I Was Reading A Fic Called Leap Of Faith (Catch Me If You Can) By Alighterwood And ErinWantsToWrite On

I was reading a fic called Leap Of Faith (Catch Me If You Can) by alighterwood and ErinWantsToWrite on Ao3, and the Lloyd audio from TikTok (Ninjago, actually) popped into my head.

Anyway, here's this:

Batman: Robin.

Red Hood: It's 'Red Hood', Batman.

Bruce: No. R-O-B-I-N. I named you.

Jason: You ruined my life!

Batman: How could I ruin your life? I wasn't even there!

Bonus angst:

Jason: Exactly! You weren't even there! You were never there...

Bruce: Jaybird...

Red Hood: You were too late then, and you're too late again. Now, make your goddamn choice. Me or the Joker

A lady from our ward (LDS) just dropped off a bucket (with a shovel) full of my mom's favorite treats.

Mom: I don't know how she figured out my favorites.

Me, who got an email from said lady last month and spent 20 minutes quizzing my mom about her favorite treats while pretending to need the info to prove a point here on Tumblr: No idea, man

Phantom's Coffee

Enough Caffeine to Kill an Elephant Side Story

There is a lot that comes with being a ghost. Most of that is really cool superpowers. The unfortunate side effect with the whole being dead thing is that he doesn't have need for human functions or sustenance.

It had been a horrible thing to discover, really. The lack of constant need for sleep and food and drink was sometimes useful, but that came with the realization that nothing affected him.

At first, Danny and his team thought it was because he was dead. No blood flow, no working organs, no metabolism. This lead to a lot of experimentation. Drugs and alcohol had no effect, neither did poisons. He didn't get sick anymore, no matter what he did!

And then he realized that coffee didn't work.

Naturally distraught, Danny went straight to Frostbite to figure out what was going on. It's finals season, damnit! Coffee was gonna be the one thing to pull him through his studies!

"From what I can tell," the yeti explained, "your human functions have stopped. Quite the opposite, really."

Danny blinked. "But, I'm dead. Ghosts don't have working organs or stuff like that."

"Indeed, but you're only half dead."

"What difference does that make?"

Why did Frostbite now have charts, and where did they come from? "I can only guess, but when you died and brought back, the electricity jump started everything in your body. It essentially supercharged you. I can only assume that it'll die down in time to the point of non-function, but we can't know for sure."

"Wait," Danny's voice was nervous, "What does that mean?"

Frostbite took a minute to think over his words, looking for how to phrase what he wanted to say. "When you are alive, your heart beats slower than it did before your death, yes?"

"Yeah."

"That would be the effects of the ectoplasm that reanimated you. Your heart rate is slower, breathing takes a more conscious effort, your blood flow is slower, your organs are all working at half of what they used to." He took another moment of pause. "When you are dead, your heart beats faster than it did, breathing is faster, blood flow is faster, your organs are working at twice capacity."

Danny's breathing, now that he was very aware of it, picked up. "What- But that- What?!"

"With a high enough voltage, electricity kills. With a high enough concentration, ectoplasm reanimates."

"Reani- but I'm alive!"

"Indeed."

"But that doesn't make sense!"

"Doesn't it?"

"No!"

"Perhaps I should try a different phrasing." Frostbite said. "When you are Danny Fenton, you are more dead than alive in the sense that your body has been killed and not fully revived. When you are Danny Phantom, you are more alive than dead in the sense that your body was revived and not fully killed."

Danny was quiet for a moment. "Reanimated and revived aren't interchangeable, Frostbite."

"In some contexts', no. In others, they are."

"Are they here?"

A beat. "Yes."

Danny knew he was lying, but he didn't call him out on it. That was a crisis for another day, thank you very much.

So, higher metabolism for Danny Phantom, lower one for Danny Fenton. Great.

All crises pushed aside to freak out about never later, Danny's ew mission was to find out exactly how much caffeine would be required to give him the buzz of wakefulness that he was searching for.

Normally, the course of action would to be to measure how much e weighs and look up the maximum caffeine intake his body could handle. It was the first thing he tried, and it failed.

By the tried and true method of 'Fuck It, We Ball', Danny learned that he needs to have 35,000 milligrams of caffeine in a single sitting before any effect takes hold when he's drinking as Phantom.

The calculations running at a 5:1 ratio, caffeine milligrams to weight pounds, the lowest end on the scale of average weight of a small female elephant (3,175 kilos), multiplied by five gives him the 15,875 milligrams that would be enough to give him a low buzz and keep him awake for a few hours. That's enough to kill the elephants on the low end of the scale.

(Jazz vetoed any kind of caffeine that wasn't naturally occuring in chocolate when he's Danny Fenton. She said that he's already died once and that he doesn't need heart problems to kill him.)

(Danny calls bull, but he isn't willing to risk his sister's ire.)

Because he can't let finals get the best of him, Danny decided to take it a step further.

The highest end of the scale for the average weight of female elephants is 4,050 kilos, multiplied by the same five, gives 20,250 milligrams of caffeine.

Essentially, the lower end of the scale would give him the same effect as 99 (and a bit) 473 milliliter cans of Rockstar Energy Drinks in one sitting. The higher end of the scale would be 126 (and a bit) 473 milliliter cans of Rockstar Energy Drinks in one sitting.

All that was left to do, now that he has the maths for the desired effect figured out, was to mix that in his favorite drink: A Red Eye.

Truly an abomination for the ages.

After way too much brain power, Phantom's completed coffee order looks like this:

A large Red Eye with 20,250 mg of caffeine

2 tablespoons of cinnamon

1 tablespoon of honey

1/8 cup of chocolate syrup

and 3 mint leaves or 1 teaspoon of mint extract

(he added 4 shots of vodka when he turned 21)

Danny is gonna kick his finals' ass, and be hyped up on caffeine while doing it!

Storyboard

Callback to my grandpa (mom's dad) who had a parrot named Pete. About a year after Pete died, he got a second parrot and named it Repete (repeat)

How do I explain Silly Songs With Larry to someone who's never seen Veggie Tales?

🎙️"Everybody's got a water buffalo-!"

"The fuck?"

🎙️"'Cause you're his cheese burger! His yummy cheese burger! He'll wait for you-o, oh! He'll wait for you-o!"

"What?!"

🎙️"Oh, where is my hair brush? Oh, where is my hair brush? Oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh wheeeeeeeeeeere is my hair brush?"

"Right....there..."

🎙️"Barbra Manatee! You are the one for me! Sent from up above, you are the one I love!"

"I give up."

🎙️"We are the pirates who don't do anything! We just stay home and lay around! And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you we don't do anything!"

*sigh*

🎙️"Kung pao chicken! Mongolian chicken! Sweet and sour chicken!" "Stop! Break a fortune cookie." "Beware the grape with wooden mallet." "Ain't that the truth."

*smh*

So, everything I've read says that Gothamites don't celebrate Halloween because the Rogue Gallery all like to amp it up on this day specifically.

Can I offer a different storyline? Specifically the exact opposite?

Gothamites love Halloween. It's like their Thing™. The Rogue Gallery don't all attack at once on this night because it's the one night a year that they can get away with not having to look over their shoulders.

Since the very founding of Gotham, Halloween has been celebrated and held in better regard than pretty much any other holiday. At first, it was accidental, but then the founders said "fuck it" and renamed their town Gotham.

Pretty much every one of the Bats and Rogues grew up in Gotham, so they'd hold this day with the same reverence as the rest of the population. Which is, to say, the crazies crawl out of the woodwork, but not to wreak havoc.

Parties, festivals for the whole week, no school, only essential work, trick or treating, the works. Gothamites pull out all the stops for Halloween because no one ever expects it.

To the rest of the world, Gothamites are distrusting of everyone. Danger lurks around every corner. Crime runs rampant. Trust does not come easy, and it's near impossible to gain.

Put the week of Halloween? It's their Thing™. The magic everyone knows runs through the city like veins light up the streets like it's Christmas somewhere. Lady Gotham herself graces her people with her presence, however fleeting her sightings may be. The spookiness factor of their beloved city, though cursed she may be, is ramped to the highest heavens.

It's exactly why they invite people to visit during this week.

Normally, Gothamites hate visitors for a variety of reasons. Most of which is because transplants and guests don't know how to react to certain situations, nor do they carry the proper equipment with them.

The week of, and especially the day of, Halloween is the one time a year that no native Gothamite has to worry about an attack because the Rogues are too busy pranking the visitors with the rest of the city! Even the Bats and Birds get in on it!

It's all fun in games, really.

Sometimes Bludhaven will get in on it, following Nightwing because he was raised in Gotham for a good chunk of his life, but they're less Halloween and more Harvest Festival.

Anyway, the TDLR, I guess is this:

The week of Halloween is the one time a year that Gothamites drop all suspicion towards each other, band together, invite visitors, and prank the ever loving shit out of the world.

And it works every year, without fail, because people don't learn. The festivals and parties are too enticing to pass up because Gotham just looks like the place to be for a good scare. And boy do they deliver