Long Time Lurker

The business in question is more of a cheat since being king of the infinite Realms means he is fluent in any language to exist. Safe, dead, or extinct the status of a language doesn't matter to him. With Technus's help he sets up and online portal where people can submit pictures or copies of stuff for him to translate at a premium price. He refuses to take any money from the fruit loop and the money he learns will go towards his clone's schooling when she gets to that point. Right now she is using it for her travels and sending them postcards.

People who claim his translations as their own get black listed with a huge fee coming out of their bank account for the breach of contract. He is trying to keep his business on the down low so those breakthroughs that get on the news are not what he is looking for. His main demographic is rich snobs with private art collections. What Danny doesn't know is that his main customers are the Justice League.

There are some clues but he kinda ignores them. Like when a document submitted is a summoning ritual he sends back a partial translation since the summoning is not good (there are worst beings they could summon but it will still be a hassle) however revealing knowledge of the banishment is harmless.

Gotham cultists hate him because they know he can translate the whole document/book but all of their attempts to trace the sage of tongues (trying to give invisobill kinda vibes) they find a dead end. They try submitting from different computers, locations, routers, anything, but just end up giving Danny more money lol

The Justice League is almost in tears because the jusyice league dark could not agree on the translation of the banishment ritual and everything they tried before had failed.

His favorite translations are the stories that give alien vibes. They talk about certain structures (he thinks it might be structures) as if they are common knowledge. Unknown to him those are Kryptonian fairy tales that Lois submitted. She didn't want to give Jon a funny accent so Clark can read them in Kryptonian while she does the English.

Duke having a hard time with an assignment, sends an inquiry asking if he offers homework help (he wouldn't be using it for career advancement which is against the terms of service BUT he would be claiming it for points so he asked) and that is how Tim finds out about this sketchy website that can translate anything. Danny feels the sincerity and sleep deprivation in the inquiry so he replies back "I admire your courage and will do you a solid but only if your promise to sleep a minimum of 8 hours. I'll know if you don't and snitch so go to sleep 😴" The translation is attached and already in the format his teacher requested.

Steph: How is he gonna know?

Duke: Idk but he is a life saver!

Tim: Duke, did you just sell your soul for a homework assignment?

Duke: Let me sleep and then we'll see what happens 🥱

Tim is driven crazy because he needs to know who is behind the website. And also because Constantine was kinda in the area and said no. Duke has his soul even if he doesn't sleep, lucky bugger.

For Primus, being a god was a lot like playing a simulator game. He could control some things about the environment, but ultimately his creations did what they wanted.

He'd wake up, check in with his Prime, make some adjustments, and then go back to trying to recover from his fight with his brother.

He had a weird headache when waking from this particular nap. It seems he was asleep for a bit longer than usual so let's see what the logs say..

Theres a war?! What!

Why?

Who the frag introduced them to the concept of slavery?!

I finally got around to writing something for this :3

Primus loved his creations. He was too tired and weak now after his last fight with his brother to be there for his creations all the time. His long and frequent sleeps kept him from seeing what his ceations were doing, but he would always make sure to check in with the current Prime and make adjustments to the world for when he slept.

But when Primus woke up from his latest nap with a headache that wasn’t what happened.

He had slept longer than normal. He always read the logs what happened while sleeping before speaking to his latest Prime. It was best to be prepared after all. But as he read the latest logs, Primus was sure he was hallucinating.

There was a war going on.

A war that had already killed most Cybertronians, and caused many others to flee the planet.

How the frag did that happen?

Primus desperately scrolled back through the logs, trying to find the start of the war, only to feel sick the more he read.

The war started as a revolution.

The Senate’s power grew out of control as they forced mechs to do dangerous work for them for barely any pay—and Primus wanted to have words with whoever introduced them to the concept of slavery. Violent words.

The oppressed mechs (who named themselves the Decepticons) got fed up with their treatment and began wiping out the Senate and all mechs related to it which Primus thought was a reasonable response. Unfortunately, the newest Prime who gained his title in the middle of the fighting did not agree with this and started fighting the Decepticons to minimize the destruction. This then spiraled out into a full-on war.

That wouldn’t do.

It had been a long time since Primus had interacted with any of his creations other than the Prime, but it seemed like he would have to do exactly that and mediate between the Autobots and Decepticons. Normally, Primus was happy to let his creations do as they wanted, their antics were always delightful giving him a joy that was much rarer since he last fought his brother. He couldn’t let them tear themselves apart in a war.

Yes, what happened to the Decepticons was terrible, but according to the logs all the mechs behind that were dead now. There was no reason for them to fight anymore other than fear of what the winning side would do to the losers.

It’s always a treat to draw them hehe

Here’s their full designs btw! I wanted to have them share some traits, like the visor and black and white color scheme. But mostly wanted them to stand apart from each other, because it’s funny to me to make them have very different looks and personality wise, just complete opposites.

You gotta be tough if you're gonna be stupid. You can do stupid shit all you want but you're not going to avoid suffering consequences.

If you can't be tough, you gotta be nice. People can forgive a lot of stupidity if you're polite about it and pleasant to be around.

because here’s the thing. i’ve harped before on how fucking dumb it is to take the character whose central line in the og show was “no matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are” and have them immediately afterwards 1. actually somehow just not leave the country they were banished from, and 2. deliberately and knowingly choose to have their own memories wiped. like ???????!!?

and yeah, that then leaves the question, when it’s revealed in late s3 that she was banished and is possibly still alive: why didn’t she ever come back for her kids? why didn’t she at least seek out zuko, who was also banished and therefore at least theoretically accessible to her? why didn’t she try to intervene when she presumably learned about the agni kai and her son’s disfigurement? and if she never learned of it, how could that be without her either deliberately forgetting she had kids or choosing to actively ignore any opportunity to get information about them?

and my friends, this is where the silliest part of the whole kerfuffle is. because there was ALREADY a built-in, solid, well-explored piece of worldbuilding that could very easily have answered all of those questions in a way that wouldn’t fundamentally violate the basic foundations of her character’s nature. that piece of worldbuilding? the city of ba sing se.

As a writer, this solves so many of your problems. If Ursa ends up in ba sing se (which there’s decent reason for her to do, given that it’s entirely reasonable that she’d be worried about ozai changing his mind and deciding he needs to tie up loose ends, and that the city just repelled iroh, making it about the most secure location she could get) then once she makes it inside the walls she discovers there is no war in ba sing se. suddenly, trying to get information about anything to do with the fire nation, let alone the royal family, becomes extremely difficult and dangerous. she has a plausible reason not to know, or have very little and extremely delayed awareness of what’s happening to her children.

also, the city is fucking massive and packed to the brim with refugees. even with zuko and iroh getting all about the lower and upper ring, it’s completely plausible for her to have even still been there without amnesia and just. never happened to cross paths. big cities are like that. you could see a million people in a day that you’ll never see again and they’ll only be a tiny fraction of all the people there that you’ll never catch a glimpse of. plus, once you’re lucky enough to get in as a refugee, it’s probably not so easy to leave again, especially if you want to have a chance of being able to come back.

if you really want the amnesia plot, the dai li/joo dee worldbuilding is already set up there too! all you have to do is have ursa keep trying to find out about her kids, maybe even discover zuko’s banishment and try to either reach out or leave the city in response, and have the dai li catch her in a sting to crack down on citizens promoting awareness of the war.

badabing, badaboom, ursa gets joo dee’d and now you have an amnesia plotline without ursa deliberately abandoning even the memory of her kids.

I also thought it was far more tragic to work off what Zuko said, that they were a happy family once, but Ozai had a bigger love for power than family.

I know as a kid he could've not realized how things actually were, but it just hits me harder to think that they were a happy once, and from Ozai's lust of power, his family fell apart, it broke, it grew weak and divided. Conflicting.

And it just added to the lesson of pursuing absolute power is a loss of love, a collapse of your house, a weakness in your foundation.

How the higher you climb, the farther you are from the roots that held you up and together, and it makes the fall far more devastating.

His want of power over family, he sent away the wife he once loved.

Turned an older brother against him to plot in secret.

Banished the son that would help lead to his defeat.

Broke his most loyal and effective daughter and soldier as he left her behind.

And all it left him was being alone and overconfident. No one to come to his aide as he faced the wrath and mercy of the Avatar.

So Tim gets kidnapped. 

Makes sense. He is the CEO of Wayne industries. Of of the most notable Wayne children. His kidnapping is really no surprise. He gets kidnapped every other month.

But usually the kidnappers tie him up.

And take his phone.

And his laptop.

And lock the door.

And make it so he can’t just…y’know…leave.

And they especially don’t give him a very nice desk set up where he can continue his work unimpeded.

Bruce is confused.

Tim is confused and intrigued.

The kidnappers are by no means special. They aren’t any sort of costumed crook. They have no magic or powers. They are absolutely normal people.

Normal but smart people.

“Mr. Wayne, we have your son.”

“Which one?“

“The one who runs your business.“

“I see.”

“We want $10 million for his release.”

“I think you’ll find that Tim has already been subjected to multitude of kidnapping in the past. We are well used to these tactics.”

“Oh, this one’s different.” The head kidnapper responded.

“It is different so far. I’m not tied to a chair and there’s no lock on the door. What’s to stop me from leaving?” Tim asks, bemused and gesturing to the aforementioned unlocked door with his again unbound hands.

“Because we have coffee.“ The kidnapper replies, gesturing to a rather fancy coffee setup with a freshly brewing French roast.

Tim immediately perks up.

“And for every hour that our demands are not met, we will give him a fresh pot of coffee with an increasing grade of caffeine.”

Ten seconds pass.

There is a “ding” from the kidnapper’s cellphone as the notification of the payment goes through.

The kidnappers blink.

“I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect that to work.”

Tim, who had taken advantage of this time to make himself a cup of coffee and already finished it, sets the empty cup down.

“I’ll double it to keep me.”

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”