Someone stole a 21 foot hammer from the community center in Healdsburg, CA and it hasn’t been returned so someone else (I’m assuming) mysteriously installed a 3 foot nail that reads “BAIT” on its head. (article)
So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.
So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.
And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.
Now. To get to my fucking thought.
Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!
They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear.They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day
What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”
They fucking did that
And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”
This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?
We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t b e c a u s e.
People in the replies trying to explain Father’s actions fall into one of three categories
Father didn’t baby-gate Ed because humans are like ants to him and he had no concept of how thoroughly Ed and co. could fuck his shit up
Father and the Hot Topic Brigade didn’t lock Ed up because they recognized the unbridled chaotic 12-year-old energy compressed into such a small vessel and they understood no jail cell on earth would reliably hold this thing
Father and his sin-sonas didn’t put Ed in a box because locking Ed away in their lair would mean dealing with Edward Elric day-in and day-out in their own home for the next four years and frankly even godhood isn’t worth certain flavors of hell.
Some Venom (the organism) story ideas, separately or combined as seem good:
Venom is not terribly aware of the concept of gender and has certainly no concept of it as corresponding to any particular anatomy.
Venom basically considers all mammals to be one sort of organism, and is still waiting for Eddie to chew hraka.
Venom considers gametic reproduction to be, frankly, so primitive as to be mortifying, but doesn’t bring it up out of politeness. (Venom’s concept of politeness is not recognizable as earth-politeness.)
Venom is not able to watch television/read/etc without Eddie’s vision and language centers doing the heavy lifting.
Venom is an obligate anaerobe and finds Eddie’s ability to breathe oxygen badass (but probably wouldn’t tell him that.)
Venom thinks Eddie’s endoskeleton is hilarious: opposable thumbs! Sure, I’ll just contract a muscle to pull on a tendon to pull a lever to pull on another tendon to pull on another lever! What a great way to interact with your environment at all.
Venom doesn’t know what a slime mold is but surely it must be the pinnacle of earth’s creations.
(L O O K i know this is not even remotely a response to the prompt of ‘bruce wayne gets railed by huge demon dicks’ but also you are all terrible sinners and this is quite frankly a best-case scenario)
It was easy to follow the path of the ratty brown trenchcoat traveling through tuxedos and gowns.
“Wayne! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Bruce had been watching him stomp his way up the stairs, and had made no effort to meet him, standing and sipping at his champagne. “John!” he greeted, too cheerful to ever be genuine. “Glad to see you got your invitation.”
“Yes, I know I wasn’t — what?” Constantine stopped in his tracks with a frown. “What invitation?”
“Your invitation,” Bruce said, gesturing to all assembled. “To the party. Which I assume you accepted, since you’re here. I knew you’d have to show up to one of them, eventually.”
“I don’t…”
The facts were these:
Bruce Wayne had apparently invited John Constantine to a party despite having no reason to believe it was necessary or desired.
‘One of them, eventually’ suggested that he had invited John to many such parties.
A party was often the easiest time to find and corner Bruce Wayne, when he couldn’t go handcuffing anyone to anything with ridiculous bat-shaped handcuffs.
John never expected or waited for invitations to parties.
Bruce could not possibly have been monitoring John’s activities closely enough to know when he ought to invite him to a party.
Therefore:
Bruce Wayne had been sending John Constantine invitations to every party he had thrown in the last six years, for the express purpose of ensuring that John could never have the satisfaction of crashing a posh party uninvited.
The pull at the corner of Bruce’s mouth suggested that he knew that John knew what Bruce had done, and this knowledge of his knowledge pleased him inordinately. He sipped at his champagne.
“Do you know who it is that you were just flirting with?” Constantine asked, returning to his original reason for talking to the man at all.
Bruce’s eyebrow only barely moved higher than the other. “I don’t know that I would say that I was flirting, necessarily,” Bruce said.
“Oh, I know what you look like when you’re flirting,” John reminded him, and Bruce’s eyes flitted away back over the crowd. “You were flirting.” Bruce shrugged. “Did you even catch his name?”
The corners of Bruce’s mouth turned ever-so-slightly downward, a twitch in his brow that wasn’t a furrow. His champagne flute drifted away from his mouth. “I don’t think I did,” he said, and this admission of his oversight was said with the awestruck manner that most people reserved for a glimpse of the divine.
Appropriately enough.
“You’ve been flirting with the Devil,” Constantine informed him, in as blunt of terms as he could manage.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Bruce said. “I haven’t seen Talia in months.”
John huffed, grabbing Bruce by the arm and pulling him toward the railing overlooking the ballroom. “Not the metaphorical devil,” he said. “I mean Lucifer, the Fallen, Prince of Lies, the Dark Lord Satan. You have been flirting with the King of Hell.” He gestured with both arms toward the circle of besotted partygoers surrounding the man to whom Bruce had been speaking.
Bruce scoffed. The man in question looked up from the dance floor. His eyes were all the colors of a sunset, and cherubic golden curls formed a halo around his head. He saw Bruce, and he smiled.
Bruce almost smiled back. It was the beginnings of a smile, a beginning that spoke of an ignoble end, asymmetrical and soft and small.
He stopped. He turned his head away, and his face went a familiar blank shape. He glanced back toward the angelic figure out of the corner of his eye, as if to confirm the effect, before looking away again. He set his empty champagne flute down on the rail.
“That is the Devil,” he repeated for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“King of Hell.”
“Technically retired.”
“What?”
“He just sort of putters around these days,” Constantine admitted.
“He seemed nice,” said Bruce, who now seemed wary of looking toward the party.
“He does tend to.”
Bruce’s gaze drifted back toward Lucifer.
“Wayne. No.”
“Hm?”
“You’re thinking about it. I can tell you’re thinking about it. Theology or philosophy or Stones lyrics. Stop it.”
“I just wish I’d known sooner,” Bruce said. He was watching those blonde curls intently. “I might have had some questions.”
“No. No.” John took Bruce by the shoulders. “That’s how it starts, just an innocent conversation, and then what? Look. I know we’ve had this little rivalry, you and me, over who can stick their dick in the least advisable place, but that is literally, actually Satan. You cannot fuck him. I don’t just mean you shouldn’t, I mean physically, it’s not possible. And even if you could — God knows, if anyone could find a way — it’s still literal, actual Satan we’re talking about here. There are very few things in this world I’m willing to state are absolutely and categorically bad, and one of them is fucking literal, actual Satan.”
Bruce grabbed a champagne flute off the tray of a passing waiter. “Despite what you seem to think, Mr. Constantine,” he said, “I have not yet sunk so far as to need lectures on ethics from you of all people.”
“So that’s the literal, actual, Biblical Devil,” Flash asked.
“You know, I didn’t have you pegged for the slow one,” Constantine said, “but way to buck stereotypes.” He took another drag on his cigarette.
“I just mean, shouldn’t we… be fighting him?”
“You want to try fighting the Devil, you be my guest,” John said, “but I’ve met people who make that their full-time job, and I can’t say I usually get along with them.” He exhaled smoke out his nose. “‘Course, they usually aren’t real good at their jobs, either.”
“We fight bad guys,” Flash said, looking to Wonder Woman for support. “He’s the ultimate, baddest guy, right?”
“Within the Christian faith,” Wonder Woman said, “Satan is considered a personified shorthand for the philosophical concept of evil, yes?” She had a thoughtful hand on her chin.
“Yes,” Flash said.
“If you’re simple, sure,” Constantine said. Wonder Woman looked down at him. “Not that I’m saying you are,” he added. She looked pointedly at his cigarette. He put it out on the sole of his shoe.
“He seems… masculine,” Wonder Woman said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Constantine said.
“And pale.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, love.”
She smiled. John smiled back. She didn’t rebuke him for the term of endearment. “I’m not,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure that everyone noticed.”
Lucifer Morningstar descended from the sky on wings of light. His suit wasn’t even rumpled. It was difficult to look directly at him; he smelled not of smoke but of heat, of lightning, of ozone.
“Consider the matter settled,” he said, his voice soft because he did not need to raise it. It was addressed to everyone, but his eyes were on Batman.
Even the Lightbringer couldn’t touch the impossible black of his cape. He was a figure of void in the light of a sun.
“Do not be so foolish as to think that you can depend on me in the future,” Lucifer added, stepping closer to the Dark Knight with feet that never touched the ground. “Your affairs are your own, and I prefer not to meddle — whatever else you may have been told.” His wings folded, dissipated. They remained as echoes, burnt into mortal vision. “This,” he said, standing too close to an unmoving and silent Batman, “was a rare exception.”
The Flash was by Superman’s side, where he had not been a half-second earlier. “Supes,” he said, speaking faster than ordinary ears could hear, “I need you to be totally honest with me right now.”
Superman had a very good poker face.
“Has Batman been a demon this whole time?”
“Thank you,” Batman said. “We appreciate it.”
“Hmm.” Lucifer cocked his head to the side, looked Batman over, as if there was anything to see through the impenetrable cape draped over the whole of him. “You know how to reach me,” he said finally, before turning on his heel. He didn’t fly away, or disappear; just walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling.
“Supes,” Flash said, “you’re not saying he’s not a demon.”
“I told you not to ask me about his secret identity,” Superman said.
“I feel like you could tell me he wasn’t a demon without it narrowing things down that much,” Flash said.
Zatanna sidled up to Batman. “Spoops.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She rested her elbow on his arm, leaning on him. “I have to ask.”
“No you don’t.”
“I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“No you don’t.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” At the edge of where his mask ended, he was turning faintly pink.
“Did he call you daddy? Did he say ‘oh my god’? Are those like the same thing for him?”
“Why would I answer that.”
“I get that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, so if you’ve had infernal dick in your mouth in the last twenty-four hours, just stand there and look stoic.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“That’s not a no!” she called after him.
“Superman,” Flash said, trying to shake him by the shoulder. “Kal. Please. If Batman has been Zee’s demonic familiar this whole time, you have to tell me.”
“Batman,” Superman said, addressing the man in question, “Flash wants to know if you’re a demon.”
Flash squeaked as Batman glowered at him, stopping in the process of storming by to lean closer. “What do you think?”
Constantine shook his head. “And that works?” he asked Wonder Woman, gesturing to the scene.
“Usually,” she said.
“What a bunch of morons. Present company excluded.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
there is something so comforting to me as a dilettante storyteller about eddie being a good-hearted dumbass with no impulse control. like theres no foreign thought processes that i have to try and simulate if i want to write his response to a problem. if eddie sees his friend in a glass case, if eddie finds out the guy hes gonna interview is dealing with wrongful death suits, if theres an alien about to get in a spaceship and go tell his people that humans are edible, the thought process is uniformly I FIX THIS NOW WITH MY TWO BARE HANDS. absolutely no consequences, all that exists in that moment is him and the crisis
but, you say. things are different now. eddie stands between venom’s predatory urges and all the rest of the planet, he has to be the reasonable one now. and i say yes. if venom wants to consume every person standing in front of them at the in n out then eddie says no dude we have to wait.
but now this is the baseline. eddie is fielding requests for living flesh at any given mealtime and he is so responsible for not procuring any. he is the rational one in the relationship now and HIS decisions are the good decisions now. eddie says to venom hey instead of eating this guy responsible for workers rights violations, we should just break into his house and steal his laptop and eat everything in his kitchen. that way we’re exercising a little more discretion and venom says I WANT TO EAT A LIVING THING THOUGH and eddie says i know baby but this is an exercise in self control
eddie lives his life as though one time he met a trickster spirit willing to grant him one wish so he wished that no matter what problems he encountered, he would always have a solution, and the spirit granted his wish on the condition that the solution must always make things worse
venom thinks dairy is hilarious. you take an animal with titties and you extract fluid from the titties and you wait until the fluid gets hard and then you put it in a sandwich. what the fuck. who does that. humans are totally fine with eating live organisms by the way when the organisms are too small to see and the entire appeal of the organisms being there is it makes the titty fluid viscous and sour. turns out you can make food out of the same animal for years at a stretch and the animal doesnt even notice as long as its gt big titties. EGGS you can eat the waste product of the unseeable organisms and its fine but try eating the waste of a seeable organism and eddie goes ballistic on you. except for the big weird balls of waste that come out of birds, eddie is fine with eating those, but only if you make them really hot first, nothing makes any fuckibg sense. eddie squashes a bug and venom goes to eat it and eddie says “no thats gross” and venom is like ITS FOOD. ITS A TINY LOBSTER AND YOU JUST EXECUTED IT SO ? and eddie says “yeah but we, humans, we dont eat bugs” and venom says THATS THE DUMBEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD NO WONDER YOU MORONS THINK OIL IS A GOOD ENERGY SOURCE
Imagine Eddie’s face when Venom finds out that, in fact, several other human cultures outside America eat bugs every day like it’s no big deal. One night Venom is surfing the web on Eddie’s phone to pass time while their love sleeps. They stumble upon an informational article about how many people in Thailand love snacking on grasshoppers, crickets, ant eggs, and woodworms. Their eyes light up with validation as they read that the bugs are seasoned and fried in a wok until crispy, then served to passers-by at local food markets.
Eddie is excitedly woken up at 3 AM by Venom who has some Very Important Information to share with is love. Eddie quints at the bright screen being shaken in his face and just rolls over grumbling something about waiting until morning.
the surreality of waking up at 3 in the morning because somebody is inside of your head screaming HUMANS DO EAT BUGS. YOU ARE JUST A LITTLE BITCH and your eyes open and you can only see the light of God and eventually that light resolves into a street food instagram video and you Know the food is bugs. it has been at least a month since the “we dont eat bugs” conversation and you thought it was over but Now It’s Not
Eddie walking down the sidewalk with 16 trillion bags under his eyes and an even more pronounced trudge to his step at 3:24 AM. He lifts his eyes to an absentee God as he desperately searches for a a singular shop that sells those cheese powdered mill-worms in little sealed plastic bags… Just to Settle the Great Bug Debate that’s been stealing most of his sleep for 4 painfully consecutive nights. Doesn’t even notice the pronounced raised eyebrow from the cashier as he purchases the bugs with all the pep and vigor of a Man Defeated. He hopes with what little sanity he has left that this will finally let him get some Real Sleep. Venom smugly wiggles in Eddie’s capillaries as he’s Cromching on a groggy handful of dead bugs. Venom’s victorious laughter fills Eddie’s head as he, to his weak horror, Develops an Actual Taste for Fucking Bugs.
He refuses to remain conscious after Finally Admitting that bugs Are Food. Venom pilots Eddie’s sleeping body back home happy and a Winner.
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