#sizable one this time

[chimerahyperfix]

The spot of endless night-time in the sky mocks you. It chases it's way to the House through the sky like a snake approaching its prey. Because that's what the King is; a predator coming to feast on the weak. It's the sign of the end. The end you can't seem to stop. A big old "crab you" for even thinking of trying.

You try anyway. Try to climb the mountain with your bare hands. Push the boulder up the hill. You tackle the situation from all angles, but nothing works. You've worn yourself thin throwing yourself at the equation, and it's killing you. Literally.

It's stopped being as painful, which sends alarms ringing through your brain. Your nerves are frying. Dying. Being frozen in time has thawed to the sensation of pins and needles instead of being bone-chilling. Caustic liquids don't hurt to chug down as much. You can phase out of thinking when the King attacks you. You can simply turn your thoughts off and move through the day like a phantom. It concerns you and you just don't care at the same time.

Your blood sings and your voice rots and you go and go and go, pushing yourself thin until you are a walking corpse.

It's just you, though. One for many. You have you have you have you have to remember that. Remember that. Just you just one, saving everyone else. Just you. No one else will remember this.

No one else will remember this.

You sit in the big room with the big window and all the dot charts. You don't remember what it's called-- did you ever know? Who cares? It's not important right now. Sit on the floor and look out the window like a child looking over the ocean.

The King, you can see him now. His tall, dark shadow appearing over the horizon, lit by the moon. His armor shimmers like the stars he seems to love so much. [Because that's what they are, right? Is that the correct term? Stars? You're not sure. There's a torn page in your mind where it should be.]

Just seeing him drives you up a wall. Echoes of pain from how he's killed you run through your body, even though you know its imagined. Mashed to gore painted on the walls screaming howling make it stop make it stop. You don't care anymore. He can come, and he'll kill you. Or you'll kill him! Eventually! It has to happen!

Maybe he can feel your stare. It looks, to you, like he looks up just a little bit, to look in your direction. You, alone, sitting behind a giant window under a shaded masterpiece, clashing sky of sun and moon and all his stupid stars. [Stars feels like the right term, it feels nice in your mouth, but you're not sure. You don't know, if it's right or wrong or if you've just crabbing made something up to describe simple spots in the sky.]

You want to kill him. You want to make sure no one ever has to hear his stupid wails again, or fight his monsters, or be frozen in time or look at his stupid crabbing sky ever again. Make that armor of his a cradle, a grave, a casket or a cage, it doesn't matter, you're going to bury him in it. Trap him six feet under like time has trapped you, a squirming angry animal of a thing behind bars of a birdcage.

No one will find you here. That's fine. The other housemaidens have started to avoid you, because you've become an angry little thing overnight. You don’t bother Mirabelle and some loops you flat out avoid Euphrasie, because they shouldn't have to see you like this, clinging to what was you from over a hundred today's ago. You don't want to worry the two of them, overstep a boundary you can't remember or something, because you've done this all for them and the consequences of your capital-C Change can come later when the King is gone and you don't have to do today over.

For now, you will wait. This loop probably won't be the one because, realistically, when will it be? When will you win? Are you going to be trapped here forever, doomed to repeat the same day over and over in a cage made of craft and wishes and pure spite?

You just wanted to help. Look where that got you. Over and over, forever.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

(x) David - bisexual with a strong female lean. but he describes himself as “straight but also not opposed to any random impulses that may arise”

I kind of overlooked this for a very long time admittedly, as I assume a lot of people did because I rarely appear to see this discussed in depth minus one, but like. I know this is an Andrew Garfield quote, but the actual prospect of David being fifteen feet in the closet makes so much sense. He is an incredibly notable figure in the universe of DRDT, his whole character is basically built upon that fact. Something else that's pretty obvious is that David is someone who cares a lot about how he's perceived by others. He works hard to make himself as palatable and uncontroversial as possible to other people. It's no wonder that he would hide and/or sugarcoat his attraction to men when describing his sexuality to the public, or even begin repressing it himself. And not only that, but it makes the inappropriate way he responded to Nico being forcefully outed make so much more sense

(x) David: So then, revealing your secret was a good thing, right? That way, you won’t have to be misgendered anymore. Nico: … Nico: I wasn’t ready. David: This is definitely an improvement. It’s good for everyone to be open with their secrets.

Like no wonder this man cannot be trusted to handle queer identity in a respectful way, he's repressing his own so far that it's going to come out of his ass.

[wutheringmights]

can't believe i made a big point about getting chapters done on a monthly basis now to only have 600 words written for this newest chapter 😬

[roseverdict]

don't cry. pour a small-seeming serving of any pasta noodle you'd like in a deep microwave-safe bowl, just barely cover the noodles with water, microwave for roughly 2 minutes 30 seconds, stir, microwave for 2 more minutes, carefully drain the pasta water from the pasta, liberally mix shredded non-mozzarella cheese into the hot noodles, and pour small amounts of milk in (maaaybe a school milk carton's worth or two at most) to taste and to make it creamier, okay?

[nugatorysheep]

My nuanced and totally unbiased ranking of SU characters

Also the link to do it yourself

[romance-rambles]

would just like to confess my undying love for this particular shot of ayn

[bookwyrminspiration]

words cannot describe the utter loathing I have for food and everything to do with it

[jankillbride]

There is something to be said about the fact that half the time, marginalized characters end up being the "normal" ones in fanon when that is so clearly not the case.

[fishtank32]

currently trying to avoid becoming obsessed w dc comics. if you see me rbing anything dc related please just send ur thoughts and prayers

[xcziel]

if anyone has recs for 21+ bldrama, kdrama, or (bts-friendly) kpop discord servers that tolerate lurker-types and slow typers i'd appreciate a heads-up

[dogmatik]

Three Seconds.

Rick runs his tongue across his teeth, finds a split above his left canine sluggishly oozing blood. He presses into it, the wound covering his soft pallet with liquid-iron. He used to love the taste of blood, it was exciting, made him see red. That was a long time ago, back when he was with the flesh curtains, doing mostly earth coke in the galactic equivalent of shitty truck stops. Now the taste just pisses him off, reminds him that some nameless waste of carbon actually got a hit in. He can feel a drop of spit and blood plop onto his thigh. He spits and the blood splatters a lurid pink against the concrete floor. He'd wipe his face, but his hands are tied around his back, zip ties of all things dig irritating impressions into the thin skin against his wrist. His knees ache where they're pressed against the floor below him, the cold seeping in through his pant legs and promising a good week of creaking pain if he manages to make it out of this shit hole alive. Fuck, he's too old for this shit.

Rick is pulled very sharply from his thoughts when he hears the door open behind him, followed by strong, steady foot falls and much lighter shuffling ones. He recognizes the later, and his guess is confirmed when Morty stumbles into his line of sight. He doesn't look hurt, his clothes are dirty and there's dust sticking to the tear tracks along his cheeks, but no pain graces his features. Just fear. If it weren't for Morty he'd already be out of here, fucking plastic zip ties were the last thing that would stop The Rick Sanchez. His captor knew that though, and they both knew that the ties were really more of a formality anyway. So yeah, he could've left an hour ago, but with the couple of blows to the side of his head knocking loose his augmentation controls he wasn't convinced he'd find Morty wherever they were keeping him on their ramshackle compound before they decided to take him out back and put the sorry little bastard down.

Speaking of, there's a laser gun pressed snug against the base of Morty's skull. Their kidnapper is a Melvonian, bipedal and mostly humanoid apart from their second set of arms, eyes and various other appendages. Wink. This one is male, about middle aged for his species, his skin tone an admittedly pretty shade of mauve. It's a shame, the guys hot, too bad as soon as he lets his guard down he'll be dead. "Morning Sanchez, I've brought your little buddy. Say Hi little buddy." The man grins, shaking Morty by the bruising grip on his bicep. "Ow, H-hi, grandpa Rick." he winces. "So here's the deal. We've got a really important fight coming up, and that portal tech of yours sure would come in handy." "I don't get involved in interstellar politics, and neither does my badass tech. Bite me." The guy shoves the gun harder against Morty's head, eliciting a squeak of fear and causing his knees to wobble like a new born calf. "Don't interrupt me." Rick rolls his eyes, but stays quiet. For Now.

Rick can see the twitch in one of the mans four eyes, he's still smiling, but he looks angry, a little crazed. Damn, it really is a shame this dude's gotta die. Forgive him for thinking with his dick here, but crazy is pretty much the only type that can keep up with Rick for too long, and the guys got two sets of pecs. Drool. "As I was saying, your tech would help us a lot. Someone from my group has tried and failed to get the machine from you peacefully. Clearly peaceful is not a approach you sway to. Now it's my turn. So here is my ultimatum: Give us a working portal gun and blueprints to build more, or I send a laser through your grandson's head. Simple, no?" He cocks his head to the side, tone light, like he's discussing which restaurant he wants to go to and he's not the perpetrator of a goddamn hostage situation. Morty has been so quiet, eyes trained on Rick. It unnerves him, the genuine panic on his grandson's face. He needs to focus.

Rick's been doing some mental math, trying to figure out how to get through the zip ties and the gun out of this big idiots hand before he pulls the trigger. He can see the safety is on, but he'd recognize a Fentel 16 anywhere, and you can bypass the safety by pressing down the trigger and holding for three seconds. Kinda always struck Rick as defeating the purpose of the safety, but the Fentel series is pretty much exclusively used by criminals, so the company only put a safety on the thing in the first place to get past Galactic Federation manufacturing guidelines. He's not sure he can get to Morty in 3 seconds from here. He needs to think of something, fast. "Listen muscle man, I'm telling you I'm not giving you or your little gang my portal tech. I don't care how righteous you think your cause is, there's a billion other warmongering douchebags in this star system alone who think the exact same thing. I'm not contributing to that." The guys fucking built. Rick isn't short by any means, a cool 6'4" un-slouched, but this guy has at least a foot or so on him. Plus he's pretty sure the dudes forearm is at least the size of his thigh; side note again: Drool. Anyway, he's not sure he can take him in a wrestling match for that gun, especially considering the two extra arms. If Morty reacted quick enough maybe, but the kids little wrists are bound like Ricks are, and he looks scared enough to be nauseous. Rick can't count on him on this one.

"I've been following you a long time, I can tell when you're stalling." Rick can talk a fish out of water on good days, but revolutionary types are a notoriously stubborn breed. He'd know, he was one. Still is, though its been a while since he's been in a fight over anything but his own self-interest. That thought stings just a little. Don't have time for that one, Back in the vault it goes. Rick can see Morty trembling, and can see his chest stuttering when he holds his breath to stop the shakes. It makes Rick's chest hurt a little, like something in there was knocked loose the same time his augmentations were. Rick stops looking at him. "Morty's a shit bargaining chip by the way, Broh. I've got a coupon for a new one from the citadel in my back pocket right now." Rick bares his teeth, smells his own blood on his breath. "Besides, I've been to your pitiful little planet shit for brains, I know your species has a thing about killing kids. You're all too sentimental." Their captor laughs, two of his four eyes squeezed shut in mirth, the other two still diligently trained on Rick "For The Rick Sanchez? I'm willing to make an exception." He grins, double canines glittering blue-white as he switches the safety off and the gun comes alive with a mechanical hum, neon purple lights flicking on incrementally, indicating the charge.

Fuck, there go his three seconds.

[itsalwaysdark]

no sims 5 . guys im gonna

[hussyknee]

Y'all need to stop reblogging from this mess of a blog. They've been posting sympathetically about Gaza while obsessively posting about how the GOP is evil and you have to vote for the Dems to fight them. I was like "okay how are they bending backwards to sniff their own butthole" and now we know. The GOP is supporting Putin to support Hamas to attack Israel to support Netanyahu destablize the democracy of the 75-year-old ethnosupremacist military state and attack Gaza so Biden has to support it and alienate his Democratic voter base for the GOP.

I know political pundits wearing clown hats made of tinfoil are funny but these blogs are genocide apologists that's using the plight of Palestinians to push their own favourite war criminal. It's depraved in every sense of the word. Never forget that tinhats given a platform are extremely dangerous. The fact that Will Wheaton reblogged this should tell you how much influence they already have.

Guess who backs Putin? MAGA.

Our terrorists listen to FOX and regurgitate 'stop the steal'/election denial Russian playbook.

The antisemitism that runs throughout the Right Wing [see: globalists] runs straight to Hamas and Putin.

Putin wants to eliminate Israel, Hamas wants to eliminate Israel. See the pattern?

When US and Israeli democracy is under attack, look to Putin, Hamas, and MAGA as the same hateful team.

[mostly-imagines]

Careless Accidents

jason todd x fem!reader

aka you get hurt and jason’s pissed

warnings: reader’s wrist is accidentally sprained from being grabbed to hard

You could hear scuttling from somewhere else in the garden, an estate more than sizable enough than the game afoot.

You were under the distinct impression though that the bats and birds are playing with you similar to how they would a child. Slower, weaker, and less experienced than the big kids. You weren't complaining though. Because, frankly, it was stressful. They tend to operate more like they’re in a warzone than a game, you felt like you were about to be sniped out at any second.

Rightfully so, apparently, seeing how silently Stephanie had crept up on you.

“Hey,” Stephanie hissed, ignoring the way you jumped. “We’re doing alright for ourselves,” she said smugly. 

“Yeah,” you’d nodded, like you agreed with her more than you probably did. 

“Okay listen, I think the flag—” what flag? “—is by the fountain so, I think because there’s three of us and two of them, we should bait-and-switch.”

“We’re on teams?” you asked, no longer completely sure you know what you’re playing. 

“We are now!” she smiled, starting to run. “I’ll bait!”

She stopped briefly in her tracks and turned back to you hissing, “Don’t trust Cass,” before scurrying away.

Rather than sit around and wait there for…something?...to happen, you jumped up darting in the opposite direction with little to no indication whether this is a good move.

What you didn’t see is Cass rapidly approaching from your rear. 

What you also didn’t see was Dick crouched down in a row of shrubbery, which gave him the perfect opportunity to snatch your arm up and yank you down with him. You’d mewled a bit as your wrist made contact harshly with the grass, immediately buckling under you.

Cass was keen to your pain immediately, slowing her sprint to a stroll as she observed you.

“Are you okay?” she signs.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.” 

The response was instinctual and you didn’t actually have time to register whether or not you were okay by the time you gave it. 

You pushed up on your elbows, trying to figure out whether Dick is even on your team, but the way the others approached had you halting consideration. They’re savvy to the situation at a speed in which you can only attribute to their vigilantism, looking at you with concern. 

“You good?” Tim asked, approaching languidly.

“That looked like it hurt,” Cass commented, crouching down next to you to see your wrist better.

Dick shook his head, “No, she’s okay.” He turned to you, prodding, “You’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m, um…” you winced, looking at your wrist. “It hurts a little.”

Cass examined it closely, tilting it gently to the side. “It might be sprained.”

Dick paled. 

“No.”

Tim pointed a thumb back towards the manor, “We can get it wrapped upstairs.”

“No.”

You were only then able to clock the barely contained grin on Stephanie’s face, begging to break.  

“Ooooh. He’s gonna kill you.”

Cass had then kindly offered to take you inside and wrap it up for you, which you accepted, unexpecting of the plus-one of Dick trailing behind you like a guilty puppy all the while.

“You know I didn’t mean to grab you that hard right? I—” 

Cass laughs quietly as she wraps the bandage around your wrist, amused by Dick’s now-third explanation/apology for the incident. 

“I know, Dick,” you say, trying to appease him. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells you genuinely, but you can tell there’s more there that he isn’t verbalizing.

You nod, “I know, Dick. It’s okay. It was just an accident.”

Cass pins the wrapping in place securely and with a smile, signs to you that she’s all done. 

You rotate your arm a bit, testing your movement under the wrap. As Cass leaves with the first aid kit, Dick remains sat at your side, leg thumping up and down.

He takes a deep breath, “What if…what if you avoid him until it heals?”

“Dick.”

He takes your uninjured hand in his with urgency in his eyes, 

He looks down at your jointed hands before loosening his already mild grip significantly.

“Are you going to tell him?” he asks, looking like he’s bracing for bad news.

You shake your head sympathetically, “No. I can’t guarantee you that he won’t find out, but I won’t tell him.”

Dick takes a deep breath, looking at the ground with intense focus. “Okay. Okay.” He stands, “I need to go.”

You watch in amused bewilderment as he staggers out the door, looking around frantically. 

Within the next few minutes, he creates and enacts his plan A. He walks into the living room, sitting down next to a very disinterested Tim, eyes forward and serious.

“I’ll give you two grand right now if you tell him it was you.”

Tim barks out, “Absolutely not.” He looks at his brother, still laughing. “No fucking way.”

Dick breaks the serious facade immediately, looking at him. “Five.”

A deadpan from Tim. 

“You don’t have five thousand dollars.”

Dick throws his head back, back thudding against the couch. “Dude, please! He’ll kill me!”

Tim scoffs, “He’d kill me!”

Dick huffs, “No, it’s different for me! Do you have any idea how many times he told me not to do that?” 

“Well then it sounds like you fucked up,” Tim sneers.

“Oh my God.”

He takes off again, combing through different rooms in the house with hope of finding a quick but effective hiding place for, say, the next twenty years?

He bursts through the study, unwittingly interrupting Bruce and Alfred having a discussion over tea.

The latter sits up with a tense brow, “Master Dick?”

The former turns around in his seat, “What’s the matter?”

Dick struggles for a second before confessing, “I accidentally sprained someone's wrist.” 

Bruce scans his face slowly, nodding. “Alright…you’ll have to take responsibility for their patrol duties—”

Dick cuts him off with a sharp breath, “Said person doesn’t have any patrol duties to be affected...”

Bruce processes for a moment before shaking his head.

“I can’t help you.”

Dick’s panic takes over again, prompting him to continue his scurry through the room, towards the other door.

Alfred interrupts his process with a very logical argument, “You don’t think running away will make this worse, Master Dick?”

“I—I don’t know!” Dick whines, stopping in his tracks. “I don’t know what to do!”

Bruce purses his lips, gesturing, “Dick, when you make a mistake…you have to submit to the consequences, you know that.”

Dick gapes, “This is not a normal consequence!”

Meanwhile, you’ve busied yourself with fiddling with the knick knacks and mementos lining the shelves of Jason’s childhood bedroom. 

You’re admiring a picture of him and Alfred from when he was young as the door creaks open behind you. 

“Sweetheart?” Your boyfriend calls out, head barely poked in through the crack.

“Hey, Jay,” you smile, setting the picture frame back on the shelf.

He enters fully, covered in motor oil and grease, and smiles his sweet, easy smile when he sees you. 

Moving onto the next trinket on the shelf, you pick up a stuffed animal placed intentionally at the front. Your gaze finds the mirror, watching his reflection as he pulls the stained shirt off his back. 

You smile to yourself, noticing the way his back muscles flex as he adjusts. “How’s the bike?”

“Better than it was this morning,” he sighs. “Where’ve you been?”

He turns around to look at you, taking easy steps towards you. 

You return the toy elephant to its place, moving to face him. “Uh, we were outside, playing…at least three separate games at once.”

The second you’re in proximity, your hands join like it’s second nature. 

He nods, all too familiar with the family’s unique methods of gamefair.

“Did th—” He looks down at your intertwined hands, brow furrowing as soon as he spots the bandage wrapped around your wrist. “What happened?”

You glance down, shrugging. “Overexerted myself playing tag.”

He looks at you skeptically, but says nothing about it.

He turns your hand over gently, asking, “Is it sprained?”

You nod, relaxed. “Yeah. Cass said it’s mild.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“No,” you say, sweeping his hair back with your other hand. “Barely hurt then.”

He nods, but he doesn’t look satisfied with the conversation.

Regardless, he turns away again, shuffling through a drawer for a clean shirt. 

“You, uh, you wanna stay for dinner tonight?” he asks, pulling his arms through, his head following. 

“Yeah,” you say gaily. “Alfred said he’s making his ‘special spaghetti’, apparently it’s a household favorite?”

He wavers, halfway to between decisions. “Yeah…”

He huffs quietly, turning back to face you fully. “Can I see it?”

You nod, happy to ease his mind. 

You start to unwrap the bandaging, him doing half the work for you. The work is done silently until your wrist is exposed, revealing your bruised skin.

You both see it at the same time—the hand-shaped bruise wrapped around your wrist.

You’re both quiet for a second—him putting pieces together and you waiting for the shoe to drop.

He takes off suddenly, clearly having come to a likely very accurate conclusion about what had happened.

“Fucking idiot—”

You try for his hand but he’s out of reach before you can grab it.

“I’ll be right back,” he grumbles behind him.

“Jason—” you sigh, “At least help me wrap it back up first.”

He hesitates, halfway to the door, ultimately returning to you in defeat. He takes your forearm gently, scanning it over again before beginning to wrap it.

You watch his face closely, noting the clear vexation. “It was just an accident,” you tell him. 

He scoffs, “It better have been.”

You drop your shoulders and lull your head to the side. “Jason. I’m not made of glass, you can’t expect other people to act like it.”

“I don’t. I expect him to mind his own strength, and if he can’t do that, he needs to keep his fucking hands to himself.”

You sigh, “Just don’t do anything harsh. Please. I think he’s worried you’re gonna punch him.”

“He should be,” he says shortly. He finishes off the wrapping, pinning it in place firmly. 

You grab onto his forearm before he can pull away, “You’re not going to. Right?”

He doesn’t answer so you try to make his gaze meet yours, “Right?”

His eyes roll, “Yeah, fine.”

You smile, holding his face. “I love you.”

He huffs as though he’s inconvenienced, but confesses the obvious truth nonetheless. “I love you.”

He looks you in the eye, face serious. “You promise me it doesn’t hurt?”

“I promise,” you nod, brushing your fingers against his palm.

“Dick!”

The angry voice bellows through the tall halls of the manor, heavy footsteps thudding.

He stomps into the living room, Tim, Cass, and Stephanie watching the entryway with wide eyes. 

“Where is he?”

Unwitting shoulders shrug and heads shake. Truthfully, at that. Dick, smartly, did not tell anyone where he was hiding. 

Jason scans the trios faces, looking for any sign of apprehension.

He clocks the grin shamelessly plastered across his sister's face quickly. “Stephanie?”

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “But let me know when you find him, I wanna see—”

But Jason’s moving onto the next room before she can get the last words out.

He enters the dining room, looking right to left before finding his target, halfway to stuffing himself behind the fine china cabinet in the corner.

There’s a brief, tense moment in between where the pair realize what they’re seeing and when Dick sets off in a sprint towards the kitchen, Jason quick on his tail. 

“Really? Really?” Jason shouts. 

“It was an accident! It was a fucking—” 

He narrowly dodges a swipe from Jason, then ducking before a ladle could make contact with his head.

“Are you stupid? Are you the dumbest motherf—”

Dick rounds the kitchen island as fast as possible, Jason testing him on the other side.

Dick takes a breath, “Dude, it’s fine now, it’s not that big of a—”

Jason recoils, “‘It’s not a big deal’? Come here. Let me sprain your wrist, asshole!”

He circles the counter quicker than the elder boy can think to move away and lunges at him. 

Dick throws his hands up in front of him, “Wait, wait, wait! Truce! Truce! Truce?”

Jason drops his shoulders, leveling his older brother with a look. “You can’t call a truce if you’re the only one who did anything wrong.”

“I…” It doesn’t take him long to piece together that his defense makes no sense, so he resorts to his last option. 

“Please?” Dick asks, nothing short of imploring. 

Jason relents—slightly—upon hearing his brother's tone, but still finds it in him to shove him, though not nearly as hard as he’d been planning to. 

“I told you a hundred fucking times not to grab her so hard—” 

Dick nods heavily, waving a hand. “I know, I know—”

“Clearly you fucking don’t!” Jason shouts. He huffs, running a hand over his face. “You sprained her wrist. You’ve been doing this vigilante shit for fifteen years, how do you still not fucking know how to control your own strength?”

Dick grimaces, “I do! I do, I just screwed up, I’m sorry!”

“Don’t—” Jason narrowly holds back a scowl, “Did you apologize to her?”

 “Yeah, of course I did!”

For a split second, Jason looks ready to keep arguing before purposefully dropping the anger from his body. 

The resulting relief almost drowns Dick.

It only lasts a moment though, before Jason looks at him again, sneering, “Idiot,” before pushing him once more. 

“Jason.”

Your voice has Jason dropping all turbulence in an instant. He and Dick both whip their heads towards the door, equally unexpecting of the interruption. 

You tilt your head at your boyfriend with a knowing but disappointed stare.

He looks back at you like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, lips parted.

“I didn’t hit him.”

⭐️ your options are: (1) reblog fics or (2) be a little bitch ⭐️

[stars-obsession-pit]

After losing a bet, Danny has to spend some time acting as a maid for Tucker (including wearing a full maid dress, where the heck did you even get that, Tucker??)

And as if that wasn’t mortifying enough, it turns out that he accidentally was visible through a partially-open door during one of Tucker’s streams.

…

Tim Drake choked on his drink. There, hidden in the background of a tech streamer he’d been watching, was the cutest boy he’d ever seen, wearing a maid dress.

He immediately queued up a sizable donation and a message.

And now it was Tucker’s turn to choke on his drink at what he saw show up on screen.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Actually, I think this does link in with a wider conversation that I have been thinking for a while Tumblr maybe needs to hear.

There's a common meme on this site now that no one here has any reading comprehension skills. The best one is, of course, the original "No offense but reading comprehension on this site is piss poor/How dare you say we piss on the poor" post, which gave rise to the nickname "pissing-on-the-poor website". There's also the "I like pancakes/How dare you say waffles are terrible" one. Both of these are great, because they're silly jokey ways to show two closely related phenomena that are probably the commonest ways to fail a reading comprehension check.

The first is someone reading certain catchphrases or buzzwords in the post, and based on their own biases or prior experiences or whatever else, their brain simply fills in what it reckons the poster is saying on the topic. Instead of reading the rest of the sentence and digesting it, the reader then just uses their assumption as the interpretation, and reacts to that.

The second is closely related, because it also uses biases and prior experiences to to interpret the post, but rather than ignoring what the OP is actually saying, it instead performs a series of gymnastic leaps to construct a whole new assertion on the OP's behalf that simply isn't there.

There's also a third, of course; that one is people being so eager to feel smug and superior over someone they perceive as Bad that they wilfully assume the OP is stupid or being serious when they're actually joking. And if the reader hadn't been so blinded by their desire to get to look down on someone, they'd have seen the very obvious tells, sometimes even including sentences like "Obviously this is a joke." (I think we have all seen examples of these. Also, in a bid to avoid as many reading comprehension fails here as possible, this does not include misunderstandings borne entirely of neurodiverse struggles to parse intentions; but, neurodiverse people are just as likely as neurotypicals to have ego play a part in their misinterpretation of others, and that is what this point is about.)

And the thing is... actually, we are all capable of any of these. I imagine a sizable chunk of people reading until this point were probably thinking "Lol, yeah, people are so stupid," but na, nage, I'm not having that. Literally everyone does these sometimes. And it becomes a particular risk when the topic under discussion is something that might brush against an issue that is a pressure point for you, like a social justice talking point that you are forever having to argue with internet strangers about, for example. Your brain holds schemas! And sometimes it likes to pattern match things before it deigns to tell you about its findings! And that can hit you right in the emotions, which if they are strong enough, really can shut down all rational thought.

But. This brings me to the real point of the post.

Because the thing is, we have all saddled up and gone to war under these conditions, or at the very least been strongly tempted to. And a vital skill that literally everyone has to learn, sooner or later, is:

Before you hit 'reply', double check the post to make sure you fucking understood it.

And that does not mean "simply re-read, confirm your bias, carry on." It means, "Is it possible to read this post from the point of view of someone who doesn't intend it the way I've taken it? If I put myself in the shoes of an innocent, could they still have written these words? Is there another interpretation for these phrases?"

And you do have to do this step. You simply do have to. Because if your desire is to 'clap back' and call someone a gargling knobskin made of garbage, fuck me sideways but you must see that it is imperative that you check if they actually deserve that kind of treatment first. You cannot spend your time claiming that we must all choose to be kind and then not bother doing your due diligence before screaming a person's various and assorted bigotries at them. If you misread it, and they were innocent - you are the raging aggressive cunt in this situation.

It does not matter that you reacted from an emotional place of normally having to defend yourself either, by the way. Sure, that makes the quality of your human soul better than that of the average Redditor who just enjoys anonymously hurting people, I guess? But it's also irrelevant. If you messaged someone and called them a misogynist because you performed several mental somersaults and landed on your own sore spot when they meant no such thing, you are the attacker. You owe them an apology. And yeah, sure, you can explain your over-reaction as the product of your normal experiences if you like, but that is only an explanation, not an excuse. You are still the asshole here. You still need to apologise and mean it.

And you could have avoided it if you'd done that due diligence, as you should have. If you're going to take a swing, make sure it's the right target. This was once described to me as donkey people - they don't think, they just kick. This is admittedly a little unkind to donkeys, who always do their due diligence, but I feel it's an apt metaphor.

TL;DR: If you feel moved to angrily reply to something, first make sure you've interpreted it right. Don't be a donkey person. And if you ask for clarification, people are innocent until proven guilty. Ask nicely. If they are a bigot, you can then smelt them for parts.