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I KNOW WE JOKE ABOUT BATMAN KIDNAPPING CHILDREN BUT OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY CANONICALLY KIDNAPPED JASON??? HOLY FUCK

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my favorite thing is when murderbot has too many things going on and replies to a question with a canned buffer phrase. its so funny to me. you stressed out this poor robot so much it had no choice but to go into customer service mode.

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my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

and she told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and i would go to heaven, and i would be able to talk to the worms, and i would be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident out of excessive Love, and that they would forgive me, because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

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yes, the papers viciously slander you because of how stupid you look, unlike *checks notes* the killer clown, the guy in a suit made of question marks, and the guy who cosplays as an alice in wonderland character. truly this is discrimination.

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dskfnsdjkanfdjkas. you can NOT just say that like one statement follows the other. oh my god.

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no shut up, you werent even actually planning to attack??? then why the FUCK were you posed in the middle of your yard you fucking weirdo??!!?

im sorry this is so fucking funny, how long was scarecrow just standing still on a pole in his own fucking yard waiting to jumpscare robin?? arent you stiff man? you literally couldve been like. hiding somewhere. not standing with ur arms straight out in the middle of the yard.

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im sorry this is so fucking funny, how long was scarecrow just standing still on a pole in his own fucking yard waiting to jumpscare robin?? arent you stiff man? you literally couldve been like. hiding somewhere. not standing with ur arms straight out in the middle of the yard.

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thinking about this again. i was 100% right, but i also want to add that when robins get into trouble, it isnt always but is FREQUENTLY their own fault. sneaking out and getting in a bad spot is a robin right of passage.

so i would like to amend the fantasy: you are not only protected from others, but from your own impulses as well. you have the freedom to be impulsive and stupid and get in over your head, and someone will still catch you.

it's a very sort of...reparenting kind of fantasy i think. not so much what kids themselves think they want, but maybe what adults still wish they had.

thinking about batman and how odd a fantasy it is. like, superheros are pretty straightforwardly a power fantasy, right? obviously. the appeal is a world where you can punch the bad guys to solve your problems, and you don't really need to fear much of anything. you'll always win in the end.

but the robins, they're a depower fantasy. they've all got a little orphan annie/cinderella thing going on, where a rich and powerful person comes and removes them from their terrible home lives. even cass and duke have that going on. and then you think maybe they'll become strong and powerful as robins, and sure they can take out like muggers and shit, but i think it was dick!robin that was literally nicknamed robin the boy hostage! the fantasy here is that even when you're trying to stay strong, you're allowed to be weak and to fail, and someone will still swoop in to save you. unless ur jason and then you get a fucked up revenge power fantasy instead.

so you end up with this really odd mix of fantasies where you simultaneously want to be stronger than you are now, but still have a Protector taking care of you. i just don't think any other heroes, even kid heroes, have that same vibe.

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you've done it, you've distilled every robin down to his base elements!

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Horse figure of the day: Schleich Pegasus #70423

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im not sure if americans realize this but "not knowing anything about other countries and their politics" is very much a USamerican privilege and not actually a sign of like. how oppressed you are

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Waking up from your decade long enchanted sleep to learn that, not only is sharing your True Name with the fae okay now, but there's actually a rule against using a false name when entering the faerie market.

Your friends admit that this causes some problems— it's way easier to fall victim to a false deal, or get stolen away now— but everyone goes to the fae market to buy their goods so what are you gonna do? Not see your friends? Go out of your way to buy more expensive stuff from the human market? Yeah right.

Also yes they still perform their light-footed fluttering dances under the silvery light of the full moon, but in order to get in you have to first watch the dancers perform two short plays about why you should shop at certain local businesses. Also if you want to talk about the performance afterwards then you need to trade them your True Name, your home address, your date of birth and your personal interests.

You do this so that the fae can this information on a scroll and give it to local business owners.

Another part of the deal they broke is that nobody may talk negatively about those businesses within the market walls. In fact, your friends say, the enchantment is so effective that it's very difficult to talk negatively about anything at all.

“I know it sounds un-good,” your friend admits. “But there are loopholes.”

“In retrospect,” another friend says, “I wish the town had voted un-yes to teaching the fae about money.”

“On the plus side,” the first friend says, “I hear the market is investing in one of those enchanted statues that responds to questions with deliberately ambiguous riddles, so long as you trade it your memories of secondary school.”

“Oh, cool. Is that why they're burning down the library?”

You wonder if it's too late to go back to sleep.