How The Media Depicts The Apollo 11 Mission:

In the Danny is Damian’s brother trope what if instead of Damian not telling the family about Danny wasn’t because of grief or shame or any of the more commonly used reasons for his silence. What if it was because he heard about how his father talked about Jason after his death, focusing and exaggerating the negative. That he was violent, angry, never listened to orders but in some iterations and popular fanon is that Jason was a cheerful and studious Robin.

What if while compiling info and researching the former robins during his tumultuous introduction he saw what kind of robin Jason was, good with kids and victims. Talking about his favorite books while on patrol and similar. Reminding Damian of his most Beloved brother.

Then he finds out about how Bruce talked about Jason after he died. Using him as an example as what not to do, erasing his good traits and just using him as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t follow orders. Just like what Ra’s said about Danny.

So he didn’t tell the family, not out of guilt or grief. But because his father stripped away Jason’s positive traits after death, the son he chose, adopted and loved. Who when he failed because he was a child led astray by his mother. What would he do to his brother, who loved the stars and excelled in stealth, who was quite in his kills but had no lust for killing.

Whether or not Bruce would do this to Danny’s memory doesn’t matter. B’s actions are gonna affect how Damian views his father even years after the initial actions. Because Damian will protect his brothers memory from being twisted even by their father.

You know with ‘My adventures with Superman’ once again doing the old  “How could you lie to me?!” bit I have come to appreciate more and more the ‘Jazz Fenton method of dealing with discovering someone close to you is secretly a superhero.’

“Holy Crap he’s got these powers?! Actually now that I think about it I can see all the reasons why he’d prefer not to tell anyone about this. I’m not gonna bring it up unless there’s an emergency or he wants to talk about it first. In the meantime, if anyone asks where he is while he’s off fighting bad guys I’ll just tell them he’s at the library or something.”

How I Met Your Brother (DC x DP)

Dan joins the Justice League - not as part of his rehabilitation, but as a reward for doing so well.

Tucker makes the grave mistake of mentioning Dan in front of Jazz. And as an eldest sister myself I would not be happy about an alternate version of my sibling being left completely alone in the world, no support, no family to then be turned into a psychopath. And I would be furious for them to then be imprisoned - not for life but for all time?

However, unlike me, Jazz is the world's foremost authority on ghost psychology. She has Dan out of his Thermos and in a larger enclosure within the week.

Now, a lot of fics have Jazz as a magical therapist who can say a few sentences and make any bad guy cry. Sorry, not today though.

First, they resocialise Dan like a feral cat (solitary confinement does make people get loopy), sitting outside his enclosure and hanging out, doing homework etc. This sort of gets him to figure out emotionally that he's no longer in the timeline where everyone he ever cared about died.

Danny discusses with him how many nightmares he's had over just the idea of losing his entire support network the way Dan did and he can't imagine what he's been through. But no emotions are not, in fact superior to having negative emotions.

After a few months, he decides that he does in fact want to actively try and get better. He goes to a therapist (because family members can't do therapy!!!) who's just unhinged enough to get a kick out of counselling a ghost from an alternate timeline.

There's only one relapse. Clockwork fixed it and they don't talk about it.

A month or so later they let him out of the enclosure for good. They offer to symbolically destroy it but Dan thinks they should keep it just in case.

While Dan's humanity has returned, his actual human half is gone forever. But he's interested in doing something with himself. He can't get a GED, or a degree, or be an astronaut. Maybe something in entertainment?

Tucker makes the grave mistake of mentioning that the Justice League headquarters are in space. Dan isn't as powerful anymore now he's no longer a halfa, but he knows he's handy in a fight. He loves space and due to having them repeatedly and ineffectively implemented against himself - a deep knowledge of international war tactics.

NGL, this isn't where I thought this story was going. But Dan is now an international politics, war policy and foreign affairs expert, I guess.

He helps a fair bit on the team, but his key contributions are his encyclopaedic predictions of how different international communities will react to events. If an out of control meta in Paris takes down the Eiffel Tower, he predicts which countries will immediately 'crack down' on their superpowered citizens - that sort of thing. It's invaluable for their PR team and young meta safety.

He's a friendly guy, doesn't judge anyone for losing control of their powers or going 'too far' on a villain who hurt their friends and family. And he never shuts up about his kid brother who is apparently also his best friend. He briefly mentions a baby sister he's never met and that makes everyone pretty sad.

He doesn't consider this Jazz his sister. He's already had a sister named Jazz and isn't looking for a 1:1 replacement. This Jazz is more like a mum-friend. However, he never had a Danny or an Ellie in his last life.

"My little brother told me about the trick to this level in Doomed 17, want me to explain what you're missing?"

"Sorry, I really can't possess you, even for 'anti mind-control' training. That isn't how overshadowing works, you can't become immune without exposure to ectoplasm in dangerous doses. No, I can't get you some pure ecto, my baby brother would kick my ass to hell."

"Yeah, my baby bro and I both wanted to be astronauts, I died so it's not in the cards for me anymore, but he has a real shot still, we're all rooting for him!"

Most Justice League members think he's a dead eldest brother with living siblings he's still in close contact with.

It's all fun and games until he tries to take a bullet for Batman during an ambush and it's actually an amnesia ray designed to make Batman forget about a specific case until the bad guy can complete his plan.

"I killed you all before, and I will do it again."

Nobby Leach

Its supremely unfair how under utilized Nobby Leach is in fanfic.

He's a blank slate! The 1st Muggleborn British Minister of Magic but we know very little about him personally or even the circumstances of his election.

Voldemort rose to power in the late 60s-early 70s. Leach was minister sometime between 1962-68. And Leach was supposedly threatened from returning to his position or possibly assassinated.

Do you think poor, working-class, assumed Mudblood of Slytherin Tom Riddle didn't see these shady dealings and go "Okay so taking the legal route to power won't work."

If having power was Tom's only goal then he absolutely would've taken a quicker route to it. But instead Nobby Leach's failure just proved the system was too broken to fix from the inside.

(Quick disclaimer, I think Riddle only used the blood-purity thing to get an in with the purebloods who were running the country. There are better posts that expand on this idea in detail so I'm not going to get into it too much here. Okay? Okay.)

We know so little about Leach that he could conceivably have gone to Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle. Did they know eachother? That's up to you, but if they went to school together then they definitely knew OF eachother.

So here you have Nobby Leach who hit the ground running after graduation, who clawed his way to being the FIRST muggleborn Minister of Magic in a government made up of bloodpurists, and then he just...resigned? Fuck that. That doesn't fit at all.

And anyone with half a brain would've picked up on that. Tom Riddle could not have missed how uncharacteristic this would be if he knew Leach, or heck just noticed the sheer will and patience it takes to become THE Muggleborn Minister of Magic.

On that note, there might've been some sort of Muggleborn movement happening in the background following Grindelwald's defeat. After all it takes more than one person to achieve this kind of victory.

So Tom Riddle watches (or is apart of 👀) a fast-paced, determined movement place the FIRST Muggleborn Minister of Magic and then watches as this victory silently tumbles down into forgotten history.

Meanwhile Tom builds the Death Eaters who also work outside the system via raids and murder despite the fact that they all work inside of it already. Theres already lots to unpack with THAT decision but moving on... Once the Ministry finally gets its shit together and arrests the (clearly labeled with Dark Marks) perpetrators, throwing them in wizard prison eventually reaching the point where they would be thrown in without a trial (Sirius Black), the Pureblood lawmakers all of a sudden realize "oh fuck, this is getting real."

And now what do they have to do to avoid suspicion in this very Red Scare-esque era of spying and tattling on eachother (it worked for Karkaroff) to avoid wizard prison? Play nice with the Muggleborns.

TL;DR

Nobby Leach: went the legitimate route to making change by working WITHIN the system. He rose fast and fell silently.

Tom Riddle: went the shady route to power by working OUTSIDE the system, painstakingly working for decades to build a support base, and falling in notoriety.

There needs to be more fics with them as foils to eachother. And if it has to be me, I warn you it will take YEARS to finish.

The official website even says 'conspiracy theories abound' and if that isn't an invitation for fanfic writers I don't know what is.

In the context of RadioStatic I find the idea of transfemme Vox to be really amusing, because you think Vox is the first good male relationship Alastor has had but NOPE!

SURPRISE FEMME!!!

Neither of them realized it but Alastor’s Gal Pal sensors were kicking off

and she felt so special about it too

tbh the most exciting part of my day is when i finally go to bed at night and start creating imaginary scenarios in my head

Then there’s Mrs. Cole. The suspicious, strict matron who takes no shit and was probably the one to threaten Tom with institutionalization. 

When Tom was a child she was probably in her prime, but as Tom got older so did she. And as parents (bc Mrs. Cole was probably the closest thing like that for Tom and probably some other orphans too) get older they become less strict... on the younger kids. 

And if there’s anything the older kids can agree on it’s that the younger kids have it way better. And the parent remembers absolutely none of the strict rules they put on the oldest kids. Gaslighting at it’s finest (see kallmekris sibling series on TikTok for inspiration).  

Smol Orphan: *leaves a dead rat and broken glass in another kid’s bed.*

Mrs. Cole: ...

Amy: oh that kid’s done for. 

Dennis: He better say his prayers. 

Mrs. Cole: ...Leave, I’ll clean it. Just don’t do it again. 

Tom: That’s it?! You locked me in my room for 2 weeks after the rabbit incident! 

Billy: You made me write lines on the entire Old Testament when I broke a window!

Mrs. Cole: That doesn’t sound like me. I never did that, you’re all so dramatic. 

Tom: *dark lord energy manifests*

Tom Riddle & The Orphanage

I’ve already talked about the under-utilization of Nobby Leach, but what about the Orphanage? 

As someone who had to live with several people (adults & children both) who made my life miserable and disliked me just as much as I disliked them…there’s no way Tom Riddle was able to avoid them all to the degree canon wants you to believe. 

Sure he has his own room, but he still has to eat, take care of his hygiene, do his chores, go to church, help with the younger children, etc. He’s going to have to interact with the other orphans and matrons at the orphanage, there’s no way around that. 

And some of the other kids may be afraid of him, but children have no fear and are always ready to test boundaries. The adults, Mrs. Cole, especially are already suspicious of him, and you bet the other kids are aware and take advantage of this to taunt and subvert Tom’s authority in front of them. 

Outside of this, there’s also no way to hate everyone and everything at the orphanage all the time. There will be some good moments because that kind of lasting hatred just is…not viable. If not on Tom’s end, then the other kids will undoubtedly become tired of tip-toeing around him. And when the bombs start to fall…no one’s going to give a shit about Tom Riddle and his weirdness, they have bigger things to worry about. And they’re all stuck together anyway. 

Let’s examine some of the relationships Tom had with the other orphans. Tom gets into a fight with Billy Stubbs and, according to Mrs. Cole, hangs his rabbit.  On a trip, Tom lures Denny Bishop & Amy Benson into a cave and traumatized them for life with something so horrible they can’t bear to speak of it.  

Nothing about what caused the argument with Billy Stubbs or why Tom chose those specific orphans to traumatize for life. Because luring two suspicious, jaded orphans into a cave where no one can hear them scream? That would take planning and a big enough motive that Tom thought the risk of Mrs. Cole catching him doing something weird again was worth it. 

But do I believe they were traumatized “for life?” No probably not. This is baby Riddle, not Dark Lord Voldemort, he’s new to the traumatizing children thing. 

So here’s where I go into the more questionable headcanon I have about the orphanage: Tom Riddle has a sibling relationship with these kids he supposedly traumatized. 

Hear me out. 

Tom killed Billy’s rabbit and traumatized Dennis & Amy; how is that sibling-like? 

I can tell you from personal experience. I have 9 siblings (technically) and several cousins who barge into my house uninvited. I also grew up on stories my mom had about her 3 siblings and my grandma had about her 11. My mom pushed her sister off a roof and cut off a piece of her tongue with safety scissors while she was sleeping. Me and the sister closest to my age drive each other crazy. Siblings are the worst to each other. 

Now these kids may not have chosen to be siblings, but rarely does anyone get that choice anyway. (And if they do, they have moments where they regret it).  

It first starts out with annoying the shit out of each other. You know, barging into their room and not closing the door when they leave, ganging up on the youngest (probably Tom), stealing each other’s toys and hiding them-Oh. OH. 

…See where I’m going there? 

Then once they get older they grow to tolerate each other and gang up on the much more frustrating younger generation of kids who’ve taken up residence in their orphanage. They’ll have to find a compromise on splitting up chores and they’ll need to have the option to talk to people they’re age. Cue reluctant siblings who refuse to admit their siblings. 

Tom Riddle: Why do I get the night shift again?

Amy Benson, to Dennis: Hey, remember that time Tom dragged us to a cave and traumatized us?

Billy Stubbs: And killed my rabbit?

Dennis Bishop: And stole my toys? 

Tom Riddle: You’re never letting this go are you. 

Dennis, Amy, & Billy: Never. 

These 4 kids grew up together and, if they were not adopted-out, grew into adulthood together. 

TL:DR

Tom Riddle does not give off only-child vibes. Discuss. 

here's the thing, I fully believe that Alastor is aroace, but I also believe that he would commit to dating someone if he thought that doing so would be really entertaining. like absolutely Al hates Vox, but if he discovered that calling Vox "babe" made him consistently short-circuit and fry any other nearby VoxTek, I think he would seriously consider starting to call Vox "babe" just to get to see him bluescreen and wreck his own tech

TBH I maintain that the funniest thing about Vox is that he IS clearly cunning and charismatic and competent, but also all of that flies out the window whenever Alastor shows up. Every single time.

I know the Vees are supposed to be the main antagonists of season two, with special focus on Vox and Alastor, but like. I have little to no faith in Vox's ability to pull himself together as soon as Alastor confronts him.

God, this is EXACTLY what I want from season 2, hahaha. I genuinely really enjoy Vox having this hilarious contrast of normally being an extremely competent and charismatic CEO type that just loses literally all of his rizz around Alastor because he's too down bad. Him being so condescending to Valentino about not chasing after Angel Dust in canon being immediately followed by Vox himself having a public meltdown on live TV just because Val mentioned that Alastor is back was peak character moment to me. "Fu-u-uck!" + QAQ at the end of Stayed Gone lives in my mind rent free.

All that said, I just sometimes feel kinda bad because I mostly write Vox in the context of Alastor and I feel like sometimes I don't do him enough justice as a result, hahaha. I promise I think he's competent! I hope he does the equivalent of stepping on a rake and slamming himself in the face with the handle every time he sees Alastor in season 2, though.

Redraw of this scene from The Nanny hehehe