The Way My Jaw Dropped At This Bit

Turn Out the Lights

dcxdp fic idea

Danny Fenton is an environmentalist. Not because of Sam or Undergrowth or anything like that.

but because light pollution and smog block out the stars.

and he misses the stars.

When he was a kid he remembers looking up at the sky and being able to see the Milky Way with his naked eye from his own rooftop. By the time he left Amity he had to drive an hour outside the city limits to see even half that with all the sky glow.

And it was only getting worse. News was that even from the ISS Earth's light pollution problem was starting to interfere with their work. In 20 years would there even be a night sky anymore? When he died for real would his body be able to be laid out under them like he always imagined?

However bad Amity had been when he left, Metropolis was worse. While there wasn't the smog problem that their sister city Gotham had-all the street lights still had the place looking like noon in the Sahara around the clock.

So he studied. Got his Master's in areospace engeneering and then his PhD in environmental sciences. It was the hardest thing he had ever done and he defeated an evil tyrant before finishing puberty.

And now he was pounding on doors and camping out on sidewalks to tell people about the problem and get signatures to try and get a city ordinance passed. He was at every town hall, every HOA meeting. He sent letters and emails and made phone calls. He raised money for billboards and applied to grants for lower lumen lightbulbs.

(He may or may not then use his powers to replace burnt out bulbs around the city and install shielding on street lamps as he could)

It was on one of these escapades that he first ran into Superman. Who thought he was a super villiain or something. Danny shoved a flyer at him saying "he was just trying to help" before vanishing.

Later, one Clark Kent would be seen stopping to talk to a young environmentalist handing out flyers and asking for signatures on the sidewalk.

If asked the young man would claim he assumed the city was finally doing something about the lights.

Clark began to do his own research and what he found went far beyond no longer being able to see the stars from Earth (which he admit hurt, time was he could even see his old solar system). but the physical and pychological damage these artifical lights were doing was awful. Increased breast cancer risk? worsening bipolar and depression symptoms? diabetes? parkinsons? and that was just the effect on humans! the effects on wildlife were just as bad, if not worse.

And he thought lead pipes were bad.

It wasn't a front page story. Not yet at any rate. But there was a story here. And he felt obligated to be the one to share it. For that little boy back on the farm taking comfort in the night sky when he felt alone and missed his people. And for that guy with desperation in his eyes passing out flyers and begging for someone to listen like his life depended on it.

listening to music like holy fuckkk thas sounds

we remake Harry Potter movies

everything the same

But

house elves are replaced

with sexy Elves

Potential DPxDC Prompt

Danny survived high school with his identity intact. It wasn't easy, and it involved "Phantom" making a deal with his parents to help fight the ghosts in return for their amnesty if permanent banishment back to the ghost zone, but no one was getting zapped or gooped or vivisected, so it's all great! Meanwhile Danny Fenton, though his life, has perfected a near universal stain remover that's not just effective even post-washing, but is also environmentally friendly (thanks ghost zone chemists for working even after death on your craft). He decides to submit it to the Wayne Foundation's Innovations of the Future contest for a potential scholarship (Jazz was already teleprompting him from her college in sending out at least ten essays a week for scholarships from other sources). He gets a full ride to the University of Gotham, along with a hefty contract for exclusive rights to his stain remover formula. The issue? Danny knows the product includes a short-lived form of ectoplasm to work, and he is very, very hesitant to allow something as big as Wayne Corp to learn about that. His parents and their zeal caused so much harm just wanting to learn about the Ghost Zone. How dangerous would it be for an Entire Corporation, whose business is to exploit for gain, to learn about it? He didn't think this scholarship application through, did he? Meanwhile Batco is horrified and aghast that a civilian not only sent in something with Lazarus water in it for a fuckin' scholarship, it is actually useful for something besides raising the dead!

When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.

So I guess, like, if you’re here and you’re 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if you’re younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.

From facebook; mic drop.

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Daily Fic Rec Master Post

DPxDC/BatFam

November

Nov 1 - Some Kind Of Miraculous Bind

Nov 2 - Who's Old Now

Nov 3 - A Ghost in the Family

Nov 4 - Wanted: Dead and Alive

Nov 5 - To Hear, To See, To Smile

Nov 6 - Danny the hungry, hungry ghost

Nov 7 - Death Echoes

Nov 8 - Leap Before You Think

Nov 9 - Say Uncle

Nov 10 - Dad from Mars

Nov 11 - Alien Boys

Nov 12 - Fever Dream

Nov 13 - I've Been Erased Yet My Shadow Remains

Nov 14 - Happy Families Kill People Too

Nov 15 - Ghost Kid in Gotham

Nov 16 - Run Ghost Run

Nov 17 - Grave Promises

Nov 18 - A Little accidental adoption never hurt anyone! Right?

Nov 19 - Royal Hot Potato

Nov 20 - persephone's in hell

Nov 21 - Bus to Nowhere

Nov 22 - I Just Wanna Talk

Nov 23 An (almost Foolproof Lie)

Nov 24 - Who Else Is Also Real

This month's master list is color-coded! DPxDC fics are green and just DC/BatFam fics are in yellow!

As you can probably also tell, I didn't finish this month. I sorta got burnt out this month so...for the sake of my mental health I'm stopping doing my daily recs

-Okay, Punk Danny, BUT he’s leaking government secrets by hiding them in the lyrics and instrumentals of his band’s songs

-No one picks up on it until one undercover Timothy Drake Wayne happens to be at one of his shows and realizes this guy managed to give coordinates of a secret government facility by hiding it in the chord progression

-Cut to him listening to the album on repeat with a conspiracy board

hobie brown studies :)