Author's Notes

Well, this particular blob ghost hangs aroung Gotham, bouncing imperceptibly around Crime Alley and feeding on all the startlingly arrayed emotions there. It latches onto one source in particular, a recently moved-into-the-neighborhood Halfa and honorary Outlaw Danny Phantom, who has a huge goopy crush on the Red Hood.

As it turns out, that huge goopy crush has a transformative impact on how our blob ghost manifests. Hence: Fatson Todd.

Whether Danny, Jason, or some Bat finds him first, it's going to be a fun time.

Danny will just have to figure out, though, how he can spin this very damning turn of events into something less mortifying.

Danny, projecting all his feelings towards Jason onto this little blob, because they're friends and Danny doesn't want to risk losing him as a friend if he confesses. Because Danny is still a little younger, a little softer, not quite at the level of emotional maturity, that possible rejection of romantic affections doesn't mean a friendship would go up in flames.

The audacity of this punk. Jason set the pitcher of filtered water - filter upgraded with Bat-tech, because who knew what the fuck in Gotham’s water supply made it past the city’s filtration and your standard Brita - down on the counter with a little more force than usual. A hard breath vented through his nose while he watched the scene playing out in front of him. 

This safehouse was a studio, which meant that from where he stood in the kitchen he had an uninterrupted sightline on the idiot fuck he’d invited here and the other, littler, more infuriating idiot fuck that he hadn’t invited. Phantom - Danny - floated about a half-inch over his couch, tossing the pretender blob ghost up into the air, cooing when it flew back to him with enthusiasm. 

Complete with flailing, stubby little limbs, spherical body modeled after Jason’s own Red Hood getup wobbling, wide eyes watery and stupid no matter what the hell was happening around him. Damian, the traitor, had taken to calling the thing Fatson Todd. 

He’d almost run him through with the All Blades for that. Damian or Fatson, it didn’t matter particularly to him. 

What did matter was that, despite having spent the last month all but waving a Pride flag in Phantom’s face, tossing rose petals at him or - even more absurdly - actually telling Danny that he wanted to take him out in the way he usually didn’t mean, Phantom hadn’t gotten the message. He would have been tempted to think the other was just trying to let him down easy, pride of the other kind intact, except Phantom reacted to all his hints, tells, and advances with everything short of actual recognition. 

Deep green blushes, clawed hands scratching nervously at the back of his neck, the ambient temperature dipping with his emotional spikes. It was pretty telling. 

And yet, here Phantom was, playing with the damned blob instead of the six-foot wall of muscle and chiseled jawline that was trying, very earnestly, not to blow the fuck up. 

“Gah, Ancients, aren’t you just the sweetest thing?” Phantom laughed, falling back so that the axis of his levitation shifted by nearly ninety degrees when Fatson barreled into his chest. “I could just love on you all day. You’d like that, wouldn’t you Fatson?”

Phantom then pinched the blob’s imitation cheeks. Jason seethed. The usurper hadn’t let him get a proper hour alone with Phantom since he’d been found and promptly delivered to him. When Fatson wasn’t with Phantom, he was with Jason and flaunting the comedy of errors that had been his attempts to End the little thing with a deliberacy that Jason knew was there behind his wide, vacant eyes. 

Like - Jason gaped - just now. Fatson looked up from Danny’s ministrations, met Jason’s eyes, and began to babble cheerily, core resonating with the frequency that Jason had only recently been learning to parse but which undeniably elicited excitement, love, mine mine mine. 

And in Jason’s own safehouse. 

He met the little ecto-bastard’s eyes and aggressively mimed slitting his throat. 

The gesture ceased, though, as soon as Danny followed Fatson’s gaze across the way to Jason. “Oh, Jay, would you grab one of those ecto-cicles from the freezer? I think your kid’s earned a snack.”

He fought valiantly not to grimace. This was the other indignity he’d been suffering lately: Phantom’s insistence that Fatson was somehow Jason’s son. All because Jason was unwilling to get the thing in front of Danny when he was so clearly enamored with it. It had taken all of his willpower not to explode when Danny claimed that, since Fatson had gained the ecto necessary for corporeality from him and had modeled himself after Jason, he was their. kid. 

“Sure,” he tried not to grit his teeth. “Anything for the kid.”

“That’s why you’d make such a good dad,” Danny said, then seemed to cringe, dark green spreading high across his cheekbones, before returning his attention to Fatson with a vengeance. 

He was going to lose it. 

“Aren’t you just the handsomest boy? The sweetest?”

He was going to fucking lose it. 

“I love you so much Fatson,” Danny’s voice lowered, but not enough that Jason couldn’t catch it. “My special boy -”

Before Jason was quite aware of what he was doing, he’d crossed the room, scruffed the imposter by the back of his fake ecto collar, and tossed him back over his shoulder -

and sat, squarely and heavily, in Phantom’s lap. 

Rocky chose a hand to match Grace's scar!

As I've been alluding to over the past few weeks, I think it was @uniasus who reblogged some information about podfic exchanges and I went "hmm, I've always wondered about podfics. But I don't know anything about how an exchange would work. A podfic of 'The Magic Man of Oz' would be cool," and then I was Seized with the Overwhelming Need to make an overly complicated podfic of "The Magic Man of Oz."

AND I DID. And I've listened to it many times and am not sick of it yet! So it must not suck!

So allow me to introduce to you The Amazing One-Woman Audioplay of my Favorite Fanfic I've ever written, "The Magic Man of Oz":

LISTEN:

(in two senses of the word)

I have often mourned that this fic really requires knowledge of all three seasons of a cult TV show to be fully appreciated, BUT there's something about it being a full-blown audioplay now that I genuinely think it can be enjoyed on its own. For you, the unfamiliar-with-Legion follower of mine, it's just a surreal and sometimes funny Wizard of Oz retelling with a great soundtrack.

Because yes Dark Side of the Moon is all through this. How could it not be? You can't mash Legion with the Wizard of Oz and not include Dark Side of the Moon. (And if EMI/Capitol Records has a problem with that I will confidently argue the Fair Use basis!)

So if you're doing household chores or commuting and need something to listen to for an hour, might I recommend THIS??? It's about an hour long and even I find it pleasant, even if it's the sound of my own voice attempting to do individual voices and sometimes with the help of pitch adjustment so I can sound like people with very deep voices!

Speaking of characters with deep voices, @stephsageek you are I think literally one episode away from understanding why Ptonomy is playing the part he is playing in this (though on the other hand everyone is cast so perfectly one would wonder what part he would have played before), and the Season Three references are more contextless spoilers than actual spoiling spoilers, so you (and other people who may be avoiding Legion spoilers) can probably listen soon, too!

like. I don't quite know how to put it into words, but sometimes I still have some lingering prickliness I'm trying to shake off at the idea of him continuing to say "the other me" after they learn he's basically just a spirit who's living in there with him because it triggers this instinctual concern in me about selfishness. but like. Yami WANTS this. he only BARELY has anything else after they're told he's the pharaoh. he knows ABOUT himself, just a little tiny bit, but he still has no alternative name, no memories of being THAT. only memories of being Yugi.

Yugi is offering to share a sense of identity, a sense of REALITY. it's not that he's putting himself first or thinking that he is the most important. he's saying we can share this life. and Yami wants to.

hey so. don’t do this.

“coming from a place of respect” there is nothing respectful about a comment like this. this is exactly why I say witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

I am not saying “you’re an asshole if you think a fic is ai”. I have come across fics that I believe were ai-generated. but instead of asking (accusing) the authors, I make my own decisions whether I’ll continue reading for the benefit of the doubt or quietly exit the fics and look for something else to read.

because with every accusation like this, there’s always a chance of a genuine, innocent writer getting wrongly accused.

last but not least, fanfic writers do NOT owe you anything. they write for themselves and their own enjoyment. their ao3 accounts are their houses and they were kind enough to let you in their houses. for free. (you get to read things for free.) you don’t go into other people’s houses and tell them “actually I think the way you decorate your room is sus. did you actually do it yourself or did you ask a robot to do it for you?”. THEY 👏🏻 DON’T 👏🏻 OWE 👏🏻 YOU 👏🏻 ANYTHING. and I say this as someone who is not a fan of ai fics. if you don’t like what you’re seeing, quietly leave.