th1ngs-1-l1k3

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Today a traditionally published author emailed me a list of helpful suggestions about getting published.

Their biggest piece of advice: Remove the main gay romance that is central to the plot.

Thread.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

waitingforthebusintherainintherainwaitwaitingforthebusintherain

waitingforthebusintherainintherainwaitwaitingforthebusintherain

waitingforthebusintherainintherainwaitwaitingforthebusintherain

waitingforthebusintherainintherainwaitwaitingforthebusintherain

waitingfortheb u s i n t h e r a i n

waiting for the bus in the rain in the rain wait waiting for the bus in the rain

waiting for the bus in the rain in the rain wait waiting for the bus in the rain

WAITING FOR THE BUS THE BUS IS LATE WHERE IS THE BUS WAITING FOR THE BUS IN THE RAIN IN THE RAIN WHEN THE BUS COME WHERE THE BUS AT GOT MY BUS PASS BUS IS MUCH BETTER THAN A TRAIN THAN A TRAIN TAKE PHONE PICTURES WHILE I'M WAITING AT THE BUS STOP BUS NOT HERE WHY THE BUS SO LATE I'M WAITING FOR THE BUS IN THE RAIN WISHING I WAS ON THE BUS WHEN THE BUS DRIVE AROUND YOUR ESTATE OH GOOD HERE COMES THE BUS OH SHIT IT'S A DIFFERENT BUS NOT THE RIGHT BUS NOT THE BUS I NEED NOW I'M WAITING FOR THE BUS IN THE RAIN AT ANOTHER STOP BUS AINT GOT A REAL HIGH SPEED

WAITING FOR THE BUS TOOK A PICTURE OF ANOTHER BUS WAITING FOR THE BUS IN THE RAIN I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THE BUS SINCE THE SUN CAME UP BUT THE SUN AIN'T UP NO MORE CAUSE IT'S GREY WAITING FOR THE BUS THERE'S A GREY ONE BLUE ONE A RED ONE ALL OF THEM TURNED AWAY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THE BUS GOTTA CATCH A BUS GOTTA WATCH NEWS GOT A REGIMENTED PLAN FOR THE DAY

BUS

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Feel like society has forgotten the art of dislike. you can just dislike a thing. a person. a ship. a character. a book. why does everything have to become Hatred. why do you need to get other people to Hate with you. why can't you just go blech!!!!!!! and then move on. god i miss living in a society that was comfortable with shades of grey and not existing between extremes

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

it’s not about the switch 2 being a bad console it’s about you happily giving hundreds of dollars to nintendo on release day when your close friends cant even afford groceries

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Kestrel-dad not sure how to dad but he’s trying his best.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

I'm fascinated by how the formatting of different social media sites affect how text is read.

For instance, a line break on Tumblr indicates a new idea.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Wow, now there's a bot going around on Ao3 telling people that the "moderators" will delete works from "deprecated" fandoms and impose bans.

Fearmongering bullshit, but it's fearmongering bullshit that seems to be taking advantage of the recent spotlight series in order to trick authors into deleting their fics.

Just. Why.

What the hell does anyone get out of making these bots.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Guide to Tim Fics

Hi, I've gathered a list of common tropes in Tim Fics and then I'm gonna link to other posts that have a bunch of fics of that nature. Honestly doing this for my reference, so might as well let other people see it lol

Tim Travel

in which a post/during Red Robin, Tim, gets transported to a different dimension. Typically involves a happy loving batfam taking him in

Tim Joins The Batfam Early

In which Tim is a sad, lonely child, who typically bat-watches every night. Then finds his way to the Wayne’s

Tim Joins The Batfam Late

same gist as before, this usually involves Jason not dying, or just Tim for some reason not finding his way into Robin, so now someone (typically Red Hood) finds him and brings him into the fold.

Second Tim-around

In which Tim somehow ends up as himself in the past and decides to improve some things, which most of the time means he’s not part of the Batfam and they inevitably drag him back

The Bats Find Out/Tim Fix-it

This is really just all fics that involve Tim repairing relationships with the bats or them finding out fucked up shit that Tim has done or has happened to him

Tim and Damian

I separated this from fix-its because there's enough to make it its own category and also I like it. Very simple, Tim and Damian bond and learn to love each other. These are typically pretty short but really sweet!

TimKon/Young Justice

Fics that are focused outside the bats. That's pretty much it. Some of them are just TimKon, but inevitably have the others at least mentioned.

In-Universe AU

This sounds counter intuitive. Basically any fics where they change one major event, or add a relationship, or some shit. This will also include any Reverse Robin AU's because there aren't enough Tim-centric ones to make its own category.

Random Tim-bits

just for some random stuff that doesn’t fall into any of these categories, mostly one shots

If you have any other categories let me know. Also if you have any fics to list, put them in the replies! Thanks <333 (don't forget to comment on the fics you read and tell them they did a good job!)

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Spread the word.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

only thing that comes to mind today.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

Saw your post in his tag and I completely agree with your Tim loves being Robin post! The “He needs to grow up” thing pisses me off so much. I kind of blame Damian for its existence, but that might be unfair. Isn’t there a comic where Dick lectures Tim about going back to being Robin or being in Bruce’s shadow again? I think I remember reading something like that, but I may be misremembering.

It's not a lecture exactly, but there was a fairly recent comic (here meaning, like I think it was from 2021, 2022? It maaaay have been an issue of Tim Drake: Robin but I genuinely don't remember) where he brought the subject up in the context of like, "It shouldn't be your job to take care of Bruce."

Blame is kinda the wrong word because it implies that Damian the character is "at fault" for the shift, but I do think it's fair to say that Damian/Damian's presence in the narrative is the source of where this sentiment comes from.

Partially because there's a not-insignificant number of Damian stans who seem incapable of separating his in-character resentment of and conflict with Tim from the larger scope of their stories and thus view Tim using the Robin name as a threat/insult to their fav, so they make up and glom onto any arbitrary reason they can come up with for why he should have to change and Damian should get to stay, like two people arguing over who should have to change after showing up to a dinner party in the same outfit.

But mostly it's because of the greater damage that the last ~15 years of pushing Damian as Robin has done to the Robin legacy and its role in the narrative. Which isn't really about Damian himself -- Damian is a perfectly fine character as he is, he tells interesting stories and he clearly offers narrative avenues that people are interested in exploring. The problem is that none of those avenues have damn thing to do with ROBIN.

The story of Damian being/having been Dick's Robin during the Batman Rebirth era is important to his personal story and the story of how he relates to both Dick and Bruce. But outside of that very specific era, which lasted a grand total of -- on the very generous outside -- two and half years, every single one of Damian's stories would be exactly the same if he'd been using literally any other superhero codename.

Because they're not really Robin stories, or Batman & Robin stories. They're either Son of the Bat stories, where Damian deals with the angst of being Batman's son; Batman & Son stories, where Bruce and Damian work on their familial relationship very specifically in the context of a father and his son; or Son of the Demon stories, where Damian unpacks the trauma/conflict/occasional pride of being Ra's al-Ghul's grandson.

The lone exception to this is Juni Ba's The Boy Wonder from last year, which is imho the best Damian story that's ever been written in no small part because it's a love letter to the Robin legacy as told through Damian's eyes while he learns to understand and appreciate that legacy. (It's also about other things but that's because it's a very very good story.)

On the flipside, probably Damian's most popular role, the one that people keep trying to shove both him and his costar back into, is kind of proof-positive of my entire point, because being one-half of The Supersons is a role that was NEVER meant to be filled by a Robin. It's a role that was created for, originated, and always intended to be filled, by a character literally named Batman Junior.

And yet. Because they've insisted, for the last ~15 years, on telling those stories while Damian is wearing a Robin costume, using the Robin name, and advertising under names like Robin: Son of the Bat, it's led to skewing the meta-narrative around what the role and legacy of Robin is supposed to mean.

Instead of being its own, complex and distinctly queer relationship ("queer" not in the sense that it is romantic or sexual, but in that it does not fit neatly into one of society's designated boxes for defining social relationships), the way it was for over 60 goddamn years, Robin has now been half-forced into a singular, distinctly heteronormative and patriarchal definition of "a father teaching his son." And sons are, by societal mandate, meant to someday either leave or overtake their fathers. And since only The Golden Firstborn Dick or the One True Blood Heir Damian is """allowed""" by these heteronormative definitions to someday inherit the cowl, everyone else has to be forced out. "To grow up" as people keep putting it.

The shift in perspective is a direct result of Damian being Robin. It's not the only factor -- Jason's post-UtRH movie popularity factors in too, since fandom tends to zero in on certain elements of his Robin years like the adoption and "Robin gives me magic" and reduce a lot of his less-flattering traits to ~sexy angst and daddy issues~ -- but the way Damian gets used in the narrative is the primary factor from where I'm sitting.

Like I said at the top: it's not Damian, the character's, "fault" or anything. It's just a really frustrating result of people trying to force a more ambiguous relationship into a heteronormative mold that it was never meant to fit, and then getting retroactively mad at characters who were never designed to fit in that mold for breaking it.

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

The "Sassy" Core 4 are my babies. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ARE WELL BEHAVED?

Nah, these 4 are little shits 🐛

[th1ngs-1-l1k3]

imma say it. “kung fu panda” did more for body positivity and saying that  you can be fat and still be healthy and liked than ANYTHING any beauty companies trying to get your money.