#so the anti posts are basically me venting my frustrations and findings here that I cant do on twitter

[heyftinally]

https://www.tumblr.com/defendingts/750845507072622592/what-do-you-think-the-p-and-the-r-in-pr-stand-for?source=share

“no celebrity is treated the way Taylor is.”

That is such an outrageous claim. Taylor is praised by 90% of the media. Taylor has a [rabid] fan base that send literal death threats to people who voice their negative opinions on her. Taylor being called out for genuinely bad work and bad choices is not hate it’s accountability.

Britney Spears has it worse than Taylor and continues to have it worse than most celebrities. Miley Cyrus endured some of the worst treatment from the general public and media of a current star when she was growing up. Justin Bieber has been abused by the media since he was 15. Michael Jackson was ridiculed at every turn when he was alive and people still tried to take advantage and drag his name through the dirt after he died. Marilyn Monroe was treated as more of an object than a person and still is mistreated today with misrepresentations of her life being made for entertainment purposes. Cassie literally just had footage of being assaulted by her ex Diddy released to the public. God I could keep going but I won’t. The proof is out there. She’s just too blind to see it. She claims she’s not a Swiftie but she clearly is. If she’s neutral towards Taylor she could at least acknowledge that Taylor has had it very easy in contrast to MOST celebrities.

I had her original account blocked but she made a new one and keeps posting in the anti tag and I’m just fed up. I’ve blocked her again but I needed to rant. Most people in the anti tag aren’t actively hating just expressing their frustrations and even if they were hating. ITS IN THE ANTI TAG. OMG. Sorry but she’s clearly a Swiftie who doesn’t have a god damn life and is baiting people into her ask box. She probably sends herself messages to show she’s got a larger following than she actually does. It’s pathetic. She calls antis pathetic but really we vent to a couple of blogs who agree with our thoughts and those blogs post them. She’s the one seeking out these things to complain about them. It’s so f*ckin annoying

I've honestly called other performers WAY worse things than I've called Taylor Swift. I've criticized countless artists for a variety of things. Hell, anyone who knows me knows I have just as many issues with Harry Styles as I do Taylor Swift (they're basically two versions of the same issues if you ask me).

I tag my posts the way I do for one reason, and one reason only: so that swifties can block me, block the tag(s), and fuck off. I'm not going to sit here and try to convince someone that they shouldn't support her - that has to come from your own moral compass. But in return, don't come on to my posts and tell me I'm wrong for having an opinion based on the facts we're given 24/7.

And as far as the old bullshit of "antis are pathetic" (how very 2010 tumblr lol), I say mocking someone for having an opinion you don't like is MORE pathetic. Taylor Swift is shoved down our throats literally constantly - if I'm forced to be aware of her bullshit, I'm going to have an opinion on it. If that opinion isn't favorable towards her, sucks to fucking suck. You know what I don't post about? Who Hilary Duff did or didn't go on a date with last weekend. Because I have no clue what happens in her personal life, and I'm not about to go be a stalker freak to find out. If Taylor Swift can't stand people not liking her, maybe she should put less of herself on display. And again, if swifties don't like my opinions, they can block me and my tags like adults and move on.

[pinksmonkey]

Update on my anti-Byler bestie

Here's the post if you missed it.

First of all, thank you to everyone who shared their favourite Byler evidence, it made me very happy and it was funny sharing it with my friend.

Now, unfortunately my friend cannot be convinced. I'm autistic and have trouble understanding people's intentions and feelings, so I can't tell if he's being fully serious, half serious, or completely unserious, but to me it seems most like half serious. He's strongly in denial and won't really give me a reason as to why, he just says, "No, not happening."

So there's no getting to him, he believes without a doubt that Byler isn't happening (and said he'll start a riot if it does happen, but Idk if he was serious). And he says he's going to find evidence, but his only proof so far has been, "Nooooo." XD

So I've been dealing with that. It's kind of frustrating because I feel like he's not really listening to anything I'm saying, he just denies everything. And I understand sort of because he actually bet me $50 Byler won't happen in season 5 (I didn't bet anything, he just gets to keep the money if he's right). So he doesn't want to admit defeat to that, which is fair, but it was a stupid bet to make in the first place since he didn't have all the information (the proof for Byler).

Additionally, at lunch today we were talking to a girl who's also in our anxiety support class, and I was talking about Byler stuff (Mike's official playlist songs, the way he looks at Will, their flirty scenes in season 4, Mike using the "we're friends" trope, etc.). She agreed with my friend that Byler isn't a thing and said Mike is so straight.

I can argue with them as much as I want but it gets really frustrating and even kind of annoying that they just don't understand all the evidence. I'm just venting here, so absolutely no hate towards people who don't believe Byler is canon, but as someone who cares so deeply about it, it can make me kind of emotional trying to argue that I'm not delusional.

In the end we agreed to disagree, which is fine and valid and I respect that. But with my friend, it's kind of a big deal, because to me Byler is a big deal. I admit I'm obsessed, Byler has been my biggest special interest since I watched season 4 and found out it was a thing. I can't really help it, I'm just so passionate about it and it gets stuck in my mind. You could say I'm hopelessly devoted to Byler, one of my friends online has even said they think it's unhealthy, but how can something that brings me so much joy be wrong?

Ok this has devolved significantly, but what I'm trying to say in this whole rant/vent thing is that yes, I'm very invested in the relationship between fictional characters, because it's important to me. Representation matters, and even though I'm not a gay man, I still love seeing other groups be represented, especially in a show this popular, with a story this deep. The beauty of Byler's story transcends everything.

So it's frustrating trying to argue for something I care so much about. Byler makes me happy, it motivates me, it inspires me. I'm not going to apologize for loving the things I love and being passionate about my interests. Of course I try to be open minded, respect different opinions, and listen to other points of view. If my friend actually had evidence against Byler, I would listen and respond as constructively and respectfully as I can.

Basically, shipping Byler is valid, and not shipping or even being anti-Byler is valid (unless it's just for homophobic reasons, homophobia is not valid). But I love Byler and it does kind of hurt to have something I care about be adamantly denied and torn apart. And you know, as I'm writing this I'm actually empathizing with Milevens. This doesn't just go for Byler, it goes for all ships (as long as they're not messed up obviously), people should be able to enjoy what they enjoy without others trying to tell them why they're wrong.

There's nothing wrong with analyzing Mileven, talking about why it's unhealthy or not going to be endgame, etc. But that should stay in the proper places, we don't need to constantly remind Milevens that they're ship isn't going to end up together. Just let them be happy, and I'd expect them to do the same for us.

Idk how this turned into talking about Milevens and respecting different ships, but it did somehow. Anyway, back to the point, my friend may be wrong about what will happen in season 5, but his beliefs on it are still valid. I just wish we could talk about it in a way that doesn't make me feel bad about shipping Byler and believing it's endgame. Does that make sense?

This isn't that serious or anything, and take everything I said here as just a random vent/rant, I'm just getting out all my thoughts and feelings, because I need to after all the arguing with people today.

If Byler doesn't happen, I'll be sad, but I know I won't be alone because I have my fellow Bylers, my Byler family and community here. We can all be sad together, and support each other. When I feel bad about something, I like to remember this quote:

That's how I feel about Byler not being endgame.

But on a lighter note, I'm pretty sure Byler will end up together, it just makes sense. So yeah, feel free to share any of your thoughts and feelings about this, I'd love to hear them. :)

I just needed to share some Byler positivity at the end because I'm tired of being surrounded by Byler negativity in my class.

Byler rights forever. 🏳️‍🌈

[mothellie]

hello! my name is river, and this is my multi-fandom blog where i post and share content related to my current interests. at the moment, i'm hyperfixated on stranger things, life is strange and the last of us, so that'll be the bulk of my content. i follow back from this blog. currently tracking #userfirefly, so tag me in your creations! you should also follow my girlfriend, she's pretty great.

twenty three years old

hy/hym and he/him pronouns

asexual, bisexual and polyamorous

trans and genderqueer/fluid

other blogs seaglassangel · daisyheadriver · nereidreads

other sites archive of our own · bluesky · stranger things discord server

tagging system talking · reblogs · answered asks · venting · projects · creations · works in progress

please visit this link for more information on how you can help palestine, even if you can't afford to donate.

if you would like to support me as i currently try to secure a new place to live, i have a ko-fi page raising funds for basic necessities (such as toiletries and clothing).

i don't necessarily have a 'do not interact' criteria, as i think they're mostly pointless. however, here's me shooting off my neighborhood gunshots to lower the rent.

minors do not interact. my content isn't for you. if i notice anyone who is clearly a minor interacting with me, i will block. i also frequently block blogs without ages listed anywhere on their page for my own comfort.

blank blogs do not interact. i block and report any blogs i think might be bots. all i'm asking is you have at least a bio stating you're a real person to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

anti-shippers do not interact. i'm too tired to fight with you guys. dark fiction, when properly tagged, has never hurt anyone who hasn't willingly gone out of their way to be bothered by it. it's fiction, and it isn't being force-fed to america's children like i've seen some of you act like it is. i live by the phrase 'ship and let ship'. mind your own business or log off.

bashers do not interact. you're allowed to dislike a character or ship, everyone has personal preferences. but my issue is when you go out of your way to be shitty and hateful about fans of that character or ship while using your opinions to justify it. this includes giving fandoms of a certain ship a demeaning name (like calling steddie fans 'stds' or stancy fans 'stankies') and constantly posting about how much you hate them. i get that some fandoms for certain ships can be overwhelmingly frustrating at times, but fandom will not become a more welcoming or chill place to be if you keep perpetuating negativity. just let people like what they like, even if you don't agree or get it. it's unnecessary and childish.

zionists do not interact. i have no sympathy for you genocide apologists. i hate you with every inch of my body. get bent. free palestine.

honestly, as long as you aren't a bigot or a creep, i hope you enjoy your stay.

i'm currently only taking creative requests from those who have donated to any reputable palestinian charity, or directly to a family who is trying to escape gaza via operation olive branch. you can find more information on different places to donate on my palestine resources masterlist, as well as other ways to help outside of monetary avenues. all you have to do is direct message me a screenshot of the receipt of your donation and what you would like to request in return.

writing requests: $1 donations will get you a 100-500 word fic. i'm willing to do this for almost any character/ship in stranger things, the last of us, life is strange, detroit: become human and the maze runner. i'm willing to do both gen fics and fics centering romantic pairings. i'm willing to do basically any plot, including dead dove. though, any dead dove story will be posted to my dead dove sideblog instead of this one. more money donated means higher maximum word count, or a different story entirely.

gifset requests: $5 donations will get you a three (3) to six (6) tile gifset of your choosing. i'm willing to do this for any fandom, even ones i'm not currently in. more money donated means more tiles, or a different gifset entirely.

moodboard requests: $1 donations will get you three (3) moodboards of your choosing. i'm willing to do this for any fandom, even ones i'm not currently in. more money donated means more moodboards you can request.

banner requests: $1 donations will get you a set of three (3) gif banners to choose from based on a prompt you give me. i'm willing to do this for any fandom, even ones i'm not currently in. more money donated means more banners to choose from, or a different banner set entirely.

icon requests: $1 donations will get you a set of ten (10) icons to choose from based on a prompt you give me. i'm willing to do this for any fandom, even ones i'm not currently in. more money donated means more icon sets you can request.

last updated: 05/12/2024

[raveneira]

I realized something

Im currently in a debate with someone on twitter about SasuSaku/SasuKarin I wont go into details but it basically revolves around Karin as a character vs Sakura as a character and Sasuke’s relationship with team 7/Taka etc

During this debate, I had to do a ton of research on certain things to refresh my memory and argue my points which yes, unfortunately, involved going onto SK blogs

But in doing so, visiting several SK blogs, seeing different SasuKarin posts and their arguments for it, not just on Tumblr but in plenty other places like youtube Instagram other sites on google etc and I noticed a pattern

Majority or I should say ALL the SK fans arguments that I SEEN [of course Im not speaking of the entire fandom only the part I SEEN]

Everything regarding SK although they ‘claim’ to care about Sasuke and his feelings, I noticed a pattern in every single post and argument made by them

NONE OF THEM actually talk about Sasuke’s feelings

Lemme elaborate, the pattern that I saw constantly when speaking of SK and why they should be together etc it all comes down to one thing, or I should say, one person

Karin

Everything I saw was about KARINS feelings, about KARINS backstory, about KARINS horrible childhood and trauma

Basically, the main argument for the pairing is all about Karin, nothing to do with Sasuke at all

Let me elaborate further, to put it in simple terms the arguments and reasoning basically boils down to pity

Thats right, the very thing they accuse Sasuke of getting together with Sakura for is the EXACT THING they use to argue for KARIN

I’ll go even more in depth so you get the full grasp of the BS and the hypocrisy

They think Sasuke should be with Karin because she loved him, she was selfless and only wanted him to be happy, she stood by him even in his darkest moments, Karin and Sasuke have similar pasts so she can understand him better, Karin grew up being used and abused and Sasuke was the first one to show her kindness, Karin loved him unconditionally, Karin deserved love, Karin deserved to be happy, if together they would make really OP kids, the Uzumaki and Uchiha need to reunite again, Sasuke wasnt aware of Karin's feelings to the full extent they actually were so he couldnt properly respond

Do you see the pattern? none of this directly talks about Sasuke, it all revolves around Karin

Let me ask you, which part of those arguments actually mentions Sasuke’s feelings for Karin? in which point do they mention Sasuke’s pov at all? I had yet to encounter one

The most I found was that he respects her, he chose her, he saved her from Bee, thats literally it

Everything else is just all about Karin's feelings for HIM not the other way around which is all based around pity

Sasuke should get with Karin because of how hard her life was, how tragic her life was, how selfless her love was, how much shes done for him, how much shes suffered, Karins been used and abused since she was a child she should be happy with Sasuke who also had a traumatic childhood, Karins Uzumaki genes mixed with Sasuke’s Uchiha ones would create a really op kid, its so sad how Karin never moved on she truly loved Sasuke she should have got a happy ending with him instead of Sakura who was just out of pity and fanservice

The irony is astonishing, it all boils down to Sasuke should get with Karin because of what SHES been through and how SHE feels for him and how bad THEY feel for her because ‘her life was so terrible, she deserved a happy ending’ which is just utter bullshit and quite frankly disgusting

So its ok for Sasuke to be with Karin out of pity for her horrible life just to give her a happy ending they think she ‘deserved’

But not get with Sakura out of pity for her feelings for him and hurting her how he did

I see pitys only ok when it involves the character/pairing you prefer, I see all that talk about SS not caring about Sasuke’s feelings was all bullcrap

Its funny to me how SKs arguments revolve solely around Karin's feelings for him yet SS argues both sides and the feelings and relationship and development of Sakura AND Sasuke together

But when it comes to SK its all about Karin and what she deserves, when it comes to SS its about what THEY deserve and how Sakura AND Sasuke feel for eachother, its not a one-sided argument

I also find it partially sickening that one of the main arguments for SK is Karins genes, keep in mind these people supposedly care about Karin and feel sorry for her messed up upbringing being used and abused for her power, yet you condone using her in this pairing just for her Uzumaki genes mixing with Sasuke’s to create an OP kid, that is beyond disgusting

This messed up argument actually reminds me of the storyline of Maburaho which I’ll post here for those who have never seen it

Kazuki learns that he is a descendant of most of the world's greatest magicians from both the eastern and western worlds. Even though he has a feeble spell count, his offspring has the potential of becoming a powerful magician.

The male protagonist, Kazuki, is a second-year student from an elite magic school, Aoi Academy, with serious social problems, and because he has a low spell count of only eight spells, most of the other students, especially the girls, would not notice him. At the beginning of his second year, it is revealed that he is descended from not only the most powerful of eastern mages but the most powerful of western mages. Having both powerful bloodlines fused into one body means that despite his low spell count, he is capable of wielding nearly omnipotent power. He is, therefore, the most powerful character in the series.

Basically, the MC Kazuki is seen as a loser because he can only use his magic 8 times and obviously isnt very popular with the ladies, however once its revealed that his genes are super powerful and that his child would be one of the most powerful mages in the world, all the girls suddenly want the D and are constantly pursuing him trying to get his genes

It’s the same for the SK fandom, they look down on Sakura because of her average status and glorify Karin as superior because of her superior genes thus making for a much stronger offspring when combined with Sasuke’s

So, bottom line, when it comes to SK its all about pity, Karin's feelings, Karin's genes, her deserving happiness and Sasuke should just reciprocate just to make Karin happy since she had a crappy life

Sasuke getting with Sakura out of pity is something I never wanna see again from SK, they have no room to talk about pity hooking up nor falling for someone's looks, nor do they have the right to claim they're more of Sasuke fans than SS

Of course they can still say this and feel how they wanna feel Im not trying to control anyone, Im just saying that from now on when I see those arguments Im gonna view them in a whole new perspective and see it for the hypocritical bullshit it actually is, especially when they claim to care about Sasuke yeah thats a riot lol

Anyway thats the end of this mini-rant I guess, should be obvious Im not directing this at the entire fandom just the portion of it that I’ve seen, its honestly pathetic and makes them look like not real Karin or Sasuke fans

It’s similar to the NS argument that Naruto should have gotten with Sakura because hes the MC and he deserved her etc, but genes are never a part of it so SK is arguably worse in this regard, its just a disgusting way of shipping two characters you claim to like

Pity, what one character deserves, who has better genes, how bad someone's life is so they deserve to have what they want in the end whether that person likes them back or not just give them the happy ending you think they deserve

Yeah, thats terrible

[cupidlakes]

honestly, thank you so much for that rant. I keep seeing posts like that in the georgenotfound tag and frankly, it kept annoying me for some reason. People are entitled to their opinions but you don't have to constantly put George down or compare his looks to others like Wilbur or Quackity. If you don't find him attractive, that's okay but there's literally no reason why you feel the need to yell about how you don't understand how George has simps and looks bland/boring or has a personality that is plain. Especially when it is so obvious that they don't even watch him that much. I'm glad someone feels the same way because I'm honestly sick and tired of people saying that George is like a plain cracker. I heard it when I first entered the fandom and I hated it from the very beginning because its just so rude!!

no, thank you!! and sincerely sorry anyone had to read all that 🙏🏻 this is likely the only ask i’ll answer because i wanna go back to regular posting i’m so anti-posting negativity on here in any form because that’s genuinely just not me and tumblr is not the place for drama i’m also genuinely not picking a fight with anyone ultimately it was just a vent i needed to get off my chest and a culmination of frustration that’s been building up for months

but yeah agreed agreed i just think people have the whole audacity to not watch george, like ever but have quite genuinely the rudest things to say about him? i want to let people know you can’t hide everything behind a /j if you don’t have anything nice to say sometimes you just don’t need to say it i’ll reiterate (and you can go look) that i’ve never been rude about a cc (on the dsmp especially) on here because i believe in my heart of hearts it is not my place if i don’t know enough about them and their content! you also generally don’t have to pit a cc against another to uplift them and yeah i really do just wish people would extend the same respect to george this sounds stupid to say but just because he has fans doesn’t mean he should be the butt of all your “personality-less” “bland + average looking”, “basic” jokes because you have nothing else to say about him he’s still a person and at the end of the day? just be nice

@netheritedream also made some good points in the tags of my rb abt the treatment of “george stans” reeking of misogyny and yes honestly this has also been something i’ve always believed about the treatment of the dream teams fanbase in general like oh hey for example liking technoblade is cool and all! but if you like gnf + enjoy his content you’re a cringe gogy stan with an assumed lack of taste or something and really it does get frustrating after a while

[nattikay]

casual followers u should probably go ahead and scroll past and just ignore this post. people who know me better/are close friends, you can keep going I guess

ngl I don’t feel entirely safe posting this and it might be a huge mistake but,,,idk

continue at your own risk

will probably delete,,,

.

.

anyways,,,

.

sometimes I get very frustrated because I feel like I’m the odd one out in practically every group I’m involved in. Like, almost no matter what community I involve myself with, there’s almost always a slew of members who don’t like me based on some other community I’m in.

this is actually the one i’m most afraid to say here due to past experience, but I feel it’s where the list needs to start. Furries don’t like me because I’m conservative (uh oh, I said the c word. hateful “clearly they only dislike u cuz ur obviously a BIGOT!!!1!!1″messages will be ignored and deleted I don’t have the energy to deal with these kinds of arguments right now so don’t even bother. I have never advocated for harassment of anyone for any reason, I have never called anyone slurs, I have never treated anyone differently for their identity, nor would I as I think those are all pretty crappy things. the “worst” I did was try to explain some tumblr-unpopular opinions several years ago after being explicitly asked (if not kinda attacked in some cases) and I deleted those posts so please if you’re coming in with that kind of message just don’t I’m so tired). 

On the flip side, conservatives don’t like me because I’m a furry (usually because they’re sorely misinformed about what furries actually are but I digress (actually I’m pretty sure furries etc. are also pretty misinformed about conservatives and are under the impression that we’re all just Backwards Seething Redneck Bigots Intent On Hurting Everyone™ or w/e which is not true but I double digress)).

Other fandom folks here on tumblr (and other places but this is where I hang the most), as well as really the internet “art” community in general, also don’t like me for being more conservative. There’s a reason I keep my ask box off 99% of the time: I’ve gotten some really nasty hate mail in the past and it got to the point that just seeing that notification on that little letter icon caused a spike of anxiety every time, even if the message ultimately turned out to be friendly.

Fandom/art folks also tend to not like me for being Christian. Meanwhile, other Christians dislike me for being LDS specifically. I’ve had multiple instances where I’d follow a Christian blog only to have to unfollow later because they started reblogging anti-LDS posts.

LDS folks don’t really dislike me for anything in my experience, but it is hard to find fellow members who happen to share my nerdy interests (furries, fandoms, etc.)

I don’t know why I find myself attracted to interests that seem to predominantly attract liberals or despite being not that 

and while I am perfectly happy to be friends with people with different worldviews than myself and very much believe in treating everyone with basic decency regardless...well, it would still be nice to find likeminded folks in both interest and worldview rather than always one-or-the-other y’know?

...

...i don’t know why people are so desperate to be unique and “different”

being the odd one out isn’t fun or quirky

it’s lonely

.

.

.

i could say more/go into more specifics but I feel like a lot of people are already mad and/or making poor assumptions as-is so I’ll stop here

again will probably delete soon

just had to vent i guess 

this post might be a mistake

i’m tired

[vikingpoteto]

Red Robin under the spotlight

Read on AO3 

______________________

Relationships:  GEN. Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake

Summary: Red Robin and Red hood are basically urban legends, no one is sure they're real. That is, until there is a picture of the two of them grinning at each other on Gotham Gazette's front page.

________________________

Tim Drake is having… a day. 

Stuck in his office for the afternoon, he is praying for nightime to come soon so he can put on his suit and vent his frustration by beating up some unsuspecting criminal. He’d known being a CEO wasn’t particularly fun, but he didn’t expect the board of directors to be babies for so long. 

He skims his proposal for what feels like the hundredth time unsure of how to make it clearer that that is the best course of action for their investments. The fact that he is only 18 should not trump his very solid, data-based arguments. 

So he’s already in a bad mood and praying for a distraction when his office door swings open and Tam Fox storms in.

“Timothy!” she shouts. 

He feels like he's about to learn he should be careful with what he wishes.

“Hey, Tam, I missed you too?” He tries.

Behind her, his secretary makes a helpless gesture as if trying to communicate she tried to stop Tam. Tim gives the woman a tired smile and makes a dismissive gesture.

Ignoring that, Tam slams the door closed and repeats for emphasis: “Timothy.” She pushes an iPad into Tim’s chest. “What is the meaning of this?”

Raising an eyebrow, he takes the iPad and looks at the screen, noticing he’s staring at a Gotham Gazette article and… Tim’s heart stops.

The headline screaming at his face says RED DYNAMIC DUO? by Vicki Vale and beneath it…

“Oh god,” Tim whimpers.

Beneath the headline there’s a picture of him and the Red Hood. 

Or, well, Red Robin and Red Hood. They’re sitting on the fire escape of one of the abandoned buildings in Jason’s territory and both are seemingly at ease. Too at ease. There are two BatBurger bags at their side and their fingers are intertwined. Red Robin is staring at their joined hands with a wide smile. Fucking hell. Tim always makes a point of never smiling in front of anyone when he’s in his suit, he has a reputation to protect. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that Red Hood isn’t wearing his helmet, because it emans his open grin is visible as well - and thank god  Jason has the habit of wearing a domino under his helmet. 

Who the hell took that picture? How the hell did they go unnoticed by both Tim and Jason?

He then starts reading the article, every word feeling like a punch to the gut. 

Gotham City has seen its share of vigilantes over the years and, unlike public figures such as Superman, they prefer to keep to themselves, making many people wonder whether they’re even human. As a shot captured by an amateur photographer that chose to remain anonymous, we find out at least a pair of the many Gotham “heroes” are closer to us than we thought. 

The vigilante known as Red Robin Gotham's patheon of heroes a couple of months ago and little is known about him. He’s been seen working with the likes of Batman, Robin and even Batgirl, making us all think he’s one of the good guys. It seems like Red Robin’s circle of friendships doesn’t include only Justice League members, though.

The Red Hood, the man so tenderly smiling at Red Robin, is a notorious mob boss whose territory's size, GCPD especulates, rivals Black Mask’s. Red Hood wanders between both criminal activities and a violent brand of justice and, while he's been seen working side-by-side with heroes like Nightwing, a hero that since has only been seen in Bludhaven, no one can claim to have seen the Red Hood so comfortable around one of the bats of Gotham

The two young men were pictured in a tender moment. Could this mean that Red Robin is straying towards villany? Is the Red Hood is considering changing his ways? Or, perhaps, are we facing a pair of starcrossed lovers, separated by different set of morals, but still unable to stay away from one another? 

Tim makes an inhumane sound. The words  star crossed lovers  jump from the screen, burning his eyes and making him wish he was going over a dumb business proposal still.

“Well?” Tam demands. “What is that, Tim?”

“I don’t know, Tam,” he answers, his voice weak. “What on earth- How the hell… Oh, god .”

“Why were you hanging out with the Red Hood?”

“Stakeout,” Tim says simply.

“Why were you on a stakeout with the freaking Red Hood?”

At that, Tim recovers enough to feel a bit miffed. That’s the same tone she had last year when Tim was working with assassins and he gets offended on his brother’s behalf. Even if, you know, said brother had also been somewhat related to the assassins in question. In the past.

“Hey, Hood is not as bad as the news make him look. Sure, he’s not exactly clean, but he’s a valuable undercover agent and…”

Tam makes sounds of a woman whose white Valentino bag had liquid lipstick spilled in. “Does that mean you  are  dating the Red Hood?”

“What? NO!”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. God, what a mess. 

“He’s my brother,” he says. 

Tam looks like she goes through the 7 stages of grief in a very short time and, honestly, Tim feels for her. He likes Tam a lot. She is smart and strong and the poor girl has had to deal with so much since she and Tim became friends.

“Are you telling me… that Dick Grayson…”

“No, Dick’s not the Red Hood.”

She stares at the picture again and then at him. “This isn’t Duke or Damian, Tim.”

“You’re right. It’s a long story. I can’t tell you, though. I trust you but Hood’s identity isn’t my secret to share.” 

Tam closes her eyes and breathes in and out slowly. After all the crap she had to deal as one of Red Robin’s friends, a stranged brother that happened to be a crime lord (an anti-hero, really) wasn’t that far fetched. She didn’t know much about the Drakes because Tim didn’t talked about them, so, for all she knows, Red Hood could be Jack’s or Janet’s bastard child. Although Tim can figure her theories, he doesn’t try to explain anything. Whatever she works out is better than letting her know Red Hood is Bruce Wayne’s son brought back from the dead.

“Fine. You’re not dating a criminal. You’re a criminal’s brother.”

“I mean… if you think about it, I’m a criminal too.” He smiles sheepishly under her glare. “Being a vigilante isn’t exactly something I can put on my resume.” 

Shaking her head, Tam checks the picture again. “What were you even doing? Because it looks like you’re holding hands and finding it hilarious.”

“We… hm. We were thumb wrestling.”

She stares at him, her expression empty of any emotion. Tim cringes.

“Look, not everything is death traps and high risks, alright? Sometimes stakeouts get boring!”

“You were laughing your head off because you were having a thumb war with the Red Hood,” Tam deadpans.

“Hm. Actually the thumb war wasn't that funny, that was him cheating. I was winning so he kept talking shit about Dick’s past to make me laugh and lose focus.”

Tam finally sits down and she looks at ceiling as if she’s considering all the life decisions that lead her to this moment. At this point, Tim knows she’s just being dramatic, because knowing Red Hood cheats at thumb war for certain isn’t more shocking than the time she met Tim. 

“The thumb was isn’t important now, though,” Tim says. “ This  is a huge problem. Hood’s gonna be in hot water if people think he’s  friends  with a hero.”

He refuses to use the word lovers, because ew. Sure they’re not related by blood, but… ew. Tim  sees  him as a brother, damn it.

“Well, I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do now,” Tam says apologetically. “The article’s been up since this morning. Even if we have them take it down, it’s already out there. #RedDynamicDuo is trending on Twitter.”

Oof. That’s… oof.

Tim intertwines his fingers and glares at the tablet in front of him as if waiting for the puzzle to solve itself. He knows it won’t, so it’s up to him to fix this. His burnt out brain suggests calling Bart and asking him to run back in time and stop that cursed thumb war. His practical brain has half a mind to call Oracle and see how much online evidence she can get rid of. He has to contact Gotham Gazette and threaten them into not putting vigilante’s identities at risk by posting such pictures, although he doesn’t hold high hopes for that course of action. What he needs now is a bigger scandal, although he fails to think of something more dramatic than Red Robin and Red Hood being buddies…

Right as he’s starting to feel a bit forlorn, his phone buzzes on the table. A picture of Dick smiling flashes on the screen and Tim allows himself to perk up for a moment. Dick for sure will be able to help him.

“Dick!” He picks up, full of hope.

Tim is greeted with cackling. Dick’s cackling.

He groans. “Richard.”

“AHAHAHAHA O-oh god, you… aha... b-baby bird, you… HAHAHAHA--”

Tim isn’t paid enough for this. He hangs up.

“Can you help me with this?” He asks.

“Don’t I always?” Tam quirks an eyebrow.

Smiling tiredly, he stands. “I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off. Can you take care of… you know… day job stuff?”

“I guess. Good luck with your… your family thing.”

 THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: *insert game of thrones joke here*

In the hood: Go fuck yourself, Stephanie

spoiler alert: not judging u bro he hella cute

WonderWing: steph please

cassandra cain-wayne: ?

send me a Signal: they’re talking about that picture of Hood and Red holding hands cass

yumm: were NOT holding hands

cassandra cain-wayne: I print that picture.

In the hood: W H Y ! ?

cassandra cain-wayne: cute :) 

spoiler alert: she right and she should say it

In the hood: Steph, turn on your location. I just want to talk.

yumm: stephanie I hv pics of u sleep drooling on me from that that 1 patrol dnt test me

spoiler alert: shut up red dynamic duo

 Tim hates the internet.

Barbara is kindly trying her best to muffle the online reaction, but there is only so much she can do without outright deleting people’s tweets. Tim knows for a fact that that would only cause a bigger uproar, so he asks her to settle for burying mentions of them under a fake algorithm. 

He has yet to think of gossip hot enough to top the rumors, but he doesn’t think even his fake engagement to Tam last year received so much attention. A glimpse into Gotham’s elusive heroes’ personal lives was too exciting to let go quickly.

When he walks into his apartment, he wants nothing but to take a hot shower and a nap. He knows he can’t, though. 

As well as he knows he isn’t alone. 

He plays it cool, walking in as though he doesn’t notice the person in the shadows. He drops his keys and phone on the nearest table as he would normally and turns around too abruptly to allow a reaction, his fist connecting to… someone’s palm.

“Nice reflexes, Baby Bird,” Jason says, quirking an eyebrow as though mildly impressed.

Tim groans. “Would it kill you to use the door?”

“It might, better not risk it.”

“It shaves five years of my life span every time I come home and you’re waiting in the shadows. Of all of Bruce’s habits to pick up…”

Jason simply shrugs. “So… what’s up,  honey? ”

“Ew, don’t say that,” Tim groans.

Keeping his nonchalant facade, Jason lets himself fall into Tim’s couch as though he belongs there. Tim heads to his room to change into more humane clothes.

“I’m assuming Dickie shared the news already,” Jason says.

“He couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say anything,” Tim replies from his closet. “Tam was kind enough to show me, though.”

“Tam… is that your ex-fiancée? Hmm… The news sure keep shipping you with everyone, speaking of which.”

Grumbling the whole time, Tim puts on a purple hoodie he might or might not have stolen from Stephanie and that he wears whenever he’s stressed. He wears that hoodie a lot. Heading back to the living room barefoot and feeling slightly more prepared to deal with the situation, he says:

“I’m assuming you aren’t here just to hang out.”

Jason gives him an unimpressed look. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

Tim blinks once. Twice.  No, it can’t be that… “ Everyone thinks you’re a rat.”

“Bingo.”

And this situation keeps getting better and better. Red Hood is feared enough that he can get away with hanging out with the goody two shoes every now and again and keep his rep. Being caught eating burgers and giggling with a hero was a whole new animal. 

They have to assume Hood’s safe houses were compromised as well. The point of having many hideouts is that you’re never left with nowhere to go, but even Jason wasn’t prepared to have everyone in his territory turn on him. That and they all had been raised and trained to be paranoid. It was too big of a risk to assume he’d be safe in a known place.

“Crap,” Tim mutters. 

“I considered ditching Gotham and spending some time with Roy instead…”

“But that would be as good as a confession. You’d never gain their respect again,” Tim completes for him.

Jason nods. 

The only silver-lining about this situation is that this is Jason. Granted he isn’t too angry to think, Jason is practical and willing to do what’s needed, even if it’s annoying or if it makes him uncomfortable. Tim likes working with him because of that.

“You know where the extra blankets are,” Tim says. 

Because, of course, if Jason can’t be at his own place and he can’t be with Roy and Kory, he’d crash Tim’s place. The manor isn’t really an option for him and Tim doesn’t blame him for that. 

“The plan of action?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out.”

Jason sighs. “I’m going to punch something in your Red Robin cave.”

“Be my guest.”

 Damage control is necessary, of course, especially for Red Hood’s safety, but there is something bothering Tim more. He opens the news and studies the picture. It’s a damn good shot, almost looks like it was staged. He closes his eyes and tries to remember that night. In order to take that picture, the photographer would have to be in of of the buildings across the street and they’d have to be good enough to go unnoticed not by one, but by two highly trained vigilantes, one of which had his senses enhanced by the Lazarus pit. 

He messages Babs quickly for more info on whoever sent those pictures to the news, but not even Oracle had managed to track them yet. It sounds like the photographer walked into Vicki Vale on the street and handed her the picture, because there was no digital footprint of such interaction.

Without any more ideas, he puts on his suit and heads out, glad that is patrol night. Perhaps punching criminals will give him some clarity.

Tim is nowhere near closing any of his cases and Gotham is unusually quiet because of course the criminals would choose tonight of all nights to be chill. The night Tim needs a crime. That’s why he’s more than a little thankful when a crackling sound in his comm lets him know someone’s trying to send him a message.

“Hey, hot stuff,” a familiar voice calls, “I have an underground gambling den to dismantle tonight, you want in?”

Red Robin smiles. “Is that a date?”

“I don’t know, is it? I don’t want Red Hood coming after me.”

“Batgirl.”

She laughs shamelessly. He hopes Barbara isn’t listening. Although the alternative would be Wendy listening, and he doesn’t know which one would be worse. Steph’s sense of humor isn’t for everyone and while, Tim doesn’t mind their inside jokes and got used to her eternal flirting, he feels as though those should remain between the two of them only.

“I’m serious, though,” Steph continues. “I don’t think backup is needed per se, but I miss fighting criminals with you. Plus I figured you could use a punching bag or two.”

He grins. He just  really  loves Steph. 

“Send me the details. I’ll meet you there.”

Turns out it’s a pretty standard burst for them. Gambling den covering a massive drug operation, because this is Gotham. Why wouldn’t they use an illegal thing to cover another more illegal thing? That sounded like a great idea. 

He finds Batgirl waiting for him on top of a building. She simply smiles and points at the shady alley down the street. 

“Gentlemen first?” she offers. 

“It’s your case.”

With a nod, she dives towards the ground and Red Robin follows her closely, frowning in confusion when she doesn’t dropkicks any windows. Instead, she casually strolls towards the back of the alley where a suspicious metal door that could easily go unnoticed if it didn’t scream CRIMINAL ACTIVITY HERE. Batgirl knocks at the door and gestures at Red Robin to stay away.

A slit on the door slides open and a confused crook tries unsuccessfully to see who’s there. With both vigilantes’ out of his line of sight, the poor bastard has no option other than opening the door to check. Batgirl swiftly pulls him into a headlock as soon as he walks into view and Red Robin’s grinning face is the last thing the man sees before the pressured applied makes him pass out.

Red Robin doesn’t figure what Steph’s plan is until she cuffs the unconscious bouncer and stands straight, offering her arm.

“You’re so dramatic.” He rolls his eyes, even as he takes it.

“Shush, you think I’m awesome.”

That he does. Especially when the two of them climb down into the basement turned illegal cassino with their arms locked as if they’re a couple. It’s cartoonishly comic how long it takes everyone to realize Red Robin and Batgirl are standing on the entrance, looking around at the 50 different illegal activities happening at once. 

Not as comic as when Batgirl shouts over the music: “Please, don’t stop on our account!”

The gamblers sober enough to freeze in horror. 

“Before we start, anyone wants to just give themselves in?” Red Robin offers.

That’s when guns start firing and all hell breaks loose. 

 The night ends, as it would, with Batgirl and Red Robin walking home a trio of strippers. The women weren’t to blame that their work environment was less than ideal and they certainly didn’t need to be left tied up waiting for the GCPD like the mobsters Steph and Tim beat up tonight.

Red Robin wanted to just watch them from the top ot the buildings and make sure they got home safe, but Batgirl insisted they walked alongside the women. Their costumes don’t look completely out of place near them and Red Robin doesn’t know what to think of that.

For a second, he thinks he hears someone behind them. Everytime he turns around, he finds nothing but an empty alley, so he shrugs if off as him getting hit tooo many times.

While Batgirl excitedly chats with two of the women about their future employment - one of them is in this line of work just to get by, the other genuinely enjoys sensual dancing as a form of art but wishes she could work somewhere better - when the third of them discreetly detaches herself from the group to walk closer to Red Robin.

She still looks tense and guarded, her arms tightly wrapped around herself and Tim wishes he had a jacket to offer her. The way she sideeyes him says she wants to say something, but is too nervous to start. Not wanting to betray his persona, he simply waits, trying to appear as non threatening as possible.

“Thanks a lot for savin’ us, Red Robin,” the woman says finally. “I can’t believe I’m meetin’ ya.”

He gives her a small smile. “I’m just glad you’re safe, ma’am, there’s no need to thank me.”

“I just wanted ta say… I get ya.”

Red Robin tilts his head to the side. “Ma’am?”

“The thing with your man. Must ta’ be hard dating the Red Hood. I know how it is.”

He was… He was getting sympathy from a stripper with bad taste in men.

“There’s nothing gross between Hood and I!” He lets out before he can help himself, his voice a little louder than intended.

The other women startle at his outburst and turn to him, wary. One of them reaches for what is clearly a pocket knife that she thinks is cleverly hidden in her bra.

He sighs. “I’m sorry, ma’am, just… Batgirl, I believe you’ve got things from here. I’m taking off.”

She gives him a concerned look, but ultimately nods. Under Batgirl’s and the three strippers perplexed glares, Red Robin grapples his way out of there.

 Tim wakes up around noon feeling as though he was hit by a truck, as he does when he sleeps longer than three hours a night. He slowly sits up and looks around his messy room, wondering how come he’s feeling so miserable. The smell of food stirs him into some sort of alertness.

Right. He’s not home alone today.

Yawning and scratching his belly, he forces himself to get out of bed. He know that the longer he stays the more likely he is to slip into a coma, his body demanding compensation for years of sleep deprivation. Tim drags his feet towards his kitchen where he finds one of Gotham’s most dangerous vigilantes humming to himself as he makes breakfast. Or Lunch. Brunch. Whatever.

“And here I thought I was the family’s zombie,” Jason says in lieu of good morning.

Tim grumbles something about his brother being too comfortable in Tim’s kitchen, but he doesn’t dare complain. Jason is probably the only person that uses Tim’s stove and one of the perks of having him over is that he does cook. A lot. 

The one disadvantage about having Jason over is…

A knife lodges itself on the counter in front of Tim when he tries to reach for the coffee pot. Tim didn’t even see him throwing it. He glares at his brother.

“Food first. Coffee after,” Jason says. 

“I’m too nauseous to eat, I just woke up.”

Again without breaking eye contact with the pot he’s stirring, Jason blindly reaches for a package of crackers casually left on the counter and hands it to Tim.

Tim makes sure to give him his best rebellious teenager glare before grabbing the stupid crackers and sitting down to eat them. Stupid Jason with his stupid boredom. Tim had forgotten Jason goes into full mom mode when he has nothing else to do and that he’s particularly obnoxious about Tim’s eating habits.

“I consume the necessary calories,” Tim mumbles over his cracker.

“Okay, Damian.”

Tim throws a cracker at him. Jason easily dodges without looking, which is kind of annoying.

After that, the two brothers fall into comfortable silence. Tim knows Jason wants to talk about their plan of action, but he knows Tim is nowhere near awake enough to hold a conversation. Besides, Jason doesn’t like being bothered while he’s cooking anyway.

By the time the food is ready, the crackers worked their magic and Tim no longer feels as though his stomach is ready to puke out its emptiness. He grabs dishes he hadn’t used in quite a while and sets the table for the two of them. The brothers start eating in silence, Tim slowly recovering his sense of self - no wonder he goes for so long without sleeping, he takes too long to reboot when he does - and Jason mindlessly scrolling through his phone. 

Then something on the small screen makes Jason choke on his food. 

Tim quirks an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“Hm… Timmy, you may wanna take a look at this.”

“What?” Tim takes Jason’s phone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake !” 

It’s another news article. The picture is fortunately less detailed, just a red and black silhouette against Gotham’s sky that may or may not be Red Robin standing over one of the many gargoyles. The text, however.  

RED ROBIN MAKES HOMOPHOBIC REMARK AND SHOCKS ADMIRER

Gotham’s newest vigilante busted an underground gambling den last night. Despite his heroic deed, his words after the fact were less than commendable. When questioned about his relationship with the Red Hood by one of the women he rescued, the hero allegedly said that there’s “Nothing gross between him and Hood.”

“Personally, I was shocked,” said the woman in question, Krystal Math, 25  years old. “Red Robin became my favorite hero when I heard he also has a dead-beat boyfriend. I was starting to finally see myself in one of those bats, you know? I couldn’t believe when he said being gay is gross. Never meet your heroes, I guess.”

   THE BIRDNEST

WonderWing sent a screenshot.

WonderWing: red robin is cancelled for homophobia, pass it on

Robin: Good. It’s about time we rid ourselves of him.

Cassandra Cain: Little brother does not approve gay rights? :(

yumm: im literally bisexual

spoiler alert: he avoiding the question

in the hood: #redrobinisoverparty

yumm: I hate this fucking family

 Tim hasn’t stopped pacing around the room since he read the most recent article. Those were his exact words by the letter, meaning someone had been listening. He doubts Krystal, bless her heart, was the one going to the news with his “homophobic remark”. 

Having basically given up on getting Tim to calm down, Jason is the one to get the porch door open for Steph. Because apparently she’s been learning from Jason and acquired his hatred for front doors. Steph knows how Tim gets, so she promptly ignores him and gets comfortable on the reading chair to check the article fully.

“This is nuts,” Steph says. “We were being careful. I made sure of it.”

Tim believes her. Batman and Robin are basically public figures at this point, even if they don’t interact with civilians if they can help it. Red Robin and the Signal were heard of and spotted around the city, but not a lot of people really  know  of them. Red Hood was basically a urban legend until recently and Black Bat sill is. Batgirl, however, is known for being a people hero. 

She was, back in Barbara’s time, stopped for a bit with Cass, but Steph embraced the old tradition whole heartedly. She would walk people home late at night to make sure they were safe, wave at little girls in the bus, talk to kidnapping victims until they were under heavy blankets handed by the police. Steph was extroverted and charming and she used that fully as Batgirl like she never could as Spoiler. That being said, she and Barbara always made a point to avoid pictures, security cameras and whatnot. If there was a hero good at hanging with civilians while unnoticed by the media, that hero was Stephanie Brown.

Tim’s phone is buzzing. He ignores it in favor of stomping around some more. 

“Well, something must have slipped your watchful eye,” Jason says, shrugging.

Steph glares at him. “Mine, perhaps, but are you implying someone went unnoticed by Oracle?”

“Well, someone obviously did,” Tim snaps, tossing his phone at the couch in frustration. “What happened after I left, Steph?”

“Nothing,” she says honestly. “I walked the ladies home. Krystal was a bit miffed but she didn’t say anything, so I thought she was just a shipper upset that her OTP wasn’t canon.”

“You think she went to the news after?” Jason suggests.

Steph frowns. “Why would she? She didn’t look like she had media connections exactly.”  

Tim’s phone, that bounced off the couch and fell with a soft thud on the carpet, continues to explode with texts. He sighs and stops to pick it up and finally answer them.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Jason argues. Then turns to Tim: “You should look into her. I’m gonna check other possible sources.”

“Hm-hum, just a second,” Tim mumbles, typing furiously. “Damian is being a nightmare and asking for help on a case.”

“Wack. Are you telling him to solve his own cases instead of using your intell to impress Bruce?”

Tim glares at Jason.

“Really? C’mon, Timmy, we’ve been over this.”

Stephanie gives them a puzzled look. “You’ve been over… Dami being a nightmare?”

“Jason says that whenever someone is mean to me I should reply by attacking them where hurts the most,” Tim explains.

“He knows all of our weaknesses and he has the quickest thinking,” Jason says, frustrated. “The least he should do is stand up for himself with that knowledge!”

"Kinda rich coming from the guy that tried to kill him," Steph says, quirking an eyebrow.

"Steph," Tim scowls. "He didn't know me then and the pit rage--"

"Timmy," Jason cuts him off. 

Tim sighs. "Besides now I could off him in 20 different ways if he tried any of that shit again. There. Happy, Jason?"

"That's my baby brother."

Steph smiles at him. “You know what? You’re onto something, Jaybird.”

Tim interrupts his walk of worry again to smile a bit. Something about Stephanie and Jason agreeing on something is immensely satisfying.

Still, on the matter at hand, Tim says, “If I go off on Damian, Dick’s gonna get mad…”

“Then go off on Dick as well,” Steph promptly suggests.

Jason high-fives her. “Atta girl. Besides if Dick doesn’t want us to tell Damian to fuck off he has to work harder on teaching him not to be a little shit. Everyone here has a tragic backstory here and we all know Damian goes too far sometimes.”

Tim shakes his head again. “Regardless, Damian’s case will have to wait. We’re gonna go with your plan, Jay. And Steph…”

“Wow, no way, José. I’m just here as an eyewitness. I don’t want to get involved with homophobes and end up shipped with Jason or some shit.”

Tim glares at her. “I was going to offer you some of our leftovers, but since you’re not interested, that’s fine.”

While Jason laughs and Steph protests, he proceeds to look for his laptop, hoping this isn’t going to be a dead end. 

 “This is a dead end,” Tim declares.

From what he can find, Krystal wasn’t even paid for her impromptu interview. Apparently Vicki Vale showed up at her place to confirm the veracity of a story that she heard God knows where. 

Dick is in Bludhaven, but he insisted on facetiming them when he realized his brothers were struggling, even if he mostly just made worried faces from Tim’s phone as Tim, Jason and Steph exchanged notes. As a rule of thumb, Tim doesn’t involve his siblings in his cases since he became Red Robin, but this is definitely an all hands on deck situation. Tim isn’t desperate enough to get Bruce involved, but he’s getting there. Especially when Dick says:

“Babs couldn’t find anything in Vicki’s email or phone. She’s double checking all of Vicki's sources, but so far it’s been no good.”

“We could always get Vale and hang her by the ankles on top of some building until she talks,” Jason suggests. "Let's go old school on her."

Everyone ignores Jason. Tim stands for another mug of coffee. Dick lets out a frustrated sigh. Steph keeps watching all of them from the couch, where she’s been lying down and tossing gummy bears into her mouth for the past half-hour. 

When no one acknowledges him, Jason sighs and stands. “Alright, this’ been fun. I’m going to patrol.”

Dick frowns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“He can’t vanish,” Steph says. “One thing is crashing Tim’s place to make sure he won’t get ambushed in his down time. If Red Hood goes AWOL he might as well admit he’s working with the Batclan.”

Jason nods. “If I don’t do my job, next thing I know Black Mask takes over my stuff.” 

“Can’t have Black Mask taking over his stuff,” Steph agrees.

Dick glances at Tim as though expecting him to disagree with the plan. Tim lets out a defeated sigh. “He’s right. Just… make sure to find a safe place to change into your gear so no one sees you. If there are any safe places, that is…”

Jason rolls his eyes. Tim knows he’s going full Robbie Downer mode, as Jason likes to call it, but he can’t help it. It’s not often that he finds himself without any ideas. He  should  have been able to solve this already. Since nothing comes to mind, he starts imagining unrealistic scenarios in hopes that they’ll give him some insight outside of the box.  AU in which I was never shipped with my brother by some nosey reporter. AU in which I went out Damian instead of Jason that night.

Tim groans in frustration. “Why did it have to be Jason? We could get away with me having a thumb war with literally anyone. If it was Batman out there, this wouldn’t be that much of a problem.”

“Maybe if you hung out with all your brothers and not just Jason there wouldn’t be as many rumors about you and Red Hood,” Dick mumbles.

Tim glares at the phone. 

“Really? You wanna go there? You wanna talk favoritism, Richard? Because you’ve been favoring Damian for-freaking-ever.”

“Drag him!” Jason cheers. 

“Tim,” Dick says, looking genuinely upset, “I love all-”

“Save it,” Steph cuts in. “We all have favorites Dick, there is no use denying it.”

Because Dick’s eyebrows are knitted in confusion, Tim clarifies: “Bruce’s favorite is Cass, yours is Damian, Jason’s is… I don’t know, his guns. Steph is my favorite, unfortunately. Steph’s favorite is Cass, Cass’ favorite is Duke, Duke doesn’t have favorites, he’s the only good person in this family, and Damian’s is also you.”

Steph nods. “You did it! You broke the Bat Family dynamics to its bare essentials!”

“And that is why Tim is my favorite. After my guns,” Jason adds.

“Jason, we do not rate our siblings.”

“That’s why you’re in last place, Dick.”

Ignoring Dick’s enraged noises, Tim sets his mug aside. “I’m going patrolling, even if today isn't my turn. Solo this time. Hopefully Red Hood and Red Robin being separate out there will help the rumors die down a bit.”

No one has a better idea - Tim’s least favorite sentence - so that’s what they do. 

 It’s another infuriatingly quiet night.

Red Robin stops a couple of muggings, scares the crap out of some drug dealers. At some point, he considers contacting Poison Ivy and asking if she has any corrupt CEO she wants help with. He could, you know. It’d stop Ivy from killing someone and on his last run with Harley Quinn she did let slip that Tim was Ivy’s favorite Robin. 

He almost falls mid swing at the memory, thinking he might be onto something, but then he remembers Harley hadn’t particularly recognized Red Robin as the third Robin. She was just ranting about how the new tiny Robin had no sense of humor and Ivy missed the last one. Besides of course Harley Quinn wasn’t feeding Vicki Vale some BatFanfic. Tim’s brain must be really burnt out if that’s the best hot take it can come up with. 

It’s almost 3am and he’s taking a pair of muggers that can’t be much older than Tim to the police. He’s about ready to call if a night when someone shouts:

“Red Robin!” 

He looks on instinct and his stomach drops when he sees Vicki Vale running towards him.  Crap.

“Red Robin, can I get a statement?”

He keeps walking. He’s just one dirty alley away from GCPD, otherwise he’d just tie the stupid muggers to his back and would use his grappling hook to get out of the situation, grapple safety be damned. The muggers gingerly attempt to hide their faces as the reporter runs to them swinging a digital recorder. Vicki acts as though she can’t see them.

“Red Robin, what do you have to say about the rumors of your relationship with the Red Hood?”

The rumors you created?  Red Robin quickens his pace and the muggers trip over themselves. He stares straight ahead, pretending he doesn’t notice the woman basically running in heels to keep up with him. 

“Are you ashamed of it? Is it because he’s a criminal or because he’s a man?”

Red Robin wonders if the muggers would walk the rest of the way and turn themselves in if he asked nicely.

“Don’t bother, lady,” one of the muggers says. “He’s a nasty bigot.”

The other mugger  nods and the two of them are wearing matching pouty expressions. Now Tim just feels bad. He didn’t become a hero for the recognition and he’s not in the business of doing PSAs like Superman, but he doesn’t want the strange socially woke criminal youth of Gotham to think they’re being arrested by a homophobe.

“I have no problem with two men in a relationship, I’m bisexual,” he tells the muggers. “Still, I’m not dating Red Hood. Just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante I run into.”

At that, the two crooks look mildly surprised and suddenly they seem to feel a bit better about being arrested. Would you look at that. 

Red Robin delivers them to the police, painfully aware that Vicki Vale is nowhere to be found anymore. He feels like he’s going to pay dearly for being too prideful to let himself be mistaken for a heterosexual person. 

 Lo and behold, Twitter, on that very same morning.

@Gotham_Gazette:

Red Robin hints that he might be bisexual. “No, I’m not dating the Red Hood, just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante,” said the hero on the rumors about his relationship.

        @dgraysonman hints??? he literally said he’s bi smh

        @stephssss wow only the male vigilantes? biphobic. let red robin date batgirl too

        @babsgeez be gay do crime, be bi serve justice

        @thomascommaduke no cops at pride, only Red Robin using a bi flag as cape.

“Timmy…” Jason starts.

“Don’t. Just leave me alone to die.”

“That’s fair, have a nice day.”

 At this point, Tim is surprised Bruce hasn’t intervened. As unaware of social media as Bruce can be, he’s always on the look for anything that might compromise their secret identities. Tim pulls two all-nighters in a row doing detective work and still makes no progress on his search for the person that sent Vicki that picture and overheard his conversation with Krystal. He fully expects Batman to jump him on his next patrol and give him a lecture.

When he comments that to Jason, he gets a confused look in response.

“You didn’t get a lecture? Bruce was the one that told me first. I had to hear about being careless for 20 minutes before I got home and could take off my comm.”

Tim frowns in confusion. Bruce had talked to him once or twice after the news got out and he didn’t comment anything on it. 

“That’s Batman’s psychological profiling,” someone suggests. 

Tim almost jumps out of his skin when Steph casually walks into the living room with a bowl of chips. 

“What are you doing here? And are those my clothes?”

Steph shrugs in the sweater that clearly doesn’t belong to her. “Jason and I are doing movie night.”

“Movie night,” Jason mocks. “She’s been here for the past two days. Did you seriously not notice, Tim?”

Tim’s jaw drops. 

Steph sighs and her expression turns guilty. “Fine. My mom is out of town for the week and Jason is a better cook than I am. Is it a crime to bum off your ex-boyfriend and his bizarrely talented in the kitchen brother?”

Before Tim can say anything, Jason interrupts: “What were you saying about Batman, Steph?”

She heads to the couch and starts looking for the remote, her feet propped on the coffee table. “B knows Jay will just shrug it off and deal with the consequences, hence the need of a lecture. If he annoys Jason, he’ll stop and reflect on it, even if out of rage. He knows Tim’s already overthinking and working his butt off to fix it, so he doesn’t want to add any pressure.”

Both Jason and Tim stand in dumbfounded silence.  Since when does Steph know Bruce so well?

She raises her gaze when the quietness stretches and quirks an eyebrow at them. “What? Am I wrong?”

“Hm. No. That’s pretty much what we’ve been doing,” Jason admits, if a big begrudgingly. “That’s annoying though.”

Steph simply makes a dismissive gesture and pats the sit beside her. “Tim, you need a break. Wanna join us?”

Tim hesitates. On one hand, the fact that Bruce trusts him that much is a tad touching… and knowing it makes him feel he has to solve this as soon as possible. On another… it’s kind of annoying that Bruce knows him so well and yet doesn’t think about offering any assistance. Tim is not stubborn enough to refuse a helping hand when he’s on a pinch.

“You’re not going to solve anything if you’re hallucinating from sleep deprivation, Timbers,” Jason points. “Besides we’re watching Avatar.”

“Fine,” Tim says.

If for nothing else, just to prove to Bruce that he’s  not an overworker and he can slack off in the absence of a parental figure.

Tim falls asleep in the middle of the second episode. Steph and Jason vow to take him to bed once they’re sure he’s completely out, but they only last until the end of the first season. The three sleep soundly on the couch for good eight hours and regret dearly when they wake up with necks too sore to fight crime for at least a day.

 Consequences. They always come.

Almost a week goes by in which the rumors are but an annoyance to Jason and a source of stress to Tim - but almost anything can stress Tim if he tries hard enough, so that’s not saying anything. Jason is still staying at Tim’s, but he’s considering going back to his own place when they go for three days with no new article and nothing unusual has happened. 

Until it does. 

It’ a rainy night Tim is going over reports for the next WE meeting when he hears a noise coming from the balcony. His stomach gives a familiar twist when he recognizes Batgirl hunched over the weight of one Red Hood. 

He rushes to her aid, already feeling nauseous. There’s no blood in sight but whatever happened must be serious if Jason is willing to let Batgirl give him a piggyback ride. Tim lets them drip water all over the floor and, in his panic, has half a mind to appreciate that Batgirl’s boots have enough traction that she doesn’t slip.

“What on Earth…”

“The most ridiculous thing,” Steph bables as she and Tim drag a very dizzy Jason to the couch. She then starts ranting so fast Bart Allen would be proud. “He was doing his thing as usual, but some of his people turned on him and there was an ambush and so many flipping people against one poor Hood and good god that guy shot his helmet at point-blank which,  damn , that was so stupid, of course the freaking helmet is bullet proof, it just ricocheted and…”

“Steph, calm down,” Tim interrupts. “Jason, can you report?”

When he gingerly attempts to take off his helmet, Steph takes over and undoes the safety measures before carefully removing it. There is a dent on the back part where he had been presumably shot. 

“Hm,” Jason grunts, squinting even behind his domino mask. “Ambush. Shot. Concussion. Very concussion. Ankle hurts? Prolly not broken, tho. Also stabbed?”

Tim nods. “Steph, get the medical supplies. Where’s the stab wound, Jay?”

Jason points to his thigh and there is an improvised bandage keeping him from losing too much blood. Considering how well done it is, Tim figures it’s Steph’s work. He nods and starts checking his brother’s vitals and making sure there aren’t other serious wounds.

When she comes back with the supplies Tim needs, Steph has her cowl down and a somber expression. She turns off the lights for Jason’s sake, the only source of light left on being the lamp near where Tim is already ripping off a piece of Jason’s pants to have better access to his wound. Steph sits by Jason’s side and grabs his hand, much to Tim’s surprise. He’s too busy taking care of the stab wound to ask, but he doesn’t have to. Steph breaks the silence:

“I’m so sorry, Jason.”

Jason gives her a confused look. “You saved my ass?”

“Yes, but…” Steph sighs and turns to Tim. “Babs is with the Birds of Prey tonight, so I was on my own. I was messing around with my comm frequency when I accidentally got into Jason’s. I heard the mess and it sounded like he was in trouble so I panicked. I went to get him and… Well, if there was any doubt that he’s working with the Bats, there isn’t now. It was too obvious that I was protecting him.”

Jason squeezes her hand. “Hm. Pigs.”

“Right. Then the police arrived and instead of leaving right away I stopped to make sure Jason wasn’t bleeding to death. More than a few cops saw me patching him up.”

Tim sighs. Well, shit. 

“It’s not your fault, Steph,” Tim says. “I mean… he literally wears a bat on his chest. People were bound to find out it isn’t just to stick it to Batman.”

“Is too,” Jason mumbles.

Tim ignores him. “The situation isn’t ideal, but we all prefer people knowing Red Hood is associated with the Bats than him being dead.”

“I died before.”

“We know, Jay.”

“Do not recommend.”

“We know, Jay.”

Steph fidgets a bit, still looking guilty, but ultimately nods. Tim is about to start stitching Jason’s wound closed when she says: “There’s more. You, hm, you know Renee Montoya?”

“The one valid pig,” Jason says. “I like her.”

“She was there. She helped a ton keep the other cops away from us before we could escape,” Steph says. “I think she wanted to check on Jason and…”

Tim stops moving. He knows Montoya, worked with her before and she’s a nice woman. That being said, she doesn’t have any connections to Hood. Why would she… Oh. The gay rumors. Damn wlw/mlm solidarity.

“What happened?” Tim asks, already fearing the worst.

“Hmmm, we’ll tell you, but I’m concussed, so you have to promise you won’t be mad.”

“Jason.”

Jason sighs. “Well. She asked about our relationship and… Hm. I might have told her we’re brothers.”

Tim stares at them. Steph is cringing and Jason is too out of it to care. At this point… Tim starts laughing, making the other two - even the concussed one - frown in worry.

“Aw, man,” Tim says between chuckles.  “What the fuck, am I right? I’m too old for this. Who cares? Not me! Fuck it. Fuckety fuck fucky-fuck.”

“I think we broke him,” Steph whispers even as Tim resumes stitching his brother.

They went from not-sure-if-real to a freaking cop knowing about their family in the span of a week. Tomorrow #TimDrakeIsRedRobin could be trending on Twitter and Tim wouldn’t care. Not anymore. Let them come.Literally everyone in his friend circle is a vigilante, a hero or a criminal at this point, he doesn’t even care about endangering anyone.

 It takes actually two days for it to hit the news. He’s alone in his office when Tam texts him a link to Gotham Gazette online. Judging by the lack of other words, Tim figures she’s cutting ties with him again.  

The newest article has no actual pictures, but a sketch of Red Hood standing with his guns pointed at the viewer and Red Robin standing behind him, his face only partially turned. The thing looks more like superhero fanart than an official sketch, but that never stopped Vicki Vale before.

 VIGILANTE FAMILY? by Vicki Vale

Red Robin, one of Gotham’s many masked vigilantes, was cause of intrigue recently. Many  people noticed the hero doing his work around Red Hood’s territory, something not even Batman dares on the regular. Speculation turned into a craze of theories when both red-themed vigilantes were caught sitting on a roof sharing a meal from Batburger and many thought perhaps there was more than your regular vigilante team up. 

Turns out the hero and the mob boss aren’t lovers, against popular belief. When questioned about the nature of their relationship, Red Hood snapped and confirmed one of the less popular theories: the two men are, in fact, related. “Red is right and he should say it,” said Red Hood to a bewildered policewoman. “Of course he’d say it’s [REDACTED] gross, he’s my little brother.” When asked about the conversation overheard by our reporter, the policewoman in question refused to give any more details and requested to remain anonymous.

It’s hard to be sure how such development came to be. The Red Hood has been active in Gotham for years as a mob boss and, more recently, a vigilante and ally to Gotham’s bats. While Red Robin is a newer vigilante, could it be that he was trained by the Red Hood? And how do the two brothers fit with Gotham’s oldest vigilantes? Unlike his older counterpart, Red Robin has been often spotted working side-by-side with the likes of Batgirl and Robin, making some question whether Red Robin is distancing himself from his criminal brother. However, sources spotted Hood being aided by Batgirl more recently. Could it be that his former sidekick is bringing Red Hood closer to the side of justice? More on the Red Twins as the story develops.

 THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: RED TWINS

WonderWing: R E D  T W I N S

send me a Signal: ~ * R E D T W I N S * ~

in the hood: uhhhh my bad?

yumm: dis is great

yumm: now im hoods stranged sidekick

yumm: i fucking hate u jason.

in the hood: hey, if you didn't want to be my sidekick you should've picked another color

yumm: screw u u dont own the color red

in the hood: I was born first

yumm: u died first 2

WonderWing: Tim!

spoiler alert: oof 

send me a Signal: wow Tim that was too far

in the hood: I’ve never been prouder to be your brother I taught you so well Timmy

send me a Signal: … I stand corrected. I sometimes forget everyone in this family is clinically insane

 “Hey Tim. There is discourse about you and Jason now.”

Tim lets out a whimper. 

“So apparently some people still ship you two. But those people are being cancelled because shipping incest is problematic.”

“Steph, are you planning on going home? I noticed you took one of my drawers.”

“There’s fanart of you two.”

“I don’t want to see it. That'll scar me for life."

“I’m DMing it to you. By the way there is civilian Red Robin fanart and for some reason they made you blonde.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s more fun to ship people with different hair colors. Should we dye your hair?”

“Why.”

“That way when you finally hook up with Co-”

“Finish that sentence and I kick you out of this apartment for good.”

 With the cat out of the bag, they start doing different damage control. 

Red Hood is now openly working with the Bats, so Steph and Cass dismantle Hood’s former safehouses around Gotham which mostly means getting Jason’s books and bringing them to Tim’s place. Jason suggests the places should be converted into something useful for the neighborhood, such as libraries or a community center of sorts, so Tim starts working on what needs to be done by WE to make that reality. Tim also makes sure Bruce pretends not to know Jason is using a lot of money illegally acquired to getting himself new hideouts.

They dance around the topic a lot and nothing is really said until Steph brings it up. Steph, whose mother returned days ago. Steph, that definitely doesn’t want Jason to leave, because apparently she suddenly has a new favorite ex-Robin. Steph, that is currently eating homemade waffles in Tim’s kitchen, even though Tim is 83% sure she didn’t sleep over last night.

“Why doesn’t Jason just moves in?” she asks.

When neither boy replies immediately, she continues:

“I mean, it’s more practical, isn’t it? Tim’s place is already secure, he has a hero hideout downstairs and you two already work together all the damn time. Tim’s office can be converted into a room for Jason, because, let’s face it, I spend most of my free time here and Tim never uses it. I once saw him take his laptop with him to the bathroom and then return to the kitchen table instead of using the office. We wouldn’t even have to take the shelves, because Jason would fill them.”

They exchange a look. 

“You know, she’s right,” Tim says. He shrugs like it’s no big deal, really.

He isn’t nervous at all while Jason stands there, his expression unreadable. It’s not like he enjoys way too much having his brother around and got way too comfortable with having a roommate and a half (if you count Steph) on the past weeks. Tim doesn’t care, he’s cool like that.

“I mean. I guess having you as a roommate beats living alone,” Jason finally says.

Tim fails to hide his grin. “We can start working in turning the office into a room this weekend.”

Jason smiles back and messes his hair. 

Tim’s first theory is that Steph wants Jason off the couch so she has an official place to sleep, because apparently Jason’s cooking is that good.

His second theory is that she noticed how happy Tim is to finally share a house with family. The Wayne Manor had been home for a while, sure, but despite Alfred’s best efforts the place wasn’t the coziest. It wasn’t the same as sharing an apartment with a brother, bickering about sharing chores and openly discussing their night jobs before shifting the conversation to a video game they want to buy. Sharing actual meals and making sure one another wouldn’t end up dead in a ditch.

Tim decides to stick with his first theory, after all it’s easier for Steph to make Red Twins jokes if Jason and Tim are under the same roof. 

 Even without new gossip, the idea of vigilante brothers is too interesting for the general public to let go. Tim and Jason start acting mostly in the shadows and having no interaction with civilians at all and they’re still the topic of Gotham’s variety shows and online discussions from time to time.

Because they don’t slip again, Bruce has yet to bring up the subject with Tim, but the mystery remains. Who listened to all those conversations and how? Tim keeps expecting the other shoe to drop, to get a message demanding ransom for their secret identities, something,  anything , but nothing happens. Nothing freaking happens and he’s never been this frustrated.

That is, until, it happens. The ultimate betrayal. 

Dick’s next visit coincides with the time Cass is over for the week. Because Bruce is secretly a sap in the wrongest way, he suggests they all go patrolling together. Such great family time. 

Despite their initial protests, they must all be the same kind of freak, because they all agree. They split up soon to cover more ground, but keep their comms on so it still feels they’re all in a big menacing group. 

Red Robin is somewhere near the crime alley when Nightwing announces he noticed some of Two Face’s goons getting into a building. He checks his wrist pad for their locations and notices Nightwing isn’t that far from where he is. The next closest person is Red Hood.

“I’ll take care of it,” Nightwing says over the comms.

“Negative. Two Face himself might be there,” Batman intervenes. “Wait for backup. The Red Twins--” And he stops himself as though realizing what he’s saying.

“Batman!?” Red Robin gasps in a betrayed voice. 

Nightwing is already having a laughter fit over the comms almost drowning the sound of Bruce’s disappointed sigh.

“I’m sorry, Red,” his father says and he even forgets to use Batman’s scary voice. “Nightwing and Batgirl have been saying it so much that-”

“Save it,” Hood groans. “And stop laughing, Jerkwing!”

The worst part is knowing that, even if he solves the mystery, the Red Twins thing is probably going to follow him to his untimely death. 

 Tim all but lost hope when he gets an email from Barbara. “To my favorite Red Twin” says the subject. He groans, but opens the email, because one does not simply ignore a message from Oracle. Then he almost drops his phone. 

Attached there is a grainy picture of a young woman talking to Vicki Vale. The image had certainly been enhanced digitally as it’s probably from a shitty security camera, but you can still see the woman’s face clear as day. She looks like she’s handing Vicki something, her shoulders tense and her expression wary. The body of the message is, most likely, the woman’s personal info. Her name is Lisa Harris. She is 27 years old. She lives somewhat close to Jason’s territory. And, most importantly, Babs added to the end of the message:

The picture is from the night before the Red Twins article ;) Vicki didn’t talk to anyone other than her coworkers and our pal Lisa on that night.

Jason comes out of his room when Tim trips on the coffee table in his hurry to stand. “What’s up?”

Tim hands him the phone. Jason’s eyes grow wide. “I don’t care about subtlety. We’re both going after this chick.”

“Agreed.”

“Should we wait for Steph? She’s gonna be mad that we went when she’s in class.”

“Jason, Steph doesn’t live here.”

“Doesn’t she, though?”

“We’re not waiting for Steph. She’s not involved.”

“Aight, but when she’s bitching I’m gonna say I remembered her and you said no.”

 They leave their bikes behind first for stealth sake, but mostly because the place they’re going isn’t that far from their place. Tim shivers at the thought of someone so dangerous living near him. He wonders what kind of information Lisa might have gathered and for how long she’d been watching them. Is she a new enemy? Perhaps a member of the league?

The shitty building she lives in doesn’t suggest that. It’s just another grimy Gotham apartment complex that didn’t age well. The place they’re looking for doesn’t have a balcony, only a useless fire escape so rusty it would probably crumble under any sign of flames. It’s a perfect hiding spot, because nothing suggests a villain lives there. It’s just a building, home to many underpaid bachelors, nothing too suspicious about it.

Red Robin reminds Hood of that before they nod to each other and split. Jason goes into the building with a ton of confidence, for such a big guy trying to go unnoticed. Tim uses his grapple to reach the right window, not trusting that fire escape for even a second. 

The window is open and he finds himself looking at a place not that different from the one Jason lived before moving in with Tim. Mismatched furniture of the living suggests whoever lives there didn’t have money for fancy decor or that they don’t mind how the place looks. However, something about the place looks… well, lived in. It doesn’t look like a criminal temporary hideout, but rather someone’s place.

As he hesitates, a woman walks in. The woman of the picture, Lisa Harris. Her long blonde hair had been tied in a knot on top of her head and she’s getting ready for bed, if her oversized T-shirt and pajama pants say anything. She’s holding a bowl of cereal.

She reminds him of Steph and that causes him to hesitate for a second. What if this girl is innocent? Their evidence is circumstantial. Maybe she just happened to talk to Vicki Vale at the wrong time.

That hesitation costs him dearly. The woman appears to feel his eyes burning the back of her head. She glances at the window and their gazes meet.

Crap. 

Lisa inhales sharply and drops her cereal bowl. Before he can reassure her of anything, she’s bolting for the door. He pats himself in the back for his backup plan, because just as she opens the door she runs right into Red Hood’s chest. Lisa stumbles backwards, her expression horrified.

“Knock knock?” Hood quips.

She lets out a squeak and guilt makes Tim wince. Once again he opens his mouth to tell her they’re not here to hurt her when she… vanishes. 

She simply disappears right in front of their eyes.

“Shit, she’s a meta,” Hood hisses. 

Red Robin’s thoughts fly a thousand miles per hour, finally making the conexions he stupidly missed for so long. Of  freaking course.  He was so used to dealing with a bunch of idiots in colorful costumes and assassins and whatnot he hadn’t taken in consideration that ninjas aren’t the only exceptional enemies they face. And if his theory is correct. 

“She’s still here,” he says. “If I’m right, she can turn invisible. That’s how she’s been listening to private conversations.”

A soft gasp follows his statement and Hood is moving almost as fast as Red Robin’s insights. An invisible woman is still solid and her clumsy footsteps are still audible, so on the moment that follows Jason seems to embrace air. 

“No!” She cries out, flashing in and out of sight for a few seconds.

“Careful,” Red Robin warns.

Hood is wearing his helmet, but Tim knows him well enough to know his brother is glaring at him as if saying  duh?  

Lisa tries to stomp on Hood’s feet, she squirms and grunts, but he doesn't budge. Apparently invisibility is her only power and she looks terrified.

“It’s okay!” Red Robin hurries to say. “We’re not going to hurt you!”

She turns her frantic gaze to him. Her brown eyes suddenly become watery. 

Shit.

“Hood, let her go,” Red Robin says. 

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You’re not going to try to escape again, are you, Lisa? We just want to ask a few questions.”

He wishes they had waited for Steph.

Lisa hesitates, paralysed, but slowly nods. Her eyes never leave Red Robin once their gazes met, not even to check whether Hood is going to let her go or not.

“Hood,” he calls again. 

Groaning something about being too trusting, Jason lets her go. He is gentle about it, too, making sure to let her feet touch the floor carefully instead of simply dropping her. Regardless, as soon as she’s left to stand on her own legs, her knees give in and she drops on the floor. At that, Tim can tell even Jason is hiding guilt behind his helmet.

He shakes his head to regain focus and crouches in front of the woman. If at this point they just apologize and leave, they’ll have traumatizes this poor woman for nothing.

“Lisa Harris,” he starts. “That’s your name, right?”

She trembles when he says her name and that should have been the first red flag. He blames it on the stressful situation and moves on.

“I’m sorry for startling you,” he says. He keeps his expression empty, even if he again can tell Jason is cringing at the understatement. “No one here is going to hurt you. We just want some answers. Is that alright?”

Her hands are balled tightly on her lap as though she’s making a lot of effort not to move them - perhaps to punch them, defend herself? But again she doesn’t look prone to start a fight.

“You’re him,” she whispers, her voice heavy with… something. It almost sounds like affection. “You’re really the Red Robin. In my room.”

That  red flag is harder to ignore. He is about to check for other shock symptoms when Hood calls.

“Hmm… Red? Are you seeing that?”

He follows his brother’s gaze… and his chin drops. On the wall opposite to the door hangs a giant corkboard. On the corkboard, held by black and red tacks there are dozens of Red Robin pictures. Some blurry, some taken from so far that you can barely be sure it’s really Red Robin or not, the infamous picture of the thumb war (demon horns had been disturbingly scribbled on Jason on that one) and… He doesn’t have words. 

“You’re my hero!” Lisa claims.

“Is he? I couldn’t tell,” Hood says.

Red Robin punches his knee, which is all he can reach from where he is, and turns his attention to the woman in front of him.

“Lisa, for how long have you been following me?”

“Since you saved me,” she says. “Well… Hm. You didn’t save me. But you stopped a heist at the Central Bank a couple of months ago and I was there. I could've died without you.”

Aw, crap on a stick.

“Do you… do you know who I am?”

“You’re Red Robin,” she repeats.

“He’s asking about his identity behind the mask.”

The way she glares at Jason doesn’t suggest she had been shaking in fear moments ago. “He’s Red Robin,” she insists. “I don’t need anything else.”

“If you don’t know… how do you have so many…” Hood gestures vaguely at her creepy corkboard.

“I did detective work,” she says and glances at Red Robin as if expecting a pat on the back. “I noticed you always go on patrol on mondays, wednesdays, fridays and saturdays. Then if I wandered around long enough… It was just a matter of hard work and bit of luck, really.”

Damn. Now that Tim thinks about it, the one time he went on patrol spontaneously was also the night Vicki Vale found him by coincidence rather than magically knowing what happened. 

“Fuuuuck,” Hood groans. “I told B patrol schedule was a dumb idea!” Then, in a deep growly voice, “ It’s a matter of efficiency Hood, don’t be paranoid. Who’s paranoid now, Batloser?”

“Not the time, Hood.”

“Right. Proceed.”

Red Robin sighs. “Why did you sell my pictures to Vicki Vale?”

At that, Lisa looks suddenly ashamed. “I.. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you were  involved  with  him  and I panicked. I thought… I thought seeing what it would do to your reputation would make you see that he’s not good enough for you.”

“Rude.”

“Hood.”

“What? She is.”

“I was trying to learn more about him, you know? I was. When I found out he was your brother, I realized you had no option, right? Family is family. I even told the news again to clean your record.”

So he had a stalker. A stalker concerned about his love life, no less, that’s… great. Just great. Of all the scenarios he considered they’d have to face, this is not one of them. Before he decides what to do, however, Lisa speaks up again. 

“You sound so… nice.”

Tim stares at her in confusion, unsure whether to thank her or not. Regardless, she didn’t sound like she was complimenting him.

“I mean… aren’t I supposed to be?”

“No! I mean… you’re… you’re dark and brooding and serious and you don’t waste time with civilians unless forced…” She frowns and Tim figures she’s thinking about the night with the strippers. “You’re… the night.”

Jason snorts. Tim punches his knee again. “Lisa, I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of Batman, not me.”

Her expression twists in such fury both vigilantes prepare to restrain her, but instead of directing her anger at them, Lisa scoffs.

“Don’t  get me started on Batman! All that crap about being mysterious and working alone? Then he joins the freaking Justice League? Just… Batman, in the middle of a bunch of rainbow wearing clowns. And then… all those freaking kids. Why does he have so many kids?”

“Lady, we ask ourselves that everyday,” Tim admits.

Lisa is wearing the same expression Krystal had when Red Robin denied his relationship with Hood.

“I’m sorry, Lisa, I’m grateful that you admire me, but you can’t keep following me like this.”

Her eyes teary again, Lisa swallows dry. “Clearly, if you’re  sorry  about it.”

They can’t exactly take her to Arkham for taking pictures. Tim feels less bad about the whole thing when the woman stands and starts telling them in a  very loud voice  to get the hell out of her house.

“Fine,” Jason says, heading to the corkboard. “But I’m taking this.”

“Take it,” she shouts. “I don’t need it anymore. You’re  just like Batman!”

And that’s how Red Hood and Red Robin find themselves standing in the middle of a dusty hallway, Hood with a conspiracy board under his arm. 

Well, that happened. 

 In the end, Steph  was  furious about them going to the stalker’s house by themselves, but there was not a lot she could do except doodle on every picture of the stalker board. 

There must be something very wrong with their sense of humor, because their text group becomes a mess of jokes about the stalker Robin being stalked. At that Tim has no problem exercising Jason’s lessons in holding grudges and refuses to help them with any of their cases unless they stop it. The thing is that all of them find the whole thing hilarious.

All of them except Duke.

“Give it a while,” Tim tells him. “You’re the most recent acquisition to the family. In due time your idea of funny will be just as warped as ours.”

“Hm. When was the last time you slept, Timmy?” Duke asks.

“Tuesday.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“Hahahaha yeah.”

“... Jaaaaasooon! Come over here! Tim is going into The Ring territory! Do something about it!”

Bruce doesn’t find it funny either. He isn’t happy that there’s a deranged meta he didn’t know about, but Tim thinks that was the least surprising part of the whole ordeal. He reckons a lot of metas doesn’t want to be a hero or a villain, they’re just regular people that live regular lives and happened to win in the metagene lottery. 

Or… well. In Lisa’s case, not so regular.

And that’s why upon hearing the story for the first time, Bruce  completely freaks out. He starts considering possibilities from scaring the woman as Batman - “That’s a terrible idea, dad, you heard she likes that shit,” says Dick over facetime - or having her arrested - “Father, having bad taste in men is hardly a crime. She has yet to do anything to harm Timothy” Damian helpfully reminds him - and finally to fill out a restraining order - “For who, Karen?” Jason snaps. “Red Robin? Or you want to walk into that nut job and tell her she’s not allowed near Tim Drake-Wayne?”

Long story short, it’s chaos. Tim has had enough of a crazy night, so he sits back near the training area of the cave and sips the tea Alfred made him. Bruce is doing Tim’s stressed out circuit, pacing back and forth around the cave while his children follow him - Damian is holding the phone higher than his head so Dick can talk to Bruce at eye level - and they try to talk him out of doing anything stupid.

Most of them, anyway. It looks like Duke is definitely looking into the possibility of a restraining order.

Cass detaches herself from the mess and heads towards Tim. She looks calm, as Cass always does, and some of that calm transfers to him. When she takes a seat by his side, he smiles at her.

“Okay?” she asks. 

Tim shrugs. “Weirded out, mostly. I’ll be fine.”

She points at her then signs Tim’s house as a question. She’s asking him if he wants her to come over.

While Cass is one hell of a bodyguard, Tim thinks of Steph, who’s most definitely playing with his video games back at home, and of Jason, whose schedule mostly matches Tim’s, hence he is, more often than not, at one shout of distance. Tim can’t think of any place that feels safer than his home right now.

“I’m fine. Jay and Steph are taking care of me. I’ll just have to be twice as careful during patrol,” he says.

Cass nods, satisfied. She gives him a forehead kiss and leans against his side. The two of them watch their family yell at each other for the next ten minutes, matching serene smiles on their faces.

 Bruce settles for keeping Lisa under occasional watch. 

Barbara stalks her online and finds that Lisa has left a Red Robin fanclub (Tim did not know those existed) and closed all of her threads on the Red Robin subreddit (Tim knew about those, but kept his distance), making it seem that learning that Red Robin is just a polite-ish kid really killed her love. 

Bruce says he’ll keep tabs on her because he know she’s a meta, it’s not like he’s being overprotective, he totally knows Tim can take care of himself, really. 

Other than that, Bruce is way too happy about Jason’s new living arrangement. He even  almost smiles. 

 Tim… is fine. The whole thing is creepy, for sure, but he finds out that his siblings making so many jokes about it makes it easier to handle. Yay for their unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

He doesn’t think he will ever be okay with media, though. It’s annoying enough that he has to deal with reporters as Tim Drake-Wayne, he definitely doesn’t need the attention as Red Robin. 

Luckily for him, his siblings help him with that too. One time he’s wrapping a gang bust with Nightwing when a reporter comes running towards them, begging for a few answers. Red Robin cringes inwardly realizing there are no close buildings to use his grapple, but before he can say anything, Nightwing squeezes his shoulder. 

“Go, Timmy. I’ve got this.”

Tim smile. “Thanks, Dick.”

And he leaves the silent and swift way only a Bat can do. 

 Things are great. As great as they can be in Gotham, at least. Tim wakes up at 9am - an early time for a vigilante, but he got at least 5 hours of sleep, so that’s something - and heads to the kitchen. He finds Steph (who still swears she doesn’t live with them) and Jason bickering over pancakes they’re making. Smiling to himself, Tim mumbles a good morning and starts washing the dirty dishes from last night.

The peaceful morning is interrupted by Steph’s phone buzzing. She use a paper towel to clean her hands before checking it and…

“Uh… Timbers?” she calls.

He freezes, the pan he’s washing suddenly forgotten. “What now?”

Steph is trembling with contained laughter when she hands him the phone. Duke just sent her a link to a news article. Tim clicks and finds himself staring at the headline RIVALRY BETWEEN HEROES? followed by a clear picture of Nightwing and a blurry shot of Red Robin.

The article follows:

After dealing with an infamous gang of contrabandists that operated near Gotham’s harbor, Nightwing and Red Robin went their separate ways without much courtesy. Despite the short collab, it appears that Red Robin didn’t appreciate Nighwing’s help, his farewell words being a sarcastic “thanks” followed by calling Bludhaven’s hero a “dick”.

Tim raises his eyes to the other two. Steph is hiding her face into the crook of Jason’s neck, her shoulders still trembling a bit. Having read the article over Steph’s shoulder, Jason is biting his lip.

Tim deadpans: “This is the funniest shit that ever happened to me.”

The three of them explode in laughter and they cackle for a good minute, until the three of them are breathless and their cheeks hurt.

“I-I want to print that and frame it,” Steph manages between giggles. “Let’s hang it on the living room.”

“Good… ahaha… Good work, Timbers,” Jason says, smiling wide. “For that, you can have extra pancakes.”

Tim is still grinning when he goes back to his dish duty. Maybe being under the media attention isn't so bad after all.

[schraubd]

Working Through Two New Polls on Antisemitism and BDS

Two very interesting surveys have just dropped on the subject of BDS and antisemitism in America. The first is the AJC's survey of American Jews on the subject of antisemitism in America. The second, a "Critical Issues" poll out of the University of Maryland, surveys all Americans on various Middle East policy related questions, including BDS. Both have some intriguing findings that are worth discussing. Start with the AJC poll. There's a lot of great stuff to unpack in here on how American Jews assess the lay of the antisemitic land. For one, it finally gives me some data on what American Jews think about BDS. Unlike Americans writ large, who've barely heard of BDS (we'll get into that more in the other poll), Jews have definitely heard about the BDS movement (76% are at least a little familiar with it, and 62% of "somewhat" or "very" familiar). There isn't a direct "do you support BDS" question, but they do ask about BDS and antisemitism. 35% say BDS is "mostly" antisemitic, 47% say it has "some antisemitic supporters", and 14% say it is simply "not antisemitic". Of course, that middle response is vague -- it could mean anything from "BDS is not inherently antisemitic, but it's got a significant antisemitism problem" to "BDS is mostly fine, but sure, obviously it has some antisemitic supporters." Nonetheless, paired with some of the other responses -- such as the 84%(!) who view the statement "Israel has no right to exist" as antisemitic -- I think it is fair to infer that the majority of American Jews are, to say the least, not BDS fans. In terms of broad assessments on antisemitism in America, things don't like great: 88% of Jews say it is a "very" or "somewhat" serious problem and 84% say it has increased in severity over the past five years. The silver lining is that most Jews have not been victimized by either physical or verbal antisemitic attack and most Jews are not avoiding Jewish spaces or advertising their Jewish status out of fear of antisemitic attacks. But perhaps the more interesting data comes in terms of where American Jews think antisemitism is coming from, and who is mostly responsible for it. It's no surprise that most Jews are Democrats, most Jews lean liberal, and most Jews have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump (by a 22/76 margin -- whoof!). It might be a little more surprising -- at least given how the issue has been covered by both the Jewish and non-Jewish press -- how Jews assess the threat of antisemitism and the response to it on an ideological level. Jews strongly disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the threat of antisemitism in the United States -- literally, 62% "strongly disapprove", the overall approve/disapprove spread is 24/73. In terms of where the threat of antisemitism is strongest in America, the answer is "the extreme right" -- 49% of respondents say it is a "very serious" threat, compared to 15% for "the extreme left" and 27% for "extremism in the name of Islam". Add in the "moderately serious" threat respondents and the extreme right gets 78%, the extreme left 36%, and Islamic extremism 54%. But that's dealing with "extremists". What about mainstream political parties? Here we see something that I think should blow some doors off. Asked to assess the Democratic and Republican parties' responsibility for contemporary antisemitism on a 1 - 10 scale (where 1 is "no responsibility" and 10 is "total" responsibility), Democrats saw 75% of respondents give them a grade of 5 or below (i.e., the bottom half of the scale), versus 22% at 6 or higher (the mode response was a "1" -- no responsibility -- the second most common response was a "2"). For Republicans, by contrast, just 38% of respondents gave them a 5 or below score, while 61% scored them above a 6. Their mode response was an "8", the second most common response a "10". The way it's been covered in the press, one would think that Jews are fearful of left antisemitism and furious at the Democratic Party for not tamping down on it. In reality, the consensus position in the Jewish community is that the most dangerous antisemitism remains far-right antisemitism, and that in terms of political responsibility the Republican Party is a far more dangerous actor than the Democratic Party is. That consensus has the added advantage of reflecting reality -- it's obviously true that right-wing antisemitism (the sort that gets Jews killed) in America is more dangerous than other varieties, and it's obviously true that the GOP has been nothing short of abysmal in policing itself and reining in its antisemitic conspiracy mongers (thinking instead that its Israel policies entitle it to a nice fat "get-out-of-antisemitism-free" card). Now the question is whether Jewish institutions and the Jewish media (or -- dare to dream -- the mainstream media) will follow the lead on this, and start reallocating attention and emphasis accordingly. Now let's move to the Critical Issues poll. It covers a bunch of ground on Mid-East policy, but it is in particular one of the first I've seen to try and gauge American attitudes towards BDS, so let's focus on that. Perhaps the most striking finding is being slightly misreported -- the Jerusalem Post says it found that 48% of Democrats support BDS. But that's not right -- the true number is probably around half that. The survey first asked how much people had heard about BDS -- and for a majority of respondents (including 55% of Democrats), the answer was "nothing". They hadn't heard of BDS at all. The next-most common response was "a little" (29%), while "a good amount" and "a great deal" combined for just 20%. Only those who had heard at least "a little" about BDS were then asked whether they supported it or not. Overall, 26% of respondents supported it ("strongly" or "somewhat"), while 47% opposed it, and 26% were neutral. For Democrats, that split was 48% support (14% "strongly", 34% "somewhat"), 37% neutral, and 15% opposed. So that's where the 48% figure comes from -- but again, it excludes the majority of Democrats who've never heard about BDS at all. Add them in (and assume they'll be at "neither support nor oppose"), and the percentage of Democrats supporting BDS probably falls into the mid-20s. Now obviously, that's itself noteworthy. But it's hard to know what to make of it, especially given that most of those who have heard about BDS still have only heard "a little" about it. That in itself is worth pointing out -- for all the indigestion this issue is causing the Jewish community, it's barely made an imprint on the polity writ large: 80% of all Americans have heard little or nothing about it. It's hardly some sort of generational wave that's caught the attention of the nation. Still, it would have been interesting to know if those who had heard more were more or less likely to support the campaign -- my guess is actually it would yield greater polarization (those who've heard a lot about BDS would be more likely to either strongly support or strongly oppose it). But -- probably because the number of respondents who've heard more than "a little" about BDS is so small -- we don't have data at that level of granularity. In any event: What does seem to be the case is that there is a sizable -- though still minority -- chunk of Democratic voters who (a) haven't heard that much about BDS and (b) say they support it "somewhat" (recall the "somewhats" vastly outstripped the "stronglys"). My suspicion is that this represents a set of voters who (a) are pretty pissed off at Israel and Netanyahu right now, and don't feel particularly inclined to think it is pursuing an end to the occupation in good faith, and (b) view BDS vaguely as a means of exerting pressure on Israel to change course, or if not that, at least signal that they don't endorse its current tack. In practice this probably means only supporting more "moderate" forms of BDS (if you even want to call it that) -- sanctions against settlements yes, full-fledged academic boycotts no -- and as I've written before that is actually a predictable consequence of BDS going "mainstream": it will lose some of its harder edges (much to the consternation of its founding, more radical core). Basically, these are people who are looking for ways to signal "what Israel is doing is not okay", and while I strongly doubt they are ride-or-die on BDS, absent other avenues for expressing that sentiment they'll at least be open to some form of "BDS" -- albeit probably not the more radical iterations of it that, say, characterize the PACBI guidelines. The challenge for pro-Israel Democrats isn't, I think, that the 2020 Democratic electorate is going to demand that the US treat Israel as a pariah state. The challenge is that these voters are looking for ways to vent their frustration at Israel, and are going to want their candidates to speak in terms of sticks as well as carrots with respect to how Israel is engaged with. We're already seeing a bit of that -- and it's frankly a healthy move. The survey asks a few more message-based questions about BDS (again, only to those who've heard at least a "little" about it), leading questions of the "is it antisemitism or is it legitimate" variety. I'm very much not a fan of the wording of those questions, and don't think they tell us much other than effective messaging frames to make people more positively disposed towards BDS (including that "Opposing Israeli policy does not equal anti-Semitism" is the salt of Israel discourse -- there's no recipe that isn't tastier with at least a sprinkle of it, so why not just toss it on everything?). The final question the survey asks on this topic returns back to all respondents (not just those who've heard of BDS) and asks about "laws that penalize people who boycott Israel". One can quibble again about the verbiage here (the laws in question impose no criminal penalties, they just bar government contractors from also boycotting Israel -- but then, wouldn't many naturally view that as "penalty", albeit a non-criminal one?), but the numbers are nonetheless striking: 72% of respondents (including 62% of Republicans) oppose such laws. So that's probably something worth keeping in mind (again, might I recommend replacing those laws with general prohibitions on nationality-based discrimination? I bet that would poll much better). via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/340Hop9

[qqueenofhades]

So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account. 

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes.  All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

[synodicatalyst]

one of the bad things about the homestuck epilogue to me is that now i have to put up with people talking about how homestuck is inherently awful bc of its 'problematic elements' like yes it has bad shit and hussie is evil but the stuff they talk about isnt like a central part of the comic and a lot of it is pretty easy to miss if you dont play the friendsim or skipped parts of openbound or were an archive reader

 like idk what 2 say about that bc the criticisms are legitimate (yes meenah’s relationship w/ vriska is bad and wrong and yes there are elements that are pedophilic even fi they werent intended that way) but when ppl say anyone who likes it is racist and a pedophile and ableist etc… like. ugh. idk. sorry to vent in your inbox todays just been super shitty

oh yeah, i definitely understand this - yesterday i was linked to a callout post that called homestuck “irredeemable” due to its “lesbophobia/homophobia, misogyny, ableism, racism, anti-Semitism” (etc.) and it’s pretty frustrating! not that calling out these things is bad - but it’s like, as your resident Gay NB Dude of Colour who has LITERALLY written essays and talked on a podcast about the racism in homestuck, and how we should treat it / whether it’s still “okay” to like it even despite the Bad Things, it’s almost… horribly dismissive and condescending seeing people circulate callout posts and tell homestuck fans about how problematic homestuck is as if we aren’t the people who are the most aware of it?

Like, an example of a criticism I saw was that “a character’s lesbianism is treated like a fetish” - in obvious referral to an andrew hussie formspring comment from 2011 (? or 2010 maybe i cant remember) and it’s like……. oh my god… are we just going to ignore the fact that homestuck has a genuinely groundbreaking number of lgbt characters (all of them), develops natural arcs for its characters outside of their identities, provided many people with positive lesbian representation literally absent from like everywhere else, did it ORGANICALLY and NATURALLY somehow despite the fact that andrew hussie is a (probably) straight white cis man - owing to the fact that the development and increase in LGBT representation was specifically in appreciation of the fanbase it gathered? are we ignoring the fact that andrew has fucked up multiple times but current homestuck projects like friendsim, and even the epilogue, are actively including and centering the voices and work of real life wlw, women of colour, trans people, etc. as a SPECIFIC point of the fact that like, andrew KNOWS he’s made these mistakes??? this isn’t me being an andrew hussie apologist because i dont even fucking..trust him or anything. but the lack of context surrounding Why Homestuck Is Bad, Actually is horribly stupid

i literally do not know how to break it to people that actively shaming and calling out a piece of independent media that has been significant to the lives of many lgbt poc and is currently working actively to rectify its mistakes is not like… Specifically Cool and Woke. on a basic level, i can understand the concerns of these people but they show a lack of nuance and understanding of growth and genuine value for the people they’re supposedly Standing Up For. i can’t stop them from doing as such but i sure do find it annoying. especially since posts like these lead to people calling out and harassment of people who are fully aware of the mistakes the work possesses. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE HALF THE SHIT IS PLACED OUT OF CONTEXT OR IS COMPLETELY OUTDATED (LIKE THE KANAYA THING. LIKE, THEY LITERALLY GOT ACTUAL LESBIANS TO WORK ON ELWURD’S ROUTE TO SHOW THAT LESBIAN CULTURE IS A THING ON ALTERNIA)

homestuck is actively antifascist, makes a point of ridiculing homophobia and misogyny especially that of the gross reddit brand (via caliborn), and lots of people - lgbt teens especially - found a home in its narrative, because it both represents them and portrays a growing up narrative that is scarily fitting for the current day. it sure does have its issues but where the fuck else am i going to get my vriska fix. SHOUNEN ANIME?? i think not

sorry for just like, unleashing my Frustrations in response to your ask anon, but i hope this sort of resonated with your own grievances. I’m sad to hear that your day has been bad, so i hope you wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed… here is jade harley

[mandaloriangf]

the reylo batb au debacle

long post ahead. tw: racism

i. preface

i dont make call out posts. i think a lot of people abuse call outs, like that one reylo who made a post about me that just consisted of screenshots of me venting on my own blog in the proper tags. i dont know if i would call this a call out, per se. most people (antis, reylos, and bystanders) probably already know the gist of this situation. my reason for making this post is primarily because the original post of mine has gotten rather long with me reblogging it and adding on (you can see the most recent version here) and i would like to have more of a masterpost of sorts, since im a petty bitch who can’t let things go. 

ii. the story

i was alerted by an anon to a fic, which is an a/b/o beauty and the beast retelling with rey as belle and kylo as the beast. in gaston’s place is finn. i haven’t read the fic word for word nor do i want to, but i searched finn’s name in the fic and this is what came up.

(note: most of these screenshots are from my original post, but i’ve added on with chapters that have been published since then)

“Myself if necessary; somewhere out there is my mate, and I will wait for them.” She said resolutely, holding her breath against the smell of pine and charcoal rolling off him. She had never found Finn’s scent a pleasant one.

“I believe Rey is missing,” Finn said with a scowl. “and I don’t like it when my things go missing.”

“Rey has never been yours.” Obi snapped. “She’s not a piece of property.”

“Details.” Finn smirked. “Now, are you going to tell me where she’s really run off to? Or are you holding fast to your ridiculous story of monsters and secret castles?”

Obi narrowed his eyes, refusing to entertain the brute anymore than he had to. “I think it’s time you were on your way, Finn. Please feel free to head in the opposite direction should you feel the urge to call upon me again.”

Finn shook his head, rolling his eyes heavily. “I’ll be back, Obi. I will find out where Rey is hiding.”

Obi shut the door in his face quickly, eager to be rid of the boorish oaf. He leaned against the wood, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing gently to ease his frustration. He should have been more open to Finn’s help, he could take all of it that he could get. Still, seeking aid in Finn felt like escaping the hounds to land in the fire. Hardly an improvement.  

“She’s the only one who’s rejected me. Me. The nerve of her. No. This won’t stand. I’ll track her down if it’s the last thing I do.” Finn snarled.

Finn took a long swig from his freshly filled tankard the server had just finished capping off, a small smile playing at his mouth as his plan gained more and more merit in his mind. Rey would not allude him for much longer. He would find her, and show her exactly who she belonged to.

Charles frowned. “I don’t want Finn anywhere near Rey. I don’t trust him. He’d sooner force her into mating with him as rescue her.”

They crept deeper into the forest, making sure to maintain vigilance as they scanned the forest for anything strange. Finn wondered idly how Rey would have even made it through this woods, a mere woman. When he brought her back home, he would be sure to have a talk with her about what is and isn’t acceptable.

She scrambled backwards then, her back meeting Artoo’s haunches as he pranced away. She felt distress coursing through her, wanting no part of Finn or his strange obsession with her. “You’ll not touch me.”

“Shh.” He whispered. “You’re only confused. All will be well.”

“Leave, Finn. Go back to Jakku. No one wants you here, least of all me.” She spat.

He growled low, yanking her up by her hair. “You’ll learn your place, Rey. Once I bring you back to Jakku. First though, I will take care of the bastard who dared to touch what was mine.”

“I. Am. Not. Yours.” She ground out, her scalp smarting from the grip he still kept on her hair.

“You will be.” He assured darkly.

He didn’t realize he had lost until it was too late. He glanced down, the iron bolt plunged deep into his chest. For a moment he merely stared at it, his breath coming out in heavy pants as he tried to process what he was seeing. A gurgle sounded in his chest, coughing up a spray of blood. His mouth fell open in disbelief, taking a step backwards as his hand went to the bolt.

He gripped it in his fist, tugging it outwards and throwing it to the ground. His hands pawed at the hole in his chest, blood pouring over his fingers as he swayed slightly. His knees trembled, falling to be ground and kneeling. He gave a final shuddering breath, falling forward in a slump and going still. Rey dropped the bow as if it burned her, leaning her back against the tree she’d used to steady herself and gasping for breath. She felt relief and remorse in that moment, the knowledge that she’d taken a life outweighed only by the knowledge that she’d saved one.

(context: the above is rey murdering finn to save kylo)

as you can see, finn, star wars’ first ever black lead, is portrayed as a violent, aggressive, rapey misogynist who threatens rey psychically and sexually. he believes rey, a white woman, is his property and rey must kill him to save her lover, a white man. i mean, this whole thing should be very obvious. i dont care that its fiction, i dont care that its fanfiction. fiction does not exist in a vacuum and if you believe so, biases like this WILL go unchecked. 

i was infuriated after reading this and found a note where the author addresses previous accusations of racism

I was more or less labeled as a racist today for my characterization of Finn, and I felt the need to briefly address that. It was never my intention to lead anyone to believe that my dislike of Finn has anything to do with his race. I dislike his character canonically purely for reasons that have nothing to do with the color of his skin. I obviously realize he’s not a villain, and that he’s out of character. I will not apologize for the way that I’ve written him, as I know in my heart I meant no malicious intent, but I will apologize to anyone who has thought even in the slightest that I was being oppressive or insensitive. I know myself and that’s not who I am, and that was never my intention. I want to go ahead and post this because I don’t know when my next will be and I wanted to leave it on a good note. I don’t foresee a long gap, don’t worry, but at this moment I don’t feel good about the story and I need a few days to reassess where it is going.

iii. the comments

while i easily could’ve just moved on since there are a number of reylo fics out there much like this one, knowing that this one had such popularity and such a tone deaf author, i decided to venture into the comments and lo and behold, the amount of hate for finn was blinding. 

there are plenty more, but i hope this can give you a taste of what the comments section looks like. 

the author’s hate for finn basically boils down to this: he’s indecisive and he lied to rey. that’s it. that’s what the author uses to justify writing finn in a vicious, anti-black stereotype. 

at some point, an anonymous commenter called out the racism.

a concerned citizen: So are you ever gonna address how racist your characterization of Finn is or what.

ktf: Oh lord. No because it’s blatantly not true. He is characterized heavily in concordance with the classic Gaston character. Possessive, arrogant, pig headed… Your complaint is reaching and you can take it elsewhere. Jeez Louise. So silly. Have you even seen Beauty and the Beast? I don’t like Finn as a a character in canon for reasons that have nothing to do with his race (because I admittedly love John Boyega irl as well as in Pacific Rim, the only other film I’ve seen him in) and as such I characterize him as an asshole for my own self satisfaction.

a concerned citizen: Look I love Reylo as much as the next guy but if you need explaining why it’s racist to make the black character who is, in canon, nothing but a kind and supportive friend, into a sexually aggressive misogynist then I don’t know what to tell you. It costs zero dollars not to demonize black characters for your own “self satisfaction.”

ktf: So, to be clear, if I had used ANY other character from the film who had been kind and supportive, Poe, Han, Holdo, Leia, Snap, Kaydel, Luke… as long as they hadn’t been a POC it would totally fine? Do you see my confusion? It’s an alternate universe.

a concerned citizen: A: Demonizing black men as sexual aggressors bent on possessing/raping white women is a long-standing trope used by white supremacists. It’s done to dehumanize black men and drum up fear in white folk so that they feel threatened enough to commit acts of violence. This is one of the most basic tactics of antiblack racism.

B: Gaston was never a part of the original fairy tale. He was made up for the Disney adaptation to add tension and to counterbalance the Beast to make the message crystal clear for the little ones watching– don’t fear The Other. Gaston represents the cultural hegemony of masculine behavior in Belle’s culture; the Beast, on the other hand, is The Other, the outsider, the marginalized force. Black people have practically been The Other in Western media for centuries. Now I’m not telling you that you have to make Finn the Beast or else it’s bunk, just that you have to be aware of the characters’ roles and what they fulfill in the narrative. Making Finn the Gaston character was a conscious decision you made– you took a black character and plopped him into a role that was specifically made to be the representation of toxic masculinity, that decision isn’t made in a vacuum.

C: Absolutely no one is holding your feet to the fire to make sure that you follow the plotline of the source material verbatim. Certainly you took liberties with what form of beastliness Kylo had, so you could have similarly chose to alter Gaston’s characterization in some way or you could have made Finn a different character entirely. Like I mentioned before, Gaston was not in the original fairy tale and so the narrative works fine without him. Finn exhibits none of Gaston’s character traits in canon so you chose willingly to sand him down so you could fit a square peg in a round hole– an action that, as mentioned previously, reflects the rhetoric of white supremacy for the past few centuries.

ktf: Okay. You know what? You obviously woke up this morning itching for a soapbox. So, may the force be with you and may your crusade keep you warm at night. This is a fan fiction, not a doctoral thesis, so if you don’t mind I’m just going to continue living my life. I can assure you no thoughts of “demonizing” a race ever crossed my mind while writing this. It’s not who I am. This doesn’t deserve my time because you, A. Know nothing about me. B. Obviously have way too much time on your hands. C. Aren’t worth the stress you’re causing. Have a blessed day!

iv. the aftermath

since my original post, i have been silently blocked by the author. antis who are poc have gotten anon hate, which has often been radicalized while i, a white anti, have not received anything wrt this fic. the author has gotten cocky about the whole situation, she has a bunch of adoring readers who coddle her, and she refuses to listen to any form of criticism.

now that i’m at the end of this post, i’m not really sure what i want to come out of it. i wanted to include more, but there’s so much shit to wade through in the comments and that doesn’t even account for what’s on the author’s tumblr. reylos, this shit has to fucking stop. you need to hold each other accountable, you need to call each other out bc this is exhausting. 

[the-lady-bryan]

saw a post and i wanted to reblog it and spit fire and venom and just....

okay, i realize just before hitting post that a TLDR would be a good idea, but i can’t really focus my thoughts enough to do that so...

if you want to read more, go for it. everything below is about my frustration at people who can/have gotten the vaccine basically making me feel like shit because i can’t get it for medical reasons and i just needed to vent.

i’m so damn tired of this. i’m one of the people that has to rely on herd immunity for vaccines now. because of medications i am non and certain health conditions, my body rejects a lot of stuff. the covid vaccine could actually do more damage than good for me. my doctors have all told me, point blank, because of my decades long documented tendency to experience the rare and atypical side effects of damn near every prescription medication i’ve had since i was around 3 years old, i actually have a greater chance of getting and surviving covid than i would surviving a side-effect. and that the risk of dying from the virus itself for me, personally, is a hell of a lot less than dying of a side-effect of the vaccine should i develop one.

so i get to play russian roulette here. only there’s not just one bullet in the chamber, there’s about four and am i willing to bet i’ll hit the one that won’t kill my ass.

i’m just.... i’m so goddamn tired of being made a villain simply because i am an outlier. because i’m one of the people in the vulnerable population all you assholes getting the vaccine are supposedly trying to protect by getting it yourselves.

instead of yelling at everyone who hasn’t gotten it yet, can you at least take a minute or two and find out if the person you’re talking to has been blowing smoke up your ass or is someone like me please?

i’m getting real tired of getting told off before i can explain and being labeled a liar, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy nut just because i have to tick the NO box on a form and don’t feel like digging out 30 years worth of medical records for you because you wanna feel self-righteous and “Stick it to the” whatever group you think i’m part of at this point. i don’t even care anymore. kinda jaded at this point.

like, can you give me a standard answer i can give that won’t force me to expose my medical history but also not lump me in with the actual ignorant assholes please? it seems like every time i think i’ve found one (my personal fave and least problematic one so far has honestly been “i’d rather not say” because it conveys there’s more information involved than i’m comfortable sharing) yet someone else finds a problem with it. fuck, at this point i’d be more than happy if they came out with a fuckin medical bracelet specifically for people who medically cannot get the vaccine if it will get people off my ass about it.

[cantskank]

LET’S WRITE A FUCKING POST

i’m just feeling just VERY bad about things, mostly about one thing in particular

and maybe i would think about bringing it to spaces where i could vent with the people i have been spending time with online

BUT some people there are doing the things i am complaining about and i don’t think i can get the subtleties of my frustration across and it would come across as complaining about them

and i think the thing with this issue is that people are supposed to be quietly ignoring it if they disagree because to bring up and argue for this point comes across as anti behavior!  and like i would like to be able to trust that i could bring this up in a good-faith discussion but i just don’t think that’s possible with the climate of this discussion/topic.

SO.  let’s talk about aspec identities and aspec rep.

AS AN ARO ACE, there are just a lot of ways in which the world is not built for me.  which is fine!  sex and relationships are a big deal for a lot of people so to some degree i can accept that they are just always a thing that are going to be something i have to deal with.

however, my identity is still really important to me.  realizing that i was ace (then aro) was a HUGE fucking deal to me.  all of a sudden i realized there were these ways in which i was alienated- these things which were just assumed to be so foundational and human were things i didn’t experience.  because of that i dove into online community with other aces.  i spent just so much time on aven- i wasn’t like a huge poster on there (or at least it didn’t feel like i was) but i was always on.  i still think of that as a huge part of my identity and a huge part of my online participation.   however, after the 2016 election i was in just a horrible headspace and kinda pulled back anyway.  there was kinda just a general leaving of aven around then anyway- a couple of the really super active people left in the winter of 2017.  then there were just like a few really active, really vocal conservative members??  who were around??  and i just stopped going on there entirely which was the right move for me!

all this is to say, i basically had this space for me to share and understand my identity and now i do not.  i have been back on recently and it’s just not the same- the conservative voices have pretty much left but there are still just some people and ways of thinking i just can’t get behind and i haven’t been on since i tried rejoining in the spring.  the other communities online are not really my thing- mostly tumblr, right?  and tumblr is NOT a community space, it’s a ‘say whatever the fuck you want and defend your fucking point and call other people out and be generally aggressive and self-righteous’ space, right??  and i don’t want to say this per se (because it’s fucking mean) but i will- tumblr ace activism is WAYYYY more about conforming to the norm than aven ever was.

like aven, when i was on, was a space where you could acknowledge your identity as different and explore what that meant and how that affected you.  ace tumblr?  is mostly ‘i’m an ace and i want a partner, can i have sex and still be ace?’ (and the response being ‘yes you can be ace and still have sex’) and it’s like!! WHAT THE FUCK!

i think my issue with this comes from a few things.

first, i HAVE to acknowledge that i have some small internal prejudice against aces who want to have sex.  i respect and appreciate those who do and would never call them invalid (and the people on aven who do are the reason i didn’t stick around when i came back in the spring) but there is a small part of me which thinks that it is a bit harder to call yourself ace and still have interest in sex.  such a big huge factor in my feelings of alienation and the solace i’ve found in identifying as asexual is my disinterest in sex.  i personally think about aces who are okay with having sex and i wonder what the big deal is about identifying as asexual in that case because you are conforming to the norm.  something which must be a huge focus of asexual activism in my mind is normalizing lack of interest in sex.  i personally think that having the message ‘okay respect asexuals who don’t want sex but some of us will have sex with you’ is just a lot and makes it harder to be sex-repulsed. (this will come up later as well i think)  anyway i MUST acknowledge that because it DOES inform my feelings about this and it is not a fair way to feel about things, i completely agree.  i will not be disingenuous about it.

okay second, i am just NOT a fan of telling someone whether or not they ‘can’ be asexual.  i think this comes from aven but!  your identity is your own!  and telling someone ‘oh you can still be asexual’ is making it seem like the choice to identify hinges on someone else’s approval.  when it really, really doesn’t.  if you want to have sex and you are asexual, then decide that is the case and just fuckin live your best life!  don’t go to some big-name asexuality tumblr blog and make THEM the arbiter of your identity.  have some self-insight and self-awareness, if you can’t do that then you.....honestly probably will have a harder time overall identifying as asexual.  aspec identities are just the hardest to hear about, the hardest to relate to.  it takes effort to find out about and do the work to decide/realize you are asexual.  relying on someone else to tell you that you ‘can’ identify as asexual?  you’re ignoring the work and imo your self-identification is ultimately built on unstable ground.  have some insight!!  do your own work!

okay so that’s my feelings on ace communities since.  i just ultimately haven’t found a good fit for ace community since and i think my overall feelings and understanding of my identity has suffered for it.  i don’t have outlets for thinking about it so i push it to the side.  and getting older has made me feel worse about things, i’m on a slow march to progressive loneliness.  i absolutely go through periods of feeling like shit about my identity and periods where i feel okay.  

and recently (well, during quarantine) i have decided to seek out more representation in media.  which brought me to magnus archives and then to rqg.  and these are the reason i’m feeling like shit today.

basically, there are people who want to write asexual characters having sex.  and that’s fine!!  fucking do it!!  do whatever you want!!

the problem is that there are people who don’t want to read that, and i am one of them.

and i feel weird about it, right, because the people who are vocally against it more often than not are antis.  so while i would never argue that it shouldn’t be written i at least theoretically agree that i don’t like seeing that dynamic.

and like the people who write it who are asexual i get because like, if that’s you and you want some rep, go for it!  if that’s not you but you’re still interested in exploring an ace person who has sex as an asexual, then go for it!  things are complicated and shit sucks!  i still won’t read it but you do you!

i do have a problem with allos writing sex-affirmative ace characters though.  and not necessarily when done in a respectful way but like.   all i want is for their asexuality to not be handwaved off like it’s not a big deal because it CAN be a big deal.  the number of people i’ve seen in ace spaces who are like ‘do i tell my partner i’m ace?’ ‘should i have sex with my boyfriend?’ ‘when should i tell them i’m not interested in having sex except maybe under the right circumstances?’

for some it’s not a big deal, sure!!  but for many it IS a big deal and i just can’t deal with people who don’t understand it (by virtue of never having experienced it) acting like it’s a simple 30-second conversation of ‘yes i’ll have sex with you because i love you’ it’s FUCKING BULLSHIT

and like this might be absolutely anti reasoning but i can’t help thinking that this is perpetuating misconceptions about asexuality (i’m referring specifically to asexuality because both characters in question are biro ace).  and misrepresenting asexuality to asexuals

and honestly here’s my big gripe with the situation: YOU HAVE LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF CHARACTERS YOU CAN WRITE SEX SCENES WITH.  I HAVE BASICALLY NEVER HAD A CHARACTER WHO CAN REPRESENT MY ASEXUALITY AND I HAVE LITERALLY NEVER HAD A CHARACTER IN A FANDOM WHO HAS FULLY REPRESENTED MY IDENTITY

(as an aro ace person.  jughead from archie comics is literally the only one i’m aware of and they FUCKING REMOVED THAT from riverdale (which is a steaming pile of shit anyway))

i just am very sensitive about compulsory sexuality and i ABSOLUTELY think that ‘i’ll have sex with you because you’re my partner’ is compulsory sexuality and while people are ultimately able to make that decision i am just worried that not being aware of what compulsory sexuality is and how it works (because i legit NEVER see it discussed in asexual spaces apart from having seen it a lot on aven, like i think it’s a term that has limited recognition outside of that space) means that there are a lot of asexuals out there who think it is expected and reasonable to have sex for their partner and that there is no such thing as a system where you’re effectively brainwashed into thinking that having sex MUST be fucking prioritized over not having sex (and that sex is a signifier of ultimate love, blah blah blah, all that shit).

all of that is to say.  if i’m being completely honest with myself, i’m realizing more and more how traumatized i have been by just existing in the world as someone who is not interested in sex or romance, to the point that i’m honestly constantly feeling at a breaking point and references to sex and/or romance can be just too much.  and especially shipping, and especially fiction where an asexual person has sex.

and i really really should not have read an argument in the discourse channel of this stupid 18+ fandom discord that i’m technically on but have muted.  because they were discussing with an anti basically how they are ‘allowed’ to write whatever pairing and whatever explicit scenes they would like to write.  and they’re right!!  write whatever.  i just wish that there was a way other than on here that i could share my frustrations with ace characters written as having sex without 1) seeming like i’m attacking people who have posted explicit material with that character in that server (:/) and 2) seeming like a fucking anti when i literally disagree with everything else

this was supposed to make me feel better and it really didn’t but i’m done with it and just posting it anyway.  FUCK THIS!  FUCK THIS!  FUCK THIS!

okay done thanks

[anarchyisfree-blog]

On Milo…

This isn’t the post that was supposed to be here. The one I had written up was all about how Milo Yiannopoulos was going to be the keynote speaker at this year’s CPAC and why everyone should ignore him. It was a good one if I must say so myself. I even ended it by suggesting that everyone should focus on the new “Deploraball” party that’s going to be happening instead of Milo. But, of course, he had to go fuck all of that up and that post will never be seen.

We all know what happened. The internet, although a vast series of tubes with lots of people using it, is made up of various communities, and if you’re reading this that means you’re probably a part of my community on Twitter. Therefore, you already know the latest Milo-related drama. I’m not going to recap it all – there’s an easy way to find out what’s going on if you’re one of the very few who doesn’t know what’s going on. I pride myself on being a reasonable person. I think I’m able to get along with so many people of so many backgrounds and beliefs because of my ability to be reasonable. So after having my knee jerk reaction to this latest (which I’ve since found out is pretty “old” news to some) I’ve decided to look at all of this reasonably. Well, as reasonably as I can considering who the subject is.

To anyone who has very basic knowledge of psychology or has dealt with people of various types, it’s obvious that Milo has issues. I haven’t studied the guy or even researched him extensively (because that’s a rabbit hole I don’t particularly want to go down) but from things I have read he has issues. He’s clearly an unhappy, self-loathing person. (He’s stated in the past that he hates the fact that he’s homosexual.) With this “new” information that he was sexually abused, everything about the type of person he is makes sense to me. I’ve probably thought about all of this more than I needed to but I have thoughts and I want to share them with you. Follow me for a minute here:

I used to work with prisoners. Not in a psychologist/social worker sense, but merely as an employee of a correctional institution who came into contact with many of them on a daily basis (no, I didn’t wear a uniform). Prisoners of all backgrounds, all with their own stories and personalities, some pre-trial and some who were serving their state sentences. For whatever reason (perhaps because I treated them like I treat everyone else – with my wit and sarcasm), many of them seemed to gravitate to me for conversation (probably because I didn’t wear a uniform) and 9 times out of 10 the conversations were them venting to me about whatever they needed to get off of their chests – arguments with their girlfriends, family matters, etc. But let me tell you about one person in particular. I’m not going to give his name, but I can tell you that he is currently serving a life without parole sentence for murder. I’ll call him “Tony.”

Tony was by all means a kid when I met him. He was 18 – and I know people take offense when I call 18-year-olds “kids” but he was a kid (and I wasn’t much older when I met him) – and charged with murdering his best friend. He was shunned by everyone when he was there – guards and residents alike – because of his attitude. He walked around with much arrogance, insulted everyone under the guise of joking, and whenever anyone would finally snap at him he’d accuse them of being “easily offended.” (Does any of this sound familiar?) One day when I was bringing paperwork back to his cell block I saw him sitting off to the side by himself while everyone else was gathered around watching a movie on TV. “Hey Tony,” I yelled. “What’s the matter? Didn’t shower or something today?”

“Nah, these pussies just don’t know how to take a joke,” he yelled back with a hint of nervous laughter. I rolled my eyes and left. When I went to work the next day I found out that he was in the hospital, having been raped by three guys and beat within an inch of his life.

When he came back to his place of residence he was put in solitary confinement for his own protection. Solitary at this place wasn’t a secluded dungeon – it was in the middle of the complex, so everyone could see them. One day I went to hand him a letter that came for him. Something that should have taken two minutes ended up being an hour long conversation. That’s when I found out that his parents were too busy for him when he was growing up, choosing to advance their careers instead of being actual parents, pushing him off on nannies and even shipping him off to a boarding school for a few years. When he was 10, Tony was molested by his neighbor who was 18. He never admitted it, but he put up this humorous tough guy protective barrier to make people think he was okay when he really wasn’t. Tony knew he needed help to get rid of his pent up anger and he got it. I’m not going to sit here and write about the oddly wonderful transition I saw in this guy, but just trust that it was spectacular. “My life is pretty much done,” he told me once. “I had a fucked up childhood. Doesn’t mean I need to be an asshole.” Last I heard, instead of channeling his inner demons to make everyone’s life miserable, he was spending his time at Angola Prison helping others become better humans.

I don’t see Tony when I read or hear Milo, but I get it. I know why he is the way he is. He’s admitted that he was abused as a 13-year-old (all while saying that it’s not abuse if a 13-year-old boy chooses to have a sexual relationship with an older man, but I digress). He’s admitted in past interviews that his parents really didn’t deal with him and that he spent most of his childhood with his grandmother. He uses his dark humor as a defense mechanism. He is not “okay.” He needs someone to care about him and it doesn’t seem like anyone does. He’s the circus sideshow, being used – as he’s probably been his entire life – as a prop, a means of entertainment for others. Realizing this now as I do, it’s disgusting and a shame. But I’m stopping short of saying that I forgive the hateful things he’s done or said because I don’t.

I’ve said in private conversations – maybe even publically, I don’t know – that I don’t think Milo believes half the crap he spouts. I think he saw an opportunity to make money and he took it. That’s not saying he’s not racist because he only dates black guys (he’s admitted that he only even started dating black guys to piss off his family). That’s not saying he can’t be anti-Semitic because he’s Jewish (only when it’s convenient for him, as his mother’s mother was Jewish and he himself was/is a practicing Catholic). Do I believe he really thinks transgender women are only transitioning so they can attack women and children? No I don’t think that. I think that was one of his “shock” comments. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s transphobic just because he’s a gay man, because if he was not he wouldn’t come down on the transgender community as much as he does. He’s said vile things and done vile things that his childhood does not excuse.

Do I think he’s a pedophile? Nah. Do I think he’s a pedophile apologist? Yes. He can try to twist the term “pedophile” however he wants. Anyone who wants a relationship with a child, regardless of how “mature” the child is, is demented. You can call pedophilia a disorder or whatever you want to label it – doesn’t make the pedophile any less demented. And, you know, maybe his thinking it off kilter because of the things he had to deal with when he was a kid. It isn’t a reach to think that’s the case. What frustrates me the most about all of this is that he refuses to understand why it’s so wrong. Yes, he’s refused to see the error in his thinking about everything else, but this… this topic isn’t something to be politicized. This is something that most people, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, can all agree is disgusting. This is a serious illness (if we’re doing to go the route and call it a disorder) or a serious crime (if you’re one of those “law and order” type people) and he is excusing it. He’s gotten a pass so many times from people on either side of the aisle for things he’s said in the past. This cannot be one of those times.

Now, I’m not advocating that Milo be beat within an inch of his life like Tony, but someone has got to get it through his head that he is a dangerous person. And I don’t mean “dangerous” in the sarcastic sense like he calls himself. I mean literally dangerous. His practical mocking of victims of child sexual abuse and pedophilia with his demented humor is dangerous. His making light of the fact that he himself was a victim is not helping people understand how serious this issue is. And let’s not forget how he admitted that he witness child sex abuse happening at ‘various’ Hollywood parties and SAID NOTHING. That, my friends, is dangerous.

And to any liberal or conservative who is sitting here reading my words right now, agreeing with what I’m saying about his being dangerous? Fuck you. You had no qualms with his dangerous speech before so you don’t get to stand on your pedestal now and get your props. I’m still not giving you a pass for all the times you promoted him or laughed at him when he was being a racist, transphobic, xenophobic, sexist piece of shit. I’m not excusing the people who cried when trash cans at Berkeley were burning because antifa didn’t want this scum to have a platform. You supported him, either directly or indirectly, when he was spewing his word vomit all over the place putting people – including children – in danger. Outing transgender and undocumented students is okay to you. But now? Oh, now he crossed the line? Fuck you, who finally realize that he’s a despicable person.

But I do want to say I’m glad you’re finally realizing that those of us who wanted Milo silenced wasn’t because we’re anti-free speech. Maybe next time – if there ever is a next time – we want to shut this vile creature down you’ll sit back, shut up, and let us do what we need to do. Or maybe you’ll even join us. (There’s a sign up sheet on the antifa website.)

[hot-chocolate-with-marcemallow]

So unrelated to all other postings here: I just finished Nier Automata, and boy howdy do I have feelings about it.

So, let’s start with this: I really liked Nier: Automata. I think it had a gorgeous soundtrack, I think it had some excellent characters and some astounding gameplay moments, really cool side-stories and emotional bits, and overall, a moderately esoteric, possibly plot-holed, but ultimately entertaining story.

That said, that story could have been a lot better. For those of my like 20 followers who aren’t porn bots and want to avoid spoilers, this is absolutely not spoiler free, so read ahead at your own risk!

Okay so you play act one as 2B, the cool goth-lady in all of the promo material. 2B is a combat android. The game starts with her lamenting the constant struggle and infinite cycle of life and death, summed up in the line "Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? I often think about the God that blessed us with this cryptic puzzle, and wonder if we’ll ever have the chance to kill him."

This lament is particularly relevant to her because, as a combat android, she has more or less experienced death multiple times over, both that of her allies, and in some cases, her own. (When androids die, they can upload their backed up data into new bodies, at the expense of any memories they had that were not backed up before they died. So really she probably doesn't remember experiencing her own death, but she certainly knows that she has died a lot, and has also definitely experienced the death of friends. This is made particularly clear in a part where her sidekick character, 9S, dies before he can back up his memory, so when she sees him again, he does not remember her at all).

She's very adamant that androids can't show and aren't even supposed to have emotions, even though most androids DO have them, herself included, and she often keeps her own emotions in check. She's been made to fight "machines", which are, as far as anyone is aware, mindless killing robots. Through the course of the game, she starts to see more and more "humanity" in them, and visibly struggles with killing them, recognizing their sapience and budding humanity, but oftentimes does so anyway because that is her designated purpose.

To me, at least, she is hecka interesting because she obviously suppresses her emotions and tries to distance herself from what she is doing, because the horror of watching her friends die and forget about her again and again, alongside the horror of possibly just slaughtering other sapient machines, is too much for her to accept. In essence, she's a determined soldier struggling with her own misgivings about her duty, but doggedly pushing forward in pursuit of her ideals. Even so, as the first ending of the game outright states, she eventually accepts that machines are conscious beings, and hopes for a time when conflict against them can come to an end.

Then, you play act 2 as her sidekick, 9S. Act 2 is a retread of act 1, but because 9S is a support robot specialized in information gathering, you are able to get more data (and therefore more context) about what is happening in the story, as opposed to 2B's side where you are kinda operating blind and just have to make due with what you know and can assume. (The data you gain is both part of the story, as in, 9S gathers the data himself, and also purely meta, as in, there is some data that you just experience as a player that recontextualizes what you did in certain events).

9S himself is rather openly emotional, and is shown to be affable, inquisitive, and pretty self-assured. He's really interested in researching these enemy machines, finding out as much as he can about them and their strange behaviors, but is very strong in his belief that they are distinctly not sapient, and more or less refuses to accept them as otherwise, summed up with the line "There's no meaning in anything these machines do", which he repeats a few times. So while 2B agonizes over the fact that she's sure machines are sapient and tries to distance herself from the openly friendlier ones because of that fact, 9S is sure they are not sapient, and eagerly helps the friendlier ones to do things for the sake of furthering his research.

He has some depth as a character, but not a whole lot; ultimately, he doesn't care for machines, and doesn't ever reach a point where he really starts to care about them. He cares about other androids, though, like 2B, and his operator, 21O. So, while 2B has a lot of stuff that she could unpack, a lot of cool development that she could have (and some of it that she does have), 9S is kinda "what you get is what you see".9S doesn't think of machines as conscious beings, and views the conflict against them as inevitable.

During Act 1/2, you are briefly introduced to A2, a rogue android who is labeled a deserter and a traitor, and who seems to be of the impression that the chain of command of your organization betrayed her. She appears for a moment, and then disappears and isn't heard from again for the rest of the act.

So, you start act 3, which is a new part of the story. At the beginning of act 3, the game makes it obvious that for this section, you're going to be repeatedly trading off between 2B and 9S to accomplish various goals and to forward the story to its ultimate climax. There're some really cool segments where you play as 9S deactivating anti-air installments with his hacking, then switch over to 2B flying in with her squad to destroy the enemy air forces and start ground combat. Then the battle goes south, their allies all get giga-hacked and turn on them, and there's a section where you're trading between them as they make their way through this crazy conflict.

Eventually, things go super irrevocably south, their home base gets utterly destroyed, and they lose the ability to load themselves into new bodies if they die. The game makes it clear that from that point on, rather than respawning, death equals a real game over. So that's cool. You get shunted into hardcore survival mode, where your allies have all died or turned on you, and a relentless force of machines promise to dog you at every turn. Ostensibly, 2B and 9S's mission from then on is to survive, and perhaps figure out what it is that destroyed their organization (known as YoRHa), how, and why.

And then 2B dies.

And she enters this weird narrative nullspace where she both is and is not a significant part of the story, known as Schrodinger's plot relevance.

For the rest of the third act, instead of 2B, you play as A2. When you met her in the forest, she was a rogue android, and didn't get a lot of development past that. When you start to play as her, she is a rogue android who mercy-killed 2B and has 2B's memories kinda? And... doesn't get a lot of development past that. She's callous, ruthless, and outspoken, which are all neat traits, and I like her character, but she doesn't have a whole lot going on, as evidenced by the fact that, as soon as you take control of her, her first goal is to "I don't know, just go kill as many machines as I can". She has 2B's memories, to some degree, but she ISN'T 2B, but she kinda acts like 2B every so often, and a lot of her decisions towards the later parts of the game are influenced by 2B. But she doesn't have her own strong identity, and she is also not 2B.

She COULD have her own strong identity. The game COULD have taken the time to develop her as a jaded soldier, betrayed by the people that made her, deprived of her purpose, and left to fend for herself in the wilds. She COULD have a lot of feelings about YoRHa, especially the fact that it is now utterly destroyed, but she doesn't express any of that. She expresses a hatred for machines, because she was built to destroy machines, and disinterest in YoRHa, because they abandoned her. She is, however, tangentially interested in 9S, because 2B asked her to keep him safe. But she overall doesn't have a strong motivation or character arc, in part because she only exists as a strong presence for the last 1/3rd of the game.

It's particularly frustrating because they even specifically introduce plot elements that are relevant to her, and should elicit a strong reaction. She finds out that her entire line of androids, the people she was sent into combat with, that she made friends with and treated as her family, all of them and herself were all purposefully created to die, and the fact that she survived was a mistake. She COULD have had a lot of development there, finding that information out, and struggling both with the fact that YoRHa made her and her companions with the intention of their ultimate destruction, AND the fact that the organization itself is now destroyed, giving her nowhere particularly constructive to vent her anger or desire for revenge. But none of that happens. She just kinda learns that information and then relays it later to 9S.

She does take part in one solid story element, where she tries to save a village of friendly machines, but that... doesn’t really make a lot of sense for her. It could be taken as her trying to find a place in the world, and kinda slowly turning towards allying with these machines, or her absorbing more of 2B’s memories and sense of self, but ultimately it is ambiguous enough to feel out of character, or like some really rushed character development.

9S, meanwhile, basically goes insane and vows to kill all the machines. All of them. Every machine. Except, that story doesn't WORK for 9S, because he didn't have an arc that would make that relevant or meaningful.

Everyone 2B loved died, too. If we followed her as she had an emotional meltdown, finally releasing all of her pent up feelings and channeling them into rage against the machines (lol), it would be heckin’ cool, because it is a natural progression that is nonetheless in conflict with the character she normally is, very stoic and at the same time very conscious of the fact that she was essentially slaughtering sapient machines. Her going into this rage and destroying a bunch of the very people she earlier wished for peace with, parroting 9S's lines of 'Nothing these machines do has any meaning' would be really meaningful and powerful.

When 9S does it, it feels flat. When 9S kills a bunch of machines while saying 'Nothing these machines do has any meaning', it doesn't feel any different than the first time he said it, even though he's really mad now, because he has always felt this way. 2B and everyone he loves dying hasn't changed him from 'contemplating the sapience of machines' to 'forsaking thought and mercy in favor of blind rage', he has simply gone from 'Machines aren't alive and it's our duty to study and then kill them' to 'machines aren't alive and also I hate them and want to kill them'.

Even so, 9S is the one who is there, driving the story forward, purely through his hatred of machines and his desire to end them once and for all, forsaking any desire to understand them.

We also find out, kinda awkwardly and offhandedly, that 2B was secretly a particular model of android designed to stealthily execute potential traitors or deserters, and that she was particularly assigned to 9S because, as the most advanced hacker model android, there was a high risk of him discovering really highly-secretive files, or otherwise learning things he shouldn't, or damaging himself in various ways via machine interfacing. So obviously, this adds another layer to 2B, and like... how ludicrously awful she must have felt, having to kill this person again and again, having to stay close with him and be his friend, only to kill him each time he stepped out of line, forcing him to forget her, and losing the person he was each time.

If this information had been revealed as part of the start of act 3, we would have even had a good reason for 2B and 9S to split up; 9S is terrified and betrayed by this information and runs from 2B and does his own thing for a while, learning more about machines and talking with the most philosophical machine, Pascal, in great detail. Through their discussions, 9S could come to adopt 2B's idea that continuing to fight would be utterly senseless, could seek to co-exist with the machines, and could even come to understand 2B and how all of this was affecting her, while 2B, already fragile from the loss of the rest of her friends and everyone at YoRHa, is finally pushed over the edge knowing that her last friend in the world no longer trusts her, and falls entirely unto a pure emotional outburst (as stated earlier) that drives her to want to destroy the machines for taking everything else from her. Essentially, the characters' motivations would be swapped, which we'll come back to later because this would become a really important plot thing if it happened.

But back to reality.

So, you progress through the game mostly as 9S, as stated, with A2 occasionally popping in to watch 9S fall down holes before she fights bosses (seriously he falls down holes several times in her presence). This all culminates in 9S and A2 simultaneously but independently trying to get into this huge machine structure because... well, 9S wants to get in because he wants to destroy all machines, and A2 wants to get in because... ? I'm not actually certain. Maybe cause 9S is there?

So this leads to a really really cool scene where  9S and A2 are both racing up this tower, going high above the clouds, and they're both fighting these two massive machines; 9S is fighting one in the air using a flying personal mech-suit type thing, while A2 fights one by hand an elevator. And every so often, during the fight, there'll be a cloud transition and you're fighting as the other character, and it's really seamless and feels really good. And as you get higher/take the bosses down lower, the swaps become faster and faster, culminating in a scene where both characters arrive at the same time at the top of the tower. The two bosses combine into one, and you have a fight where both characters are working together to defeat the combined boss, and you swap control of them seamlessly at various intervals, faster and faster until it ends with a scene of them tag-team finishing the boss off.

And then soon after that, they stand off and have a duel, because 9S is hella mad at A2 for ostensibly killing 2B, and A2 wants to stop 9S from messing up some important stuff in his blind revengerage. And you select who you play in the duel, and the outcome of the duel depends on who you play as, so there are two different endings depending on which character wins. Unfortunately, because of how the story has played out, all of the emotion in the duel is entirely one-sided. 9S hates A2 for killing 2B, and A2 is kinda ambivalent towards 9S but 2B wanted him safe so she's gonna try to keep him safe I guess.

If you side with 9S during the duel, he and A2 kill each other, and his fading consciousness is uploaded into the machine network and launched into space. If you side with A2, she saves 9S (by hacking into him, because at some point she gains the ability to hack for almost no reason), and destroys the thing that would launch stuff into space, believing that it is intended to destroy some really important stuff, and also she dies. So either way A2 dies, and either way, in some form, 9S lives.

So, I'll take this moment to call back to that part that would become a "really important plot thing" if it happened. See, these scenes were really cool, and the idea of them was really cool. But the execution was utterly lacking, and the strongest reason for that is lack of character motivation. You know what would have been hecking cool? A2 is not part of the story, or at least plays an entirely different role and you don't play as her. Instead of 9S driving the story along, he and 2B are both doing it in their own ways; 2B tears a  hole through the machine forces in order to gain access to the final huge machine base so she can destroy the machines once and for all, while 9S uses his hacking and more pacifistic means to gain access, both to stop 2B, and to find a way to co-exist with the machines. They either briefly encounter or narrowly miss each other a few times, and if they do encounter each other, tensions are high (a perfect example: one of the meetings between 9S and A2 ends with A2 killing 21O, 9S's old operator and close friend, because 21O was corrupted, essentially murdering her in order to save him. Replace A2 with 2B. 2B kills 21O to save 9S, but he's distraught that his friend is dead by 2B's hand, and they don't come to a resolution there).

Then you have the scene where they're both ascending the tower. Instead of 9S and (secondary character), it's 9S and 2B, both working towards the same end point but with different goals in mind. They team up like they had before, finish off this huge enemy using the power of teamwork, and then face off in this duel. And in this case, the duel actually means something, because it's a battle between people who actually care about each other, both of them fighting the person they want to preserve the most, over their now very disparate ideologies. And the ideology you, the player choose to side with ultimately determines the ending of the game.

Like really at that point you could even just cannibalize the endings already in place. You side with 2B, you mistakenly kill 9S, and destroy the machine structure, destroying all of the machines and also yourself in the process. If you side with 9S, you end the duel by hacking into 2B to calm her down, and then upload both of your memories into the machine network to coexist with them. Boom. Give me a story writing medal. Okay not really, like I don't even know if that would have been a *good* story. But I think it would have been better than what we got.

Ultimately, though, my biggest complaint is that I felt lied to. I signed up to play 2B's story, and instead, I played a story distinctly and unflatteringly centered around 9S. I expected cheesecake, and honestly, I was fine with that, because 2B felt really interesting to me despite that, and felt like a character I was supposed to sympathize with, but 2B died to give 9S a flimsy revenge motivation. A2 felt like she didn't even belong in the narrative for how hollow her character was, despite the cool trappings (not literally, I kinda hated her outfit, but I loved the berserker aspect), and basically served as a vessel to make sure that 9S could get to where he needed to go, and to sacrifice herself for his survival (in her ending). Devola and Popola were awesome and I loved them, and they essentially both died to get 9S where he needed to go. Operator 21O, dead, in order to make 9S even more angry and emotional. All of the cool women of YoRHa were just set-dressing to make things more sad because women dying is more sad, I guess? I actually don't know. I can make some insidious guesses, but I kinda doubt willful malice is a part of it.

Anyway, there's my thoughts. Please feel free to comment, I'd love to have a discussion about this. Maybe if some of you have played yourselves, you can point out things that I missed that would help me to like the game as it is instead of as I wish it had been! Or something. Either way, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading! (Thank you to everyone who read, too, even if you didn't finish and aren't reading this right now).

[taylorb94-blog1]

medical mystery

so one reason i wanted to start a blog was to vent and write out about the medical mystery thats going on with me right now. so here is the deal, pain we all experience it, physical or emotional. but, both at the same time is just unfair.

it all started two years ago, normal night sitting at home and then it started, the pain. lower abdomen, upper pelvis, whatever the medical professionals like to call it. basically us ladies know it as the area around the ovaries. i know what you are thinking and no these were not cramp x.x. thanks to the depo shot i haven’t had a period or cramps in what feels like forever. yes, i know “tmi” well you started reading and the natural human curiosity is making you keep reading.

so pain started, first kind of annoying but as the night went on, it got more and more intense. doubled over, screaming, crying, worst pain of my life. so my mom rushes me to the er, 5 hours, poked with needles and peeing in cups later, doctor says bladder infection. he convenced me that, thats all it was, shot me up with some toroidal and anti-biotics and sent me on my way. 

few nights later, same thing. this story is funny just wait. so since i was just there and showing the same signs, more poking for blood and they wheel me off to do a ct. now we (my mom and i ) are waiting, and waiting, and waiting...... finally doctor peaks his head in the curtain and the first thing out his mouth,” have you been swallowing coins?”, as you could imagine i had the most angry and confused look on my face. only thing i could think to say was “ DO I LOOK LIKE A  3 YEAR OLD LEFT ALONE WITH CHANGE?!?!?” don’t get me wrong in todays day in age with munchhousins and crazy people i get now that it was a valid question, but at the time i was just upset.so the diagnosis that night was “foreign objects in the cologne” yea try to go to work and explain that to your boss. with out mentioning names, i had a mole in the hospital who may have looked at my file for me. the ct tec. said the objects were “ undissolved food or pills”.... so my “coins” was my dinner. cant roll my eyes hard enough.

fast forward grand total of 6 E.R. visits. yes i know a lot but hey i needed answers. there were nights i laid in my bed just thinking to myself that a butter knife to the abdomen would give me some relief. why a butter knife? just think of how pissed off you have to be to make damage with a butter knife..... scary right? now we move on to the ob/gyn two different doctors, 4 different ultrasounds later. nothing , and everything passed though our minds,( cancer, cysts, endometriosis, ect. even telling myself if its the worst, “ hey i can always adopt”) but everything came back normal. 

then one doctor had the magical idea that he pulled out of his butt “hernia”. and if you are like me with all this medical mystery, google has become your best friend. a hernia occurs when you put strain on your body with heavy lifting and what not, producing a lump or bulge. i could be sitting down doing nothing and this pain starts, (hell its hurting now and i’m laying in bed typing this.) but i went with it, and talked to a surgeon. fast forward to another ct scan. this time with the contrast, both oral and though iv. if you have ever tasted that stuff, omg it was horrible and then to “make it taste better” they added raspberry flavoring. yea that tasted like a raspberry’s asshole. But i pinched my nose and gulped as much as i could at a time. thinking to myself “do this now and we get answers later.” 3/4 of a liter everything that went down tried to come back up. and as i sat in that waiting room i held back tears, because yes, there were more people in there with me. all waiting to do cts, lucky some not having to drink the horrible drink. but i couldn't help but think to myself, they all know what they are looking for. cuz of course i was eves dropping on conversations, but one cute guy was there for kidney stones, one was looking for something else i forgot, but when they asked me, all i could say was Idk and try not to cry. yes everyone was there for a bad reason but they all had something more then me. a piece of mind, a diagnosis, a plan. i had nothing but a gut full of nasty drink and theory. 

ct results come back, i sit in the doctors office hopeful that we have an answer, that we can make a plan, that i can finally start to feel better. 

my world came crashing down the second she walked in the door. i could see it all over her face, then she spoke,”honey i’m sorry but we don’t see anything on the ct,” i cried beyond control, ugly crying face and all. 

side note, i am not a thin woman. yes i am plus size and “over weight” and due to this sickness i haven’t been able to work out and lose weight. but after crying my eyes out so frustrated to the point i was begging for exploratory surgery. the surgeon looked at me and said “maybe if you lose some weight.” .... ok now im pissed. “NAME ONE FAT PERSON WHO HAS THIS PROBLEM” yes i need to lose weight, but don’t make that the dumb answer to this situation.

needless to say here we are, still in pain, changed diet, gone gluten free and all that fun stuff and yes i have lost some weight. Has any pain subsided? hell no. 

the pain had escalated to where i could not walk. so my mom took me to the emergency room again. (against my wishes) and i told the doctor on call” i was not leaving with out some kind of answer and stronger medication then what ive been given (cuz lets face it, no i don’t want hard core pills but the aspirin they have been giving me was not worth the kidney damage it was doing, it did not put a dent in the pain.) i laid on that bed crying, to the point i couldn't speak, and as me and my mother told her the adventures of the past two years. for the first time i left she was actually listening, that she didn't want to rush me out of there but actually give me an answer,especially when i said the magic words “please cut me open, ill do the exploratory surgery”, of course she didn't have one, but her theory goes right back to ovaries, something called interstitial cystitis. 

so we are back to square one, thinking its my ovaries but at least now i have a stronger theory, yes the pain is horrendous, the doctor visits seem tedious, and you start to question your sanity when the doctor tells you that nothing is wrong or they cant find anything. but its your piece of mind that you must hold on to. 

at the end of this, i hope people will say, “ she was a Warrior.”

i plan to keep you all updated as i continue my mystery medical journey. and i hope you are an entertained with my tails.

this is my story, i don’t regret posting it.