#and my stuff is not even half as bad as alfred’s fortunately

[ivyithink]

continuation of that “kids having the same expressions as the adults in their lives/relatives” post with aelfwynn

athelstan gets bonus meat portions with those “resigned with hints of melancholy and frustration” looks of his

[ethelphantom]

Things a Pet Name Can Reveal

Scroll down to the end for the art btw, don’t miss it! Also, you’re getting pure fluffy humour again, you should consider yourselves lucky. Maribat March day 13, Pet Names. Also, this is your friendly reminder that yes, I can tag you to stuff if you ask me to do it. This month or all my Maribat content or a specific series... You decide.

Ao3

This is Maribat -- don’t like; don’t read

_________________________

So, maybe, looking back on it, Tim regretted wanting to come over to see how Marinette was doing. He really hadn’t wanted to see and know what he did now and while it wasn’t honestly that bad, he kind of wished he’d found out some other way. Such as, maybe someone actually telling him with words.

The only good thing about any of it was that he had knowledge about Marinette none of the others except for maybe Alfred and Cass had. Scratch that, the two of them definitely knew, but the rest.

Marinette had gotten commissioned by many big names in the movie industry, as well as by a lot of the Wayne Industries’ partners, and yeah, she was definitely drowning in them. Of course, she had wanted to take them all as they paid well, they were good publicity to her, and they were okay with waiting as they knew she had a ton of people wanting to commission her at the same time. Tim would have felt bad for talking so much about his favourite designer to them because he was proud of her and how far she’d come, but Marinette had said it was okay and that she greatly appreciated it.

That was why he decided he wanted to come over to see how she was doing, maybe help her if she needed take-out (because yeah, he couldn’t cook to save his life), coffee (because at least he knew how to brew actually good and strong coffee), or really, anything. She would only need to ask and say the word, and he would do whatever she asked.

As he got to the door, the one that had opened it had been Jason. Which, okay, he could understand, they were close and Jason was the reason the rest of them knew her in the first place, but it still surprised Tim. Jason hadn’t even blinked an eye and let him in. And told him were Marinette was. And was that dark turtleneck Marinette's design he was wearing?

Marinette was, as Jason had said, sitting at the kitchen table (okay, to be precise, she was sitting on top of it), biting her pencil as she had a sketchbook in her hands. Some of her hair fell on her face and shoulders though most of it had been pulled up in space buns to stay away from her eyes. She didn’t even notice Tim had come in.

There was a huge pot on the stove, and the smell hanging in the air was wonderful. It was possible Marinette was cooking — that would explain why she was in the kitchen instead of her study — but somehow Tim found that unlikely. Marinette wasn’t focusing on any clock, didn’t check the food even once, and looked a whole lot like she’d stayed in one place for the past hour or two. There were chopping boards and knives behind her, as well as a whole lot of still untouched vegetables.

Yeah, so it wasn’t her cooking. Then who…?

The answer came in the form of a six-foot man with a white streak in his hair and a scar splitting his lips. “You gonna eat, Timbo?” Jason asked, crossing the kitchen easily with large strides before getting to the food he started stirring. “We’ve got quinoa.” And, as an afterthought, he added, “And avocado, tomato, corn, tuna, carrot and a ton of spices.”

Only then did Marinette realise there was someone else in the room as well. She lifted her head, looked at Jason, and then turned to Tim. The smile that had appeared on her face when she saw Jason widened and she abandoned the sketchbook and the pencil on the table in favour of getting down to give Tim a hug. “Hi Tim, it’s wonderful to see you. Sorry I haven’t texted you or anything, I’ve just been so—”

“Busy, I know. It’s alright, I didn’t really expect anything less from you,” he replied laughing. “You’re you, and you’re like me, and neither of us really knows how to stop working. That’s why I came over as soon as I had finished the biggest projects going on at the WE. I wanted to see you and thought that I could maybe help, even if it’s only in the form of providing you with strong coffee or snacks or something.”

Marinette snorted and covered her mouth with her hand. The ring in her hand glimmered in the light and her eyes crinkled. It was only then that Tim noticed the dark circles around her eyes that were so easy to see now that he paid attention. When was the last time she’d slept?

Not that he really had any say in it, he didn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than four hours at once. The last week had gone cat napping so much Selina would be proud of him. Dick would be horrified and disappointed. Well, who cared about that, that man didn’t know how to eat anything but takeout and cereal, so he had no right to judge the rest of them. Absolutely no right.

...Honestly, Steph, Cass or Jason were probably the most stable of them at this point. Maybe Duke. It was, the least to say, disturbing.

“Well, I appreciate that. You still remember how to make that death coffee you made for me like, a year ago when I was drowning in schoolwork?”

“The one that would probably kill any normal person with the amount of caffeine it contains but that both of us crave for because of the sweet, sweet caffeine?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Definitely. Where’s your coffee and coffee grinder?”

Marinette pointed him to the direction — to the left, the topmost shelf, hidden where neither of them could actually reach. When Tim asked why, Marinette’s sharp response of “Guess once,” and pointed look at Jason had told him everything.

Which meant, he needed to either get Jason to give the things to him or climb.

His dignity wouldn’t let him ask for help with this (after all, it wasn’t a life or death situation, or even an actual mission or job they had, simply his own personal need to be able to do something without anyone’s help on the line), so he climbed.

Eventually, he managed to reach the things and set them on the kitchen counter, careful as to not damage either of them.

After that, the coffee was soon finished, and he set a cup of scalding hot coffee in front of Marinette, who inhaled the strong smell of coffee into her lungs and sighed with satisfaction. He was rather sure someone else had sighed as well, and when he turned around to look at Jason, his suspicions were confirmed. He shook his head and looked at Tim like he’d ruined something personal.

“I was tryna to keep her from coffee. Just like you should be kept away from it, Baby Bird. Neither of you needs it, especially not the amounts I know both of you are drinkin’. God.”

“Yeah, we do need it,” Marinette and Tim chorused, followed by, “It’s the liquid of the gods”, “You can’t stop us”, and “stay away from our fountain of fortune.”

Jason just pinched the bridge of his nose but refrained from saying anything more even though it was clear he wanted to. That was alright with Tim — he didn’t, contrary to popular belief, have a need to fight Jason over every single little thing. No, the one he had the need to do that was Damian, even if he got along with the little brat significantly better these days.

When it seemed Marinette didn’t need him to do anything anymore and just wanted to concentrate on her designs again, Tim took out his laptop and set to work alongside her, just on the chair instead of the table. After all, just because he didn’t have that much work to do didn’t mean he didn’t have any or a lot of work to do.

Later, he was alerted back to the real world from his work by Jason who informed him food was done. A quick glance at the clock told him it had been forty-six minutes since the last time he checked it, so a little bit after he started working.

Reluctantly, he put his laptop away and accepted the plate full of the quinoa thing — whatever Jason had done — that was set in front of him. Marinette didn’t even move.

“Sweet Cheeks, you’ve got to stop working on that design before you burn yourself out. At least eat something.”

Tim’s gaze literally snapped at Jason. Sweet Cheeks? What was even going on?

Marinette groaned and let her face fall into her hands, but she missed and hit the table instead. That must have hurt. Then she gave Jason the finger, somehow perfectly aware where in the room he was located. “See, you started off saying that as a joke to annoy me and now I think you got so used to it that you're saying it unironically, and it's getting to be a problem.”

Jason just raised his eyebrow. “Does it still annoy you, Sweet Cheeks?”

“Yes!”

“Then I fail to see the problem here.”

“You are an asshole, Jason. Asshole.”

“No shit. We’ve been married for, what, half a year and you’re only noticing now?”

Tim’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He could not believe his ears. The fork in his hands falling to the floor, he finally got his brain to cooperate and asked, slowly, as to make sure he didn’t say something wrong and would actually be able to understand what was going on, “You’re what now?”

“We’re married, I just said so. You seriously didn’t know? I thought that out of all of the people B’s trained in his life, you would have been able to figure it out on your own.”

“And you — neither of you — thought to invite us to the wedding?”

“Nah. It kinda happened in the spur of the moment and well. I mean we did have a suit for me and a dress for her so maybe it wasn't that impulsively done but yeah. Forgot to tell you after that and then we started betting on who would notice and when.”

“Of course you did. I shouldn’t probably be surprised even, now should I?”

“No, no you shouldn’t.”

Marinette, that little shit, just laughed. Tim sighed.

“Well, congratulations, you two. I hate you both.”

“We love you too, Tim.”

The rest of the visit was spent discussing the hows, whens and whys of their relationship and marriage. It was cute, he supposed. He was most definitely sure that he was happy the two of them were happy together, though. They clearly deserved one another.

Also, it would be fun to see the rest of the family’s reactions because they told him that if they didn’t figure it out by the end of the month, the two of them would come over and tell them, in some way or another. Tim kind of hoped the family would not figure it out.

A week later, Marinette received a package that contained a card and a framed picture of herself and Jason, taken by Tim on the day he had visited. Under the picture, there was a quote from one of the few plays Tim knew for certain Jason favoured. What the card said was lost in the wonder that was the gift Tim had sent them.

“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”

_________________

@kris-pines04​ @thethirdwheelfriend @daminett4life @abrx2002 @persephonebutkore​ @rebecarojas07 @corabeth11 @freshbark @maribat-march2020 @catsandfanfic @fertileleaf @eat0crow @cutechip

[renaroo]

Super Brothers (2/12)

Disclaimer: Superman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: Child Abuse, Gender Dysphoria, PTSD and Anxiety, Character Death Rating: T Synopsis: Jon Kent knew he pretty much had the perfect family life, but something still felt wrong with himself. At the height of feeling like an alien in his own skin, however, his world got turned upside down when his parents took in a troubled child who embodied everything he felt he lacked. However, becoming a brother ended up being the smallest of the trials brought by adopting Christopher Kent. And being best friends with Damian Wayne has not exactly helped keep a neutral perspective on the matter.

A/N: This is almost late and I apologize. I have no excuses other than my brain is turning into as much mush as everyone else’s. But I really am enjoying where the future of this story is going and am really excited to get there. But, first, we have to reach some difficult places first. 

Before we go further, I must say this: TRIGGER WARNING. There is overt child abuse and child harm in this chapter. It’s not super detailed and it gets cut off, but I do not want people to get upset from it without warning. So please take care of yourself first and foremost.

I’m blown away by the support this fic is getting so far and I appreciate you all so very much! Special thanks to the lovely comments and promotion from @secretlystephaniebrown, @spiralcass, @noartificialfruitjuice, @fred-astairs-dark-impulses, @karagordon, and elietrope on AO3 and tumblr!

Chapter Two: Pay in Full

Damian isn’t surprised when he is the lone attendant of breakfast the following morning. His wrists are still bruised up and a little painful from his restraints, but he ignores them under the cuffs of his school uniform and is the picture of polite society and manners. He eats confidently and alone.

It isn’t unusual, only disappointing.

Fortunately, Alfred is nothing if not an excellent reader of the atmosphere and does not force conversation or dullness on Damian that is unwarranted. He leaves the youngest Wayne to a peaceful meal.

The quiet makes it easier for Damian to overhear Alfred conversing just a step or so into the hall.

“Ah, Miss Cassandra, it is unusual to see you up and about at such an hour,” Alfred’s voice carries with a genuine mix of praise and surprise.

“Yeah, um,” Cass mutters, speech slurred with sleep, “can you, um, take me? Soon? He wanted to talk to me.”

“But of course. I can take you as I take Master Damian to the academy this morning.”

Starring toward the door, Damian lets his oatmeal slip off of his spoon and carelessly plop back into the bowl. He doesn’t even pay attention to the splashes of oats which end up on Alfred’s meticulously cared for table runner. He’ absorbed by the implications of the conversation happening in front of him.

After an encounter with Professor Pyg which ended as eventfully as his did, Damian anticipated some negative news getting to either his father or Grayson. And while Damian didn’t want for Dick to hear about Damian’s poor performances without him, there was at least some trust.

Grayson would be annoyingly supportive and want to use the entire event as some sort of learning experience.

Father is something else entirely.

After a few moments of subconsciously holding his breath, Damian glances down to his oatmeal and finds it suddenly subpar.

He pushes out from the table, chair legs protesting loudly, and tosses the handkerchief from his lap onto the table. Damian is on his feet and in the hall before Cassandra even has time to leave Alfred and redress herself for the day.

“Alfred, I do not need to attend the academy today,” he announces.

The butler tilts his head slightly and raises his eyebrows minutely. “I believe the education system would disagree with you entirely.”

“I have things to discuss with Father,” Damian elaborates stiffly. “Important information that outweighs any supposed social-developments I am pretending to make.”

Cassandra scratches at her jawline and frowns at Damian. She’s assessing him, her dark eyes boring into Damian’s soul and evaluating every tremor of his muscle.

Which makes it even more annoying that her choice of commentary is to say, “Bad at it. Pretending,” she jokes.

“Silence, you,” Damian hisses ferally. “The entire first year I lived here, I had to listen to everyone talk about you and never once did they mention your sass.”

She offers a half-shrug. “Forgot the best part.”

“Tt, more like the worst,” Damian teeters, hands on his hips.

For a moment, Cassandra seems to be ignoring him as she looks over Damian’s head at Alfred and rotates her shoulders. “Maybe shouldn’t go to school,” she offers, surprising Damian entirely.

Alfred seems just as taken by the suggestion and looks at her suspiciously. “Why so, Miss Cassandra?”

“Had a bad night,” she explains. “Probably does have important stuff to say.”

Heat flushes into Damian’s face. His eyes glaze into a distinct red hue and his shoulders tremble as he clutches his hands into fists by his side. There is almost certainly steam coming off of him as anger overtakes him in a way that it hasn’t for ages now.

“How dare you!” he roars.

All too casually, Cassandra glances down to Damian and raises an eyebrow at him. She doesn’t say anything with words.

“How dare you assume so much about me! You don’t even know me!” Damian continues, bringing his fists up as if ready to brawl. “Perhaps what I’m going to do is while you wish to tattle to Father, I’ll tell him the truth about how you are nothing but an interference here in Gotham! That you do not deserve to trespass on my affairs! And that absolutely everyone wishes you would bugger off again so that everyone can go back to the way things were!”

“Master Damian, that is enough!” Alfred says coolly. He never raises his voice, but he never needs to.

Despite himself, Damian snaps his jaw closed. But he doesn’t stop glaring into Cassandra’s face, her eyes. His anger is still boiling over, no matter how much he’s contained it.

Cassandra looks back at him, her face drawn and unreadable.

It makes Damian even more upset.

“That is no way to speak to anyone, certainly not family,” Alfred reminds Damian. “Considering your injuries—“

“I am not injured that gravely, Pennyworth!” Damian sputters again.

“—I can see the benefit to a day of recuperation from school, so long as we do not continue this theme habitually,” Alfred persists. “We will leave for your father’s office as soon as Miss Cassandra is ready to leave. And we will not leave a moment sooner than that.” He looks to Cassandra and pats her shoulder. It’s the only thing that gets her to pull her gaze away from Damian. “I encourage you to get ready for the day at your leisure, my dear.”

After that, the conversation is over, and Damian ends up sitting in the foyer waiting for the better part of an hour as Cass does just as Alfred insisted.

***

“There he is!”

Jon is still wiping at his eyes as he stumbles through the apartment. It’s difficult, in these early mornings, for him to focus on appropriate amounts of strength, so he shoulders into furniture a touch too hard or bangs into the doorframe with enough force to send pictures lined down the walls tumbling down.

Some things that are less natural to him since his coming into power, like flight or his special types of vision, take more effort and alertness. Not his super strength, however fortunately or unfortunately.

He stumbles his way into the kitchen, his feet padding over the shift from hardwood to tile. He can smell the scrambled eggs before his dad even set them on Jon’s prepared plate.

At the table across from Jon is his mom, already in a beautiful silk top with a gold necklace of large geometric squares. Her chin-length hair is curlier than usual which means she hasn’t straightened it. Her lashes are long, nearly swooping down to her cheeks as she looks down to her iPad as she reads. When she takes her cup away from her lips, a dark purple lip stain is left behind on it.

Jon admires her for a moment, scooting into his seat but not pulling up to the table.

“Good morning, honey,” his mom says full of affection. Her violet eyes glance up to his face.

“Good morning,” Jon says back, smiling brightly.

“Leave walking room, champ,” his dad says from behind. Before Jon can even think, two massive hands close in around the edges of Jon’s backrest, then his whole chair is lifted and scooted up until Jon’s chest nearly bumps the table.

“Sorry, Pa,” Jon says automatically, sparing a glance as his father moves over and plants himself in one of the two chairs between Jon and his mom.

Even in a collared shirt and sweater vest, Jon can see what a massive shadow his father leaves for him. He is broad-shouldered and firm, even with his softness. He has a body that exudes power and strength. It’s only with folded in shoulders and deflated presentation that Clark Kent can convince the world there is a difference between himself and Superman.

At home, among family, as Pa, Jon knows his dad is unmistakably Superman.

When Pa’s large hands reach for his cup of orange juice or poke at scrambled eggs with a fork, it makes Jon look at his own hands.

They’re thin, nimble hands. Soft.

Mom has said on more than one occasion that with fingers as long as his, Jon needs to either learn piano or practice keyboard typing. And Jon is certain he has no ear for tunes.

“I almost came to get you a second time, young man,” Pa says between bites of eggs. “I warned you before about staying up late. I know there are plenty of things an eleven-year-old boy thinks are cooler than sleep.”

Curling his nose, Jon shifts uncomfortably. “I’m almost twelve now,” he reminds them. “You said I could push curfew when I turned twelve.”

“And you’re still not twelve,” Mom says, closing out the tabs on her iPad. She looks very seriously at Jon. “And it doesn’t matter what age you are, my mother’s intuition tells me you’re watching scary movies with the Wayne kid again.”

“No, I wasn’t!” Jon squeaks. “I promise I wasn’t!”

“You had nightmares last night, Jon. We share a wall with your room,” Pa says, face the picture of sympathetic. “And it’s okay to have nightmares sometimes, but you’ve been having them a lot lately. Something like that would usually require something scaring you.”

“Like movies,” Mom adds, still eyeing Jon suspiciously. “Is it Gotham? Maybe we shouldn’t let you go to Gotham so much. Especially this time of year. I hate that stuck-up little island, Clark. No wonder he’s scared.”

“Wait, no, it’s not anything to do with Gotham or movies or Damian,” Jon argues emphatically.

Both of Jon’s parents stop and do the thing Jon has come to hate most during their meals. They look up, toward one another, and seemingly carry out an entire conversation with each other through micro expression alone.  It would be adorable if they weren’t his parents.

Jon decides to take the time to begin shoveling in his eggs. His dad’s cooking may be simple but it’s always filling.

“Do you want to talk about these nightmares you’re having, Jon?” Pa asks gently. “You and your body have been put through a lot of changes very quickly over the past year or so. You’ve gotten your own powers, you’ve moved schools twice, your mother and I both are back at full time. That’s a lot.”

He chews over his father’s words for a long moment and considers them.

For most of his young life, Jon Kent has been able to tell his parents positively everything on his mind. They are loving, supportive good people. The best people. Whether they’re superheroes or super reporters, they make Jon proud with almost every second of every day.

But his nightmares make his throat fill closed and tight in ways that are impossible to express. He likes to think they could know, but it feels like they couldn’t.

They couldn’t know how certain words or certain looks or certain things make him feel like he’s crawled into someone else’s skin. Like he’s been lying to everyone on accident this whole time. That what people see him as is undeserved.

What could he ever say to explain that?

Not to mention, explaining that he was patrolling in Gotham and got captured by some madman like Professor Pyg is probably worth far more trouble than simply admitting to scary movies with Damian.

“I don’t remember them,” Jon lies through his teeth.

“That can happen,” Pa says warmly.

When Jon looks up, it’s unsurprising to see that his mother’s face is fairly neutral. She looks at him worriedly and unconvinced.

If she plans on saying anything, however, the moment eludes her. Her iPad lights up simultaneously with the default ding of her phone. She glances at them both before getting to her feet. She’s a full inch taller in her heels and wearing Jon’s favorite skirt of hers.

“Clark, are you going to take Jon this morning?” she asks. “I can use it to excuse you from any early bellows from Perry.”

“Of course,” Pa says, leaning back and tilting his head for the optimal kissing angle.

Mom comes around the table and ducks down, holding back her hair delicately as she kisses Jon’s forehead. “Have a good day, hun, I love you.”

“Bye, Mom, you look beautiful,” Jon informs her as she leaves.

He watches her go and takes a breath. His gaze is only broken when his dad holds his glasses out in front of his vision.

“Don’t forget these,” Pa reminds him.

“Oh, thanks,” Jon mutters, taking the thick frames. His motion is stopped, though, as his father doesn’t let go. He glances back up to Pa and raises a brow.

“Jon, do you know how polygraphs work?” Pa asks, still not letting go of the glasses.

“Um, not really,” Jon admits.

“They measure your heartbeat, because if someone’s not a good liar then they will increase their heart rate, and the machine records it,” Pa explains as he finally lets go of Jon’s glasses.

Despite himself, Jon’s heart picks up its pace. He glances down to his lap. “Do you always listen to my heartbeat?”

“Since before you were born,” Pa says softly, running his broad hand over Jon’s hair. His thumb strums the locks affectionately. “And you thought I was the easy parent, huh?”

“I just don’t want to talk about my nightmares yet,” Jon explains worriedly.

“That’s okay,” Pa assures him, letting go of Jon’s hair. “But I’d appreciate you not lying to me or your mother.”

Jon frowns. “I won’t, Pa, I promise. Sorry I did.” He glances toward his mother’s seat and notices her coffee mug sitting where she left it. Her purple lipstick is still staining the side. “Do you listen to mom’s heartbeat?”

“Practically since the day I met her,” Pa laughs, picking up both of their finished plates. “I always listen out for the hearts of the people I love. It’s,” he pauses in thought before continuing his walk to the sink, “it’s comforting to know everyone’s safe.”

Humming some, Jon puts his chin on the kitchen table and focuses. His mom should be in the elevator on her way down. If he uses his x-ray vision he could even watch her. But instead, he listens. It’s hard to focus on the beat alone, to isolate it. It could give him a headache until he’s better at it. But Jon can do it.

It’s one of many things he can do, he can be because of his father — a polygraph.

But as he listens for his mother’s heart, Jon wonders if there are more things he can do and be because of his mother.

“Pa, it’s a good thing to want to be more like mom, right?” Jon asks before he can stop himself.

His pa lets out a deep laugh over the running water in the sink. “Jon, everyone wants to be more like your mother. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

And that, Jon decides, is comforting.

***

Lor-Zod learns through the sunstones in silence. His eyes are transfixed on their histories and piloting and mathematics, but his mind is distantly occupied.

His mother has stood vigilant at the door, unmoving, the entire morning. She has not greeted him yet, has not introduced herself to him. Standing, quietly, scathingly.

The moment Lor finishes his aeronautics lesson, he feels his mother’s hand close around his wrist. He is reaching for the next lesson, but she is suddenly upon him, stopping him. Her face is mere centimeters from his own. Her nose snarls.

“You are summoned, Lor,” she tells him, as though he should already know.

“Where, mother?” he barely has air in his lungs to ask before he is jerked into the air and guided through the halls of their palace.

As they travel swiftly through their palace, Lor notices for the first time that he has not seen servants or even heard servants all morning. That is beyond unusual, and it makes their giant crystalline halls even more empty than normal.

Something sits unsettled and worrisome in Lor’s chest. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears.

“What are we doing, mother?” Lor attempts again, voice tight with fear.

“Is a child to speak out of turn?” she asks angrily, her brown hair whipping across her face as she looks over her shoulder.

Lor obediently shakes his head. “No,” he answers.

“Then you have no turn,” she informs him. When she looks ahead once more, her fingers tighten around his wrist. “There is a lesson to be learned today.”

Silence overtakes Lor as they reach the grand hall and entrance of their palace. There still are no servants to be seen, and there is also no sign of the general. Every hair on Lor’s body stands on end as he realizes just how wrong everything is set up to be.

But he cannot even force himself to speak. He knows better. His body knows better.

As they bound out of the giant doors to their palace, Lor realizes that they are opening up to an enormous gathering. There are purple-skinned Jekuul natives for as far as Lor’s unaided vision can see. They all face forward, toward the intimidating staircase to the palace’s entrance. And to the general.

General Zod does not even turn his shoulders toward Lor and his mother as they come to his side. He is facing forward, over the crowd.

Lor is positioned harshly, stood in front of his mother. She swiftly shifts her hand from his wrist to his shoulder, her other hand matching it. They grip him fiercely, nails clicking against the Kryptonian armor beneath.

When Lor looks up to his mother’s face, he can only see her chin as it faces the general obediently.

Then, when Lor follows her gaze, he lets out a soft gasp.

They are not the only ones standing on the stairs. There is also a familiar, tiny purple girl in his father’s grips.

“Ti’ahl? What’s she doing here?” Lor asks before his mother’s grip becomes even more constricting. He feels his chest freeze up, his heart pounding again.

“You are out of turn, child,” she hisses down at him. “Watch.”

Swallowing, Lor looks back to the General.

The General seems satisfied after Lor falls silent, and he begins speaking out in a tongue so strange but familiar. His voice booms and echoes over the silent crowds below. He’s speaking in Jakuul, Lor knows that much, but still not what his father is saying.

For a moment, Lor tries. He tries desperately to understand what is being said, but none of it makes sense. There aren’t even the familiar possibilities of understanding like he had with Ti’ahl just the day before.

Thinking of Ti’ahl, Lor glances down from his father’s face to where Ti’ahl stands trembling in the General’s grip.

She looks paler than yesterday, her purple skin lighter in the face and almost blue in her cheeks. Her big, dark eyes are tear-filled and sunken, her hair messy. It occurs to Lor that she is wearing the exact same clothes that he last saw her in.

Only at that moment does Lor realize she never made it home last night. But he can’t imagine why.

Deep down, Lor wishes to speak to her, to comfort her, to offer his cape once more, but she doesn’t even have it now. Lor wonders, idly, where it might be.

The General’s voice picks up in fervor, growing in a tempo as the crowds below become unsettled.

Lor doesn’t know what to think, what’s going on when he sees his father wrench Ti’ahl’s arm back and up into the air at a frightening angle. It makes the little girl scream in shock and begins crying, tugging.

Not sure what is going on, Lor opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

With a flick of his wrist, the General turns Ti’ahl’s arm completely upside down and a hideous snap echoes through the hot Jekuul air.

Stunned, Lor stares at his father and at the little girl he played with yesterday. The air erupts with high pitched squeals and sobs from the crowds below. Ti’ahl herself hangs limply unconscious, only held up by the General’s tremendous grip on her arm.

His mother holds him down with so much force, Lor feels as though he will sink through the stairs. He can’t look at her, can’t hear her past the thundering pulse in his own ears. He stares only at his father who is happily soaking in the shock and awe of the crowds.

Then, Lor snaps.

All he can see is red and then his father’s shoulder is smoking, singed.

And, for the first time since the night before, General Zod looks at Lor.

“I am disappointed, Faora,” the General says angrily. “You assured me that our child was being raised in the traditions of Krypton. Are those traditions not that punishments are handled by the mother?”

“They are,” Lor’s mother says, aghast, before yanking Lor into the palace doors.

Lor hits the floor before he even sees the smack coming. And it is only the first.

He hardly feels any of it, numb to everything with the sound of that crack echoing throughout his whole body.

[absentlyabbie]

family and (mis)fortune

or, tommy merlyn accidentally part-time joins the batfam

hello, please enjoy and have mercy, pretty much all of my batfam knowledge is informed either by batman: the animated series or tumblr posts. be gentle with me, i know so little about jason todd, i’m doing my best

this meta developed over whatsaspp in messages to @andyouweremine, @acheaptrickandacheesyoneline, and @storiesofimagination

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Just a fun little notion to mull over: Malcolm Merlyn dies/disappears (hallelujah) in the two years after his wife’s death and leaving his child behind. Accident and happenstance bring Tommy Merlyn, orphan, to the attention of Bruce Wayne. And thus Tommy becomes a part time foster sibling to the batfam

(lol the above was supposed to be it, the end, literally the entire whole thing, but then all the rest happened)

Like. Say Bruce (probably he knew Rebecca?) takes over custody of Tommy. For the sake of the boy and his clear attachment to the Queens, especially Oliver, Bruce has Tommy enrolled as a boarding student at Starling Academy. So the boys still get to spend the school year together, and sometimes in the summer or over holidays Oliver visits in Gotham

And Tommy is pretty much just a part time addition to the Bruce Wayne orphans-who-eerily-resemble-me collection, so it’s several years before he catches on even a little to what Bruce and older foster brother Dick get up to after dark

But eventually he DOES find out. And maybe he doesn’t suit up too, but Bruce can’t have one of his kids knowing about Batman and not prepared to protect himself so he gets a lot of the same training

(Meanwhile Tommy grows up with siblings and a father figure(s)—heyyy Alfred—who show him care and don’t abuse him. And maybe even therapy. But also he gets to maintain his closeness to Oliver and even Thea because he still spends most of the year in Starling)

As a better adjusted dude all around Tommy is probably a moderately better influence on Oliver. Like he can’t change everything but maybe things are mitigated. Then the gambit still goes down (probably Malcolm didn’t actually die after all? He just went deep into the league or whatever and continued to influence things in Starling towards the Undertaking from the shadows?)

In the wake of that Tommy moves to Starling full time and insists to everyone including Bruce that Oliver is still alive etc etc. he doesn’t give up hope (although also maybe he doesn’t get involved with Laurel? Maybe.) and then Oliver actually comes back

More or less most of canon stuff goes on except now you have a Tommy who eats breakfast casually with Batman and multiple Robins and has training and has been inside the Batcave and knows what it looks like when someone he loves is not doing a great job of a) hiding how deeply traumatized they are and b) concealing their vigilante side gig

(@acheaptrickandacheesyoneline contributed: "Oliver, you need to get better excuses"

"Excuses for what?"

"Like that. Right there"

To which i responded: “Look I know the reckless playboy thing seems like an awesome cover story at first but trust me, if you don’t balance it right it just makes everything more work than it’s worth”)

Bruce calling Tommy ostensibly just to check in with his foster son but non-covertly actually sniffing around about this murderous new vigilante in Starling

Tommy very awkwardly and transparently lying that he has no idea who it could possibly be

Tommy tries to crack bad jokes about how he just seems to attract cape and cowl types to wherever he lives and Bruce heaving the longest sigh on record because Tommy and Dick really are way too similar for Bruce’s mental health

Also in this headcanon Bruce was definitely like early 20s when he took in Dick so he was like maaayyybe 27 when he took in Tommy. Putting him younger than 40 or just over at time of Oliver’s return. So Bruce is like barely older than Diggle

Okay my math wasn’t great. So if Dick is a few years older than Tommy and Oliver and Bruce adopted him at like 22, let’s say Bruce is 24 when Rebecca dies and Tommy is 8... 26 when he takes custody of Tommy... which means he’s actually like 43 at time of Oliver coming back from the dead (subject to change, i’m bad at math!)

The way I picture it is that Bruce knew Rebecca (maybe their families knew each other??) and went to her funeral, where he observed the lost looking, clearly devastated eight year old that widower Malcolm was too busy brooding furiously to attend to. Bruce never liked Malcolm. They’d met a few times over the years and he always thought Rebecca could have done better. Malcolm always stuck Bruce as oily and shark eyed. Something cold and hungry under the surface of his charming facade. But Rebecca seemed happy with him so it wasn’t his business

That boy though. The image of that grieving boy, his whole world snatched away and not even a kindly butler to hold his hand at the graveside, that stays with Bruce, nags at him. He checks up on the remaining Merlyns from a distance after returning to Gotham. He’s unsettled and unhappy when he learns Malcolm has run off, leaving his young son behind with some hired help and power of attorney vested in his friend Robert Queen. He follows the situation for two years. When Malcolm returns he’s hopeful Tommy’s life will go better than Bruce’s did, but Malcolm only leaves again all too soon. And then he disappears. His plane goes down or something (who even cares as long as Malcolm is gone-zo, pfft bye bitch). And Tommy is truly alone, an orphan in name as well as circumstance now

Bruce knows there’s no other family to claim Tommy. He knows the boy is staying with the Queens at the moment, that Robert has guardianship, but it’s also apparent they’re in no rush to formalize the situation to anything more permanent. Bruce decides to go to Starling himself and see what will become of Tommy

It’s immediately obvious the Queens are a mess. Infidelity and fighting and periodic separation between Moira and Robert. Moira is just recently pregnant. And she seems anxious and uneasy about Tommy. Even as she does seem to care about him, she also seems determined to keep him at arm’s length. However it’s just as obvious that despite all this, Tommy and the Queen boy might as well be brothers for as close as they are

It’s clearly not an ideal situation. Bruce being Bruce decides he’s just gonna fix things. But when Moira catches wind of it she goes oddly protective and it leads to a face off between the two of them. Moira hits Bruce about being too young, unmarried, having no prior relationship with Tommy, living so far from everything Tommy knows. 

Bruce hits back with brutal truths, the killing blow that Moira clearly has no intention of making Tommy part of her own family. Robert may have slightly more ground to stand on, but ultimately they all know that if the Queen marriage falls apart, it’s not Robert who would take custody of Tommy in the aftermath of another family disintegration

And so with the cooperation of Moira and Robert and a lot of money, Bruce becomes Tommy’s legal guardian and works out with the Queens an arrangement that has Tommy in boarding at the same school Oliver attends and charges Moira and Robert to act in loco parentis for daily or immediate matters. Moira will eventually unclench and let Tommy connect easily with Oliver and even Thea, because with Malcolm gone she doesn’t have that fear about her baby girl and her secret half brother putting her family at risk

And then @storiesofimagination was sad that there would be less Thea/Tommy sibling shenanigans in this AU, to which I said:

Oh but there will still be plenty of that! Because Tommy spends most of his school years largely in Starling and a lottttt of time at the Queen home. And Moira isn’t as uneasy about Tommy adoring Thea and vice versa because with Malcolm gone/presumed dead she’s less worried about her indiscretion being exposed

So @andyouweremine asked if Dick and Oliver get along

Dick is a few years older than Tommy and Oliver so he probably didn’t spend loads of time with them during Oliver’s visits? Not none though. Tommy thinks Dick is absurdly cool so Oliver might have been a little bit jealous but also thinks Dick is cool. Dick almost definitely thrives on the fact that living human beings think he is cool

But yeah. Dick. Dick is probably weird about Tommy at first. Is this a threat? A rival? Nope it’s a shy goofy kid who thinks Dick is way funnier than Bruce does and looks up to him and he’s only around for holidays and summers so he’s the best part time little brother ever

They get on like a house on fire probably. So many bad jokes. So many. Bruce probably hides from the puns down in the Batcave even when there’s no mission because Dick can either hang out with Tommy or annoy Bruce in the super secret crime fighting lair but not both

Tommy loves the hell out of Alfred. He’s like Raisa, only Tommy gets to keep him

Alfred is just pleased to have a charge he doesn’t have to semi regularly do sutures for

If we’re going full batfam, Tommy and Jason probably can’t stand each other most of the time, but it’s mostly because Jason is extremely prickly and acts out wildly (younger days, obv)

Years later when Tim arrives on the scene, Tommy delights in being the older brother at last. They don’t have tons in common but they get along well enough

AND THEN, because @andyouweremine campaigned to ship Tommy/Dick because both Tommy Merlyn and Dick Grayson are as bi as they come:

Tommy would absolutely have the world’s most awkward crush on Dick at least in his teens. He so would though. Dick would probably be his bisexual awakening. Oliver would get sick of hearing about it. Tommy just looks up one day at like 14-15 while Dick is tooling around the house doing dumb acrobatic impressive-feats-of-athletic-dumbassery and there’s all those taut muscles and a flash of rock hard abs and suddenly Tommy needs to go to his bunk excuse himself to his bedroom to freak out privately that apparently he also likes boys now and ugh WHY THIS ONE

(later in life he’ll somewhat bitterly lament that his type seems to be “taboo.” probably he mentions this to Jason when they are both adults and sharing a beer and doing some extremely rare bonding, and Jason shoots him one hell of a side eye like “Please tell me you’re not into underage girls because I will kill you and I won’t feel bad.”

And Tommy barks a mortified laugh and says “No. Jesus Christ, no, I mean people—adult people!—that I should stay away from, because I should know better or they’d never be into me or, uh,” sweating nervously, hoping his face isn’t telegraphing DICK GRAYSON  or OLIVER QUEEN to someone trained by the actual Batman, “other reasons.”)

And you know, Tommy probably doesn’t find out about his foster dad and foster brother being Batman and Robin until he’s like 16-17. So right before Dick stops being Robin/Jason arrives on scene

Not telling Oliver about kills him

And he’s probably torn between reactions. Excited/in awe that his found family are actual superheroes. A little self conscious and insecure that his found family are superheroes but he’s just... him. Stressed that Bruce and Dick are regularly putting themselves in danger. A little off balance and hurt because Bruce Dick and Alfred have all been keeping this secret from him for years

Eventually he knows why they didn’t tell him. Because it’s so hard not to tell Oliver. He doesn’t actually want to brag to the world and he’s not dumb enough to just accidentally give it away, but not telling Oliver is excruciating, and Oliver can probably tell there’s something Tommy is hiding from him all of a sudden. 

It probably puts a new and awful strain on their relationship, but Tommy finally puts the words together to beg Oliver to understand that he has to keep someone else’s secret. That it’s important and not his to tell and that that’s the only reason he wouldn’t tell Oliver something. Things are still stiff for a little while but Oliver accepts it eventually. Especially after Tommy likens it to how just because Tommy has told Oliver he’s bi it wouldn’t be okay for Oliver to tell somebody else Tommy was bi without Tommy’s permission

And so, after Tommy finds out that he’s part of the actual batfam, Bruce makes him train. Not to take up a mask but to be prepared to protect himself if what he now knows were ever to endanger him

Tommy actually doesn’t want to take up a mask. He’s never been a big “family business” guy, even if he did intern at Wayne enterprises last summer

The strain of keeping Bruce’s secret from Oliver was bad enough. Tommy can’t imagine keeping it secret from Oliver if that same secret was his own

(After all, Tommy may have interned at Wayne enterprises but so did Oliver. He stayed with the Waynes the whole summer and Bruce was never more stressed out in his life over things not directly related to costumed villainy)

--

@memcjo @klaus-hargreeves-katz @its-a-pygmy-puffle @keabbs @princesssarcastia @obscure-sentimentalist

[camsthisky]

He knows before he’s officially gotten home- before he’s even turned the corner onto his street, really, his every sense attuned to his apartment.  Still, it isn’t until his key is in the door that he finally places the heartbeat he’s hearing- steady, strong, slightly too fast, either young enough to still be growing or upset.  Probably both.

There’s a heavy-looking backpack sitting on the floor, a dripping wet school blazer hooked onto the coat rack they have in lieu of a closet.  He finds room on the floor for his own bag, moves the blazer to a lower hook so his coat won’t get dripped on.  Then he sighs and turns to face the living room at large, and the boy on the sofa.

“Lois went out to grab some food,” the boy says.  His damp hair, so black it shines almost blue, is hanging in his eyes, and only his fingertips peek out of the sleeves of the sweatshirt he has on.  The boy is small enough that Lois could have easily lent him one of her sweaters, but instead he’s swimming in Clark’s old U of M hoodie.  He’s already small for his age, but between the sweatshirt and the tight little ball he’s tucked himself up into, he looks absolutely tiny, and so fragile Clark’s heart aches.  “She didn’t really know what to do with me,” he adds, almost abstract.  Less of a complaint, more of an observation.

“Does she know who you are?” Clark asks, coming into the room a little.  It’s a fair question- Clark himself barely knows who this boy is, for all they’ve met a half-dozen times.

“I told her my name, and she got all,” the boy twists his face, a near-perfect imitation of the face Lois makes when she hears something interesting and is trying not to let her excitement show.  “So. Probably.”

“Ah,” Clark says, because he doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Also, I gave her two hundred bucks,” the boy adds wryly.  “So you probably want to call her.  Dinner’s on me.”

“Robin,” Clark begins.

“Dick,” the boy corrects instantly.  “I’m not Robin right now.”

Clark takes a deep breath to respond to that, holds it a moment, lets it back out again in another sigh.  He moves over to the sofa and sits down carefully on the far end from Dick, for whatever good that will do.  The kid would have to leave the state to be out of Clark’s immediate reach.

“Bruce?” he asks, sparing the boy a sideways glance.  Dick turns himself so he’s facing Clark, leaning back against the arm of the sofa, still tucked up painfully tight.

“Hunting wabbits,” the kid says, and Clark looks sharply over at him, surprised at the faint humor in his tone.  He instinctively scans the boy- he knows Bruce, he knows Batman, he knows the sort of training this boy is getting- but sees no dead spots that indicate any sort of container with a lead lining.  There is, however, a scattering of warm spots up the boy’s side and on his stomach that will resolve into light bruising within a day or two, most of them the size and shape of small fists.  It’s too new to be from anything Batman-related, and Clark spends a moment or two judging the likelihood of this kid getting bullied in school.  “He’s in Edinburg,” Dick continues, oblivious.

“Edinburg,” Clark echoes.  “Business?”

“Yeah,” Dick says with a shrug.  “And Batman stuff, but he doesn’t want me knowing that.  Alfred’s gonna be busy running the comms, so this morning he told me I could hang out at a friend’s house after school.”

“And by a friend, you mean me,” Clark says in patient disbelief, and gets another shrug.  “Would there even be a point to asking how you know where I live?”

There’s a chipped mug sitting on the end table behind Dick, filled with something that smells like some flowery sort of tea.  Dick twists around and picks the mug up, cradles it carefully in both hands as he sips from it.  “You should be flattered,” he says to the mug.  “You’re his number one Batman-related emergency contact.  Not counting me and Alfred, of course.”

Clark shifts a little, braces his elbow against the back of the couch and rests his head on his fist, staring in contemplation at his young guest.  Batman is fiercely protective of Robin and won’t tolerate even the slightest whisper about the little bird, about his skills or his training or the appropriateness of his presence in the field.  It had taken three encounters for Superman to be able to so much as introduce himself to Robin, and even that was with Batman looming close over his young partner’s shoulder.  But Clark Kent has never met Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne’s ward, and he is rapidly realizing that the dynamic is different under these circumstances.

Still, Clark has no desire to start stepping on Bruce’s toes, especially in this area.  “Why don’t you let Alfred know where you are,” he says mildly, and it sounds like a request but it really isn’t.

Dick gives him a brief, considering look.  Then he holds his tea out in clear expectation, and when Clark automatically takes it for him, he dips one hand into the pouch pocket of the hoodie and produces a cell phone.  It has a little S-shield charm tied to its case, and Clark smirks despite himself.  The sweatshirt sleeves get pushed up enough to free the boy’s hands- his knuckles are red and raw, one or two bandaged- and he taps out a fast message.  He waits a moment, then turns the phone around and holds it out, showing the received-and-read message to Clark.  Then he tucks the phone away again and daintily plucks his tea out of Clark’s unresisting grip.  “There.  Now can I stay for dinner?”

“Might as well, since you’re paying,” Clark agrees, and glances askance at the kid.  “Two hundred dollars?”

“Yeah,” Dick agrees without meeting his gaze.  “Turns out, Bruce has like zero understanding of what money is worth.”  He drinks his tea and plucks at the sleeve of Clark’s hoodie with his free hand, rubbing the well-worn fabric between two fingers, and Clark wonders at Dick’s life before the tragedy that had deposited him on Bruce’s doorstep.  He seems almost embarrassed by the wealth Bruce throws around so casually.

The mug is almost empty, drained by Dick’s attempt to avoid further conversation.  Clark holds out his hand in offering, and when Dick passes it over, he rises and heads into the kitchen.  There is no kettle, so Clark merely rinses out the tea dredges and refills the mug with water, adds a teabag from the box on the counter, then puts it in the microwave.  Alfred would be horrified.

“So did you miss out on Edinburg because of the fight?” he asks, still in the kitchen, safety and comfort in the distance.

Dick is silent, not even breathing for a long moment- and Clark is panicking, thinking he screwed up, remembering all the uncomfortable conversations Batman has simply walked away from- but then there’s a noise, the slide of fabric on skin as Dick pulls the sleeves back down over his hands.

“He doesn’t know about this,” he says.  “It’s.”   And he stops, and swallows hard, and Clark turns to look at him.  He looks unsure of himself for the first time since Clark walked in to see him perched on the couch.  “It’s a bad one, the case.  I didn’t want to distract him.”

Ah, Clark thinks.  And there it is- he’s worried.  Worried, and useless, and trying to find something to do with himself.

The microwave dings and Clark turns back to it.  He uses the distraction to pull out his own phone and text Lois- she won’t be happy, but she’ll understand.  This doesn’t really involve her.  Then he gets the tea out of the microwave and heads back into the living room.

“Well, I don’t have a Netflix account,” he says as he offers the tea to Dick.  “But I do get the Game Show Network, and it is-” he glances at his watch, realizes he has no idea, and takes a guess, “- Jeopardy time.”

“Wheel of Fortune,” Dick corrects, but he doesn’t protest when Clark turns the TV on.  And when Clark sits down, in the center of the couch this time, it’s only a matter of seconds before the boy shifts closer.

By the time Jeopardy actually does come on Dick is tucked in against Clark’s side, not asleep yet but working on it.  And when Alfred calls much later to report mission success, Clark elects to tell Dick in the morning, and lets sleeping birds lie.

this is such a wonderful fic thank you anon :)

[ellana-ravenwood]

Fun fair with the Family - Batmom x Batfam (REPOST please READ the explanation right under the summary :-( )

Summary : Batmom decides to take her family to the fun fair…She quickly realizes it might not be her best idea ever.

You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

Repost because, and this time I really don’t know how, the original post got erased...BUT I had it backed up for once. So here. FUCK. Hum. Sorry. But it had almost 100 notes, and comment people left I didn’t even had time to read because the story simply disappeared...I’m a bit bummed out right now...Is it too much to ask if you could like, reblog and comment again ? I kinda feel bad, it’s not my style to ask those things...I’m so sorry for that, but it’s a bit discouraging, to write something, and to see that apparently it was liked, but to not know who liked it, what were the comments etc etc, especially since this time, I didn’t do anything, the story simply disappeared...Anyway, hope you’ll enjoy, and re-enjoy if you already read it :’-( : 

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Not even an hour in, and you know you made a huge mistake bringing them here. All at the same time. They were going to be the death of you, so much energy…But it was just so rare that you all had some free times at once…You just wanted to spend some time with them.

It all started so well though.

*******************

You woke up in the best way possible : with your Bruce’s lips trailing kisses on your neck, shoulders and back, his arms wrapped around you. You shifted around, and before you could say anything, he kissed your temple, the corner of your mouth, slowly putting butterfly kisses on your face, to finally kiss you on the lips.

You melted in the kiss, and squeezed his large frame against you, your arms struggling to wrap around him. Damn that man was big. When he pulls away, you can’t help but grin at him, and he gives you the smile he only reserved to you. A real, pure smile. You nuzzle his neck, and he let out a contended sigh.

-You’re alright ?

-More than alright my love, as always when you’re here.

-My sweet Broosh. You know what I mean.

-I am alright. Not even a single bruise or scratch. The boys are too. Calm night.

-I like those.

-I like you.

-I love you.

-Oh yeah, that too. I love you (Y/N).

-Well, here’s for our morning’s cheesy ritual…We probably should get up.

-I have the entire day off.

-Oh ? Well then, what’s the hurry right ?

He smiles once more at you, and you crash your lips on his, climbing on him to straddle him. One of his hand tangles itself in your (H/L) (H/C) hair, the other goes to your waist and his grip is almost bruising. He cannot stop himself, you always had a strong and immediate effect on him…He rolls on top of you, and you wrap your arms around his neck, your legs around his waist.

-What’s the hurry indeed.

********************

-Can I change bedroom ? Because I need sleep, and I realized that choosing the bedroom just down the hall from yours was a mistake. I think I understand now why the others have their bedroom at the other side of the Manor. You guys are so loud.

Bruce chokes on his coffee, and you turn all kind of shades of red. Give it to Damian to be brutally honest like that…His brothers hesitate between being disgusted (reminding themselves why they also switched bedrooms from the master bedroom’s floor to the opposite aisle of the house), and bursting out laughing, Alfred and his childish giggle convince them to howl in laughter.

You look at your husband, quite horrified, and he shifts awkwardly on his seat, the fork full of eggs he was going to eat still half way through between his plate and his mouth…He says :

-Yes, of course you can change room.

-Great, because really, my dear parents, you’re mak…

-OOOoooook, subject close.

-Yes Dams, subject close. You’re going to make it weird again.

-I never make it weird Grayson ! I think it’s gross too, they just have to know that they’re a nuisance when together, that we can hear them from the gard…

Bruce cuts his son off, putting his large hand on his mouth, and says :

-Let’s not talk about this anymore, instead, let’s talk about the fact that today, we’re all completely free and we should do something together ! 

You freeze at Bruce’s words. “All completely free” ? Could it be ? This hasn’t happened for almost seven months ! You definitely had to do something as a family ! Before one of your sons could say he had plan, you throw in the idea of going to Gotham’s fun fair, without really thinking about it (maybe if you had, things would have gone differently). You even convince Alfred to come with you, because come on, he’s definitely part of the family. When you say he’s “like the dad you never had”, you swore you saw tears welling up in his eyes, as he rushed to put the dirty breakfast dishes in the dishwasher…

Your sons are excited, Bruce seems ok with the plan (as long as he’s with you, his sons, or Alfred, he’s always OK), and you’re just too happy at the prospect of spending a day with your family !

*********************

As you all were wearing casual clothes, almost unfashionable for some of you (Bruce and his black sweatpants, baseball cap and oversized hoodie…oh, what were you saying, that man always looked good), no paparazzis bothered you. They just couldn’t even fathom the fact that the great Wayne family would go out in ripped jeans, flannels, sweat pants, and old shirt that seemed to be a thousand years old ! You guys were always classy !

It was so good, to not be recognize. You could all be yourselves without fearing a silly picture to be posted in every papers the next day !

Like right now, in the fun house, making faces at each others, laughing your asses off when one would fall on a “trap”, dancing as if no one was watching to the stupid circus song that kept playing over and over again. You all had some great move. You completely lost it when Alfred, finally loosing his English phlegm, did the “arms wave dance” with your boys.

You could hug and kiss your Bruce without fearing articles being written the next day, with the pictures, judging you guys’ relationship…Everything was just great ! Your sons though, kept rolling your eyes at you two, whispering, or plainly saying out loud : “Get a room”, “PDA !!!” and other “Ew, gross”.

Damian won a gigantic teddy Bear for you at some darts game, that was bigger than him, and you thought it was the most hilarious thing ever to see him carry it all around the fun fair. The boy refused the help of his brothers and father, so he deserved his struggle, and damn, it was just too cute. He had to twist his neck on the side to be able to see where he was going, because that damn bear was so large ! When you thanked him with a kiss on the forehead, he looked just so proud of himself that it melted your heart a little bit. That boy.

Jason, making all of you laugh, won some water guns at the “hook-a-duck” game, that was suppose to be for little kids. Of course, the rest of the warm summer day was spent spraying each other.

Tim got thrown out of the “magic house” as he made it a mission to debunk absolutely every single “creatures” in it, and explained every single trick, in details, the magicians were performing. The owner, a very fat, dirty and bald character, grabbed him by the collar, and Bruce almost knocked the man out, no one was touching his babies ! …Fortunately, you got a hold of him before he could do anything, and Tim handled himself. You could understand the owner though, because your son was being a total buzzkill, and every visitors were leaving his attraction…

Dick decided to “test his strength” by using one of those machines where you put a couple of quarters in, and a ball would come down for you to punch, and then a number would tell you how “strong” you were. All the boys did it, even Alfred…Dick punched the hardest, breaking the score that was the highest before he tried…Until Bruce tried too, and broke the machine because he punched too hard. He apologized to the owner of the machine, and gave him check for him to buy another one.

Everything was just great.

Until your sons’ energy was a bit too much. They wanted to do EVERYTHING. As soon as they finished an attraction, they were running to the next one, and you realized that you were not fit to follow them…But then a day that was starting to be too exhausting for you to really appreciate your family’s presence, too much at the same time, while it started so great..turned perfect.

Bruce gave you a piggy back ride through the fun fair, and things were good again. You could follow your children with ease, comfortably snuggled against his back, and you had easy access to his neck, jaw, temple and hair…All the places he liked to be kissed and caressed. Bonus point because your actions grossed out your sons a lot.

You were so glad you decided to go to the fun fair everything was so perfect…a few other accidents happened besides Bruce broking the punching machine, and Tim being thrown out of the magic house.

Damian punched a man disguised as a werewolf in the haunted house, because he jump scared him, and you guys all ran out of the place…until he realized he forgot his giant teddy bear inside, and went back in, just to punch the werewolf man once again because the fool was trying to grab him, while yelling “SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE PLEASE”…You avoided the Haunted House area until the end of the day.

Jason ate too many candies, and threw up everything after he went on the tea cups attraction…You couldn’t help but telling him : “I told you son”, as, indeed, you warned him all day that he was going to get sick with all this sugar combined with fun fair stuffs. Even the carousel made him gag…

Dick almost got punched in the face for flirting with the girlfriend of some very jealous guy. Of course, he didn’t realized the girl had a boyfriend. He escaped with a laugh that infuriated the dude, and a few backflips that impressed the girl…and was able to slip his number in her pocket. Of course he would.

Tim got stuck in the “hamster wheel” of one of the fun house because Damian kept throwing his giant teddy bear at him…and both you and Bruce had to separate them before they would get in a violent fist fight. You made them hold hands the rest of the day as a punishment. Yours and your husband constant snickering towards them got the lesson through their head. Alright, no more fighting…in front of the parents.

And finally, the boys convinced Alfred to go with them in the biggest roller coaster on the fair, even though their favorite butler kept refusing their proposal as he said “rollercoasters made him sick”…He just couldn’t resist them. He considered them his grandchildren, he felt obligated to please them. And so here you all were, on a gigantic rollercoaster and…Damian, who was sitting next to Alfred, turned, and the panic on his face scared you.

-MOM, DAD, PENNYWORTH JUST FAINTED !!!! AL’ !! HE’S NOT OK !!

You all rushed around your loved butler to see if he was alright at the end of the ride, and with a weak voice, as he was waking up, he just said :

-I told you those made me sick…I don’t like heights too much…

And that marked the end of your day. It was getting quite late anyway, almost time for patrol. Dick and Jason supported Alfred back to the car, and Bruce went behind the wheel, forbidding his dear butler to drive, and once you all got home, he forced him to go take some rest.

Your boys felt extremely guilty that they almost broke their Al’…

********************

Before going to sleep, you checked on Alfred, bringing him some hot tea…that he never drunk as he was already in a deep slumber when you came in his room. You put the blanket back up to his neck, and with a kiss on your adoptive father’s forehead, you felt him, leaving a note telling him that if he needed anything he should just ring you, even though you knew he probably would never do it…

You went to bed late, but not late enough for your children and husband to be home, and you slipped into your king sized bed alone.

It was alright though, you knew your Bruce was going to warm the place next to you soon enough (you hoped it would be another “calm night”)…And the day you spent with him and all yours boys charged you up so much on family time that it was fine.

You made a mental note to take them to the fair again some day, but after a very exhausting night, so that their energy would be a bit lower.

********************

The sun was already rising in the sky when you felt Bruce’s side of the bed shifting, and his arms wrapping around you, squeezing you on his naked chest.

-Calm night ?

You asked hesitantly.

-Very calm. Bruise and scratch less.

You smiled, and turned around into his embrace so that you’d face him.

-Good. I like those.

-I like you.

-I love you.

-Yeah, that too. I love you (Y/N).

You stare at each other for a bit, each enjoying the presence of the love of your life, until a mischievous smile appears on your face :

-The night was calm enough to leave you with some energy ?

-You betcha sweetheart.

And on that note, he is on you, his lips crashed on yours, and his hand roaming your body. Damn you loved that man. And if you could hear his thoughts, what his heart said, you’d realize he loves you even more.

[junker-town]

How sports is Seven Worlds, One Planet: Episode 5?

Alfred Trunk/McPhoto/ullstein bild via Getty Images

David Attenborough’s new show is epic ... and sports.

We continue our extremely important mission to conduct a scene-by-scene review of the BBC’s new nature documentary, Seven Worlds, One Planet, in order to see how sports it is. We determined that Episode 1, which focused on Antarctica, was reasonably sports. Asia was very sports, as was South America. Australia was more drinking than sports, but that’s OK. Now it’s time for ...

Episode 5 Europe

Let’s start with a prologue: there are really only six continents, and Europe’s not one of them. I’m sorry, it just isn’t. Every other continent is separated from its neighbour by something sensible — an isthmus, perhaps, or a whole-ass ocean in the case of Australia. Europe is just a chunk of Eurasia that thinks it’s cool. You’re never going to convince me that the Ural Mountains are a sensible continental boundary. Europe’s a big, smug, densely-populated peninsula and that is all.

There is still some cool stuff going on there though.

Scene 1: Attempted Urfanticide

Europe used to be dominated by an enormous forest. Almost all of it is gone. Such progress! But some remains and in Finland there’s enough to support a small (1,500) population of brown bears. Some members of that population are adorable:

This scene isn’t all frolicking baby bears, however. Where there are bear cubs, there are also bear mothers, and where there are bear mothers there are hopeful bear-fathers in pursuit. Bear, as you may know, share an unfortunate habit with many large carnivores: if they can, big males will kill infants which they haven’t fathered.

So when a big male shows up, the cubs play it safe and scamper up a tree, while the mother responds to his catcalls by telling him to leave her family the hell alone. (I don’t speak bear, but the context makes things clear.)

The cubs then proceed to play it somewhat less than safe, coming down while the male is still in sight. They’re in mortal danger, so the mother goes full on Bear Mama and runs the male off into the woods. Good parenting. Bad childrening.

Aesthetics 9/10

I just want to squeeze their little bear cub cheeks, although, since their mother could tear me in half without trying, I would probably have to be quite drunk to actually attempt this.

Difficulty 8/10

Bear cubs are surprisingly good climbers. Conifers have straight, overly-disciplined trunks, and are therefore much harder to climb than most large deciduous trees, which are more sprawling and inviting. And yet the little dudes zip straight up them.

Competitiveness 10/10

Male brown bears average almost 500 pounds. Female brown bears are closer to 350. That’s one brave charge.

Overall 27/30

Most parenting is not a sport. Bear parenting is a sport.

Scene 2: The Hair-Cows

When my three-year-old saw this scene, he decided he was watching “hair-cows”, which is at least as good a name as “musk ox”. (He also claimed he wanted to eat “hair-cow nuggets” for dinner, a worryingly predatory request.) Hair-cows are, true to their name, very hairy cows that live up in the tundra.

The tundra is not a very nice place to live. It’s cold, there’s basically no vegetation to break up the wind, and although it’s majestic in a desolate sort of way, I don’t think I’d be able to appreciate it on account of not being able to feel my legs. The hair-cows’ shaggy coats help them stay warm in this barren environment. Their huge horns help with ... other stuff.

Hair-cow herds are run by a bull, who controls mating rights for the whole group. A bull who doesn’t run a herd essentially has to go off and live on his own, which makes them pretty enthusiastic to upgrade their living situation. And that’s where the horns come in.

When a lone male meets a herd whose leader he thinks he can handle, this happens:

Still not as bad as the hangover from last week #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/IIwSbmrU4I

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

Let’s review the numbers. Quoting from Wikipedia, hair-cows:

can reach speeds of up to 60 km/h (37 mph).

on average, weigh 285 kilograms (630 pounds) and range from 180 to 410 kilograms (400 to 900 pounds).

Big bulls at the top of their game will therefore weigh close to 900 pounds and charge at each other significantly faster than, say, Usian Bolt. They also have four-inch think skulls to protect each other from a battering. Well-matched males can end up charging and gouging for some time, and if the fight goes on long enough we start to get head-to-flank goring action. Which just seems unpleasant, really.

Anyway, this is a long and drawn-out hair-cow fight. Good stuff.

Aesthetics 6/10

Hair-cows aren’t the world’s most attractive creatures, but at least they have style. Demerits on account of male hair-cows smelling like they’ve coated themselves in urine, because that is in fact what they have done: “The odor of dominant rutting males is ‘strong’ and ‘rank’. It derives from the preputial gland and is distributed over the fur of the abdomen via urine.”

Cool.

Difficulty 10/10

Taking a single head-on hit from a hair-cow would send your corporeal self into next week and probably eliminate your soul altogether.

Competitiveness 10/10

This is a great fight. It’s long, hard-fought, and there are enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Well done, hair-cows.

Overall 26/30

Definitely a sport.

Scene 3: Wolves

You don’t really expect to find wolves roaming around Europe. Well, that’s not exactly true: I played last year’s Assassin’s Creed, so I expect to find a pack of wolves roughly every four yards, including in major cities. But in real life, finding a pack of wolves on the edge of an Italian village would come as something of a surprise.

Not that you’re likely to find these wolves. They’re so elusive that the Seven Worlds team had to film them all through thermal cameras, which gives this whole scene an ethereal look:

Sirius Black? Is that you? #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/DZvtQTW8Xg

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

It’s mid-winter and the wolves are hungry, so they’re attempting to ambush a herd of red deer in the darkness. Their first attempt fails thanks to a combination of being too noisy and having their hunt disrupted by a passing car. Humans!

Their second is better planned out, and they manage to isolate one of the deer and herd it down the mountain. As it tries to escape, it slips on an icy road (humans!) and the hungry pack manage to bring it down.

Unfortunately, the hunt has been watched by the village sheepdogs, who flood out to chase off the wolves and claim the kill as their own. Poor wolves.

Aesthetics 7/10

The night vision gives this an air of fantasy, which is nice because one gets the feeling that these wolves would be somewhat bedraggled had they been caught on normal cameras.

Difficulty 8/10

Hunting down deer in what amounts to pitch blackness sounds very difficult indeed.

Competitiveness 8/10

The deer give the wolves a seriously hard time, and the emergence of a third party right at the end is a clever twist.

Overall 25/30

Extended hunts are almost always sports.

Scene 4: Monkeys

The presence of Barbary macaques in Gibraltar is a reminder of the planet’s habit of undergoing massive changes over relatively short timescales. There are no monkeys in Europe except these ones, and they’re here because around five million years ago, the Strait of Gibraltar was closed, and north African animals had free rein to wander over to the Iberian peninsula.

Then came the Zanclean Deluge. With the Straits closed, the Mediterranean had no access to the Atlantic and slowly evaporated. And when they re-opened, the Mediterranean re-filled in about two years, powered by what was probably the biggest waterfall the planet has ever seen. This has very little to do with the monkeys. I just think it’s interesting.

Gibraltar, right on the southern tip of the continent, is home to Europe’s only monkeys. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/GMnBIod7Eq

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

Anyway, Barbary macaques spread across southern Europe, but eventually (I assume because of the Ice Age, etc.) they collapsed back into a small population at the Rock of Gibraltar. Around 300 monkeys still live there. Some of those monkeys, incidentally, have a thing for kidnapping.

A low-status female monkey (these macaques live in tiered social groups) has just had a baby, and a higher-ranking female is jealous of her. So she steals the baby and runs away. The mother is so low-ranking that she can’t approach the other monkey for fear of the rest of the troop ganging up on her.

High monkey drama ensues as the kidnapper — who clearly has no idea what she’s doing with a baby — makes her escape, climbing a cable car tower with a tiny little monkey dangling off her. Eventually the mother catches up with the baby-thief, but the gang is more than 100 feet above the ground, and any wrong move might lead to a fall and certain death ...

... so naturally, the situation is resolved by grooming. Mama monkey finds a random monkey to groom within sight of the kidnapper, who gets so jealous that she gives the baby back in exchange for a change to get in on the action.

Most of this was some action movie stuff, but the end might be difficult to translate. I’m trying to imagine Liam Neeson rasping into his phone about his “particular set of skills,” only for them to turn out to be removing parasites from the other person’s hair with his teeth.

It’d be weird, but you’d watch it.

Aesthetics 7/10

Monkeys just aren’t that cute, even baby monkeys. The tension, fortunately, is accentuated by the impressive cinematography.

Difficulty 10/10

As a parent I have found it is more or less impossible to do anything with a baby, so climbing a cable car tower while fleeing the scene of a crime, baby in tow, is impressive work. Not morally impressive, mind.

Competitiveness 10/10

The ending doesn’t take anything away from the stakes.

Overall 27/30

Kidnapping monkey babies is sports. But please do not attempt this particular sport, at home or anywhere else.

Scene 5: Grave-Robbing Hamster Battle

This is it. This is what we’ve all been waiting for. The culmination of Sir David Attenborough’s long and storied career lies here, in a Viennese graveyard, where hamsters lie in wait to feast upon the offerings left for the dead ...

... it turns out that European hamsters love flowers. LOVE them. And, as graveyards have plenty of fresh flowers for them to munch through, that makes them prime hamster territory. Prime territory, of course, does not go uncontested. And while hamsters are cute and adorable, they’re also ferocious little balls of anger when roused. Observe:

Thug life. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/ePaxjj8Ybd

— BBC One (@BBCOne) November 24, 2019

Thwarted by the martial skills of the home hamster, the challenger has to sneak in while they’re distracted. And here, they’re more successful, creeping merrily over a tombstone and then munching happily on a bouquet before being enticed by a nice, uh, candle.

Attenborough claims that candles are full of oil and high in calories and therefore excellent hamster food, so I’ll take his word for it. The hamster certainly agrees, stuffing their face with as much wax as they can fit into their squishy little cheeks, which turns out to be a lot of wax: European hamsters can apparently fit about a quarter of their body-weight in their cheek pouches.

And now I should mention that this candle is in a jar with a slightly-tapered mouth and ... oh no.

Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again #SevenWorldsOnePlanet #wevealldoneit #chonkyboi pic.twitter.com/TDhY1YEpBd

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

My only regret is that Edgar Allen Poe never found out about this.

Aesthetics 30/10

COME TO ME, MY GRAVE-ROBBING HAMSTER FRIENDS. TOGETHER WE SHALL RULE THIS DISMAL PLANET.

Difficulty 10/10

WE SHALL RULE IT IN THE NAME OF PEACE.

Competitiveness 10/10

AND JUSTICE. AND COMPASSION.

Overall 50/30

AND DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS CANDLES. IT WILL BE A BETTER PLACE. ONE FULL OF HAMSTERS, WHICH ARE SPORTS.

Scene 6: Mayflies

In June, the largest of all mayflies emerge from a Hungarian river. They’ve spent three years as larvae preparing for just a few hours of adult life. The males come first, flapping to the banks to get one last molt in, and then fly back to the river to catch the females, emerging later.

There’s a terrifying amount of competition to fertilise female mayflies, accentuated by the fact the male mayflies are literally dying as they scramble to find a mate. The females have timed their emergence to within a few minutes of the males’ death, and as their corpses float past they then fly up-river, 10 million-strong. Then they die too, releasing their eggs upon impact.

Houston, that’s a lot of bugs. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/zp5GddXM2B

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

Within hours of the mayflies emergence into the European summer, they’re all dead. This is the most metaphorical metaphor that has ever metaphored.

Aesthetics 3/10

After three years of feeding and growing on the riverbed, the male mayflies appear first.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/V3bOFAv3R1

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

No.

Difficulty 8/10

It must be hard to try to be at the top of your game when you’re literally on the verge of death, especially in the middle of a mayfly melee.

Competitiveness 10/10

An entire generation of male mayflies fighting it out at the same time? Yeah, this is getting high marks.

Overall 21/30

Probably a sport.

Scene 7: Asshole Pelicans

Great white pelicans breed on the delta of the Danube river, one of the richest in the world. There are two things you should know about great white pelicans. The first is that they are huge. And I mean really, really huge: their wingspan can get to well over 10 feet and they can weigh as much as 30 pounds. The second thing you should know is that they’re assholes.

Flying above the delta, the pelican flock scans for food, using other birds for help

Cormorants: Come over. Pelicans: Can’t. Busy. Cormorants: We are eating delicious fish. Pelicans:

The real question here...are you a pelican? Or a pelican’t?#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/YRaphn3WUY

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

Do the pelicans go fishing once the cormorants have done the hard work of finding their prey? No. That’s not assholish enough for a great white pelican, and is also far too much work. Instead, they wait for the cormorants to do the fishing and then do whatever the hell this is:

K...O#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/48F9A4UDOM

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

The bullied cormorants quite naturally give up their spoils upon being engulfed by these horrible huge pirates. Imagine what it must be like having your head wrapped up in a penguin pouch. It’d like someone jamming your face into a yellow latex glove, and I’d rather get actually mugged.

Aesthetics 10/10

This scene is beautifully shot. All non-raptorial birds look better in large numbers, and the coordinated flight of the pelicans is gorgeous.

Difficulty 7/10

All these pelicans have to do is find and harass the people doing the real work, then enjoy their rewards. They’d do very well in the modern office. The cormorants, on the other hand, have to go fishing while being mugged by assholes, which sounds pretty difficult to me.

Competitiveness 5/10

Pick on someone your own size, pelicans.

Overall 22/30

Fishing is a sport. Piracy ... is also a sport?

Scene 8: The Offspring of the Cave Dragon

The face of Europe has been scoured by humans, turned from forests to homes and farms and roads and etc.. Under the skin, however, is a different story. Mankind’s reach doesn’t extend very effectually into caves, and nor does the sun’s, which leads to some very weird critters.

Olms, so far as I can tell, are the European equivalent of the American axolotl: blind albino cave salamanders which stay in larval form their whole lives. Unlike the axolotl, which is sort of cute, olms are very not:

Olms have feathery gills which enable them to breathe underwater, as well as on land.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/W75pHQ8gpS

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

Here be dragons Well...baby ones at least.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/MjdCQcDmxM

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

What they lack in cuteness they make up for in looking-like-an-eel-ness? Their weird looks and hermetic life led locals to believe that they were somehow related to more mythical beasts: 17th-century naturalist Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, upon handling an olm body, claimed that they were “baby dragons” which “resembled lizards.”

Fair enough, Johann.

Aesthetics 4/10

Weird-looking critters. Even the bonus point for being mistaken for baby dragons doesn’t net the olm very much.

Difficulty 10/10

Olms live in pitch blackness and only get a meal about once every 10 years. Even ignoring hunger, that environment would quickly reduce even the most hardened human into a gibbering wreck.

Competitiveness 0/10

Nothing happens.

Overall 14/30

Sorry, Johann, but olms aren’t sports.

Scene 9: Lynx

10/10 on the graceful fence leap, extra points for epicness.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/rkwRWiDxZN

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

It is hard to be an Iberian lynx. Nearly extinct, and hemmed in on all sides by human development, their population was at one point reduced to double-figures. Their final fastness is in southern Spain, where conservation efforts are going reasonably well. We are introduced to a lynx patriarch, who has helped preserve his species by fathering ... wait ARE WE GOING TO GET KITTENS?

And the award for cutest cat family goes to…#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/cfqvVJl0Qf

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 24, 2019

KITTENS! Anyway Iberian lynxes are doing better these days, but still not well at all. Europe has been so over-developed that there’s no room for wild animals to co-exist along with humans, and so, like the lynx, large animals everywhere are under threat. Unless people make a concentrated effort to be much better neighbours, the lynx, and many other critters, won’t last long.

Aesthetics 10/10

KITTENS!

Difficulty 7/10

Imagine living your days in existential dread, suspecting that you might be close to the end of the line for your whole species. Couldn’t relate.

Good jump though.

Competition 0/10

Nothing happens.

Overall 17/30

Probably not sports, although I could be tempted to change my mind for reasons entirely related to KITTENS!

[alfredosauce50]

What makes me human [Cyberpunk! America x reader] 17

Wordcount: 3, 927 Rating: T for strong language and mature themes Chapter synopsis: Alfred woke up wanting to take things slow, all so he can enjoy the morning with you. You, however, were in a rush to regroup in the wake of a sinister conspiracy. He's too stubborn to hear the truth, so you bribe him to listen with an amorous gesture. When he does find out, he gives you an earful. Allen snaps back and rediscovers his motivation to keep him away from you. Meanwhile, Alfred's clone survived. The only person who knows isn't even meant to be on the planet, and he's helping Alfred 2.0 find his place in the world. Everyone's struggle to free themselves from the tyranny of your father continues. The war rages on. The reader is referred to as she/her.

17 - Rebirth of the old

Alfred was never keen on staying in a motel. But the appeal of it hit him like a tidal wave first thing in the morning. You were here, half-dressed and curled up next to him in a proper bed. To think this was how things used to be—he couldn’t take it. He lost something more valuable than gold! Not giving a shit about anything else? He was living in luxury.

To hell with Arthur and Zao. He couldn’t relate to their long-distance struggles and he didn’t have to. But more importantly, to hell with Allen.

The bed creaked as he leaned to you. Reaching out to your cheek, he patted it continuously. "Hey. Get up. It's past noon, lazy." Alfred kept at it until your peaceful expression scrunched up, indicating the return of your consciousness. He grinned. This marked the beginning of another good day. Snaking two arms around your waist from behind, he pulled you onto his lap as he sat cross-legged. "Up we go. Sleep well?" You lolled your head on his shoulder. "I know I did." He snorted.

You inhaled a deep breath to wake yourself up. Fluttering your eyes open to look at him groggily, he tilted his face down fondly. That, you could never get enough of. It showed in the floaty smile across your face. He chuckled, "What, you're not gonna talk to me? Don't leave me alone with my thoughts here."

He heard a scoff, the sound prompting him to pin your head with his chin. "I thought you would've gotten used to it by now. Your brain works fast." You sighed that out jokingly. Alfred hummed as if to say, touché. "Morning." You murmured raspily. However, your exhaustion was short-lived—did he say it was past noon? You tensed up in his hold and sat forward, twisting your form to him, panic-stricken.

"Dude, why didn't you wake me up earlier?"

You slid off his thighs, much to his displeasure. The quiet morning he wanted was no more. "Oh, God. What time is it?" Planting your feet on the brown carpet, you spun to him briefly for his answer. Alfred merely hung his head. Quietly. He stayed put where he was while you walked off to get dressed. So much for walking on the same wavelength.

"Well? Don't leave me hanging, Astroboy." Glancing at him over your shoulder, your expectant gaze welcomed a dash of frustration as he made no effort to get off the bed.

He looked up with a shake of the head. "I was just kidding, toots." The man then grinned mirthlessly as he slid off the mattress. "It's only nine. Don't fuss."

Breathing out a sharp sigh of relief, you placed your hands on your hips. But nine was barely sufficient for what you promised. Seeing that he never bothered getting dressed, you looked from side to side to find his clothes. It was in a heap on the desk.

"I'm not fussing. I just said we'd be back by morning. Now, work with me." You picked up his shirt, pants, and jacket, then tossed it to him one after the other. "You're making me nervous."

Alfred caught them with ease. "Don't fuss. You're fussing." Why you were so hell-bent on getting out of here was beyond him. Sparing him a brief glance of displeasure, you walked off to the bathroom without another word. His point exactly.

Sleep wasn't something he needed. But judging from where this conversation was going, his energy was about to be sapped away faster than he could deal. He appeared in the doorway while you washed your face. As you scrubbed away furiously, he folded his arms with a brief shake of the head. "You know, no matter what, we still gotta grab something to eat." He began. "So you can slow down."

You patted yourself dry before turning to him. Catching him in a hard stare, the silence became a sure-fire sign of your unwillingness. You never actually planned on eating anything before going back. But now that he mentioned it, it wasn't such a bad idea. "... Yeah, of course." You smiled. "We'll just go to FamilyMart. There's one down the street, and we can pick some stuff up for the gang... Just in case."

Just in case they wanted to chew you out for disappearing in the middle of the night. By they, you really only meant Allen. He was the only one who knew, after all. "They're probably worried, so we should give them an offering to appease them." You chuckled light-heartedly.

Alfred knitted his brows together until creases formed between them. What the hell? This was exactly what he didn't want to hear. Since when did everyone else have such a significant place in day-to-day life? "Worried? Then why did you leave in the first place?" He asked, reaching out to grab your hand. "Just hear me out. Hear me out." He squeezed you hard. His iron vice and low tone were all you needed to predict what he was about to say.

"You said you wanted to be alone with me. How come now that you are you're racing to get back? Slow down a little, won't you?"

For a night, everything could be swept under the rug. But it couldn't stay hidden forever. You forced yourself to look at him anxiously. "We have to get back to the group. We have to stick together." He shook his head with a hand over his mouth. Seeing how unhappy he was about that demand prompted you to add this. "Alfred. Just get to the car. I'll tell you everything. You'll understand, I promise."

He licked his bottom lip, disgruntled. What was there to tell? He took your other hand to hold you in place. "No. Let's not do that." Alfred asserted through a glower. "And it's Al. Al. Either you call me that or some stupid pet name. Whatever you want. Just not Alfred." You narrowed your eyes, confused by the growing temper in his voice. He never had a problem with what you called him, so why now?

"Okay, fine. Al. Will you go to the car, now?"

The man rose his brows. Did you seriously think he could be convinced? "Make me, baby. You can try dragging me out, but I'm fine right here." He took a seat on the toilet and gleamed at you sarcastically. You folded your arms and shot him a look of irritation. A few moments of tense silence passed before he continued. "Last night was nothing, you know that. So why can't we have the morning to ourselves? Just an hour? You can't say no."

You swayed from side to side. It was endlessly frustrating that he was misunderstanding everything so terribly. It was never about not wanting to be here. "Would you stop being so difficult?" You huffed angrily. He shrugged dismissively, then reached out to pull you in against your will. "I'm serious, Al. I'm not playing games with you. Something's wrong. It's about him." Hissing out the last word, you saw something change in his expression within seconds.

Christ on a bike. Alfred stared at you through his eyebrows sternly. But he decided to save the questions for the car. "... Fine." He relented, much to your relief. But something was glinting in his electric blue eyes. Was it mischief or something else?

"But I'm not moving til' you kiss me."

Blood rushed up to your face as you heat up with mortification. Was he serious? He looked serious. "What the fuck, Al. Didn't I just impress on you the importance that you get off your ass?" He remained quiet. His gaze on you was unwavering and expectant. He honestly couldn't mind if you tore him a new one for this. If shit was going to hit the fan again, he needed to set one thing straight.

Seeing that he was deciding to be stubborn, you gave in, but not without a frustrated huff. And so, you kissed him on the lips.

You gave him what he wanted. When your mouth connected to his, the force was enough to move his head back. You'd give him his money's worth—a hard, angry kiss—though he barely paid anything with boldness. But boldness was exactly what you needed. It coaxed you to be somewhat honest with yourself, as you'd be lying if you said you didn't want this too.

Alfred's eyes were as wide as dinner plates during the exchange. He didn't actually think you'd do it. In fact, the pleasant surprise caught him so off guard, he never even got the chance to return it before you pulled away. When you leaned back with a deep inhale, which was hotter than he cared to admit, he gawked at you like you just shot him. "Woah." He spluttered. His chest was whirring so crazy you could probably hear it. "I was only joking."

"No, you weren't." You muttered as a matter-of-factly. He laughed nervously at you, then fell silent. Way to go, Alfred. He thought. The second-hand embarrassment made you light up like a Christmas tree. Fortunately, it was staved off by urgency. "Car. Now." You ordered. The man watched you leave through the door while he was left reeling.

Bewilderment, giddiness, it was all there. He didn't waste any more time to scramble onto his feet and run after you. "Hey, wait! You didn't even let me kiss you back!" Alfred exclaimed, picking up his pace. The metal door slid downwards behind him to a close. "Can we kiss in the car? I'll be good after that, I swear."

"I swear to God, Alfred. Now is not the time!" Your shouts trailed off into the hallway. It was never something you could say out loud, but this—his inability to let things go—was his best attribute. It saved what needed saving.

Himself, you, and what you both were together.

Shooting up with a start, he twisted around a white bed in his bout of grave disorientation. He stopped when a sharp pain shot through his abdomen. "Ah, crap." While he hunched forward to wince, his heart pounded alarmingly hard in his chest. As loud as it was, it couldn't beat the monitor beside him that beeped away. "... Still alive, huh?" He murmured. This had to be the most sterile environment he'd been in for a while.

Perfectly polished metal walls, and not a spec of dirt in sight. There was nothing in the room except everything he was currently using. He ripped off the electrodes on his chest, then the IV drip from his arm. The heart monitor flatlined as abruptly as his movements. While he slid off the mattress, a voice interrupted his silent haven.

"If you wanna stay alive, you'd wanna take it easy."

He whipped his head to the source. "Jesus, Zao." He took a deep inhale before continuing, watching the said man tilt his head up as a greeting. Why the guy even saved him after kicking him around like a football was beyond him. But more importantly—"And would you stop doing that?" He shook his head with disapproval. "You're turning into an omen of death, always showing up when I'm fucked up."

The other unfolded their arms and walked towards him. Slowly, grudgingly. "Invulnerable or not, you're one hard guy to kill. You're just like him." The brunette remarked, causing his companion to narrow their eyes fiercely. Zao scoffed with a growing smile. So he hit the mark. "But you are him. Aren't you?"

"Don't fuck with me, man." He glowered, picking up a vacuum-sealed packet of clothes on a trolley. Alfred tore open the packaging with next to no grace. "You can start by telling me what the hell you want from me. And I'm not planning to be your guinea pig for a sick little experiment." While he spoke furiously, he hopped on one foot to put on a pair of pants. It was endlessly vexing how he seemed to find himself in the same place over and over again.

Somebody was always playing with his genetics, one way or another. This somebody being his oldest nemesis.

"I've had enough of crazy science freaks treating me like some... Extinct animal. This isn't Jurassic Park."

Zao threw his hands up defensively. "Listen, I may be a scientist, but not that kinda scientist. I don't clone people." Alfred threw on a jacket and glared at him. He was beginning to wonder if he was developing some prejudice for biology majors. And this guy, well, they were never particularly chummy in the first place. "I clone plants. Big difference there."

The blonde rose his brows and laughed mirthlessly. That certainly made him feel better. "Right, right, sorry, a farmer. My bad." He muttered sarcastically. "And what does a farmer have to do with my sorry ass? You want something from me, don’t you?"

The answer was in the question. This guy’s story was so disturbing it fazed the unfazed. "What do you have that I’d want? I already have enough shit on my plate." Zao snorted, popping a few gummies he dug up from his pockets. His scarlet eyes darkened. Catching the other in a look so foreboding, they were shocked this was the same person. "Not everybody is out to get you. I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of saving your life just to fuck it more than how fucked up it already is. You can do that yourself."

Alfred’s eye twitched, but his mouth never opened. This guy did look like the type to have a silver tongue. The assumption only manifested into reality as they continued. And without mercy, at that. "Allen told me about you, you know?" He tensed up. His ears were ringing, almost as if his body knew to reject what he was about to get into. "You’re not from around here. You make enemies with the yakuza, and somehow, you skip half a century and end up here so they can take you on in their prime."

Zao circled him tantalizingly while he stood frozen still. It was like being tied down and scrutinized against his will. He didn’t like it. No, he hated it. But something about his lack of filter was relieving—he was forced to confront his demons in the worst way. "You’re something. Not just anybody makes it to Matsumoto’s kill list. What you did, what happened to you, even gives me the goosebumps."

His anger was too hot for him to think. But he knew better than to lash out. Not after some clarification first. While he clenched his fists until the veins began to pop, he kept his eyes on the ground. "I’ve spent the last twelve hours being well and truly fucked with, so if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on—" Alfred lifted his head for a heated stare burning with conviction. "I may as well lose my temper."

"Of course." The brunette mused, turning his feet towards the door. Once again, he was barely impacted by the threat that loomed over him. All his life, he had much bigger fish to fry.

"If you couldn’t tell, I was about to get to that part."

The Alfred everybody knew was never the first to walk this Godforsaken Earth. His mind was the same, but his body wasn’t. He was the second version of himself, having become a creation of metal parts, silicon, and everything flesh and blood couldn’t handle. What about the Alfred that stood before him? How was he any different? He never asked to be made, and now that he was, Zao thought he deserved just as much of a fighting chance.

"You didn’t have to do this." He muttered raspily with his head down. If it weren't for his ravenous hunger, he would've stayed in that hospital room. But it was too much to handle. And so, they changed locations to a ramen stand smack-bang in a commercial district. Picking up a cup of steaming miso soup, he took a small sip from the rim. "You shoulda’ just left me on the ground to bleed out."

"And let you die in one of the VIP rooms? Dead bodies aren't great for business." The other remarked, fully expecting a glare from him. But it looked like his spunk was gone. He never responded, not even with the least of a glance. Zao had to wonder if he was aggravated from his empty stomach back there. Little did he know, his anger was quelled by something else entirely. "... Want some painkillers?"

Alfred shook his head and covered his eyes with his palms. Everything still hurt like hell, but it balanced out everything on the inside. No matter how much food he consumed, he couldn’t swallow down the bile in his throat. It was only a matter of seconds before the waterworks started. Boy, he'd forgotten how good it felt to cry. "What the fuck..." He laughed dryly. To think you were responsible for this—he couldn't handle it.

The brunette rested his cheek on his hand, which he propped up with an elbow. Darting his discerning red eyes to Alfred's mouth, his brows came together. It was twitching as he forced a smile.

"Do you hate her?" Zao asked.

He swallowed thickly. "No."

"Of course you don't." He continued. The certainty in his tone caused the blonde to look up. There in all its ugly glory was his face blotched with patches of red. Zao was no sentimental person. But seeing him like this could shake anyone to their core. "I was there. She was hesitating because she wanted to give you a chance." Alfred wasn't sure how much he agreed with that statement. But there was one thing he could put his faith in.

"Doesn't change the fact that she did this for you."

Alfred fell quiet for a few moments. "What are you trying to say?"

"What do you think, Einstein?" Zao raised a dish of sake at him, almost on a celebratory note. If he was right about his assumptions, you've never shot a gun before, let alone offed someone with one. There could only be one reason for your eagerness to kill. "She's high-strung about you, dumbass." At first, he had to shake his head at how clueless Alfred was. Once it finally began to click, as evident in the blood rushing up to his face, Zao slapped a hand down on his shoulder with an amused look. High-strung, huh.

"Give it a few days. Once you're not so crippled, we can rock up to Arthur's place. She won't push you away, trust me."

The redness flushing Alfred's cheeks disappeared just like that.

"Are you crazy? They'll fucking kill me!" He whisper-shouted, slamming his fists down on the counter. "Not just the other me, but Allen too. And maybe she'll wanna do the same cuz' everyone else is."

Zao clicked his tongue. "Will they? You're stupider than I thought."

"Have you forgotten how you even came into this world? The man in the sky! Matsumoto. If they're gonna get rid of him, they need all the help they need. They're gonna have to take you in."

Allen had been up since five. He was half-awake and sprawled across the couch, struggling to keep himself conscious. He barely managed any sleep last night. Rolling his tired eyes to the digital clock on the kitchen island, he squinted at the neon figures. 10:26. You said you both would be back by morning, and it was nearly eleven. And eleven was pretty much twelve. Clearly, you were up to something. Something you were too kind to let him know what.

But he was something of an over-thinker himself.

He slid further down the couch until his head was the only thing against the backrest. Currently, he was in the bargaining stage. If you really chose Alfred over him, your best friend, big brother, and everything Alfred wasn't, that didn't mean he couldn't be in your life, right? Yeah! If you both moved out somewhere, he could be the live-in housekeeper. That sounded pretty swell.

The door slammed open. In stormed the subjects of his thoughts.

"Your dad made a clone of me, and you didn't tell me?!" Alfred exclaimed with the utmost terror. His shouting was the perfect splash of cold water to wake him up. So Allen stood up, concerned at the scene that was about to unfold before him. "And you... You shot him. How did that feel like? You said he was dead?" You marched into the living room and spun to him, eyes-wide and heavy-hearted.

Your mouth was wide open, but the words were caught in your throat.

"I..."

Alfred's nostrils flared. This was what you had to tell him? He couldn't comprehend why you put it off. How could you withhold something so important from him? He whipped his head to Allen, who didn't seem all too shocked at what he was witnessing. No way. "You told him, (F/N)? Is he in on this too?" He pointed to the man accusingly, all while keeping his hard stare on you.

"Or is this why you both were gone for so long? Why didn't you tell me?" He sucked in a sharp breath before raising his voice.

"Why didn't you fucking tell me?"

"Because I was in shock!" You snapped fiercely. Alfred froze while Allen's expression darkened. "It was just one day later. I told you in the morning, didn't I? Why are you so angry?" Allen could admit he felt pity for the poor bastard, but he was finally seeing him for what he was. A setback on your life. On his. Alfred didn't deserve half the attention you gave him. He couldn’t let Alfred have his way with you anymore. Even now, a light tremble had seized your body because of his selfishness.

You were forced to relive those memories, and the brutality of it was enough to blur your vision. But you had enough of crying. Crying over Alfred and crying in front of him. So you blinked the tears away before taking off. Alfred reached out to grab your hand, but you slipped away too seamlessly. "(F/N), wait—I'm sorry—" He begged, "—come back!"

Fuck, why did he have to be so goddamn explosive all the time? He’d been so caught up with himself, he never stopped to think how it could impact everyone else. He was never good at listening. Hell, he couldn't do it to save his life. That statement rang particularly true when he felt like he just lost something—broke something. What he had with you. In the end, his inability to let things go didn’t just save it. It ruined it.

Before he could follow you back into the guest room, Allen grabbed him by the collar and throttled him. Alfred stumbled back a few steps out of shock. He’d never seen him this furious. "Just face it, skin-job. You’re a fucking drag on her life." He seethed, shoving him back roughly. "She should’ve walked out on you ages ago. But she’s too good for you."

With one last bitter glare, he added this to rub more salt into the wound. "Once we kill that old fuck, I’m not letting you do what you please. I’ll be haunting you like your demons. One wrong move and you’re dead." Allen growled. "I even wish she never killed your clone. That way, I can kill you twice."

[iatethepomegranate]

Homecoming Chapter 21

@iontorch @prettybeefballs @darkmagicianknight

The whole fic is a sequel to Human Connection (can be read as a standalone, but character personalities make more sense if read together)

Tag, in chronological order

Shiny Masterlist of the entire series (including AO3 link because I don’t trust tumblr to behave regarding external links)

Pairing: DickTiger

Rating: Teen, probably? I don’t know. There’s no sex anyway. (In this chapter)

Length: 5.4k (this chapter)

Summary: Dick and Tiger get some much-needed time together. Now that immediate danger is over, however, Tiger has far too much time to overthink things.

Notes: I don't think there are any particularly common triggers, but Tiger isn't in a great space mentally and Dick is still experiencing those symptoms (but they know why now so no more panicking). 

Hopefully my source on language stuff was correct. I think the spelling is sometimes a bit different. Fewer a's. Anyway, hope it's right or I'm gonna hate myself making that a plot point.

Chapter 21

Tiger was sorely tempted to sleep in his clothes, but Jason stopped him in the hallway right outside Dick's bedroom in the manor. Tiger supposed it was also his own room, but it was strange to think of that after being absent for months.

“Give me your clothes,” Jason said.

“What?” Tiger was too tired for this.

Jason leaned in, whispering so quietly Tiger could barely hear him. “Go put on a towel or something and give me your clothes. I need to get the evidence off. Then you need to have a year-long shower or something so we can be sure there's no evidence left on you.”

“I am not getting naked in front of you.”

“Half-naked, more like.”

He was missing the point on purpose. Tiger stared him down.

Jason snorted. “Fine, fine. You can hand me your shit through the door.”

Tiger rolled his eyes and stepped into the bedroom to strip off to his underwear, throwing clothes at Jason through the tiniest opening he could manage without jamming his own fingers.

“Dick never mentioned you were shy,” Jason teased.

“It is called modesty. Have you not heard of it?”

Jason laughed at him, his voice shrinking as he moved away. Was it really common to simply... walk around shirtless in front of people you were not intimate with? Or was it simply a characteristic of this highly unusual family?

Tiger was never going to find out. He didn't really want to. Modesty was sometimes impossible while in the spy world. Wearing the lungee helped, but he had fallen out of the habit recently. He would have to start again. He had left one of them in this room when he'd left. Perhaps it was still there... unless Dick had taken it with him to his apartment.

Tiger washed his hands thoroughly before searching, finding it folded neatly in a drawer. Dick mustn't have touched it. The man never folded anything neatly if he could help it. If that was there, then maybe his Quran was... ah. There it was. On the sparse bookshelf in the corner of the bedroom. It had been a simple enough task to clear a shelf so it could have a place by itself. Most of the books Dick had were old schoolbooks or romance novels with swooning maidens and oddly attractive noblemen. And a few circus arts photo books.

Tiger was suddenly grateful he hadn't had much time to pack when Bruce forced him to leave. Helena had returned the spare Quran to him that he had originally left at St Hadrian's. He wasn't sure where it was now. Helena might have taken his things with her before she detonated the explosives. He had been... preoccupied at the time.

The anxiety that had plagued him all day still had its claws in him. He wouldn't be able to sleep in this state. Well. He needed to wash up anyway, and he had not yet given his final prayer for the night, preoccupied as he was by the escape and Dick's subsequent brush with death.

Tiger showered, washing himself thoroughly, and took the ritual washing steps required for prayer at the end. Then he dressed and wound the lungee onto his head. His Quran hadn't collected much dust. Someone must have kept it clean for him. Damian, most likely. Dick had left the manor at some point after Tiger had.

Praying helped, like it usually did. It calmed him, even if the feeling of the anxiety ebbing left him exhausted. It had been a difficult day. He had earned that.

The calm carried him to sleep, but not so well that dreams did not haunt him. He woke breathless, disoriented, heart pounding but unable to remember why. There was a strange feeling of dread in his stomach and he felt around for Dick's presence. He wasn't there. Why wasn't he there?

Tiger curled up, breaths hissing ineffectively in and out. Do not panic. Where was Dick? He had the distinct feeling he had forgotten something.

Wait. Dick was fine. He was in the batcave med bay, fighting a migraine. Well, fine was perhaps inaccurate. But he was not in danger.

Tiger sat up, putting his head between his knees until he could breathe again. He reached over and found the digital clock Dick kept hidden in a drawer because the light annoyed him. It was after two in the morning. He had slept only a couple hours.

He needed some time to calm down. He couldn't remember his dreams this time, thankfully, but there was an empty feeling that made him think they had something to do with losing Dick. He needed to see him or he would not be sleeping more tonight.

He hoped Dick was asleep or at least feeling better. Tiger found a ridiculous fluffy bathrobe Dick owned but never wore and a pair of socks that held the cold at bay, just a little bit. The wooden floors of the hallway outside the bedroom still chilled the soles of his feet, so he moved faster, grateful no one was awake to see him slipping around like a foal.

He almost expected to see Bruce at the computer in the batcave, but apparently the man did sleep sometimes. Once every year, perhaps?

There were soft voices behind the door to the med bay. Someone was awake. Tiger gently tapped on the door.

“Enter,” came Alfred's voice.

Tiger opened the door slowly, in case it made noise. It didn't.

Dick was sitting up, cross-legged in the middle of the bed with a pile of pillows supporting his back. He smiled over at Tiger, eyes bright despite the dark circles beneath them, and his lips were almost symmetrical now. Tiger breathed a sigh of relief, a little louder than he had intended.

Alfred passed Dick a child's drinking cup, the kind with handles on each side and a spouted lid for drinking. Tiger had forgotten the word people used for it. Something childlike, fitting given its usual purpose.

Dick took a sip, holding it by the handles with both hands. “Ah, water. How I missed ye.” He patted the end of the end with his right foot. Or, well, he attempted to. It wiggled more than anything. Dick glared at it and repeated the motion more successfully with his left. “Sit with me?”

Tiger sat on the spot Dick had indicated. “You look better.”

“Head's still pounding and my right limbs still kinda hate me, but yeah. I don't feel like I'm dying anymore.” He smiled over at Alfred. “I'm okay, Alf. You should get some sleep.” He set the cup down in what looked like a custom-made cupholder on a trolley that also carried a heart rate monitor. Then he wiggled his left pointer finger, which had a clamp linking him to the machine. “You'll know if I need you.”

“A few more tests, sir.” Alfred brandished a ruler.

Dick groaned. “Spoiler alert: my reflexes still suck.”

Alfred rounded the bed and held the ruler in the air, a small camera in the other hand. “One more time.”

Dick sighed and held out his right hand. Alfred dropped the ruler. Dick missed grabbing it entirely.

“Your reflexes have improved slightly,” Alfred said, crossing to input the data into the computer. “We will test you again in the morning. Master Tiger, do you intend to remain here tonight?”

Tiger would prefer that, but felt strange asking.

“I'd like you to,” Dick said. That made it easier.

“I will,” Tiger said.

Alfred ducked into another section of the med bay, pushing a screen aside. He pulled out a second bed on wheels and dragged it to the other side of the heart rate monitor. Separate out of necessity due to the medical equipment and access in the event of an emergency, but close enough that Tiger would be in Dick's space enough to go back to sleep.

Alfred stole one of Dick's pillows for the bed. Dick only complained for a few seconds. Alfred checked the vitals on the monitor, made Dick drink some more water, and then left them for the night.

“He has an alarm system in his room that'll let him know if I need help,” Dick said. “I'll be fine. I promise.”

“I thought you were going to die,” Tiger found himself admitting, not entirely of his own volition. He had not intended to say that to someone recovering from hours of pain.

“Me too,” Dick said quietly. Tiger squeezed his knee, but his awkwardness probably made it less of a comforting gesture and more... discomforting.

“Can you sleep?”

“I think so. I dozed off a bit while the migraine was screaming at me, so now should be easy. Comparatively.” He nudged Tiger with his good foot. “Get in bed. You look dead.”

“Flattering.” Tiger climbed into the other bed, which was surprisingly sturdy under his weight. Everything in here had to support Bruce's bulk, so he shouldn't have been surprised. Medical equipment was not often built to accommodate Tiger in either height or weight. He actually broke a stretcher once. Before Dick's time in Spyral, fortunately, or he never would have heard the end of it. Alia been bad enough, teasing him for...

And now he had made himself sad again.

Dick reached over with his heart-monitor-wearing hand, nudging his face. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“I broke a stretcher once,” Tiger murmured. “Not on purpose. I was too heavy.”

“I believe it. I've seen Bruce break chairs by sitting on them.”

Tiger found a smile working its way onto his face, despite everything. “Alia saw the whole thing. She teased me for weeks.”

“You miss her.”

“Mm.” Tiger was beginning to regret opening his mouth.

“That's okay, you know. You're allowed. Double agent or not, you still spent a lot of time with her.” Dick lay down, nudging Tiger's hand until he took the hint and laced their fingers together. “Remember the good stuff. I know she cared about you at some point. Nearly ripped my face off after the Old Gun mission when you had to go in and save my ass without sniper support.”

Maybe Tiger was not regretting opening his mouth so much. He leaned down and kissed Dick's fingers. It felt good to do that. They didn't have to hide how they felt anymore.

“No one is completely good or completely evil,” Dick said. “Remember the good in Alia. Remember how she was, not what she became. Even if she did try to frame me for murder a little bit.” He laughed, a little sheepishly. “Anyway. People are complicated. I've lost people who I had complicated relationships with. Dwelling on the bad doesn't help.”

“You should have been a grief counselor,” Tiger told him.

“Hey, I'm still young. Anything could happen.” Dick grimaced. “I'm not sure I'm ever gonna be Nightwing again, so... may as well explore my options.” He huffed out a breath and pasted a smile on his face. “Whatever. Not gonna think about that now. Happy thoughts, eh?”

“Yes. Happy thoughts.” Tiger desperately needed that, and he sensed Dick did, too. “I'm proud of you. For holding up so well against Bannon.”

Dick shrugged his left shoulder. “Necessity makes heroes of us all.”

“I admire your bravery. Do not diminish what you did.”

“Okay, okay. I'm awesome. I admit it. You were pretty darn good in there, too.”

Tiger didn't think he was, but it was nice to hear. “I... thank you.”

“I'm serious. That shit was rough.” Dick's thumb rubbed against Tiger's nearest finger. “We're gonna need time to deal with that. I'm just glad we're together now.” He grinned, but it slipped off his face immediately. “Ooh. Ow. I hurt myself smiling.”

Tiger held back his laughter, because it really wasn't funny.

“Oh, come on,” Dick said. “You can laugh. I certainly can't. Let me live vicariously through you.”

Tiger snorted.

“Eh, that'll do.”

Dick's aggressive positivity certainly helped wipe away the last traces of dream anxiety. Tiger nuzzled into his pillow, smiling over at this wonderful man, this cheerful force only a few hours removed from a torture chamber and yet burning so brightly as if he had never suffered a moment in his life. That was true bravery. His heart was burning with love. Or, he hoped it was love. He hadn't eaten enough for indigestion, surely.

“Jaanaana—”

Dick cut him off. “You know, you promised to explain what that meant once we were free.”

“Oh. Uh.” Tiger coughed nervously. He was not the type to cough nervously—who did that?—but apparently he was now. “Would you like me to...”

“I'd love you to. I've been dying of curiosity.” He snickered the tiniest bit. “Ow. Please tell me before I hurt myself doing basic human things again.”

Tiger had to take a few breaths before he had enough air to speak. “Oh. It, uh... it means my love. Or my beloved. It depends on the translation. I... it slipped out one day and...”

“Oh my God.” Dick was grinning again. “Smiling hurts a whole lot right now but I can't stop. That's so... I love it. I love you. Please keep calling me that.”

“I intend to.”

“Aww. You're so sweet.”

“Hardly.”

“Yes, you are. You're not allowed to argue with the injured guy.”

Tiger laughed, muffling it in his pillow in case the sound was too much for Dick. “Very well. I am sweet. You, however, are the sweetest.”

“Oh, stop. You're just spoiling me now. And I haven't even come up with a petname for you yet.”

“Please don't.”

“Hey, we can't let this be one-sided. I feel mean letting you shower me with affection while I sit here like, yeah thanks. Come on. Be a sport.”

Tiger could not deny Dick anything right now. Or ever, really.

Dick pulled his blankets up with his weak hand, even laughing a little bit at his struggle. He'd managed to get it to grip the fabric before Tiger could offer assistance.

Then Dick sighed, his eyelids visibly heavy. “I'm glad you came down here. I missed sleeping next to you.”

“As did I.” Tiger leaned over to give Dick's fingers one last kiss. “And I love you, too. Very much.”

They didn't need to say more. Dick fell asleep first, finally giving in to his exhaustion. Tiger watched him for a while, finding comfort in every rise and fall of his chest, every soft breath filling the air.

Fingers still loosely tangled with Dick's, Tiger fell into the most peaceful sleep he'd had in months.

Dick woke, feeling distinctly hungover with a brain full of cotton wool, to find Tiger curled up on his side. Eyes open. Watching him. Dick caught a moment of softness before Tiger registered he was awake and climbed out of bed.

“I should call Alfred.”

“Chill for a sec.” Dick rubbed his face, sleep still clinging to the corners of his mind. He wiggled the fingers on his right hand. They felt weak, but they were moving better.

Last night had sucked, except for those moments with Tiger. Dick didn't remember half of what he said—the memories lost to some kind of pain haze—but he did remember talking about Alia, and Tiger finally explaining what jaanaana meant. He just wanted a few seconds to let all that warmth wash over him again before reality set back in.

“Sit with me?” he asked. “Just for a bit?” He shuffled more to his left. “These things can take both our weight. Bruce and Jason tested them together in a rare show of familial unity.”

Tiger gave him a look that was simultaneously affectionate and exasperated—he hadn't quite guarded himself yet but it wouldn't be long—and slid into bed beside him. It was a tight fit, not exactly comfortable, but Dick couldn't have given less of a shit if he'd tried.

“Hi, stranger,” he said, just so Tiger would give him that look again.

Tiger held himself up on one elbow and played with Dick's fingers in his free hand. “I know you did not hit your head that hard last night.”

“I do have some great swiss cheese pain memory going on, though.”

“Oh?”

“Don't worry, though. I remember the important stuff.”

“We have very different definitions of what is important.”

Dick grinned up at him, and it didn't hurt nearly as much as he feared it would. Progress. Tiger was playing with him, in his own way. They both knew what Dick meant.

Tiger ran the backs of his fingers along Dick's jaw. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Kinda hungover, though.”

“...meaning?”

Right. Tiger didn't drink.

“Still kinda tired. Head's pounding. Maybe a little nauseous.” Dick was silently grateful Tiger hadn't been in the room when he was vomiting the previous night. He kept that to himself; he'd managed to keep some food down and use mouthwash between Tiger's two visits anyway. “Don't tell me you've never gotten hit in the face with, like, a sleeping drug and woken up like that.”

“Not recently.”

“Lucky you.”

Tiger smiled indulgently. Dick had half a mind to tease him about it, but it really was nice to see him looking so relaxed. Knowing Tiger, and the way he dealt with trauma, it wouldn't last. So Dick kept that to himself, too.

“Morning breath kiss?” he asked instead.

“Will you throw up on me?”

“Probably not?”

Tiger kissed his forehead instead. Dick found that an acceptable alternative. He could always pounce on him later.

“Now may I call Alfred?”

Dick sighed. “Oh, fine. He's gonna make me pee into a jar again. I mean, I definitely could pee a lot right now but I'm always worried I'm gonna miss.”

“Uh-huh.” Tiger slid off the bed. “Stay put. I do not trust you.”

Dick didn't trust himself, either. He lifted his right leg and rotated the foot. Moving okay, but he wasn't sure what would happen if he tried to stand on it.

Alfred arrived with a tray of fruits. Dick had a sudden urge to eat everything in sight.

“Take your time, sir,” Alfred warned. Dick munched on pieces of watermelon while Alfred stabbed him with needles.

Tiger got kicked out at some point during the examination process, which definitely did involve peeing into a jar. Well, a plastic cup. And more freaky brain-scanning machines.

Dick was sitting on the edge of the bed, working up the nerve to try standing while Alfred put data into the computer. Alfred seemed fairly confident Dick could stand, though he wasn't so sure about walking. Dick, for his part, was trying not to set himself up for disappointment.

Before he could bring himself to do it, though, there was a knock on the door. Dick and Alfred looked at each other. Dick shrugged.

“Enter,” Alfred said.

Bruce poked his head through the door. “How are we doing?”

“Well,” Dick said, “right now, I'm in shock that you actually knocked for once in your life.”

Bruce joined him on the bed. “Tiger warned me you were probably peeing into a jar.”

“Did he actually say peeing, though?”

“No. Urinating.”

“That sounds more like him.”

Alfred finished with the computer. “Now, Master Dick, shall we try standing?”

“Do I have to?” Because joking about his fears sounded more appealing than actually facing them.

Bruce stood, offering his hand. “Come on. I'll help you up, just this once.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Dick grabbed it with his good hand, letting Bruce pull him up. He had to adjust his stance to put more weight on his left foot, but that was easy enough. That circus upbringing had given him a near-supernatural sense of balance. Thanks, Mum and Dad.

“Do you feel secure, sir?” Alfred asked.

“Relatively. Not sure I can walk without falling on my face, though.” He hobbled a step, half-expecting his right leg to crumble. It didn't, but it wobbled something awful.

“Very good,” Alfred said, typing something into the computer. “At this rate, sir, you should have sufficient mobility within a few more hours.”

Dick could've sank to the floor with relief, if Bruce hadn't chosen that moment to drag him in for a hug. Alfred had assured him repeatedly the symptoms were not permanent and typically disappeared within twenty-four hours, but there was definitely a part of him that feared he'd be stuck that way forever. He'd be (relatively) fine in a few hours, at least until the next attack. And he had no idea when that would be. They had as much data as they could find about that machine, but there was nothing like hands-on experience.

Was this simply a case of him developing a short-term tendency towards migraines? Would this become a chronic condition? Would he end up being more or less sensitive than the average migraine-sufferer who developed their condition due to natural causes? The unknowns were freaking him out a little bit.

Bruce squeezed him but didn't offer any verbal assurances. He didn't typically offer platitudes. Unknowns freaked him out, too. At least Dick could trust him to be honest. He wasn't the type to sugar-coat things for the sake of people's feelings.

Alfred placed a spiral-bound notebook with a pen in the binding onto Dick's bed. “Now, Master Dick. You will need to track your symptoms and triggers.”

“I'm right-handed, Alf.”

Bruce stepped back from the hug, raising an eyebrow. “Did I not teach you how to write left-handed?”

“Oh, you did. I just hate it.” Dick had been trained to do pretty much everything with his non-dominant hand. Writing was still unpleasant, though.

Alfred sighed. “You may ask someone to write for you, if you must. Light and sound appear to be common triggers among the machines' victims.”

“So no going outside without cool shades. Check.”

“Dick.” Bruce almost managed to sound stern. Impressive, really.

“I've had a bad week. Don't judge me.”

Alfred made him sit back down and suffer more tests and scans. He definitely wasn't getting out of here before lunch.

Tiger was glad to spend time praying with Damian at midday, for several reasons. First, of course, was the fact he simply liked praying. Second was the fact Damian was good, quiet company during this time. Third was unique. The entirety of Dick's family had not left him alone for more than a few moments today. He was flattered Dick's family cared enough that they kept seeking him out, but Tiger had never been a people person, even less so today. Dick was resting until lunch and Tiger had honestly hoped to have some time to himself.

So Tiger lingered on his favourite verses even after he had finished praying, sinking into the familiar text. Damian lingered beside him, even as he fidgeted.

“You can tell them to leave you alone,” Damian said. “Or I can do it.”

“No, I...” Tiger didn't want to reject their kindness. Stephanie had brought him chocolate, of all things. No one did that. He and Dick didn't do gifts. It had seemed impractical for a long time. Maybe that could change now.

They were just trying to help. It was not their fault he needed some time alone with his thoughts.

Damian rolled his eyes. “Do you like suffering?”

Sometimes Tiger honestly wondered if he did. He had lingered on his pain these past few months in a way he never had in the past. Maybe repression had been unhealthy, but wallowing was equally so, as well as impractical.

There was a balance. Why could he not find it? How did other people do it? Was there something wrong with him? And why was he having an (internalised) emotional breakdown because a child offered to help him?

He's been silent for too long. Damian made a kind of tutting sound Tiger had never heard another person do in all his years. Where did this child even get that from?

“I will tell them you leave you alone today, since you clearly cannot be trusted to interact with your fellow human beings.”

“You're not wrong,” Tiger said, closing his Quran. There was perhaps an hour until lunch. The sun was almost bright today and the gardens did not seem quite as rain-drowned as they usually did. Maybe a walk around the manor grounds would help him put his mind into working order.

He and Damian parted ways outside the room. Tiger put his Quran away and found a coat in Dick's closet. Tight around his shoulders, but it would do. Gotham weather was a liar. Even when it looked warm, even the slightest breeze would chill to the bone. He considered finding a beanie, but dismissed it as too dramatic.

Tiger hadn't had many opportunities to explore the gardens behind the manor. Bruce had not wanted him wandering unsupervised during his previous stay here. Dick had to fight just so Tiger could walk to a few set locations without a chaperone.

Well, Bruce wasn't here now, and Tiger was not above complaining to Dick if problems arose. He hurried down the back steps before Bruce could show up to stop him.

The climate rendered the back gardens of the manor especially green, though Tiger suspected it was not all in the hands of the weather. The lawns were even more manicured than St Hadrian's, which had been painfully immaculate. Tiger used to sneak off to find something that looked real.

He found himself wandering a sweet-smelling rose garden, separated from the grounds by dark metal fences. Gravel crunched underfoot, and that alone made him feel more alive than he had in months. Gravel. Really? Tiger decided not to linger on the thought.

The bushes were well-tended, but a little wilder than the rest of the grounds. Every colour imaginable was here, though the overall favourite seemed to be white. Those bushes were everywhere. They reminded Tiger of a funeral shroud.

He spotted a stone bench in the centre, surrounded by the gravel path. He leaned down to read an inscription: For Martha. That was the name of Bruce's mother, yes? Tiger suddenly wasn't so sure about sitting on the bench. Was it purely ornamental? Would it be disrespectful to sit on Bruce's dead mother's bench? Tiger didn't know the etiquette here.

He didn't know a lot of things.

“There you are.” Dick was leaning against the gate, a thick pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. “Dami said he spotted you out this way.”

“How did you get here?”

“I have to tell you something,” Dick said, too seriously to be real. Unless Tiger was making assumptions. “You see... that machine did something terrible.”

“Oh?” Best to take this seriously until he knew for certain.

“Yeah. I can't walk anymore. But it gave me some pretty sick invisible wings. You know... win some, lose some.”

Tiger tried not to sound too relieved as he replied, “But how will you fit into civilian society now?”

“Tim's making me some robot legs. I'll soon be a flying cyborg who gets hemiplegic migraines that may or may not be a long-term thing.” Dick pushed the gate open and limped through. “Just kidding. Except the migraines. Check out these cool shades.”

They looked like he had stolen them from a white middle-class great-grandmother. “Very cool, Dick.”

“I knew you'd like them. Alfred shone a flashlight in my face. It sucked. So he gave me these for going bright places.” He drew level with Tiger, leaning slightly to his left. “Don't tell Alfred I'm leaning. He'll smack me with a newspaper because I'm gonna give myself posture problems or something.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

Dick lowered himself onto the bench. Tiger quickly followed suit. One question answered. Now if only everything else bothering Tiger could be resolved so easily...

“Is today a brooding day?” Dick said.

“I... what?”

Dick shook his head, smiling slightly. “Never mind. I'll save the teasing for Bruce. His reactions are funnier.” He lowered his voice to a respectable imitation of Bruce-as-Batman. “I do not brood, Robin.” He coughed, laughing through it. “Man, I haven't done that voice in a while. Should've gargled some gravel first. More authentic that way.”

“Your face looks better,” Tiger said. It... did not come out quite the way he had planned.

“Thanks. I powdered my nose just for you.”

“That's not what I—”

“I know what you mean, hon. You're right. The paralysis is dying down.” He wiggled his fingers. “Give me a few more minutes and maybe I can write in that nifty migraine journal Alfred gave me. Shame I won't have anything much to write until the next time my brain goes on strike like that.”

“You could write down the symptoms you remember.”

“I made Bruce take dictation for me already, even though he whined about it since he did technically train me to be ambidextrous. Mentioned everything I remember about last night.”

“Are the sunglasses helping?”

“Yeah. Just remind me not to stare directly at the sun.” The sunlight dimmed as clouds covered the sky. Dick looked upwards and snorted. “Not that there's much risk of that in Gotham.”

“Why does anyone want to live in this place?”

Dick shrugged. “Well, historically there was a reason. I don't remember what it was. Then people put down roots and didn't wanna leave. Now a lot of people come here for work, or stay because they've always lived here.”

“And you?”

“My family's here.” Dick rested his head on Tiger's shoulder. “I know it's hard to believe, given you and Bruce don't really get along, but he was there when my world fell apart. He took in a random kid from the circus because he knew exactly what I was going through. That's what he does. And, look, he has some pretty strong views on stuff like guns and killing, but he has a reason for that. I mean... I remember the first time I faced down a group of mob henchmen as Robin. The anger that boiled in me. They weren't the man who killed my parents, but they were cut from the same cloth, you know? Bruce is like that with guns. Plus, he gets protective of his kids. A random spy boyfriend who's shot people before? Hoo boy.”

“And yet you have fought with him. Over me.”

“Well, yeah. Just because I understand doesn't mean I can't see when he's being irrational.”

Tiger was unsure Bruce's problems with him were irrational at all. Here they were, pretending he hadn't helped Jason and Helena shoot Alia. Fatally. From where he was sitting, Bruce seemed like the only rational person in the world.

Dick reached up and kissed Tiger's neck. “Hey. Enough brooding, big guy.”

“I shot someone.” The words burst out of him, shaking through the air before he even realised his mouth was open.

“To save me.”

“I shot someone.”

“You weren't the only one.”

“We are lying about it.”

“Because Bruce is not gonna be rational about this.”

“Are you defending what we did?” Tiger did not recognise the voice coming out of his mouth. This voice did not belong to him. Who was he anymore?

“No. I don't like it. But I know why the three of you did it.” Dick squeezed Tiger's bicep. “And I'm grateful, okay? I'm alive because of that split-second decision. I'm in one piece, more or less, because of you.”

Tiger did not want to talk about this anymore. He did not want to examine his feelings about this. Too much confusion. Too much fear. Too much everything.

Relief came in Jason's shape, as he leaned over the fence to yell, “Hey, losers! Lunch is served.” Then he walked back up to the manor without waiting for them to follow him.

Dick grabbed Tiger's arm before he could move. “One second, gorgeous.”

“Are you testing petnames on me?” His voice still didn't sound quite right, but close enough that they could both ignore it.

“That obvious, huh?” Dick grabbed Tiger's chin. “Now our breath's better, I'd very much like to kiss you.”

Despite the bulky sunglasses and his questionable health, Dick pounced on him. Their lips locked. Tiger forgot about everything else. Including lunch.

It was anyone's guess how much time passed before Jason came back, yelling at them to come eat some sandwiches rather than each other's faces.

Dick laughed so hard he gave himself a minor headache, but insisted it was worth it.

[networkingdefinition]

Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. – George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. – George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

[jeroldlockettus]

Make Me a Match (Rebroadcast)

Market-design wizard Al Roth finds solutions for the problems money alone can’t solve. (Photo, cropped: Newtown Grafitti)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Make Me a Match (Rebroadcast).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner. The holidays are upon us, so we’re taking the opportunity to replay what’s turned out to be one of the most influential episodes we’ve ever made. It actually helped save lives! Now, we can’t claim credit — we were just spreading the word on the good work done by people like Al Roth, whom you’ll meet in a minute. And then people who heard the episode acted on their own to perform random acts of kindness, and courage. I won’t tell you what they did — you’ll figure it out as you listen. Suffice it to say that during this season of gratitude, we’re grateful to have played a tiny role in this most excellent display of human ingenuity, and generosity. The Freakonomics Radio team has been really busy this year, producing dozens of new episodes that are sent out to you each week, free of charge. That’s they way it should be. It’s why we’re here. It’s quite possible that if you are a regular listener, you spent, in total, more than one whole day with Freakonomics Radio in 2017. It feels safe to say that we’ve earned a spot in your life. I mean, you’re here now, right? Well, you can help us bring you more Freakonomics Radio in the new year. When you do it by December 31st, you’ll set yourself up for a nice little charitable deduction on your tax return. What are you waiting for? Support Freakonomics Radio. Become a member today with your donation. Get your 2017 tax deduction before it’s too late. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

[MUSIC: Greg Ruby, “Someone Told Me Your Secret” (from The Rhythm Runners)]

Al ROTH: Okay, I’m Al Roth and I’m a professor of economics at Stanford.

For many years, Roth had taught economics at Harvard. But he and his wife, who’s a human-factors engineer, had relocated.

ROTH: We had just moved into our new apartment. We had moved to Stanford in September of 2012.

Shortly thereafter, on October 15th, something memorable happened.

ROTH: And my wife woke up around three in the morning and said, “The phone’s ringing.” And I woke up and it wasn’t ringing anymore. We only had one phone at that point and it was in her office, which was downstairs. So I said, “It’s not ringing,” and went back to sleep. And she went down and got the phone and it started ringing again. It turns out it’s a good thing they call you back, they don’t go down their list. And it was the Nobel Committee.

Roth, half-asleep, was informed that he, along with Lloyd Shapley, had won the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — also known as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

DUBNER: Did you think you had a chance? Um…

ROTH: You know, it’s hard to answer that humbly. So I knew that I was on the big list of people who, if I won a Nobel Prize, it wouldn’t cause the Nobel committee to be embarrassed. The newspapers the next day would not say, “Craziness in Stockholm.” But there are many, many people in that category. So indeed, we had- we were asleep. We were not waiting for a call. And it’s an interesting call because one of the things they’re concerned about — they have a lot of experience with this — is convincing you that it’s not a prank. So the person who first spoke to me said, you know, “Congratulations. You’ve won the Nobel Prize.” And then he said, “And I’m here with six of my colleagues and two of them know you and they’re going to talk to you now.”

DUBNER: To persuade you that this is for real.

ROTH: Right.

DUBNER: Either that, or a very elaborate prank.

ROTH: Exactly. But they call you up and say, “So in half an hour this is going to happen. Get ready.” And, you know, I took a shower and got dressed, which was a good thing, because there wasn’t the opportunity to do that again all day.

DUBNER: And what was the rest of the day like then?

ROTH: Well, so at five minutes to, someone calls you back and again, they’re still I guess concerned that you shouldn’t appear confused on the phone. So what she said was, “Point your browser to the Nobel site and you will see your name being announced and then we will come on the line and have a press conference by telephone.” So by the time that happened, I was ready and then the Stanford press office, fortunately descended on our house at 4:00 am and started fielding calls from journalists, and you know they’d say, “Professor Roth is ready now. Are you ready?” And I’d get the phone and I’d get, you know, five questions from someone and I would speak to many, many people. And apparently I mostly answered them very, very seriously, but I told a joke or two that I hadn’t intended to tell. But people would say to me, “Oh, I heard you on NPR. You said something a little odd.” But—and then there was a press conference, and then at 11:00 I had a class. So people seemed a little surprised but that’s how we ended the press conference. That this was a surprise and it was a Monday and I teach on Mondays.

DUBNER: Word had travelled to your students by then, I assume?

ROTH: It had. There was Champagne in the classroom.

DUBNER: Very nice. Yeah.

So what kind of work did Al Roth do to land a Nobel Prize in Economics? Well, it’s not the kind of work that typically wins a Nobel. He has helped people who need a kidney transplant find a donor. He’s helped new doctors find their first jobs. He’s helped high-school students in New York City find the right high school – even though Roth himself, who grew up in New York City, dropped out of high school.

ROTH: I was, you know, a poor ungrateful student who didn’t appreciate what my teachers were trying to do for me. You should tell all your listeners they should complete high school.

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[MUSIC: Slink Moss Explosion, “Bad Bad Blues” (from Slink Moss Explosion)]

I recently visited Palo Alto, California, home to Stanford University – and a few others things — to talk with Al Roth. He was, as you’ve heard, a high-school dropout. But don’t worry, he did go on to college – many, many years of college. Not finishing high school isn’t the only odd thing about Al Roth as a Nobel laureate. Consider this: even though he won the prize in economics, and even though he’s a professor of economics, he is not technically an economist.

ROTH: I mean, my degrees are in engineering. And, you know, I wrote a paper once, a manifesto of market design called “The Economist as Engineer,” so I think of myself as something like an engineer. I’d like to be an engineer.

“A manifesto of market design” Roth calls it. The Nobel Committee’s citation noted his “theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” So what is market design, and why can it win you a Nobel Prize?

ROTH: Market design is an ancient human activity. You know, when you look at a distribution of stone tools around the Middle East and Europe, you find that long before the invention of agriculture, stone tools were moving thousands of miles from where they were quarried and made. And that’s a sign that there were markets for stone tools. There were ways to meet and trade things and we don’t really know much about those markets. But the stone tools, which are very durable, are evidence that markets are older than agriculture. But the Stone Age men who traded those stone tools and weapons had to make markets somehow. They had to make them safe. They had to feel confident that they could bring the things that they would trade for those stone tools and not be robbed by guys with stone axes who would take their stuff. And that’s been a big part of market design for a long time is making markets safe. Today we think about fraud and identity theft and securing your credit card. But there was a time when kings thought about securing the roads against highwaymen so you wouldn’t be waylaid on your way to and from the market. So if I were the king of England and I wanted to have markets in England, I had to make sure that the roads were safe to get to the markets.

Al Roth has written a book – a really wonderful book, I should say – called Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design. If market design is, as Roth says, an “ancient human activity,” why does someone like him need to get involved? After all, we’re told that markets generally organize themselves – there are sellers and buyers, supply meeting demand, with price being the glue that holds it all together. In this regard, the invention of money was a big breakthrough.

ROTH: Barter is very hard because you need a double coincidence of wants. You need to find someone who has what you want and who wants what you have.

DUBNER: Right, you happen to have salt, I happen to have wool, and we each want what the other wants, or we find a third party.

ROTH: Right. Well, so finding the third party starts getting you involved in other things. And, of course, money is a great market-design invention for helping you find third parties because you can sell what you have for money and then go look for what you want.

But there are some transactions – entire realms of transactions, really – where money cannot do what it does in a typical market. Where, for whatever reason, supply is not allowed to naturally meet demand with price as the arbiter. And that’s where someone like Al Roth comes in handy. The economist as engineer. Because these atypical markets have to be set up differently, they have to be helped along. This is called a “matching market.”

ROTH: Matching markets are markets where money, prices don’t do all the work. And some of the markets I’ve studied, we don’t let prices do any of the work. And I like to think of matching markets as markets where you can’t just choose what you want even if you can afford it, you also have to be chosen. So job markets are like that, getting into college is like that. Those things cost money, but money doesn’t decide who gets into Stanford. Stanford doesn’t raise the tuition until supply equals demand and just enough freshmen want to come to fill the seats. Stanford is expensive but it’s cheap enough that a lot of people would like to come to Stanford, and so Stanford has this whole other set of market institutions. Applications and admissions and you can’t just come to Stanford, you have to be admitted.

Or think about this problem, which Al Roth has worked on directly: what is the best way for hospitals to hire newly minted doctors, and for those doctors to find the most appropriate hospital for them to work in? The current system is called the National Resident Matching Program:

ROTH: So I got involved in helping it during a crisis in the 1990s. But you have to go back to the 1900s to understand how doctors get jobs. And the 1900s is around the time when the medical degrees as we know them, the MD degree, became the dominant medical degree. In about 1900, that’s when internships began. So instead of graduating from medical school and immediately beginning to “practice medicine,” as we say-

DUBNER: A word that’s always bothered me.

ROTH: Yes.

DUBNER: You should be good at it by now.

ROTH: The first job- the standard first job for medical graduates became what was called an internship, and is today called a residency. And that’s a job where you work at a hospital and you take care of patients under the supervision of a more experienced attending physician. And it’s a giant part of the professional education of doctors. So it’s very important to doctors where they get their internship and residency. And it’s very important to hospitals because the interns and residents are a very important part of the labor force of a hospital.

As Roth tells it, there was an arms race between hospitals for the best future doctors. They began grabbing medical students earlier and earlier – sometimes two years before graduation.

ROTH: And when you try hiring people two years in advance, it’s hard to tell who the good doctors will be. It’s also hard for the doctors to tell what kind of jobs they want.

So the medical schools intervened. In 1952, they created the National Resident Matching Program.

ROTH: They developed a marketplace that has a form that has survived ‘til today, although my colleagues and I have helped modify it since then. And what that form was…you go on interviews and you find out the salary and the working conditions of the various jobs that you might be offered and then, instead of working the phones and maybe getting an offer that says you have to take it — yes or no right now on the phone — what you do is you consider in advance which jobs you would like and you submit a rank order preference. This would be my first choice of the jobs I’ve interviewed at. Here’s my second choice. Here’s my third. And the jobs do the same thing, the hospital residency programs do the same thing. And then a match is made in a centralized clearinghouse.

By the 1990s, this system was showing strain. Some people thought the hospitals had too much leverage over the residents. Also: by now, there were a lot more female medical students, some of whom had a significant other who was also a medical student – and such a couple typically wanted to get a residency in the same hospital, or at least the same region. But the matching program couldn’t handle that kind of request. So those candidates might opt out. In 1995, Al Roth was asked to help write an algorithm that could fix these problems. The algorithm worked well and it now matches more than 20,000 applicants each year.

DUBNER: It sounds as though this works pretty well according to most people involved, yes? Most people involved in this scenario are pretty happy with how it works, correct?

ROTH: Well, labor markets are stressful for everyone. So I think you are overstating how happy people are with the labor market. But I think it works pretty well.

DUBNER: I mean in the medical residency matching particularly. Or at least an improvement over what was before?

ROTH: It’s a vast improvement.

DUBNER: But here’s my question for you really is this, broader labor markets. If we consider the medical residency matching program relatively successful to what preceded it, at least, why is it not used more widely in the labor markets?

ROTH: Well, the medical market is an easier one to coordinate than many markets because just about everyone becomes available at the same time when they graduate from medical school and they all start their jobs therefore about the same time in July. So it’s a market that can easily move people all at the same time. Whereas many markets, think about the market for journalists, they might be hired at different moments and jobs might become available and need to be filled and not be able to wait for you to consider many jobs.

DUBNER: Yeah, but you and your colleagues are pretty brilliant and you have mathematical backgrounds. I would think you could deal with rolling admissions, is that right? For all the talk about how modern labor markets have so many mismatches in them — so many people doing jobs that they don’t really want to be doing, so many corporations with all these theoretically qualified people out there not being able to find the people to fill them without going through- going to a lot of trouble. I mean, hiring practice has become more and more complicated it seems as one way to address the matching problem. But it seems as though your complicated mathematical foundation might provide, ironically, a simpler way to address that problem.

ROTH: So I’m not sure that’s true. Again, one of the special things about residency positions is, although they’re very different at different places, they’re sort of similar to each other. If you’re thinking about should you be a journalist or an airplane pilot or a chef, you are dealing with very different jobs with very different employers. And one of the things that we do in the medical match is we make all the jobs available at the same time that allows you to consider them, to have preferences over them. That’s hard to do if you’re thinking about being a chef or an auto mechanic.

DUBNER: Sure. I’m curious to know, what’s a market or scenario that you’ve looked at before that you thought, “Boy, I would love to help fix that one,” but either haven’t had a shot or maybe tried and failed?

ROTH: Well, the markets for new lawyers might fall into that category and certainly the most- the fanciest job that top graduates of elite law schools get is a lot like a medical residency. It’s a clerkship with an appellate judge. That market is presently in the kind of situation that the doctor market was around 1940, where jobs are being contracted far before law school graduation. And probably a dozen times in the last 30 years, the lawyers have tried to fix this with things like setting dates before which you shouldn’t hire and things like that, but it turns out it’s hard to make rules that judges have to follow. Judges are a law unto themselves, and they break the rules. They cheat. If you know someone who’s in law school now who wants a clerkship, they’re probably going to get an offer sometime in their second year. You know, so the middle of their second year and a half before they are ready to graduate.

DUBNER: And what would it take for you to have the authority to get in there and redo that market?

ROTH: Well the question is, is there a desire for judges to coordinate in a way that would control the market? And so far there hasn’t been.

DUBNER: So you can win all the Nobel Prizes you want and there’s a limit to your power nonetheless.

ROTH: There is.

[MUSIC: Tallboy 7, “Electro Acoustic”]

As complicated as it may seem to match future lawyers or doctors with their employers, consider an even more complicated match: a person who will die unless they can get a kidney transplant.

Ruthanne LEISHMAN: You can’t buy a kidney. You can’t pay for somebody’s college education to get a kidney. You can’t buy them a car. It’s illegal in the United States to obtain a kidney through any kind of valuable consideration.

That is Ruthanne Leishman.

LEISHMAN: I’m the program manager for the kidney-paired donation program at the United Network for Organ Sharing.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS maintains the registry of all the people in the U.S. who need an organ transplant. According to the National Kidney Foundation, out of the roughly 123,000 people awaiting an organ transplant, more than 100,000 of them, roughly 80 percent, need a kidney.

LEISHMAN: We don’t have enough supply of kidneys available. And so the list is ever-growing, but the number of kidneys available for transplant is pretty stagnant.

It’s estimated that 12 people die each day in the U.S. while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant. And that’s because, as Leishman says, the demand for kidneys keep rising — but the supply hasn’t risen to meet it. Why is that? Consider where most donated organs come from. They primarily come from cadavers – from people who have died but who’ve died under just the right circumstances – from a brain trauma, for instance — to allow their still-functioning organs to be harvested for transplant.

LEISHMAN: Only about 1% of the population who die are actually able to donate their organs.

So if you need a heart transplant, let’s say, you are waiting for a cadaver organ. But a kidney is different from a heart. Why’s that? Because humans are born with two kidneys – and yet we really need only one. Which means that in a country like the U.S. with a few hundred million people, there are potentially a few hundred million spare kidneys out there. When someone has kidney failure, typically both their kidneys fail, so they are left with zero healthy kidneys. Whereas the typical healthy person has a perfectly good spare. So while it might seem that there’s a massive demand for donated kidneys – remember, there are more than 100,000 people on the list – the fact is that the potential supply is really massive. Here’s Al Roth again:

ROTH: If you’re healthy enough, you can remain healthy with just one. And that means if someone you love is dying of kidney disease, you can give him a kidney and save his life.

DUBNER: If you happen to be a match.

ROTH: If you happen to be a match. And that’s where kidney exchange comes in.

[MUSIC: Scott Hallgren, “Milonga” (from Tango – Jazz (live in Studio C))]

Ah, kidney exchange. Because remember, unlike some markets, where price is allowed to let demand meet supply, organ donation is a market that doesn’t allow money. As a society, we’ve decided it isn’t right to reimburse people for donating an organ – although I should say, some economists have argued that we should rethink that. But for now at least, kidney donation is reliant on altruism. Which, judging by the backlog of kidney patients waiting for an organ, isn’t working so well. And that’s why Al Roth got involved.

ROTH: People often ask me how I got involved in kidney transplantation and I think the romantic thing that they’re hoping I’ll say is that I knew someone who was ill or that I was ill, but that isn’t the case at all. I entered through the mathematics.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: how Al Roth and his comrades used mathematics to save lives:

LEISHMAN: We have about 600 kidney paired donation transplants a year right now in the United States. In 2000 we had 2.

And: Al Roth’s greatest hope for his new book, Who Gets What – and Why:

ROTH: My hope is that this book will help you to see markets in new ways. So may I take you to dinner to celebrate the completion of this book?

That’s coming up. But first, a quick quick reminder that you can do something amazing that will deliver good stuff for many other people, right now. This is the time of the year when we remind you that Freakonomics Radio is made possible in no small part by the dollars given by our listeners. That means: you. You can help us bring you more Freakonomics Radio in the new year. When you do it by December 31st, it’ll deliver a charitable deduction on your next tax return. Become a member today with your donation. Get your 2017 tax deduction before it’s too late. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

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[MUSIC: Seks Bomba, “Fresh Perked” (from Somewhere in This Town)]

Al Roth – high-school dropout, Nobel laureate, author of the book Who Gets What – and Why – began working on organ donation more than 40 years ago, as it turned out.

ROTH: So in 1974, in Volume 1 Number 1 of the Journal of Mathematical Economics, Herb Scarf and Lloyd Shapley, with whom I eventually shared a Nobel Prize, wrote an article about how to trade indivisible goods when you couldn’t use money.

DUBNER: And this was a theoretical argument? Entirely, yes?

ROTH: Entirely theoretical. And sort of whimsically they said, “Let’s call the object houses.” And let’s suppose everyone has a house and people have preferences over houses and they can trade houses but they can’t use money. All you can do it barter. You can say, “I’ll trade my house for yours.” Or you can do it among three people, you know, “I’ll give you my house and you give someone your house and he gives me his house.” That’s all you can do. How would trade work? So they wrote a paper about that. And I had just gotten my Ph.D. in 1974 when this article came out and I read the article and I thought, “What an interesting problem to think about: how to trade without money.” So I wrote some articles about that too with Andy Postlewaite, and—

DUBNER: Still theoretical or did you touch-

ROTH: Entirely theoretical. We were talking about how to trade houses, and of course, no one trades houses without money. I can tell you, I’ve just bought a house in California and money played a role. But it’s, you know, the way economists learn about things, the way mathematical economists learn about things is a little bit the way children learn about things. You find toys to play with and then by playing with the toys you gain experiences that might help you with other things. So this is a toy. This toy model that allows you to think about the question of how to trade goods when you can’t use money and when you can’t divide the good. You can’t say, “You have a big house and I have a little house, so just give me half of your house for my house,” you know. You say, “Houses are indivisible, we have to trade.”

[MUSIC: Dorian Charnis, “Cubano”]

In 1982, Roth took a teaching job at the University of Pittsburgh – which happened to have an excellent medical center with a prominent organ-transplant program. Roth began thinking about kidneys from the perspective of supply and demand. Again, there’s a seemingly huge demand for donated kidneys – but in fact a much, much larger supply of potential kidneys for donation, since healthy people have two, but only need one. So let’s say that your spouse, or sibling, or parent needs a kidney transplant. You could voluntarily undergo surgery to give up one of yours – if, that is, you happen to be a biological match.

ROTH: If you aren’t a match, then you’re healthy enough to give someone a kidney but you can’t give the person you love a kidney. So there they are with an indivisible object that we had been calling houses. But now, call it a kidney. And here are these incompatible patient donor pairs and they have an indivisible object and it’s against the law to buy and sell kidneys for transplantation. So all of a sudden this toy model that we’d been playing with that didn’t make a lot of sense for houses because we use money for houses made sense for kidneys.

DUBNER: Was there a light bulb moment for you where you saw that the kidney was the, you know, concrete version of what had been discussed in this model or no?

ROTH: Again, I’d like to say that there was but there wasn’t.

DUBNER: Were you looking for something to plug in to that model?

ROTH: I was looking for a teaching tool. I was teaching the model and my students would say, “This is an interesting model, but isn’t it a little silly. We use- here in Pittsburgh, we use money for houses, professor.” And I’d say, “Yes, yes but this is a toy model. You should study it.” But there we were in Pittsburgh and we had all these transplants going on and I said, “Well, supposing it’s kidneys.” So we talked about kidney exchange without my ever thinking it would become a practical thing. I was not seeking to design kidney exchange. But in 1998, I moved to Boston to teach at Harvard and in 2000 the first kidney exchange in the United States was done in New England.

That’s an exchange between “incompatible patient-donor pairs” as Al Roth calls them – two couples, let’s say, with the healthy member of each couple agreeing to give a kidney to the needy member of the other couple. The first kidney-paired exchange ever took place in South Korea in 1991; the first U.S. exchange, that Roth mentioned, happened at Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence.

ROTH: And it was covered in the press, it was an unusual thing. And there I was, I had notes about kidney exchange. So with a former student of mine from Pittsburgh who was visiting at Harvard, Utku Ünver, I said to him, “Look at this. There’s kidney exchange. Let’s give a class-” I was teaching a market design class, “Let’s give a class on how we would do kidney exchange.” And—

DUBNER: Meaning this one had happened without your help and you looked at this and thought, “Hey, if this is happening on a small scale, we can maybe-“

ROTH: We can help organize it. We have played all these years with toy models. We know how to organize on a large scale trade among people dealing with indivisible goods when you can’t use money. We know a lot about this.

Several other economists began thinking about the problem.

ROTH: And eventually we wrote a paper about how to organize kidney exchange if you weren’t too worried about logistical problems. So we hadn’t yet talked to doctors. We hadn’t yet talked to surgeons. Although-

DUBNER: Like where the kidney needs to be at what-

ROTH: Right-

DUBNER: And what the preparation is for surgery and so on.

ROTH: And how hard it is to do big exchanges compared to little exchanges. So we sent the paper to all the surgeons we could think of and only one answered. It was Frank Delmonico.

DUBNER: Ah, that’s a good one to have answered then, as it turns out.

ROTH: Absolutely. He was the director of the New England Organ Bank and he came to lunch and he and I have been colleagues on kidney exchange and on other things for more than a decade now. But we helped him build the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.

[MUSIC: Arian Saleh, “Better in Blue” (from The Cobblestone EP)]

One person that Delmonico hired at the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, or NEPKE, was Ruthanne Leishman, who helped set up their kidney-paired donation program. Remember, the Rhode Island transplant had already happened, in 2000.

LEISHMAN: But that was just done manually looking at the blood types of the donors and the candidates. And then in 2004, we started working with Al and using his optimization program.

The idea behind using Al Roth’s algorithm was to make it so transplant centers could simply enter the medical and demographic data on potential organ donors and recipients, type in a few keystrokes, and then – voila! – it would produce a match.

LEISHMAN: It would really be impossible to do this by hand because of the number of antibodies that we’re talking about and the number of people that we’re talking about and we really need a computer to look at it. Not just to do any kind of matching, but really to optimize the matching.

DUBNER: Matching a potential kidney donor is harder than it sounds. Not only does any given person have one of four major blood types but we also each have our own stew of antibodies and antigens. We’re born with a certain amount of inherited antigens; but when our bodies encounter foreign antigens, we develop antibodies that battle them. This can happen during a blood transfusion, for instance. That’s was the case with a Minnesota woman named Julie Parke.

Julie PARKE: What really happened was I broke my leg about, I don’t know, five, eight years ago and unbeknownst to me they gave me a blood transfusion during it. And that just changed a bunch of antigens and antibodies, enough so that Ray no longer was going to be a match for me.

Ray is Julie’s husband, Ray Book. They’ve been married for 24 years.

Ray BOOK: Julie and I went to high school together, didn’t know each other, had one date when we were freshmen at the University of Minnesota. I told her I’d get back to her and at our 20-year class reunion I got back to her.

Julie and Ray have one daughter and three grandchildren. Julie has been a Type 1 diabetic since she was 8 years old.

PARKE: And it basically, you know, has caused all my medical issues over the years.

Julie got her first kidney transplant when she was 35. It came from a deceased donor.

PARKE: And it lasted me quite a while, and that was great, like 26-plus years. And then that one for whatever reason was failing. So, all of a sudden I needed another one.

Ray’s blood type is O, which means he’s a universal donor.

PARKE: We were kind of going down that road thinking he’d be able to donate to me someday.

But after that blood transfusion, Julie was told by her doctors that Ray was no longer a match. In Julie’s body, Ray’s kidney would have failed. Ruthanne Leishman is familiar with Julie’s case:

[MUSIC: Tallboy 7, “Underwater Dreamer”]

LEISHMAN: She had a lot of antibodies. 94% was her antibody level, which means basically she only matches with about 6% of the population.

So if Julie went the route that got her her first donated kidney, it likely would have taken a long time to get another one. Given her particulars, one doctor told her, she could wait five years or more – years which, as Leishman describes, are hard on anyone with kidney failure.

LEISHMAN: And then they’re waiting on dialysis and then three days a week, they go into a dialysis unit to have their blood cleared of the toxins that the kidney usually removes, or they’re at home at night doing home peritoneal dialysis, and so that’s a nightly ritual for people. And it makes it difficult to work. It makes people tired. It makes people sicker, so when they do get a transplant they may not be in the best health anymore, so it’s challenging.

But Julie had the good fortune to be enrolled in a kidney-exchange program. And her chances were greatly increased because her husband Ray was offering to donate one of his kidneys to someone – anyone – since he wasn’t a match with Julie. This is what’s known as being a “paired donor,” meaning that Ray was offering his kidney under the condition that his wife would receive a kidney donated by someone who was a match with her.

BOOK: I wanted to help my wife in any way that I could, so I went out and got tested. All the information went into the computer. We just put it out there into the network and thank god there’s a network like that and the algorithm obviously worked.

And it worked fast.

PARKE: You know, I went on dialysis November 1st. They called me around Christmas time and told me, “Looks like we got something on the schedule here, but you’ve got to heal this wound you’ve got on your foot.” So I spent the month of January in bed. So anyway, that was January and then we had the transplant February 5th. So, you know, it wasn’t- it certainly wasn’t five years or more.

The kidney-exchange landscape has changed. There have been consolidations – NEPKE, for instance, has been dissolved under a push to create a national program. And the numbers have grown. Last year, for instance, there were just over 17,000 kidney transplants in the U.S. About one-third of those came from living donors – not all from kidney-paired donation, but still: that’s a lot. As Al Roth points out, in one respect it’s even more than it sounds:

ROTH: So what that means is that in the United States, we now have more living donors than we have deceased donors because deceased donors give two kidneys and living donors only give one. So there are more living donors than deceased donors, but more deceased donor transplants than living donor transplants. But the growth possibilities would be in the living donor transplantation because everyone has two kidneys.

The growth possibilities are substantial not only because the matching algorithm is successful but, perhaps because it’s so successful, it has allowed for another kind of kidney donor to enter the program. Ray Book, you’ll remember, was a paired donor; but there’s also room for what’s called a non-directed donor. Ruthanne Leishman again:

LEISHMAN: Somebody who comes into the computer program without a recipient. They don’t know anybody who needs a kidney transplant. They just want to donate to somebody and help somebody. Well they come into the program and they match with a recipient whose donor matches with another recipient, whose donor matches with another recipient, and this can go on and on. And so instead of that nondirected donor helping just one person receive a transplant, they can help 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, 60 people receive a transplant as we go down the line in the chain.

It was one of these incredibly generous people – a non-directed donor — who wound up giving Julie Parke a new kidney.

LEISHMAN: This chain started with a woman named Jodi.

Jodi SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: Hello. My name is Jodi Sheakley-Wright.

Jodi Sheakley-Wright is 42 years old. At the time, she was living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: In May 2012, I was working as a telephonic health coach for a company in Dallas, TX, and I worked from home in Charlotte. I had a client who needed to lose 20 pounds so that he could donate a kidney to his sister. And I knew nothing about organ donation at the time. And at first I wanted to do some Internet research to determine how his lifestyle might change after the surgery, as well as what he could expect to do pre-op in order to prepare for the procedure. In my research, I came across something called kidney-paired donation. Wasn’t really familiar with that at first, but I had also seen around the same time an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. It’s actually season 5, episode 5 if you’re interested in checking that out, but it’s about paired donation. And at first, when I had seen it on Grey’s Anatomy, I wasn’t really sure if it was a Hollywood thing or if it really existed. So I did some more research and sure enough it was a real thing and I wasn’t looking to donate, but kind of sat back and thought, “You know, I’m at a place in my life where I think that I’m healthy enough. I work out of my house. I’m financially stable, and this is something that I could do.”

She began working with the transplant center at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. She went through a long series of physical and psychological tests.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: They wanted to know if I had considered all of the factors why I should not donate. First and foremost, I was asked to make a few minor lifestyle changes, or at least I felt like they were minor. But things like they didn’t want me to do any death-defying stunts, like ride motorcycles or jump out of airplanes. I had already jumped out of an airplane so that was okay. But with one kidney, you kind of have to take a little bit more care. So basically, you know, they wanted to make sure that I was sure about donating one of my kidneys, because I really only have one to donate. I need the other one to survive and you know, they really want you to think about things like, are you going to be okay with the decisions that your recipient makes? Meaning that once you give this kidney up, it’s not mine to direct how it’s used anymore. And I was really okay with that. That’s the recipient’s call. I’m giving a gift.

After passing her tests, Sheakley-Wright’s information was entered into the computer program used by the kidney-paired donor system, and the algorithm went to work on her data. It quickly found a match – Julie Parke, in Minnesota. Less than two months later, it was surgery day.

[MUSIC: The Mackrosoft, “The Immortality Project” (from Antonio’s Giraffe)]

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: My surgery was in Atlanta. First thing in the morning. And once they removed my kidney, it’s put in a styrofoam container and it’s put on a commercial flight and was flown to Minneapolis.

LEISHMAN: Her kidney is actually put on a plane and flown to Minnesota, where it is transplanted into Julie.

PARKE: I think I went in about four in the afternoon, something like that.

LEISHMAN: Julie’s husband, the same day, is having his kidney recovered at a hospital in Minnesota.

BOOK: It was a very emotional time. I told my kidney, “Go, do a good job and take care of somebody.” And I shed some tears.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: So Ray’s kidney at the same time that my kidney was flying from Atlanta to Minneapolis, his was flying from Minneapolis to Atlanta for the second recipient in the chain to receive her kidney.

So Ray Book donated his kidney as a paired-donor so that his wife, Julie Parke, could get a kidney from a stranger, the non-directed donor, Jodi Sheakley-Wright. And who got Ray’s kidney?

BOOK: We did find out that it was a woman who got my kidney, so. And she was in the next room, next to the woman who was donating to Julie.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: Now my recovery room in Atlanta was next door to Ray’s recipient’s recovery room. And I’m, you know, I had the respect enough not to barge in there and introduce myself; although I have to be honest, I really wanted to. All I know about her is that she’s doing well.

That recipient had also come into the kidney exchange with someone willing to give her a kidney – but she wasn’t a match.

LEISHMAN: So this person in Georgia who received Ray’s kidney, her daughter the same day went to the operating room and donated her kidney. And that kidney stayed right there in the same hospital and went to somebody on the deceased donor waitlist who didn’t have a living donor available to them.

So this one act of kindness by Jodi Sheakley-Wright…

PARKE: Who donated out of the goodness of her heart. She didn’t even have anyone she was donating for.

This one act had a multiplier effect.

LEISHMAN: So what Jodi did by entering the program without a recipient attached to her—she was able to unlock matches that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.

It also wouldn’t have been possible without the algorithm created by Al Roth and his colleagues.

LEISHMAN: It’s saving a lot of lives. We have about 600 kidney-paired donation transplants a year right now in the United States. In 2000 we had 2. We would have stayed doing 2 or 4 or 6 a year without the algorithm.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: The entire process is incredible. I don’t have that much knowledge about algorithms. It’s been a little while since high school and college so I’d have to revisit some of my math skills, but I do know that it’s amazingly complex and just to match blood types and antibodies. And especially knowing that at this time there are almost 124,000 people in need of an organ. So how somebody begins to sift through all that is beyond me.

But, thankfully, it’s not beyond everyone. Al Roth again:

ROTH: This is about exchange. It’s called kidney exchange. There’s real exchange going on. So when I started talking to surgeons they didn’t automatically think of economists as fellow members of the helping profession. But when I talk about it nowadays, I say, “exchange.” That’s what economists study. Of course this is a subject for economists. But initially many people found it odd that economists were getting involved in organizing surgeries.

DUBNER: You write in the book, or maybe hint in the book, that all this work that you and others have done to try to solve this problem, will hopefully be obviated one day not too long from now, when there’s either medical treatment, or perhaps artificial organs, yeah?

ROTH: Oh I hope so. I think that your grandchildren, and maybe mine, they’ll just be appalled. They’ll say to you, “So Grandpa, tell me again. You used to cut the organ out of a dead person and sew it into a sick person and that was modern medicine?” And we’ll have to say to them, “Yeah yeah. We were proud and lucky to be able to do that. It saved lots and lots of lives.”

DUBNER: And even more antediluvian, perhaps, would be the notion that you would have had to create this complicated way to get a living donor to match with a donor, yes?

ROTH: So my hope is that stem-cell technologies will allow you to grow a new kidney the way you grew the ones you had originally. But we’re far from that now. And while that may eventually happen, everyone who has end-stage renal disease today, will be dead by that time. So our responsibility is to try to take care of the people who are sick today, even though there will be better ways to take care of them in the future.

DUBNER: What’s it feel like to have played a role in helping redesign, I don’t know if you call this a market, it is a market, yes?

ROTH: I call it a market. I mean, it’s not a market where money plays a role, but it’s exchange and you want to get efficient exchange. You want to get as many and as good quality transplants as you can, so absolutely it’s a market.

DUBNER: So there are a bunch of people out there who are alive who would not have been alive had not you and others working with you done what you’ve done. What’s that feel like?

ROTH: Well, many others. It feels good, but economics in general does good things for people. So I think that it may be an illusion to say, “Here we are saving lives. Isn’t that great?” And it is great, but imagine all the other good things that markets do. You know, the economy has been immensely productive. We all live much, much longer than people like us lived even a hundred years ago. And this has to do with the rapidly increasing prosperity that the world experiences because of the way markets work. So the big job of economists, of market designers, is to help that process along. It’s been going along for many, many centuries without the help of economists, but it goes by trial and error and maybe we can reduce some of the errors and make some of the trials go more quickly and more fruitfully.

DUBNER: The last chapter in your book is called “Free Markets and Market Design.” Do you happen to have a copy with you?

ROTH: I don’t but I remember it.

DUBNER: I’m glad you do. I do have a copy. I’d like you to read then, if I may pass you the book, the first two, the first two paragraphs there.

ROTH: “Thinking about the design of markets gives us a new way of looking at them, noticing them, and understanding them. My hope is that this book will help you to see markets in new ways. So may I take you to dinner to celebrate the completion of this book?”

DUBNER: Okay, that’s great. So Al, you interested in continuing this conversation over a bit of dinner, then?

ROTH: That sounds like a great idea.

[MUSIC: Studio Nine Productions, “New Orleans Funky Jazz” (from Michael Nickolas and Carl Carter)

DUBNER: Okay, Al, you have any ideas for where we can go grab a bite then?

ROTH: Well, we could go to California Avenue. There’s a thick market for restaurants there.

DUBNER: We didn’t really get into that. What do you mean by a “thick market”?

ROTH: Lots of restaurants and lots of people who like to eat at them.

DUBNER: And thickness is good in a market because why?

ROTH: Well, if we didn’t have reservation—which I know that you did make…

DUBNER: Did I? Did I?

ROTH: Someone in your office made a reservation. But if we didn’t have a reservation, the advantage of thick market is we could just walk down California Avenue and open doors and say, “Do you have room for two guys at this hour?” And we’d eventually get to one.

DUBNER: Okay, let’s go.

We went to a nice place in Palo Alto, on California Avenue, called Spalti. Northern Italian.

DUBNER: Al, you interested in something to drink?

ROTH: Uh, yeah—so we’re gonna split a half bottle of the Santa Margarita.

DUBNER: We can order food as well.

ROTH: I’ll have the salmon please.

DUBNER: Chicken Marsala. Thank you very much

[MUSIC: Texas Gypsies, “Maxwell Swing” (from Café Du Swing)]

MAN: Salmon?

DUBNER: Salmon here.

MAN: Some pepper?

DUBNER: I’d love some pepper. Please. Thank you…

You wrote about something that was so fascinating to me, it was just a tiny little aside, I just wanted to ask you not about it per se, but what it’s like to do the kind of work you do and the things you learn about these fields where you’re coming from outside. So when you’re writing about organ transplantation you wrote that if let’s say a husband and wife, if a spouse needs a kidney and the other one is willing to donate and they might be physiologically, blood type, tissue type, they might be compatible, but if they’ve had children there might be a higher chance of rejection because of the proteins intermingle or something during…It sounded made up to me, but I believe you because you’re a Nobel laureate. So…

ROTH: So one of the things that could stop you from taking my kidney is that you might have antibodies, pre-formed antibodies against some of my proteins. So if you have antibodies against my proteins then your immune system is waiting to attack my proteins if they show up in my kidney, for instance. But mostly you shouldn’t have antibodies against human proteins that you don’t have. You have to be exposed to those proteins to develop antibodies. So the chance that, so if I didn’t know my blood type, the chance that you could take my kidney is somewhat over 50 percent. But the chance that my wife could take my kidney is only about 30 percent. And the reason is we’re parents, and in the course of childbirth, not pregnancy, but childbirth, my wife, my wife’s immune system might have been exposed to some of the proteins that our boys inherit from me. And if so, her immune system might have developed antibodies that would now be prepared to attack my kidney if it should appear. So for parents, husbands donating to wives is harder than other donations.

DUBNER: And I assume that is just one of many strange, interesting, fascinating things you learn in your work about realms that you knew, right, nothing coming in?

ROTH: Market design is an outward facing part of economics, which means that we’re always learning new things. Economics is about almost everything that people do, which means that the nice thing about being an economist is it means that we can learn things from almost anyone. And of course you have to learn a lot about kidney surgery to be able to help surgeons organize surgeries. You have to learn a lot about medical practice and education in order to help organize labor markets for doctors. You have to learn a lot about New York City’s schools to be able to help high schools do their admissions process.

[MUSIC: Teddy Presberg, “$4/Gal” (from Outcries From A Sea Of Red)]

And that learning is a chain of its own, like the kidney-donor chain that Al Roth and others helped create, and which is saving lives. And as Al Roth and people like him continue to learn, they pass that knowledge along to people like you and me, making all of us a bit wiser, a bit more curious, a bit better off every day.

DUBNER: Cheers!

ROTH: Cheers!

SJD NARR: Thanks for listening. Please remember: it’s a great time to make a donation to keep more Freakonomics Radio coming in the new year. And to claim your tax deduction. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: we talk about one of the most important — and, unfortunately, elusive — components of a healthy, happy society: social trust.

David HALPERN: Social trust is an extraordinarily interesting variable and it doesn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserves. But the basic idea is trying to understand what is the kind of fabric of society that makes economies and, indeed, just people get along in general. It’s an issue that’s got long roots, but it doesn’t mean that governments had done very much about it until very recently.

How to create more social trust. That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

CREDITS: FREAKONOMICS RADIO is produced by W-N-Y-C Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Stephanie Tam, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check out our archive, at Freakonomics.com, where you can stream or download every episode we’ve ever made – or read the transcripts, and look up the underlying research. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail at radio@freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Al Roth, professor of economics at Stanford University

Ruthanne Leishman, program manager for the kidney-paired donation program at the United Network for Organ Sharing

RESOURCES

“The Economist as an Engineer”; Alving E. Roth, Econometrica (2002)

“A Kidney Exchange Clearinghouse in New England”; Alvin E. Roth, Tayfun So¨nmez, And M. Utku U¨ Nver, Practical Market Design (2005)

“The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design”; Alvin E. Roth And Elliott Peranson, The American Economic Review (1999)

Who Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth (2017)

EXTRA

Al Roth Takes Home the Nobel Prize

The Opposite of Repugnance

The post Make Me a Match (Rebroadcast) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-match-rebroadcast/

[fire-bear]

A, E-G, I-K, N, P-Z? sooo basically most of them :'D

Why do you do this to me? ;A; I never read any of the questions before I post, urgh.

Right.

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why? 

Uh. Well I know that Dance For Me has a song. I had the idea and the title and began writing before I needed a song and went looking. This is what I found:

E.  Who’s your favorite main character you’ve written? 

Arthur. Or APH England. He’s the easiest for me to write for some reason.

But I like my OC from my novel, Benrial. He’s pretty easy to write because, after thinking about it, he’s a more confident, more fun and just better version of me.

F. What stories are you planning for the future? 

Well. I’m in the middle of writing my Christmas one-shots. I’ve counted and there’s 15. (I’m supposed to start posting them on Wednesday cause it’s twelve days till Christmas then - unless I counted wrong which is highly likely. Urgh, numbers.)

Then I’m gonna do this thing cause I wanna write more Voltron stuff but I have too many things started and not enough time, dammit!

After that, it’s Hunk’s birthday and I’m gonna do one-shot birthday things for all the paladins! ... Even if Shiro technically has no birthday... They’ll all be different birthdays from different universes. For instance, Hunk’s will be from a soulmate AU. Actually, I’ll just tell you all of them’s since I’m excited: Shiro’s will be canonverse because canon Shiro needs a break. Pidge’s will be a chat AU and... I’m not sure how I’ll do in that cause I’ve not done one like that before that I can recall... Lance’s birthday is in a fantasy AU where it’s his destiny (along with Hunk and Pidge and Keith) to save the kingdom but there’s a misunderstanding and angsty hurt and the Galra catch him and, well. Keith gets his birthday in a zombie apocalypse because he had to go and be born in the month of Halloween. (I would’ve written it this year but, urgh, time. There is not enough of it.)

They’ll be written between the continuation of the Sticky series because I have a lot of ideas for that AU so. I should point out that I mean a continuation from the second chapter of Glue and not the first one.

And in between this, I need to finish of the chapter I started of Shadow House 2, try writing more of my novel and I really wanna write more of Lance’s Fury.

So, uh, does anyone want to pay me to write instead of going to work so I have time for all this?

G. Where do you think you grew the most this year? 

Probably my belly.

Nah, kidding.

I think I’m... pretty much the same? I think I might be getting better at mimicking other’s styles, like I apparently did with Thames’ Child. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Then again, I did write over 50,000 words of my novel and I never finished it so I reckon I did better than my first attempt which... eh. *shrugs*

I. What’s your favorite work you did this year? Why? 

Hm.

*goes to AO3*

Hm. I quite liked Neighbour. And Glue. Which, uh, says a lot about me... Or says that I’m kinda dissatisfied with all the half-finished stories I apparently have lurking around. *sighs*

J.  What are the best jokes you told this year? Any jokes you thought were funny that people didn’t catch? Vice-versa? 

Uh... Hm. Heh, the one I can actually remember is the jokes they tell in the second version of Glue where it’s ‘not as if a vampire will lure me away’ or something to that affect.

Also! Any of the jokes in Thames’ Child because I managed to evoke the source material for the crossover quite well, I think. :3

K. Who have you killed this year? Why did they have to die? 

... I think it best I not say... ;P

But, lemme see...

Wait, I can’t say without spoiling things! But, well, I killed Arthur and Gilbert at points because of the universe and the idea.

But, in Shadow House, wow. So many die. It’s meant to be a horror story - kinda like a horror movie where people are dying in horrible ways

N. Anything you were planning to write that never got written? 

I have a document solely with Hetalia fanfic ideas which is 84 pages long. To be fair, some of them have been written but I’ve kept them in the document because I had vague ideas of what could happen next (these are usually one-shots).

I also have a separate document for every other fandom idea and that’s 14 pages long, including notes for one I’ve started. Or for one-shots I wanted to continue and haven’t gotten around to it.

P. What are your pet peeves in other people’s work? 

When they don’t make it clear who’s talking.

By that, I mean, they have the person speaking named in the next paragraph for some reason. Or they close their speech but all they needed to do was take a new paragraph.

I get confused easily - don’t do that to me. :(

Q. Quote three bits of writing you read his year. Can be your writing, or not. 

I’ll just use my own...

From Fortune:

"Then Arthur came to this action on his own," Alfred declared. "And he will be punished, in a way. But there is something else to note. Arthur, your toga..."

"What about it?" Arthur asked distractedly as his heart sank. He was more focussed on his previous comment. There were only two ways to punish a god: strip them of their powers and lock them away for a millennia or to kill them outright and replace them with another. Arthur would not mind dying but the idea of being unable to see Gil fulfilling his life while he was locked away would be a torture he didn't want to endure.

"Have you not noticed?" Alfred asked, a smile beginning to grow. "Look."

Without thinking, Arthur obeyed, looking down. His eyes widened when he realised what he was looking at: his toga was now white. And, now that he thought about it, he had once worn black, had he not? He stared down at himself, confused.

From Lance’s Fury:

Just as they reached the adjoining corridors, there was movement and Lance jerked away as something came towards him. Whatever it was, it was fast and probably deadly. He grasped for something to defend himself with but he didn't carry a knife and there wasn't a vast source of water around. Before he could even think of taking the water from the air around them, another movement cut in front of him and two blades clashed just a hand's breadth from his heart.

Blinking once, his eyes focussed and he found Keith wielding a knife against Pidge's dagger. Keith and Pidge struggled for a moment before they broke away. Lance staggered back, still in shock, his heart hammering in his chest. He had almost been killed... By Keith.

"Keith-" Pidge began but the other academ had focussed his attention on what he seemingly deemed the greater threat and launched himself at her, his windcrafting ruffling her hair as he used his increased speed to fight her. Thankfully, Pidge was using her metalcrafting and was just as fast, keeping up with every swing.

"Oh man, oh man, oh man," Hunk was mumbling beside Lance. "What do we do?"

From Glue:

Unable to think of an intellectual response to that, Arthur merely said, "You're ridiculous."

"And you're actually smiling – it's pretty."

Arthur sucked in a breath, startled by the comment. His heart did an odd thing where it fluttered and clenched and seemed to swell all at once. It was way too soon for him to entertain thoughts for anyone but Kiku, in his opinion – even if he had been dumped. And Kiku clearly had no intentions of returning to him. So he was on his own and free to do as he liked. Shaking his head to clear away his thoughts, Arthur turned to Alfred and held out his hand.

"I've not actually introduced myself. I'm Arthur Ki-"

He was interrupted with a loud laugh. "Dude, you totally don't need to be so formal. But, Arthur, huh? It's a cool name. Suits you."

Again, Arthur couldn't stop his lips from twitching up into a smile. "Your foam moustache suits you, too."

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch, which one would it be? What would you do to it? 

This lot. I’d make it more realistic. Like, do actual research into the porn industry? Or just make their reactions and stuff more... I dunno. I mean, it’s okay just now but I’m just gonna continue it rather than go over it.

Also, all my earlier stories on ff.net - I would scrub all the attempts at accents. Urgh. (Though, some of the stories, the accents are supposed to be exaggerated versions which would disguise them. Or something.)

S. What’s the sexiest thing you wrote this year? 

....

Well: Neighbour, Glue, Thames’ Child, To An Ell Broad, Dance For Me.

T. Themes, motherfucker, do you have them? What are they? 

... I don’t really get this question. Themes for what? In general? Because, if so, not really...?

Oh, wait. I think I understand it now... But I can’t think of what my stories have for themes...

=/

U. Any stories that took a abrupt u-turn from where you thought they were going?

When I started The Keeper, I thought it was gonna be simple. It’s... not any more. Also needs to be updated. ^^”

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write? Tell us your narrative kinks. 

... I honestly liked writing them all? I like the ideas finally being put down. Then they leave my head, poof! And people leave kudos and I’m like, “Wait, what was that one again?”

I can’t think of any... kinks...

W.  Who are your favorite writers? 

Hm, well, @zeplerfer, obviously. And... there are others but I’m just too lazy by this point to go looking for links to the ones on AO3.

X. What’s your least favorite work of this year? 

Actually, one I’ve not posted yet. The first Christmas one I finished. The prompt limits you to ‘enemies in the same company’ and my mind just went ‘nope’ so what I got down was horrible. I feel bad cause it’s for an anon...

Y. Why did you write? For fun, for a friend, for acclaim? 

For fun.

Also, always wanted to be an author, even if I took a course in something completely different!

And I think I’d go insane if I didn’t, to be honest.

Z. If you could choose one work and immediately finish it, what would it be? How would you end it?

Hm. This is difficult. I want all of them to be finished so everyone can find out what happens in them!

... But I’ve been thinking about A Harmless Archfiend and it would end in death and sacrifice and love.

Flipping finally! I thought I’d be at this all night! O.o I hope these answers are good enough?