#do you source and therefore reblog sharing more?

[bobbiedebruyn]

So you just joined Tumblr?

Tumblr basics + Fandoms/Gifmaking

Congratulations, you just landed at Tumblr! This hellsite (affectionate) can seem intimidating and complicated at first, but once you grasp the basics of it it’ll quickly turn into your own personal little hut in the forest. Tumblr is a website where you and only you curate your dashboard, you’ll see the content that you seek on your own. In this post, I’ll explain the basics of Tumblr and the basics of how fandoms function here with the help of Bob. Okay, let’s get started.

1. Blog customization

The first thing you should do as soon as you land on Tumblr is add a profile picture and header before you interact with people. You want to be distinguishable from bots and therefore avoid getting blocked. You can also add anything to your bio, there's no character limit. Some folks add their name and pronouns, but there are no rules about that. There are also no rules about profile pictures. It can be a picture of you, a picture of your dog, a picture of a rock, or a picture of your favorite character. If you plan on staying on the fandom side, you might notice that a lot of fandom blogs have colorful-looking icons (a cutout of a character on a colorful background), for these icons and also headers I suggest checking out source blogs that make those icons. For starters, @iconheadersource is a goldmine where you definitely going to find something that’d suit you and your blog.

Tumblr on mobile and Tumblr on desktop are two different creatures when it comes to customization. On the desktop, you can customize your blog with coding (HTML + JS). Now Bob will demonstrate to us some examples of blogs on desktop.

If you want to customize your desktop blog, I suggest checking out @phantomcodes and @glenthemes for the codes.

Tutorial on how to install themes

Using javascript on Tumblr pages

2. Search Engine

Nice! You've made your blog look pretty! Now, let's shift our focus to the search engine and ways to discover content. As mentioned earlier, you curate your dashboard by looking for things you enjoy and like. Search using hashtags or the names of your interests (TV shows, movies, birds, music, etc.) to find your piece of cake. For instance, folks who create posts about TV shows you like use tags to ensure their posts reach others interested in the same thing. So, let's go ahead and search for something right now.

Once you search for that specific tag, you are redirected to the corresponding tag page. Here, you can see that posts are sorted by "Latest" or "Top" (indicating posts with the most notes). On the right side, you will find related tags and blogs which are frequently using the searched tag. By following the tag, both the tag itself and the posts tagged with it will automatically appear on your dashboard in the "Your tags" section. You have the option to filter tags according to your preferences. In the settings, you can choose to block specific tags if you prefer not to see content related to some particular topics.

The only method for sharing posts and content on this website is through reblogging. On Tumblr, reposting others' content, including art, gifs, and fics, is not accepted. Reposting means downloading art, gifs, etc., creating your own post, and then sharing it. And that's a big no-no, strongly discouraged. Your likes essentially function as bookmarks, and you have the option to set them to be private. When you save something, it doesn't appear on your friends' dashboards.

We don't censor things here, and I advise you not to do so too. If you need to mention a word that might be potentially triggering or could be flagged on another social media, feel free to say it. Many users have specific topics and tags filtered out, so if you use variations like "K!tKat" instead of "KitKat" in the tags, it can bypass the tag filter, potentially causing more harm as people will see content that triggers them. And remember to always tag posts that have flickering or flashing!!!

If you want to organize your reblogs or make comments on a reblog, use the tags section and not the comments section itself. This is called "#add tags." Feel free to type whatever you want, but keep in mind that the original poster receives notifications when someone reblogs their post and adds tags. Yes, all tags are visible to us.

Okay, so let's quickly recap this information with the help of our dear friend, Bob.

3. Social interactions

So let's move on to one of the crucial topics - how to make friends on Tumblr? Personally, I don't think there's one particular formula for that. Sometimes you just see a funny bloke posting about something as random as desert rain frogs, grab them, and go "You're my friend now" and that's how you become mutuals. 

However, there are other, more common ways to become friends with someone. You can start by reblogging someone's post, adding tags to the reblog, and then following the person. Create your own posts, tag them to ensure they reach the folks who are interested in the same things as you, and participate in fandom events and challenges if you're into that. Interact with people you want to befriend, message them, send them asks. You will eventually find your crowd. You'll also find swifties, and fans of supernatural who never moved on from that destiel love confession four years ago, they also can be your friends, at some point, you will become friends and chill with each other. Be open to new interests to make sure your dashboard is not dull and boring.

Tumblr doesn't have the supposed hierarchy, and you don't have to listen to anyone who tells you otherwise, you curate your own experience and blocking is pretty normalized here. Notes and followers (which are private for everyone) don't really matter, stick to your beliefs and your vibe and you'll be fine. We're all equal losers here.

4. Fandom / Gifmaking

Fandoms play a significant role on Tumblr, they're closely tied with gifmaking. As a fellow creature of fandom, I'm adding this part because we don't gatekeep - more gifmakers and fandom enthusiasts mean a better fandom experience. As I mentioned earlier, everything has its tag, making it easy to find your favorite TV show fandom by searching for the tag. This is also how you can connect with people who share an interest in that specific TV show. Upon entering the tag, you'll stumble upon numerous moving pictures – these are GIFs. People create GIFs of everything, from their "blorbo" (the term for favorite character) to beloved ships and favorite moments. There are also plenty of creative GIFs with different coloring and complicated effects. And the best part? You can do it too!

There are a lot of ways to make GIFs. Some people use Photoshop, and some use Photopea which is an excellent accessible option. I'll be linking posts for Photoshop under this text. For Photopea tutorials and guides, please check out @photopeablr.

I've been making GIFs for three years at this point, and those are the tutorials I used when I was just starting out:

how to make a gif:

comprehensive guide 101

basic gif making tutorial + mvp player installation 

gifmaking for beginners

how to install MVP player on a PC

film downloading & screen-capping tips

correct photoset dimensions 

coloring

how to fix orange-washed characters

how to: coloring east & southeast asian celebs

channel mixer

colored background

color manipulation

vibrant coloring

how to brighten dark scenes

color isolation

effects

glitch effect

blending

crossfade transition

gradient effect in the text

gradient text

red colour accent on the b&w gifs

how to add a gif in a template

blurring gif backgrounds

using templates

text

text tutorial 1

font resources

understanding fonts and typefaces

split text

subtitles

other

icon tutorial

gif headers 

For more tutorials, inspirations, and resources - please check out @usergif. It's a good source blog for all gifmakers.

Wait but what's a source blog? These are blogs that center around a specific theme, creating content for a particular topic. They are managed by multiple editors, these blogs track their own tags to reblog content related to the theme. They can be source blogs dedicated to gifmaking (just like @usergif), a TV show, a movie, a character, a celebrity, a sports team, or literally anything else. Typically, these blogs incorporate terms like "network," "source," "central," "creators," "hub," or "daily" in their usernames, making them easily distinguishable from regular personal blogs. Examples of source blogs that come to my mind right now are @dailyanakin, @heartstoppercentral, and @nancywheelercentral.

Let's also talk about tracking tags, which are often included in blogs's bios, whether they're from source blogs or solo gifmakers. You can add these tags to your posts when creating a gifset related to a specific source blog or something you know a particular gifmaker would appreciate. Basically, the gifmaker can search their tracking tag, much like a regular Tumblr tag, and view the most recent sets in which someone used their tag.

The last thing I want to talk about are usernames, and main and side blogs. On Tumblr, we have two types of blogs: the main blog and the side blog. The main blog is the initial blog created when you sign up for your account. This blog has full functionality and all features, allowing you to follow other blogs, like posts, and send asks to other blogs. In addition to the main blog, you can create side blogs on your account. Side blogs lack some of the features of main blogs; you can't like posts, follow other blogs, or send asks from a side blog. They have slightly different functionality – a side blog can be password-protected, have multiple users, and allow you to send direct messages to people. Other users can follow your side blog, and you can receive asks from them.

Many people use side blogs as URL holders. For instance, when a new TV show is announced, someone might be the quickest to save all canonical character names. You can then message that empty side blog to inquire if they're willing to trade that specific URL or if it's available for a giveaway. Canonical URLs are often challenging to obtain, so many people add letters in between or at the end or use symbols like "-", and they also mix names and surnames of different characters.

5. The End

Okay, so we've just covered how Tumblr works, how fandoms operate, and how to get into gifmaking. I hope this guide by me and Bob has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to my ask box or simply ask Bob. I hope you enjoy your stay here, and that your experience with this website will be a positive one.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/756599406195818496/i-feel-like-such-a-hypocrite-reblogging-all-these?source=share

it seems like our perspectives are too different for talking to you to help me but I have nowhere else to talk about this so

it doesn't make me uncomfortable because other people say I should like female characters, it makes me uncomfortable because I wish I did

and I wish I did because I AM a woman; if some/many slash fans turn out to be trans good for them, but I don't wanna be a different gender, I just don't wanna feel like mine is inferior

if characters have to be male for me to appreciate and empathise with them, then I can't appreciate or empathise with myself

I only think it's cool/attractive/emotionally moving when men do things; if it's a woman doing the same thing it's automatically off-putting -- so anything I do is off-putting

I'm not saying this as a universal objective logic thing, I'm sure there are women who only like slash and have no self-esteem issues related to it, but I do

but maybe it's not "fictional women are off-putting, therefore I'm off-putting", but rather "I'm off-putting, therefore fictional women are off-putting" -- so maybe I can't try to fix it by just liking the fictional ones more, I have to learn to like myself first, but the only way I've ever changed my mind/feelings about anything was by consuming art about it so idk

my point is, I think *my* exclusive enjoyment of male characters *is* related to internalised misogyny and it makes *me* suffer, and I feel invalidated being told I just fell for other people's nonsensensical moral panic

but I understand you're just not gonna be the person who validates me on that and that's your right

--

I think most of that genre of post is silly in a way that this is not.

Self esteem issues are real. They can be addressed—not easily banished forever, no, but addressed.

The reason the typical post is garbage is that it's not personal. It's always projecting on other women rather than seeking help for oneself. That's just shitty to other women while doing nothing productive.

No, I'm not going to validate a broken coping mechanism that makes the tumblr space more hostile to women having fun. But if you want people's advice on how to improve one's own self esteem, perhaps someone will have ideas.

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who sent me the four anti-Israel Twitter users with blue checks, with claims to being "journalists" or similar titles... You're very right. I looked into them, and they are Assad apologists. They're literally ignoring the murder of hundreds of thousands of people by Assad's regime, including countless Palestinians who were living in Syria, while supposedly being against genocide and for Palestinians.

I didn't see something about Andrew Tate, but I didn't dig too far back, and I do believe that women who can post the following would side with a man charged with rape and human trafficking:

IDK if they're being quoted here, on Tumblr? If they are, I haven't seen that. At least not since Oct 7.

I guess the bigger issue is that when people on Tumblr see a post meant to trigger righteous rage, they don't check the source. Especially if they think they already know who the side in the wrong is, based on popular Tumblr opinion. So people automatically reblog and help spread these hateful, antisemitic massacre apologists.

Then again, the whole world is reporting Hamas' numbers on how many people have died in Gaza, how many of them were civilians, how many kids... Don't get me wrong, many people died in Gaza, and when Hamas uses civilians as human shields, many of the victims would be civilians indeed, kids included. But:

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of fatalities

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of civilians killed

Hamas is motivated to inflate the number of kids killed

And of course Hamas doesn't allow into Gaza any organization that can verify its stated numbers. Hamas has a complete monopoly on access to the areas affected in Gaza, and therefore on the "truth" that you get from there

Hamas has not reported a single terrorists from among the victims, they're all reported together, as if they're all civilians

Over 10% of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel are known to fail, fall inside Gaza and kill Palestinians, but Hamas doesn't report how many of the fatalities were people killed by Palestinian rockets, they're all reported together as if they were all killed by Israel

Terror tunnels built by Hamas have been well documented (there are reportedly over 1,300 such tunnels in Gaza), some sink holes that killed Palestinians are clearly the result of Hamas deliberately building those tunnels under civilian residential areas, but Hamas won't report its culpability for those deaths

There's new footage emerging from Gaza, showing people who tried to evacuate from the north, and who had been slaughtered by Hamas. You can be sure that these fatalities aren't being reported by Hamas either, so the world will be led to believe that these people were killed by Israel, too

(I'm not sharing the footage, because... it's graphic. And just like the Israelis murdered by Hamas deserve their dignity, so do the Palestinians killed by Hamas, but here you can listen to a subtitled conversation, where a Gazan says Hamas is shooting people who are trying to evacuate)

While we're on the subject of Hamas and its lack of reliability, today Hamas used a humanitarian window provided by the IDF to attack. Please remember this when Israelis point out that Hamas has broken every ceasefire ever. Including the one that existed on Oct 6.

If respectable journalists were more vocal about questioning Hamas and the numbers it reports (not to mentions their breakdown), then maybe people online would be a bit more critical, too.

I hope you're taking care of yourself, and you're not drowning in the biased material of these hate driven people! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[pigeon-smidge]

GAZA FUNDRAISER - HELP BY SHARING AND DONATING PLEASE

' I, Ahmed from Gaza City, feel proud of myself to write this request after I and my family ran out of ways to survive, after we lost our home and our source of livelihood in Gaza City and became displaced towards the south, and we have nothing and no place to shelter me and my family, and I fear for my children and my wife that they will be harmed. It is especially bad for my pregnant wife, whose due date is approaching, and I do not know what to do since there is no hospital available to receive her, especially since she is giving birth through a cesarean section. I fear for her and her fetus that harm will befall them due to the lack of medical services. I fear for them from the pollution of the environment surrounding us and the spread of a lot of... Epidemics and the lack of the appropriate healthy atmosphere, therefore I ask those who have humanity and a good conscience to help me and my family to leave Gaza City through the Rafah land crossing. Finally, I thank everyone who contributed to helping me and my family. '

Donate if you can. Every small bit helps since it all adds up. If you can't, share please as well, the same thing goes, it combines together. Thank you. Copy link, reblog, similar things.

If you can't donate, Arab.org actually allows you to donate to Palestinian refugees FOR FREE with clicks. You can normally click once per day but if you use different browsers, devices and open it from different platforms on mobile you can do it more often.

Peace for Palestine and the world. No one deserves to be hunted for simply existing.

We can all coexist peacefully. We are all human. 

[fitscientist]

Understanding FDA Guidance: "Excellent Source of Fiber" and "Good Source of Fiber"

Welcome to fitscientist! I'm a food scientist irl and I see a lot of misconceptions about packaging claims out there - I'm trying to be more active on my tumblr (instead of just reblogging/queuing pretty pictures - which obviously I will continue to do!!) and I'd like to share my expertise with you all so we're all more knowledgeable about food labeling, packaging, and more - especially as we are all on our fitness journies together :) The more you know!

Today, we'll be discussing the FDA's guidance on "Excellent Source of Fiber" and "Good Source of Fiber" claims found on food packaging. Understanding these claims can help you make informed choices when selecting products that contribute to your daily fiber intake. Let's dive in!

FDA Guidance on "Excellent Source of Fiber" and "Good Source of Fiber"

The FDA has established specific criteria for food manufacturers to use the terms "Excellent Source of Fiber" and "Good Source of Fiber" on their packaging. These claims are intended to inform consumers about the fiber content of a particular food product.

Here's a breakdown of the FDA's guidance:

1. "Excellent Source of Fiber": - To make an "Excellent Source of Fiber" claim, a food product must contain at least 20% of the Daily Value (DV) for fiber per serving. - The DV for fiber is 28 grams per day based on a 2,000 calorie diet. - Therefore, a food item must contain at least 5.6 grams of fiber per serving to qualify as an "Excellent Source of Fiber."

2. "Good Source of Fiber": - To make a "Good Source of Fiber" claim, a food product must contain at least 10% of the DV for fiber per serving. - This means the food item should contain at least 2.8 grams of fiber per serving.

It's important to note that these claims are based on the fiber content per serving of the food product. Different products may have varying serving sizes, so it's crucial to check the serving size stated on the packaging to accurately gauge the fiber content you'll be consuming. Why Fiber is Important (as covered in a previous post, but a reminder on why fiber is important for our health!): - Fiber aids in digestion, promoting regular bowel movements and preventing constipation. - It helps control appetite by keeping us feeling full for longer periods, which can support weight management goals. - Fiber plays a role in regulating blood sugar levels, making it beneficial for individuals with diabetes or those aiming for stable energy levels. - A high-fiber diet has been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease and improved cardiovascular health. When shopping for food products, the "Excellent Source of Fiber" and "Good Source of Fiber" claims can be helpful indicators of a product's fiber content. By understanding the FDA's guidance, you can make informed choices to meet your daily fiber needs. Remember to check the serving size and consider incorporating a variety of fiber-rich foods into your diet for optimal health benefits. Stay nourished and enjoy a fiber-filled lifestyle! Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog post is for educational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice nor guidance for front-of-pack labeling claims. Please consult with a healthcare professional or registered dietitian for personalized dietary recommendations, and consult with a regulatory professional for guidance on product content or other claims for your own products.

[miss-jaye]

help Palestine and gaza, with just a reblog, repost and a few swipes and clicks. If you cannot donate, you can share! PLS DO NOT IGNORE THIS IS NOT FAKE

From this original post: https://www.tumblr.com/buttercuparry/759191215263596544/in-less-than-two-months-it-will-be-october-7th?source=share

In less than two months it will be October 7th again.In less than two months, it will be a year of genocide. In light of this, I just have only one request for you; please do not give into whatever you are describing as “compassion fatigue” right now.Realize that this is exactly what the colonizers conducting this genocide want you to feel. Realize that apathy during a genocide is what leads to the normalization of atrocities. Realize that this is a tried and tested method found throughout history; that now when the genocide is been widely documented by Gazans themselves- the only way the colonizers can get away with it is by running you down and making you feel hopeless! They want you to stop caring about their victims and this is why you need to fight harder now more than ever!! I request you to fight harder for every Gazan! And therefore request you to fight for my friend Siraj Abudayeh too, whose family recently faced another assault. His parents and siblings had to flee to him for protection, because their areas ( Hamad, southern Khan Younis) were marked for assault from occupation forces. With the number of people depending on him increased now, Siraj has a much heavier responsibility on his shoulders to raise enough funds to support all of them and their needs, when prices of food water and other essentials are already skyrocketing.With the coming of the rainy season, there comes the danger of epidemics spreading from open sewers as well! Siraj’s son Amir has already fallen ill, and his other two sons are showing symptoms too- they are in dire need of medical treatment! I cannot overstate how badly Siraj and his family need these funds!! How badly he needs your continuous support. There has been a significant drop in engagement with fundraising posts and I very clearly remember, someone tagging one of my posts with compassion fatigue. It shocked me to my core to think that the cries of Free Palestine could fade so suddenly; that after only a year some of you have begun to feel fatigued, from having to care about this.Do not give in please; do not let the colonizers make you complicit in this horror! They know that if they can overwhelm you enough, then one day the videos and posts would stop hitting as hard and sooner or later everyone will stop talking about Palestine. This cannot happen again! Not when your attention can literally save a life! This is the power you hold- especially if you are living in the Imperial core. The colonizers are afraid of it. You have to know this and believe this!So please do not turn away and help Siraj get to 50k as soon as possible!He is currently only at $45,044 / $82,000 CAD [ GFM LINK ][ Vetting at 219 on Hussein's spreadsheet] And if you are having trouble donating to Siraj's fundraiser through Paypal, please get in touch with @malcriada .#free palestine#all eyes on rafah#free Gaza

Help Palastine and Gaza! Help Palastine and Gaza! Help Palastine and Gaza! <33 Donate or if you can't, reblog and share to your friends, family and literally anyone you know <3

[socialjust-ish]

I reblogged this post, and @butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway responded. I think it's an interesting topic worth discussing, but butts has asked that we not fill up the OP's notes with giant discourse posts. I agree.

Here is a link to butt's response. Below the "read more" is my reply, because it is long and I am not going to ruin your dashboards.

Under what other fundraising circumstances have you asked people to perform their vetting in public for your approval (as opposed to the more traditionally accepted practice in community organizing of providing outlines that describe some but not all of your vetting procedures outside of the context of any specific call for funds)?

I generally work off the assumption that a fundraising post on Tumblr is a scam. Tumblr's search feature is not the best and I am even worse at tagging posts, so I don't have an easy way to search my blog.

But, on July 9th, I reblogged this post, about someone asking for help with a gofundme. I was, full dislcosure, in a sentimental mood and real sad. And the story got to me. So I reblogged it uncritically.

But here are the tags I made:

Maybe not the clearest indicator of "buyer beware" but the intent was for me to say "I believe these people, but you should do your own homework and be warned my belief is because I'm a sucker for a mom post."

Even with that context though, and with fully believing the post, I thought the responsible thing to do was warn anyone who saw the post that my reblog was unverified.

Because what you’re describing as “vetting” is, in fact, what I learned in my organizing work as “modeling vetting procedure for educational reasons” and includes getting the explicit consent of all involved to perform (in part due to the violative and invasive nature of most vetting techniques and approaches) the process in full via case study. This, notably, is not something that can ethically be done for anonymized public consumption, because literally no one would consent to their entire case study being made publicly available forever on the internet, and therefore cannot be ethically performed. Which is WHY the other, traditionally accepted, practice exists. To offer broad spectrum reassurances to an anonymized audience about the fact that vetting of fund calls is being performed, without unethically dumping a person’s entire life online during one of the most traumatic moments of their life.

So, first off, my wording may have been a bit poor, here.

I wrote that vetting is:

"Vetting is reviewing their information and disclosing what was reviewed and how it was validated."

What I should have said, for precision, was

"Vetting is when someone reviews the post's information. That person then discloses what type of material was reviewed (e.g., they spoke to them in person, they met over video chat, they have only spoken by text) but not necessarily the specific details of said material, and how it was validated (e.g., I met in person, I demonstrated it was a live feed, they had one witness with them, the photo includes a newspaper of today's date)."

So that's totally my bad. I shouldn't post on my phone.

My example of vetting was just that, an example. I wasn't suggesting that needed to be done for every case. I also probably shouldn't have added the last line about "here is the video for you to see."

But it's important to remember the context of these fundraisers: These people are already sharing their names, family members health conditions, and photographs of themselves online. It is not any more onerous or invasive for them to post a ~5 second video saying "Hey, it's me." These are non anonymized sources.

They're also, again, asking for five-figure sums of money. Some level of skepticism should be allowed and encouraged.

So I will ask again, being extremely clear about what I am asking and why.

First off, this is a snakry comment on my part, but this is not a clear question. It is 173 words long (113 if you end it at the first question mark), contains a few parenthetical tangents, and so many double negatives that I genuinely got a little bit lost. So, I'm going to break it down and answer as much of it as I can, but if you think me breaking it up loses context, feel free to advise.

In what other circumstances have you demanded the unethical revelation of private (and in mamy cases protected) information in order for you to personally verify the vetting process done by the person performing it,

Couple of points here.

As set out above, I believe my clarified definition of what "vetting" constitutes does not require the revelation of private information. It requires an authority figure stating "I have vetted this post, here's how."

If someone is posting a Gofundme online, and it is being "vetted" by a random blogger, the academic standards of ethics and protected information don't apply. You don't get to play the game of "This example of 'vetting' only works in an academic setting as an example" and simultaneously expect regulations and ethical standards used in the context of academia to apply. There is no "protected information" in the context of these fundraisers. These are anonymous people publicly asking for money from strangers. People considering providing funds can ask whatever questions they want to satisfy their respective level of skepticism.

I haven't ever demanded this information - even in my post above (because I gave an example of one method that vetting could include that disclosure =/= that's the only way to vet something) - because I don't typically donate to gofundme pages. But generally speaking, I demand this information for anything I do donate to. I once got scolded by a fundraising person on the street because I asked what portion of my donation would go directly to the charity, and what portion was a commission their contracting company received.

vs accepting their public conversations about tactic and technique (whatever else may be debateable about 90-ghost, it is NOT debateable that he has openly and publicly discussed his vetting process, even if he declines to publicize specific case studies, per ethical aid guidelines) as confirmation of process that you are within your rights to trust or not trust, but NOT within your rights to claim aren’t actually being done just because they are not being done for public consumption?

I did start my post by writing:

The entirety of the rest of them are just reblogs from 90-ghost. Of those reblogs, I think only two have 90-ghost saying anything, and all they say is "this is legit".

I'm not suggesting 90-ghost needs to publicly disclose the information of each family they supposedly vet. I was suggesting they need to do something other than tacitly reblog it.

I don't know who 90-ghost is. If you go to their page, their pinned post is a request for help for their personal fundraiser.

Their sidebar has two links, one to their twitter, one to their instagram. His Instagram post has two photos on it, one from 11 weeks ago, and one from 2014. His twitter appears to be more personal - sharing and reposting news about the war. A lot of it is not in English, and I'm a loser monoglot, so I don't know what is or isn't being said there.

But to the point: You cannot figure out how 90-ghost vets their posts easily. Despite your claim that it's "not debatable he has openly and publicly discussed his vetting process." It's actually pretty difficult to find. In fact, I can't actually find any posts of his explaining it. It might be easy if you follow him or are actively engaged with this community, but I'm not commenting on this because I follow him, or even OP. I'm commenting because I saw it on my dash.

Here's what I was trying to suggest was needed instead of these blank reblogs.

"Hi, I am 90-ghost. I have vetted this fundraiser. To learn what my vetting process constitutes, see this post [link to a post.]"

The silent reblog and the assumption it's vetted is what I take issue with, here.

If thus is NOT an ask you have made in other circumstances, can you explain to me what *specifically* about this set of circumstances means that the traditionally accepted public-facing vetting procedure discussion is inadequate,

Because charity scams, specifically charity scams related to Gaza, have exploded since October 7th. This is true of every natural disaster, according to Forbes.

and how this has NOT been present in other times when you have interacted with or spoken on the process and procedure of redistributing funds?

Two points here.

I don't typically interact or speak with the process of redistributing funds. I interact with what comes up on my blog. And so I click a link, and see that it's suspicious, and then look into it.

It wasn't until I started seeing posts about the Gaza fundraisers that I became aware of this issue with scam fundraisers. Don't worry, next time a hurricane hits, I'll be just as skeptical about those posts.

Additionally, and this is anecdotal, but you're asking what's different here, so this is the answer.

I reblogged this post on August 2nd. Within one hour of posting it, I had four asks in my inbox from "gazan Gofundmes". Prior to that ask, I had received a grand total of 0 gofundme posts in my inbox. That means one of two things:

Multiple people are watching every single reblog of their posts like a hawk, and critical or not, if a reblog was made, they then go and manually send an ask.

It's a bot network sending asks based on reblogs, like every other bot network on this site.

I deletedthose asks and so they're gone from my inbox, and I can't compare them to the verified list, but I reblogged one post and got four asks for others almost instantly. I assume it's pretty similar for everyone else who reblogs these fundraisers.

Even if they were legitimate, using a botnet to garner attention is... scam-like behaviour, if nothing else.

You have given zero evidence that any of these fundraisers are raising flags of illigitmacy, and are so far merely offering the possibility of illegitimacy and the protection of recipient private info fully in keeping with standard aid procedure ethical guidelines as enough to assume fraudulance.

Again, I'm criticizing the "vetting" done here, and people's apparent willingness to just trust a reblog as an endorsement of vetting. It is exceptionally easy to make hyperlinks on Tumblr. It is easy for 90-ghost or the spreadsheet to simply add a hyperlink saying "Vetting process is here."

The spreadsheet just says "this was researched by us."

What does that mean?

I understand that in the world of mutual-aid communities, you might have shorthand. But you need to understand that if you are trying to send a message to people who don't live in that world (like me) you need to provide some basic definitions and explanations of process.

All I've said (or at least, all I meant to say) in my post is "these "vetting posts" do not clearly explain how the post was vetted. That needs to be done, and people should think critically about why it isn't being done."

If you can, with a straight face, say "hey, silently reblogging a post and having to dig through that person's blog for pages and pages to find the post discussing how they vet things is a good system" then you and I live in different worlds.

That is….a wild speculation on your part that, by your demands, you are ill-equipped to actually validate or support on your own, which tells me you have (heaven forbid) decided to TRUST people in your sphere who tell you that you have cause to doubt these fundraisers,

I clicked a post uncritically reblogging a fundraiser, and went "Oh, these are vetted." I then followed the link to the supposed vetting, that they include, to find that it is a silent reblog from one person.

This was me, following the links on the post, to see how they vetted the post. And I was lead to that every time.

The post said "vetted here." The link it takes me to is not a vetting. It's a silent reblog. Even if we accept your standards for vetting (which I don't think are actually that far off what I consider vetting, I just worded it poorly) these posts don't do that. As I said in my first reblog - literally only two say ANYTHING, and it just says "this is legit."

That's barely any information at all. These people are asking for upwards of $50,000. If 90-ghost is trying to advocate for them, the least he can do is put in the 30 seconds of work to make the posts not look like scams. It's bad advocacy, if nothing else.

even though you yourself visibly lack the understanding of how that doubt should or even WOULD in aid work be put to rest.

Just to be clear, I fully accept the premise that if someone trusts 90-ghost, and 90 ghost says "I have vetted this post." then that's enough to justify donating.

What I'm saying is that a wordless reblog or "it's legit" is not proof of any of that happening. And if people from inside the community think that's convincing to the outside community, they are either naive, intentionally hoping people don't click the links to check, or some third reason.

If 90 ghost had a link at the top of the blog saying "Hey! Here is how I vet a post. If I reblog a post, it is a direct endorsement of this vetting procedure." I would be satisfied.

It's that they're operating on, apparently, an unorganized chain of faith that makes the "vetted HERE" links completely misleading. To figure out how 90-ghost vets posts, you have to dig through hundreds of their posts. To consider a quick hyperlink to a wordless reblog a valid source of vetting is unreasonable, in my view.

So my follow up question, once you’ve answered the earlier ones, is how are the conspiratorial accusations you are leveling here any different from the blind trust you are accusing others of having in things they don’t understand enough themselves?

I'm not entirely sure what the "conspiratorial accusations" here are, but I'm assuming it's my two bullet points re: What 90-ghost could be doing - this part:

There's no reason to trust 90-ghost just because they reblogged the post. How do you know 90-ghost isn't

A) In on the scam;

B) So (rightly) upset that this is happening that they don't care if some of these are scams on the off chance that even 1 is legit, and so are using their goodwill to "vet" posts.

If 90-ghost is doing a thorough vetting, that should be shared

If this is wrong and you're referring to something else, let me know

Again, this may come to me being imprecise in my language, so I apologize.

How I perhaps should have phrased this, is:

"A reblog alone is not enough to confirm a post is vetted. How do I know, from a silent reblog alone, that this post was vetted? If 90-ghost is vetting the posts, he should be sharing that by stating he has done so, and providing information on how he vets posts (again, not the specifics of the vetting for each individual, just a "here are the steps I take" post that is immediately visible and linked in any post he claims to have "vetted").

I don't think that's conspiratorial or unreasonable. I do think that, without that, it is reasonable to make those two assumptions. I don't know 90-ghost, because I don't follow this world closely. These posts are meant to be a "signal boost", so they're meant to go outside the usual circle of followers, right? So you have to assume those people won't know who 90-ghost or anyone else is. So if you want them to trust the process, that process should be explained clearly, consistently, and on each post or fundraiser. An empty reblog does not do this. And the fact that an empty reblog is used as the "vetting" post for every single post except two shows a pattern which is unusual and justifies skepticism.

How is your decision to trust the people undermining the credibility of online fundraisers without understanding enough about EITHER side’s points to convey them yourself with any actual evidentiary support (have you perhaps never actually SEEN the evidentiary support your trusted people claim is responsible for their perspective?) in any way different from the choice of people (knowing the risks) to donate to fundraisers that are being circulated by the Palestinian community and their allies?

Again, you are jumping to assumptions about what made me reblog this, or who I'm trusting. I saw the post, from someone I follow and respect, and saw that it had a bunch of links saying "vetted here." I followed the links, and there was no vetting, and no confirmation of vetting. That frustrated me, because when I read "vetted here" and "please give me money" I expect to be able to... verify the vetting before I consider giving money.

Perhaps they have reasons you have not seen (looked for?) to trust and make their own judgements.

Sure, but words have meaning. And a link that says "vetted here" implies that if you follow that link, you will be given information confirming a post is vetted. To come to the conclusion that "90-ghost reblogging a post = vetted" requires significant time and investment into the mutual aid community that is absolutely not apparent from the link. And so when all you link to are wordless reblogs that, justifiably, raises questions about how skeptical people should or shouldn't be.

Perhaps your condescension goes beyond questioning the capability of Palestinians to know how to organize aid calls and ensure effective distribution, and even extends into believing your fellow non-Palestinians are just too easily duped? Would be just as skeptical of you if they realized how much trust they were putting in another person?

Again, you are making a lot of assumptions from what I think is a pretty simple ask: Provide a clear and easily accessible link to how the vetting process occurs, and specific confirmation that a post was, in fact vetted. A silent reblog does neither of these.

Weird how YOU haven’t seemed to question your trust in the people who started this uptick in shaming of donation posts even though you clearly reference seeing posts that call that trust’s validity into question.

I saw one post, it's been linked above.

I don't actually think I reference any posts that call that trust's validity into question, here. The only thing I do reference is people "blindly" reblogging."

But that was based on the personal observation of someone I follow blindly reblogging the post.

Maybe the problem isn’t that people don’t know they’re choosing to trust someone, but that they have intentionally chosen to trust someone that you have chosen not to, and you cannot tolerate that someone might do that while thinking it was the right choice, because what does that say about YOUR choice if they think that?

Nope! Trust is fine and good.

I take issue with the misrepresentation that the links that say "vetted here" do not, in fact, vet the post.

That's my issue.

I understand donating to any individual fundraiser requires a network of trust, and don't particularly care what degree of trust anyone chooses to use or not use.

But uncritically reblogging a post with a dozen "vetted here" links, of which none actually provide any information on the vetting, is bad and silly.

I suppose saying it's suspicious is probably unfair. I try to follow the "never assume malice when stupidity would suffice" rule. But like... it's either malicious or stupid to think that's an adequate "vetting" - ESPECIALLY when trying to convince outsiders to the community to donate.

Again, imagine you are me: Someone not involved in this community. You have sympathy for Palestinians wanting to flee the country. A post comes across your dash which says "these fundraisers have been verified." You click the "vetted here" button. You are taken to a silent reblog of a post. You go, "okay, maybe this 90-ghost person is some sort of authority." You click to get to their home page. It has no links discussing how, why, or what criteria they use to vet posts. It also doesn't make it clear if a reblog is a "vetting" or just an endorsement. There are two posts in the list where 90-ghost says "this is legit." Why didn't he say that on the other ones? Are the other ones not legit? Has he only vetted the ones he explicitly says "These are legit"? If so, why do only two of these meet the criteria? What does 90-ghost do to vet these posts?

Do you see why that's an issue?

Or maybe you really do just think your fellow non-palestinians are too stupid to know that vetting processes are literally always about deciding who it is worth it to you to trust and making the most of a situation that can literally never be made asshole-proof?

Again, I understand this about vetting processes. My gripe is that a wordless reblog provides ZERO information to suggest anything has been done.

Feel free to just say that next time. It’ll be faster, and you’ll irritate fewer people in the process.

I think I've said it a few times, but just for total clarity:

If someone says they are vetting a fundraiser, they should set out:

Their methodology for doing so (again, not revealing the actual information they received, just what type of information they do receive);

A quick statement that confirms that specific post has been vetted so you can tell which posts are vetted, and which are sympathetic; and

Make access to the vetting process easily discoverable (e.g., a pinned post, a link in the reblog, etc.)

Failure to do these warrants skepticism, especially when the call for aid is meant to be broadcast outside of the community that already knows this information.

[starlightshadowsworld]

Hello dear friends ! 🍉🇵🇸⚘

Thank ❤ you 🖤 so 💚 much 🍉 for ✌ being 🤍 generous 🌷and 🇵🇸 kind for those people of Gaza 💔 who urgently need your help and support. Months of hard and tough living conditions have left all families of Gaza hopeless and incapable of leading their life. All this has explicitly happened as a result of the damned unfair war over the innocent civilians of Gaza. Houses, possessions, belongings and businesses have vanished and been swept away. No more livelihood sources exist. Consequently the life of sufferings and hardship have begun since then. Food, medicine 💊 , clean drink 🚱 water , health care, and other necessities of a normal life no longer exist in the way that we can get them. Life is still sad 😔 and dire and this gets us desperate and pessimistic over the unclear future.

Despite the tragedy and sorrow that we have been undergong for all these incredibly harsh days, some people come to attack and criticize us as criminals and scammers. Are we scammers because we are seeking peace and safety for our families after we had been forcibly displaced and therefore we lost everthing we used to have over the past years? How 🤔 can we convince you that we are leading the worst and harshest days a person can experience! IT IS A DISASTROYS WAR, DEARS !

I have been accidently attacked by a nasty person, accusing the people of Gaza of being scammers and not deserving life as human beings.

But we have breat trust and belief in you that you can respond to such nasty and disgusting beasts by supporting the fair cause of Palestine and its people. I wanna tell those people that the Gazans are not the scammers, but you the killers of children and innocent civilians.

The people of Gaza are well educated and were brought up well but the unfair war has forced them to ask others' help and support. The incredibly and unbelievably harsh conditions have created new characters of us.

I am asking you , my friend , to keep spreading our true 👍 words to the free world, telling them that we deserve life under any sort of circumstances. You are our voice and our last ❤ hope as we vehemently need you in our dire time.

Yours 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Fadi ❤🖤💚🤍🍉🍉🍉

Long live Palestine 🤍🇵🇸

I’m sorry people having been saying such awful things to you. There are many scammers trying to profit off what’s happening in Palestine. But this of course doesn’t mean what’s happening to actual Palestinians is a lie or a scam.

Vetted fundraiser. If you can donate please do and if not please share and reblog.

https://gofund.me/63ecf482

[chaiaurchaandni]

These past two months have filled me with nothing but tears. I was looking for a post I reblogged from you two years ago about the “warnings” Israel sends Palestinians before bombing their homes and cried reading it aloud again. May Palestinians one day be free and may their oppressor’s grey heads go down to the grave in blood.

ohmygod i know exactly the post youre talking about anon! i went back and looked at it also in the first week of israeli bombing this october bec zionists online kept bringing up those 'warnings,' as they always do, to justify bombing civilians. it's insane that this is seen as a mercy.

honestly, i've never felt so deeply heartbroken. i dont feel like watching a new show or reading my silly little poems or listening to taylor swift anymore. every waking moment of mine is consumed with the desperate need to do something - anything at all - for palestine. to spread awareness, and encourage people to donate, and deconstruct israeli propaganda bec this is all i can do now. i dont want to fall into despair and im doing my best to cultivate revolutionary optimism and hope!! i've cried and had nightmares and messed up my quizzes bec i cannot stop thinking about everything that's happening in palestine but!!! every single time, i have picked myself up and reminded myself that this is also a battle of perseverance, and we cannot afford to exhaust ourselves to the point that we cannot look after ourselves and therefore, cannot contribute to the cause.

my heart goes out to you anon and i hope you know that we are all united in our solidarity, in our collective pain and also in our collective struggle!! and youre aways welcome to reach out if it gets overwhelming and if you just need someone to talk to <3

(just a side note: i have personally been able to cope better with the despair ever since i started following more palestinian resistance-centric sources, e.g. the telegram channel, resistance news network + accounts like mellow.falahi on IG or revolutionaryem on X/TWT just to mention a few. these sources report on the activities of resistance forces + translate messages from different resistance factions + share news ab israeli aggressions all over occupied palestine, while also speaking about the long history of palestinian resistance/sharing speeches from iconic palestinian revolutionaries/sharing revolutionary artwork, etc. i think it's rlly imp to remember that palestinian resistance has existed ever since zionism landed in palestine (even before 1948) and that this is just one of many battles fought by the resistance. every single time, the palestinian people have survived and the palestinian resistance has survived. this time will be no different inshallah.)

[empty-pools-vacant-alleyways]

Hello, I'm Kariman Dohan. I am writing this letter to you feeling a state of sadness and grief, after the war on Gaza completely destroyed our lives. My husband works as a fisherman, but the fishing boat, which was our only source of income, was badly damaged and no longer usable😭😭😭. My young son, Hamoud, suffers from malnutrition due to the lack of food and the polluted water we drink. My husband, Ayman Olwan, and I are trying with all our might to survive, but the situation has become too much for us. We are desperate to escape to a safe place where we can start over, but we don't have enough money to do so.💔😔🥺 Therefore, I ask you for your generosity and kindness to help us so that we can overcome this crisis. Please consider our situation and help as much as you can by donating and sharing the link.💔🍉🥹😭😭😭😭

My campaign was vetted by 90ghost🫂

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-kareman-dohans-family-from-despair

To those who see this, please donate if you can! If you can't, please reblog/share so that someone who can donate will see this post. Please also interact with Kariman's posts so that this GoFundMe can reach more people. Thank you!

[axolotlsandabsolsarethebest]

Hello, I'm Kariman Dohan. I am writing this letter to you feeling a state of sadness and grief, after the war on Gaza completely destroyed our lives. My husband works as a fisherman, but the fishing boat, which was our only source of income, was badly damaged and no longer usable😭😭😭. My young son, Hamoud, suffers from malnutrition due to the lack of food and the polluted water we drink. My husband, Ayman Olwan, and I are trying with all our might to survive, but the situation has become too much for us. We are desperate to escape to a safe place where we can start over, but we don't have enough money to do so.💔😔🥺 Therefore, I ask you for your generosity and kindness to help us so that we can overcome this crisis. Please consider our situation and help as much as you can by donating and sharing the link.💔🍉🥹😭😭😭😭

My campaign was vetted by 90ghost🫂

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-kareman-dohans-family-from-despair

Hello, while I'm sadly not able to donate due to currently being a minor with no disposable income. I will gladly and happily share this post so more people will be able to see this.

Link to gofundme:

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

!!TO ANYONE THAT SEES THIS POST! PLEASE DONATE IF YOU ARE ABLE TO AND IF YOU CAN'T FOR ANY REASON THEN PLEASE SHARE AND REBLOG THIS!!

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

I’m sorry if this seems mean but I really have to say it.

Pressuring people, both content creators and fans, into taking immediate action on a situation they have very little control over or knowledge on is not helping. At all.

For content creators, you realise they have to be careful with that shit, right? It’s a fucking minefield to walk, and if they get something wrong- which they will, if they’re literally just learning about the thing and don’t have full context- that could not only severely damage their careers but be incredibly harmful to their fans. Speaking rashly on situations like this is something they can’t do. They need to wait and find things out to make a statement, and it hasn’t even been a fucking week yet. I highly doubt they know any more than we do, or perhaps even less because they’ve not been fucking doomscrolling over it.

In addition, a lot of them are teenagers. Tommy and Tubbo are barely any older than the victims themselves, they shouldn’t be expected to deal with this situation at all. If the worst allegations are true, then engaging with Dream at all is not something you want a young person to do, anyway. They don’t know how to respond to a scenario like this, and they shouldn’t have to. Pressuring them into responding when they’re going through something that they have no reference to is going to be a disaster, and it’s cruel.

For fans, they have even LESS control, and a lot of Dream SMP fans are traumatised, underage, and mentally ill, and therefore are very vulnerable themselves. Shouting at children for being upset their favourite content creator turned out to be someone who’d have hurt them isn’t acceptable. They might not be the victims here, but that’s traumatic. Shouting at abuse victims who don’t want to reblog something too close to home isn’t helping, you’re just triggering survivors who have had their source of comfort suddenly taken from them. And I know for one that my own moral OCD has been triggered so fucking hard by these posts that I’ve barely been able to eat or drink the past few days because I’ve been so guilty, and that’s not the worst of it.

This is a betrayal for all of us and it’s beyond fucked up to suggest that any emotional reaction to it is making yourself the victim. It’s fucked up to suggest any discussion of their own emotions and guilt and grief and pain are diverting attention, like this is some competition. And, more than anything, it doesn’t help. There have been so many posts about this situation I’ve wanted to share but can’t because they’ve triggered my own scrupulosity so bad I started spiralling in ways I really don’t want to share. Some of you are so caught up in making sure people know you don’t support the bad man that you’re hurting vulnerable people really badly for no reason other than to feel superior.

You’re not helping. You’re hurting vulnerable fans, and you’re making it harder for CCs to get properly informed and make a proper statement.

[starlight-write]

🔥🧠Welcome to Braindump Central™🧠🔥

❤️ Welcome to my own personal Hell! ❤️ Here is where I store all my weird thoughts and writing projects that would have my neurodivergent ass shunned by my friends and family if revealed to the real world.

Originally, this blog was meant solely for writing tk fics (tw btw!). And while that is still our primary focus here, you can also find some regular-ass fanfics on my AO3 account, (which will be revealed soon enough) as well as sleep deprived ramblings, a shit ton of reblogs, and all sorts of other nonsensical shit.

The current annual hyperfixation that haunts my every waking moment is Hazbin Hotel, if that wasn't already obvious enough. So most of what I write will revolve around that.

Other fandoms I will write for are My Hero Academia, The Amazing Digital Circus, and The Owl House. (I live under a rock and don't know much else.)

Requests are Open and here are The Rules™!!!!

1.) Story Prompts, Character Headcannons, Character Pairings and similar ideas are all free game. (Also if you just want to talk, please I'm so lonely.)

1.5.) Requests aren't limited to fandom or tk fics! I love a good challenge so if you got a good prompt you wanna hit me with, I'm all ears!

2.) Obviously, I reserve the right to deny any requests if I can't vibe with it but don't think that means I appreciate your inputs any less!

3.) I will not write anything NSFW. (Dude, there are children here!)

4.) Requests will NOT be answered in a timely manner as I have the time management skills of a narcoleptic seahorse and run off of hyperfixation and spite alone.

5.) I'm not comfortable writing anyone's OCs for fandom fics, sorry.

6.) Keep it silly. Keep it fun. Don't be an asshole.

About the Author: (over sharing)

Here's some personal details about me that I feel like have a significant affect on my perception of reality and therefore my writing as a whole.

First things first, my irl pronouns are she/her. But let's be real, we're on Tumblr so call me whatever you want. Get creative with it.

I'm a 21y/o software engineering student diagnosed ADHD. (I keep praying to God but he's not answering) But y'know, that double homicide clearly wasn't enough and I got nerfed with a chaotic and relatively unstable living situation so if I go ghost for a hot minute that's probably why.

I identify myself as a sapphic-oriented AroAce abomination who ironically, is in a happy relationship with a man... (It was an accident I swear!) I'm just as confused as you are don't worry. So needless to say the pairings I write are going to be affected by that aroace lens but hey, if you're like me and enjoy exploring platonic dynamics a lot more then you've come to the right place!

Your girl also has a condition known as Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (MaDD), as if my pea-brain wasn't screwed enough already. Pretty self explanatory, basically means I have this dumbass condition where I have to disassociate into my fantasy worlds for hours and hours on end instead of actually contributing to society. Fun, right? I mention this not only to spread a little awareness but also to *cite my sources* in a way. Pretty sure it's forced me to become a better writer in a way, too. So it's not all bad ig.

If you want any more personal information out of me you either gotta hunt down my FBI agent or fill out my friendship criteria form on Github.

Now scroll and enjoy yourself.

Also if I get one more dm blasting me for the badges I probably won't do anything but IT WAS FOR THE BIT!!!!

[paperstorm]

I really appreciate all of the links and information in that post you reblogged about the Israeli prison/detainment policies/abuses (not sure the best wording for all of that horror tbh)… but the OP post of that talking about the condition of hostages vs prisoners released doesn’t make sense to me at all. Are they saying the hostages released are supposed to be some kind of reflection of being treated well during captivity? cause I’ve read about a hostage who was shot multiple times and needed surgery, another on the brink of death because of lack of medication, a 12 year old boy who said he was beat by residents, another child being forced to watch footage, etc. I don’t understand why we can’t acknowledge the absolute horrors Israel is committing while also not trying to turn Hamas into angelic freedom fighters with the purest of morals. Things like this make it really hard for me to reblog or share stuff on social media cause I can agree with 95% of the information but then I’ll realize “oh that link hidden in this post actually goes to an alt right neo nazi website” or “oh snuck in the middle of this really great article is the most glaring of antisemitic rhetoric”… anyway, I’m sorry for the rant here I’m just… exhausted. By the world and also sometimes by my fellow pro Palestinian advocates.

I am also exhausted by it sometimes, and not immune to getting swept up in the emotions of all of this as much as I'm trying to stay reasonable. I agree the way OP worded the original post was not ideal, if it had been just that without the longer and well-sourced reply I don't think I would have reblogged it. Because you're right, criticism of Israel can't devolve into acting like Hamas by default is an amazing upstanding moral organization. That's kindergarten nonsense, this need to have a well defined Good Guy and Bad Guy in every situation. Adults should be capable of more nuance than that, and it's really frustrating to see that so many aren't.

I think for me - because I don't know the intentions of that other person and can't speak for them - posts like that are not about saying 'wow look how wonderful Hamas is'. They are about the more zoomed-out task of challenging the Western/Imperial narrative that Israel isn't doing anything wrong. The 'right to defend itself' narrative, that is just blatant nonsense under international law. The narrative that when Hamas does something it's terrorism but when the state of Israel does the same thing (or, usually, a far worse version of the same thing), it's not. The narrative that Israel is the moral authority who is following international law to the best of their ability, is trying to minimize civilian casualties, is only going after Hamas, has no choice but to bomb hospitals because there is no other way to protect their own citizens. It's not for me about saying that just because Israel is bad, Hamas is automatically good. It's about acknowledging that for literal decades, the broadcasters of the Western narrative (governments in America/Canada/UK, corporate owned media companies like CNN and MSNBC, etc) have been just blatantly lying, propagandizing, and selectively presenting partial or twisted information, all in service of empire and money and colonization and the enrichment of defense contractors. Joe Biden said, years ago, (paraphrasing because I can't remember the exact quote) "If Israel didn't exist, America would have to invent an Israel to protect it's interests in the region."

I don't know if that makes sense, I hope it does. For me it's about .. yes, push back against people who are trying to make this a binary situation in which Israel is Bad therefore Hamas is Good. But also seeing more value in a more zoomed out perspective that is meant to challenge extremely pervasive and genocidal Western narratives that have gone largely unchallenged for the entire history of the region. Sometimes you do get there by drawing equivalencies. By asking "wait a second, why does Israel have thousands of Palestinian hostages in the first place and why does no one in power seem to think that's a problem?"

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I made this post yesterday in response to a message I got, and I’m making a new one instead of reblogging it just because it was so long and there’s no need to bring the whole thing back, but this is an addition to the post here (I won’t usually be arrogant enough to tell people it’s worth the time of reading my own posts, but this one does have a reply from someone else that brings some really interesting perspective, and I recommend reading that if you haven’t).

Today I tried to look up an article that would explain the concept of comedy washing, thinking I should probably update that post with a link to someone who knows more than I do defining the term itself. Annoyingly I didn’t find anything I was happy with, but I did happen to find this, which is quite funny:

It’s such a good point that it seems worth adding to my previous post. Once you understand the concept and start looking for it, everything is comedy washing, and therefore, it may as well be the case that nothing is. In the same way that everything is political, talking about how anything “shouldn’t be political” is ridiculous because that isn’t possible. We can’t be perfectly principled about this because we’ve moved so far into accepting politics in our entertainment and entertainment in our politics and the erosion of journalistic integrity, so the only debate now is where to accept the drawing of the line. (…I don’t think that’s necessarily the point David O’Doherty was trying to make with that joke, but it’s what I got when I happened to see it in this context.)

The relationship between journalism and politics, between journalism and entertainment media, and between politics and entertainment media, is complicated. In some cases, there’s no perfect way to navigate it. But the problem is that so many sources aren’t even trying to get it right anymore. This is why I have so much respect for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), because they still try. They try for basic, fundamental, journalism 101 principles like:

- Declare all potential conflicts of interest even if they seem small, don’t put a journalist on a story at all if they have a conflict of interest that could be significant.

- Report all sides of an issue fairly, but in a way that’s actually representative of the issue itself and expert consensus, not just giving equal voice to all parties regardless of qualifications (this one is really really hard to get right and I don’t always agree with how they end up approaching it, but at least they give it a shot).

- Report the facts with objectivity (again, this is almost impossible to do perfectly, but at least they try), and then report subjective reactions to those facts.

- Here’s a big one: fucking fact check – anything reported with no caveat should be a fully verified fact, anything that’s not fully verified should be clearly labeled as speculation or opinion, and if you do make a mistake in this area, issue a formal retraction.

- Here’s another really difficult one that comes down to the skill of the actual reporter: Fact check politicians and other guests, in real time if necessary. If they engage in speculation, inform the viewers that this is unverified. If they make a statement of fact that is untrue, cut them off and say it’s untrue.

- Give airtime to viable political parties that is equitable according to the share of population they represent.

- Give credit to sources where it’s due, protect anonymity of sources where that is due.

- Give airtime to stories according to how important they are, not how many “clicks” or “views” they’re likely to garner.

- Tell stories in an honest and not sensationalized way.

- Don’t let your news organization or any of its journalists become the news – hold yourself to a high enough standard of integrity to maintain the public’s trust.

- Give enough context so the audience can understand what they’re being told. If a politician or other guest says something technically true but leaves out context that changes what they’re saying, it’s the reporter’s job to add this context so there’s no confusion.

- Get funding from… well, there’s no perfect way to do this. Advertising in political journalism is obviously bad, as it causes a conflict if they need to report on any brands that advertise with them. Private doners are bad for the same reason. Government funding has the same problem. Being funded by paying viewers/readers/listeners is bad because that incentives compromising all those other principles to bring in a bigger audience. Personally, I think the public broadcasting model, with strong rules to preserve journalistic independence from the government that funds it, is flawed but the best option we have.

This stuff is hard. And it’s often imperfect, because sometimes different principles contradict each other. They’re supposed to give equitable airtime to all viable political parties but not spread misinformation – well what if one viable party bases most of its platform around disinformation? When contradictions occur, journalists have to figure out how to navigate the issues as responsibly as possible, and I like the way CBC approaches that. If I may briefly get more specific than anyone wants, CBC’s current chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton is one person who does it incredibly well.

I think there should be a term like the Overton window, but rather than describing the parameters of publicly accepted political opinions, it describes the parameters of publicly accepted deviation from journalistic integrity.

If I may briefly indulge even more in being a pretentious nerd (and isn’t that a problem, that I say some very basic journalistic principles are important and then I immediately feel the need to apologize for being annoyingly old-fashioned and pedantic?), there’s a 2015 documentary I really like called The Best of Enemies, which you can buy for pretty cheap on YouTube if anyone else is interested in this. It’s about Gore Vidal and William Buckley, two opposing figures in American politics in the late 60s and 70s. They took advantage of live television creating new ways to bring political opinions to the masses, and played a major part in ushering in the current era of political punditry (also they were two middle-aged men with a lifelong rivalry and one was queer, by rights this should be Tumblr’s favourite movie). They were part of a movement that changed the game for political journalism, and I find that history fascinating.

So much of that documentary seems antiquated now, not just the issues and opinions but the responses. When one of them lost his objectivity for a moment and engaged in a personal attack, he lost all his credibility from an audience that expected better of their public figures. That’s how much higher standards were back then. Now, the bar’s been lowered so much that CBC stands head and shoulders above most other sources even when they’re at their worst, just because at least they’re still trying to get it right. (If you want to watch something that explores this stuff in a more fun way than the Best of Enemies documentary, I think Tracey Wigfield and Tina Fey’s 2017-2018 sitcom Good News was quite underrated.)

We now accept so much more news in our pop culture and pop culture in our news, and it’s so common for people to just consume pop culture instead of news. I love political comedy, but it’s supposed to be what you watch/read/listen to to dissect the news after you’ve heard what’s actually happening from actual journalists. And any responsible political comedian will say that. John Oliver and Jon Stewart have both just about shouted it from the rooftops, insisting any time they get the opportunity that people should not equate them with serious journalism. Because meme-ifying and comedy-ifying and pop culture-ifying the news is how you get an erosion of journalistic principles, subsequent erosion of public trust in journalism and the rise in misinformation, and people voting for Donald Trump and Boris Johnson for a laugh.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got on this for the moment. Thank you, whatever anonymous person sent me that message yesterday, I’m sure you did not realize how much ranting from me you would set off. I didn’t realize it either, and only some of it has been relevant to the original question, but I do feel slightly better for having written this all down.

[watchtowerindistress]

we are not our demons (18/24) - bruce wayne x batmom

Gif source: jokerous

Author's note: SHIT'S ABOUT TO GET REAL, BITCHES! instantly regrets the endearment A lot of things will be happening this chapter, so you'd better strap in, I'm serious. This chapter is actually longer than I expected, lol. It's one of the chapters I've been anticipating the most and therefore was most afraid to write.

This is the first time I did a Nolan/Tarantino and just switched the chronological timeline, but this time it was deliberate. I had big issues starting this off (what else is new?), so I just changed it up a bit.

Please excuse me using some 'The Killing Joke' quotes and butchering the whole everything of that comic. [Read more at the end.]

Beta-read by Heidi.

Words: 6.2k

Warning: language, violence, kinda dark themes

Please reblog/leave a comment.

Series Masterlist | Want to be tagged? | Read on AO3

Hang my head

Drown my fear

‘Til you all just disappear

- Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden -

“Gotta say, weirdest feeling ever being invited into Arkham,” Dick’s voice reverberated through the comms with an equal blend of weirded-out and teasing.

Behind her glasses, Ellie’s eyes narrowed when Dick’s blue-and-black superhero outfit came into view on the next CCTV camera. She tilted her head. “Are you walking on tiptoes right now?”

Dick’s lone figure tensed briefly and continued walking with a flatter stride, but ultimately his shoulders remained strained. “I was a circus artist. Learned ballet and stuff,” Dick defended with a calm voice.

“Please keep off the comms unless it’s important. Don’t get sidetracked,” Bruce’s modulated voice echoed in her ears with a deep timbre.

Someone meant business.

Ellie pressed her lips together to ward off her blushing cheeks. Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself due to her nerves and the excitement for tonight’s mission. “Check,” she conceded and studied the available cameras for the asylum, but Batman’s shape still remained to be seen. Judging from his tracker, he was in the elevator shaft getting closer to the crème de la crème of the place.

“Are we sure it’s tonight, Batman?” Damian asked dubiously and brought them back to the mission preparation they just had before in the Batcave.

“Wait, run that by me again.” Ellie licked her lips and felt herself blinking furiously at what Bruce just revealed impromptu.

He sent her a furtive glance when he jostled the phone prototype amid the quiet hum of the elevator leading its inhabitants down to the basement.

“What did that guy say exactly?”

His eyes paused on her, with his eyebrow lifted high on his forehead. “You mean verbatim?”

“Why don’t you start by revealing who that was on the Bat-phone?”

Other than his throat clearing, Bruce remained unfazed when he spoke, “I got someone in the inside of the asylum. He told me the patients have been acting restlessly as of late.”

Ellie merely pursed her lips and a crease formed on her forehead at the absurdity of that one confession.

Dick stated, “Okay, most eerie sentence ever,” and let his finger point in the air to share his playful opinion.

“I concur wholeheartedly,” Ellie agreed with a swaying head before a sigh left her lips. “And here I thought I’d get a more challenging task than the Asylum’s defense.”

“There is more than just Arkham Asylum out there. Trust me,” Bruce replied with an indulgent smirk.

Ellie’s shoulders dropped in accepting disappointment. “Alright.”

As soon as everyone filtered into the cave, Ellie could get to work. After a combination of soft keystrokes, the monitors came to life.

Damian was silently watching the live footage of an athletic Harley Quinn doing slow and relaxing Yoga poses. At the moment she was cultivating an elaborate handstand that would make Ellie envious if she wasn’t this distracted by more important matters.

Bruce nodded to himself, having made up his mind for their mission. “It’s tonight. It has to be.”

“Wait, what’s with this mood lighting?” Dick’s head whipped around, almost like he was noticing the atmosphere for the first time. His voice reached her ears in a mischievous lilt.

Ellie glanced up from her position to be more aware of her surroundings. Dick managed to wrap that truth with a shroud of playfulness once he had his first impression of the modified cave.

Just like Bruce had promised, Alfred had dimmed the lights considerably until the fluorescence was no longer blinding. It even astonished and left her heart aflutter. Not to mention seeing a few technical adjustments to their hideout.

There was always this fascination seeing new technology within her grasp. Especially when she moved towards the object that had the impression of a normal—if not pricey-looking—table standing in the middle of their base. Her fingers reverently touched the milk glass, almost like she could feel being in the presence of high tech, only to see a ripple effect forming underneath.

The words ‘Welcome Miss Rhodes’ conjured next to her right.

Ellie didn’t know whether to feel freaked out or mesmerized by this tech’s high prowess in knowing her identity.

“I adapted the tech to fit your needs.”

Behind her, the soothing warmth of Bruce’s body resembled that of a shield originating from her right side. Ellie’s mesmerized gaze moved away from the touchscreen display to shift over towards the new presence.

Before she could continue asking, Bruce explained like he had been reading her mind, “It’s linked to a satellite of Wayne Enterprises. We call it the Satellite Intelligence and Gravitational Network of Artificial Level. S.I.G.N.A.L. for short.”

“You have a satellite?” Her head turned in surprise before she muttered quietly, “Of course, you have a satellite.” Ellie shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you just gifted me a satellite.”

Bruce shrugged with a quiet sigh. “The one we had to rebuild after Superman destroyed it, yes. And it’s a satellite link.”

The boys seemed to have noticed their exchange when—like a kid on Christmas awaiting their presents—Dick’s laser-focused glance switched over to her new toy.

“Oh dang, holy Batman!” he exclaimed before his emotional outburst morphed into a reverential murmur the closer he ventured towards them. “New gadgets,” Dick murmured with an awe-filled voice.

“Just for the HQ.” Bruce barely tamed his son’s elation with the lift of an eyebrow.

Dick shrugged haphazardly at that. “I don’t mind. Just so you know, my escrima sticks could use an upgrade too, you know?” It was hard to imagine how his pout could rival Tim’s. “An extra kick would be nice, y’know what I mean?”

Ellie didn’t see Bruce’s reaction, but his long sigh was the familiar epitome to Dick’s playful ideas, or maybe just the weariness of parenthood had been creeping up on him. Listening quietly, Ellie’s brows lifted high on her forehead. Half curious about their conversation and half expectant to get to their nightly mission.

“We’ll see,” Bruce mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe Alfred could try his hand at that,” he offered with a contemplative expression.

Dick’s arrogant pout was perfectly in sync with his head nodding in understanding.

Bruce’s eyes met Damian’s expectantly, whose arm leaned with a devil-may-care attitude against the edge of the table. Ellie absolutely loved this state-of-the-art technology. It was one of the reasons why her eyes lingered with deep fascination on the interface display slowly coming to life, and not Bruce’s response.

“Anything else to add to the shopping list, Damian?”

“I could use a flamethrower,” the young one replied with a blank expression, and kept going once he met the anticipating faces of his father and Ellie riveted on him. Damian pursed his lips in contemplation, racking his brain on how to indulge his lethal instincts.

“Too much? A taser?” Rapid-fire suggestions left his mouth when he was met with reluctance. “Something small to electrocute my enemies with? Like, let’s say … how does 300,000 Volt sound?”

His father’s eye twitched at the blatant display of just pure violence. Dick gazed at Damian while hugging his body with a cocked hip. “How about overkill?”

“You could incapacitate someone with that.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“How much AMP?”

"3.6 milliamp."

Bruce paused in thought before consenting ultimately. “Alright. But the moment someone loses their memory, we’ll adjust.”

“Fine.” Damian’s lips thinning was the only facial gesture revealing his emotions to that compromise.

“Wonderful.” Ellie lightly clapped her hands together to move things along. Her sideways glance met Bruce when she inquired, “Back to the task?”

He nodded briefly before saying, “Yes.”

At first, the modern technology was something to get used to. But Ellie still adored the integrative innovation—it just needed a few minutes to connect to the Batcomputer. The files she was looking for slowly pulled up when she swiped the blueprint of Arkham Asylum to the main screen of the milk glass surface.

“This might seem familiar to you, guys,” Ellie surmised once everyone had a good view of the access points.

“As of now, we have been formally invited to Arkham Asylum,” Bruce’s declaration sounded ominous enough as it was.

Ellie’s head nodded in severity while Dick’s blue eyes settled on the visual illustration and his hands braced against his hips. “What’s the game plan?”

“Damian and I go ahead. Dick, you’re following behind on the bike. We go in through the back entrance. Go in separate directions and cover as much ground as possible.”

Damian furrowed his eyebrows in concentration. “Divide and conquer,” he hummed, nodding carefully.

Ellie sent him a crooked smirk as her brown eyes twinkled in delight. “Someone’s really digging that strategy.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Damian explained, “What can I say? I deeply admire Caesar’s techniques.”

Dick’s eye moved confusedly in his sockets. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he muttered under his breath.

Bruce cleared his throat to get them back on track. “As I was saying, we move quickly. And always notify our status over the comms. Quinn is kept in the East Wing, in one of the maximum containment cells.”

Ellie only had one thing to add. “Not to mention, deemed highly dangerous. Security thought she’d incentivize people into riots if they kept her just in the violent ward with the others.”

Damian merely nodded in consent while Dick remained mild-mannered, and replied, “Duly noted.”

“Suit up,” Bruce commanded with an authoritative voice, leaving no room for objections.

“Yes,” Bruce offered, not leaving room for any argument. “Status on Quinn?”

“I’m sorry, but if you request contact to the command center of this Bat-Lair, you’re gonna have to use the designated code name.”

Bruce’s loud sigh made her lips twitch and judging by the snickers emanating from Dick and Damian, they too agreed with teasing Bruce just for a little bit. Several seconds passed, prompting Ellie to patiently raise her eyebrows and wonder if he was going to cave.

Bruce coughed before he finally uttered through clenched teeth, “Aether, tell me the status on Harley Quinn.”

“What’s with that look?”

Bruce tilted his head in fascination. “I don’t know. Maybe I was really afraid you’d still choose Lady Pumpkin.”

Ellie shrugged her shoulders. “Hey, Lady Pumpkin Patch, if I may. Besides, didn’t want to use my former grey hat hacker name—I mean, not that I would ever dabble in something like that.”

“Sure.” He pursed his lips mockingly with a nod. “How long did it take you to find the right alias?”

Ellie licked her lips, remembering all the possibilities and how most of them were either outlandish or already taken. Mentally, she pumped her clenched fist in frustration.

Damn you, Spectre.

“There were definitely some lists.”

“Why Aether then?”

“It originated from Greek mythology.”

Bruce hummed in acknowledgment. “Primordial deity.”

Ellie’s eyes widened in amazement at his lightning-fast intellect but admonished herself just as fast. Why was she still surprised by this man’s deep knowledge? “Exactly. The Aether is the epitome of the upper sky and basically the pure upper air that the Gods breathe.” Ellie shrugged her shoulders, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. “Maybe I just like the idea of being your eye in the sky.”

Ellie could feel Dick’s presence behind her, especially when he used the back of her revolving chair she was sitting on as a support for his arms. Dick was leaning against it and casually steered her movements out of sheer amusement.

“I think it’s great,” Dick threw in and instantly managed to soothe her worries of sounding cheesy when she threw her head back to send him a grateful smile.

A certain someone sounded close to growling.

Ellie shut off her comm line to giggle to herself before she got serious again when she answered, “In her cell. Doing the plank pose…” Her eyes lingered in enthrallment on the woman’s steady core training while she was holding herself up with the underside of her arm. “Quite expertly if I do say so myself,” Ellie muttered under her breath.

“I’ll report to you when there are new status updates.”

“Ditto.”

Ellie exhaled loudly, shutting off her audio. This night turned out to be even more stressful than she anticipated. Her arms stretched out in front of her when a hand brushed her shoulder.

“Oh, dear God!” Ellie shrieked and pressed a hand against her chest. The spot where she was touched shifted from ice-cold shock to a hot mark of mortification. Her eyes wandered to her right side before her breathing turned back to normal. “You’re such a Ninja-Alfred—don’t do that to me, okay?”

Alfred’s lips twitched at the coined name before his hands clasped together inches away from his stomach. “My deepest apologies for my stealthiness, Miss Ellie.”

“Accepted,” Ellie conceded with an exhaling breath.

Tim’s small figure stepped away from behind Alfred’s tall frame like he had been silently standing there all along—

someone had been learning from Damian after all—

and clasped his fingertips on the edge of the table while gazing at the computer display.

“Hey, Timmy,” came Ellie’s softly spoken words. It was hard to resist the urge to comb her hand through his hair—the intelligent boy always had this rumpled look to him. Who didn’t want to squeeze those pinchable cheeks?

“Hi, Ellie,” Tim replied with a barely audible voice. His moss-green eyes met hers for a fragment of a second before they were lingering on Harley’s hands talking to each other.

“I thought Master Tim here needed a breath of fresh air from one of his binge-reading sessions, as the young kids like to call it,” Alfred thankfully answered her unspoken question. “We’re not here to disrupt your progress. This young gentleman wants to observe my chore of upgrading equipment.”

Ellie’s head tilted to look at the side of Tim’s face. “Someone’s turning into a young Alfred, huh?” she praised the boy before she was forced to shift her focus back to the task she was initially assigned for. “Sorry, guys, gotta devote my time to some clowns for a bit, alright?”

“Proceed. We’ll be right around the corner at the workstation,” Alfred offered with the wave of his hand and stepped backwards, prompting Tim to move ahead. The small kid’s movements were awkward and slow-paced when his footsteps thudded lightly on the ground.

“Can I hold the screwdriver, Alfred?” he inquired curiously when he placed the wooden stool near his feet and elevated himself to a higher level.

“I need steady hands though. You think you can be my little assistant?”

Tim quietly nodded, with his eyes already focusing on the shock gloves needing another upgrade.

With a smile tugging on her lips, Ellie shifted her body back until she was facing the Batcomputer again.

“Robin, what’s your status?”

Silence followed Batman’s order. A predicament which made Ellie’s head do a double-take. Taking the second monitor to her advantage, the tips of her fingers pressed fluidly against the keypad to access the GPS tracker in the Robin suit.

Ellie frowned with an intense aura once Damian’s location became visible. “I can trace Robin’s position back to the hallway close to the containment cells.”

Before her alert status was even fully articulated, Batman’s figure rushed through the air on the security footage.

“I thought we were supposed to talk to each other,” Dick mused grumpily.

A statement which incited Bruce to retort with a growling voice, “Just focus on the task at hand.”

Deep suspicion throbbed at the back of her head when Harley looked straight ahead, with her blue eyes staring intensely at something behind the containment glass. The woman was standing so close to the barrier that it was hard to distinguish which kind of emotions boiled behind those ocean eyes. Menace was radiating in waves off of her.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, a masked Joker goon stepped into view, with his back turned towards her. Chills erupted on her forearms when the clown slowly turned his head until he was looking directly into the camera.

Disgust coiled her stomach into knots as she groaned, “Screw this Purge shit.”

Someone coughing barely reached her senses. “Everything alright there, Miss Rhodes?”

“Just splendid, Alfred,” Ellie replied instantaneously before she let her fingers do their hacker magic. Her brown eyes strained vehemently on the heat signature painting a vivid picture of the threat ahead.

“I detect about a dozen hostiles. Get ready, it’s starting.”

“Understood,” Bruce replied with an ominous voice after a moment of silence.

Tension wreaked through her body when she switched between the camera channels, but unfortunately the Joker was a no-show and only his crazy thugs roamed the halls without a care in the world. Not to mention, no sign of Damian either.

Ellie’s hand covered her clenched fist which shielded her mouth. “Please, be alright,” she whispered into her palms in a prayer. “I’ve sent you Robin’s location to the tracer device. You’re about 500 feet away from him.”

“We’ll find him,” the caped crusader assured her.

“Is that you, Batman?” The notoriously high voice resounded in her ears.

Ellie’s head whipped in the air once she connected the guffawing nature of the sound with the origin. She held her breath as the sensation of ants crawling underneath her skin made the extent of her worst fears for tonight’s mission come to fruition.

Son of a bitch.

With a gradual sweep, Ellie’s eyes shifted to the left side of the screen and identified the transforming waveform of the communication link next to the codename ‘Robin’. The muscles surrounding her mouth stiffened at the Joker’s violation.

“Why won’t you talk to me, Batsy?” Joker said after heavy silence hung in the air.

All-consuming tenacity infiltrated her veins like a parasite when her upper body shifted into a more agile stance. “I’ve opened a separate channel. Joker has access to our line with the help of Robin’s radio device. Keep him talking. I still have no visual on Joker or Robin yet.”

“Got it,” Dick stated hurriedly over the radio. “En route from the Southeast corridor.”

The clown’s voice was starting to grate on her ears. “I know you’re in here. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been desperate to get in touch with me. Is something the matter, Batsy?”

“Stop playing games, Joker,” Batman grunted lowly as his blinking dot got increasingly closer to the younger vigilante, and hopefully their target as well.

“And take all the fun away?” He giggled with a demented air that didn’t fail to leave shivers down her spine. “You’re just as humorless as this little bird here.” Joker’s pregnant pause gave way to something far more sinister lurking underneath.

“You have something to say to the good ol’ bat?” A humming noise reverberated from deep within his chest. “No, nothing to say? Looks like someone’s too stubborn for his own good. I got ways of making people talk,” Joker stressed every word of that last sentence with a ground whisper.

“Leave Robin out of this.”

“Why don’t you say that to my face? But first, you’ve got to find me,” he sing-songed devilishly.

Ellie’s eyes zeroed in on the scene she was witnessing when she leaned forward, pushing her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose. She whispered quietly into the microphone device, “I got visual on Robin and Joker. They’re on the platform leading to the containment cells.”

“All this attention just for little ol’ me? Tell me something, Batsy, when are you finally going to break your rules? You barely bent them for that little birdie. I wonder … how far are you willing to go for Commissioner Gordon’s niece?”

~ Bruce POV~

Bruce forced himself to remain calm in his composure as the halls surrounding him grew darker the closer he got to the blinking dot of his son. His jaw clenched at the reminder of Jason’s fate and the meaningless abuse on Barbara.

As much as Bruce wanted to release his inhibitions to hurt his nemesis in return, under no circumstances could he unveil his pressure point to him.

Bruce’s features twisted into a disgusted grimace. “You hurt Barbara … because you wanted to prove something? If you were half a man, you would stop being a coward and face me without hiding behind a child,” he enunciated the last word calmly despite the turmoil ravaging inside him. The dark cape swooshed near the ground behind him when he rounded the corner—

and faced the one thing he had been dreading for weeks on end.

Bruce sighed under his breath. Joker was standing on the opposite end of the bridge while his crazed thugs held Damian captive with the threat of using their firearms against him.

As usual, Damian was facing his opponents with a stubborn glare and a sharp jaw. Other than a red bruise forming on his cheek.

At last, Bruce’s eyes targeted the delighted expression in the Joker’s bright green-eyed gaze. His purple glove-covered hands stretched out in a flamboyant attitude on each side, a golf club clenched tightly in one glove. “Well, here I am,” the green-dyed man giggled from afar. “And it looks like I found another Robin.”

Bruce stopped in his tracks when the words he heard from a distance echoed like a haunting trigger in his ears as well. Stretching out his gloved fingers, he resisted the urge to create some friction at his fingertips and reveal another weakness. Not necessarily an outcome Bruce preferred in the grand scheme of things.

Disappointment was the predominant expression on his face when the Joker shook his head, dropping his hands at his waist. “Not the welcome I expected.”

“How did you expect me to react exactly?”

“Grateful,” he hissed with a menacing whisper, “I’m trying to open your eyes here, but you make it so much harder than it needs to be.”

“Keep him talking,” Ellie’s whispering voice said in his ear softly and calmed his thudding heart, “Nightwing is right underneath you and will act on your signal.”

Bruce’s gaze swerved to Damian’s right and subtly hummed in consent.

“I’m listening. What do you want to show me?”

“Your true self. Don’t you realize that all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy?” Like the thought itself was hilarious, his voice pitched even higher. “That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Surely, you must have. You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else… only you won’t admit it!”

This psychology lesson was starting to grate on his nerves the longer he had to listen to Joker’s delusions, especially since he couldn’t control his son getting even more hurt the further this was prolonged.

“Barbara was innocent in all of this.”

“She was necessary. A means to an end to the grand play.”

Every single word he uttered was pulled apart with a growling sensation. “Let. Robin. Go.”

Joker’s erratic scream echoed through the asylum, “As soon as you finally admit it!” before the sound transformed into maniacal laughter. “That we’re the same.” His hands hid behind his back as he casually walked around Damian’s body when he tried to prove his point. The threatening glint of the metal shone under the asylum’s lights. “Only I realized that nothing made sense—that code of yours, of value, of morality—it means nothing. You think those rules are protecting people?”

A twisted smirk drew on his curved lips as an icy expression took over his eyes. “When I saw what a dark, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a nut! And I’m smart enough to admit it! So why can’t you!?” The green in his eyes only intensified with the crazed look. “You’re clinging to this reality, and you’re desperately denying the reality of the situation! Everything anybody’s ever valued or struggled for—it’s all just a bad joke.”

God, that guy needed psychological help.

The shoulders in his dark-purple suit shook with erupting chuckles that grew with intensity at the mere idea. “So why can’t you see the funny side!? WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING!!??”

“We are not the same,” Bruce replied calmly.

Joker exhaled loudly. “You disappoint me, Batman,” he muttered gravely. Before long, his face turned dark as he slowly lifted his head and sent him a diabolical glance from under his eyelashes.

“Don’t you see?” The gloves squeaked with its movement when his grip tightened on the metal equipment. “You’re just one bad day away from being me,” Joker breathed with exertion before whooping laughter wrenched free from his chest.

“Woohoohoo,” he exclaimed gleefully and swung his golf club, striking behind him.

“No!” Bruce’s voice scrambler contorted his outcry when his eyes widened.

~ Ellie POV ~

Tears gathered in the corner of Ellie’s eyes. Her palms covered her mouth in shock to ward off the scream in mid-cry. Soundless static rang in her ears at the horrifying video revealing the pained expression underneath Damian’s mask as he was brought to his knee, holding his arm to his chest.

Robin’s health stats were displayed above his audio waveform. His heartbeat intensified at the added injury, giving off bouts of anxiety.

“Damian,” Ellie heard behind her quietly. With a stricken face, the brunette stood up from her seat and detected Tim was standing behind her—and closer than she first realized.

Her back shielded most of the Batcomputer from any onlookers, but the boy still had seen enough. Her eyes wandered towards Alfred’s concerned gaze and hoped he understood what she was asking for here. “Alfred, could you—?” she begged with a thick voice.

“Certainly, Miss Ellie,” Alfred assured her and moved in the direction of Tim.

Ellie pleaded with him, “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t do that if—”

Alfred nodded once before soothing her worries. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll be on the floor below.”

Tim’s widened eyes looking back tore at her heartstrings. But unfortunately, Ellie needed to jump in the cold water again, she realized, when she sat in the chair. Her fingers were shaking nervously above the keyboard, feeling too stunned to react. The edges of her sight blurred with a throbbing pulse until she clenched her hands into fists. Trying to fend off the chill which had taken root in her body.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ellie worked on accessing the asylum’s power grid. Her heart only hammered more vigorously in her chest at witnessing Joker deliver a blow over the head when he was lying defenselessly on the platform.

Jesus. Ellie absolutely was starting to loathe this retro network.

“Wouldn’t it be a shame if this one endured the same fate as its predecessor? You love birds with broken wings, don’t you?”

She frowned deeply in perplexed stupor when Batman wasted no time in utilizing the grappling hook—generally intended for scaling walls—

and targeted the Joker’s throat. With the flick of his wrist the criminal was dragged like an accelerated magnet towards him. The tips of Joker’s feet crawled on the metal grid underneath before a hard punch so powerful sent him flying over the ledge. Without glancing back, Batman dropped the hook, letting the end of it anchor on the edge of the railing. A dangling Joker was gasping for breath and clawing for his throat.

Nightwing sprinted under the metal overpass and spoke incredulously on comms, “That was supposed to be the signal? Really?”

“We need to get the Joker. Just keep Robin safe,” Ellie reminded Dick with intense fervor.

His black-and-blue suit jumped from underneath and with a somersault kicked an assailant in the face before landing on his feet. “On it.”

Despite the grievous injuries, Damian tried his best to fend for himself when his stepbrother came to his defense, fighting together back-to-back.

The sound of quick keystrokes was a dull diversion thumping at the back of her head when her brain tried to comprehend her viewpoint. The mess of everything was truly starting to gnaw at Ellie once Bruce’s rigid stature stalked towards the ledge.

Ambiguity marred her features as soon as her eyes switched between Joker’s hollering face—notwithstanding the life-threatening situation he was in—and Bruce just silently staring at him with a blank face. The corners of her mouth twisted with torn emotion as Joker lifted his arm in surrender, pleading with Batman to be saved.

“Is this really how you want this to end, Batsy?” he taunted with a wheezing murmur.

This was seriously getting out of hand, Ellie perceived numbly.

The electric grid was laid in front of her eyes, including the code to initiate a lockdown. At the last second, Ellie opted for a lockout instead of merely a power grid outage to keep everyone contained. She felt close to tasting her success when the blueprint glared red before an error alert displayed ‘Electricity outage initiated’.

“What?” Ellie hissed, throwing her hands in the air in utter dismay. Her gaze twisted back to the live footage and found the asylum doused into darkness.

“What was that?” Batman’s voice inquired urgently.

“That wasn’t me,” she spoke into the microphone defensively. “You’ll get power back in a few seconds,” Ellie confided in them as her fingers entered its new command into the network. She closed her eyes in immense failure after studying the asylum halls and knowing the one thing for sure she had suspected.

The Joker had already disappeared.

Ellie’s breath released with a long exhale. Her hands were tightened into fists. Her jaw was clenched while she was trying with all her might to keep her cry of frustration in. With her wide eyes and mouth agape, she was facing the screen. Feeling so empty in a way she had never felt before.

“I didn’t do this,” she stated with a dazed sensation in her chest and pressed her lips together.

Her body was operating on auto-pilot when she called in everyone for a mission debrief. Everyone except Dick who stayed behind to placate the executives at Arkham Asylum.

Ellie’s jaw hardened once this unfamiliar code was branded into her eyeballs. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her closed eyelids. Ellie just felt so drained, like she had persisted through the end of a therapy session.

A heavy exhale pushed through her chest when she stood up, only for her breathing to pick up as well. Ellie’s eyes didn’t meet anything in particular with her head bowed down.

With great and surprising finesse, her voice sounded without emotion when she called out, “I need some fresh air, okay, Alfred? The others will arrive in 15 minutes.”

Her unfocused eyes stared right ahead while Alfred said in return, “Duly noted, Miss Ellie.”

Her gait was unhurried and Ellie stroked the tips of her fingers together when she was struggling to understand why her heart started thudding in her ears while quiet tears crept in the corner of her eyes.

Why was it so hard to keep everything together?

Furiously, Ellie shook her head as the familiar walls of the corridor met her eyes. The fingertips of her right hand brushed against the wall to hold onto something as long as she wanted to remain conscious. Inhaling deep breaths turned out to be a mistake when her breathing stuttered with nervous energy. With every inhale and exhale, Ellie got closer to the entrance door of the manor—she could almost taste that whiff of relief.

She breathed out as soon as the biting air occupied her lungs. Stepping out onto the front entryway, Ellie’s hands vigorously brushed her wool cardigan, feeling grateful for the autumn chill.

Trying to find something—just anything to hold onto—her head anxiously swerved around. Every breath was starting to hurt. Even breathing in was a struggle not to break down. Hot tears only intensified the bout of frustration swelling up, threatening to swallow her whole. Ellie’s chest rose irregularly with every breath as her hands settled on her hips. Burning teardrops streamed relentlessly down her cheeks and it felt just so useless.

Damian’s anguished eyes flashing through her mind was the last and only thought taking over before control was an inconceivable sentiment.

Ellie’s hands were clenched into fists while she crouched low to her knees. A long wailing cry of despair pierced through the night sky until there was no longer any air left in her lungs. Until her vocal cords felt sore. Ellie’s chilling and stuttering breath was visible in front of her very eyes. A savage emotion lit up in those orbs when her breathing returned back to normal.

However, her lungs were still scorching ceaselessly.

“What was that?” Bruce’s cowl was still covering his face when he energetically jumped out of the Batmobile. His hardened jaw was the only thing she saw underneath that mask. His partial expression stood in frightening contrast when he walked briskly into the lair.

Ellie was still sitting behind the Batcomputer while her absentminded eyes followed Alfred helping a bruised Damian step out of the vehicle. There was a twinge in her chest just looking at him.

“There was another hacker tonight,” Ellie revealed numbly, just recalling that unexpected invasion hurt her pride enough. Something in Bruce’s eyes stood out to her. Ellie’s expression turned shocked. “You don’t believe me? I intended to initiate a lockdown and not a power outage. I meant to keep everyone contained. Not only that, but I mean, we still got Harley Quinn.”

“That’s all we got.” Bruce’s chest rumbled with emotion as another failure hit him. “We’ve got no guarantee that Joker is going to come after her again just for the fun of it.”

Alfred and Tim flanked Damian’s side when the older brother sent a silent but concerned glance towards him.

“You good?” Tim asked him with a low whisper and tilted his head in doing so.

A question to which Damian merely nodded briskly, without uttering a single word to display what he was currently feeling. The bruises on his forehead and cheek were starting to darken. Ellie believed there was more to the mask Damian was shielding behind to cover up the vulnerability, he would under no circumstances put on display.

Damian spoke up for the first time, “What’s done is done. We need to think about another strategy and regroup.”

A feeling of gratefulness hit her instantly that this kid was trying to alleviate budding tension which soon shifted into regret once her inquiring gaze lingered on the consequences of tonight. The Joker got him good—Ellie was honestly surprised how Damian was still standing upright.

Her eyes wandered back to Bruce again, worried about the effects the Joker left behind on all of them. “Do you want to talk about what just happened?”

“You mean that Damian sustained grave trauma or that I hesitated when Joker hung over the ledge?”

Ellie’s body winced at Bruce’s frankness that bordered on scathing. “He was trying to push you over the edge and there was a part of you that at least considered it.”

His eyes narrowed as his arms crossed over his chest, getting ready to push back. “You want to talk about my misgivings, that’s fine, but don’t forget that you let someone else get the better of you.”

Ellie’s features turned to stone when Bruce managed to hit the one spot she was still sore about. She was the only one who could put herself down due to her struck pride. Mortification heated up in her belly as the fight for control was hard enough, but she barely reined it in.

Alfred chose this moment to tame any more tension-filled conversations. “If I may say, I believe we all need to take a breather and get a good night’s sleep.”

Ellie could feel Bruce’s heavy stare on her while he was mutely just looking at her without saying anything.

“You’re probably right,” Bruce replied, sending the older man a brief glance before he walked off without another word.

Exhaling heavily, Ellie stared after him with unsaid emotions as her back sagged in her seat. She let a strained smile draw on her lips when her eyes met Damian’s again. “Let’s get you patched up, huh?”

The youngest Wayne child was escorted a floor below to the med bay. For the first time, his features twisted into a pained grimace once he was lying down on the operating table.

Wordlessly, Ellie’s eyes studied his injuries, and the young woman could feel her heart tear into pieces.

This was just so unfair.

Her inner upheaval must’ve shown on her expression when Damian’s chocolate-brown eyes met hers. The first droplets of sweat gathered above his eyebrows.

“I’ll survive,” he whispered with a tense voice, already understanding the inner thoughts she was stuck with.

And the tears were back in her eyes.

She forced a comforting smile on her face as much as it pained her to muster it up and nodded. Iron resolve settled in her bones the longer Ellie gazed at him. Damian might see himself as utterly wicked, but to her the young one was an innocent child who didn’t deserve this kind of pain. Only because of a man who wanted to corrupt the people around him.

Ellie ground her teeth as her decision was made final.

No more.

A/N: The following code names were in the run: Overlord, Nemesis, Corvus, Zero-Day and Grey Hat. To be honest, I wanted the alias to sound dope and have a profound meaning at the same time. Overlord would've been only cool because of the Led Zeppelin reference, lol.

Small trivia about Aether: he embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals. I chose Aether because Ellie's literally the eye in the sky, and I didn't want to steal "Watchtower" from Smallville.

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