#this is why ranking things is important

[silly-mode-cilia]

im so sexy im sooo cool

[neonhellscape]

okay its no secret i dont buy into marazhai being the persona he puts on. so as i've officially met him in game now, im making a list of all the in-game reasons i think he's a bit of an idiot [which i love btw. i find him far more compelling if he's a bit stupid/weird and he's trying so hard not to be but you just know nobody in commorragh is inviting him to parties]

the very first time you get a glance of him on a rooftop and. 'deal with this' "of course" proceeds to just walk off like 3 seconds after the other two

ambushes you. has you cornered. is in optimal position to kick your ass frankly, high ground and better weapons and utilising shock against you. ...he bitches at you for a while, gets insulted, then runs off into the forest with a maniacal cackle

heinrix fired a mild insult [considering what he's like to everyone else its barely an insult] and he took big enough issue with it to start saying how he'll break him and turn him into a pet. oh sure dude you're responding super well to this mild comment from the guy who accidentally insults everyone and their entire ancestral line at some point

i think it says something that he's learned to speak your language fluently too. that Has to be some kind of Yikes moment to admit publicly in drukhari culture. buried family secret great great grandfather drukhari-georg learned to speak mon keigh and now we claim he just spoke oddly because was shot in the head as a child to prevent the shame

he also knows the mon keigh lore that says youre a super special little guy as rogue trader and actually LISTENS to the fact you're the special little guy as rogue trader. and he does treat you as more equal/with more respect than the other characters. thats not just a drukhari culture yikes thats what gets you checked for a concussion or brain damage

literally socially atrocious enough its believed he's working with you [read: with you. not using you, not manipulating, cooperating. this is a big difference i feel] and only he himself doesnt believe it

ignore the fact he eventually DOES work with you which. is its own follow up statement

challenges you to fight him, to give chase then and there. i made him wait while i went through english government simulator where i queued for multiple days, did multiple day/week voidship trips back and forth, got distracted by accidentally starting jae's romance, pasqal telling me to servitorise her, getting blackout drunk with her, shipwide broadcast tm, giving her a voidship, her getting me a space cat, attacked by pirates, dealt with a plague, explored a few extra systems.......................

he destroys your palace. ...its rebuilt effectively within a week. most of the damage is in bodies which are just sent to the poor district to rot [almost feels worse than the damage done good job imperium]

the throne has claw marks. he could've blown it up or shot it or piled corpses on it but no he wanted to sit on the fancy chair and so turned into a common housecat mauling the sofa arm

how long was he just sitting there lounging on that chair? again see how long i kept him waiting. he was just sitting there trying to find a comfy position on this [for him] kinda small chair JUST so he could briefly taunt, break your window with his space motorbike, jump off the chair in a dramatic [but not gunna lie not that impressive] feat of gymnastics, then fly out. he doesnt even shoot at you as he leaves

i will continue my list as i see more that entertain me

[samanthamulder]

THE X-FILES (1993-2018)

SEASON FIVE — What do you hope to find? I mean, in the end.

[simgerale]

CHAPTER ONE ; 1/3

TRANSCRIPT:

[sounds of swords clashing and rowdy cheering]

geordie: Your highness, apologies for the intrusion, but her majesty has asked me to remind you of the time.

killian: [panting] The time? And what exactly is the time?

g: Half past noon.

k: So she wished to inform me of my tardiness. Thank you, Geordie. I will be with you shortly.

---

k: Am I the only late one?

g: I am afraid so. Even the princess arrived promptly.

k: Drat. Dara will never let me live it down. The one time I lose track of the hour…

g: No matter, your highness. Soon you will be Knight Captain and have plenty of excuses for tardiness.

k: I sincerely hope not. I am perfectly satisfied with my rank.

---

luca: There you are, at last.

k: Apologies, apologies. What did I miss?

[blasphemousclaw]

Something I noticed about the, um... The Big Snake Club showing the snake devouring the world that Bernahl uses.

It looks like there's a bunch of hands holding the earth, as if offering the world to the snake!

totally!! I love your interpretation that the hands are offering the world to the serpent; I think that’s exactly what the weapon is meant to be depicting:

“Scepter in the shape of a serpent devouring the world. This weapon will one day become the very symbol of the Lord of Blasphemy. One of the legendary armaments. A vision of the future briefly seen by Rykard in his final moments before being devoured by the great serpent.”

in my weapons of Mt. Gelmir post I theorized that the Devourer’s Scepter was not something Rykard had made, but something that originated from the ancient cult that worshipped the serpent as a god. I believe the serpent cult were the ones who originally prophesied that the serpent would one day devour the world, a prophecy that Rykard himself glimpsed in his last moments, and that they were working to grow the serpent’s power by feeding it blood sacrifices (as seen in the Serpent God’s Curved Sword) until it was large enough to literally eat the world. so the hands depicted in the weapon can be seen as the cult members offering the serpent the greatest sacrifice of all.

[bijoumikhawal]

"Biden is the best choice and he's actually really empathetic and reasonable but also you can't wait for a candidate that won't do genocide and war crimes because to become a presidential candidate you have to be willing to do that" see what you fundamentally don't understand is I'm not waiting for a candidate that won't do war crimes, because I know that. I cannot morally stomach this system, it's a joke to claim its democratic, and AMERICA DELENDA EST. this country is a plague on this Earth

[wormboyfriendcentralstation]

what the tags to my posts have taught me is that the wurthering heights stans are eating devouring enjoying while im locked in Moby Dick Jail with the ahab starbuck emotionally draining yuri that lives only in my mind-

[doggirlbuck]

is it weird that it bothers me a little that no one has mentioned that we have already gotten a lot of insight into mariners character through her relationship with her mother

[adhdtsukasa]

i finally have enough crystals to both spark birthday nene and be able to comfortably spark on 3rd anni so life's kinda awesome but also can everyone manifest her to come in the first pull i desperately need to pull on our happy ending because. that is NOT a good team

[butchhansolo]

mild malding because i LIKE the idea of phee/tech but imo it's being poorly set up... like headscratch theres potential for a really great dynamic here that's just not being explored in their interactions because the interactions are kinda just flirting to the point that since we have so little of them interacting without that that it feels a little. forced? like i can seeeeeee the concept and i DO like it i just agh please take more time with it

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

hey this might be a really stupid question and i’m very sorry if it is but do reblogs still help if i have 0 followers? bc i havent been reblogging stuff bc i dont have any followers so i thought it didnt help anyway (i usually still like stuff)

if it does help i wanna start reblogging bc i wanna be helpful to the writers i like but i just dont know.

again sorry if this is stupid and thank you for your time you’re a very talented writer and i love your work:) much love<3

i do understand why you’re asking this, it’s not stupid at all. sure, if you currently don’t have any followers, then it might not do as much as if you had lots. but no matter how few or how many followers you have, it is still the best way for you to support writers on here. 

if you are concerned about gaining followers, then just the act of reblogging stuff can still be enough to attract some. now idk what your blog looks like, if it's completely empty or what, but i have a handful of secret sideblogs where i don’t make any original posts, just reblog things, and they still have more then 0, because just reblogging can still bring some attention to your blog and thereby maybe also some followers. I also know a lot of authors that block ghost blogs, so just be aware of that.

but the bottom line is that it is the best way to support people on here and if you wanna do it, then do it. but if you feel like your lack of reach to people is currently too small and thereby making your reblog seem pointless to you, if you really did enjoy it, then tell us that. add a comment, add your reaction, point out your favourite sentences or just add a funny reaction pic. there are so many ways to make an author feel your love, even just you popping in here on anon and generally saying that you enjoy my stuff. that means so so much. you don’t need a bunch of people who you can get to look at a thing you enjoyed to make the creator smile. I don't know a single author who doesn't have their gloomy day turn around at least a little bit by a reblog that is so clearly full of love, no matter who it is by. they have so much power, you have no idea. because yes it is amazing to boost and to help others find the good stuff, but if you add the sparkle on top? that always knocks our socks off.

[gigifujijifu]

Ok so I first wrote a mess in the tags but by the end of it I realized the actual answer, for me, is not just following impulses for who I want to play but also: spreadsheets.

My boyfriend and I make spreadsheets almost as a hobby. We have... a lot of alts, so to make it easier we have spreadsheets for things like which alts we've done holiday events on, and which trade-able cosmetics we've unlocked on who so we can pass extras around without having to log into everyone to check (not that I collect anything in a completionist sense with so many alts).

I also made a spreadsheet that lets us mark which WT stickers we need that week and it will flag which ones we have in common with each others alts so we can pair them off to do them more efficiently if we want.

I realize it's excessive but it's a kind of fun project and I love all of my characters and my bf dearly so playing with them no matter who I'm on or with is fun and there's always something to do.

people who have alts on ffxiv

how do you do it /g

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/05/power-of-positive-thinking/#the-socialism-of-fools

In her unmissable 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein paints a picture of a "mirror world" of right wing and conspiratorial beliefs that are warped, false reflections of real crises:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

Klein is at pains to point out that other political thinkers have described this phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, leftists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Socialism – the idea that working people are preyed upon by capital – is reflected in the warped mirror as "working people are preyed upon by international Jewish bankers."

The mirror world is a critical concept, because it shows that far right and conspiratorial beliefs are often uneasy neighbors with real, serious political movements. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, in other words:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Once you understand the mirror world, you start to realize that many right wing conspiracists could have been directed into productive movements, if only they'd understood that their problems were with systems, not sinister individuals (this is why Trump has ordered a purge of any federally funded research that contains the word "systemic"):

https://mamot.fr/@Lazarou@mastodon.social/113943287435897828

This also explains why the "tropes" of right wing conspiratorialism sometimes echo left wing, radical thought. I once had a (genuinely unhinged) dialog with a self-described German "progressive" who told me that criticizing the finance industry as parasitic on the real economy was "structurally antisemitic." Nonsense like this is why Klein's "mirror world" is so important: unless you understand the mirror world, you can end up believing that "progressive" just means "defending anything the right hates."

Historian Erik Baker is the author of a new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which has some very interesting things to say about the mirror world:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674293601

In a recent edition of the always-excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, the hosts interviewed Baker about the book, and the conversation turned to the subject of pyramid schemes, the "multilevel marketing systems" that are woven into so many religious, right-wing movements:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-entrepreneurial-ethic/

MLMs have it all: prosperity gospel ("God rewards virtue with wealth"), atomization ("you are an entrepreneur and everyone in your life is your potential customer"), and rabid anti-Communism ("solidarity is a trick to make you poorer").

The rise of the far right can't be separated from the history of MLMs. The modern MLM starts with Amway, a cultlike national scam that was founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (father-in-law of Betsy DeVos).

Rank-and-file members of the Amway cult lived in dire poverty, convinced that their financial predicament was their own fault for not faithfully following the "sure-fire" Amway method for building a business. Andrea Pitzer's gripping memoir of growing up in an Amway household offers a glimpse of the human cost of the cult:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/amway-america/681479/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZxYkntna5M_rYEv4707Zqqs

Amway – and MLMs like it – don't just bleed out their members by convincing them to buy mountains of useless crap they're supposed to sell to their families, while enriching the people at the top of the pyramid who sell it to them. The "toxic positivity" of multi-level marketing cults forces members deep into debt to pay for seminars and retreats where they are supposed to learn how to repair the personal defects that keep them from being "successful entrepreneurs." The topline of the cult isn't just getting rich selling stuff – they're making bank by selling false hope, literally, in Hilton ballrooms and convention centers across the country, where hearing an MLM scammer berate you for being a "bad entrepreneur" costs thousands of dollars.

Amway destroyed so many lives that Richard Nixon's FTC decided to investigate it. The investigation wasn't going well for Amway, which was facing an existential crisis that they were rescued from by Nixon's resignation. You see, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, was the former Congressman of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who was also the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbyist in America.

At Ford's direction, the FTC exonerated Amway of all wrongdoing. But it's even worse than that: Ford's FTC actually crafted a rule that differentiated legal pyramid schemes from illegal ones, based on Amway's destructive business practices. Under this new rule, any pyramid scheme that had the same structure as Amway was presumptively legal. Every MLM operating in America today is built on the Amway model, taking advantage of the FTC's Amway rule to operate in the open, without fear of legal repercussions.

MLMs prey on the poor and desperate: women, people of color, people in dying small towns and decaying rustbelt cities. It's not just that these people are desperate – it's that they only survive through networks of mutual aid. Poor women rely on other poor women to help with child care, marginalized people rely on one another for help with home maintenance, small loans, a place to crash after an eviction, or a place to park the RV you're living out of.

In other words, people who lack monetary capital must rely on social capital for survival. That's why MLMs target these people: an MLM is a system for destructively transforming social capital into monetary capital. MLMs exhort their members to mine their social relationships for "leads" and "customers" and to use the language of social solidarity ("women helping women") to wheedle, guilt, and arm-twist people from your mutual aid network into buying things they don't need and can't afford.

But it's worse, because what MLMs really sell is MLMs. The real purpose of an MLM sales call is to convince the "customer" to become an MLM salesperson, who owes you a share of every sale they make and is incentivized to buy stock they don't need (from you) in order to make quotas. And of course, their real job is to sign up other salespeople to work under them, and so on.

An MLM isn't just a pathogen, in other words – it's a contagion. When someone in your social support network gets the MLM disease, they don't just burn all their social ties with you and the people you rely on – they convince more people in your social group to do the same.

Which brings me back to the mirror world, and Erik Baker's conversation with the Know Your Enemy podcast. Baker starts to talk about who gets big into Amway: "people who already effectively lead by the force of their charisma and personality many other people in their lives. Right? Because you're able to sell to those people, and you're able to recruit those people. What are we talking about? Well, they're effectively recruiting organizers, people who have a natural capacity for organizing and then sending them out in the world to organize on behalf of Christian capitalism."

Listening to this, I was thunderstruck: MLM recruiters are the mirror world version of union organizers. In her memoir of growing up in Amway, Andrea Pitzer talks about how her mom would approach strangers and try to lead them through a kind of structured discussion:

Everywhere we went—the mall, state parks, grocery stores—she’d ask people whether they could use a little more money each month. “I’d love to set up a time to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity.” The words should have seemed suspect. Yet people almost always gave her their number. Her confidence and professionalism were reassuring, and her enthusiasm was electric, even, at first, to me. “What would you do with $1 million?” she’d ask, spinning me around the kitchen.

This kind of person, having this kind of dialog, is exactly how union organizers work. In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey's classic book on labor organizing, she describes how she would seek out the charismatic, outgoing workers in a job-site, the natural leaders, and recruit them to help bring the other workers onboard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Organizer training focuses on how to have a "structured organizing conversation," which McAlevey described in a 2019 Jacobin article:

“If you had a magic wand and could change three things about life in America [or her town or city or school], what would you change?” The rest of your conversation needs to be anchored to her answers to that question.

https://jacobin.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-organizing-activism-friends-family-conversation-presidential-election

The MLM conversation and the union conversation have eerily similar structures, but the former is designed to commodify and destroy solidarity, and the latter is designed to reinforce and mobilize solidarity. Seen in this light, an MLM is a mirror world union, one that converts solidarity into misery and powerlessness instead of joy and strength.

The MLM movement doesn't just make men like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel into billionaires. MLM bosses are heavy funders of the right, a blank check for the Heritage Foundation. Trump is the MLM president, a grifter who grew up on the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale – a key figure in MLM cult dynamics – who tells his followers that wealth is a sign of virtue. Trump boasts about all the people he's ripped off, boasting about how getting away with cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The corollary is that being cheated means you're stupid. Caveat emptor, the motto of the cryptocurrency industry ("not your wallet, not your coins") that spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected.

Tech has its own mirror world. The people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and make delightful and wonderful things are mirrored by the people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and call for fascism, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps.

In Picks and Shovels, my next novel (Feb 17), I introduce readers to a fictitious 1980s religious computer sales cult called Fidelity Computing, run by an orthodox rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Mormon rabbi:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Fidelity is a faith scam, a pyramid scheme that is parasitic upon the bonds of faith and fellowship. Martin Hench, the hero of the story – a hard-fighting high tech forensic accountant – goes to work for a competing business, Computing Freedom, run by three Fidelity ex-employees who have left their faiths and their employers to pursue a vision of computers that is about liberation, rather than control.

The women of Computing Freedom – a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family, a Mormon woman who's renounced the LDS over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's left her order to throw in with the Liberation Theology movement – are all charismatic, energetic, inspirational organizers.

Because of course they are – that's why they were so good at selling computers for the Reverend Sirs who sit at the top of Fidelity Computing's pyramid scheme.

Hearing Baker's interview and reading Pitzer's memoir last week made it all click together for me. Not just that MLMs destroy social bonds, but that within every person who gets sucked into an MLM, there's a community organizer who could be building the bonds that MLMs destroy.

[jennelikejennay]

You know what I think t'hy'la means?

It's not an ambiguous term, like it could mean three different things. But I also don't think it always means all three. I think it's a singular concept that we don't use on Earth, but maybe we should.

You know how some people's number one person is their spouse, while other people, married or not, have a best friend who's the one they really tell everything to? You know how you might have a queerplatonic relationship but whether or not you have sex with them is just ...not an important question?

I think t'hy'la means your number one person. And humans don't have a word that says most important without distinguishing whether we're blood-related or whether we're having sex.

Vulcans do. So I don't especially like the idea that all t'hy'la pairs have to be lovers in a sexual sense. It's not that at all. It's that they have this deep bond that transcends everything. You could have that with your brother. You could have it with your friend. Or if you're attracted to that person, you would probably be lovers.

Kirk and Spock love each other deeply; everyone who knows them knows that. The word they use for each other doesn't say whether they're having sex because Vulcans don't care about that. Humans are all "weird, the dictionary definition won't tell me whether they're boning, which is information I'm used to having publicly announced!" Well, too bad. Vulcans have arranged marriages usually, and some of them have sex once every seven years. So I just don't think sex is the defining point that makes a relationship serious to them.

If a Vulcan says "this is my t'hy'la" that lets everyone know they are bonded in the deepest level of the katra and any arranged spouses or temporary pon farr surrogates they might have don't even rank, by comparison. That's uncomfortable to humans.

Now Kirk and Spock are definitely having sex, but Spock doesn't consider that to be the fact that makes their relationship serious and primary over all others. So that's why he chooses a word that is about the soul bond, not the flesh.

[wheelscomedyandmore]

You Might Not Ever Guess

Captain Kangaroo passed away on January 23, 2004 as age 76 , which is odd, because he always looked to be 76. (DOB: 6/27/27 ) His death reminded me of the following story.

Some people have been a bit offended that the actor, Lee Marvin, is buried in a grave alongside 3 and 4 star generals at Arlington National Cemetery . His marker gives his name, rank (PVT) and service (USMC). Nothing else. Here's a guy who was only a famous movie star who served his time, why the heck does he rate burial with these guys? Well, following is the amazing answer:

I always liked Lee Marvin, but didn't know the extent of his Corps experiences.

In a time when many Hollywood stars served their country in the armed forces often in rear echelon posts where they were carefully protected, only to be trotted out to perform for the cameras in war bond promotions.

Lee Marvin was a genuine hero. He won the Navy Cross at Iwo Jima. There is only one higher Naval award... the Medal Of Honor

If that is a surprising comment on the true character of the man, he credits his sergeant with an even greater show of bravery.

Dialog from "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson": His guest was Lee Marvin Johnny said, "Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima ..and that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded."

"Yeah, yeah... I got shot square in the bottom and they gave me the Cross for securing a hot spot about halfway up Suribachi. Bad thing about getting shot up on a mountain is guys getting' shot hauling you down. But Johnny, at Iwo I served under the bravest man I ever knew... We both got the cross the same day, but what he did for his Cross made mine look cheap in comparison. That dumb guy actually stood up on Red beach and directed his troops to move forward and get the hell off the beach. Bullets flying by, with mortar rounds landing everywhere and he stood there as the main target of gunfire so that he could get his men to safety. He did this on more than one occasion because his men's safety was more important than his own life.

That Sergeant and I have been lifelong friends. When they brought me off Suribachi we passed the Sergeant and he lit a smoke and passed it to me, lying on my belly on the litter and said, where'd they get you Lee?' Well Bob.. if you make it home before me, tell Mom to sell the outhouse!"

Johnny, I'm not lying, Sergeant Keeshan was the bravest man I ever knew.

The Sergeant's name is Bob Keeshan. You and the world know him as Captain Kangaroo."

On another note, there was this wimpy little man (who just passed away) on PBS, gentle and quiet. Mr. Rogers is another of those you would least suspect of being anything but what he now portrays to our youth.

But Mr. Rogers was a U.S. Navy Seal, combat-proven in Vietnam with over twenty-five confirmed kills to his name. He wore a long-sleeved sweater on TV, to cover the many tattoos on his forearm and biceps. He was a master in small arms and hand-to-hand combat, able to disarm or kill in a heartbeat.

After the war Mr. Rogers became an ordained Presbyterian minister and therefore a pacifist. Vowing to never harm another human and also dedicating the rest of his life to trying to help lead children on the right path in life. He hid away the tattoos and his past life and won our hearts with his quiet wit and charm.

America's real heroes don't flaunt what they did; they quietly go about their day-to-day lives, doing what they do best. They earned our respect and the freedoms that we all enjoy.

Look around and see if you can find one of those heroes in your midst.

Often, they are the ones you'd least suspect, but would most like to have on your side if anything ever happened.

Take the time to thank anyone that has fought for our freedom. With encouragement they could be the next Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers.

Send this on will you please? Nothing will happen to you if you don't, but it will tell what a "real" HERO is made of.

[greenglowinspooks]

Thinkin about a DCxDP where Danny’s helping ghosts find peace while he’s laying low in Gotham.

Like, he moved away from Amity for whatever reason. Maybe the reveal went badly, maybe he just couldn’t stand staying any longer. For whatever reason, he’s in Gotham, because the rent is cheap and he’s nowhere near the strangest thing there so no one looks at him twice.

However, this city is cursed. Like, cursed beyond cursed. It’s actively alive with how many curses there are, and the ghosts there are extremely unhappy about it.

(Of course, that’s not a problem for Danny. His ghost side filters out the toxic smog and the chemicals in the water, and his human side gives a resistance to the rank ecto and the hexes that are actively trying to devour him.)

He doesn’t really want to do anything about it, to be honest.

He’s sick of playing hero, considering how it went last time, and he’s busy working at Waffle House or Walmart or whatever other store doesn’t bother doing a background check (in Gotham, that’s probably all of them), and maybe trying to find a way to get highschool credits that don’t immediately disqualify him from every college in existence.

Still, the ghosts know he can hear them. They know, and they keep coming for help.

So, hey, why not? He definitely can’t put this as experience in any sort of job application, but he really doesn’t have much else to do.

So, he becomes errand boy for a bunch of ghosts.

Sometimes he’s finding objects that are important to them, sometimes he’s giving evidence they collected together of their murders to the police, sometimes he’s getting them the last meal they never had, sometimes he’s just spending time with them like they’re not dead.

The ghosts don’t always move on, but they’re always more at peace. Occasionally they pay him back in charms and blessings and the locations of valuables that he can keep or pawn for cash.

Eventually, a new ghost shows up.

She looks like a shadow, like all the ghosts of Gotham, but she seems stronger than usual. She asks him for a favor that those who came before him were never able to fulfill.

She asks him to find her engagement ring, and give it to her son.

Easy enough, he thinks. It’s a bit of a pain to buy the ring from the seedy pawn shop it’s in (he would usually just steal it, but he doesn’t want to implicate her kid in anything, which she seems grateful for), but everything’s going mostly alright.

Then, she tells him who her son is, and wow, no wonder no one’s helped her yet.

He’s Red Hood. The guy who is(/was) the crime lord in charge of crime alley. The title sounds a bit stupid to Danny, but he’s still a genuine threat to a living person.

Good thing he’s not one of those.

And so, the next time he sees Red Hood out and about, he goes right up to him. The man seems mostly unbothered, but Danny does notice how his hand slightly drifts towards one of his many weapons.

He tells Red Hood outright that he’s there on behalf of the man’s mother, then just holds out his hand with the ring inside, dropping it into Red Hood’s open palm.

Then he leaves, not waiting for a response.

—

Jason has a mystery on his hands, and he might just cash in some favors from Babs and Tim to figure it out.

He’s got to find the guy who gave him his mother’s ring, and find out everything he knows.