let’s not talk about this, ever
Dick : so yeah, we should definitely- oh hey jason, do you want to join us? We were planning to go to the movies-
Jason, who's looking down at his phone, walking past them,
Jason : maby another time, dad.
Dick :
Tim :
Damian :
Duke :
Jason, just walking off, leaving them baffled.
Duke : ..what just happend?
Dick : oh no..do I.. look like bruce?..
Tim who's being frantic : did he even notice that he called you- wait what? How-
Damian : does todd think...
Duke : is this normal? Did this happen before?!
Tim : ...no. sure, dick is a great older brother but none of us ever called him dad..
Damian : I'm sure todd ment to say dick, but misspoke..
Dick : do I look like b?!!!
Jason, who recently found out that dick tried to adopt him, and now to mess with bruce, calling dick dad and B gramps.
While Danny's fight with him was heavily assisted with the help of other ghosts, and he'd needed to use a suit, he had still been the primary fighter in that fight.
This puts Pariah Dark in a...very odd position after he gets out of the Foreversleep again.
Because this is a baby ghost. This is a child.
Officially, for all intents and purposes, Phantom is engaged to Pariah Dark. He has permission to utilize Pariah Dark's lair, command his servants, use the Ring of Rage or the Crown of Fire, and essentially act on Pariah's behalf when Pariah is out of commission.
Phantom. A child ghost in both form and age.
Pariah may be many things, but a cradlerobber is not one of them.
However, in ghost culture, if he were to turn Phantom away that would be a huge mark of disrespect towards Phantom, his lair, and his Fraid. Phantom would be marked as a target for other powerful ghosts to hunt down, and his Fraid would be hunted for sport, all for the crime of just being a child that was unfamiliar with their customs.
Sure, ghosts are already hunting Phantom for sport, but Pariah Dark does not want turning Phantom away to add to it; the boy's Fraid has remained relatively safe so far. He doesn't want a child ghost to be beaten into his core or that child's Fraid to be shattered because that child ghost happened to be, legally, a runaway child bride. Which is...a whole other disgusting thing and title he refuses to let any child have branded on them courtesy of him, Pariah Dark.
So he changes the rules.
He's Pariah fucking Dark, what, like he can't? Who's gonna stop him?
He decrees that defeating a royal doesn't mean earning a place as their spouse, but instead earns a place in their Fraid.
He decrees Phantom his son. As Phantom is now his son, that means that the Fentons are his kin by extension, and Amity Park/all of Earth a haunt that belongs to his own kin.
So he begrudgingly extends protection over all of it, as well as actually starts doing boring meetings and shit because his new son has, apparently, made a lot of powerful friends in the Zone, and he doesn't want to show discord to the outsiders.
So he'll respect his new son's contacts and alliances.
For now.
But news travels slowly, and Justice League Dark doesn't hear the addendum when they research new hero Phantom.
They find text regarding the old rules.
Just after they've found text essentially confirming that sightings of Phantom in the past were the result of time travel, just after Phantom himself slipped up and said he'd only been dead one year.
To say Diana of Themyscira is furious is an understatement.
She's ready to start a war.
For those who do not know, Wonder Woman is a member of Justice League Dark in it's current member list.
I have a head cannon that Dick isn’t as phased by things in Gotham as the rest of the batfam. Per my post about Dick getting to do whatever he wanted as Robin, I feel like Bruce learned what he should censor for the other Robins but he only learned that by having Dick experience it first. So now Dick will just walk into the most cult like violent scenes and he’ll just be walking around like he’s in a Home Depot. Like one of my favorite panels of Dick is when he is with the titans and he tastes the “blood” on the floor to see if it’s blood or not. I just feel like he does stuff like this all the time and Jason and Tim stare at him like he’s insane.
Scott: Alright, so the vampire's gravestone is— Stiles: Cenotaph. Scott: What? Derek: It's only a gravestone if it marks the location of a body. A monument honoring someone whose body isn't present is a cenotaph. Scott:I'm… not sure that's how it works if the body gets up and walks away on its own. Stiles: There's a precedent for gravestones being reclassified as cenotaphs if the body is later removed and re-interred elsewhere. There's no rule that says the body itself can't do the removing. Scott: Okay, but the body is very much coming back. That's kind of what we're here to accomplish. Derek, shrugging: So it's a temporary cenotaph. Scott: And naturally our greatest concern here is avoiding semantic ambiguity. Stiles, nodding: Semantic ambiguity is how vampires get you.
Okay, but, realistically speaking, Bruce Wayne has got to have a low alcohol tolerance. He’s a lightweight.
Like, think about it—this man rarely drinks. Most of his “drunken” shenanigans are done stone cold sober on account of the Mission, and all. If you get more than two glasses of wine in him he is fucking gone.
Which is part of what makes family dinners at the Manor so entertaining. Assuming that such events are one of the rare times Bruce truly relaxes, it’s not a stretch to think he might indulge in a glass of wine or a bourbon; and this is fine and all… until the Batkids persuade him to have another round with them or, God forbid, do a celebratory shot.
After that? Bruce is wiped.
His kids think it’s hilarious. Drunk Bruce is a trip. He’ll drop insane Dad Lore about his time in the League or a wild JL space mission or something, but then proceed to list in meticulous, clinical detail all the things that annoy him about Hal Jordan, and then all the sudden get super excited and start detailing his latest Superman Contingency Plan using the salt shakers in the dining room table. He switches moods and topics so quickly that his kids would get whiplash if they weren’t laughing their asses off.
And you know the +1, singular, solitary, time that Bruce got drunk in front of Clark will go down in history as the best day of Clark’s life. Bruce spent the entire time baring his soul, praising his children, and describing his world travels… but he also kept getting distracted by Clark’s abs and called him “sexy” no less then fourteen times. (Clark left that bar wheezing with laughter and had to disentangle himself from Bruce and force him into a taxi because Bruce kept trying to make out with him. It was fantastic.)
Okay, so hear me out. There are species of animals that reject their offspring if they don’t “smell” right. Like something about the pheromones are off and thus the vibes are bad. You can’t be mine, you smell funny. Similarly, we know that hormones and neurochemical reactions play a large part in bonding between human babies and parents. Our brains are swimming in chemicals that have us looking at our squishy, decidedly odd-looking newborns and saying “it’s so cute, I wanna bite it.”
My dudes (gender neutral). My people. My fellow nerds. Superman initially rejecting his clone because he doesn’t smell right. The kid was in a soup of artificial, clone-making chemicals and he doesn’t smell like he should. But what the fuck is he supposed to smell like? Superman having no frame of reference for this crazy feeling, for this intense dislike of a person with his face, and struggling internally with it because he knows logically that this deep revulsion doesn’t make sense. Problem is, he physically can’t help it. Something about this kid makes his teeth itch and his fingers twitch.
Then the kid takes a shower and changes his clothes and oh. Why would I push him away? That’s my baby. Hate him? How could I hate my baby? My baby. My sweet, perfect, amazing angel baby. My baby. My baby. My baby. Mybabymybabymybabymybaby.
And it’s probably hilarious from the outside looking in, because Superman looked ready to light the kid on fire a minute ago and now he’s all gooey-eyed. No thoughts, just sappy smiles and burying his nose in the clone’s hair. He’s ready to pluck the moon from the sky and hang it on a string for his kid. It’s sweet and adorable.
It’s also completely, utterly terrifying. Seeing how quickly one of the strongest beings in the known universe fell victim to his own biology, how wildly the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other. Batman’s immediately planning a trip to the Fortress to gather intel on this reaction. How long does it last? Is it normal? Is it supposed to be like this? Does it have anything to do with the clone being a teenager and not a newborn? Would it be worse with a newborn? Does the League, does he need contingency plans for this?
And Superman—Clark recognizes the sudden shift, but can’t do a thing about it. He should be scared of how every concern in his mind gets swept away by this out-of-control hormonal response, but he doesn’t want to do a thing about it. He can’t help the smile plastered on his face when Kon—what a perfect name, a beautiful name for my baby, mybabymybabyMYbabymyBABYMYBABYMYBABYMYBABY—sighs contently in his sleep or scrunches his nose in disgust at new foods, new sensations.
Something in Clark’s eyes says “I don’t know what’s happening, help me,” but it quickly gets snuffed out by “I will flip this entire universe over if a single hair on my baby’s head is out of place.” And honestly? Yeah, it’s scary, but every parent he knows—Bruce included—totally gets it.
batman villains are funny bc they all end up in arkham over and over so its just like
killer croc, painting a beautiful and sensitive portrait representing his inner turmoil: i had no idea (insert plant) was an invasive species in gotham
poison ivy, painting a photorealistic fern: they are! they’re so widespread that its almost impossible to contain, and it really hurts my heart
joker trying so fucking hard not to call them homophobic slurs because the therapist told him he’d get extra joker mush if he behaved for once in his fucking life:
Tim: Can you imagine the food they eat in jail? Bleh!
Dick: Don't need to imagine, it's disgusting.
Jason: When did you try prison food?!
Dick: When I was 8.
Tim, scoffing: If you commited a crime I'm pretty sure there'd be hundreds of articles about it, I didn't see any when I was researching you.
Dick: Oh! I didn't commit a crime.
Jason: Why the fuck would you be in Juvie if you didn't commit a crime?
Dick: Orphanages were full.
Everyone:
Jason: The hell?
Tim: I'm calling a lawyer, that has to be illegal.
Damian, in the vent: I can't believe this city's incompetence.
Dick: I can. Now get down here.
Damian: Fine.