's difficult, Bruce's trust isn't easily earned back, but it happens, because if there is one thing Bruce knows how to do, it's how to give endless chances. He realearns how to not tense in Hal's presence, how to relax in his arms, how into deep, peaceful sleep in the same bed as him. Hal watches Bruce's chest rise and fall with calm breaths and feels giddy at being one of the few people who's rustling about doesn't wake Bruce anymore. He feels joy at being allowed to see all the vulnerable sides of Bruce, all the old wounds, all the secret worries. He feels grateful at getting to see Bruce do silly faces at his kids and to hear him laugh gracelessly at a dumb joke.
He feels dread - doom, even - at the certainty that Bruce will soon learn, will soon remember... that Parallax wasn't the first time Hal betrayed him.
Justice Coup (DPxDC prompt)
The Justice League has been fighting for years to repeal the Federal Anti-Ecto Control Act. At the same time as Danny Fenton's escape from the GIW, the Supreme Court reaffirms the Act, siding with the GIW. If you know what to look for, you could see the corruption which lead to this decision. The private jet flights, the "gifts". The wealthy "friends" of the Justices who made the decision. With further anti-meta and anti-alien laws in the works, it is only a matter of time before the persecution is expanded, and death camps are built There are already active pogroms. After an emergency meeting in the watchtower, it is decided that the JL should launch a coup against the US government The story takes place shortly after the coup, opening with the big three in a press conference, explaining why they did what they did, likely with Superman as the main speaker. Trials will likely be held for those responsible for the genocidal laws. Those responsible including billionaires, judges, members of congress, the former president, and so on, and so on.
DC x DP
Danny kills the Joker.
Totally and 100% an accident.
Also televised with worldwide coverage.
The problem?
He was cosplaying as a Bat.
A really well done costume that he spent weeks making, the one that is so intricate in detail because he spent months stalking the vigilante at night to get it done right.
Now, the Mayor of Gotham is shaking his hand, and cops claping him on the back for a job well done.
He just accidentally saved the Wayne Family from their promised demise.
It started as an extra credit assignment from Mr. Lancer. Help out with setting up at some sort of hero memorial gala thing, make up for—well. Danny isn’t even sure WHICH assignment or grade at this point, if he was being honest. He needed the help regardless.
The bonus was that after he helped set up in this garden venue, he was free to go home or attend himself. Upon finding out that there would be hero cosplays, Tucker not only volunteered himself and Sam to join, but also had INSISTED they all dress in costume. Sam only agreed if she got to be ‘stabby Robin’, which led to Danny also being a Robin when her first cosplay sets came in as the wrong Robin.
Waste not want not, and Danny found himself as either Robin one or Robin two, he isn’t sure and—frankly, there wasn’t much difference in the costumes as far as he could tell. Tucker still laughed at the pixie boots as he donned his own Signal costume.
There’d been some double takes at Danny throughout the evening, which really only encouraged him to mess with people a little. He can’t sneak in and out like one of the Gotham heroes, but he can turn invisible, which was much easier to pull off. He even got Brucie Wayne looking like he’d seen a ghost! Highlight of the evening, really.
Which led to the lowlight of the evening.
They weren’t in Gotham, rather a neighboring town, in an attempt to avoid the usual Gotham Rogues. Considering this was still a Wayne Enterprises affair, it was maybe unavoidable. The Joker had decided to show his ugly face.
And also about fifty freaking ghosts, invisible to everyone else but making a giant racket in Danny’s ears. Not to mention a handful of armed goons.
Danny had been trying to carefully sneak back to his friends and bail them out, or at least get them to cover before showing up as Phantom. Human enemies weren’t his specialty, but like he’d really let anyone else get hurt by a guy that had a haunting that intense going on. Amity Park was special in that regard—haunting a person as a ghost on the living side was actually quite difficult, so to have dozens of people successfully do so? It meant his actual kill count was exponentially higher.
Unfortunately, Danny is a Fenton, which meant Fenton Luck.
Joker spotted him.
“Oh?” Joker grinned. “Didn’t I kill you before? Quite a place to show up in a dead man’s clothes. Or are you just a fanboy?”
Danny scowled. He did not want to fight Joker while wearing honest to goodness tights, but he’d done far dumber for far less good reasons than keeping a madman’s attention on him. Time to distract until he either got a plan or got bailed out by-hopefully-another hero. “I got better. Your unwaking dead send their regards, by the way. Quite loudly, too.”
Joker cackled, and Danny was honestly unimpressed. Sure, it wasn’t a pleasant laugh, quite spine-chilling. But Danny was also a horror movie fanatic, a horror movie creature himself, and had met Freakshow. Did this guy even have any powers? Not to underestimate him, but—actually.
Hm.
Weird.
Danny could see a bit of what he can best describe as murky ectoplasm. Basically, ectoplasm that had fermented while on the Living Side. Everyone had at least a little by the time they grew into adults, since ectoplasm was some kind of biological messenger or… something? It was something in the environment that all living beings used, but it was also somewhat produced internally…. He thinks. He hadn’t paid as much attention as he should have to that lecture.
He did know this though. Ectoplasm kind of was like a nutrient, cycling through the body and the ecosystem with several different sources of getting it. ‘Living’ ectoplasm got cycled out naturally, but ‘dead’ ectoplasm had a much harder time leaving, and can build up, causing nasty side effects. The body didn’t know the difference, so when around the dead—cemeteries, funerals, cadavers, and so on—it all gets picked up regardless. Humans stored a lot of it naturally, more so than any other species, but that meant that it took that much longer for the murkier ‘dead’ ectoplasm to be able to DO anything to someone before it DID get filtered out.
One way to get more of that ‘murk’ quickly was to consume another living thing. Eating meat or eating plants wouldn’t cut it—both were the usual bulk sources of ‘living’ ectoplasm—unless it was rotten. Option two was cannibalism.
Danny didn’t think the Joker was a cannibal, but looking at his levels of dead ectoplasm… that had to be affecting the Clown Prince Of Long Monologues That Danny Was Not Listening To. Something something Waynes something something terror something something deranged laughter.
What if he just… took it out? That much had to be affecting Joker’s mind. Heck, not even just Joker—Danny could see a couple of others with concerning levels of their own in the room, and that could end badly. If the ectoplasm in Joker could, say, cause a subconscious hive mind, or otherwise interact with the other higher leveled people, it’d go from bad to worse for everyone.
One way to find out. And hey, he was already wearing a mask, so…
Danny, ignoring whatever ultimatum Joker was spewing as he gestured wildly at one of the statues, reached into Joker’s neck, into his spinal column, and pulled out stringy, almost-seaweed-like strands of corrupted ectoplasm.
Joker looked at him. Danny looked at the Joker. They both looked at the whatever the hell Danny had in his hands.
“Are those my blood vessels?”
“… No?”
The ectoplasm twitches.
Joker leapt back, completely and uncharacteristically surprised, and toppled over his own feet. His head smacked against a marble table, covered in velvet and finger foods but no less solid for it.
Danny waited for him to get back up, to start screaming or going back to that monologue.
He doesn’t.
One of the goons, wearing a full face mask and eyeing Danny warily all the while, stepped over to the Joker.
“Boss?” she poked him lightly in the shoulder.
Nothing.
Very hesitant in her movements, she pulled one of her gloves off and held it against his mouth, then against his pulse.
She stood, pulled her glove back on, and said in a very clear tone, “Uh oh.”
“What do you mean ‘uh oh’?” A different goon in a hat asked.
“Can’t get paid if the man is dead, which means the Goonion is going to have to bail—cause we’re totally getting arrested.”
“The Joker is DEAD?!”
Danny didn’t know who shouted, but he can hear the thunderous roar of Joker’s ghosts cheering. He winces, and accidentally clamps too hard on the gross ectoplasm in his hands.
The damn stuff splattered, and in an attempt to purify it before it can get into anyone else’s system, Danny tried to both burn it with an ecto blast and freeze it with ice at the same time.
It became a sort of mist, floating in the air and taking up far more volume as a gas than as a—was ectoplasm a solid or a liquid? He had no idea, but he did notice the effect it had immediately.
The ghosts were visible to the other gala guests.
Danny was still the only one to hear them, but the crying and cheers from the dead were plainly visible to the living.
Someone was trying to talk to him, but the ghosts were just too loud.
With a snap, because Danny had accidentally helped kill a man just now and was rather frayed from it, he turned to the ghosts. “I get it, I did the thing you wanted, now would you go?! I only have limited time here myself you know! Go party in the afterlife, please!”
For the first time in Danny’s lif-er, existence, the ghosts listened, shimmering away slowly with happy tears running down their faces.
It’s just as well, since the doors now burst open, the police coming just in time to see actual spirits wave goodbye and a far few shouting complaints about competency as they leave.
There’s only so much nonsense Danny can take for the evening, so he let invisibility fade over him as the guests look over to the police squad now standing dumbfounded in the doorway. It takes mere seconds to grab Sam and Tucker and get out, running through the halls with intangibility until he can see the night sky, and then running further after until he’s satisfied.
“Dude,” Tucker said as he panted. “You couldn’t have just flown us home?”
Danny glared. “Ah, yes, I’ll just go ghost in the middle of a ballroom. Excellent choice. My powers are weaker as human, you know.”
Sam started to laugh in a rather incredulous manner, which is something Danny actually IS wary of when hearing. “No lost love here, but I can’t believe a “Robin” just killed the Joker.”
Danny glances back down again.
…. Well. It’s a good thing this Robin was already retired, right?
Surely this won’t have any long reaching consequences.
Back in Gotham, Red Hood's duffel bag of heads falls from numb fingers as the Breaking News broadcast ends.
Robin's ghost had just killed the Joker.
*Jason Todd's ghost* had just killed the Joker.
... Fuuuuck.
The League of Assassins had LIED to him. The REAL Jason Todd was clearly still dead; they hadn't resurrected him, they'd *cloned* him.
And if they'd lied about that, what ELSE were they lying about?!
Time to make a list of people to beat answers out of.
I mean “clone” Jason is 1000% going looking for regular Jason
He’s not sure why, there’s been some jokes about “the traditional clone/original standoff”
The other bats are pretty quickly roped in to help, because obviously they’ve already been looking
(If this snaps Jason right out of his ominous plotting because he’s not even the real Jason so why bother and leads to quicker reconciliation, all good)
And of course, all three Amity Parkers’ names are on the lists of people who helped set up the event
And pictures of Danny from before he costumed up can be used to extrapolate build
And some selfies of Danny, Sam, and Tucker before the party in those costumes are posted online
(Bonus points if Danny’s blurry like Bigfoot in the photos but just about distinguishable, Bruce saw him in person)
It’s really not all that long before Danny’s dodging Waynes at home, but what really brings things to a head is when an absolute brick shithouse of a man stalks up to him, stares down at him for a while, and bursts into tears
Jason’s wondering who the hell else they mixed his dna with to make him, Jason Todd was a tiny little guy and he’s so huge, and Danny’s about the same size as baby Jason
They’ve been joking about it being Bruce or Clark, but he takes a look at Danny’s actual face and hair and eye colour aside… they look nothing alike
Jason’s not even sure how much Todd dna he has in him and finally agrees to a test, which confuses everything so much more
Danny has so many questions he has no idea where to begin. Who made that clone (believable thanks to a certain evil alternative version)? What possible motivation do they have? Why did they clone him? What do they want? And so on and so on.
Jason was really confused when the guy is so chill about being cloned... I mean... Look at how superman reacted.
Danny just accepting he has a clone he doesn’t know about because so much stuff happens without him knowing (including a host of ghosts who are now petitioning for his royal status to be formally acknowledged after he avenged their untimely death-by-joker)
Danny *le~awkwardly patting the semi inconsolable Jason Todd (he’s a bat so he’s keeping it together pretty well for falling apart)*: There there? Umm so a clone? Well you’re in good company, not the first time it happened.
Jason *bluescreening*: not the first?
Danny *glad to have something to talk about other than the crying*: oh yeah, I wonder if they over shot on the dad side of the DNA in you because you’re such a tank… and so stable… (thinking:maybe they only used the human DNA?? But I can sense ectoplasm in him…) or maybe the cloning of me just mucks things up… yeah whoever made you made you very stable…you’ll see when Dani comes over. *grabs his phone and starts texting* she might respond in a few weeks because she never looks at her phone but *phone chirps* wait… oh so I caught her at a good time, she’ll be over in a couple of days time to come see her new brother!
Jason: …I’ve got a sister?
Danny: yeah, her cloning pod produced a lot about there were some severe mutations to the clones and many dissolved - she was the only survivor just a heads up to maybe steer clear of that as a topic
#dpxdc#dc x dp#dp x dc#dcxdp#danny & jason#prev tags ->#jason thinks he’s danny clone#danny killed the joker#everyone thought he was the ghost of robin (2)#even jason
The Real, the Only, the Mega Villain
With all the current vitriol and mudslinging and strawmanning and rage floating around the fandom I got to thinking (again) about whose fault it really is. And I realised - we've been duped!! For the last three months we thought that the Night King was a colossal disappointment. We couldn't have been more wrong. His villainy knows no bounds!!
We've been told that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That's true - and what NK counted on for his reign of terror beyond the Wall. Good men (and women) on the other side did nothing, thus contributing to the greatest army the living world has ever seen, an undead dragon and the fall of the Wall.
But that's not all!! See NK is also a savvy strategic genius who would fit right into today's business environment. He knows what got him to the Wall won't get him to Westeros 2.0 (aka DISASTER).
That my friends, is a true Mastermind. A visionary of no uncertain ability!! See, he figured out that he could get incredible results by a remarkable twist on the age-old wisdom.
You can also make evil win by ensuring the bad men do nothing!
See that's why he threw the game. It was all his master plan! Let's consider one by one, shall we?
He brought his entire strength against Winterfell but ensured that only a couple of secondary characters and some tertiary characters died. Grief unites people you see - if everyone surviving lost someone truly important to them then they would form an unbreakable bond which nasty, conniving wannabe queens couldn't manipulate.
He brought all his firepower against one measly crippled boy (or parasitic tree wizard, I honestly don't know at this point). Now that might seem an overconfident strategy to mere mortals but you see he knew what he was doing. If the majority of the army doesn't see them but only hordes of ice zombies, they won't even believe that the Walkers exist. And if they don't believe Walkers ever existed then they will continue to think that only the Iron Throne matters.
He lets himself be fake taken out by a scrappy little kid with a tiny blade. But before that he ensures that atleast Jon and Dany see that he's impervious to dragonfire. This will make them think later - that's it? That's all that took to take out the greatest threat to humanity? You need the only two people capable of leading others to think they're incapable of truly judging the magnitude of a threat.
He lets himself be taken out by someone who's never had anything to do with him in an inexplicable manner which has no explanation. This results in taking away Jon's entire reason for existence. This is ghosting in the worst possible way. For years you've haunted this guy's waking dreams. The poor boy made you his primary reason for existing. He's made sure that you're at the center of his every thought and action. And at the end you let yourself be taken out by a stranger, after spreading your arms and giving him hope that his moment with you has come. Only to leave him cornered and yelling at the last moment.
See his genius? With his life's purpose made meaningless in such an abrupt manner Jon is rudderless. Combined with the knowledge that his father was never his daddy, Jon will never trust his own decisions again. In fact he will be so overwhelmed at being so wrong about the severity of NK's threat that he's going to be incapable of thinking or speaking much after this.
And Dany? She won't know what to think of a threat which is impervious to dragonfire but not little girls with little knives. She will wonder if this threat was even worth it. She will start seeing conspiracies in everything and believe that people who have never seen her accomplish what she has will suddenly love her. She will start thinking that the Throne was all that mattered in the first place and she should never have swerved.
Since Varys, Tyrion and Sansa never saw the Walkers and only the zombies, they won't take much time to get back to their regularly scheduled programming of scheming. I mean the apocalyptic threat they thought would destroy everything turned out to be less destructive than Ramsay so why not get straight back into the game of thrones? Only this time with higher stakes?
And that's why the Night King is such a genius. By becoming an annoying non-entity when least expected he started the process of destroying Jon's ability to think for himself, Dany's ability to rise above her impulses and Sansa's capability of not being a self-serving (redacted).
Oh he's waiting somewhere in the Lands of Always Winter. He'll wait till the continent has crumbled through utter idiocy and mismanagement and greedy grabbing. And then he'll make his move.
After an enlightening solo trip to the ghost zone, Dr. Maddie Fenton decides to do research on the most fascinating thing she found.
The plausibility of the myths and legends surrounding a seemingly extinct type of ecto entity. It’s known as a Halfa, and it’s supposed to be a ghost human hybrid.
Parchment crinkled under the fingers of Maddie’s gloves, the sound echoing weirdly off the vaulted ceiling of the ruin she had discovered floating only thirty minutes from the Fenton Portal. She wore a Fenton Ecto-Exploration suit, designed to protect a human being from all the dangers of the Ghost Zone, a tether and hose tying her back to the Specter Speeder.
Already, this first foray into the Ghost Zone had yielded more data than she and Jack had gotten in all the time before opening the portal, and more data than they recorded in a week back in Amity Park, waiting for the ghosts to show up on their own terms. Minutes after entering, they had encountered whole swarms of lesser ghosts, little creatures that barely showed up on their scanners, and to their surprise, a vast variety of ghostly architecture.
True, most of the buildings were ruins, and there were far too many stairs and free-floating doors to be at all logical for entities that could fly, but their presence had been entirely unexpected and brought up whole new lines of inquiry.
Who built these structures? Why? How? Had humans once lived here? Because ghosts didn’t have the focus, the organization, or the intelligence to do something like this. Perhaps they were stolen. She and Jack had researched occurrences of people and vehicles being spirited away, most notably in places like Bermuda. But for all these buildings to suffer a similar state…
Maddie had to investigate. That meant leaving the relatively safe confines of the Speeder. Jack had objected, of course, not to the concept of entering one of the buildings, but to Maddie being the one to go. But she had talked him over to her point of view. She was the better fighter, after all, and less likely to set off any traps the ghosts had left in the buildings.
She had lucked out, too, in their choice of buildings. This appeared to be an abandoned library, or some kind of record repository, full of scrolls and bound books.
There were too many for her to take all of them, sadly. The ecto-preservation box she had brought for samples would only fit a few of the thick, dusty tomes- and she had to put them in the box. There was no telling how quickly they would decay if exposed to normal, real-world air.
She picked the five books that looked best preserved, with leathery covers and silver-edged pages. The scrolls appeared to be more fragile, even if she could probably fit more of them in the box.
Giving the room one last glance and snapping one last picture with her Fenton Ecto-Imager, she turned, and followed her tether back to the Speeder.
.
They kept the books in a sealed glass containment unit, using attached gloves to reach in and manipulate the pages, as if they were handling lethal chemicals or disease-carrying vials. For all they knew, the books could be just as dangerous. Even something as innocuous as a musical instrument could become a weapon in a ghost’s hands.
Still, the main reason for their precautions was to preserve the books. The pages were fragile enough, and scans showed that the paper and parchment they were made of had a high ectoplasm content; a high enough content that, were the ectoplasm in them to disperse, the pages might crumble entirely.
Maddie and Jack painstakingly took pictures of every page. They were written, and beautifully illuminated, in a language neither of them were familiar with, forcing them to send the work of translating them to a linguist friend.
Jack literally held his breath, waiting for the linguist to call them back. Maddie was less optimistic about the response time. Jocelyn was a friend, yes, had been a friend since college, but Maddie was well aware of the reputation she and Jack had built up over the years. They would be lucky if Jocelyn looked over the images this month, let alone within five minutes of-
The phone rang.
Maddie hit the speaker button. “Hello, this is Fentonworks, Dr. Fenton speaking.”
“Maddie, this is Jocelyn. Where did you get these books?”
“The Ghost Zone!” said Jack, excitedly.
Jocelyn laughed. “Right, right, don’t tell me, that’s fine. Anyway, four of them look like they’re in Voynich script-”
“So you can translate them?” asked Maddie, excitedly.
“Afraid not! Before you showed me these, I thought there was only one example of that in the world, and no one has been able to translate it. You should get these all tested for authenticity, by the way. If any of them are legit, you have a fortune on your hands. Anyway. The fifth one seems to be mostly in Gaelic script, with some notes in Latin and Ogham. Very interesting. Subject matter seems to be ghosts from what I can tell, which, well, I’m not surprised, exactly.”
“So you can translate that one?” Maddie asked, eagerly. She didn’t want the trip to come to nothing.
“Well, some of it. I’m not super familiar with Irish languages. I’ll have to ask my colleagues, and they’ll really want some kind of confirmation about the books before they spend too much time on it. You know?”
“That’s reasonable,” said Maddie, even as she winced. She’d have to follow up with Jocelyn on what kind of ‘confirmation’ translators would want.
“Anyway, from what I can tell just by looking, this is a treatise of some kind on the ‘half-dead,’ compiled by a couple different authors over a long period of time. The Latin notes read like clarifications, or personal anecdotes, but there are also a lot of references to the god Janus. There’s a bit much to go over on the phone.”
“You can email us,” said Maddie.
“How about I drive down to Amity? I’ll bring my notes, and I really want to hear where you got these.”
“We told you! The Ghost Zone!”
“You always were a joker, Jack. Good to see life hasn’t changed you. So, do you guys mind if I come?”
“Not at all,” said Maddie.
.
Jocelyn regarded the portal with guarded disbelief. “I can’t believe it. I really can’t. No one is going to believe this.” She paused. “Were those books written by ghosts?”
“Unlikely,” said Maddie. “Ghosts lack the mental capacity. It’s more likely that these were stolen from people who were researching ghosts.”
“Right, right, that makes sense, I suppose. Anyway, I think I’ve put together a good summary of what’s in that book. I had to call in some favors, by the way, so you owe me. Also, you’ll have to pay to get the whole thing done, sorry.” She put her bags on a clean counter top, and gazed longingly at the books under the glass. “Man, I hope you can get more of those. Wouldn’t it be wild to translate the Voyinch manuscript?”
“Well, lets work on the one we have now,” said Maddie.
.
By the time Jocelyn left, Maddie was obsessed.
The book was about half-ghosts, a species of ghost that had to be either entirely mythical or, at least, extinct in the modern day. Humans simply couldn’t have ghost powers. The science didn’t work.
But the stories were fascinating. The descriptions of how ‘half-ghosts’ developed and acted were detailed. The logic of the ancient authors compelling.
As far as the translated portions went, in any case.
It left Maddie wondering: What if half-ghosts were possible?
How would one be made?
She and Jack spent hours pouring over the notes Jocelyn had left, staying up all night. Her visit hadn’t been nearly long enough to go over everything.
Maddie felt a little guilty. She knew her children, Jazz and Danny, worried over them when they got so invested in a project like this, especially a project so likely to come to nothing. Danny, in particular, had come down several times to bring them snacks or peek over their shoulders.
Maddie and Jack, feeling guilty, and also tired, had relented towards dinnertime, and ordered pizza for the family. Then, they had gathered on the couch to watch a movie. Jack fell asleep right away, but Maddie was too wired.
“So,” said Danny, his eyes fixed blankly on a dialogue-free action sequence. “What are you guys working on, down there? You’ve been busy since yesterday.”
“Well,” said Maddie, “you remember that we took our first trip into the Ghost Zone a few days ago?”
“Yeah,” said Danny.
“We found those books there, and Jocelyn translated some parts of one of them for us. We think they’re field observations made by medieval ghost hunters.”
Skepticism and exasperation flitted across Danny’s features, but quickly vanished. Maddie pushed away her disappointment. Danny and Jazz had never been very enthusiastic about their work, and she despaired of what would happen to Fentonworks when she and Jack got too old to keep it up.
Still. He was showing interest now, even if it was only to be polite.
“Okay,” said Danny. “What are you guys going to do with them?” He rubbed his hands back and forth on the couch upholstery.
“We were planning on running a few tests to see if the claims made in them are feasible.”
Danny winced.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everything we do is perfectly safe,” said Maddie, patting his knee.
“You’re going to be playing Mythbusters with ghosts,” said Danny, dryly. “I really doubt that’s going to be safe.”
The characters in the movie started talking again.
.
Danny had a point, Maddie had to admit. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if she were testing these things on herself, and Jack was around to double-check all her calculations.
“… manuscript retrieved from the Ghost Zone,” said Maddie, clearly, into her recorder, “suggests that natural portals formed an important role in the formation of the first generation of so-called ‘half-ghosts’ or ‘doorway spirits.’ The exact role is unclear at this point in our translation efforts, however, based on our own interaction with the Fenton Portal, and the fact that we do not exhibit the abilities of ‘half-ghosts,’ we believe the most likely cause is being ‘caught’ in a forming portal. If, of course, there’s any validity to the manuscript’s claims in the first place.”
Maddie paused, adjusting some of the controls in front of her, making sure everything was in place. Jack was taking care of the mice.
“We are going to test this theory with mice. Based on our current understanding of portal physics, our current expectation is that the mice will simply die. However, we ignore the wisdom of the past at our own risk. Are you ready, Jack?”
“Just about!” said Jack, fitting the last mouse into a harness to keep it from escaping the opening portal. He jogged over to stand with Maddie behind the blast shield.
Maddie nodded, checked the cameras, and then pulled the lever to bring the portal gun into alignment. They both pulled on their tinted goggles.
“Will you do the honors, dear?” she asked Jack, nodding at the firing button.
“You betcha! Geronimo!”
The lab was filled with a flash of light, making both of them wince, and then everything went dark.
“I think we tripped a circuit breaker, Mads,” said Jack, sheepishly.
“It happens,” said Maddie. “I hope the kids weren’t in the shower…” She tapped the night-vision switch on her goggles and walked over to the breaker box. She flipped the culprit switch. “There we go. Now, let’s take a look at the mi-” She blinked at the wreck of the mice cages. “They’re gone!”
They would have to revise their theories. None of them had predicted the mice being vaporized.
.
“I think I know why our experiment with the mice didn’t work,” said Jack.
“Oh?” said Maddie. She was working on preparing the Speeder for another expedition.
“No Obsession. To get a halfa, we need something that would have become a ghost on death anyway.”
Maddie frowned. “Halfa?”
“Easier than saying ‘half-ghost,’“ explained Jack.
“You may have a point,” said Maddie. “But that just means we’ll never be able to create a halfa in the lab. We can’t predict what will make a ghost.”
“That’s true,” said Jack. “But, we agreed before, halfas would be able to blend in with the living pretty well, right? Their human brains would override most of their ghostly impulses?”
“Except for a slight tendency towards violent and possessive behavior, yes,” said Maddie. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, natural portals still form all the time! And there are more humans than there have ever been. Halfas could be all around us and we’d never even know it! What we need is a way to detect them.”
“You’re right,” said Maddie. “But how?”
“Well, in theory they’d have ectosignatures, like ghosts, right? So, we could use our regular scanners, and if a human showed up as a ghost on them, then they’d be a halfa!”
“But, Jack, our scanners never work properly. They keep latching on to Danny, remember? Ever since…” Maddie’s brow furrowed. “Ever since… his accident with the portal.”
Jack had gone an odd, pasty color. “You don’t think-?”
“No,” said Maddie, firmly. “It isn’t possible.”
“But if it was?”
Maddie looked up, as if she could see through metal, concrete, wood, laminate, carpet, and drywall, all the way to Danny’s room on the second floor. “If it was… We’d just have to ask him, wouldn’t we?”
Bruce's canon (or canon adjacent) traumas I wish were explored more in fanworks:
- his torture and abduction in Batman: The Cult
- his struggles with recovering from addiction to Venom
- Barbatos
- harassment and SA by multiple people (not the racist Talia retcon)
- his CSA and abuse at the boarding school in Batman: Gothic
- Emperor Joker
wob au - chapter one
This fic is connected to my untitled whumpy omega!bruce au, which will now be called my wob au, for the lack of a better term.
I'm going to be posting my chapters here first, and then I will post the fic on ao3 when it's complete. Chapters will be posted at random, mostly whenever I finish them, so be on the lookout!
Author’s Note: This is a fic of a fic of a fic. The original is Batman is a WHAT?! by Cringe_Fella and the fic that heavily inspired me to write this is Oh we fucked up… by The_Corvid_Ruler. @occasionalauthoring’s #no pack au is also a heavy inspiration for my omega!Bruce, so be sure to check them out!
Description: Bruce has never disclosed the truth about his secondary gender to the Justice League. They believe him to be an alpha, just like the rest of the world, and Bruce isn’t much of an omega anyway. But now he’s over a month into his two-week trip into space, his suppressants ran out a fortnight ago, and the close proximity to so many alphas has triggered his abnormal heat cycle.
Unfortunately for Bruce, his heats have never played nice, and it certainly isn’t about to start now.
Content/Trigger Warnings: As you can probably gather, this is going to be a whumpy/angsty fic, so please heed the warnings! There will be mentions of self-hatred, self-esteem issues, unintentional self-harm, mentions of miscarriage, and implied/referenced rape/sexual assault.
Warnings for Chapter One: mentions of miscarriage, self-esteem issues, and unintentional self-harm
r/Advice How can I show my daughter I support her while also making it clear that I think her boyfriend's obsessive-compulsive disorder makes him a genetically superior heir to my evil empire, but also that she needs to kill him anyway because he keeps refusing to join me in wiping the human race from the face of the earth?
Basically what the title says. I (M892) started a small business when I was younger that grew over the years, and now I run an evil mercenary ecoterrorist organization with locations in multiple countries. Although my favourite daughter (F25) -- let's call her T -- is incredibly smart and has a business degree, I can't pass it down to her because she's a girl (and before anyone starts, I'm NOT sexist, my wife was a woman). My useless son (M??) won't be inheriting.
All this to say, I was happy to meet T's boyfriend B (M29), who I think would be the perfect heir. He's a genius, business-minded, and has a unique blend of complex PTSD and obsessive-compulsive disorder that would make him a fantastic cult leader. Even if my daughter wasn't female, T only has PTSD from being raised in a cult and watching her mother die as a child, not both parents, unlike B. He's American but I don't hold that against him.
Unfortunately, when I raised this offer to B, he got angry and refused, claiming that he "would never help me wipe out the human race" and "doesn't kill people" and that I "deserve to pay for my crimes against humanity." I know all young people say these sorts of things, but it was really hurtful to hear them from a young man I care more about than my own (admittedly ugly) son.
Obviously, B needs to die for this, but he's very good at avoiding my assassins and death squads. My best bet is having T get close enough to kill him, but she doesn't seem to want to. I understand she loves B, but he still needs to be killed off and maybe resurrected in such a way that his broken mind is more amenable to taking on the job.
How do I show T that I love and support her, and empathize with her feelings, but that her boyfriend needs to be assassinated and she's going to have to help me, unless she wants to be tortured in a magical hot spring like the one that killed her mother (again)?