I am choosing to believe he’s playing cheese Viking

It's been a while since I painted ghost king Danny. I went with the aurora borealis crown this time. Also more animation experimentation with 2d and 3d stuff.

I struggled with the background a bit. Below is an alternative version, I can't decide what looks better.

This is what happened when a fanfic site is profit driven. Wattpad sucks 😞

The email from Wattpad is so condescending imagine pressuring writers to update and work while they are doing it for free and fun. Also the discovery? Algorithm? Of Wattpad looks like a stressful popularity contest 😑

Hey I just wanna quickly say that you only get these if someone reports the story. I've barely updated on Wattpad in the past two years and haven't gotten any of these, mostly because I don't even have an audience over there who has the potential or drive to report my fics. So, corporate greed is bad, yes, but it's also readers being buttheads

Hmm, that's interesting! You know what happens if someone reports a story for being incomplete on AO3? Jack shit, because not churning out content for your fun little hobby is not a reportable offense on AO3! And that's because, unlike Wattpad, AO3 isn't profiting off of your work, either directly or indirectly, and so when readers are buttheads, the AO3 abuse mods ignore them, instead of sending out weird automated messages harassing writers for daring to have a wip.

Yeah like, Batman talks to Duke wanting to check on Danny's wellbeing and Duke's all "I thought he was *yours*" 😂

@freshmiraclecheesecake

While yes this would give Bruce all sorts of complicated feelings. It would also mess Jason up post-revival seeing Danny who looks disturbingly amount like himself when he was that age, Jason now has to wonder if he's seeing his inner child or just hallucinating more than normal

---

Responding to both.

Danny gets his filter functioning and gets his first batch of purified ecto and Jason immediately zeros in on his location.

Jason has no idea what instinct he's following or why it's so desperate for him to go to this one specific area. He just knows there is something there. And he needs it. He needs like he needs water.

lmao the mental imagine of Jason just whirling around and perking up like a dog staring at a treat is great

Danny who has been decanting his Ecto into special containers is VERY glad he made them. Apparently he is now an Ecto dealer for multiple undead. Even Lady Gotham rocked up at his bunker. Holy shit! He thought the Talons were a myth! And Red Hood? Grundy? Fucking Scarecrow is a liminal?

He's gonna need to make them their own isn't he? Or make a bigger one here. Either way he needs more clean Ecto fast.

Jason, more than a little feral, still not really knowing what's happening or why he's reacting like this; does know that he does not want to share his new favorite guy with all these Talons and Rogues and one random lady who feels really familiar even though Jason is certain he's never seen her before in his life.

Danny, who is resigned to how weird his life is? Figures out Red Hood and the Talons? Very feral. Need much more help than he can give. Him and Lady Gotham share a look and sigh. This is going to take a while.

Lady Gotham really saw that Danny had been resisting Batman's adoption, so she went and adopted Danny for him.

Is Danny even in his Robin costume right now? Is Red Hood? Does Jason know Danny is the kid they've been chasing all over Gotham? Does Danny know he's taken in one of the very vigilantes he's been avoiding for like 2 months?

My question is, how do the OTHER BATS react to Jason running off out of nowhere, apparently honing in on a young second-generation Mad Scientist's "glowing green Catnip for the Undead," and QUITE POSSIBLY being mind-controlled by the afford mentioned Deadman's Catnip?.

Sure, the (vaguely familiar??) guy SEEMS to only be taking advantage of his cooking skills so far-- but it's GOT to be a prelude to something more sinister! It's ALWAYS a prelude to something sinister, in this town!

But Jason won't listen to the "don't take candy or glowing green goo from strangers" lectures!

Jason is Not Happy with their attempts to separate them.

At All.

There's been calls.

There's been family dropping by trying to wheedle him into leaving with their stupid, complicated words that he Does Not Care about.

There's been attempts to full-body tackle both of them away from each other on patrols - which he only ever does with smoothie guy now.

It's a little weird working with a guy wearing essentially his old costume, but he's getting used to it.

(And wow does Jason hate leaving the building with the green smoothie machine in it.

But he's not that far gone - he knows the guy who made the machine is way more important to protect. What if the machine broke! If something happened to machine guy who would fix the machine!

...he should probably learn machine-guys name at some point, he thinks.)

It's irritating. It's not like the guy kidnapped him or something. Jason chooses to be there. It's asset protection.

Jason needs those smoothies. No smoothie guy = no smoothie. Gotham alone = high odds of no more smoothie guy.

And okay, maybe smoothie guy is pretty capable of defending himself yadda yadda but no man's an island and all that. Everyone has close calls once in a while. Jason is just investing in long-term smoothie security.

And also, just a bit, it's that he'll never forget what happened the one time smoothie guy tried to make something other than a smoothie.

He can't let that happen again. It'd be an afront to all things culinary and good.

And really, it's not a bad trade - smoothies you can only get in one place (as far as he's aware, at least? He certainly never encountered anything similar in any of his travels before) in exchange for, what, meals?

He'd have to cook for himself anyway, what's an extra serving?

He'll admit that the amount of traps he laid around the place before leaving to do Crime Boss Things that first time might've been...maybe, potentially, just slightly too much.

And maybe poorly thought out.

A bit.

But he panicked, okay!? He'd been away from crime alley for almost a week with no plan ahead! He had to go! But he couldn't leave machine guy undefended! And he certainly couldn't bring machine guy with him! (Both because: criminal activity & also Tempting Fate. You do not bring key person you want to survive to the alley where people tend to get murdered to death. You just don't do it.)

And it was only a few... dozen- cars anyway! What's some cars to machine guy's life!?

Nothing!

(And okay maybe it was trigged by a false positive. But if they're gonna say he's "brainwashed" for being paranoid then they're all brainwashed! Don't throw stones in glass houses Bruce. If you want to help, you can help by buffing the security!

What's that? Smoothie guy keeps moving every time you try to help him? Then get lost dude! boundaries!

No, no that is not hypocritical, this and that are two totally different things. I was invited you jealous whore.

Okay maybe it was after I showed up but it still counts - yes it does replacement, shut it.)

The fact th at he is so good at disappearing is also concerning the bats. No one is that good at moving all their shit. Undetected. In Gotham. Something hinky is happening dammit! Jason is compromised! They have never seen the kid without a mask. What the fuck is going on!!! Admittedly, admittedly, 'smoothie' kid seems more... Resigned than accepting of Jason's presence. But it could be an act!

Okay so item the first there is not a single member of the Batfam past or present that knows longer or more complicated words than Jason even drugged up

He’s a nerd ass bitch built like a tank

(If he starts only responding to them in Middle English this would probably be a reasonable ability and also hilarious)

Item the second, Jason is still trying to give smoothie guy a better suit! With kevlar! It’s dangerous out there and he is literally wearing a Halloween costume

Danny just shrugs happily and explains he’s already dead anyway, so it’s a little late for body armour

Being shot dead on and phasing directly through the bullets is not convincing while Jason is feral but it carries more weight once he’s thinking clearly

Also Danny gets .05% of the way into moving into the batcave on his latest quest for an underground lair because he comes through the wall behind the giant penny, assumes it’s a villain’s old lair, and bugs the fuck out when the lights turn on

He doesn’t know it was the batcave but Jason does and he’s never telling either party

Cass is also pretty much magnetically attracted to Danny and his smoothies after her own resurrection, but she’s not as contaminated as Jason and does not have even a hundredth of the range

They only realize she can sense him at all when Black Bat is asked to come help separate Jason and Danny and half way through getting into position she abandons stealth and just koalas onto Danny and won’t let go

The rest of the bats are immediately suspicious and pause the sneak, Jason explains to Danny that that’s his sister and she’s just kinda Like That but not usually with strangers? And Danny sighs heavily and pulls out the Good Thermos to give her some goo

The bats immediately attack, Jason shoots Dick in the ass and nearly does inestimable damage to mankind but Dick has butt armour, Cass shotties the thermos and tells them all to back the fuck off her new bestie

Bruce, who has also died but is too repressed to have urges, immediately pulls everyone who’s seen or touched a Lazarus pit from the case because who’s gonna get tainted next???

Cass hasn’t followed the lads home to base yet but she is abjectly refusing to consider harming Danny or even inconveniencing him and now Jason is bringing her some extra goop on the side

The bats test it and test it and test it but Cass will deadass lick the samples if she doesn’t get her fix for too long and not a fucking one of them can stop her

(This does make her sick with the testing reagents at least once and that is when they decide A) this shit is addictive as fuck B) detoxing is not gonna work the normal way cuz she performs better on all of the aptitude tests half way through the detox period than at either end and C) she gets to keep at least half of her deliveries from Jason for snacking purposes)

Stabby Robin arrives and is immediately all for just murdering Danny and solving this problem… right up until he meets Danny in person and feels calm for once in his fucking gremlin life

That’s right, Danny doesn’t trust the living, Danny absolutely is not going to let himself be adopted into the bat clan, and the more Bruce tries the more of his kids get adopted by Danny instead

(Not that Danny wants to keep a single fucking one of them but plot twist he’s an ecto dealer now and while his new buds are more alive than he’d like he’s not gonna withhold the only thing that keeps them healthy

He does try foisting Cass off on Lady Gotham but she gets on way too well with the Talons and LG knows Bruce will only flip his shit harder if she comes home with Talons in tow so nope now you have two buddies Danny)

Danny does explain what Ecto is to the affected liminals. And the laws that apply to them. Which, Cass and Jason? Do not report back. Because sad boy is sad. And needs to relearn trust. Damian? Has no issues writing up a full report on everything he has been told.

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how fucking arrogant can you be to think any eugenics program could ever weed out “fascist genetics”. even if the “dark triad” was a reliable precursor to fascist ideology and even if “dark triad traits” could be reliably linked to genotype (they aren’t and they can’t be), how fucking far to jupiter are you if you think you can remove it from a population of seven billion, let alone in some “anarchist” manner? how do you programmatically sterilize anyone in an “anarchist” manner?

Do you ever see some discourse float by and think “Maybe I’m not hanging out on the worst parts of Tumblr, actually”

jesus fucking christ

Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.

I brought this post up with my ADHD therapist today (who also has ADHD), and she got so still that I thought our Zoom call had frozen.

Turns out she just needed to stare into her soul for a bit and it looked like this:

Every so often, I see notes from this post go past in my activity feed, and the tags really do look like a mass of people screaming as the suspension wires holding up the metaphorical elevator snap and we all plunge into the abyss.

Sorry/happy to have helped rip the bandaid off that coping mechanism for you. Hope it wasn't too load-bearing...

Anyway. I'm starting EMDR trauma therapy for this soon because I haven't been able to gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss DBT my way out of this one, so, y'know, really puts the trauma of masking in perspective when you have to resort to the same desensitization and reprocessing therapy you use to cope with the cPTSD from literally almost dying.

I'll let you know how it goes.

been watching some of the justice league cartoons. I have chosen my favorite(s).

if alphas in the omegaverse knew that we referred to it as the "omegaverse" and not the "alphaverse," they'd throw a fit

i hc that jason is concerningly good at obscure competitive video games, and that tim comes around his apartment at least twice a month