stardew valley au where joel and skizz are new residents to pelican town (hermit town?). joel just inherited a large farm from his late grandfather and skizz is moving in with his old friend after reconnecting with him and wanting a fresh start. and the townspeople are like, kinda weird.
bdubs is fine enough - he’s a sweet man with a fun personality and he’s the local builder, but it’s almost frightening how fast he constructs new buildings when joel needs them. pearl, their resident postmaster, is also pretty normal other than the fact that skizz never seems to be awake early enough to catch her delivering mail. scar is lovely but he’s never available when joel wants another chicken. the mayor, xisuma, is pleasant too, if a little eccentric at times, but he doesn’t really seem to do much in town.
for the most part, skizz is settling in well. he’s moved in with impulse, who runs the local blacksmith in town, and he gets along well with most of the local townspeople. he’s started spending his evenings at the local saloon listening to ren regale the patrons with fantastical tales while he and stress serve up food and drinks, and he finds himself growing close with cleo, the local sculptor. he even gets a new wardrobe from hypno free of charge, and sometimes helps cub out with his totally scientific studies and creations.
skizz also joins forces with beef (who helps to supply the local general store that xb and keralis run) in terrorising the local manager of the corporate chain grocery store that no one likes. doc is a terrible manager but would make a fun supervillain (according to joe hills, the bookseller who appears once in a blue moon but seems to know doc more than anyone in town).
joel, on the other hand, seems to only be interacting with the strangest residents in town. he discovers the adventurer’s guild after only a couple weeks, and is only somewhat irritated by iskall’s refusal to pronounce his name correctly. false promises to give him prizes if he can kill enough monsters, which is not something joel had expected to be doing when he pictured farm life, but here he is. he stumbles upon a travelling cart one day, and the man inside insists he’s a knight from a faraway land, that he risked his life to make it all the way here to sell his wares. it’s all stuff joel can get cheaper elsewhere.
he’s pretty sure the local doctor has no real medical training, but then he passes out while fighting monsters and he wakes up completely fine, so zedaph probably knows what he’s doing. maybe. when joel isn’t passing out he sometimes makes trips to the library-slash-museum, which is probably almost completely empty because mumbo, who begs joel for anything to display, looks like he’s never fought a duggie in his life. eventually mumbo gives joel a key to the sewers, which are way cooler than they have any right to be, and that’s where he finds jevin’s secret sewer shop. jevin lives in town. he just also has a shop hidden underground. joel has stopped asking questions by now.
and then there are the three who live by the beach. etho spends most of his time tinkering around the fishing hut or hovering around bdubs, but sometimes he drives the bus to the desert. only sometimes. there might be something under his mask. no one knows for sure. gem runs the fish shop most days and she claims she’s a sailor, but joel has never seen a single working boat around despite all the ocean. she can also hold her breath underwater for an uncannily long amount of time, like, scarily so, and will sometimes disappear for a few days and return with an abundance of treasures. joel has never seen her leave by boat. grian fishes a lot and runs the shop when gem can’t, and he sometimes talks as though the sea can speak to him. skizz has caught him staring into space for extended periods of time. one time he waded into the water and just stood there, head down, muttering to himself.
apparently there used to be a lighthouse but “it’s gone now”. gem says if they ask bdubs nicely enough maybe they can build another one, but she and grian are banned from build requests after the last incident with their pet snails (joel has never seen the snails, but scar complains about them enough to convince him they’re real).
there also might be some kind of wizard who lives in the creepy tower in the woods. skizz has heard he’s the one who helps maintain the power in the valley, and joel’s convinced he hallucinated seeing him once until he recieves a letter from the wizard himself, and visits him only to find that the strange fire-creature he saw that one time was, in fact, tango, who is human for the most part, he just sets himself on fire sometimes.
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The fandom's bias and tendency to wanting to agressively associate EVERYTHING with Percy and getting upset when a character isn't associated with him really taints their view on actually significant relationships, and it ruins Percy's canon character tbh.
I came across a video edit appreciating Jason and Nico's friendship, and the comments were just filled with people raging on how Percy should've been included instead of Jason because he was "much closer friends" to Nico than Jason was. It's appalling how much ppl can turn to a blind eye when it comes to Jason.
People hate Jason SO much in this fandom that they literally refuse to admit that Nico canonically considered Jason as his first ever friend, not Percy (this is literally said in Tower of Nero, by the way)
You guys are seriously so hell bent on wanting to take away every little thing jason had that makes his character meaningful, simple to give it to percy when it isn't even necessary. Doesn't percy have enough good characterization already? Why deprive Nico of a genuinely good friendship? Jason spent time and effort to make Nico comfortable and succeeded in earning nicos trust. He taught nico to never push people away and not to be ashamed of being himself, Isn't that beautiful? Why do people get salty abt that so much? Because of course, it's about appreciating Jason for once, and not Percy, isn't that it?
My perspective on Percy and Nico is that, they were never really "close" to begin with and never ended up being close either, and that's okay. Percy tried his very best to be a brother to Nico, but they somehow always had tension with eachother because of Nico's internal turmoil of idolizing and crushing on Percy whilst simultaneously associating him with Bianca.
Sure, they talked it out a little in the end, but I'd like to think that some tension would always be there, because they started off at the wrong foot, and there was too much bitterness and resentment to come in their dynamic. And them never actually being close "brothers" makes their dynamic very significant and authentic. In the end, Nico acknowledged that Percy was a good person, and I like to think that's the farthest they've ever gone in their dynamic. They both are on amicable terms but the awkwardness still being there is very realistic, the weight of Bianca's death would always be associated with Percy to Nico, and it's neither of their faults. That adds SO much to their angsty dynamic, why get so upset about it when it's such an integral, and meaningful part of the story? Nico and Percy not being close friends shows how complex character relationships can be.
Percy doesn't have to be close with everyone just because he's the main character, it really deprives him of actually meaningful connections. The fandom forcing him to be buddy buddy with everyone simply because they HAVE to associate Percy with anyone and everyone, and getting angry that Jason is closer to Nico than Percy is, is just really weird.
Why do people feel SO threatened about Jason all the time that they have to get all defensive and suppress his connections by dragging Percy into videos that doesn't even have to do anything with him? I swear y'all are creating this whole Jason/Percy rivalry thing because you cannot bear to see someone rival Percy, and you want Percy to be the only powerful/good person in the books.
Let other characters befriend eachother without trying to insert Percy in there all the time.
Percy and Nico would never be like Reyna and Nico, or Jason and Nico, and that's completely fine. I like them better that way. You can't be best friends with everyone. That's just how life works.
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(DCXDP) The obligations of a rogue versus those of a parent (Pt. 5)
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Tw: torture scene (GiW agent receiving), general angst, canon-typical violence (DC), nobody is having a good time
Will be crossposted to AO3 eventually
(Masterlist/subscription post)
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It was pretty easy for Danny to forget that Dr. Crane was a rogue at times.
Most of the time he wasn’t comically evil, like what he’d expect of a Gotham rogue. He was helping Danny, even if only because he didn’t want to be taken in by the GiW as well. He was even downright nice most of the time, or at least neutral.
Sure, he had a strange obsession with fear and psychology, but that wasn’t really out of the ordinary for Danny. It didn’t feel like living with a rogue, just like…staying with a distant relative, or something.
He seemed like just an ordinary person.
Today, though, Danny was brought back to reality.
The GiW agent they’d tracked down together writhed on the ground, screaming in pain and terror. Scarecrow was sat a few feet away, setting up a syringe of the antidote he’d made.
After a few more moments, he injected the man with the antidote, watching him like a hawk the entire time.
Suddenly, the man surged forward, lunging at Scarecrow with a feral scream.
Unluckily for him, though, he was still weak from the fear toxin in his system, and from the beatings he’d received prior. Scarecrow easily wrestled him to the ground, settling himself on the broad part of the agent’s back with a vice grip on one of his arms.
“Let’s try again,” he said sharply, all of the warmth Danny had grown used to gone from his voice. “Where is the GiW base of operations?”
The agent took several shuddering breaths before spitting at Scarecrow, defiance and hatred written all over his face.
For just a moment, the room was utterly silent.
“Fine, have it your way.”
Scarecrow began to twist the man’s arm further. It wasn’t long before the agent began to squirm, then writhe, beneath him. Danny’s stomach churned.
“You know,” Scarecrow began, almost conversationally, “there are plenty of jobs that one can get without the use of their legs, especially with the level of education you have. Anything that doesn’t involve hard labor, really.”
The man’s face was beginning to turn red in his struggle not to scream. He took in gasping breaths, the way that his mouth moved almost reminding Danny of a goldfish.
(He felt awful for the comparison, but it was true.)
“However,” Scarecrow continued, “I find you’d be rather hard-pressed to find a job without the use of your arms. Especially in a place like Gotham, where you can always be replaced by someone eager to do your job for even less money. Of course, you could most likely coast off of savings and severance pay for a while, but…”
He leaned closer to the man’s head, his voice lowering.
“Would you be able to live like that? To live with yourself, if you no longer have a purpose?”
He allowed the agent a few seconds of rest before increasing the pressure on his arm. The agent gasped, letting out a strangled hiss. His arm bones were making fascinating noises in response to the strain. Danny felt sick.
“You seem like a rather driven young man. I’m sure your family would hate to see you unmotivated, directionless. Would they resent you, do you think?”
“Fuck you, you—”
The man was cut off by his own scream as Scarecrow finally allowed his arm to break, audibly splintering into thousands of useless shards of bone.
He had the exact pressure memorized. Clearly, he had done this before.
This was wrong. This was wrong.
Shouldn’t Danny step in, do something?
“That won’t heal cleanly. Even with the best medical care in the world, you’ll end up with permanent damage.”
The man below him wheezed and sobbed, choking on air as Scarecrow let go of his arm carelessly, letting it flop back onto the ground.
“Just the sort of thing something like you deserves,” Scarecrow hissed, his voice cold.
“You tortured a child, and you enjoyed it. You laughed with your friends about it. In your notes, one of your friends complained about the screaming,” Scarecrow brought his leg around, grinding his boot into the man’s broken arm. He howled in agony, writhing uncontrollably.
“Was it inconvenient to him, do you think? Too loud? If you were joking about it, clearly you thought so, too. I could fix that as well.”
He drew out another needle, this one once again filled with fear toxin.
“Scarecrow, wait,” Danny choked out.
Scarecrow turned to look at him.
Even his posture was different than usual. He looked… stiff, more like an animal than a man. When he tilted his head at Danny in a silent question, it looked like something in his neck had snapped, his head lolling to the side.
Danny wondered if he was consciously moving like that, or if it was habit at this point.
“You—we don’t have to do this. We can get information some other way, right? You don’t have to…”
Danny looked down at the GiW agent below Scarecrow. He didn’t even have it in him to glare up at Danny like he had before. Instead he laid limply on the ground, tremors rolling through his body uncontrollably.
“We’ve exhausted every other option and you know it,” Scarecrow said, his voice low, “this is the only way we can move forward.”
“Still, I—I don’t,” Danny swallowed, his throat tight, “this isn’t—this isn’t right. Isn’t there some other way to do this? Like—a truth serum, or something?”
“Truth serums are notoriously unreliable. They’re almost as bad as lie detectors. We’re much more likely to get a reliable result from this.”
Danny just stared at the GiW agent and his splintered, ruined arm. He began to weakly wriggle in Scarecrow’s grasp, which was graciously ignored.
He vaguely remembered himself doing the same thing when he was on the operating table; even if he knew there was no chance of escape, he still thrashed and screamed, desperate to get away. The jagged I-shaped incision on his torso felt uncomfortably warm.
What was there left to say?
“The Bat does the same thing at times, you know,” Scarecrow said, “him and the rest of his brood. By using my toxin, I’m actually lessening the amount of permanent damage that I’m doing. Physically.”
“Still, that doesn’t make it right,” Danny said desperately. “Even if—even if everyone in the world did this, it wouldn’t make it right.”
Scarecrow hummed.
They were both silent for a moment.
His next words were gentle, absurdly so when compared to the scene in front of him.
“I would love an alternative. But…”
He shrugged, hand coming to rest on the break in the GiW agent’s arm. Even without applying any pressure, the man stopped squirming immediately.
“There aren’t any other options,” Danny repeated, his voice flat and his body numb.
“Yes,” Scarecrow said. “I’m sorry.”
There was a pause. No one moved a muscle. Eventually Scarecrow spoke again, his voice strangely empty.
“You can stand outside and keep watch, if you’d like. At such a short distance their radars won’t pick us up.”
Danny said nothing, leaving the room silently.
He sat outside for quite a while.
He was grateful that Scarecrow had, with his help, dragged the agent to one of his previous hideouts. It was soundproofed, after all.
He was glad that he didn’t have to hear the rest of what Scarecrow did to the man.
After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Crane left the building, joining him outside. He guided Danny back to his beat up old truck and they drove home in silence.
“Did you at least…do you know where they are, now?” Danny asked as they entered the apartment, his voice small.
“They didn’t share the details of all of their locations with any one person. I know where one of their locations are, but not their main base of operations.”
Danny felt disgusted. With himself, with Dr. Crane, with the GiW.
He was disgusted by the agent, too. Did he just hate the restless dead so much that he would prefer to be tortured than to give them the upper hand? Did he really think he was in the right?
Was there a chance that he was?
Danny felt very, very small, and very stupid. Stupid and weak and cowardly.
“Danny,” Dr. Crane spoke, his voice soft.
“I’m truly sorry that this is happening to you. I really, truly wish that you didn’t have to endure my company. I…”
He fell quiet. Danny wondered if he was just saying this to pacify him, or if he truly meant it. He wondered if it really mattered in the end.
After a few moments of silence, Dr. Crane sighed, looking truly pained.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Danny was quiet.
“I’m going to bed early,” he finally said, turning away and leaving without a second glance.
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