If I had any sort of animation ability, I'd redraw this as the Bats doing casual training. Just look at these athletes, they are so amazing! I can't be the only person trying to figure out who would be who, either!
I love this, I love this, I love this, I-!
This is my favorite kinda thing. Taking accepted canon and asking yourself, "but what if Unreliable Narrator? What if fronting?" Taking fanon interpretations and tilting them sideways a bit, looking at character traits from a different perspective.
And crossovers are just so much damn fun to do this with! The rules of engagement change around. The timeline becomes more of a suggestion. There is resting potential energy in every interaction!
The idea that John Constantine uses his rumpled, chain-smoking, tired lech of a person as a work uniform? Genius. Brilliant. Machiavellian.
Batman's disguise is being stupid. Superman's disguise is glasses. John Constantine's disguise is business casual fatherhood.
I am so excited for more of this! I've not seen this be explored before!
I love love all your writings!!
I like your depictions of John Constantine.
I'd like to see you write the sad trenchcoat persona as just that a persona in the same fashion as how Brucie Wayne is a persona.
Maybe he's been the de-aged Danny/Dannies father for years and is an actual functional adult. The sad trenchcoat is just used to keep people from calling on him to frequently because he's a dad and has dad-like things to do.
He could help tim with the time stream thing, like 'oh, yeah that does look like Bruce. Alright kid pack a bag we're going in the time stream I know a guy. No Nightwing I'm not joking this looks like solid proof'.
Maybe Bruce has a oh shit he's actually competent and could kill me, that's hot moment. (Kids I have found your other father, help me get him home)
"I would love to offer more of my time to waste on monitor duty, but I have a previous engagement. A particular fit lady needs help getting her dress on the floor. The cloth always gets stuck on her horns. " John leers, wagging his eyebrows at the grimaces his words cause.
He takes a puff of his cigarette, inhaling the smoke like a drowning man. He never smokes at home, not with Danny's sensitive lungs or Dani's general disgust at smoking, so he only had the chance when called away on missions.
Plus, Danny was trying out for ballet soon, and he wasn't going to ruin his son's chances of being a star because of his own poor habits.
It helped that the rest of the heroes believed he was consistently pumping nicotine into his system. Rather irresponsible for the hero to publicly commit frowned-upon activities - at least in the States. Back home, no one cared that much.
It didn't matter that the Justice League was a global team; the main hard hitters and founders were nearly all American, and they tended to uphold those social expectations, either subconsciously or not.
One more reason why they shouldn't bother John, he can't have him smoking at a big awards ceremony or seen going through an entire pack of cigarettes mid-fight. Oh no.
John Constantine was one of the best magic users of this universe, but he was a last resort. There were plenty of other magic users like Zatanna, Dr. Fate, Zatara, or even Etrigan that came to mind first.
John was likely too busy drowning his misery in bottles or the arms of any willing partner. That's what they all thought.
Or more importantly than what he wanted them to think.
"Well, this has been a time." He announces, snapping his fingers to open a portal to his house. "But I have to run. My lady needs a knowledgeable hand to help her-"
"Enough," Batman growls. Though he has complete control over his emotions, John can tell he's irritated by the meaningless detail. He smirks as the hero waves a hand, "Just go."
He offers the rest of the meeting room a cheeky two-finger salute as he struts out, letting the portal close behind him so his trench coat flares dramatically. It's a nice view, he's sure, but it's also unnecessarily showy, and he is sure at least three pairs of eyes are rolling at his exit.
A chuckle escapes his mouth, straightening from his slouch to properly stand straight and bend it far enough to pop. Goodness, his act always leaves him with a sore upper back; maybe he shouldn't hunch over so much, even if he was playing the part of a no-good punk.
John only had a few seconds to shiver at his own thoughts- he was a punk. A real one! He was in a band!- before he heard the tell-tell sign of a rapidly approaching double set of footsteps echo down the hall. He scrambles to fling his lit cigarette into a water portal, chucking the pack for double security, while summoning a random suitcase from thin air.
All that's left is his rather eye-catching coat, a little too worn down and old to work well with his well-put-together outfit underneath. Without it, John has a clean, pressed white shirt, a respectful tie, and a pair of slacks that make more than one head turn as he walks.
All in all, he looks like the office businessman his worthless father always wanted to be.
John throws off his coat over a chair at the same time the door is thrown open with a pair of excited yells. "Welcome home, Dad!"
A grin stretched across his face before he could think about it, feeling his heart swell at the sight of them, as he knelt down, arms open wide. Two tiny bodies slam into him without a second of hesitation, nearly knocking John backwards.
He lets out a soft grunt as Dani's arms attempt to wrap around his left arm and right shoulder. She clashes against Danny, who's trying to bury himself into John's right side, little face squished against one of John's pecs, like a bunny burrowing into the snow.
"Hello, my little lambs!" He gushes, squeezing the kids close. "How was your day with the House of Mystery? Did you two behave?"
"They were angels," Black Orchid confirms, gliding into the room at a much slower pace. They had their regular, impassive expression on their faces, but John could tell that Orchid was happy with the kids by the way they gently tapped the tops of the children's black hair.
"Dad! Dad! Now that you're home, can we please go get my new ballet shows?" Danny begs, bouncing on his toes.
For a moment, John doesn't see his son, but rather his own blue eyes staring up at his father, when he was also five, begging to join Lily, the next-door neighbor, in beginners' ballet class.
His father had beaten him nearly to death for wanting such a girly interest. It was the last time they spoke about it. It was also the last time John ever bothered asking to start new hobbies.
"Dad! Dad! Can I do Karate?" Dani asks then, snapping John from his memories better left buried, as she presses her check against her brother's in an attempt to get John's attention. "I want to break a board with my fist!"
He gives the children another squeeze, laughing at the squeals he gets. "Of course you can do karate, little lamb. We're going to get your brother his shoes, and then I'll find a gym that offers the classes at the same time."
"I already provided that service." Orchid cuts in, holding a flyer for Flying Graysons' gym, founded and run by the eldest Wayne in Gotham. "I took the liberty of signing Danny up for a class with Casnadra Wayne, and Dani will join Duke Thomas's class. It starts in a week."
"Plenty of time to go get them everything they need and a new book series for our bedtime stories," John announces, loosening his arms so his children can cheer and bounce up and down in excitement. His knee is starting to cramp up, but he ignores it so he can hold his kids.
It's moments like these, so small and mundane, that John is grateful he thought of his persona. When he first learned how to use the magic he was gifted, he always made himself available for any crisis.
This was before the Justice League days, so anyone who sought him out was familiar with the occult world. He adored helping, and he built an incredible amount of skill and knowledge in magic, but soon John was facing disaster after disaster, dragging his exhausted body from one place to another.
Those who came searching for him never cared. They wanted John to jump at the drop of a hat. He tried for years to always be ready, always be willing, but years of isolation and desperate battles tried him to the core.
Then he took in Danny and Dani, finding the pair of babies in a basket at the feet of the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep. He had gone to investigate the legends of the famous King Pariah Dark, only to find what he assumed were originally sacrifices, well and truly alive.
Their names were attached to their feet with a letter written by a Jazz Fenton begging the two to grow and live well. She had died to save them. In her honor, John kept their names.
Daniel "Danny" Fenton and Danielle "Dani" Fenton. He often wondered what Jazz had been to the kids, with their identical last names. It is a question he will never get the answer to.
They could have been no older than five months, but when they opened their eyes and reached up for him, John realized he no longer wanted to be the go-to man of magic.
He wanted to be their father.
To discourage people from calling him away from his children, John created his persona of a man barely honorable enough to join a team. Over the five years of his raising his kids, his reputation plummeted until only Batman called to him unless absolutely necessary.
It was a breath of fresh air. John had fought for too long and too hard. He was retired now, just like his band days, the days when John would speed off to save the world were behind him. He only stepped in if a friend asked for a favor.
He had other priorities now.
The best part? The Justice League would never know that.
"Dad!" Dani screamed into his ear, making him grimace.
"Inside voice, darling."
"Sorry." She twirls her fingers, a nervous habit she picked up from John, before brightening up "I'm just super excited. Orichad said Mr. Bruce Wayne will be at the gym! Do you think he'll sign my Wayne Space shirt?"
Ah, yes, the man who was funding some space program or another. He only knew about this because his twins adored anything to do with space travel, as if though he couldn't just teleport them to a different planet.
"I'm sure he will, darling."
Okay, hear me out. I know it's not canon that Jason drugged the other Titans during the Titans Tower Incident; he electrocuted two of them and then drugged the third.
But we're playing in the au's like bitch whatever, DC retcons and rewrites at the slightest provocation and we are here for stories, right?
And a lot of Titan's Tower au's have Red Hood drugging more people than in canon. And every time it happens there's an absolutely terrible little voice in the back of my head going, "Jason is so lucky that no one he drugged was hiding a substance abuse issue like Roy did. Jason is so lucky that none of these teenagers-to-young-adults who are incredibly physically active and who have so many traumas took some physician-prescribed, completely legal pain medications or anxiety pills or muscle relaxants. He is so lucky that any daily upkeep medication didn't cause a catastrophic drug interaction with the unknown. Heck, Jason is so lucky that whatever drugs he used were perfectly tailored to each individual's body mass and species."
I'm not saying I want a fic where Jason accidentally makes a young hero OD, but I think it would be interesting and darkly funny if Tim made him think he might have.
"You drugged everyone? Wait, even (X)?! What did you use, did you check to see if they took their benzos before you drugged them? (Y) Is allergic to propofol, was that part of the stuff you used?"
"Look, you can have the fight you want, just let me make you none of my friends are choking on their own vomit first."
@malfiora found it for me so I'm gonna share it! I genuinely love this so much, it's such a Thing that would become part of Gotham's cultural zeitgeist.
Imagine the first time each of them heard some kids singing this?! Imagine if it's a cryptid Batfamily au and the song breaks containment before the other heroes know them? So much possibility, so much potential, I love it.
Listen... All I know is that the kids I babysit were singing that one Gummy Bear song and next thing I knew my brain made a parody
Me: “Yeah I read all the time! I’m always reading a book-”
My books sitting unread on my bookshelf:
People have said that this art looks like it's hinting that Bernard is going to get killed in upcoming storylines and I'm really hoping they're wrong.
He's in a suit. There are doves. It could be marriage!
The red rose over his heart definitely isn't evocative of a sniper's laser sight! The askew posture and dangerous position don't look like a body! He's not dressed for a funeral, he's dressed for kinky Court of Owls roleplay!
DC needs to give Tim Drake either an age-up + a new suit, or, give him the most badass, diabolical villain arc known to man.
If you can read them online you can buy them online.
I get that it can be troublesome without a local store, so I encourage everyone to buy their comics from other brick-and-mortar stores and have them conveniently delivered to your door through the mail. Or go ahead and buy the PDF!
Pirating comics contributes to a future with even fewer comic book shops and an even greater dependence on bloated businesses like Amazon. It makes it more difficult for people to become comic book artists and writers in general.
It's a short-term savings for the individual vs the long-term protection of the genre.
Why are comic fans so against piracy and reading online like dude there are literally no places to buy comics where I live I have no other option
(<i>Hi, I’m the written half of this freeform collab with @dahtwitchi, putting my side up with very little working knowledge of how to Tumblr</i>)
(Sugar!Madara is offering to make out with his alternates to encourage the Tobis to do the same, because he is a shameless perv. His younger self approves of this plan)
"They seem to be enjoying the view." Sugar!Tobirama raises his eyebrow at the toothy grin his boyfriend sends his way. Bluntly, he warns his other selves,
"...My Madara is probably going to try to start something again; he has a _thing_ for shadow clone sex."
"...Shadow clones of _us_?" The younger Sugar version sounds dubious and Tobirama shrugs, remembering how strange it felt to have some so obviously appreciate his unusual appearance.
"He thinks we're pretty."
This post will be updated now and then, so reblogged versions will get out of date
#1 #3, 4 & 5 #6, 7 & 8 #9 #10, 11 & 12 #13 #14 #15, 16 & 17 #18, 19 & 20 #21, 22 & 23
TBC? Probably. Possibly. Sometime.
(sorry, but I wont be turning this into something that makes more sense ^^;;; I’m just posting my part to share art rather than story x3 freeform collab with @donkoogrr‘s sugarverse MadaTobis. So there is a random meet up of pre-sugarverse Madra&Tobirama, current-ish sugarverse Madara&Tobirama, and my gardenverse Madara&Tobirama that are actually 6 years into the future versions of cockblockverse Madara&Tobirama. Are you properly confused trying to keep them apart now? Good, because it’s a mess keeping track of who is who x’D)
Damn, I'm gonna hafta stop joking that Batman's a furry because after some thought, that's a disrespectful joke. Batman is clearly not a fursona and I should know better than to kink shame like that anyway.
(Art is by the amazing @dahtwitchi. This is a freeform collab with no real goal)
Cool water is pressed to his lips and the youngest Tobi shivers as he docilely sips it directly from the older man's hand. He feels overheated, his throat aches, there is an uncomfortable wetness in his fundoshi, and his mind is more clear than it has ever felt before. He presses himself against the man in before him, holding onto him while he waits for his legs to regain their strength. Someone crouches next to him and begins patting his head comfortingly, "So good, you did so well, that was beautiful..."
SugarMadara smiles softly and a little bit ruefully. Between those two, this younger version of his lover will be more than fine as he rides out his first high. He wishes he had been able to do that for his own lover, but that regret is an old friend by now.
"My attitude got me my Tobi; yours would have surely frightened him off..." Or not. He is well aware of how fragile his Tobirama had been when they had begun dating. It is uncomfortably possible that this other Madara could have pushed him enough to pull an emotional attachment out of the broken man. Whether this version could have kept up with the myriad of issues that accompanied Tobirama outside the bedroom is what would make the difference.
His younger self glances at him, possibly noticing the change in his elder's mood.
He is very quiet as he responds to the eldest's likely rhetorical question. No need for the Tobis to hear this, even if he is certain his own already knows.
"I have worked very hard to keep my lover happy because I am so very bad at letting go. Once I truly began to think of him as mine..." Madara grimaces, but if anyone could understand, it would be other versions of him.
"I will not give him a reason to leave me, because he will never be allowed to leave me. As long as I keep him happy and safe, as long as he loves me, I won't need to make him stay at my side."
Yoooo! Yes!
When Batman was a wee little character, just a concept still being fleshed out by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Batman killed people.
Like, with guns, even.
One of the early comics has him straight up acknowledging that he's about to kill innocent madmen who were experimented on at Arkham and turned into monsters, but he had to stop them from killing other innocent people.
Early comics were wild and I am out here so excited to talk about history and the moral panic of the 50s and how legally you couldn't publish a comic that made a criminal sympathetic!
I've got. So many essays. About the Comics Code Authority and its effect on media and culture.
Me, skimming pages of Batman year one and two, with Jaybin: . . . The f#&% you mean Batman has killed before in self defense? •-•
WHAT!!!??? BATMAN HAS KILLED PEOPLE!?!?!? ._.
This... This messed with my character analysis so much.
WHAT. DO. YOU. MEAN?!
"I'm glad they're dead!" Careful, Jason, the writers took that singular comment and haven't let it go since.
Also, just shout out to Jaybin for being all cute and >:/ and :D
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