Seducing Astarion as a Rogue is fun!
You think they are what happens when you ALMOST but not quite A Ghost(tm)? Like, you have the ectoplasm and the will to continue... but you didn't really have A Thing in life? No Final Crystalizing Thought that brings focus? Just "ow! Ah! I'm scared. Don't wanna die!" And theeeeen.... *poof!*
Why am I Orb? Am squish? No bones.
Like? Remove any one piece of the Critical Formula and you get Blob instead of Ghost? Different KINDS, mind you, but blobs none the less.
Like Skulker! Not enough Ectoplasm. Ended up Blob. He CLEARLY had the Will, the Obsession, the gory end and unfinished business... buuuut? No green goo to power the creation of a full body. He clearly knows what he's supposed to LOOK like? But it's not something FIXABLE? Even with his now unlimited access to Ectoplasm.
Like in utero damage that permanently stunted his growth. HE is fine. All his facilities are on-line and checking in as they should, for the level of sentience expected of a ghost of his people. He just... smol. Same strength, intelligence, and power as he would have always HAD...
He just got handed a really, REALLY crap "customize your eternal meatsuit" option screen. Like for real guys. Basicly NO options. His salt is eternal and entirely justified. He could have had his tattoos. He paid a LOT of credits for those! Sat for DAYS! Had to track down this One(1) artist on this SHITTY little trading hub, that BARELY QUALIFIED as one, to sit in on uncomfortable overturned crate... IN A GAS MASK because the AIR SUPPORT KEPT KICKING IT... for hoooours!
It was a WORK OF ART. You would have CRIED.
This is BULLSHIT.
But wait, I hear you say, staring at the Blob ghost chewing on a lamp post. The one that has wii music playing behind the eyes. No thoughts, head jello, one might say. What about THEM?
LOT of Ecto! But THAT... might be either an animal or a fungus. We'd have to check. ANYTHING can and DOES die. If it's alive? It can die and potentially leave a ghost. But! Consider the noble Ghost Rabbit! *holds up squirming rabbit that is ABSOLUTELY trying to both bite me and kick me in the face* A noble and friendly creature!
THIS is what happens when an animal: has sufficient Ectoplasm at the death site, a reason to continue living (fairly common. It's usually their offspring, escape, the instinctual drive to survive itself or other understandable base drives. Like love, loyalty, or hunger.), and that all important High Emotions End.
Miss any of these? You get Blobbertson over there! He's clearly a hungry boy! But! Not very DRIVEN is he? Just floating along, chewing on whatever seems interesting, looking for a snack. He's food motivated. But not MOTIVATED motivated.
Blobbertson over there? A peaceful death. Too much Ectoplasm too leave, too food motivated in life NOT to carry over, but? No DRIVE. To DEFINE and DEMAND the Ectoplasm in his little body become sharp and active. No highly emotional state to stir it into action.
Is Blobbertson INCAPABLE of higher emotions? No. He is every bit as capable as the Ghost Rabbit that has savaged my hands and escaped while you were reading. It was, in fact, NOT as friendly as originally assumed. I may be bleeding. Unimportant. Blobbertson is PERFECTLY capable of getting attached. Being trained.
Whatever level of intelligence Blobbertson had in life, still remains. And WITH that? Comes the ability to improve and grow in death! IF (and this is the big one) he ever finds MOTIVATION to do so.
Because you see, Blobbertson is quite happy. No thoughts, brain jello. Drifting along in a happy green ocean like a jellyfish. Only concerned about his next snack. It's comforting. His food obsession filled, his tiny motivation barely enough to move him place to place.
He would GLADLY sit in one place and eat for the rest of eternity. Head blissfully silent.
And that's OKAY! It truly, honestly, is. Not everyone has to be conquers and kings, crafters and cosmonauts. Sometimes you just want to spend the rest of time playing in the sand. Resting on a sunshine-y hill. Not EVERY soul is a loud one.
And there are places like Amity Park out there. THICK as cold honey with Ectoplasm in the air, gently infusing all the life that grows there with greater and greater chance of Ghost-hood. Even the peaceful blinking awake after that final rest to look down and... little nubby green paws.
Congratulations on becoming a Blob, grandma! Yes, I imagine you ARE furious it is inordinately difficult to knit like this. No, I don't think complaining to the king will help, MeMa.
That said? I can not tell you if Blob Ghost all belong to the same Family or the same Order, but they are NOT the same species! The WAY in which you fuck up that ever vital Fomula results in WILDLY different Blobs! Was it an animal? A sentient species? A sentient PLANET? A complexe interlocking colony of fungi? What was the EXACT Ectoplasm concentration at the death site? Was that the historical levels or the At Death levels? Was the individual under sedation?
And you think it ends THERE? HA! The SKIES are FILLED with Fighty Mother Fuckers! Ghosts LOVE to fight! It's built into their social dynamics and hierarchy! Good ol brawls to get the Ecto pumping!
......Local Blob Farmer would like to take this moment to say "GET OF HIS GHOST PEONIES, YOU HEATHENS."
No they would NOT like to join your 24/7 thunder dome in the sky, THANKS! Martha here is trying to compose some Atlantian Shell Poetry. Blobby Jr of Blobbington and Blobbington Incorporated is TRYING to study! You've DESTROYED THE COMMUNAL ZEN GARDEN!!
And THEN you look not even a mile east? And it's the floating island of Blobs. They LIKE that rock. It's just an ever shifting, accidentally rolling off the edge, falling slightly, making an offended squeek, and floating back to the top of the pile to repeate the process, MOOSH of thousands of blobs. No one's certain if they used to be seals or some sort of cat.
Apparently THAT island is Warm(tm).
So there they sit. Making contented noises, chirping and shoving for the best spots. They never leave. You can literally just... float up and sit on them. It's amazing. You gotta be careful not to get buried, but it's So Soft and bouncy? And they are ALL making that soft happy Blob vibrate noise. It's like a giant, island sized, warm and almost fuzzy but not, water bed that massages you.
Just DON'T start anything there! Holy SHIT are they territorial. You Will Die. They SWARM.
And THATS not even getting into the Blobs that are? Literally brainless. Some people eat those. Which? I guess? They ARE basicly Ectoplasm jello. But SOME of them are NOT? Like... it's a debate. Hot button issue, ya know?
Some fungus turns into Ecto Jello with negative IQ and delicious insides. Is this food? But OTHER fungus was SENTIENT in life and become a whole RANGE of Fungus ghosts, from Blob right on up to complexe dryad like ghosts! Clearly NOT food unless you are a MONSTER. But THEY argue the FIRST group are ALSO not food?
Plant Ghosts have strong opinions and are willing to Gruesome Violence about it.
Which brings us back to the Humble Blob Ghost! Check before you pet! That might be grandma! Or planning to eat your hand! Just as Mammal tells you little to nothing about what animal you are looking at, so too does Blob and Ghost! Stay safe out there! And if anyone sees a glowing green rabbit? I want my blood back! That's supposed to be in MY body! Rude!
@hdgnj @stealingyourbones
I’ve realized that the main reason I don’t give a fuck about Red Hood’s actual canon crimes is not that I think they’re justified, or reasonable, or even just funny. He has been shown doing very fucked up shit that at times has very little, if anything, to do with any reasonable moral code. But the reason I don’t care is that I’ve steadily become very critical of villain framing. It’s so very common to have a villain say something very reasonable like “poor people shouldn’t die” and then complement it with “and I will kill babies about it.” If the first statement is reasonable, and the narrative does not provide a reason that justifies the balls-to-the-wall batshit “solution” the character came up with, then I assume the author is either deliberately or subconsciously villainizing a specific group of people for no reason, and I don’t vibe with that. At that time I no longer care about what the author/narrative actually has to say and my reaction becomes “the narrator is actually a biased witness and anything they say about this person’s actions should be taken as exaggeration”. Oh, so Jason is an indiscriminate killer who thinks every petty criminal deserves to die? Wrong. They’re exaggerating and taking the facts out of context. So he killed a hundred people in prison with barely any provocation? It probably wasn’t that many and the ones he did were trying to kill him to begin with, with no intervention from the guards, so it was self defense. He attempted to kill a child? Wrong, that was a two-sided fight between two teenagers, he just won so the other one’s bitter. Like, I don’t care how much made up context I need to stuff in there to make it make sense, I will do it because the narrative decided to frame the homeless kid from a poor neighborhood as the villain against the nice and kindhearted humanitarian billionaire so its logic is fucked from the get-go
Jason who’s been gushing about Jazz: oh and her younger brother killed the entire justice league in an alternate timeline. Don’t worry he fixed it. I wanna invite him over for dinner because I think him and Tim would nerd out together. But he’s embarrassed and think you’ll hate him but technically he hasn’t killed anyone in this timeline so hey, already better start than me! He didn’t even come back from the dead insane either!
Bruce: excuse me what
Jason: so just can you be a little less broody, I’m hoping if you like him, then it’ll give me some brownie points for trying to kill him when we first met because he was in my haunt
Bruce: wait hold-
Jason: and now whenever I’m hanging out with Jazz he always glares at me when I take her out and bring her back home and hey, if he starts dating Timbers then he won’t be there to glare at me all the time
Bruce: may I speak-
Jason: and I like I just really want him to like me because I want to do this the, well not right, but the more traditional way and ask permission for Jazz’s hand in the eternal realms of forever but I have a feeling if I ask him now he’d have me beheaded by the court
Bruce: Jason this is the first time I’ve seen you in a month calm-
Jason: and I just would rather not be a beheaded entity. I can’t be the red hood without a head to put the hood onto!
Bruce grabbing his shoulders: JASON!
Jason:…
Bruce: I love you son but what the fuck
Pairing: Jason/Danny
Warning: Descriptions of violence
Description: During a Pit flare up one of Jason's longest 'goons' reveals healing abilities he kept secret and offers Jason the chance to take out his anger on him. As this strange relationship unfolds Jason learns more about the man he previously knew as 'Fox'.
You can find the series on AO3 if you'd rather follow it there: https://archiveofourown.org/series/4130452
Part 1: I Don't Trust the World with You
part 2: Caring Enough to Kill
Part 2.5: Flowers From One Bitch to Another
Part 3: Not Without Me
Part 3.5: I Want Better For You
Love me, Control me (18+)
In Their Element
Please don't reply to this post
Point being, he knew when Pariah Dark got taken down by a kid.
He also knew that, whether or not that kid became the next High King, there would be a lot of attempts to summon him.
Further investigation revealed the flimsiest secret identity he'd ever seen, and also that the kid was like fourteen. Fifteen, max.
So he started his own personal campaign; he spread false rumors about the One Who Defeated Pariah Dark.
Gave the wrong summoning sigil out like candy, lied and said that the kid was strong enough to ignore his own summoning and send innocents in his stead because it was funny, interrupted as many potential summonings as he could, and overall kept an ear out for the kid.
He slipped Batman the information on the GIW, and to the surprise of no one it was dismantled in three months flat.
He made offerings to the kid, but charmed them so that they were bathed in the strongest protection wards he knew, just in case the kid had to go against his own parents. He made sure they were things a teenager would like; hoodies with NASA branding or space themes, backpacks from the DOOMED franchise, school supplies that were not themed because there was a limit to how much someone could do that before the other kids made fun of them, etc.
The kid has no idea he exists, which is great considering his uh. Luck. Better the kid doesn't know. Better he never starts thinking about the kid by his name.
Except at some point, he started doing that.
At some point, he started caring.
And worse, after that point, some of his enemies started to notice and hone in on Danny.
Ok so Danny knows two billionaires personally and they really couldn’t be more different. Yet they had one thing in common. A vampire aesthetic. Sam is fully into goth. Spiderwebs, bats, the color black. She enjoys fangs and fake blood and the darkness of her soul. Meanwhile, Vlad is Vlad. If his name wasn’t enough, the dark clothing, pale skin, and flying around with a cape and fangs with coffins in his mansion really sells it.
Danny doesn’t know many rich people so he thinks this might be some kind of trend. (If Paulina is rich, her family likes the chupacabra) So he just thinks that all rich people have some kind of vampire thing going on.
Cue Danny somehow ending in the Wayne household. Maybe he was brought over as a friend of one of the bats, maybe rescued from a field trip/vacation gone wrong, maybe some other situation. But he is there in civilian form with civilian Waynes and Danny just takes a good long look around the inside of the mansion.
“So where’s the vampire aesthetic?
Everyone freezes.
Danny just starts looking around, checking behind paintings and feeling the walls for secret levers. Used to secret passages with Vlad and possibly Sam. The Fentons definitely had them when they were temporarily rich.
“Come on, I know you guys are hiding it.”
Cue the entire batfamily thinking that this is another Tim and that he is fully aware that these people are the batfamily. Danny hangs around the mansion more and the bats just start dropping their disguises and not even bothering to hide stuff around Danny because they assume he already knows. (Possibly even trying to recruit him to be a new bat) Meanwhile, Danny, who does not know these people are batman and his birds, just does not pick up on any of it.
He grew up in a health violation with a giant ballon observatory lab above his head and a portal to the afterlife in his basement. He is a half dead teenager who has tea with the god of time and his godfather is the other parent to his clone child. He’s used to death lazers being scattered across his home and mysterious stains on clothing.
People are weird! He doesn’t judge!
Am AU where when Jason come back from the dead he recruits Tim instead of tries to kill him. Tim is the best hacker and is second to Barbra when it comes to surveillance and that’s mostly due to experience. It’s clear that Bruce is not appreciating the skill set of his new little bird, so Jason figured he might as well grab the kid before Bruce permanently ruins another kid.
Tim, fresh off of particularly harsh Bruce lecture and having been receiving the cold shoulder from Dick as well, runs into Red Hood who he almost immediately flags as his Robin and immediately accepts the offer. Tim hadn’t wanted to be Robin in the first place. Bruce was killing himself as Batman and if he ruined Batman then he also ruined Robin’s legacy and since Tim couldn’t save Jason while he was alive, then he would do everything it took to keep his memory alive now that he was dead.
Except Jason wasn’t dead he was in front of Tim, and wouldnt you know it, Tim has also suffered Exponentially at the hands of the Joker. Sure I can help you kill them.
Now we can go two ways here, both being equally enjoyable.
1) we follow the same or similar path. Jason becomes a crime lord stake his claim in crime alley and he and Tim come to an understanding on Batman not killing, why it’s important, and that they just kill the joker themselves. After this while things are tense, they still operate in Gotham.
2) Jason and Tim kill the Joker and decide to fuck out of dodge and essentially become a mercenary duo. Tim gets the info, Jason does the kills.
Additionally, do to shenanigans of your choice, Talia could choose to send Damian to Jason and Tim after the coup since Jason’s her pseudo so and technically still family.  
A little after Clockwork adopted Danny he decided to throw a "family reunion" to introduce him to his new siblings and nieces and nephews. Admittedly, he did forget that he never apologized for the time he went crazy with power and ate his kids until he received a response from his oldest, Hestia, asking him if this was a plot of some kind. (She also seemed to be open to reconciliation though, so he was hopeful)
Wonder Woman had been chatting with Hawkwoman when a glowing green envelope appeared on the table in front of her with her name on it.
Red Hood has been spotted doing something that made his reputation take quite the hit.
Walk around with a teddy bear riding on his shoulders.
Now, did Jason give any fucks about his reputation right now? No, not one, because he found a friend that he thought he wouldn't see again.
You see, after Jason died, he manifested as a ghost in the Infinite Realms, there he met a sentient Teddy Bear that he became fast friends with.
After having been revived, however, he no longer saw them. At least until today, where they appeared out of nowhere and looked exactly the same as he saw them last.
A shoulder ride, for old times sake.