for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal
before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"
and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"
i cant get over the ball being so CLEARLY all for crowley i can't get over aziraphale trying to woo him with a WHOLE FUCKING BALL because that's what he knows that's what romance IS for him because he's been wanting to dance with crowley ever since dancing was invented and he's so stuck in time with the way he dresses and talks and he still thinks a dance is the high of romance AND HE MADE A WHOLE ENTIRE FUCKING BALL FOR CROWLEY JUST SO HE COULD DANCE WITH HIM like now it's so fucking obvious he gave away his BOOKS without a second thought and it was all for crowley he organised a whole JANE AUSTEN THEME BALL just so he could have an excuse to finally dance with the love of his life and i can't get over this i'm shaking my fists and pacing up and down he did not give a single fuck about anything other than dancing with crowley and HE BARELY TOUCHED OTHER PEOPLE'S HANDS WHILE HIS WHOLE FUCKING PALM WAS PRESSED TO CROWLEY'S AND i need to lie down
"Great!" Danny says, clapping his hands together to get everyone's attention. The dinner table falls silent as everyone looks towards him. It's a full house today and, honestly, Danny's a little nervous. "I'm sure you're all wondering why I gathered you here today."
"It's dinnertime. In our house." Duke mutters, while doing a very bad job of concealing his yawn. He holds his fork poised over the braised beef, but, just like everyone else, still looks towards Danny before tucking in. It's intriguing enough to wait.
"Yeah, no one misses Alfie's dinner." Dick says, with a brilliant smile that Danny can't help but return.
"Precisely! What better time to talk to you all than when you're all actually here!"
"Wait, I thought you came round to work on our English essays?" Tim asks, blinking owlishly.
"I'm afraid I've lured you here under false pretences, Tim."
"This is where I live."
"I would still really appreciate help on that essay though, I mean, what the hell is Hamlet even about? I just don't get that old time-y language, like 'Hark! A ghost hath killed me!' - absolute rubbish, what does that even mean?"
"The ghost never kills anyone in Hamlet, he's there to tell Hamlet that he was murdered. Have you actually read it?"
"No, but it sounds like you have. Tim, I want this guy to help me with my essay instead. I know for a fact that you haven't read Hamlet, either."
"So? We don't need Jason, I've read the Sparknotes."
"Hi Jason, I'm Danny, pleasure to meet you, summarise Hamlet in three sentences or less."
"Am I auditioning to help you write your essays? I can't believe you’ve gone through your whole school life without reading it, it’s good!"
"Hamlet, along with a number of other classics, was banned in our house because it portrayed ghosts as intelligent and sympathetic beings rather than evil, animalistic beasts. I didn’t even get to see The Muppet's Christmas Carol until last year with Tim! It was surprisingly good, and I hate Christmas because everyone always argued and it sucked. But we're getting off topic. I—"
"No, no, please go back to that, because what the fu—"
"Boys, please." Bruce interrupts, looking to the world as if he wants to hang his head in his hands. "Danny, you were about to say something?"
"Oh, yeah, Mr. Wayne! Thanks!"
"Please, call me Bruce."
"Well, that very succinctly brings me to my point, because I'd actually really like to call you dad."
Nobody says a word. Nobody even blinks, all as shocked as the other, watching open-mouthed as Danny pulls his laptop out from beside his chair. Bruce can definitely feel a headache coming on.
"Before you say anything, I've prepared a 69 slide PowerPoint presentation on why you, Bruce Wayne, should adopt me, Danny Last-Name-Pending. Please save your questions, comments, and verdict until the end, thank you."
So. Danny might have accidentally become a bit of a cryptid. He didn’t mean to, but he’d become a bit nocturnal- like many an Amity Parker- and it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t be bothered to make sound when he was tired. Or pretend to breathe or, okay, he could see why he kept freaking people out at the grocery store he kept going to.
But it wasn’t his fault! He has to get food too! And really is it anyone else’s business? Seriously he thought that people wouldn’t be so surprised with how much magic is everywhere. Like you’d think they’d never seen someone who wasn’t fully human before or something.
Oh great, there’s a journalist at the grocery store now- he’s going to ignore that and finish his shopping and then continue his online work. Ooh, and eat icecream. He deserves it for potentially putting up with this.
Oh, it’s a little baby reporter, first couple of article thing. Adorable.
putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023