Thank god for the Flash. And for Alchemist finally sitting down and explaining/listening to someone rather than just blandly grinding and complaining about people existing.
To be fair, people tend to treat Alchemist rather badly most of the time, even if he's not doing anything objectionable. Tiffany has been a little asshat for as long as he's known her, so of course he's not going to act like she's his best friend.
 
  • Dark of the Void. Nonmagical illumination, including sunlight, can't create bright light within 6 miles of the lair.
  • Torn Veil. Within 3 miles of the lair, disembodied voices whisper in the night. Celestials, Fey, and Fiends with a challenge rating of 2 or lower can choose to slip into the Material Plane from their native planes or vice versa.
  • Uncovered Knowledge. Secrets have a way of coming to light within 6 miles of the lair. Clues are inadvertently discovered, slips of the tongue hint at a hidden truth, and creatures become morbidly curious for forbidden knowledge. If the dragon dies, these effects fade over the course of 1d10 days.
So we see the first true traces of his Void Dragon powers coming in. Can't wait till the others start showing when he doesn't expect them.
 
Last edited:
And she'd told Doctor Quinzel about most of it and the woman had up and left without so much as saying goodbye!
I saw this and two things happened. I started hearing "let the bodies hit the floor" playing in my head, and I remember that what really turned Doctor Quinzel into Harley Quinn (at least in batman TAS, which is the only origin I remember) was that she got too emotionally involved with her patient (cared too much) and when he (Joker) came in hurt she had to do something about it.

Looks like Harley Quinn might just become a thing after all.
 
Last edited:
I saw this and two things happened. I started hearing "let the bodies hit the floor" playing in my head, and I remember that what really turned Doctor Quinzel into Harley Quinn (at least in batman TAS, which is the only origin I remember) was that she got too emotionally involved with her patient (cared too much) and when he (Joker) came in hurt she had to do something about it.

Looks like Harley Quinn might just become a thing after all.
And she'll be opening herself up to Retaliation Via Alchemist™. He knows who she is, and he can find both her and "Mistah J" in minutes, disable them both in seconds, and do something to both of them they'll both be regretting, possibly for the rest of their (very short) lives.
 
was that she got too emotionally involved with her patient (cared too much) and when he (Joker) came in hurt she had to do something about it.

Well, not quite. She wanted to "fix" him, to prove herself to the world by solving someone who nobody thought was solvable. That's why she became so disinterested when Penny turned out to be pretty normal. The way she tried to do that with the Joker included empathizing with him, forcing herself to understand the world like he does, and she's already a bit of a nutjob so he was able to guide her into fully doing that.
 
The whole League is wrapped up in so much secrecy that finding someone with the clearance and the credentials to work alongside them is a nightmare. They can't even hire a janitor, much less a secretary, a lawyer or, God forbid, a therapist. So they're stuck trying (and failing) to do all the work themselves, which stretches them even thinner. The mess at Mt. Justice and the leak at Star Labs are exactly the kind of issues that slip through the cracks.
Well, they do have Canary, you know the florist with a semester of psychology study and so many issues that she wouldn't be able to graduate, acting as team counselor instead of Guy Gardner (one of the three Green Lanterns that are active), who's an actually trained counselor and has experience dealing with troubled kids.
 
And she'll be opening herself up to Retaliation Via Alchemist™. He knows who she is, and he can find both her and "Mistah J" in minutes, disable them both in seconds, and do something to both of them they'll both be regretting, possibly for the rest of their (very short) lives.
Well, not quite. She wanted to "fix" him, to prove herself to the world by solving someone who nobody thought was solvable. That's why she became so disinterested when Penny turned out to be pretty normal. The way she tried to do that with the Joker included empathizing with him, forcing herself to understand the world like he does, and she's already a bit of a nutjob so he was able to guide her into fully doing that.
I thought there might be some unreliable narrator going on and that Harley disappearing might have been a direct response to something that Player One said that sent her down a path of vengeful violence - let's be honest, with Quinn it's an easy assumption. I had to search back and find the following
She hadn't really wanted to keep up with doing therapy at all when Doctor Quinzel had literally just up and left her office. Tiffany hadn't even known the serious blonde woman had quit until she'd tried going to the locked building for her regularly scheduled session.

But Alchemist actually recommended Doctor Meridian. The fact that the man was... not open, no, but he didn't seem ashamed of the fact that he needed therapy. That actually really helped.

"Harleen has been trying for years to get into Arkham," Doctor Meridian continued through Tiffany's silence. "Either the woman thinks she can do a lot of good in there or else she's planning on writing a paper and getting her name out into the scientific community at large. Either way, I can guarantee she didn't leave because of you, dear."
And recontextualised things for me since I'd completely forgotten that happened a while ago (october, real world time. Like, 3 months ago.), though no idea how long it actually is in-universe.

So yeah, I guess unreliable reader more than unreliable narrator on that one. Though if she is in Arkham her descent is locked in stone without an outside assist.
 
Last edited:
Well, they do have Canary, you know the florist with a semester of psychology study and so many issues that she wouldn't be able to graduate, acting as team counselor instead of Guy Gardner (one of the three Green Lanterns that are active), who's an actually trained counselor and has experience dealing with troubled kids.
John 'Crayon Munching Ground Pounder' Stewart: "He is unreliable and immature! He drinks beer in a safe and responsible manner. So he must be a alcoholic!"

Rest of the JL: "Welp nothing we can do but trust only one person's points of view. Especially if said person is actively speaking about instituting a version of Jim Crow for metas."
 
I wonder about the old situation with Ivy, the one where she helped attack cities.

It doesn't really make sense that she would travel out and about to hunt the homeless to feed Frank, usually she would just feed her plants the people messing with her or trying to attack her.

So a question from me is whether maybe Ivy did make a clone/child for herself and leave them under the care of her plants while she went off to try and figure out how to help the planet in privacy. So what if an older entity in the Green used this to influence the child Ivy and have her make him stronger?

What if this entity was Frank? And what if Jinx and Kary accidentally freed this Ivy Child from his influence?
 
Question! What Bestow Curse effects could Alchemist make use of on good ol' Dave? Remember, the effects can stack so long as they aren't similar enough to overlap or opposing enough to cancel out!

Clearly, first and foremost is to make the parts that allow him to function as a pedophile stop working altogether. Whether they remain attached or rot off is beside the point, I suppose. On one hand, remaining attached means a healer can't heal them back (not that there are many of those, and fewer still who would willingly heal a pedo), but on the other, it would give him hope that they might start functioning again someday.
 
Question! What Bestow Curse effects could Alchemist make use of on good ol' Dave? Remember, the effects can stack so long as they aren't similar enough to overlap or opposing enough to cancel out!

Clearly, first and foremost is to make the parts that allow him to function as a pedophile stop working altogether. Whether they remain attached or rot off is beside the point, I suppose. On one hand, remaining attached means a healer can't heal them back (not that there are many of those, and fewer still who would willingly heal a pedo), but on the other, it would give him hope that they might start functioning again someday.
All it really needs to do is apply a misfortune and a may you live in interesting times curse effect and then there you go, reality will torture him for you.
 
All it really needs to do is apply a misfortune and a may you live in interesting times curse effect and then there you go, reality will torture him for you.
Reality would have to work extra hard. Interesting to me means making the news headlines. A man getting beat or stabbed in Gotham is barely a conversation. Makes you wonder what would it take for him to make headlines.
 
Asterisks, actually. Or just italicize the word(s), or underline if you have to.
Asterisks? for real? so i was giving that other guy the wrong advice when he had it right from the beginning?
edit: just looked it up seems like your misinformed about the asterisks thing. anyway i appreciate the pointers but I'm going to keep taking cues from the other people on the site. ...and I'm dropping this line of discussion because this seems like something the mods might get on our case about. have a nice night man!
 
Last edited:
Asterisks? for real? so i was giving that other guy the wrong advice when he had it right from the beginning?
edit: just looked it up seems like your misinformed about the asterisks thing. anyway i appreciate the pointers but I'm going to keep taking cues from the other people on the site. ...and I'm dropping this line of discussion because this seems like something the mods might get on our case about. have a nice night man!
If possible, use italics; if you can't, use underlines; if you're using plain text (such as in a .txt file), asterisks are used.

Typically, you'll want to use italics, but that's not always possible. Still, don't ever use quotation marks for emphasis.

medium.com

How to Use Quotation Marks Correctly

The incorrect use of quotation marks can confuse the reader and change the meaning of your message.

[edit] I wonder how superfluous P1 will feel once she realizes that her entire existence (as far as Gaia and various other gods are concerned) is a convenient medium to pass information to Alchemist. Tiamat even called her his "messenger," explicitly.
 
Her own parents? They'd just put her in therapy and that was pretty much it. They acted like there was something wrong with her, now.

Tiff's parent really do seem to have dropped the ball, hard, and they've clearly done it over and over again. They didn't notice what Dave was doing to her, they don't seem to have nearly grasped just how traumatic the grooming and abuse was for her, nor how Leslie's suicide was yet another trauma, and they have seriously, seriously fucked up in so many ways in letting Dave's wife visit at all, let alone while Tiffany was here and clearly expected to behave politely to someone that was, at best, a bystander that made no effort to stop the abuse, if not actively condoning it.

It had been five months, almost six since all of that had happened. Dave was in jail, Leslie was alive, although he never contacted her first any more. And he barely spent any time with her unless she went out of her way to visit him. Karen, Mrs.Winters, she practically doted on Tiffany and treated her like she was made out of glass or something.

Her own parents? They'd just put her in therapy and that was pretty much it. They acted like there was something wrong with her, now.

See above about how Tiff's parents should probably have a very detailed and very unpleasant chat with a very angry Bats about how many times and ways they have repeatedly failed their daughter.

Alternatively, Al could do it and make it even less pleasant for them over a much longer period, but he's nowhere near as good at the conversational/social precision best used here as Bats is. Al is, after all, all about massively over the top responses to be 110% certain the threat has been ended. (See Vampires and how Al dealt with them as a prime example of this.)

"I..." she hiccuped and buried her face into her knees. "I keep messing everything up. And I apologized and it didn't make anything better and-" she swallowed heavily, forcing down a growing lump in her throat, "and now my power is gone and I'm gonna be kicked off the team

ohh, kiddo... :cry::cry::cry:

and Dave's wife is hanging around my parents and I don't know how to tell them I don't like it because she knew what he was doing and they won't believe me and I'm, I, I just..."

Again, Tiff's parents have massively failed her repeatedly, and could really do with repeated and ungentle application of the ClueByFour until they eventually get close enough that they can see how badly they fucked up, at least on the horizon.

Actually, there's a thought. Guy's a trained and experienced teen/child counsellor, yes? Have him explain the depths and breadth of their fuckups to her parents. He's a hothead, but he will 100% have Tiffany's well-being at the front of his mind as he does so, and he won't bother being gentle with her parents unless he has to for her sake. And even then, he will be using the very minimum required for her benefit.

He's a hothead, a blowhard and not infrequently a complete jerk, but there's no arguing that he's a hero, and this situation might call for exactly that mix.

She'd already started crying, anyway, and that wasn't going to let up until she'd cried everything out.

Impressive levels of self-awareness there for such a young and traumatised a person. Or maybe it's different for those raised AFAB, I have no clue myself having been firmly AMAB. Certainly for the vast majority of AMAB folks that'd be impressive levels of insight for someone at the other end of puberty.

That said, there really should be long-term consequences for all of these revelations, and they should be wide-spread, because so many have failed so many times, and currently show no hint of actually changing course at all. That's not nearly good enough, and not just on her parent's part.

Regardless of whether Gamer's Mind was worsening things or merely buffering some of Tiff's emotional reactions, her sudden loss of her powers, especially in such a casual way, has added to her trauma and will need to be addressed as well. The poor kid really needs something that can make her feel safe and like she has agency again, stat. Taking those powers away will NOT be at all helpful, but giving her the choice of when and/or how to enable/disable them might be a good choice.

Much like all of the therapy she desperately needs, this needs to be very carefully considered and even more carefully and cautiously actually enacted.

Barry is good people.

Barry really, really is Good People. Wally's no slouch himself, and Bart always means well, even if he's almost always deeply handicapped by his upbringing, lifelong strong connection to the Speed Force and the manifold weird parts of all of his personal history/ies. You've got to get the mule's attention first, after all, but when you do, Bart will cross the world and back to help someone with the slightest thing.

Quite literally, of course. ;)
 
I think Tiffany would do well to learn magic on her own. Her soul has been divinely touched and so even without the Gamer System she's an exceptional person -- or at least has exceptional potential. Learning magic herself, rather than simply grafting a few spells to herself through the Gamer interface, would allow her significant agency whether she gains her Gamer powers back or not.

And as Leslie has shown, even being divinely touched at a remove is a powerful thing -- and Tiffany was touched directly.

Alchemist can teach her, and she can further learn with Leslie, if he decides to help.

And if done correctly, it could solve quite a few of the issues she's had lately, such as feeling abandoned, and like she doesn't have a mentor. It would also help her with her narrow focus and inability to think outside of the box she's built for herself.
 
Last edited:
Much like all of the therapy she desperately needs, this needs to be very carefully considered and even more carefully and cautiously actually enacted.

Honestly, the way things have been playing out I think, at best, alchemist is going to have to be the one to deal with this, cause it really seems like none of the other leaguers can be bothered to actually do things besides Batman, and he's… a chronically overworked obsessive paranoid who really just doesn't have time… maybe he should just tell Alfred to deal with organizing the help and therapy these kids all really really need? He seems to get things done.
 
See above about how Tiff's parents should probably have a very detailed and very unpleasant chat with a very angry Bats about how many times and ways they have repeatedly failed their daughter.
What makes you think that the paranoid and deranged nutter, who gets his jollies by beating up the mentally ill (with a very well padded velvet glove while he leaves their downtrodden and desperate underlings maimed/crippled to die from blood-loss, shock and/or exposure ...) would care about the well-being of those he's responsible for? Just look at how Richard Grayson aka Nightwing formally known as Robin turned out. An anti-sozial, overly violent drug addict.

Your later suggestion of Guy Gardner would be a much better choice. So would Barry Allen or maybe Oliver Queen (he must be good for something other then his money, right?)
 
Back
Top