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Sometimes you’re trying to focus in school but your brain is like “Yo, remember that really good fic you’ve read a while ago? That was a good fic.” and you’re trying to ignore it but also you do remember because it’s been living rent free in your brain for quite a while now and it was, indeed, a really good fic.
Anyways, “Home” by @selkienight60 is a really good fic, alright-
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"Damian is a murderous brat", "Damian has murderous tendencies", "Damian shouldn't be in the Batfam because he's an assassin"
Damian the second he's allowed some agency outside the league:

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duke: i have to tell you something
dick: what
duke: i killed somebody once...
dick: me too
duke, laughing: APRIL 1
dick: july 18
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Careless Accidents
jason todd x fem!reader
aka you get hurt and jason’s pissed
warnings: reader’s wrist is accidentally sprained from being grabbed too hard



You could hear scuttling from somewhere else in the garden, an estate more than sizable enough than the game afoot.
You were under the distinct impression though that the bats and birds are playing with you similar to how they would a child. Slower, weaker, and less experienced than the big kids. You weren't complaining though. Because, frankly, it was stressful. They tend to operate more like they’re in a warzone than a game, you felt like you were about to be sniped out at any second.
Rightfully so, apparently, seeing how silently Stephanie had crept up on you.
“Hey,” Stephanie hissed, ignoring the way you jumped. “We’re doing alright for ourselves,” she said smugly.
“Yeah,” you’d nodded, like you agreed with her more than you probably did.
“Okay listen, I think the flag—” what flag? “—is by the fountain so, I think because there’s three of us and two of them, we should bait-and-switch.”
“We’re on teams?” you asked, no longer completely sure you know what you’re playing.
“We are now!” she smiled, starting to run. “I’ll bait!”
She stopped briefly in her tracks and turned back to you hissing, “Don’t trust Cass,” before scurrying away.
Rather than sit around and wait there for…something?...to happen, you jumped up darting in the opposite direction with little to no indication whether this is a good move.
What you didn’t see is Cass rapidly approaching from your rear.
What you also didn’t see was Dick crouched down in a row of shrubbery, which gave him the perfect opportunity to snatch your arm up and yank you down with him. You’d mewled a bit as your wrist made contact harshly with the grass, immediately buckling under you.
Cass was keen to your pain immediately, slowing her sprint to a stroll as she observed you.
“Are you okay?” she signs.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.”
The response was instinctual and you didn’t actually have time to register whether or not you were okay by the time you gave it.
You pushed up on your elbows, trying to figure out whether Dick is even on your team, but the way the others approached had you halting consideration. They’re savvy to the situation at a speed in which you can only attribute to their vigilantism, looking at you with concern.
“You good?” Tim asked, approaching languidly.
“That looked like it hurt,” Cass commented, crouching down next to you to see your wrist better.
Dick shook his head, “No, she’s okay.” He turned to you, prodding, “You’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m, um…” you winced, looking at your wrist. “It hurts a little.”
Cass examined it closely, tilting it gently to the side. “It might be sprained.”
Dick paled.
“No.”
Tim pointed a thumb back towards the manor, “We can get it wrapped upstairs.”
“No.”
You were only then able to clock the barely contained grin on Stephanie’s face, begging to break.
“Ooooh. He’s gonna kill you.”
Cass had then kindly offered to take you inside and wrap it up for you, which you accepted, unexpecting of the plus-one of Dick trailing behind you like a guilty puppy all the while.
“You know I didn’t mean to grab you that hard right? I—”
Cass laughs quietly as she wraps the bandage around your wrist, amused by Dick’s now-third explanation/apology for the incident.
“I know, Dick,” you say, trying to appease him.
“I’m sorry,” he tells you genuinely, but you can tell there’s more there that he isn’t verbalizing.
You nod, “I know, Dick. It’s okay. It was just an accident.”
Cass pins the wrapping in place securely and with a smile, signs to you that she’s all done.
You rotate your arm a bit, testing your movement under the wrap. As Cass leaves with the first aid kit, Dick remains sat at your side, leg thumping up and down.
He takes a deep breath, “What if…what if you avoid him until it heals?”
“Dick.”
He takes your uninjured hand in his with urgency in his eyes,
He looks down at your jointed hands before loosening his already mild grip significantly.
“Are you going to tell him?” he asks, looking like he’s bracing for bad news.
You shake your head sympathetically, “No. I can’t guarantee you that he won’t find out, but I won’t tell him.”
Dick takes a deep breath, looking at the ground with intense focus. “Okay. Okay.” He stands, “I need to go.”
You watch in amused bewilderment as he staggers out the door, looking around frantically.
Within the next few minutes, he creates and enacts his plan A. He walks into the living room, sitting down next to a very disinterested Tim, eyes forward and serious.
“I’ll give you two grand right now if you tell him it was you.”
Tim barks out, “Absolutely not.” He looks at his brother, still laughing. “No fucking way.”
Dick breaks the serious facade immediately, looking at him. “Five.”
A deadpan from Tim.
“You don’t have five thousand dollars.”
Dick throws his head back, back thudding against the couch. “Dude, please! He’ll kill me!”
Tim scoffs, “He’d kill me!”
Dick huffs, “No, it’s different for me! Do you have any idea how many times he told me not to do that?”
“Well then it sounds like you fucked up,” Tim sneers.
“Oh my God.”
He takes off again, combing through different rooms in the house with hope of finding a quick but effective hiding place for, say, the next twenty years?
He bursts through the study, unwittingly interrupting Bruce and Alfred having a discussion over tea.
The latter sits up with a tense brow, “Master Dick?”
The former turns around in his seat, “What’s the matter?”
Dick struggles for a second before confessing, “I accidentally sprained someone's wrist.”
Bruce scans his face slowly, nodding. “Alright…you’ll have to take responsibility for their patrol duties—”
Dick cuts him off with a sharp breath, “Said person doesn’t have any patrol duties to be affected...”
Bruce processes for a moment before shaking his head.
“I can’t help you.”
Dick’s panic takes over again, prompting him to continue his scurry through the room, towards the other door.
Alfred interrupts his process with a very logical argument, “You don’t think running away will make this worse, Master Dick?”
“I—I don’t know!” Dick whines, stopping in his tracks. “I don’t know what to do!”
Bruce purses his lips, gesturing, “Dick, when you make a mistake…you have to submit to the consequences, you know that.”
Dick gapes, “This is not a normal consequence!”
Meanwhile, you’ve busied yourself with fiddling with the knick knacks and mementos lining the shelves of Jason’s childhood bedroom.
You’re admiring a picture of him and Alfred from when he was young as the door creaks open behind you.
“Sweetheart?” Your boyfriend calls out, head barely poked in through the crack.
“Hey, Jay,” you smile, setting the picture frame back on the shelf.
He enters fully, covered in motor oil and grease, and smiles his sweet, easy smile when he sees you.
Moving onto the next trinket on the shelf, you pick up a stuffed animal placed intentionally at the front. Your gaze finds the mirror, watching his reflection as he pulls the stained shirt off his back.
You smile to yourself, noticing the way his back muscles flex as he adjusts. “How’s the bike?”
“Better than it was this morning,” he sighs. “Where’ve you been?”
He turns around to look at you, taking easy steps towards you.
You return the toy elephant to its place, moving to face him. “Uh, we were outside, playing…at least three separate games at once.”
The second you’re in proximity, your hands join like it’s second nature.
He nods, all too familiar with the family’s unique methods of gamefair.
“Did th—” He looks down at your intertwined hands, brow furrowing as soon as he spots the bandage wrapped around your wrist. “What happened?”
You glance down, shrugging. “Overexerted myself playing tag.”
He looks at you skeptically, but says nothing about it.
He turns your hand over gently, asking, “Is it sprained?”
You nod, relaxed. “Yeah. Cass said it’s mild.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“No,” you say, sweeping his hair back with your other hand. “Barely hurt then.”
He nods, but he doesn’t look satisfied with the conversation.
Regardless, he turns away again, shuffling through a drawer for a clean shirt.
“You, uh, you wanna stay for dinner tonight?” he asks, pulling his arms through, his head following.
“Yeah,” you say gaily. “Alfred said he’s making his ‘special spaghetti’, apparently it’s a household favorite?”
He wavers, halfway to between decisions. “Yeah…”
He huffs quietly, turning back to face you fully. “Can I see it?”
You nod, happy to ease his mind.
You start to unwrap the bandaging, him doing half the work for you. The work is done silently until your wrist is exposed, revealing your bruised skin.
You both see it at the same time—the hand-shaped bruise wrapped around your wrist.
You’re both quiet for a second—him putting pieces together and you waiting for the shoe to drop.
He takes off suddenly, clearly having come to a likely very accurate conclusion about what had happened.
“Fucking idiot—”
You try for his hand but he’s out of reach before you can grab it.
“I’ll be right back,” he grumbles behind him.
“Jason—” you sigh, “At least help me wrap it back up first.”
He hesitates, halfway to the door, ultimately returning to you in defeat. He takes your forearm gently, scanning it over again before beginning to wrap it.
You watch his face closely, noting the clear vexation. “It was just an accident,” you tell him.
He scoffs, “It better have been.”
You drop your shoulders and lull your head to the side. “Jason. I’m not made of glass, you can’t expect other people to act like it.”
“I don’t. I expect him to mind his own strength, and if he can’t do that, he needs to keep his fucking hands to himself.”
You sigh, “Just don’t do anything harsh. Please. I think he’s worried you’re gonna punch him.”
“He should be,” he says shortly. He finishes off the wrapping, pinning it in place firmly.
You grab onto his forearm before he can pull away, “You’re not going to. Right?”
He doesn’t answer so you try to make his gaze meet yours, “Right?”
His eyes roll, “Yeah, fine.”
You smile, holding his face. “I love you.”
He huffs as though he’s inconvenienced, but confesses the obvious truth nonetheless. “I love you.”
He looks you in the eye, face serious. “You promise me it doesn’t hurt?”
“I promise,” you nod, brushing your fingers against his palm.

“Dick!”
The angry voice bellows through the tall halls of the manor, heavy footsteps thudding.
He stomps into the living room, Tim, Cass, and Stephanie watching the entryway with wide eyes.
“Where is he?”
Unwitting shoulders shrug and heads shake. Truthfully, at that. Dick, smartly, did not tell anyone where he was hiding.
Jason scans the trios faces, looking for any sign of apprehension.
He clocks the grin shamelessly plastered across his sister's face quickly. “Stephanie?”
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “But let me know when you find him, I wanna see—”
But Jason’s moving onto the next room before she can get the last words out.
He enters the dining room, looking right to left before finding his target, halfway to stuffing himself behind the fine china cabinet in the corner.
There’s a brief, tense moment in between where the pair realize what they’re seeing and when Dick sets off in a sprint towards the kitchen, Jason quick on his tail.
“Really? Really?” Jason shouts.
“It was an accident! It was a fucking—”
He narrowly dodges a swipe from Jason, then ducking before a ladle could make contact with his head.
“Are you stupid? Are you the dumbest motherf—”
Dick rounds the kitchen island as fast as possible, Jason testing him on the other side.
Dick takes a breath, “Dude, it’s fine now, it’s not that big of a—”
Jason recoils, “‘It’s not a big deal’? Come here. Let me sprain your wrist, asshole!”
He circles the counter quicker than the elder boy can think to move away and lunges at him.
Dick throws his hands up in front of him, “Wait, wait, wait! Truce! Truce! Truce?”
Jason drops his shoulders, leveling his older brother with a look. “You can’t call a truce if you’re the only one who did anything wrong.”
“I…” It doesn’t take him long to piece together that his defense makes no sense, so he resorts to his last option.
“Please?” Dick asks, nothing short of imploring.
Jason relents—slightly—upon hearing his brother's tone, but still finds it in him to shove him, though not nearly as hard as he’d been planning to.
“I told you a hundred fucking times not to grab her so hard—”
Dick nods heavily, waving a hand. “I know, I know—”
“Clearly you fucking don’t!” Jason shouts. He huffs, running a hand over his face. “You sprained her wrist. You’ve been doing this vigilante shit for fifteen years, how do you still not fucking know how to control your own strength?”
Dick grimaces, “I do! I do, I just screwed up, I’m sorry!”
“Don’t—” Jason narrowly holds back a scowl, “Did you apologize to her?”
“Yeah, of course I did!”
For a split second, Jason looks ready to keep arguing before purposefully dropping the anger from his body.
The resulting relief almost drowns Dick.
It only lasts a moment though, before Jason looks at him again, sneering, “Idiot,” before pushing him once more.
“Jason.”
Your voice has Jason dropping all turbulence in an instant. He and Dick both whip their heads towards the door, equally unexpecting of the interruption.
You tilt your head at your boyfriend with a knowing but disappointed stare.
He looks back at you like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, lips parted.
“I didn’t hit him.”

⭐️ your options are: (1) reblog fics or (2) be a little bitch ⭐️
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Charles: We were in bed- not in the same bed (fans cheering 😭) and we were playing chess, okay? So the last game he wins, and so its 4-4, and I'm like "oh my god" and he doesn't want to go to sleep being 4-4. So hes like "lets do another game!"
Lewis: We can't go to bed when it's 4-4, we gotta play another game
Charles: But I was so tired and I didnt want to play that game.
Lewis: He's home, I'm on the flight to Japan, so I'm like mid air, somehow got internet and its quick enough... so next game, he's making moves so good... so I go "Maybe I'm going to find some suggestions, so I found this website and it gives you predictions... - And he goes, "wait a second- are we both cheating?"
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Writing Tips
Punctuating Dialogue
✧
➸ “This is a sentence.”
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
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The article is under the cut because paywalls suck
This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:
Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.
Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.
Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.
Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.
Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.
Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.
But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.
You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.
But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.
There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.
But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.
That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.
The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.
But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.
The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.
I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?
The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.
What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.
I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.
But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.
There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.
In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.
This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.
Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.
The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.
You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
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had a fascinating english class that resulted in the notes header “the forcefeminization of victor frankenstein”
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breaking my silence to my american mutuals and followers: i think you are lying to me about the super bowl. it feels as though it is constantly the super bowl every few months i am hearing that it is the super bowl and then someone tells me it’s the super bowl again and im meant to pretend that you guys didn’t just have one of those things and it only happens once a year. between now and last february you have had at least four super bowls and you know it. and i know my truth and this is it. and i will not be gaslit any longer.
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honestly? being in a void between hyperfixations is such a weird feeling, like I can feel my brain searching for something to grab onto but nothing seems good enough so I just sit there and wait for some random obsession to hit me out of nowhere so my brain won’t feel like a dry sponge anymore
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official elon musk hate post reblog to hate like to hate reply to hate
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people don't talk enough about how fucking funny it is that bruce can sub in his kids as batman when he's too busy. like can you imagine it from the league's perspective? imagine you have this really mysterious, geniusly scary guy that you know next to nothing about, never cracks a smile and yet always comes out on top, and one day he shows up to a league meeting and there's just something... off. about him.
you can't pin it down because he's literally acting exactly the same as usual and there's no reason to think there's anything wrong, but maybe he shifted in his seat one to many times, or he looked just a tad bit too bored during green lantern's case review, but something's just... odd. so you quietly ask superman after the meeting if anything's up with the bat bcs you know those two are closer and also clark can hear heartbeats so if something's wrong surely he'll pick it up? and without hesitation he leans over to you and mumbles 'yeah batman was busy, that's his 17 yr old son. he's a crime lord and kills people sometimes though so we're not allowed to let him into the weapons department.' and then walks away like it's normal.
like the whiplash the league must go through every time they realise that no, this is not their fearless dark and brooding leader, this is in fact one of his dipshit kids being forced to sub in bcs the real batman broke an ankle, is incredible.
wonder woman: so that's my proposed plan, what are your thoughts batman?
batman: hn. i think that- *voice raising two octaves* oh shit hold on my phones buzzing
the league:
batman, answering the phone and immediately dropping the Bat Posture™: what do you mean- aw come on little wing that's not fair! but- no, NO DON'T YOU DARE TELL ALFRED I'LL BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU- IM SORRY OK I'LL BUY YOU MORE- *catches sight of the league watching him, baffled* *stiffens* ok listen i promise to replace them but i gotta go, please show me mercy iloveyoubye *hangs up*
the league:
batman:
batman: *coughs awkwardly*
superman: *sighs*
batman, to superman: ...red hood found out i ate his chocolate pretzels-
superman, shaking his head: just... just stop.
the flash: so this isn't batman either, is it?
wonder woman: if this one's also a criminal im losing my mind.
superman, tiredly: no no, this one isn't a criminal. this one's actually a cop.
batman: *sinks down in his seat* b's gonna kill me
green lantern, mystified: where does he keep GETTING you all from!?
'batman' dick, who made a pact with jason to Always Fuck With Bruce Whenever The Opportunity Arises: batman is a whore.
they think they've finally sussed out all 2 of batman's kids and then one day during a meeting 'batman' ends up on a 30 minute rant about different hacking methods this tech villain could be using that results in him half way through a sentence breaking off to say '-oh uncle clark could you pass me that pen- thanks, anyway so-' and then five minutes after that when the league have all been exchanging incredulous looks he finally freezes and is like. SHIT.
wonder woman: you're different from the other two, aren't you?
batman: maybe i am maybe i'm not, you can't prove it.
wonder woman:
green lantern: so like, are you new or have you just managed to avoid sub duty up until now?
superman, coughing: actually, this is this ones ninth occasion of replacing batman. you've just never realised before.
the league:
batman: yeah actually the other two are kinda mad i lasted longer than them...
the flash: how the fuck does he keep getting kids with the exact same build as him!??!?
'batman' tim, spent 20 minutes padding the suit out so he would look the part, still mad that bruce keeps palming WE work off on him: oh he forces us to take steroids for it.
the league, concerned:
superman, pinching the bridge of his nose: now come on red robin-
batman, fully tearing up and looking distraught: PLEASE uncle clark, it HURTS, you can't keep COVERING FOR HIM!
superman, frantically to the league: this one lies.
bonus
the league, squinting at batman:
the league: ...
superman: *head in his hands, too disappointed to do anything*
the league: *silently exchanging looks, wondering if anybody's brave enough to say anything*
duke as batman, fully aware this is fucking stupid but jason and tim fell on the floor laughing when dick came up with the idea and frankly, he wanted to see if anybody would have to guts to call him out: so, are we all ready to start the meeting?
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Jason in the League getting a babysitting duty w baby Damian and so he just does what he thinks parents normally do. So he goes ahead and teach the kid, 'Mama' so that Talia can be idk hapy about it. He just figures Talia would want Mama to be her son;s first word. probably.
But now the thing is, Baby damian attaches Mama with Jason.
So now you have this 6 foot tall hunk of a babysitter bodyguard who is addressed to as Mama by the Prince. and Jason is just stumped cos he doesnt know how to fix it.
When Damian grows up eventually he just calls Talia 'Mother', but Jason is still98% of the time Mama. It just stuck and he never quite figured out how to undo it.
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Flashforward, after becoming robin, and gaining some conciousness in general Damian started calling Jason 'Todd' (or whatever honestly idgaf), but the word Mama still slips out sometimes when Damian is like really pissed off and screaming "WHY DID YOU HOLD ME BACK MAM- TODD", or super not paying attention- "uhm, idk ask mama. hm? Todd. ask todd. thats what i said.", or like drugged when hurt, "ma, wheres mama..."
:3c
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Jason: “I’m NOTHING like Bruce, okay? We’re not even that similar. That’s all in your head.”
Dick, perched on Jason’s couch watching him gear up, sipping a Batburger shake: “so you’re NOT about to go deal with your emotions by going out on patrol and beating people up?”
Jason: *sets down the brass knuckles he was just holding* *stares off into the distance*
Jason: “These are just…for my — look, I don’t like your fucking tone, Richard.”
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