God I Fucking Love Strawberries

Chloé Zhao, who just won an Oscar for best director, writes fanfiction.

That's the kind of validation I needed in my life. Thank you, ma'am.

my fyp aligned for one thing and i don't even know what or why

sorry yeah we queer coded your boyfriend. he’s arguing with his brash and emotionally reserved rival over something trivial for comedic effect. they have a special, vaguely suggestive bond that sets them apart. hm? oh uhh. yes they are blue and red

This is why you don't sleep with the Tyrant King - The consequence is children

Constantine avoids involvement with the Infinite Realms for two reasons.

Who wants to deal with all those Ancients in the first place?

He’s avoiding yet another unhinged ex of his.

Of course, hooking up with Pariah Dark wasn’t really an actual relationship, more like a one night stand via dream walking (Nocturn owed Pariah, but seeing as it would be insane to release the Tyrant King from his endless sleep, he’d give him a dream partner every couple centuries) - regardless, Constantine doesn’t want to deal with that.

So yeah - the fact that the Justice League is attempting to summon the High King into the Watchtower has him wanting to drink more than usual.

Of course he gave warnings, but they’re dead set on doing so. A green folder had appeared in the secure “cursed artifacts” vault with no trace of whoever left it there. How else were they gonna find out how it got there?

So Constantine’s stuck there to set up wards, and is trying to find his way out of this one.

When the summoning circle worked, no one expected the teenager to pop out of it. 

Instead of Pariah Dark, or even the sarcophagus showing up, there was a white haired ghost boy with glowing green eyes the same color as the flames of the Crown of Fire. Except he didn’t look exactly like the others ghosts. He had a human skin tone, his proportions were exactly like a human teenager’s, and he was wearing a black and white hoodie with black sweatpants, for God’s sake. 

… Were ghosts able to reproduce with humans?

Before any of the Justice League can get into questioning, Constantine speaks up:

“You’re not the Ghost King.”

Green eyes settle on him, lighting up with recognition - Danny knows exactly who this is, with the amount of complaints on his desk about the blonde. Clockwork also informed him (he didn’t want to know but now he does) of the man’s stint with Pariah. 

Daniel “Commit to the bit” Fenton chooses to do just that.

“Of course not,” The confusion crosses the face of the heroes present- “That’s just because I haven’t had my coronation yet! I’m the Crown Prince, it’s practically the same thing!”

Oh, and the dread and realization crossing Constantine’s face is almost enough to make his core purr in amusement. 

“Now I will gladly answer all your questions, but first!” His eyes swept over the heroes before raising his hand and pointing accusingly at the British warlock.

“John Constantine,” his voice boomed, the temperature of the meeting room dropping as his face stretched with a smile too big and too pointy, “You owe me fifteen years of child support.”

Sometimes I feel like us as the bat family fandom forget how starry eyed people get about Nightwing canonically.

Because with the exception of early era Tim most of the Batkids are like. lol that’s my loser older brother or some variation of yeah…he’s some guy I guess? He helps me with homework?

And Nightwing is the canonically a center of multiversal light.

When Heroes meet Nightwing they do the vigorous handshake and the “it’s an honor to meet you sir, I have heard so much about you oh my god”

There are so many character where they are literally shown giggling and kicking their feet whenever Nightwing talks to them.

Even the people who don’t have the celebrity level worship of him respect the hell out of him and call him as soon as they need help.

From raven to Starfire to Superman to Superboy to all or the flashes there is so much respect and awe given to this one dude.

And it is deserved

But imagine you are Damian Wayne and you’ve been working with what 90% of the people you’ve met (all bats) have been calling an embarrassment to your father’s legacy.

Your mother hates him and your Grandfather doesn’t feel that strongly about him.

The red hood calls him an embarrassment and a coward and he couldn’t even keep Red Robin from running away.

Your father tells him that he never should have been Batman

And you’ve worked with him and you know what you think everyone is full of shit about him and you and him the new Batman and Robin are the best no matter what anyone says.

And fuck it the fact he keeps going in a suit that everyone tells him he’s not good enough for is scratching something in your brain that you’re refusing to acknowledge because why would you feel that way? You are the circus freak have nothing in common (shut up)

And then you meet the justice league and all the extended teams.

And people are falling over themselves to listen to a word out of your brothers, your Batman’s mouth. They wait for a nod or headshake and dictate decades worth of planning on it.

Both Drake and Todd’s hero teams ask him for advice with or without their designated bats presence.

The man of steel asks for child rearing advice and wonder woman cracks a joke about a spar

Newer heroes whisper about him in the halls

He’s literally your favorite hero’s favorite hero

And it’s breaking Damian’s Brain

Because well… he kinda gets slapped around in Gotham. He’s the butt of half the jokes the other Batkids make and Dick just smiles and takes it.

The rogues have a bounty on nightwings ass and he gets leered at by goons, rogues, civilians and anti-hero’s alike and he doesn’t say anything.

He lets oracle crack jokes about a pretty face and having to do everything herself

Let’s Jason run the alley despite the fact that apparently he knows how to take it back

Apparently he’s had 12 people tailing Drake since Paris and despite being the man Ra’s Al Ghul calls detective has yet to notice. (Because you can’t tell me Dick was just magically at the right place to catch Tim falling to his death on coincidence)

And necessary to peace talks because he’s the best they have at deescalation

Like imagine you are a child who was raised to believe power is this obvious, all consuming thing. That the ones who control the board are visibly larger than life figures who fought their way to the top and cling to power by even the thinnest hangnail if they had to.

People who ignore simpler morals or an overall greater goal or good

And then you’re taken in by the man who whispers the correct answers into the larger than life figures ear.

Like I feel like that would have such an impact because Dick didn’t take power from anyone to reach his goals, it’s why his siblings don’t really defer to him unless in crisis.

Dick didn’t take power, no people just looked at him and decided he was the best option to give it to.

Everyone basically looked at this kid and went, yeah you’re the future of all heroism.

And if that dude can’t even get Bruce Wayne’s respect what chance does Damian Wayne have

Chapter 0: The End.

First chapter of my Trigun post-canon AU. It will roughly be 10 chapters and all in manga style :3c It will have a lot of gayearning and feels ywy So prepare, this is gonna be fun. You can find an HD version of it on my Ko-fi.

From next month, I'll upload the new pages directly on my Ko-fi page, as soon as I finish them. Then, after the chapter is done, I'll post it whole on my social media!

Thank you so much fro reading, lmk what you think!!!

Oh wow, this is great! Absolutely delighted to have inspired you!

Dick Grayson's unmatched success as a child vigilante makes a lot more sense when you remember the Court of Owls was a thing and that Dick was meant to be the next Grey Son.

There is no way that someone at Haly's Circus wasn't there keeping an eye on him while he grew up. A future weapon needs to be trained and monitored after all, and a circus, a place where weird skills are completely normal, is actually a great place to secretly train a child.

You know, just some knife tricks that translated really well into actual fighting. How to get out of restraints and pick locks while under a time limit. Death defying acrobatic stunts that coincidentally do wonders for parkouring. That sort of thing. Nothing that seems out of place for a boy growing up around circus performers to learn, but would literally any where else.

I mean, while I fully believe that most kids would want to kill the man responsible for their parents deaths, Dick was weirdly prepared to go through it. He tracked down Zucco with way more ease than any normal child should have too. He became the first child vigilante, for goodness sake. The first Robin! He only started getting formal training after he basically forced Bruce into it!

Bruce himself has no idea that this kind of competency in a child is unusual, considering he was much too blinded by the similarities between his and Dick's tragic orphanhoods.

Alfred is in a similar boat because he’s desensitized to weird children after he somehow managed to successfully raise Bruce 'The Batman' Wayne, so he doesn't clock the hyper-competency as abnormal either.

By the time the other batkids start popping up (Jason 'The Audacity' Todd, borderline-street rat with no fear) (Tim 'the greatest stalker in Gotham history' Drake, child genius, also bullied his way into becoming Robin) (Barbara 'raised by the only uncorrupt cop in gotham' Gordon) (Stephanie 'daddy issues and spite' Brown) (Duke 'Pretends he's the normal one and people believe him' Thomas) it's too late.

It would also explain how Dick got along so well with Damian out of all of them. Similar childhood with different approaches and all that. On some subconscious level, Dick recognises and resonates with the murderous ten year old assassin with strong familial ties to a secret elite assassin organization.

It isn't until after the whole Court of Owls and Grey Son reveal that suddenly Dick realises a whole lot of things about his childhood that suddenly make a lot more sense.

oh god i’d heard about the “i won’t commission artists who undercharge for their art” post and now it’s making its rounds on my dash.

please understand that this concept does not actually help anyone. the sensible thing to do if an artist is undercharging is to tip them for what you think their work it worth, and be sure to let them know that. even if this doesn’t cause them to actually change their base prices, at least YOU’RE paying for what it’s worth, and THEY’RE getting business instead of nothing.

by essentially boycotting artists who are already unsure of the value of their own work (and are thus underpricing) you’re not sending any positive message. no one is going to up their commission prices when nobody is buying them. the only thing the artist gets out of it is that people don’t want to buy their art for some reason, and people who’s products aren’t selling aren’t going to say “oh i guess it was because i wasn’t charging enough, i’ll pump up the prices!”

if you want to support a commission artist, please do it by actually SUPPORTING THEM WITH COMMISSIONS rather than by choosing to take your business elsewhere because their prices were too low.