#like i'm never telling ANYONE

[lyrashifts]

anyone ever have dreams so completely awful that they'll take them to the grave

[posalis]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[bluewolfangel01]

Mc: *approaches Beel, looking dejected*

Mc: "Beel... Can I ask you for a favor?"

Beel: "Of course."

Lucifer: "Why is Beel holding Mc like that?"

Beel: *holding Mc super tight, with slight crazed eyes*

Belphie: "Mc asked Beel to hold them tight as if he just found them almost dead."

Lucifer: "I see.... Are they're alright?"

Belphie: "Yeah, especially now because of Beel."

Lucifer: "Very well then, as long as they're fine."

Mc: "thanks Beel."

Mc: *hugs Beel tighter and buries their head more into his chest*

Beel: *buries his face into Mc's hair*

Beel: "anytime Mc"

[hailsatanacab]

A Persuasive Argument - dpxdc

"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."

[egophiliac]

heeey guess what, I'm obsessed with this idiot flamingo now

[fridgrave2-0]

hehe ghost-turbo haunting felix au

turbo is connected to the last piece of his code in the whole arcade - a trophy he gifted to felix in mid 80s as a symbol of him genuinely caring about their relationships on par with being the best racer. felix also gave him one of his medals and both kept their gifts next to other rewards, but when roadblasters and turbotime were unplugged, the medal was gone with everything else

now, after burning in cola-lava turbo is basically dead, but scraps of his code still were intertwined with the trophy (after all, it was his first winner's cup, but felix never knew about it), giving turbo an opportunity to exist as a shadow incapable of interacting with anything and anyone besides felix, who kept the trophy even after the roadblasters incident

also I went crazy in tags, feel free to check them out

[giantkillerjack]

Me: hm, I want something to put on the TV as background noise... Huh. Looks like YouTube is recommending something called The Last Unicorn. That's perfect, it's probably some old shitty animation that has aged poorly! I can watch it ironically!

Me, 2 hours later as the credits roll: *crying, cheering, buying the book, composing the songs*

Me, 2 weeks later: So I have compiled all of the quotes from the book that I think could make good tattoos, and also, HOW HAVE I NEVER LEARNED ABOUT HOW THE LAST UNICORN FUCKING SLAPS??? This gay-ass little fairytale fed my soul! Watered my crops! Transed my gender! Can't believe I heard of this story from youtube recommendations, of all places!!

[reasonsforhope]

You don't need to believe that people as a whole are good or well-intentioned to be an optimist about fixing climate change.

A lot of the time, it's enough to trust in this: people hate being screwed over. And even more than that, they hate feeling screwed over.

Climate change is actively screwing over almost every single person on this planet, whether they know it or not. We just need to keep making sure that people do know that they're getting screwed over, along with all their loved ones, and who's doing it.

Spite and righteous anger will honestly do a lot of the rest.

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[black-and-yellow]

[saphushia]

|| part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 coming soon... ||

the update!! is finally!! done!!! holy shit i'm so glad i can finally post this aubdskjg. it was so fun seeing everyone guess what ace was gonna do after the last part! turns out, he can be silly AND pissed! who knew he was so multitalented~ i do wonder though- with the abilities they had when they were 17, who would win in a fight... >:3c

if you're wondering why this update took so much longer to come out than the last one, well... i got halfway through making it and then scrapped everything and started over completely... ah eto... bleh >v<

if you're curious what the initial version looked like, or want to see the pages without speech bubbles, they're both below the cut ^-^

so! first off! the scrapped pages:

the reason that i scrapped it is because... well. it doesn't flow well at all. i tried too hard to cram it to 4 pages which resulted in both the layout and the story flow feeling cramped. for the most part both versions cover the exact same beats but with the dialogue and timing/spacing tweaked. compare page 1 here to the first 2 pages in the final- it's the same exact scene but the final has way more impact because the larger panels give a 'pause' at emotional beats (such as ace's realization) that lets them sink in

my only regret is that i had to scrap sabo's expression in the first panel of page 2 aubsdkjfgb.

here's all the pages textless now ^-^

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

Man, this pisses me off so bad. If you're a woman who relates more to males than other women, it's because you've decided to focus more on how you're different from other women rather than how you're like them. You will literally never have more in common with males, and males do not feel the same way about you. These cute little posts that you write about how you love males more than your fellow women? They do not write the same thing about you. They hate and mock you constantly. Anyone remember "Cis women need to shut up"

"As a cis woman, I agree"

"You need to shut up, specifically"

?

Yea, that's how they feel about you and your solidarity.

The difference between lesbians and trans women in female spaces is the fact that lesbians do not have high rates of violence. There is no group of women that outclass men in terms of violent tendencies. Trans women retain the rates of male violence that regular men do. I'm not saying you have to treat trans women like they're all violent beasts, but if you can't see why female people would be uncomfortable with male people in their spaces, you're either naive or genuinely unsympathetic towards the very real fear that women have of being subjected to male violence. You can't say trans women and lesbians are similar because, unlike males, there is no statistical evidence that lesbians are highly likely to take advantage of a woman. If it turned out that 98% of rapes were committed by lesbians, I would 1000% understand why straight women don't fucking want to be around me. Have some fucking empathy, holy fucking shit. Even if you are completely on board with trans women being in female spaces, at LEAST acknowledge that it makes sense for women to be concerned about who is allowed in their spaces. It's crazy how I could tell someone I have a fear of dogs because one bit me when I was a kid, and they'd put their sweet pooch up, but God forbid a woman be cautious around a demographic who commit 90% of all violent crime. Oh no. That woman is suddenly a terf bitch.

I have nothing in common with trans women. I don't care how much pain they have experienced. We are not the same. When I was twelve, I cried and I cried as I put my palms together to pray to a God I hoped would be able to take away my homosexuality. I didn't even grow up in a particularly homophobic family. Both of my parents were accepting of me, but I still sat in the dark of my room, tears streaming down my face, as I prayed to have my sexuality changed.

Two years later, one of my friends made a joke about me dressing to impress my crush. She said my crushes name---a feminine name. A girl sitting in earshot heard her, turned to me, and asked me with disgust if I was gay. I said no without even thinking about it. It absolutely did not help that we were in a locker room with other girls. I was aware of my sexuality by that point, but I was 14 and unable to hold my own against a girl looking at me like THAT. For a few weeks after that, that girl made comments about how she was "watching me".

I know pain, I know discomfort, I know what it's like to feel predatory. Seeing feminine women, especially if they're white, makes me feel like an alien. I look at them and think "how are we so different? I see none of myself in you."

Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes we're not similar at all. But guess what? That doesn't mean I'm similar to a straight male. Fucking hell, sometimes I'm not similar to other lesbians. That's completely normal. I think OP needs to read better work by cishet women. If you think that there is not a single piece of cishet female writing that can move you more than something written by a male, you're not looking in the right places at all. I don't understand why some LB women seem to think that the very act of someone being a straight woman makes them incapable of relatability. Of course it makes sense for you to be cautious. Lesbians deal with a lot of alienation and predatory feelings, but if the very ACT of a woman being cis and straight makes you feel like she has absolutely nothing in common with you...? The issue lies with you. YOU are the one othering THEM. Not the other way around. You're the one who has decided that a few cis straight women othering you means that they ALL will so you'd better beat them to the punch. You're the one who has decided that your relationship to womanhood is so astronomically different from straight women that nothing they say speaks to you. That's INSANE. Do you realize how much you have to alienate yourself from womanhood to feel more relatability with a male person than a female one? Idk how to tell you this, but it is highly probable that the most cis, most het woman you have ever met has had a period. It's highly likely she's been harassed by a man. It's highly likely she's been made to feel inferior by way of being born female. No, they can't relate to the experience of being a lesbian who is made to feel predatory for no reason, but to say that nothing a cis het woman says/experiences can move you at all? Nothing they say can make you feel like your experience with womanhood and hers are similar? Do you realize how you sound? "Trans women have been harassed by men and made to feel inferior, too!!" Okay! So you should be able to relate to cis women in the way you do trans women, right?

I told my discord server that I was nervous about my future roommates. I showed them photos and someone said "all this tells me is that they're feminine and white" and I literally think about that all of the time. I was projecting. I was so scared that these white, feminine, probably straight women were going to judge me for being a black lesbian that I didn't even realize that I was the one violently judging them based off of nothing but their skin color and their femininity. I knew nothing about them. I STILL know nothing about them. I've barely spoken to them. But already I had labeled them as unrelatable judgemental women because of how they looked. Hold on. Wasn't I the one afraid of them judging ME? How could I be so afraid of them judging me for being a black lesbian when I was the one judging them already? What sense does that make?

You guys are so busy writing off cis straight women as unrelatable bigots that you've failed to see that you're the one who is extremely prejudiced against them. And I absolutely fucking know someone is gonna read this and say "well, you can't say that all trans women have male violence patterns and dahdahdahdah" and it's like. But YOU can say that cis straight women are so unbelievably different from lesbian women that you'd rather say you're more similar to a straight up fucking male???

I'm not saying it's not a little jarring to see women who are so different from me. I'm not saying I haven't been burned before and there's no reason for me (or other lesbians) to be cautious. But I will literally ALWAYS have more in common with cishet women than I ever will a man pretending to be a woman.

One time I had a professor. She was on the older side (I'd say 40's) and white. Not the type of person I'd think I'd click well with. She was straight and married with children. One day we talked after class, and the only thing that ended our conversation was the fact she had an event she had to go to. We would've talked longer if not for that. She emailed me a little while later to tell me that she enjoyed our chat. After that, she actually hugged me on two occasions. You wouldn't think we'd have common ground. An older, straight, married white mother and a young black lesbian. Both of us are "cis" but I can tell you I relate to her much better than I ever could someone born male.

I once had a personal trainer who was a feminine woman. She had acrylic nails and everything. One time she said that she couldn't hug her male friends anymore because she had a boyfriend (he wasn't the one enforcing that rule. That was something she personally felt). Also not someone I thought I'd click well with. But we did. One time we had a really productive discussion that was actually derived from the conversation with my professor. I felt very close to her in that moment. Our conversation came to a close because she had another client, but I still think about that convo.

There have been so many fucking times where I thought "this woman is not like me. Look at her." But what I realized was that I was the judgmental one. I was the one deciding we were different, not her. I was the one writing her off. I was the one convinced we had nothing in common.

I am BEGGING you not to alienate your fellow women. There are no inherent traits that make you unable to relate to other women. No amount of whiteness or cisness or straightness can make a woman completely unreachable. I am NOT talking about political parties or views so don't fucking try me with that shit. Obviously that puts a wedge between people, but someone simply being born cis and het does not make them alien from you. For God's sake, look at the fucking MeToo movement. Women from all fucking backgrounds who share an experience that an unfortunate amount of women go through. Women from all different races, sexualities, etc. who came together to talk about how they've been subjected to sexual violence. Ellen degeneres was one of them. How does that fit into your "lesbians and cishet women cannot relate to each other" spiel?

OP's post has 130k notes and it makes me fucking sick. Holy crap y'all, we need more solidarity than this. Other women are not your enemy. I'm begging you to reconsider your approach to women who are different than you. You are missing out on people who can love and support you in a way that literally no male can. You are depriving yourself. Just because a few cishet women in the past alienated you, does not mean that you have to continue their legacy. Let it go. Everyone on earth can see you embracing your hatred of women, and you wonder why your fellow women never hug you? They fucking can't! Put your hatred down and make space for the love that comes with realizing that you absolutely are like other girls!

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[dismas-n-dismay]

Over and Over - Rio Romeo ur not telling me she didnt think of the first time she met falin and her beauty as she recreated her in that same image of purity and kindness, piece by piece get out of here

[musical-chick-13]

This is the only thing I'm going to say about the election until it's over:

Anyone who did not vote for Harris or who attempted to dissuade people from voting for Harris, you are indirectly responsible for whatever shit Donald Trump does if he gets elected. That blood is primarily on his hands, yes. But it is also on yours. I hope you can live with that because I sure as hell wouldn't be able to.

[of-time-and-space-itself]

YIPPIE! We Unlocked The Snatcher DLC, LET'S GO!

The best way that I can describe this man in this AU is like.....mostly deadpan, with an occasional snarky quip, he kinda just rolls with the flow at this point. He's very much past his prime, and is now just very calmly sitting in the passenger seat while Hat kid rams her scooter into the nearest cement wall.

He is the only real sane voice of reason in the entire kingdom, Which is why Hat always bothers him with all her problems.

Something I can mention w/o having to be vague is the fact that, - yes, in this universe dad snatcher is a thing. It NEVER comes up in the main story, mostly because I decided I wanted it to be a side thing entirely(backstory for the two kingdoms). Hat kid isn't actually aware of this until post-plot, which is when their relationship really starts to blossom.

In the meantime, he's just her super secret lawyer that nobody really knows about.