#look i said something

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[zorilleerrant]

people asking "why would anyone vote to kill baby Jason???" as if they don't lose their minds over every reboot and start plotting various characters' murders

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happy queer new year to all heteroromantic acespecs, heterosexual arospecs, heteroromantic heterosexual aspecs, hetero oriented aspecs, and anyone else who identifies with both het and aspec labels! happy queer new year to all other aspecs and any other queer people who see this, too!

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I've been watching so many shows lately where someone pulls an aha! you're faking using a wheelchair! because someone stood up once or walked a little. and so seeing it presented here, where not only do we have Shirley stand up, but also the accusation that she's not really disabled because she can stand is explicitly a paranoid and offensive rant. it's just. I like seeing it! I don't know if Shirley is supposed to have spina bifida like the actor apparently has, but I do like that she's not just neatly paralyzed like most portrayals of wheelchair users. and not just because it's my new blorbo Shirley being pointed about it, either.

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Niko: If you were home alone when you weren't expecting anyone and you heard a knock at your door, who would you be more surprised to see, a fairy or a walrus?

Edwin: Why would Mick be at our door?

Charles: Maybe he's dropping something off.

Edwin: Surely we would be expecting him then?

Crystal: Plus we already kind of have fairies.

Niko: That's true, but if they knocked at the door that would mean they escaped and that would be really surprising.

Edwin: They are not fairies; they are small gods.

Charles: Sure, but what if they were fairies?

Edwin: They aren't fairies!

Crystal: And we never resolved why Mick was dropping something off. Like, does he have a case for us?

Niko: Aw, if Mick had a case for us, I would help him. We can totally help him, you guys.

Charles: You know, you're not wrong, if he had a case for us I wouldn't be surprised to hear from him at all.

Edwin: I don't even know if fairies exist, let alone why they should need our help.

Niko: Wait, do the fairies have a case, too?

Crystal: If a fairy knocked at our door it's a good bet it would have a case for us, yeah. Or why else would it show up?

Charles: Yeah, but we already know Mick.

Edwin: Why is Mick knocking at our door?

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Tim is fine with being protected. It comes from being the least trained in a family full of people with borderline supernatural skills, it comes from playing backup, from being the eye in the sky during so many missions when he has more support skills than those better equipped to be boots on the ground. It comes from being on so many teams with so many people with so many powers and it comes from being practically family to household names. It comes from being the one Robin that’s always there for Batman to play it safe with.

Tim is not fine with a civilian putting himself in danger. It’s not because it’s Bernard, he tells himself, over and over again. It’s any time it’s someone with less training, less armor, less experience in the field. Anyone with fewer weapons, anyone with fewer allies, anyone who can’t see the split second decisions the villains are making with someone else’s life on the line. Anyone who didn’t devote themselves to this, who didn’t look at the symbol of the Bat and agree to be part of the venture, paring off every extraneous branch on the journey until the pike is honed smooth, ready to throw.

It’s every civilian, but it’s one civilian, one with a lopsided smile and the most textbook perfect punch he puts his whole weight behind, a body at peak physical health but without the kind of reflexes scarred in day after day he needs to stand his ground. Smooth skin, few scars. Hands soft despite the callouses and gentle, carefully applying stitches, bandages, injections they’re not yet used to holding. One civilian with ridiculous, almost unintelligible good luck wishes, and no fashion sense, who talks too fast to keep himself safe when he’s in someone else’s sights.

But Bernard knows people, he knows places, he has a name with weight where Robin’s doesn’t matter much and Tim Drake’s even less, and he’s willing to throw it around Tim like the shield it is. He puts his body in between Tim and harm, and still that easy smile, still those eyes shining with some kind of hidden plan, some words unspoken because you know that once they are, they’re going to be good. He doesn’t tell Tim the way out. Tim isn’t supposed to have the kind of skills he needs to navigate a situation like this, so why let him in on the secret?

From everyone else’s perspective, Tim is soft and small and spoiled, Tim is the kind of kid who doesn’t even know himself enough to be sure he wants to hold hands. A rich kid who’s never gotten his hands dirty, a pretty little trophy on the arm of someone whose gaze holds the weight of the world when he carefully measures his words. Someone there to giggle when Bernard asks if they’re absolutely sure they really want to do that.

Bernard knows who he is. Bernard knows what Tim would throw himself bodily between, knows how much he would give, how much he has given, for his friends, and his family, and Gotham. How much he would give for Bernard. He knows that Tim would fight tooth and nail, and how well he knows where each tooth and each nail fits for maximum damage, to keep himself alive those few seconds long enough to wait for help. Bernard knows what Robin can do, would do, will do again once they’re out and safe and free.

But Tim knows just how fragile the human form is. How many bones there are to break and how many pints of blood there are to lose, how deep scarring has to go before it’s impossible to move. He knows the spots that hurt and the spots that harm, and he knows that the bravado is just a façade. That if anyone sees through Bernard’s act, sees through his ploys and appeals to an authority that scares him as much as his audience, that Bernard has just as many points of vulnerability as anyone else who’s lain broken and cold before him.

Tim will be the princess in the castle, and Bernard his knight, but for all the things he knows a dragon can do. Tim can count the dragons around them. Bernard can, too. Bernard’s been a dragon on his own, or else the child of one, and he knows firsthand the burns they leave, and still he sweeps across the ash like it isn’t even there. It’s Robin who can do something, Robin the wizard with ancient tomes and sage advice, but Tim is the only one here, and no one ever wants the princess to rescue herself. He has to let Bernard be his knight.

But Bernard speaks the magic words, and Tim does trust him, places his life so carefully in his lover’s hands and closes his eyes against the chill, and Bernard takes that gift for what it means, carries it with all the weight it has and tucks it up so gently against his own heart. Tim isn’t always the one with the way out, and he isn’t always the one who can do the protecting, and he’s used to that. But he slips his fingers through the one hand he thought he’d always be able to hold without being led by it, and lets that perfect image shatter. There’s no keeping Bernard away. He’s already involved. More involved than Tim ever was, in some ways, and less in the ways that Tim can still keep him out of it. Not safe, none of them were ever safe, but not as fragile as the snowglobe he was trying to frame the picture with, and there are more angles than he was prepared to watch. Still, Tim has contingencies. And the contingency, now, is to let Bernard protect him for once, just like he promised he would.

[zorilleerrant]

Halloween Shazam Plot: Take a 'Captain Marvel looks like C.C. Batson' fic and have Cap interact with Jason Blood. Give him some quick help on some magic stuff, but familiar enough it seems like they're old friends. The Justice League sees this, hears about it, Cap tells them about it, or even they call in some backup. Whatever it is, they now believe the reason C.C. abandoned Billy is that there's a demon attached to him and he's terrified for his son's safety. They start using this explanation to piece together things like disappearances, spotty understanding of magic, extreme powers he seems unwilling to use all the time, memory lapses and confusion about current events, and... the fact that he once mentioned he could transform, but it would be dangerous....

gone, gone the form of man, call forth the demon named Shazam

[zorilleerrant]

okay so Bernard:

had a close friend come back to life in high school

is obsessed with the Bat drama and has definitely seen all the conspiracy theories of who is which dead Robin

lives in a world where some people (like Superman) have publicly come back to life and there's a whole thing about it

joined a cult that seemingly had raising the dead as one of its long term end goals???

would've seen Tim's death announced in the news, maybe even went to the funeral, and then Tim is back either acting like it never happened and giving him the brushoff, or admitting it did happen but he doesn't want to talk about it

you guys I don't think Bern believes in death anymore

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anyway I think it would've been very cool if the Pig Man was looking for Quentin Coldwater but not Julia's Quentin, like he was looking for a specific Quentin Coldwater but it was a much later descendant of Q's, because like. that one line?

"do you ever think about them?" "the grandkids?"

like the idea that Elliot and Quentin's kid was off not just growing up but getting married and having his own kids and then they go off and start families and then they go off and start families too? after 400 years there would be a lot of descendants out there and like. you have to think a lot of them are still named Coldwater and some of them are even named Quentin too

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Cordelia Chase is autistic. her special interest is clothes, fashion, makeup, Events, and decorating things. (possibly also dance, if either show remembered how dedicated she is to cheer.) she likes aesthetics. she likes the way things look, when they look right, even when right isn't her favorite kind of look. this is why she leans into popular girl stereotypes sometimes, as a form of masking

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quick question for more hardcore Billy Batson fans

did Dr. Sivana just move in next door???

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TimBer x Don't Fear The Reaper

[zorilleerrant]

wait hang on the Danny Phantom show is set in high school, right? in a town with its own little time bubble that's not entirely linear? maybe where modern references kind of go over people's heads? big magic things happen a lot and people kind of learn to ignore them?

I think a town like that would need to go head to head with another town like that, because who else is going to do like local sports and debate team and whatever against each other. like Fawcett

Billy Batson and Danny Phantom on academic probation forced to do mathletics against each other is what I'm saying

[zorilleerrant]

About the writers' and actors' strike: I think people are thinking of it in the wrong direction.

No one's asking the audience to pay more, or to pay anyone involved directly. This won't even impact audiences at all, except that the people involved will have more time and energy to devote to movies and TV, and more freedom to pick the projects they love most. Your model isn't going to change. (Possibly it will be easier to buy DVDs/Blu-rays, but even that 's unlikely.)

So what's happening is people make a movie, right? And they go: let's put $1000 into this movie. And like obviously the real numbers are way more than that, but with the kind of numbers we're talking about, it's hard to keep track of anything, which is what the news is constantly using to trick people anyway.

So what we have is a writer, and the writer gets paid $10 for this. And a couple of actors, and they get paid $10. And you have the crew, of course, lighting and sound, camerapeople, hair and makeup, etc. but they aren't striking right now (although possibly they should, given the state of the industry lately). Some of the budget goes into props and sets, some of it goes into the actual film, and some of it goes to the people who are organizing the budget and paying people, but that's not important right now.

The point is, when the movie is finished, it makes $10,000 profit opening weekend. And the actors and writers get some of that money for making the movie. (They aren't arguing for that part. That already happens anyway.) And so the writer gets 10 cents. And the actors get 10 cents each. And then these other two dudes split the rest of the 10,000 dollars.

Now, these other two dudes, they didn't work on the film. They didn't write it, and they didn't act in it, and they didn't direct it, and they didn't edit it. They didn't play the music for it or record the actors talking or sort through files full of sound effects. They didn't decide where the lights should go or hold them up or make sure to film the right angle to avoid glare. They didn't design the costumes or do the actors' hair or sign things out and move them to the right place at the right time. They didn't build the set or decorate it or figure out what to buy to make it realistic, they didn't animate anything or edit out the microphones or make the colors pop. They didn't even hand out the money to everyone who worked on the movie, which is the job of a specific person who doesn't get paid that much either and sometimes gets yelled at a lot.

All they did was this one dude had $1000 lying around. And he put it into the project. And the other dude didn't even do that, he just mentioned to the first dude there was a movie that needed $1000. And now they're splitting $9,999 between them. And this keeps happening every weekend, for varying amounts of money, and then in different ways once it moves to DVDs and streaming. They just keep taking the lion's share.

Anyway, the writers and actors are striking so that for every 1000 dollars those guys make, instead of making 10 cents each, they would make a whole dollar. Except those two dudes are making way more than a thousand dollars. And the writers and actors are literally being paid ten cents.

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~ hey, look what I found ~