#pay wall all of it

[kermdoeswriting]

The worst jobs ever lead to 0 Student debt

Have you ever been so broke that you've resorted to gigs that normally would make you seem like a minor villains goon?

Danny has.

Being practically broke, drowning in constant student debt, college student has led to some of the weirdest side gigs Danny has ever done. He can at the very least confirm that as he continues his degree in Astrophysics at MIT.

But in all honesty, he's not very picky or upset about how weird they are. Danny would rather do something strange once, then continue drowning in debt the way he was currently.

Student debt was not a joke.

And even if it were, it wasn't a very funny one, considering he himself was just scraping by on his two front teeth due to them.

Either way, the point was Danny's done practically everything in Gotham possible just to make some small bits of cash here and there. Danny only ever goes to Gotham for the sake of an extra ectoplasm boost on top of the fact it has the most jobs out of any city possible due to the crime rate.

He's been a temporary goon and a guard to several different warehouses throughout Gotham & New York City (most times there isn't even anyone or anything in them but a jobs a job). He's been in charge of covering a front temporarily for what looks like fake companies (nothing to do with drug dealing or the mob for some reason, he usually tries to stay clear of those offers).

He also was a tester for some of Mr. Nygma's traps being hired for the sheer fact that he couldn't really die and therefore could test several of Mr.Nygma's traps at once.

He took a temp job to help feed Dr.Quinzel's pet hyenas when she was in Arkham for awhile as well as pet sit. That one was his favorite honestly, Lou and Bud were sweethearts despite the carnage thing.

He recently had even been a personal insta-cart driver for a certain Penguin mob-boss strangely enough (until the guy got sent back to Arkham that is).

Danny really isn't picky when it comes to jobs unless it was just something mostly immoral and just insane, like drug dealing and/or murder & world or several life ending situations or just involved with someone like the Joker.

It's gotten to a point that the average Gotham goon usually recognizes him when he passes by during a job visit. They tended to recommend him a new job when they saw him, knowing he was just as eager as they were in this economy.

Which is how he ended up here, sitting in an empty warehouse yet again for possibly another hour before he could leave and get paid. Danny was sat on the floor doing his advanced calc homework and trying not to scream about it as he sat there.

It was something he did when the nights were slower honestly. The night was ruined quickly after that though when the glass shattered above him and scattered all over his homework and the rest of the ground.

Danny only sighed and mourned the possible money he'd be losing to that mess before shaking the glass off of him and his papers. He didn't bother looking up at his possible attacker.

"You have got to be fuckin kidding me. Not again, Kid."

Only then does Danny look up to see who broke the window. Red Hood sounds exasperated despite the mask covering all of his real voice with a mechanical voice changer. Besides him was Nightwing who seemed just as disappointed as his partner was while putting his escrima sticks behind his back.

"Can I help you Red Pill, Blue Pill?"

That made Red Hood snort while Nightwing just sighed into his hands and dragged them down his face before responding.

"Kid, what are you doing in he- Is that homework???"

Nightwing walked closer almost sounding offended as he looked down at the mess of Danny's math that he was going to have to redo before turning in tomorrow. The thought of recopying everything made him feel angry all over again.

"The one you guys wrecked by getting glass all over it? Yes," Danny leaned back into his plastic chair provided by the Goonion. "Thanks for that by the way, I'm going to have to recopy everything before class tomorrow."

"That wouldn't be a problem if you just got a normal part-time job like a normal young adult." Red Hood snorted as Nightwings slight lecture and it made Danny roll his eyes at the both of them as he sat up.

As if he hadn't tried that route already. In between his space museum internship during the day and his thousands of classes every week, he didn't exactly fit a lot of younger adult jobs schedule.

"Do you know any nearby normal adult jobs that are hiring a current university student with millions in debt and a internship schedule that only allows them to work at night?" Danny snapped back which made Red Hood start to snort and laugh again at Nightwings expression.

"Well..." Nightwing at the very least had the decency to look sheepish as if he had thought about it genuinely and couldn't think of a thing.

"Thought so." Danny slumped against the chair again, before shutting his eyes. He waved them away as he sat back, already mentally preparing himself for another all nighter for the sake of recopying his papers.

"If thats all, I'll see you next time I get a fake listing or bad job that you guys have a tendency to break into. Go away."

Nightwing only sighed again before Danny heard his grappling hook sound off back through the broken window into the night. Red Hood only chuckled one last time before ruffling his hair.

"See you, Kid. Make sure you try to sleep before class"

Danny just huffed at him and waved him off again as Red Hood shot his grappling hook off into the night and joined Nightwing. With a sigh, Danny sat up again and grabbed his nearby backpack filled with scrap paper.

Time to restart the equation all over again.

______________________________________________________________

Basically Danny needs money to keep going to MIT so he continuously decides to take up jobs for hire in Gotham (and other places but mostly Gotham), which lead to him breaking a lot of laws for another cash grab.

Meanwhile, the Batfam is very concerned that they keep meeting this meta young adult (who doesn't even live in Gotham!!) who seems to continuously be running through villain placed ad offers like water to get cash.

How desperate for cash is this guy????

[so-very-small]

realistically, i think climbing around inside of a giant’s walls would be scary + dangerous. like obviously less so once other borrowers cleared paths and all, but the initial exploration? i would REFUSE to do that. like, bugs, fiberglass, no light, iffy stability, there’s so many things that could go wrong. knowing me, they would go wrong. if i was a tiny i’d live outside in an old tea pot and look at wall-dwelling borrowers with the type of awe i typically reserve only for underwater cave divers

[shadamypositivity]

so Amy convinced Shadow to join them, oh oh I'm sick I have to lie down he's so down bad for her

[ganondoodle]

theres people that build the entire map of botw in fucking minecraft and im sitting here for the 100th time within less than a year crying bc i cant draw a line how i want

[un-till-the-end]

The True Face Deconstruction (1/2)

I'm seeing a lot of people jump to Mizi's defense after the latest comic (good), but then continue to criticize the other characters at face value. Everyone is acting out of character, and the entire comic contradicts all the existing lore we have so far.

I'm skeptical these are actual memories. People recognize how her perception of herself is distorted but don't seem to be considering that her perception of others is distorted as well.

We're not seeing the true face of herself or any of the other characters, but rather her resentment toward everyone including herself. The comic makes sense as a mental breakdown and her warping reality to both blame and pity herself. It makes no sense to be taken as fact on any level.

Sua would not act like this. Mizi would not act like this. Till would not act like this. There's a difference between revealing a darker side to characters and completely contradicting who the characters are.

Before jumping in, I will point out there are many fascinating themes present in this: the burden of being loved because she has what others do not; the extent to which she recognizes the suffering of those around her; how everyone enabling her as their form of "love" led to this intense suffering; her feelings toward her situation and everyone retroactively; etc. I'll leave that analysis to those more versed in Mizi's character.

The comic starts where we left off: Mizi despairing at the deaths of all her friends.

The first "event" to happen is Sua leaning down next to her, asking if she finds it regrettable and describing her as "cunning." This seems to be her survivor's guilt accusing her of letting this happen and tells us right from the start that this is all happening in Mizi's mind.

The next event is an unknown boy asking her if she and Till are an item.

His uncanny resemblance to Luka could mean he's a representation of her experience in Round 5. He could be a culmination of all the men who have confessed to Mizi before (though it was Sua being confessed to, not Mizi). He could be a real person, and this is a conversation that actually happened. I have no idea. I do not think that slap actually happened though, because of everyone's underwhelming response.

The segyein teachers closely watch the children, record events happening, and report back to each child's guardian. The art book confirms the flowers have cameras in them (pg. 74), leaving the children with little to no privacy.

It doesn't show on the Field Day page available on Twitter or the Patreon, but Shine has signed every single one of Mizi's notes.

Till's entries show us that any children who act out are reprimanded and recommended regular education at home. The segyein teachers promise to do their best to prevent future incidents. In regards to Till getting into a fight with Ivan, it's written "Ivan has generously forgiven him" suggesting the segyein teachers intervene and facilitate the aftermath.

By extension, the unknown boy's tirade could not have happened without intervention either. These are Mizi's own thoughts about herself.

Now we get to Sua. Sua was possessive of Mizi in subtle and unobtrusive ways. She didn't like others being around her and would get jealous when Mizi was equally kind to everyone.

She wouldn't have just brushed over someone slapping Mizi.

She is also nothing but affectionate with Mizi in every official art we see of them together. There's too many to even list. If you're splitting hairs, this is the only image I noticed that could be construed otherwise, and here Mizi is resting on her shoulder. Sua's just not happy in whatever she's thinking about.

Sua harbored intense guilt for keeping Mizi in the dark:

In Heart, she calls the "dream [she holds ...] filthy as hell." We can infer that is most likely referring to these feelings.

Sua is described as a character who is "fragile" and "soft-hearted". She "kept her feelings tightly hidden" and only confided in her sister and Mizi. Mizi considered "her heart [...] cleaner and finer than any other friend".

Sua was always focused on Mizi who allowed her to turn a blind eye to the cruel facts of their world. It was her only way of survival (pg 41). It was her only escape (pg 44). She just wanted to stay in the happy moments with Mizi (pg 39).

Sua didn't reveal her emotions to the very end. She never would have hinted at anything.

She "doesn't even have the courage to blame others or express herself." Sua wouldn't have said "I told you so" or shown resentment toward Mizi. She didn't resent Mizi, if anything Mizi resents her.

She has every right to. Sua led Mizi to dream of and believe in a happy ending. She left Mizi completely unprepared for her death (pg 44).

Vivinos says Mizi "is still like a child. She can't control her emotions very well, and she has trouble dealing with many of the events she has to face." She was left confused and became defensive (pg 143).

A hallmark of Mizi's character is her pureness of heart. She is a character who is the same on the outside and inside (pg. 29). Her enthusiasm and naivety prior to Round 1 are both genuine. Even the segyein audience was "struck [...] with a sense of sincerity" during My Clematis.

Part 2

[pseudophan]

extremely important question do any buffy fans here actually like angel (the series not the character) because i swear all i see lately is people saying it sucks and they couldn't get through it and it's like you can't ALL be that wrong

[k1d-khaot1c]

how dare ao3 go down while i should be paying attention in class. my stories :(((

[kneelingshadowsalome]

I imagine that when König doesn't eat enough (especially considering how massive he is, that 6'10 giant in camo.) and when the colder seasons roll around he's all sleepy and slow (think, Wall-E before getting his solar charge.) bit once he get enough food and is warm enough it's like he slowly comes alive and is able to do more and get stuff done.

Yes have you seen that slutty little waist and that itty bitty tummy?? Guy has crazy fast metabolism and stands about 10 feet tall so he needs a lot of food and also a pair of woolen socks and mittens... He has poor blood flow in his feet and hands and if he eats a lot all the blood goes to his stomach. Poor thing 💔

Maybe that’s why he’s so grumpy and therefore -> trigger happy, König is always underfed and cold climates make him look like a huge, stiff, walking icicle. His skin could be blazing like a furnace and still he claims he’s cold, pulls you closer for snuggles and won’t say no to an extra blanket. When his cold shins and feet meet yours, you shriek :( Even worse are the icy fingers that steal their way under your shirt...

[hoeswater]

hey alan mandel and jonathan williams come over here a minute i just wanna talk

[sossolf]

Bad thoughts

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Everything about the battle at yokohama was Amazing, I love all of your thoughts and world building in pez dispenser. If you have time (and feel like it), could you explain ‘this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards’. (i was ENRAPTURED by your hero economic analysis)

ps. when i saw in the tags about how the class just. broke down. and asked for their parents, it was like sucker punch to the face, i couldn’t imagine how the actual heroes felt when they saw them. if the public saw that side of class 2a, would they lay off? probably not, but damn. your world building and ideas are just. so good

So my decision about Idaten and its subculture actually hinges on one question about canon: Why did Stain go after Tensei?

Stain was all about attacking people who had committed some kind of perceived failing of heroics. But Tensei seems to be legitimately above the board. He didn’t seem to engage too heavily in the consumerist culture around heroics. He did good work. He was a good hero. So what about him made Stain decide to go after him?

I didn’t want it to be an “IDK he thinks all heroes but all might is fake” thing because 1) that cheapens the character and 2) it doesn’t match what canon shows. Don’t get me wrong, he was a lunatic who thought he needed to kill a fucking kid over his extremist ideals, but he let Izuku go the second Izuku established he conformed to his moral system.

Stain kills when he perceives a reason to. That doesn’t mean he’s always right. But he needs an excuse first.

I decided that there was one detail about Idaten that would be his most likely motive: the number of sidekicks he had.

Tensei is canonically taking up his parents’ mantle. This is a family business he’s heavily suited to and excels at. He has working beneath him a much higher than average number of sidekicks. And we know from canon that he’s not the type to take advantage of his team. Fuck, he seems to emphasize taking care of his team and working together above all else.

But we know that from canon. Stain doesn’t. What he sees, from the outside, is a young hero who took over his parents’ agency and is bolstering his own career on the backs of his sidekicks, which is what so many heroes were doing at that time.

Because stain is an extremist. He doesn’t once consider that maybe Tensei is the exception to the rule. He didn’t think to ask the sidekicks who he was, in a way, taking action on behalf of what they thought of Tensei.

Which is consistent with his character. It took him less than five minutes to decide “yeah I need to put down this grief stricken fifteen year old boy” do you????

Iida becomes the kind of hero that meets his ideals. Stain would have killed him the first time Iida gave him a reason. He’s shown to not always be right or do due diligence to determine if someone is even consistent with his crazy fucking moral system. He was just wrong when he went after Tensei.

And a big reason why he was wrong is because Idaten, as a culture, is far from the typical agency experience. It’s just that no one knows this, because Idaten is shown to be all about maintain a strong and confident facade. It’s not releasing its fucking employment contracts. The public only gets the calm, in control demeanor of the team. It doesn’t see how the sausage is made.

Do you know that millionaire ceo who realized his employees lives sucked and voluntarily took a huge pay cut so that way he could raise all of their salaries to a huge degree and the company as a whole got much, much better because the workers cared about it now and they made more profits and his salary eventually increased too as the company improved and all of his employees loved him? And he published the results thinking maybe other ceos would follow them after it was proven to make their companies more successful? And literally not one single one of them did?

Yeah that’s Idaten.

We talked in the earlier post about how heroics culture, for the most part, is abusive and built on the backs of sidekicks who are being widely taken advantage of. Idaten just… isn’t. Their compensation is incredibly fair and above board. People get credited for busts based on who was in charge of that particular bust or went above and beyond. They genuinely take care of their team, which is consistent with how Tensei seems to treat his team in canon.

For the most part, the sidekicks don’t want to even leave Idaten and become big name heroes themselves. They are all so genuinely happy and fulfilled that most of them happily spend their whole career as a sidekick.

But that’s the exception, and not the rule. And from the outside, Stain saw another sidekick farm propping up a pretend hero.

Which is one of the reasons why all of the Idaten sidekicks got together to hunt him down like a sick dog when he escaped. Tensei was babygirl to them and Stain hurt babygirl. He besmirched babygirl’s name over something he didn’t even do. Tensei didn’t even coordinate that mission the sidekicks made a group chat without him and went out to kick that fucking guy’s ass.

Idaten is a model of what heroics could be if it wasn’t focused on self profit and promotion. It made sacrifices to be this way. But it resulted in a team of excellent heroes who are all able to focus on protecting society without going home and feeling like they got fucked.

Stain has this mental image of heroes who should be helpful and good and save everyone without any personal incentive. But when you’re breaking your fucking back and going home to a shit apartment while your boss does 3 hours of work per day and has five houses, you start to ask yourself why you have to fucked for society to be safe. The sidekicks’ “greed” took the blame for the meltdown with Tartarus, but really, people should have been pointing fingers at every single agency head who refused to treat them fairly.

Idaten is this sparkling model of a business that is incredibly successful because the company heads are actually fair and good. They are the exception. And they are operating within a system where many of the other agencies are treating their talent like disposable cogs in a machine. The system needs to be regulated to force everyone else to act like Idaten—Idaten’s independent success is not a sign that the system works on its own.

As to your second question—no. The world saw little snapshots of Class 2A melting down in the aftermath and it got traded around like every other moment. Someone took a picture of the moment I talked about with Iida just sitting on the curb and crying when his brother’s men came to relieve him of command, and it was just another famous picture of many on the internet do that incident.

It was just—a horrifically public event. All of the kids had to be hospitalized in the aftermath. The world knew that. Izuku took a hit during his big fight with Mirio against the major villain team. He got stabbed, and it was poisoned. He knew from the villain’s history that the poison they produced was slow acting, though, so he quietly took Todoroki aside, had him cauterize the wound, and kept fighting until more heroes came. There’s a fuck ton of photos of him lying down on the sidewalk with his head in Todoroki’s lap in terrible shape waiting for the ambulance to come get him. And the world took that as a “Look At How Strong He Is, All Might Reborn, He Fought All Night With That Terrible Wound And He Still Prevailed” not “wow, that actual child had to fight for hours through the night not knowing if he’d live long enough to make it to a hospital.” Which is like. What happened. Izuku didn’t tell anyone but Todoroki that he took the hit. They both knew that if he didn’t get the antidote in time, he was dead. And they also both knew that there was no way he was going to be able to have even a shot at a hospital until morning, so they just had to keep going.

The world also took that as fuel for the ongoing ship war around Izuku and Todoroki, that they are only marginally aware of. Which like. Would not be comforting, that that’s what they took from a picture where both of them were legitimately afraid that Izuku was going to die.

The world knew they were young. They knew they were a bunch of amazing kids who had done something spectacular. To a lesser extent, they knew that those kids struggled in the aftermath. But that was never going to save them from the media machine. The fact that this fell to kids who visibly struggled in the aftermath was picked apart and used as a bat to hit opponents with in the debates that followed.

The picture of Iida crying on the curb with his brother’s sidekicks around him is considered one of the seminal photos documenting modern Japan’s heroics. It is the kind of thing that is probably going to end up in a textbook down the line.

Iida hates that photo. He hates that he had one moment of vulnerability in the aftermath when he managed to keep it together the entire rest of the event, and people still pass it around like a trading card. He had worked so, so hard not to lose it, and right when he thought it was safe to, it got posted on the internet.

When Iida sat on the curb and started crying, he was barely standing. He was injured himself. Momo had a tremendous fight that left her in terrible shape, and everyone was afraid that she was not going to make it. Izuku had just revealed, by the way, guys, This Happened, and now everyone was afraid he wasn’t going to make it. Bakugou was like two days out of the medically induced coma Uraraka put him in when this happened and apparently the doctor’s warnings that he could only be on light work was a hard requirement because he was completely non responsive for the since the fighting stopped and now everyone was afraid he wasn’t going to make it. The entire class was concussed, exhausted, and wanted their parents.

And he just really, really wanted his brother. He wanted his big brother to come in as the hero he had always admired, sit down with him, and tell him it was over. That he did good, and he could rest now. His brother’s sidekicks were the closest second available to him.

That picture made Iida feel like he had failed. He hadn’t held it together, and he hadn’t had the same strong facade as his brother always did. His anguish became another thing for the world to chew on. And that was true for all of those kids at that fight.

[lotus-pear]

GUYS GUYS JUST HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE i propose skk hair color swap👹👹👹 just imagine how much more powerful chuuya would be w dark brown hair…… man would be the stereotypical mafia boss character he would look so good omfg and dazai alr gets bullied so what’s making him a ginger gonna change lmao. but like does this make sense?????????????? i can visualize this w perfect clarity and idk if that’s a good thing or not

[mosaic-briar]

my hot take is people who fall too black and white on the discourse of ethics in fan fiction or queer media actually just aren't active readers

or like have no honest sense of what's read, how often, the politics of editing (watch American Fiction (2023)!!!!!!!), or like what the general discourse is between writers, distributors, or types of readers. like they dont read, they just parrot talking points in discourse they want to be associated with.

imo "proshipper" , "antishipper", "problematic ship" kinda sucks for effective communication. It sounds like you dislike people who engage in the act of shipping (an already established discourse) and it just makes the thing you're mad about harder to address. im begging you to say racism. say pedophilia. say abuse is romantized because like no "ship" exists with one unified interpretation. like that is just not how that word works. you can like just say fuck a ship but like using the characters of a ship as shorthand for the bad thing just is ineffective communication. I feel like shit that is dark porn should be labeled as such kept in dead dove spaces because everyone should be able to utilize common sense about mainstream spaces. instead people dont even know if the thing they are writing off in the ship is implied, canon, just common in the space because to learn that you'd need to go to the ship tag.

You see my point like I dont think anyone who does this is silly, I think it was worth a try and ppl can curate their spaces however they want I just think its okay to say hmm this doesnt work. The obstacle is the way, that's never gonna let you down. I think people dont give themselves enough power to change the things they need to change in their creative space. Like people used to invent new types of ship names and styles to implicate all sorts of things. Make up a smart one that always implies siblings or whatever, so you can never be misunderstood. "sibship" or a way of blending names you think communicates an idea. I think the citrus scale is still useful for telling people tone, not just rating.

I think there is a smarter way for all the good and reasonable people who just want to feel safe online to establish their boundaries than by using show and character names as labels. I dont see any downsides to always naming the evil thing by its name because calling something racist should demand its response is more serious than just the right to a positive fandom experience. racism, and other serious social ills should not be hidden behind fandom words they should speak over them. imo.

anyway I could pick up a book from any romance section, mystery section, thriller section, or so on and find two characters that end up together despite the stalking and the eye fucking and that time he gas lite her mom for years and turned out to be her dad. idk I have eaten through so many writers who have like 18 books of just balls to the walls motifs over and over again. some of us commute on the bus ya know.

hey did you know that in the real novels, there are four, for the Hannibal Lecture series that Clarice Starling and Hannibal end up together. That's the real ending the movies always change. Everything else is the same, he kills and munches his way right into her heart. He fucks her by the fireplace while a memory of her dad says its totally cool and then they get plastic surgery and move to Europe. have a good day.

[ravenofsilver]

Sometimes I see posts wondering if Patroclus and Hyacinthus would be friends in the afterlife.

And I want to assure you that no. They would absolutely not be. Why would Patroclus and Achilles be fond of one of the best-beloved of Apollo, the god who played a most direct hand in both their deaths?

Don’t get me wrong I see the parallels. But still absolutely not.

I do think Hyacinthus chills with Adonis. In some myths, Apollo is listed as one of Adonis’ lovers. I think out of the three, Apollo would have been the one to give that mortal the most freedom, the most room to breathe.

Similarly, in his courtship of Hyacinthus, Apollo took him to new places and taught him new things.

I think if there is anyone who could really appreciate what this means, it would be the two of them. So. Adonis and Hyacinthus are friends in death. But Patroclus and Hyacinthus would absolutely throw hands because they’re both slightly unhinged and very much in love.

[whirliko]

if ur posting early access cc, the very least you should do is tag it correctly

[star-kovs]

the bellamy drawing in clarke’s head is driving me crazy because she also had a drawing of lexa there as in the two loves of her life and still between him having that much of an impact in her head and the way he fought for her and brought her back with the cpr and they still never got together has me sick