and all that jazz

...

Tim has been up for hours passed when he told Alfred he would be resting and he's wrapped up his case files into neat little bows to deliver to Babs and the GCPD/Lawyers to do their jobs. Damian had made a comment earlier in their patrol that night about Tim being the wrong sibling to make it to his rescue and... and it got him thinking about that phrase. His parents were negligent with him, certainly, but they were always very clear about how he stood in their eyes. Praise and criticism were the two options, and very strictly limited passes of 'I love yous' that faded as he got older.

He's run his DNA before in the national databases- it was critical for maintaining his Alias' that multiple people didn't flag- but he's never searched in records before. About his twin. About the one who didn't make it home.

And its definitely the lack of sleep, and definitely the lack of brotherly affection he feels these days, but Tim just can't close the door until he's seen a death certificate. He's hacked Gotham General Hospital a million times for work, but doing it for his own gain feels wrong some how and he works with extreme caution. He finds his own birth certificate and... One Theodore Daniel Drake.

Tim snorts with a short ha, pretentious name alert and goes on to find not a single certificate of death or medical record of atypia. Oh no, what he finds is adoption paperwork meant to be closed to all wondering eyes and one Daniel James Fenton leaving the hospital instead. Tim blinks a few times, retraces his steps and then sure enough, learns for a second time that his TWIN was still alive.

After a stinging conversation with Bruce, Damian decides that the best course of action for himself is to pack up and run away since he can’t stay at the Manor and he absolutely cannot go back to the League.

Which…leaves him two choices: either go off by himself or….

Sigh.

• • •

Damian glared at his reflection in a window as he impatiently listened to the dial sound that came from the payphone he stood at. He hitched the collar of his jacket higher as he discreetly glanced around him.

He didn’t have many options left after he decided to leave the Manor and the Waynes’ (it was for the best) if he had, Damian wouldn’t have dared to contact him.

Maybe it was just the anxiety and fear that he would also turn his back against Damian

Finally, just as Damian was about to slam the phone back into its place, a voice spoke. A familiar one that made his face scrunch up.

“Fenton household. This is Danny speaking.”

“Tsk. Hello, Danyal.”

Damian jerked the phone away from his ear as a harsh static sound erupted from it but it disappeared just as quickly as it came, a silence taking over the filled Damian with anxiety anticipation.

“Oh. Hello, Damian. Been a bit hasn’t it?”

A bit is a light way to say it.

“It has.” Damian took a moment to check his surroundings again.

“Uh huh. So, why are you calling me? I didn’t think the heir would wish to speak to the little ol’ spare.” The words in on themselves were harsh and cruel, but there was a lightness to the way Danyal spoke which made Damian’s chest both loosen and tighten simultaneously.

He opened his mouth to answer but couldn’t find himself able to do so, instead making a soft choked sound as he tried to inhale discreetly but it came off too sharp. The phone made a crackling sound as the two brewed in the silence.

“…Damian? Are you okay?” Danyal voice finally broke through hesitantly, a mixture of unsureness and surprise concern hidden in the layers of his tone and the general poor condition this payphone was in. “What happened? Aren’t you supposed to be with Bruce?”

The mention of Bruce Father, Damian couldn’t stop the soft keening sound that escape him. He clasped his hand over his mouth but it was too late, Danyal had heard it.

“Damian- Brother. What the hell happened?” The words were harsher this time but they were not directed towards Damian, who didn’t flush in embarrassment at the moment of weakness as he took a breath to recollect himself.

“The League is gone, Grandfather is dead, and…I did not meet Father’s expectations.” Damian summarized quickly, unsure how much Danyal knew since he hasn’t been with the League in years.

It was silent for a moment. “I see.” Danyal replied in a neutral tone before growing quiet again, the static seemed to return but softer and more in the background.

He was. Doing things.

Mostly, if he was going to be honest with himself, he was looking back on how he had interacted with Damian and not realized that his son was still prone to murder.

He knew the night had passed, and that it was sometime during the day, but when he got as...introspective as he was Alfred tended to only leave snacks instead of meals.

He was interrupted from his brooding by Tim's Redbird screaming to a stop in the vehicle bay.

"Red Robin, what-"

"-No time, because apparently Damian takes after you more than any of us realized and now I have to hunt him down too."

Bruce flinched.

Then what Tim said clicked.

"What do you mean, 'hunt him down'?"

Tim snorted as he shoved Bruce to the side and started up the Batcomputer.

"What do you think? He bolted. Also, here's the proof he didn't mean to kill Piotr." The last bit was said with the side-mindedness of someone pointing out something obvious, and a video feed was pulled up in the corner of the screen displaying the killing.

Except, it hadn't been that.

Piotr had snuck up on Damian, and had almost managed to get close enough to slit his sons throat when he'd somehow alerted Bruce's youngest.

Damian turned, sword at the ready-

-And Piotr genuinely slipped onto it.

"How did you-?"

"-National Parks and Wildlife had a live cam set up to overlook a rare bird nesting in someone's window, ran facial recognition, pulled it from it's database and onto our own servers." Tim finished what he was doing and straightened up.

"I'm coming with you, I have to apologize to Damian."

Tim turned towards him, eyebrow raised.

"Bruce, you didn't have a choice. Get on the Plane, we're going to Illinois. Preferably before Dick and Jason realize what you did."

Above them, the door slammed open with enough force that it was definitely broken.

"Well, shit. Guess now we just outrun them."

Bruce considered himself a brave man.

Bruce also knew his limits, and he knew he could not take the thrashing that his two eldest were about to unleash on him.

Yeahhh... turns out that having a genuinely kind and understanding parent figure raising you with love and care does wonders for a kid of any age tbh. Or at the very least is leagues better than the normal Targaryen upbringing of septons, septas, nursemaids, servants and a 50/50 chance of some kind of psychotic family member on the sidelines torturing them. Add to that that Dunk is not above disciplining his charges and making sure they don't turn out spoiled or cruel and you basically got a Targaryen raising machine.

Not sure how exactly cloning works in Westeros or if it's even possible. But imagine a darker AU where Aegon, realising that, just....orders Dunk to take a wife and found a noble house. Either they use the name Pennytree or Tall, no matter- it is founded SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of giving future Targaryen generations companions and advisors like Dunk was to Egg. The house would be in a really weird spot where TECHNICALLY they are only landed knights- but functionally they are addressed with all the respect and powers of a normal lord. With a standing relatively equal with the royal family in the sense that- since they are COMPANIONS -the princes and princesses obviously shouldn't order them around. They'd try to have as many kids as possible within each generation to get an heir and a spare for their own house while the rest of the kids are sent to court and raised alongside Targaryens. It's very very fucked up but unfortunately it works. The Dunklings DO usually inherit their ancestor's kindness and honour and are honestly good influences. To the point where the houses become almost co-dependent on each other.

He loves his muña, don't get him wrong! He really does! But even he has to recognise that it's getting ridiculous. Dunk just will not recognise any sort of deeper emotion he elicits in others while being fully convinced he's but a simple guard/basically a nanny.

Baelor doing the dragonshifter equivalent to peacocking about in front of him? Ignored.

Maekar trying to be hostile towards him due to jealousy over Dunk 'stealing' his long-lost son from him? Not addressed.

The rest of the court trying to play political games and trying to manipulate him? Disregarded.

Dunk is just head empty, eyes forward, "I wanna make sure Egg gets to fulfil his destiny without dying myself! No way am I messing with the story in any way shape or form by lying low" going through the motions much to the bewilderment of everyone else. In a world of intrigues and double meanings, it is surprisingly refreshing to meet someone who has the skills of a brick wall to the face. You'd think that would mean Dunk is easy fodder to bad actors when in reality his complete non-involvement in anything political makes him pretty well protected! Add to that that he's got the backing of the king and he's pretty secure.

More quotes with Fox, because apparently this is all I do with my life lmao

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

None of the signup methods require a password. It only takes email and birthday. Minimizing time on the signin or signup screen makes it harder for people quitting to avoid relapse.

"Characters" on the website will send messages "on their own" (prompted by the site) to try to invite inactive users back after as soon as 1 day of inactivity. This is likely to force FOMO, or make users feel more like they owe the bots a response. Unhealthy attachment stuff.

Account deletion is an essential part of every service that should go smoothly, right? Right? Wrong. It takes 1-2 weeks for a Character AI account deletion to be finalized, and account deletion requests have a high chance to not go through if you're not using the app.

Rephrasing: People leaving Character.AI are pushed to download the app in order to delete their accounts, if they haven't already. This makes it harder for people to quit and stay gone. Failing to quit an addiction makes it harder to quit successfully in the future, so this feels like a feature, not a bug. On top of that, the delete account menu reads like this:

/ban user:1153984868804468756

to get rid of it.

if you're interested in the Colorful support post i made regarding this, its under the cut. i'm livid.