“DIDJA SEE THAT, DANNY?!” Tim, a scrawny eleven year old now, excitedly smacked Danny’s arm.
“Ow. Yes, yes I did.”
“Oh, gosh, I have to tell Jazz about this!!” The kid waved his arms about wildly, grinning from ear to ear.
“Jaso- I mean, Robin, smiled at me! And said he liked my t-shirt!! Oh my god, he likes literature puns, he even laughed! And then he punched the bad guy in the face! Look! I even saved the tooth!”
“Okayyy, nope!” Danny plucked the tooth and tossed it, ignoring Tim’s betrayed face. “I’ll trade you that for this.”
Danny Held out a piece of paper with Robin’s and Batman’s sigil on it, from when he asked them to sign it after they “saved” the two brothers from the two-bit thugs trying to mug them.
“Oh. My. God. This is like the best day of my life!! I love you, Danny! You’re the best brother ever!! Oh my god! I have to get Nightwing’s signature!!!”
Danny felt a rush of warmth at Tim’s proclamation of affection. Ah, he should probably step in.
“Hey, wait, no, we’re not going to Blüdhaven for you to stalk another vigilante.”
“It’s not just any old vigilante-!” Tim ignored Danny’s dramatic clutching-pearls gesture of mock hurt. “It’s Nightwing. The original Robin! He gave me my first ever hug!”
Danny paused. God dammit.
“…Fine.”
“YESSSSSS!!!!”
——
Danny-
“I’m gonna be Robin whether you want me to or not!”
-is so damn tired.
“Tim. I’m literally a vigilante ghost. What makes you think I’d be stupid enough to argue with a kid who runs around Gotham at night to take pictures of other vigilantes?”
Tim deflated. “Oh. Honestly, I thought you’d put up more of a fight…”
Jazz laughed and ruffled Tim’s hair. “I definitely couldn’t stop Danny when he went out. He trusted me to support him and I trusted him to come to me if he was injured, though. Can you promise me that, Tim?”
“Yeah… okay, Jazz, I promise.” Tim promised, even if he was still pouty.
Danny chimed in.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally worried and I’m gonna hover like a mother hen when you go out, but again, I know how stubborn and crazy we vigilante types have to be.” Danny paused. “Do you want me to put up a token protest?”
Tim nodded, sulking. “Yes, please. I had a speech planned out.”
Jazz and Danny exchanged amused glances.
“Oh, okay, my bad, kiddo. Here, let’s start from the top.”
“Okay. Ahem,” Tim straightened his back, settling into his previous mulish expression once more. “I’m gonna be Robin whether you want me to or not!”
Danny placed an appropriately disapproving frown on his face. “No, you can’t! It’s dangerous! You could get hurt! You’re just a child!”
Tim launched into his speech. “But I can’t stay still and do nothing when people are getting hurt! Even…!”
They were gonna be here for a while. There was definitely something about Batman going on a spiral because Jason wouldn’t be able to walk again after the Joker got to him. Danny wondered if ectoplasm could help. He might offer, if it actually had a change of getting Tim out of the vigilante business.
But that’s for later, because they had time. Jazz was on Spring Break… and they’re still staying here for free, after all of these years.
“So, how are you going to convince Robin to let you be Robin?” Jazz asked Tim.
Tim froze. “I… hadn’t thought of that yet.”
“Well, you could always remind him of the fact that we saved him from the Joker. He seemed pretty ready to leave the Robin mantle, the last time I saw him as Phantom.”
“I don’t want to blackmail him into it!” Tim whined.
“It’ll just be a suggestion, Tim.” Jazz smiled patiently.
“Besides,” Danny continued, smirking mischievously at his adopted little brother. “If you were actually blackmailing him, you’d pull out the photos where he ate dirt.”
“I guess that’s true…” Tim mumbled. “I know! I’ll have to follow them to see how I can best approach him!”
"I think that's called stalking," Jazz deadpanned.
"Well, it's not any worse than what he's already done." Danny shrugged at his older sister. "Sure, kid. Why not? Do whatever you want."
"I was planning to!" Tim bounced off to grab his photography gear. Jazz stared off after him.
"Should we be encouraging that?"
"More like can we actually stop him?" Danny leaned back, lazily completing his GED assignments. Jazz sighed.
"Guess not. Make sure he doesn't get in trouble."
"Do you even know how hard that is, Jazz?" Danny complained, dodging the whack Jazz sent at the back of his head. She smirked at him.
"Womp, womp, Danny. How does karma taste today?"
Danny flipped her off as he put the last punctuation on the paper. He heard a clatter and groaned.
“I’m gonna go watch Tim stalk Batman for the night. Want anything from the store?”
Jazz hummed. “Get me the specialty strawberry ice cream, from that one place?”
“The one that’s definitely a front for Falcone’s money laundering??”
“Yeah. They make good strawberry ice cream.”
“Sure.”
Danny went ghost and flew straight through the walls to catch Tim sneaking out by the scruff of his collar.
“No. Bad Tim.”
“Awww, come on Danny!”
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something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.
“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”
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i know people are going to come for toto after what he said in the presser and i understand because it was ridiculous hypocritical embarrassing etc etc however i am not here to dive into that, personally i want to know what’s going on with him. brazil was bad yes we’ve all seen and talked about it at length and we’ve heard the “we’re going to learn from it” bs now tell me what’s really going on. he has been ad21 angry these past few weeks otherwise he wouldn’t have lost it in the presser. he’s very much of the fraction “hide it until it gets absolutely impossible to hold in anymore and then make it absolutely everyone’s problem” and even though i think that’s stupid and maybe he should call his therapist, i am convinced there’s something else going on in the background. either he’s decided to step down if the team doesn’t get it together by the end of the year and now he’s realised that actually, the team has not got it together by the end of the year and oh shit he might actually have to leave now because he’s a man of his word and he has to come through now, OR mercedes decided they need a change in leadership. however. in a very real sense he owns a third of that team and i am not sure they would make him leave when he was involved in 8 titles. also. from a pr and marketing angle. and we know merc are big on their pr. would they really want to make the very well known team boss leave after two arguably not so great seasons in which merc still came 3rd (2nd) in the constructors? a team that is so outspoken about team spirit and integrity? that builds 75% of their brand around this? hm. not sure. anyway there’s a third option which is also not great which is they have no car for next year either and they were kind of gambling on fixing this year’s car and look how that worked out. austin was a light at the end of a very dark tunnel and everyone’s hopes were so high after that race and then came brazil and the w14 showed them who’s boss (not merc). also not a great option.
anyway my point is he’s so bad at handling big feelings, he’s so embarrassed to suck and he gets so angry about being embarrassed and then he lashes out and while i think it’s silly to be 50 and still have anger issues i also think it is very compelling. because in comparison christian clamps up and gets so snappy and annoyed when he’s mad but he still stays in control while toto keeps everything inside for as long as he can until he kind of just. snaps and everything slips away from him and then he can’t help but literally let everyone see him at his most vulnerable and make it so much worse for himself.
anyway. that’s my rambles done for today. what i don’t want to see is “time to kill yourself toto” tags or posts or whatever the fuck because frankly what is fucking wrong with you. you’re evil and disgusting and everyone will get fucking blocked. just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean you get to say shit like that
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