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longwuzhere · 10 months

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Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers pt2

Episode 1 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 3 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 4 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 5 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 6 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 7 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here and here

Episode 8 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 9 of My Adventure with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Episode 10 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

(SPOILERS obviously):

An obvious one, but a classic, the "up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" line reference. This one never gets old.

Jimmy next name drops Flamebird. in the comics Nightwing and Flamebird were Kryptonian superheroes adopting their names from a species of Kryptonian birds. This is where Dick Grayson gets his Nightwing identity from. The page here is from Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #17 (1986) drawn by Curt Swan and Karl Kesel.

At the climatic battle of part 2 of Adventures of a Normal Man, we see Leslie Willis become blue and look more like her traditional Livewire look. Her first appearance was in Superman the Animated Series, season 2 episode 5 "Livewire" where she was voiced by Lori Petty, a.k.a. Tank Girl. In the show Leslie was a shock jock radio DJ slinging hot takes live on air knocking down Superman a peg or two

Obviously MAwS took Leslie in a whole different direction, design choice, and occupation change, but I am excited to see what happens next for her.

Before we see Clark battle Leslie we see this guy. White hair, wears orange and black, its Slade Wilson a.k.a. Deathstroke. This fool here in like 20 to 25 years will have his life spiral out of control and get his ass kicked by a bunch of colorfully dressed teenagers.

Deathstroke makes his first appearance in New Teen Titans #2 (1980) (W: Marv Wolfman and George Perez, P: George Perez, I: Romeo Tanghal, C: Adrienne Roy, L: Ben Oda) where he is hired by H.I.V.E. to kill the Teen Titans. In the comics he's a major piece of shit, but a damn good assassin.

After the fight we see Supes clean up and he picks up a billboard that reads Amazotech.

This is a good reference to Professor Anthony Ivo, a mad scientist of the DC Universe who built the Amazo robot who could adapt and replicate any power that the Justice League has and weaknesses. Both Ivo and the Amazo robot make their first appearances here in Brave and the Bold #30 (1960) with the cover art done by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson.

At the end of the episode Slade name drops Task Force X better known as the Suicide Squad. The name "Suicide Squad" is from the Brave and the Bold #25 where it was the name of Rick Flag's unit in the military. The Suicide Squad pop culture knows first debuted in Legends #3 (1987) as seen below (W: John Ostrander and Len Wein, P: John Byrne, I: Karl Kesel, C: Tom Ziuko, L: Steve Haynie).

The team at this time was composed of Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Enchantress, and Blockbuster. The team members have changed out with each new Task Force X/Suicide Squad iteration.

Behind Slade, here is Amanda Waller, the most fearsome woman in the DC universe. She's ruthless, politically powerful, and will not hesitate to blow up anyone in the Suicide Squad if they screw up. She makes her first appearance in Legends #1 (1987) same comic series in the previous picture. Very excited to see where My Adventures with Superman goes with this cuz you don't see Superman interact with Deathstroke or Suicide Squad all the often.

Link to Episode 1 of My Adventures of Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 3 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 4 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 5 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 6 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 7 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here and here

Link to Episode 8 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 9 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

Link to Episode 10 of My Adventures with Superman Easter Eggs and references is here

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dailyadventureprompts · 4 months

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Homebrew Mechanic: Battles of Attrition

I think we can all agree that there’s something a little wonky with how d&d’s combat system changes between the early and mid/late game. Heroes go from being rightfully cautious about danger to being outright banal about it, confident that their accumulated power will be enough to dispatch all but the most outstanding foes. The traditional solution is to put them up against stronger enemies but in my experience these mismatched encounters are a failing proposition: combat just gets more swingy and there’s only so many high level threats I can throw at them in a short period of time before it begins to strain credulity.

While a lot of folks (Especially the OSR crowd) have taken the stance that 5e is broken because of how much it empowers players, I think the real fault lays with the lack of systems that exist to provide challenge outside of anything related to the damage based tug-of-war that is combat. I think a lot of those systems were part of the non existent “exploration” pillar of the game before Hasbro realized they could make easy money selling the game in its unfinished state and gutted it along with the development team.

Thankfully, I and other homebrewers are around to do what the megacorporations cant, namely have some original thoughts and try and figure out a way to add challenge back to the game without resenting those playing it for having fun.

TLDR: Trying to make our games challenging by upping damage numbers in combat is a losing proposition, in no small part because that part of the game is DESIGNED around the heroes winning. Instead, we up the overall difficulty by making them temporarily weaker with systems like sickness, stress, exhaustion, & item degradation. All of which I have details and guidelines on below the cut.

First and foremost let me state some of my goals for these “attrition systems”, so we can all be on the same page. Whenever I make homebrew rules I try for something that’s going to require little to no paperwork on behalf of the players and can be seamlessly implemented into my DMing style. It’s not about realism, it’s not about punishing players, this is a way for me to add mechanical depth without bogging down the machine entirely.

Attrition should be largely non-permanent. The 5e audience invests a lot in their characters both emotionally and mechanically, so it won’t do to pile on debilitating debuff after debuff to the point of making a character useless.

There should be an inverse relationship between the severity of the affliction and how long it lasts. Think in term of encounters, days, or weeks, (with the understanding that an attrition that goes on for long enough becomes a questhook in itself)

The exception to this rule is if someone hits 0 hitpoints. I’m outspoken in my stance that characters should only die when it’s alternatively appropriate, but the dm is at liberty to inflict thematically devastating setbacks in the unlikely event that the party DOES suffer losses in the damage tug of war.

We want to be sparing with how much attrition we throw at the party at once, so as to not create a “death spiral” where failures compound upon one another and make getting through the adventure impossible.

In most cases suffering Attrition should be something the party is able to avoid by being fast/lucky/cautious/clever or whatever else the encounter requires. It’s there to add weight and consequence to their actions, and as a factor for DMs to build scenarios around.

Exhaustion: Unlike a lot of the other changes made in Oned&d, I actually quite like the overhaul of “each point of exhaustion is a cumulative -1 to all d20 rolls and spell dc, beyond 10 is death” as it allows us to play with exhaustion far more readily as an attrition.

Every night you don’t rest in a haven (a safe comfortable place) you need to make a con save or take a point of exhaustion, with the ruggedness of the environment determining the DC. Characters with the survival skill or natural explorer feat don’t have to make this roll. Only rest in a haven removes exhaustion at the rate of one point per night (though spaces like a luxury inn or a peaceful glade watched over by friendly fey may restore more)

Hitting 0 hp and then being healed gives you a point of exhaustion. Nothing’s going to tire you out like getting magically defibulated so now everyone can stop complaining about healing word spam.

Poison: For our purposes, the “poisoned” condition as written is too severe. Disadvantage on all attacks and ability checks is downright punishing for anything other than a single battle. Instead we’re going to make it work like charmed, where there’s a baseline effect for the purposes of resistance, but the status of each poison is dependant on the source.

Poison falls in the “ short term big effect” side of attrition, specifically undermining a player’s ability to do most things since most effects end on a successful save or at the end of an encounter. Long lasting poisons should have more minor effects than the default poisoned condition, only applying to a few types of rolls or having a bane-like effect that makes judging the odds just a little bit more difficult.

This makes poison great to use for dungeons and short-ranging exploration where the party is likely to face multiple encounters in one day.

Diseases: 4e aced the design of these maladies by treating them as a contained skill challenge with their own CR with various stages: stage 0: you were cured, stage 1: you suffered the initial effect, stage 2 or 3: you suffered a severe effect, with the final stage (3-4) being some effect that made the disease permanent. When you got a disease it was usually stage 1, and you (usually) saved for it at the start of each day. Beating the DC by 5 or more meant you went down a stage (closer to 0), where as simply succeeding meant it stayed as bad as it was. Failing meant you got sicker, meaning a character could bounce up and down in wellness as an adventure went on.

Diseases are best for longterm adventures, and often undermine one particular aspect of a character ( healing, actions assosiated with a particular stat). Counterpoint to poisons, diseases should start out fairly gentle and then get worse the longer they’re left alone, leading to eventually devastating effects.

Curses: While borrowing the mechanics of diseases, I’d have curses be specifically weirder in their effects. The sort of thing that can make up the central hook or b-plot of a whole adventure. This should also mean that curses are the hardest for the party to stumble into, but also the hardest to shake.

Item Degradation: Detailed in a previous post HERE, the long and short of it is that item degradation is a form of player driven attrition that gently curbs their overall power level. If they go too hard, use their best items recklessly, get involved in needless fights, then they’re going to be in worse shape by the time they reach the final challenge. This was supposed be the idea behind HP/limited class abilities per day, but attrition systems cover that better IMO.

Stress: The psychological counterpoint to exhaustion, I’ve already talked about Stress HERE. I tend to only use stress in horror themed adventures and campaigns, as it builds upon 5e’s optional “madness” system which fits the theme when gothic terrors and eldritch abominations but less so with the game’s usual heroic fare.

Hunger & Supply: I made a super lightweight system based off this idea of “depletion die” for potions and other consumables, check it out, it’s lightweight and fantastic. Using this kind of system gives us another avenue to challenge our party, lengthening or shortening their lifeline as they lose supplies and seek out new caches.

Thinking environmentally: Part of the fantasy of being an adventurer is travelling to dangerous places and living to tell the tale. We’re denying our party that fantasy if we don’t follow through on the threat the idea of these places imply. You should risk sickness if you go into a swamp, sewer, or jungle, thirst should be a factor in desert exploration, just like freezing is for mountain and winter expeditions. That’s to say nothing of magical hazards; cursed landscapes that drain your will to live dead marshes style, alchemical smog in a steampunk industrial zone, fading into nothingness as you approach the edge of existence.

Figure out the natural hazards, make your party aware of the danger, and then build your adventure around the fact that they’ll need to save against the hazard each time they take a long rest.. Do they take a detour if it means having a safe place to camp? Is there a resource they need to manage along the way? Could encounters expose them to further dangers or make their current exposure worse? Keeping these ideas in mind especially when you’re planning a wilderness exploration adventure should give you lots of ideas to fill up those encounter tables.

Adding insult to injury: Giving enemies the ability to inflict attrition in various forms makes otherwise trivial enemies a credible threat even to a seasoned adventuring party. As an example, A party might breeze through a fight with some monstrous spiders ( or even ONE regular sized spider, if you can imagine) , but that spider encounter doesn’t need to be the most dangerous thing ever if their next encounter is a navigation challenge fording a river and a few of the heroes are still groggy thanks to the slow acting poison in their systems.

In this way you can use attrition based battles to soften your party up for greater challenges, long after their HP totals and healing ability have outpaced the damage a single trap/encounter can do.

Artist

#homebrew mechanic #d&d mechanics #attrition #combat

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soylent-crocodile · 23 days

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Myr (Monsters)

(Silver Myr by Kev Walker)

(I FUCKING LOVE MYR! They're cute, they're iconic, they're interesting bits of worldbuilding... I HAD to make 'em! Mercifully, I've separated Mirrodin from New Phyrexia, and created the Plane of Steel, a fun little plot hook roughly referencing Mirrodin's creation. If you want to make these native to the Plane of Metal- new to PF2- or simply old machines of a dead culture, feel free.

Also, this will contain rules for Mana Myr, which I spiraled off the five colors of Magic, but expect more myr in the future!)

Myr are mysterious creatures native to the Plane of Steel, an artificial plane ripped from the Plane of Earth and turned into a vast network of self-sustaining machines. Myr themselves are the most common denizens of the plane, servitors to an unknown master and performing upkeep on their more complicated cohabitants.

Myr have been imported from the Plane of Steel in rare quantities, and serve as a rare treasure on the Material Plane, loyal servants infused with magical energy. Some, however, fear inviting such mysterious creatures into their homes, especially paranoid wizards and watchful politicians, as it's a known fact that myr are vulnerable to scrying- and it's a distinct possibility that their master is still watching.

Myr are unique among constructs in being easily repairable once slain. Upon reaching 0 health, a construct with the Myr subtype is not destroyed; rather, it turns inactive, and will reactivate upon being returned to positive hit points. However, a myr that reaches -20hp is destroyed as usual. Additionally, the knowledge of how to create myr has been lost or well-hidden, and they lack rules for construction. Fortunately for myr, they are capable of reproducing themselves, although attempts to study how they do so have not succeeded in creating animate constructs.

There are thousands of different kinds of myr, most being only slight modifications on a basic design; what is presented are some common archetypes and a few notable variations.

Mana Myr

(Myr Moonvessel by Danny Orizio)

Among the most common servitor myr, mana myr work on the machinery that makes up the bulk of the Plane of Metal, and these servitors are attuned to one of the eight schools of magic. Of the myr of the plane, it is the mana myr who are most desired, and those who find themselves in possession of multiple, or let them reproduce, sell them for exorbitant prices.

Each school of magic produces a myr of a different color. Even though they are all made of the same substance, the magic forged into their bodies makes them appear as one of a variety of colors; the mana myr of each school of magic is named after a metal or mineral it resembles.

This small humanoid construct has a strange head shaped like a heavy beak. It resonates with magical energy.

Misc- CR1 LN Small Construct (Myr) HD2 Init:+2 Senses: Perception:+3 Stats- Str:8(-1) Dex:15(+2) Con:- Int:4(-3) Wis:14(+2) Cha:14(+2) BAB:+2 Space:2.5ft Reach:0ft Defense- HP:21(2d10+10) AC:13(+1 Size, +2 Dexterity) Fort:- Ref:+4 Will:+2 CMD:13 Special Defenses: Construct traits Offense- Slam +2(1d3-1) CMB:+0 Speed:25ft Special Attacks: Feats- Lightning Reflexes Skills- Perception +3, Spellcraft +0 Spell-like Abilities- Share Memory /at-will Make Whole 1/day Special Qualities- Mana Servant, Scrying Focus Ecology- Environment- Any Languages- Common (Can’t speak) Organization- Solitary Treasure- None Special Abilities- Mana Servant- A mana myr is designed as a vessel for magic. When created, it is infused with magic from one of the eight schools of magic. When used as a focus to cast a spell of that school, the spell is cast at a +1 caster level and with a +1 DC. A mana myr registers as strong magic of its school when viewed through Detect Magic or similar spells. Scrying Focus- Myr are perfect vessels for scrying on. They get a -5 penalty to saves against spells with the Scrying descriptor, and magical sensors made to scry on a myr and its surroundings get a +5 bonus against rolls to perceive it. Additionally, myr- and any object or creature they are in contact with- are not protected by spells such as Nondetection and Screen.

#soylent original #monsters and races #homebrew #pathfinder #mtg #mtgblr #myr #mirrodin

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lostloveletters · 1 month

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Big Girls Don't Cry (Bucky Egan x OC)

Summary: After a night out spirals out of control, Holly thinks she's doomed to be a haunted house. Bucky’s brave enough to let the light in.

Note: An angsty first kiss for Holly and Bucky…I’m so overwhelmed by the response to the MotA fics I’ve posted so far, thank you so much🖤 There's going to be a parallel Woody/Brady-centric fic to this, which is why I included a decent ensemble here lol. Do not interact if you're under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 2.8k

Warnings: Descriptions of a panic attack and related self-inflicted injuries; mentions of death and grief (hurt/comfort). Inevitable historical inaccuracies. Ends on a somewhat suggestive note, but nothing explicit.

Holly was exhausted when Bucky asked her to go to the pub in town with him and some of the other pilots that evening. She initially hesitated, but between his near insisting and her notion that a break from the base would do her good, she accepted the invitation. When she found Woody later on to ask if she was going, Brady had already invited her, a light blush spreading across Woody’s face when she told Holly. The overall group of seven required pushing two tables together and stealing some empty chairs.

“Holly, your drink’s on me. I got $4.50 when you won the last typing contest,” Bucky said.

“You bet on it?” Buck asked.

“I knew she’d win.”

“Beat her own record,” Woody added.

Buck shook his head, smiling a bit. Holly liked Buck a lot, especially the way his face lit up when she asked him about Marge. Seemed to be physically lighter, too, like the weight of being one of the de facto leaders of the 100th was off of his shoulders for that moment in time. He’d get almost flustered if he realized he was rambling, apologizing for taking up so much of her time talking about his girl even though she was the one who asked him.

“Which is why I’m buying my sailor a dark ‘n’ stormy, and the rest of you are on your own.”

She laughed, “Thanks, Bucky.”

‘My sailor.’ He had taken to calling her after they listened to the Nationals-Yankees game together. But she apparently inherited her sailorship from Stan, her preference for rum and penchant for cursing around Bucky (and few others), made him designate her so.

Nevermind she had only been on a boat a handful of times, one of which was the ship that brought her over to England from New York, and no, she didn’t know any sea shanties. He took it upon himself to learn one from a local laborer who worked on schooners at the turn of the century. Of course, Bucky had been drunk when he tried to teach her the song, remembering half of the lyrics and ad-libbing the rest. She left the singing to him.

She still had one secret–an anchor tattoo on her upper arm. An impulsive decision she and Stan made together when she accompanied him to San Francisco the week he shipped out to the Pacific. The same week she met Woody, and the rest of her life started before she could blink.

Being in the pub with everyone was the most normal she’d felt in a while. She hoped could finally shake whatever stormy clouds had made their home in her mind over the past year.

“Hey Holly, you’re from DC, right?” Curt asked abruptly. “You ever meet the President? See him around the neighborhood or something?”

She laughed. “No, unfortunately I’ve never run into President Roosevelt at the drug store.”

“How would he even do that? He’d get mobbed,” Crank said.

Woody nodded. “He’s probably got a mean security detail, too.”

“Well he can’t spend all day in the White House!”

“Why not? Heard they got a bowling alley in there,” Buck said.

“Woody, I’ll get you a beer?” Brady asked, his voice low among the clamor of what President Roosevelt did for fun in the nation's capital.

“Thanks, John.”

Holly sneaked a glance at her best friend when Brady stood up and headed over to the bar. She wasn’t sure if Woody had told him that Holly knew about them. There were few, if any secrets between Holly and Woody, and guys were certainly no exception.

“Look, if I were the president, I’d wanna know my neighbors,” Curt said.

“If you were president,” Buck repeated, toothpick between his teeth as he smiled. “Listen to him.”

“Hey, anybody can run,” Curt said. “That’s what it says in the Bill of Rights or something.”

“That doesn’t mean you should,” Crank said.

“You got my vote, Curt,” Bucky announced, setting his and Holly’s drinks on the table.

“Thanks, Bucky. You’ll be my VP.”

Bucky grinned, sitting next to Holly. His arm settled on the back of her seat, his fingers brushing the ends of her curly hair.

The next few minutes was a game of musical chairs as everyone else came and went with their drinks of choice, Brady taking the seat next to Woody as soon as it was open.

Holly found herself leaning against Bucky as she drank, nursing her dark ‘n’ stormy with the intent of making it last until it was time to leave. He was the only person she felt comfortable enough to be in such close contact with besides Woody. He felt like sitting next to the radiator in her childhood bedroom, and she nearly nodded off after some time, Buck and Bucky in the middle of some conversation she couldn’t follow.

Curt returned to the table with what must have been his third or fourth beer of the night.

“Hey Bucky, some of these blokes are lookin’ to play darts,” he said, motioning behind him.

Bucky nodded. “Hope they’re ready to cover my tab.” He threw back his whiskey and gave Holly’s shoulder a gentle squeeze as he got up. “C’mon, doll.”

Holly didn’t remember much of what happened between then and when she heard it. An entire chunk of time morphed into a hazy blur in her mind. Vaguely remembered cheering for Bucky and Curt. Then Curt called an RAF pilot an asshole, and a fight nearly broke out before fizzling down by the grace of god. Or maybe Buck stepped in. Bucky had something to her before his turn, an aside she laughed at, but couldn’t recall.

Different conversations around her jumbled with one another, stringing together in a cruel way only her own mind could conjure up for her. She heard him clear as day.

“Stan?” she whispered, her voice crazed with illogical hope.

Her heart raced. She looked frantically around the room for a sign—any sign of him.

But Stan was dead. There’d been a funeral with a body. His mother wept over the open casket. Her own mother had written as much. Sent her the funeral program which remained hidden among her belongings.

She kept the accompanying memorial card on her person at all times. A nice photo of Stan in uniform. His full name. Dates of birth and death. A bible verse and a little mention of his service in the Navy.

Stan was dead. Had been for over a year.

Her chest tightened, pulling like a rubber band about to snap. As the room closed in on her, she barrelled through the pub patrons, paying no mind to who was in her path, only that they were between her and a door.

The cool night air shocked her skin, but it wasn’t enough to snuff out the burning in her lungs. Panic overtook her brain. With a strangled shout, she curled her fist, unleashing months of unspoken grief directly onto the brick wall in front of her. Pain struck her hand like a bolt of lightning, but she could breathe again.

Her knuckles split open, bruises blossoming across her fingers in the darkness. “Fuck!” she shouted, both in pain and disbelief at herself. “Motherfuck–”

The alley door slammed open, chaos from the bar ringing in her ears as she looked wide-eyed at the person who interrupted her. A tense mortification swept over her body.

She’d been doing so well. Kept the self-destructive thoughts at bay. Used to chew on her bottom lip until it bled, the pain of broken skin and taste of copper strangely grounding when her mind wandered too far. Hadn’t done in it months. But she never exploded. Not quite like this.

Bucky stumbled forward, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Holly?” he asked, his gaze drifting down to her hand. “Jesus, what happened?”

Of course he would be the one to witness her breakdown. She wished it were Woody, but she sure as hell didn’t want to ruin her best friend’s night out with her boyfriend either.

Woody was used to it. Holly was always too embarrassed to go to a nurse, so Woody would sit her down and carefully apply petroleum jelly to Holly’s raw lips, eyebrows knit together in concerned concentration as her fingers brushed across the cracked, scabbed over skin. Didn’t care if she had been working for over twelve hours straight or was in the middle of something else.

But Bucky wasn’t Woody, and she never wanted him to see her like this.

Holly stared at him, trembling as he took a tentative step toward her. Tears welled up in her eyes. She frantically rubbed at them with her sleeve. She let out a shaky breath.

“Holly,” he repeated. “Are you alright?”

“I felt like I was going to explode in there so I came out here and…” She flexed her injured hand and winced. “I heard someone talking. He sounded just like Stan.” She swallowed a lump in her throat, feeling more pathetic as she explained herself. “I guess my wires got crossed.”

“Hey, it happens,” he tried assuring her. “You think you’re the only one?”

Holly shook her head. “Even when I got the letter last year, I still showed up and did what I had to do. Didn’t miss a day.” She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know why tonight was so different.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it.” He took her bruised hand, whispering an apology when she hissed in pain. Examined it as best as he could in the cover of night. “At least not any more than you already have.”

“I punched a brick wall. I’m not gonna be able to type tomorrow,” she said, quickly adding, “I can’t go to a nurse. They’ll ask what happened, and I’d rather crawl in a hole somewhere.”

He shook his head. “C’mon, I’ll patch up that hand for you. It’s probably not even that bad.”

“Don’t cut your night short because of me.”

Briefly, almost enough to convince her it was just a trick of the moonlight, he looked uncharacteristically sheepish. “It’s the least I can do for making you come out tonight.”

“Bucky, you didn’t make me do anything. I don’t want to be some wilting flower who’s too afraid to keep living. Stan wouldn’t have wanted that for me. I just wish my brain would get the message.”

“Well, I’m sure Stan wouldn’t have wanted you to walk all the way back by yourself if you didn’t have to,” he said.

She smiled weakly. “Yeah, he’d chew me out for that.”

So would Bucky, if this had happened and he hadn’t found her. If she walked back to Thorpe Abbotts alone in the dead of night with nothing but the stars to keep her company. She never cared for them, especially not after Stan. They gave the night glistening teeth that tore her apart far too often for her to be comfortable beneath them.

“Hey, what about darts?” she asked, a good distance away from the pub.

“I pulled Crank in. He can hold his own. Besides, if there’s an angry bartender hunting me down on the base tomorrow, you could probably hold him off for me,” he joked, lightly elbowing her side. “You got one hell of a hook.”

“Stan taught me.”

“He taught you how to fight?”

“Sort of, but he was probably thinking more along the lines of self-defense instead of getting into fights with brick walls.”

“That wall had it coming. If you didn’t punch it, I probably would’ve.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Will you tell that to Chick so he doesn’t kill me tomorrow?”

“He’s not gonna kill you. Might be pissed that his best typist is gonna be out of commission for a few days, though.”

“I can still proofread. Or sort mail. Or—“

“Let me worry about that, alright?”

Holly hesitated. “Alright.”

—————

Bucky had the keys to the Air Exec office, empty for the night, and sat Holly down at her desk. He disappeared for a few minutes, but returned with an armful of peroxide bottles, absorbent cotton, and a roll of gauze.

“Geez Bucky, don’t waste all of that on me.”

“If I brought you to a nurse, they’d use it on you, anyway.”

He pulled up a chair, his knees touching hers as he took a closer look at her hand beneath a desk lamp. His eyebrows furrowed as he considered the dried blood, cuts that had already begun to scab over, and a particularly gnarly knuckle that didn’t sit quite right.

“I don’t think it’s broken, but one of your knuckles got dislocated. I’m gonna clean your hand and then pop it back into place.”

“Fuckin’ A,” she said. “I learned that from Stan, too.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“No. Neither did he.”

He snickered, grabbing the peroxide and some cotton. “What was Stan like, anyway? Sounds like an interesting guy from what you told me.”

“Stan was…” She paused. Nobody asked her about Stan. All anyone knew was what little she offered. What was he like? “He cursed like a—well, he was a sailor. Of course he was a Nationals fan. Loved detective novels. We’d have ones we’d read together and see who could figure out the big plot twist first. His front tooth was chipped, but god, he had the best smile. I’m talking serious wattage—“

“Wattage?” Bucky repeated incredulously.

“Okay, I made that up—think electric! He could light up a whole room with just his smile,” she emphasized with a smile of her own. “You know what I mean?”

He glanced up from her hand to her face for a moment. “Yeah, I do.”

“What else…we had this goofy thing going where we’d play tic-tac-toe in our letters to each other. I started doing that because I’m not great at writing letters. I never know what to say, but I wanted him to still look forward to getting them from me.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I just started secretarial school when he got a job at this fish market up the street from my house. I remember thinking he was so handsome, he almost looked out of place,” Holly said, her voice soft for a moment. “Well, I’d spend so much time there that my mom would complain about how awful I smelled by the time I got home. I asked him out first.”

Bucky laughed. “You’re kidding.”

A wide grin spread across her face. “I wanted to make him mine before he could even think about another girl, so I went in one day and said, ‘When are you gonna take me to see a movie?’ Most guys wouldn’t have liked that, but Stan got a kick out of it. He’d tell the story to anyone who’d listen.” She paused. “I think what really scares me is that at some point, I’ll remember him for longer than I knew him, and I’m always gonna be…like this.”

“I’m gonna set your knuckle back in place now,” Bucky said, his voice low, almost contemplative.

Holly tensed, staring at the ceiling while Bucky pushed against her bruised knuckles. Bone clicked back into place. She groaned. Clenched her good hand into a fist, blinking away tears.

“Barely flinched,” he said. “You’re tougher than you give yourself credit for, doll.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Bucky.”

They were quiet as he finished bandaging her hand. The room was almost chatty though, buzzing overhead lights, ticking clock on the wall, a leaky pipe somewhere. Among them, a thought broke free from the confines of Bucky’s mind.

“Stan was lucky to have a girl like you waiting for him.”

Glassy brown eyes, wavering with the weight of the world, stared back at him in silence.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Holly. I shouldn’t have—”

She kissed him, her bandaged hand caressing his cheek. Weeks of silently longing, lusting, and wondering, answered in full as she moved her lips against his. Nearly forgot to kiss her back until he felt her pulling away.

He placed his hand over her bandaged one, still tenderly cupping his face. The gauze was rough against his skin, a contrast to the pads of her fingers. He curled his fingers around hers, her blunt nails lightly scraping against his cheek.

She gasped against his lips. “John.”

A shiver rolled down his spine as he brushed his thumb over the bandage he’d just finished wrapping, her knuckle that he set back in place for her. All for her. And she kissed him first.

‘I wanted to make him mine.’

Mine.

Her dulcet tone echoed in his head until he couldn’t think of anything but kissing her again, offering himself to her as the sole object of her affection.

Mineminemineminemine. “Holly, baby—” He was trying so hard to be coherent, nearly choking on his words until finally uttering, “I’m all yours.”

#bucky egan x oc #john egan x oc #bucky egan x ofc #john egan x ofc #masters of the air #bucky egan #john egan #masters of the air x oc #mota x oc #mota oc #masters of the air oc #ch: holly

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dairy-farmer · 1 month

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I call this the Highlander Au! >:Dc There can Be Only One! (Unless he REALLY enjoys the process and the world stops going to shit for like... FIVE god damned minutes!) (The second is sadly unlikely)

Tim? Fully Cis gendered male. Not terribly ATTACHED to this, physically, but certainly identifies as Male and has a male body.

Maybe it's been all the near misses. The "all my friends fuckin DIED on my and I mentally spiraled like you wouldn't believe". Could be him finally reclaiming his life. Or yet another horrible mental spiral. Who knows!

But he's decided.

He wants to be a Dad. *sound of various Bats choking and/or dropping things*

Is even seeing anybody? Nope. How the FUCK is he gonna get a baby?! Oh, normal, Bat Paranoid fashion. Cloning tube. Same way Damian happened. He just needs to figure out the maternal DNA and he's golden. Figure out where to hide his tech to stop Villainous Baby Snatching Plots.

Because that's a very real concern.

No you can't talk him out of this. Timmy want himself a baby. Is already designing a nursery and studying child development books. Parenting manuals, getting those little animal onsies, lazer death grids to ward of Ra's ninjas. The works.

Bruce is off to the side, quietly having an aneurysm and choking to death on his own spit. Baby boy? Fatherhood? OFFSPRING!? Alone and not going to LET HIM HELP!? But why would he help!? Bad idea! But. But he needs to BE THERE to TAKE CARE of TIM and the future BABY! Aaaaaaaaa-!!!!!

It's a... "Fun" time. Dick is nearing a nervous breakdown. Bruce not far behind. Damians having Feelings(tm).

Then! At a Wayne Charity Event(tm)? Small glowing child. Looks alien. Is getting upset. People backing away IN A HURRY because they just watched this child WARP REALITY to turn the nearest table into candy.

Tim is there as the face of the family. A hero. Already feeling generally Paternal. Upset baby is Bad. So he goes in, dispite clear protests. Gets low and talks soothing.

But the alien Wants Her MOMMY!

And? Oh. Well there goes the protective amulets JLA Dark made for him. Now he's in an alien dress and? Very much no longer Cis. Guess he would have and DID inherent from his dad's side of the family, no boobs. Tiny. At least he got his mom's killer legs.

And the kiddo isn't scared any more. Since he "looks like mommy".

Except not even remotely, because she warps into being an HOUR later, looking for her daughter and is made of pure light. Thanks him. Doesn't FIX anything. And just leaves. Gee, thanks lady.

There were REPORTERS there. Tim Drake has tits now. Front page news. Great. Ra's is GOING to know and get WEIRD about it.

Tim shrugs. Off to Leslie we go, though. Check up time!

Yep. Full lady bits action. And, hey! Shiny new spleen! So that's nice.

It DOES change his plan though. He didn't, you know, collect any "samples" yet. But? Does... does he NEED too? He COULD concoct a story of "rich person hires mystic to get penis back" after going and getting magiced back.... OR?

He could have someone put a baby in him! *simultaneous Bat Choking Noises*

MUCH easier to defend. THEN he could be changed back, after the baby is weaned. The problem is who to trust? Ra's is ABSOLUTELY going to do everything in his power to get his seed inside Tim new puss. So a seed bank is out. And-

*hands slam on the table*

Obviously! We can't trust anyone outside this house! Villian plots and Ra's specifically! Bat paranoia! W-we will just have to make this sacrifice for you!

.....Weirdly intense, but okay.

Objection! Says Tim's newly no longer Dead team mates. Tim tried to CLONE Kon! OBVIOUSLY it should be Kon! And Bart! Bro Threesome! Let nature decide! (Then kid number 2 is the other Bro, is only FAIR)

ALSO a good point. He did have that promise, if one of them ever got turned into a girl. And a Kon baby WOULD be nice...

Shit! Grayson pulls "last of my legacy and I have so much to make up for" cards!

Is betrayed by his OWN FATHER (Bruce! How COULD YOU!?) Who plays "you saved me from the time steam and nearly died for me, let me help(emotional)" to devastating effect!

Cheating! Howls the Speedster! You're CHEATING!!!

And Tim stands there... kinda confused but finding he's actually Really In To This as people argue over how much THEY want to be the one to put a baby in him? He's never felt this badly WANTED. Desired.

He may not want to go through the whole "actually carrying a baby for 9 months then pushing one out" thing more then once.... but the fighting over him thing? This might be awaking something.

And, well, Kon already made a good point. Why try to control it? Let nature decide~

Everyone can help.

The argument stops dead. For all of the seconds before "who goes first?" Occurs to everyone.

Sadly for THEM, Bruce is a bastard willing to play dirty to get what he wants. And his house his rules. He goes first. After all, he no doubt smirks, none of THEM have the... experience, to handle a virgin properly.

He refuses to allow Tim hurt on his watch.

Got it? Good talk. Tim, with him.

Which is what leads to Tim clawing at the bed and begging like his life depends on it, soaked in sweat, hours later. As Bruce STILL gently, teasingly, RUTHLESSLY eats him out. Puddles worth of lube ruining the sheets and easing his way, as he works calloused fingers DEEP to find spots Tim didn't know he had yet. As they rub and tease and fuck against those spots so relentlessly it feels like Tim's coming apart.

He didn't even know he could MAKE half these noises.

His hole is so wet and sloppy, it's like it's given up. Like his body can do nothing but quiver and twitch under Bruce's hands. Given how big he is? Probably the point. Because he crawls up to loom over Tim like a giant. Presses kisses to his whimpering, sweaty face. And rocks into his exhausted body, filling every inch of him.

It doesn't even hurt. Something that big probably SHOULD for his first time, but Bruce isn't a legendary playboy for nothing. And it just fills and Fills and FILLS. Rubs against everything in a way that makes his toes curl. Makes him want to gasp and cling, even though he's so exhausted.

Bruce just shooshes him. Pulls him close. He won't have to do a thing. He can just cling to Bruce and feel good. Bruce is here. He's got you.

And it's the best thing Tim's ever felt. Forget masturbation, sex is AMAZING. Bruce rocking then thrusting then pounding into his body. Holding tight like something precious. Hammering his good spots still he sees stars. Til he's nearly sobbing, hiccuping, from how good it feels to have his insides all messed up.

Bruce fills him up. All gooey and warm. Picks him up and carries him to a clean bed to get wiped down and tucked in. Cleans up then joins him. Fills him back up and tucks him close. He feels boneless and precious. Sleeps like the dead.

Discovers sex with a puss is AWESOME.

Next morning, he's barely out of Bruce's room before Dick is scooping him up and dragging him into his room. Almost franticly bending him in half as he presses him to the bed, kissing the air out of him. Holding his face as he whispers filthy praise into his lips. Hips relentless as they slam home, pounding at just the right angle.

Like he's trying to make for YEARS of mistakes by pouring it all into pleasure NOW. Clinging tight and trying to fry Tim's brain with how good he can make him feel. Dick buries his faces against Tim's neck and rutts like he's making up for lost time. Fucking Tim through orgasms, spilling again and again, like he's determined to drain his balls dry and wring every last bit of pleasure he CAN out of Tim's exhausted body.

Tim has to threaten to hit him with an alarm clock to let him up. Tim wants LUNCH damn it. They missed breakfast. By a LOT.

But then work calls. Damn it. So he has to get dressed. Double damn it. And he does it, but refuses to be pleased about it. Resolves things. Even gets ahead on work. Only for DAMIAN to walk stiffly into his office. Sus.

The gremlin hands him a frankly VERY well put together report on why he, Damian AL Ghul... should be allowed to fuck a baby into Tim. He has brought along a slide show and genealogical report.

.......Explain.

Damian does. He REALIZED some things about himself. When Tim was discussing becoming a Father. Using the same method as he, himself, was created. Went through a whole "go to the Kent farm and have a life change adventure" character growth arc, as you do. And? Now realizing that he potentially COULD be DIRECTLY involved in the Hypothetical Child's life instead of as an uncle?

He wants in. They could be glorious, combined. AND he firmly believes Tim will be a magnificent Mother. Let him Father your child.

It's a bad idea. Tim knows this. He literally JUST slept with Bruce yesterday and nothing good comes from sleeping with AL Ghul's. They Obsess. But? Fuck it. Maybe THIS is the thing that finally stops the Tim-Gremlin cold war and bring peace to house Wayne once and for all. He unbuckles his belt. Walks over to his resting room.

And Tim KNOWS, even as he's being urgently fucked into the fold out bed, that this is an AWFUL idea. No way in HELL, from the desperate and sloppy thrusts, clinging, panting and whines, is this NOT Damian's first time. He's utterly undone.

Pounding load after load into Tim because it feels too good to stop. All enthusiasm and no skill. Half the pleasure Tim's even GETTING is his own hand, relentlessly teasing his own clit. But? Oh. The feeling of being wanted so BADLY. Of cum, gushing and gushing into him. Knowing it's HIS hole that's so good, it's driving Damian incoherent.

He feels... sexy. It DEFINITELY does something for him. He may not be able to go back. Could see himself enjoying being a milf.

But of course. Business hours end. And he PROMISED! Is swept up by Bart for their threesome. Which, after several rounds and untold loads of near-no-refractary-period speedster cum dumped inside him? Is kinda spotty, in his memory.

All he knows for certain is he wakes up to his sheepish best friends, "Sorry we fucked you unconscious repeatedly" bribes, no voice, and a warm bath. He's also plugged up and FULL full of that premium speedster/half-kryptonian blend cum, because apparently his friend intend to WIN and nothing says victory like overwhelming odds. He'd call them fuckers, but they ARE and hold no remorse. He can't move.

Carry him you bastards.

When he asks where Cassie is, he learns she's apparently trying to harrass the magic users into a making her a temporary "turn me into a dude" amulet. Both as a gift AND so she can join the race for Father Of Tim's Baby. Huh. Interesting new options.

Obviously, throughout ALL of this, ninjas. Because Ra's has never wanted to smash so hard in his LIFE.

Instead, Tim is out here, on Jason's shitty couch. Getting lifted up and slammed down onto his cock. Called baby girl. Princess. Jason's never been harder. Already planning their kids graduation dinner and baby number three.

Tim feeling precious and taken care of and DESIRED. Like the young adult with a first shitty apartment he never got to be. Something so close to normal. Put a baby in him. Fuck him like you love him, like they do this every Saturday night, then eat pizza and watch trash TV. Fill him up.

And if course~ it's a VICIOUS game of Fuck The Tim keep away, up until one day he starts to show. Then Everyone is loving and coddling and in a "No I Am The Father" cold war. The birth is a nightmare, because Tim is slender and more scar tissue then not. But?

Adorable quarter-Kryptonian! With the biggest blue eyes and Tim's porcelain doll face.

Tim is NOT doing that again. Ffffffuck giving birth. And being pregnant! Granted, the EARLY part? He loved. He glowed. Getting pregnant was AWESOME. But later stages? God awful. Clone tube babies from here on out.

Absolute Devastation in the Tom Fucking Community. Babe no! You can't MEAN IT!

Woah, hey! He never said he'd STOP. "Getting Pregnant" is very, VERY enjoyable. He's just refusing to carry SHIT. Birth control for HIM. Scooping that slurry of "leave it up to Nature" out and storing it. Now... Kon stop being smug and hold your son.

-🐼🐼🐼

😭😭😭 tim getting everyone to come to dinner and they all think it was alfred and are like 'this was a great idea alfred! we should all get together like this more often' only for tim to cough and say well actually i called you all here, i figured you all deserved a heads up since i'm going to be undergoing some serious life changes. everyone's confused and then tim says he's going to have a baby.

immediate panic and some disappointment from bruce because he thinks this is a teen pregnancy and he expected better from tim only for tim to have to yell to interrupt everyone and say there is no 'girl', not yet anyway. he's just announcing that he's GOING to have a baby. they're not yet conceived and now the family is dealing with whiplash of how of course TIM would do something like this now they're sitting their listening to him talk about the ideal gene pool given tim's family has a history of mental issues and he's going into some very detailed things like nurseries and everyone just wants him to slow down because tim is still a kid!!! dick is older than him and even HE doesn't feel ready. so everyone is trying to talk tim out of it while tim insists he's ready, he's been going to a therapist for 11 months trying to deal with his issues so he COULD be ready to be a parent.

which of course baffles them even more because???? dick has been trying to get them all into therapist for years and tim just???? went??? on his own????

bruce is of course the least welcoming of tim's ideas of teen parenthood. because what about highschool, college? at least ONE of his kids has to go to college!

tim however says no, says his GED is more than enough.

bruce tries finding other angles, asking what if he just sets tim up with babysitting gigs? make him see kids aren't that great and tim just huffs and said he already did a bunch of babysitting and volunteering at the children's centers in gotham as part of his adoption application!

which ???? just stressed bruce out even more?! because tim had tried to adopt a baby first? but apparently got rejected because of his age, lack of partner, and lack of job which tim loudly says is unfair because bruce was in his 20s when he took in dick and HE hadn't had a partner or a job!

so the family is protesting, despertly trying to get tim to change his mind,,, then tim gets a womb and suddenly the protests die down VERY quick.

#answered asks #asks #anonymous

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pokelolmc · 2 days

Text

One of my new favourite Hazbin Hotel fic AUs is this weird crossover niche of "Alastor is/was a character from another fandom, before he snapped and became who he is today" AUs, eg. "Harry Potter becomes Alastor", and one random "Tim Drake becomes Alastor" fic I found on AO3. Because I find it interesting to try and figure out how to meld the other character's backstory, powers or personality with his.

And that inevitably led my traitorous brain to the idea of "Danny Fenton becomes Alastor" (because now DP and DC are forever associated in my lizard brain, curse you Phandom!).

Which is just...the weirdest thing ever, because they're just so different—like, how the fuck do you set up Danny to become Alastor, of all people?! It feels like the most unfitting character to do this with...

And that's exactly what my brain has decided to see it as a challenge.

Added caveat: this is an AU!Danny specifically from a generic angsty dissection fic scenario, where he's been traumatised by his parents and fucked over by the world (and he has no healthy way to cope)—then he's sent back in time, lost and completely alone

-Danny falls through a natural portal to 1900's Louisiana with no way back (something something, Clockwork's-out-of-the-picture, something something)

-Alastor being a mama's boy? Danny gets taken in by a loving mother figure after getting lost in time—a kind woman familiar with the supernatural who accepts his ghost half right off the bat. He sees her as his family. After a year or so, though, she dies. He spirals again. He dyes his hair brown and starts wearing glasses when he runs away to New Orleans to change himself and cover his tracks.

-Alastor feels like an interesting name for Danny to choose because it means "the avenger", and can also mean "defender of the people" (a meaning more apparent in the Scottish version "Alasdair/Alastair"), but could also have a negative connotation of "persecutor"; the character symbolism writes itself

-the normally tech-savvy Danny who finds old-timey stuff boring would be forced to find something to entertain himself in the 1900's. So he gravitates towards radio, with it being the closest thing he's got to modern tech. Give him several years or so to grow attached to it and enjoy the idea of working in it. He goes from fantasising of radio comms at NASA to a public radio host, playing with all the fancy knobs and dials.

-his ghost half is the reason Alastor's powers/magic in Hell is green

(also I heard someone say the typical human!Alastor design has the "Timmy Turner hairstyle", which I can't unsee now. And it's Danny's hairstyle too. Because we know how well Butch Hartman and originality mix. Male protagonist? There's only one hairstyle for that!)

-he becomes a serial killer because he's snapped over the years after all the shit that's happened to him; he's developed a bitter, cynical and self-aggrandised ego and thirst for justice and revenge, and he's all alone with no one to keep him out of the dark echo chamber leading to villainy

-a serial killer with ghost powers plays cat-and-mouse with cops, and never leaves a trace; before he starts killing, he's already made deals with and intimidated the ghosts that come to New Orleans through other natural portals (it's a portal hotspot) under a new ghostly persona. He has both sides of the city fearing or respecting his power. Every ghost who goes to New Orleans knows whose territory it is. They just never link the ghost and human together. He becomes like an even worse Plasmius. It sets him up for Overlord stuff in Hell from the getgo

-the cannibalism was a...happy accident. On a whim, he decided one guy's crime was too insufferable to die without torment, so he took the guy back and...tortured him the way his ol' folks knew best. He starts cutting people open as if trying to relive what his parents did to him, but from the other end—as the person with all the power. Taste-testing what he cut up came incidentally, but he decided he didn't mind it and made it a routine.

I can imagine a villain!Danny with more narcissistic tendencies, but my main trouble is where the overblown confidence and charming/manipulative skills come from. After all, Danny's pretty socially awkward. How exactly does he grow into that?

#danny phantom #danny fenton #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #crossover au #cw: murder and cannibalism #but I mean it's Alastor what did you expect?

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thatblondeperson · 1 year

Note

Do you have your own ranking of Tim and Stephanie's suits?

Sure, I'll give 'em scores out of 10.

Starting with Tim:

The Classic: 10/10. Who doesn't love the original? It was a brand new take on Robin and it stood out and still does to this day given that it's the one most seen on merchandise. This suit became the default in a way, and for good reason. It's simple, functional, and timeless. Great suit.

The "my best friend is dead" Robin suit: 7/10. I don't hate it, it's just not as good as the original. The more simplistic and darker color scheme is indicative of not just Tim's meaning for the colors, but the decline in a lot of his optimism. This was the start of his downward spiral and he never really came back from this era. It's a good suit, I wouldn't call it great. She's basic (affectionate).

Red Robin (the 2009 run): 9/10. I would put this at a perfect 10 if he didn't have the stupid cowl. I hate that thing, and the only saving grace for it is the fact that it could have been there to cover his burn scars. Swap that for the Unternet mask and it would be my fav.

See?

(^Original art by Marcus To, recolored and posted on Reddit)

Unternet Red Robin: 10/10. Ok this one is so cute because it shows just how much Tim still looks up to Dick. This is basically a rebranded Nightwing suit, complete with finger stripes, and it's adorable. This is what Tim envisioned himself as in the Unternet and is that not just precious? And I love this dorky mask. It's got a giant bird beak and it's so stupid that it's endearing as hell.

Swan Queen Red Robin: 2/10. Not sorry, I hate this suit. I don't know what it's trying to be but it's a mess. There's too much going on and it needs to be simplified. I hate the tiny logo on his chest.

This stupid shit: 0/10. What the fuck is this?

The Rebirth Robin suit: 10/10. This suit is spectacular. Plays on the original but modernizes it in a way that still feels like Tim. I love this suit, it is exactly the kind of look I would want for Tim in this day and age as Robin.

Drake: 0/10. Burn it. I don't think anything needs to be said. We all agree, yes? Good.

Not going to speak on the video game suits but just know that I hate all of those too.

Moving on to Steph:

The Classic: 10/10. It's campy, it's colorful, I love it. She made this herself and I think that makes it even better. It's such a classic look for the time and I think it's wonderful. Look at that giant shoulder strap. What is that for? No one knows. It went through a few variations over the years. The shoulder strap got smaller but so dud the outward facing underwear and they gave her basically a thong. Not cool, DC.

Stephanie's homemade Robin suit: 2/10. This is just pure over sexualization and I hate it. Why does it have to be a loose crop top? Why is it so tight?

Stephie the Hedgehog: 9/10. This one is also way too boob heavy but I like the overall look better. The skirt is still debatable as far as movability goes, but the hair is so great that I'm just going to ignore the flaws, silently dock it a point and move on.

Spoiler 2.0: 8/10. It's a good suit. This is the one I based my cosplay off of. It's simplistic but it still has the essence of the original with those ridiculous boots and gloves. I still love this, I just like the original better.

Katavi: ?/10. I don't know how to comment on this design. I love that Stephanie just wanted to help and took up a new persona in a new place to do so. I think the design is lovely but I can't speak on whether it's as appropriate worn by a white character. I think character wise, it makers sense for Stephanie, but I don't know what to say about it past that.

Batgirl (the 2009 run): 10/10. I'm skipping past the borrowed suit since this suit is specifically Steph's, and it's perfection. It's classic but with the touch of purple to make it hers. It's simple, but it's great. I'd love to have this suit someday.

Nightwing: 10/10. This is a great suit that we were robbed of. I would love this look more with Stephanie's short bob that she had for a while, but this look is so great.

The New52 suit: 10/10. This may come as a shock considering my distaste for the Ew52, but I actually really love this Spoiler suit. It's a great mix of some of the elements of her classic Spoiler suit, heavily mixed with her Batgirl 2009 look, and modernized in a way that feels very Steph. It's scrappy looking, idk. I just like it. I really love the half mask on it too.

Future's End: 6/10. I feel like it's missing a lot. It's drab.

Future State: 0/10. This is Rose Wilson.

The Batgirls suit: 7/10. This is just the Rebirth look with a purple bat slapped on. Lazy. I still like the look, but I wish they did something new.

There we go! Best I can do on this anon, I hope you enjoyed!

#timsteph #tim drake #stephanie brown #robin iii #spoiler #robin iv #red robin #batgirl #personal #ask tbp

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eedaeth · 8 months

Text

🎭🎪✨

Chippin' away at her design slowly. I love drawing her so much already HOLY FUCK Harls is always fun for me to draw tho so that's expected teehee [im obsessed with her actually]

Once I design her outfits I can FINALLY get on with designing her some wigs for said outfits. I want her to have some options + she's the type to actually like dressing up so having funky wigs just makes sense for my version.

These looks are just roughs and will probably change a lot but im just fucking around rn and yall deserve to see

#the girls who girl girl the girls who girlnt gornt #she deserves all my love and attention and she will get it #harley quinn #harleen quinzel #batman #dc villains #dc comics #eedaeths scribbles #dc spiral designs #dc rogues #batman rogues

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hingusdinguss · 6 months

Text

Slowly spiraling down the DC rabbit hole, making my own designs & head canons for fanart :)

#dc comics #dc joker #bruce wayne #batman #dc fanart #joker fanart #batman fanart

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starleska · 10 months

Note

Ok, spill the beans about this Mad Mod blorbo of yours. Gimme the details

aaaaaaaa!!!!!! oh my gosh yes yes yes thank you for the opportunity i would love to gush about him - and hopefully get some other people interested 🙈🙈🙈 prepare for an infodump!!!

this is Mad Mod, real name Neil Richards: a brilliant, stylish villain, and an iconic enemy of the Teen Titans!! now, Mad Mod's been around for a while, first appearing in Teen Titans #7 as a fashion designer-turned-smuggler working on Carnaby Street, and later with a more hipster design in the New 52 DC comics. however, the version you'll see me yelling about most (and i think that most are familiar with) is the Mad Mod from the 2003 animated Teen Titans show (see above) 💖

Mad Mod is very much emblematic of his name: he's a crazy British bad guy whose aesthetic, interests and personality are influenced by 60's Mod culture. he speaks with a pronounced Cockney accent (voiced by Malcolm McDowell, who you may know as Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange), dresses in trim, fashionable, Mod-style suits and other outfits (e.g., military parkas), and is an extreme Anglophile: believing British culture and values (ostensibly Mod culture, but also Britain and/or England as a monolith) are superior to others. his original beef with the Teen Titans is their lack of manners: Mad Mod believes them to be poorly behaved, and in need of 'teaching' and 'correcting' (please make no assumptions about me or my taste from this 🙈).

i think Mad Mod is fascinating for a lot of reasons, with the first being his incredible technological capabilities. you see, Mad Mod is not technically the young man you see in the image above: he's actually well past middle-age, but is capable of constructing high-tech illusions using gadgets, robots and screens (shown to be controlled using his ruby-topped cane, which he is quite proficient with!). in Teen Titans, Mad Mod is first shown projecting this younger version of himself as a hologram in a constructed, confusing labyrinth which mimics a school. behind the scenes, Mad Mod - physically an old man - is using this younger version as an avatar to torment the Teen Titans. however, later on Mad Mod devises a technology which allows him to steal youth from other people. in the episode Revolution, Mad Mod steals Robin's youth, reverting his own physical form to a younger version - confirming that the Mad Mod we see in his debut episode is how he looked when he was younger: the skinny, suited redhead with the pretty smile 😉

a lot of people will remember Mad Mod for one thing: the hypnosis. a big gimmick of Mad Mod's is his use of custom-built hypnoscreens: large screens which play repetitive spirals intended to hypnotise and/or brainwash the observer. his goals expand beyond just trying to hypnotise the Teen Titans into being more well-behaved; he later attempts to brainwash them and the entirety of Jump City into believing the American Revolution never happened, and that he is actually their English king. with regards to his love of Britain and England, Mad Mod is...not particularly well-adjusted, and i'm saying that as a Brit 🙈💖

a lot of people are very taken by the unique design of Mad Mod's episodes - specifically his chase sequences, which contain fun references to popular British culture (like Monty Python and The Beatles). taken to be an avant-garde extension of the giant illusions he builds, Mad Mod's style borrows a good deal from 60's pop art, and uses stark, black-and-white imagery with noticeably different rendering than other characters and backgrounds. it's honestly really cool!!! you may recognise a similar art style used in Across the Spider-Verse with Spider-Punk, AKA Hobie Brown 🔥

everything about Mad Mod is explicitly British (particularly English), but his view of Britishness and correct behaviour is both out-dated and extraordinarily narrow. i theorise this is because he never quite reconciled with growing older and the Mod subculture going out of style...he's obsessed with regaining his youth, and despite being The Most British Thing Since Austin Powers, he continues to live in America and push a very odd, caricatured idea of Britishness onto other people that is unique to his worldview. as Cyborg sums up neatly, "Man, I bet even real British people don't like you!"

but, all of that lore aside - you came to know why Mad Mod is my latest blorbo!!! well...just look at him 🥴 he's capital e 'Evil' with a penchant for tying people up and absolutely no respect for other people's personal space 🥺💖 he also has that attractive combo of being abrasive and degrading, whilst also being soft and elegant. not to mention he's a total goofball;;; there's nothing i love more than a villain who's having a great time, and he is having a blast 🙈

you know this guy is Tumblr Sexyman material too: the suits, the cane-twirling, the crazy powers...who cares that he's actually a grandpa? sexualising old men is a national sport on this website 😂 on a physical level he hits a lot of beats for me...gangly, bespectacled (with tinted lenses!!!!!), ginger and crooked teeth??? man 😳😳😳 it doesn't help that i've already had a handful of f/os who are meant to represent a specific decade/style/etc, one of whom is literally Austin Powers;;; my taste is terrible, but consistent 😂😂 all in all, please visualise little cartoon hearts coming off my icon whenever you see me posting about this freak 🥰🥰🥰 if you're a lover of silly villains too, the DCAU is a great place to look!! shout out to my pal @iriso-page for sending the fateful ask that triggered my fixation in a cascade 🙈 thanks so much for sending this in - hopefully this causes a couple other people to check him out too 😉

#i don't know how but after writing this i am somehow out of breath 😂😂😂#mad mod #neil richards #teen titans #dc animated universe #dcau #dc #starleskasks #f/os #long post

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sprintingowl · 1 month

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Batman Miniatures Game (2015)

So, a friend was thinning his ttrpg collection and sent some my way, which means I'm going to be reviewing a few rpgs that I probably wouldn't have picked up normally.

This is good, though! It means I'm getting a broader diet of media than "this looked weird and gloomy and I was unable to stop my own reflex to acquire it."

Anyway, the Batman Miniatures Game is still being maintained by Knight Models (at least as of my writing in 2024,) and is a skirmish game that emphasizes parkour and worker (token) placement.

You play as various factions from the broader Gotham metropolitan area and engage in objective-driven battles in a world of perpetual darkness (canonically, all combats in this game are considered to take place at night.)

There's a lot of elements in BMG you'd expect from an older wargame. Rolls to hit, rolls to damage, multiple wounds per model, etc. But initiative is handled by going back and forth activating models until everyone runs out of action tokens. And action tokens are the stars of the game.

At the start of each round, before any actions are taken, players assign tokens on each character's sheet. These tokens are assigned to different categories of actions, like movement, attack, block, and special. During your turn, when you activate a model, you choose which of its action types to take and spend tokens from that type to act. Token placement is public knowledge after it's been done, so there's an interesting meta here where you can see the enemy's bruiser with a bunch of movement tokens on it and know that it's going to rush you down when it activates. Damage also removes tokens, so you can theoretically preempt said bruiser by just opening up on it with a shooter.

The game being objective-oriented feels a bit necessary, because models become less capable as they take damage. Damage is in two flavors, stun and injury, and characters can get nonlethally KO'd if they're dropped with stun. They can also wake back up from KO, and it takes extra actions to cuff them or finish them.

So you can kind of get stuck in a spiral of your characters getting less capable as they take damage, and that means you'll generally be taking fewer activations in later rounds than earlier ones, but this isn't bad gameplay because the more actions your opponent is spending on gunning down your models, the less they're dedicating to the objective.

To further support objective-based play, Batman Miniatures has non-complex but relatively detailed rules for climbing fences, jumping gaps, wading through sewage, etc. Plus, close quarters attacks can grab and push, and cover and sightlines matter a lot for ranged engagements.

This is a game that wants detailed three-dimensional environments and shantytown style terrain, and will lose a lot of its complexity if it's just played on a flat board. Knight Models, which produces the game, also sells a lot of associated models and elements---although they're fully supportive of you making your models and terrain yourself.

And that's Batman Miniatures at a glance, but I want to take a moment to talk about the layout of the book itself because it's... it's something.

Despite being fully endorsed by DC and being an official production, this thing looks more like a high effort fan project than almost any high effort fan project I've seen--and that's not a negative. There are splash pages and pull quotes drawn from the comics, the Arkham games (rendered in engine!), and the Heath Ledger movie. No two page spread looks quite like any other two page spread. There's a page that's layed out as a newspaper and it's done that way *perfectly*, feeling like a windblow scrap picked up off the streets of gotham.

The layout designer popped off, even if the actual visual contents are kind of weird at times. You'll get a full two page spread of procedural rules for what to do if the Joker kicks you in the nuts, and then the next page is just straight up a cover from Long Halloween with "Live. Laugh. Love. -Frank Miller's Batman" in stylized red HAHAHA font over it.

Also, adding to the weirdness, the whole back half of the book is just photographs of models you can buy from Knight Models and then a semi-comprehensive guide to modern batman chronology (circa 2015).

Overall, I don't think I vibe with Batman Miniatures as much as with other modern skirmish games (such as Rangers Of Shadowdeep) or other superhero rpgs (such as the old Marvel Universe,) but I'd be amiss to say that I don't think there's something here. The token placement is rad, and the movement system is clever and streamlined. If you're a ttrpg designer looking to study an action economy, or you need a reason to paint some dark deco terrain pieces, or you're just a batman fan, there's probably something here for you.

#ttrpg #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpgs #ttrpg design #indie ttrpgs #rpg #indie ttrpg #tabletop #dnd #rpgs #batman #skirmish game #wargames

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metawatts · 10 months

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Saw your review for the jl/rwby crossover. You mentioned Cruz as being one of the failures of the movie. Kind of leaves me conflicted because honestly she was kind of my favorite part of the movie while everything else was just mostly meh or frustrating. I am not that familiar with comic Cruz and the Incarnation I am more familiar with from DC superhero girls is very different from the comic from what little I know. Care to do a deep dive on this particular GL and how the crossover failed her?

Alright, I have some time to do asks, so lets dive on in! I was gonna write this out way better but my dotpoints kinda became their own essay so here we go!

TL:DR: I think that Jessica's anxiety was mishandled due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how her character is built in the comics, because they wanted a Cute Agoraphobic Queen (and forgot to have the agoraphobia). I also think that she lacked agency in her own mental health and plotline, with Jaune being the main mover in both, and that there is whitewashing to her design, as seen here compared to: other cartoons, other comic runs, her other rwby designs (feat. one Simon Baz because DC is keeping him from me)

Yeah. Hm. Anyway, lets get into my rambly thoughts about Jessica Cruz

Alright first things first: I’m not against Jessica Cruz being written differently to the comics if she’s written respectfully. I also really do like dc superhero girls and Jessica there is very fun as a character, even if I have some other issues with what they took out from her storyline

The thing about this iteration of Jessica Cruz is that apparently the theme of the movie was ‘gun violence’ or whatever and that’s. That’s her whole. That’s literally her whole comic backstory.

For a quick recap in the comics: Jessica Cruz one day was hiking with friends before they stumbled across some guys dumping bodies in the woods. All of Jessica’s friends were shot down and murdered right in front of her for being witnesses, and Jessica gained an absolutely brutal case of PTSD, which later fuelled her agoraphobia and anxiety.

Then, after spending 3 years literally never leaving her apartment out of terror that she was going to be tracked down and murdered like her friends, she was instead tracked down by an artifact called Power Ring (it’s complicated but p much it’s like an Evil Inverse Green Lantern Ring). The Power Ring, which is fuelled by the wearer’s fear and trauma, forces itself onto Jessica and turns her into a villainous puppet for it’s own will. She’s canonically being tortured by physical and psychological pain the whole time she’s wearing it. She’s nearly saved a few times from her Literal Possession but the thing that sticks is when she pulls a self-sacrifice and supposedly dies, only it turns out that the ring died in her place and then she got a Green Lantern Ring for her bravery in facing her fears and such. (I think the universe/writers were apologising because Genuinely WTF)

Now, the thing that a lot of people praise about Jessica as a character in most comics, is that she is, most of the time, a very realistically-written character with anxiety. Her anxiety is rooted mostly in her PTSD, which means that it has very definite triggers, one of which is, on her bad days, ‘guns being aimed at her’.

However, Jessica is also someone who actively works on this aspect of her mental health, she’s shown having gone to therapy sessions, learnt how to internally combat her negative self-talk, and actively works on herself. She has her coping mechanisms, and they genuinely work for her when she’s spiralling, and she’s able to work through her anxiety and remind herself that, in what is one of her main catchphrases ‘you are not your fear’.

DC Superhero girls pretty much just axed Jessica’s anxiety entirely and while she’s a fun character she’s also not really close enough to comics Cruz for me to really draw comparisons, although I do wish they’d been willing to explore that storyline (and maybe have Simon there) I understand why with the age range they didn’t decide to throw in Gun Violence and Anxiety (but they could have had Simon there where are you keeping him dc)

Meanwhile: RWBY/JL Jessica Cruz. Well. I don’t want to hate on people who like her. If you found joy in something that I did not, then I’m happy for you, but I do want to explain my problems. The first is the way they misrepresented and mishandled her anxiety, and the second is Jaune. Why does it always have to be Jaune, I don’t even hate Jaune, I just hate how much everyone in the writing rooms love him.

Anxiety: Jessica in the film is pretty much given a much more generalised anxiety disorder. She mentions that she’s had it from a young age, that she’s always been afraid, that the ring helped her fit in. She’s given a much different trigger of claustrophobia, and her agoraphobia is completely missing from her character. DC Superhero Girls took away her anxiety, so there’s nothing to misrepresent. RWBY/JL put in her anxiety, and put in the wrong one.

Comics Jessica’s anxiety, and her insecurities, come from a genuinely traumatic event, one that shaped her for years, one that she’s still fighting overcome. And then worse stuff happened to her and she kept going. I have a generalised anxiety disorder, I’ve had one since I was a teenager, and I can also say that how it was shown in the movie was… kind of stereotypical. She’s meek, and she shy, and she’s nervous and jumpy and doesn’t feel like she can do anything. And this is meant to be Jessica who still is that adult, just in a teen brain, and I know hormones suck, but they completely axed the fact that this is canonically a character who has mental health issues and works on them so they could have Jaune peptalk her through her panic attacks, which. Cures them, all of a suddenn

Yeah we’re getting into the Jaune stuff now. Jaune is the catalyst for everything Jessica does. He makes the plans while she worries, he talks her through her panic, he talks her through all her anxiety, and then… that’s it, really, all she does from that point on in the movie is Solve All The Problems. The emotional core of most of their scenes from post-Jessica confessing her anxiety disorder up until ‘the claustrophobia panic attack’ is on Jaune missing Pyrrha so much that he ignores Jessica actually trying to be reasonable about ‘this is sus’. It feels like they wanted to do ‘Jessica gets a best friend who helps her through her anxieties and supports her to stand on her own’, forgot to write the second part of that, and forgot one other tiny lil detail

WHICH IS SHE HAS ONE.

Simon Baz is Jessica’s Green Lantern partner in the comics, they’re your classic ‘hothead/cautious’ duo, they have literally the best interactions of friendship ever, this is the man who worries that Jessica’s not feeling okay after a bad day and shows up to make her pancakes for breakfast. They also have a real interesting quirk to their specific brand of green lanterning, which is that Hal Jordan was like ‘okay you need to learn to work together’ and fused their Power Batteries together. (quick rundown: green lantern rings need to be periodically charged up with lantern shaped power batteries otherwise there’s no constructs or cool costumes). Simon and Jessica cannot recharge their rings separately, they have to work as a team. And the first few comics of their run are great (I know nothing about the state of it now). They’re mutually supportive, they both have their issues, and Jaune feels like he was written to slot into that role.

I get that ‘we can’t have two green lanterns in here that’s boring’ was probably what was said but this is also what speaks to a wider issue about how Jessica is getting a lot more press time in non-comic properties. Which is awesome! Overall I love her character, I love the different takes on her, and it’s very cool to see her. Simon Baz, however. Is. Not getting any of this. Which is a shame. I just wish that my duo could get to be a duo.

But, I mean, if dc superhero girls is willing to just completely nix jess’s anxiety from her, why not nix Simon Baz’s backstory and still have him be her partner there? Why do all these properties decide that Jessica is best written when all of her character stuff beyond ‘female green lantern, occasionally nervous’ is removed from her? This isn’t just a rwby problem, but it’s something I’ve noticed especially in the rwby movie because of how they took Jessica’s character, when her backstory as it was would have tied into the so-called ‘theme’ for gun violence, and stripped her entirely for parts about ‘Jaune is a nice caring friend look how protective he is of poor scared Jessica’. He even powers her up for HER big 'ending the bad guy' move instead of allowing her to be as strong as a green lantern ring is meant to be

Jessica in the film is pretty much written as ‘nervous agoraphobic adorable widdle queen’, all of her actual agency, all of her own inner strength of being someone who struggles with anxiety and overcomes it is removed so that she can be a Pep Talk Recipient, and I gotta say another small thing: pep talks, in my experience, don’t actually cure a chronic generalised anxiety disorder.

Oh yeah and also not only is her Green Lantern outfit in this crossover really not good (everyone is, except vixen, vixen’s power is too strong for rwby character designers to truly damage), she’s also definitely whitewashed to the point that I think a lot of people would find it hard at first to know that she’s meant to be Latina. Like, even compared to her Adult Version, or her rwby comics version, or, say, some of the other animated versions of her, or even her comics version in The Good Runs, as shown above. I called her ‘ben 10-ified’, and I stand by that, it’s just… it's a bit eesh, considering rwby's other problems with colourism and such.

I think all the DC characters got massacred, but if this had to be the anxiety rep for the film, why couldn't it be the Jessica who was actively working on dealing with it, dealing with her self-talk, like this?

I know rwby's allergic to character development, but come on. Jessica is more than an Anxious UwU bean. That's kinda the whole point. Also, she plays pokemon, what's not to love?

#rwde #rwby x justice league #rwby x jl #justice league x rwby #jl x rwby #rwby-meta #chara-meta #mod watts #RWBY Jessica Cruz #RWBY Green Lantern #asks

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