#we're going to go where everybody knows everybody

[iminyourwallsbabe]

Alright, let's back up a little here. I get what the general point is and in that sense I agree but we have to be very careful with what we're saying, especially with the rise of anti-intellectualism and censorship.

The idea that reading something or discussing something automatically means you agree with what the author has to say is a very slippery slope when you include other literature that isn't Harry Potter. For example, let's switch it out for something like The Communist Manifesto. If the government were to apply that thinking and said everybody who read or discussed that book agreed with the author and was a communist (which I'm pretty sure they already have at some point), it'd be a problem. I don't really think I need to explain why.

Also, not talking about a piece of literature because we don't like it's messaging, even if the reason is valid like in this case, is extremely dangerous. Again, try and say that about something like idk, The Color Purple and see how that sounds. This gets very iffy very quickly.

I think a better way to approach this would be to not ignore it in either direction. If you read Harry Potter, keep in mind JKR's biases and opinions, notice how and where they show up in the story. Look for those things in other books. Actually take notes from this book if you are going to engage with it. Harry Potter is full of red flags and dog whistles and these are things we need to look out for always, but especially now. Don't let nostalgia make you forget to think critically. (But also, again, don't go out and give her money.) On the other hand, don't act like the franchise doesn't exist. You don't have to engage with her work, discuss it, or anything, especially if you weren't already but don't act like it doesn't exist. Talk about why you don't like it, shit on JKR and the wizarding world as much as you want, if all you wanna say is "boo hp sucks", do that but when we stop having conversations period, we open the door for a lot more ignorance to come through and that's exactly what someone like JKR wants from us.

Long story short, fuck JKR. I agree that there's no agree to disagree about her work. Her mindset plagues everything she puts a pen to and it's impossible to separate. But let's not venture into anti-intellectual rhetoric trying to take her down. That kind of stuff will only indirectly give her more power because you know what's worse than giving her money? Creating more people like her.

[lamardeuse]

well. shit. the Kenny interview just made me realize this may be really happening, huh? if it's real, here's the thing:

Tim Minear is not special. There have been so many TV powers that be, whether creators or showrunners or networks, who have been fundamentally incapable of guessing the ingredients in the secret sauce, the magic stored in this creative endeavour they've been entrusted with - even if they played a hefty part in making it. I'm sure all of us could name a dozen shows like this: shows we loved where that magic gets lost when TPTB think the format needs a "shakeup" or the program needs a "broader appeal". Sometimes it's a reaction to something happening behind the scenes, such as an actor asking for what they consider to be too much money or a Black woman knowing her worth and having the audacity to ask for better treatment (yeah, I'm talking about more than one show). They decide that they know better than the audience what the audience wants, enjoys or expects from the show. And nine times out of ten, it backfires.

911's special sauce is, first and foremost, that its core cast is incredibly fucking talented and - more than that - beyond happy to work together, in a way I haven't seen on many TV shows. There seem to be no prima donnas on that cast, and the #1 and #2 on the call sheet lead by example when they have every right by Hollywood custom to put up their feet and demand star treatment. I defy you to find an actress of Angela Bassett's calibre, experience, and status who would go through that whole cruise ship filming ordeal, but she did it. Krause puts himself through the same longass overnight shoots the rest of the cast does. The show itself is not great art, it's basically a high concept soap opera that only works because the writers have created loveable characters and the actors make you root for them no matter how silly the plots get. And because everybody lives and nobody dies.

If we wanted to watch a show where people die on the regular, we have a hundred other options. But this is one of the reasons we tune in to this show. We LIKE the stakes being low, we like our escapist nonsense, we're good with it.

One of the pitfalls of being in charge of a TV show, it seems, is you get to the point where you think you're making Great Art, and worst of all that you're smarter than the audience. Tim decided the audience (and who knows, maybe the actors) needed a lesson, needed to know after seven and a half seasons of keeping everyone intact that people could actually die. But here's the thing: we're not fucking stupid. We know all of this shit everyone survives could have killed them several times over in the real world, or on a TV show that was based in reality. But 911 has never been based in the real world, and we don't care.

Tim could have been happy that he and the other writers and cast and crew had created a show where the audience was able to suspend its disbelief to a frankly ridiculous extent because they loved the characters and actors that much, but instead he decided he was making a different show after seven and a half years. And if this is real and Bobby is really dead - and right now it seems like the only way it might not be real is if Tim hasn't told the actors what he's planning for the finale - I can't help but wonder if the secret sauce is gone forever.

Fuck.

[light-wrath-paradise]

Animorphs book club: book #6

Ok I'm late but in my defense I was busy. Anyway. Book 6.

My reaction:

Ok now for some thoughts:

Still fascinating for me that Animorphs has a level of body horror that isn't a lot less graphic than the horror audio drama The Silt Verses. Literally only like 20 % less graphic.

Ah I see we're continuing the trend of characters not really understanding one another. Jake thinking that Marco is immature and super unserious is so funny in a sad way. Like haha Marco I guess the façade you're putting on is working well for you!! Sorry about it or congrats it happened.

"Why would the Yeerks infest a hospital?" is such a question. Like yes, for one, it gives them a lot of people to turn into Controllers when they're under anesthesia. But there's the second deal as well: even if you aren't going under...even if you're just visiting...the hospital is a somber place. It's, very often, a place of pain and desperation. It's a place of grief. All those things make you less guarded, less rational. And more prone to outside influence. There is no better person to recruit into a cult than someone who is going through the loss of their loved one or someone who might soon lose their life. Scared people. Grieving people. Crying exhausted aching people. Nervous and anxious and jumpy and alone. There's no better place to get more hosts than the hospital.

Extremely funny that all the Yeerks in the hospital (logically) assumed that some roaches got inside and were just like "Ah fuck we got roaches. Oh well, there are other things to worry about." while Visser 3 is the only one whose first and only thought is "Those roaches are secretly the Andalite bandits." I mean, he's not wrong in this case but it's incredibly funny that he's paranoid enough for this to be his assumption. He's like the saying "the man who sleeps with a gun is a fool every night but one" and this happened to be the rare case time he's right (I assume that many a time we don't see him, he does claim that randomass animals are the Andalite bandits. Like come on a man who looks at a random cat or a group of roaches and immediately claims that they're Andalite bandits HAS to be doing that nearly every time he sees an animal. He sounds like this to me:)

"Someone kill this fool for me!" - completely normal thing to say. Top 10 sentences to liven up an office meeting.

EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR HOST-PARASITE PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE YEEHAAAAAAAAAW. LET'S BREAK OPEN THE CHAMPAGNE YIPPEEEEEE. I'd say sorry but I refuse to apologise for being insane about host-parasite psychological warfare and about watching an alien war criminal eat shit and experience The HorrorsTM. I am collecting instances of alien parasites experiencing The HorrorsTM like they're the only vital for my survival.

Warning: this is the part where I get a little insane and also start rambling about other literature as well without like explicitly naming it but rest assured I'm talking about several stories at once which is why I use different pronouns for the different aliens in question:

EVERYBODY GIVE IT UP FOR THE MUTUAL HORROR OF THE PARASITE-HOST RELATIONSHIP, I REPEAT WE HAVE A CASE OF THE HORROR OF PARASITE-HOST RELATIONSHIP. YEEEHHAAAAAAAAWWWWW.

Anyway, yeah, I just...love it when a story features the horror of knowing in relation to being a host/parasite. Especially when it includes organisms that either are a hive mind or function similarly to a hive mind. There's horror in something knowing every crevice of you, every inch of your mind, something that is not you in any capacity and not even the physical one now has access to every thought you've ever thought, every feeling you've ever felt, every memory, every desire, every fear. You can't lie to it, you can't pretend that you don't feel sad when you do, you can't pretend that you feel angry when you don't. There's unimaginable horror in being perceived like that. It's more naked than being naked in the literal sense. It's as if someone stripped you of your skin and exposed the flesh underneath. It's the kind of naked you wouldn't want to be even in the presence of the people you love most, not to mention in the presence of a stranger or an enemy. There's horror in the thing that knows you speaking with your tongue and moving with your limbs as you can only watch.

But the thing, the organism, well it doesn't really think of itself as a thing, does it? The organism considers themselves/itself/himself as important as you are (in truth, MORE than you are), with their/its/his own goals and thoughts, and, oh, they're/it's/he's wholly unprepared for a mind that stares back. There's horror in being next to nothing, just a small little thing, that has the tables turn on it. You're on top when you're on top but the fact of the matter is you are just a fungus/worm/slug and you don't really have much of a say when push comes to shove. Your warfare is psychological and even that is flawed - you are not prepared for having it reflect back onto you.

Now, you can try as you might to say that you're not scared, that you're rational, better and smarter and colder but you seem to forget that the spotlight of perception shines in the eyes of the beholder and, unfortunately, that's where you are.

How does it feel? The fear and anger you claim you don't experience (You don't feel.) (Emotions are below your race.) (You're not afraid.).

How does it feel? The horror of the prey glaring at you and telling you "Two can play this game." How does it feel? When the antelope speaks in the lion's tongue to tell him it knows, it knows it's old and afraid of getting discarded? You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?

[andtheirmoonlight]

The new ‘strategy’ is depressing, but I’d have accepted it for lack of anything better — if only the new desktop version wasn't there. The new desktop interface is unusable and anxiety-inducing, and I don’t think we’re getting the old one back. I’d be happy to be wrong about it, but.

For now, I open tumblr and I want to leave right away. It’s unusable for a multitude of reasons. It looks like twitter. So the question is ... is there anywhere left to go? To go, as in, one’s populated social media of choice. People from twitter and reddit did a go to here. Tumblr was the last. Everything else had already succumbed to capitalism and The Algorithm, but even if I looked past The Algorithm for a second; facebook sucks, and the Parents are there and they’re eldritch; I avoid instagram like the plague, among other things I prefer to eat my food asap and I don’t want to share any pictures publicly; twitter is nothing but pointless hatred, one can’t be social there without suicidal thoughts creeping up in minutes; mastodon is a wasteland etc etc. Where do I go where it’s okay, where there’s a lot of people, where I don’t need to show my real face or real name, where an app is not a must, where the things that people share are in chronological order, where there’s no pressure and no clout-chaser-induced crap..?

Popularity is conformity, and I thought that tumblr existed specifically for people who aren’t interested in conforming, yet now there’s this ‘update’ that directly states: psych, lol!

You might say, go be social on discord, but I’m fandomless. I’m fandomless, but I do want to see what my mutuals are obsessing over and be like ‘wohoo! good for you!’ on occasion. I want to have mutuals, so to speak. I want to have the means to find more mutuals. I want to be social. With people who live on the other side of the world, and I can check how they’re doing and how their various niche interests are doing. And I want to be able to poke random strangers with reblogs and ask ‘r u fren?’. I want to post my sad little jokes too. I want to be able to curate my own experiences. I also want to have something to just scroll and read and poke hearts on, yes — when I have no energy and brainpower to read books (although I read at every opportunity). But uuh, do you read books in doctors’ waiting rooms or under IVs? I doubt it. I bet you, too, read through odd tags of odd things. So where do I go?

If your answer is ‘outside lol’ — joke’s on you, I go there every day, and not even/only for vexing things, but just on walks and for game nights and date nights and falafel. We go on aimless walks every day. Atm we live in a very walkable country with a lot of nice touchable grass, and that’s not what I mean. Yes, I get that it’s healthy and all, but I am not exactly a healthy or particularly outgoing person, and outside is definitely not somewhere I can go to poke random people who are happy about being poked, or to potentially befriend someone from the other side of the world— and I want to. So where do I go?

I’m pretty sure that it’s a rhetorical question, and that the only place left for me to go is gooseberry grove (which is code for ‘my head’).

The internet has gotten so lonely.

[neverbelessthan]

SEVERANCE 2x10 | "They give us half a life and think we won't fight for it."

[clockworkreapers]

No, you may not have to-go boxes or the check.

[xcziel]

has anybody else thought about how jk could easily manage sofia's parts of slow dance or is it just me?

[robocops-a-christ-allegory]

Im no political analyst but if only there were a presidential campaign done in the last 20 years where the Dems managed to win by running someone who just said they were actually going to do anything at all to try to improve things after 8 years of a conservative rightwing president. If only that were a proven thing that worked ever. Too bad we all just have to get worse or kill ourselves

[evilkitten3]

having some thoughts on itachi and radicalization and how people can do the most horrific shit imaginable while fully believing it's the right thing to do and police states

[andtheirmoonlight]

My SO, peeking into the draft: ohhh you're writing dark academia. Interesting. me: no-no, it's not dark, there will be a happy ending, I promise! it's all about love and acceptance, as usual! and they're not academics! they would not be interested even in ‘grad school’ or whatever it's called in derekland, PhDs are not worth the time, you know they’re no— My SO: ... 👀 My SO: ......... 👀 My SO: please tell me you know what dark academia means Ron Howard's voice: She did not. 😐

...anyway, congratulations to me for fundamentally misunderstanding something and never bothering to check if I misunderstood it despite how I'm on tumblr.

Apparently dark academia is NOT psychological horror about sleep-deprived academics. Apparently it's not even a genre, but an aesthetic. Apparently I’m writing dark academia.

[anaalnathrakhs]

...i'm starting to wonder if i wasn't actually pretty often failed by the adults in my life as a young kid tbh.

[rig-a-rendal]

he literally swore he had a point to make but he forgot

[dukeofankh]

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

David Tennant interview at the British LGBT Awards, June 2024 (x)

Int: You being an ally to the community isn't something new. You've been doing it, but recently you've obviously really stepped up for trans and non-binary people in a time that's so, so needed. What made you do that?

David: I don't know that I feel like I've done anything that I wouldn't just sort of be normally doing. I mean, it's for me it's just common sense that there's there should be any suggestion that people aren't allowed to live the life they want to live and and to be who they want to be with and to express themselves wholeheartedly. I mean, as long as you aren't hurting anybody else, everybody else just needs to fucking butt out. I don't really understand why...

Int: ...it's controversial.

David: Yeah, there is and the thing... the thing, if there's something that's particularly sobering and depressing, it's that certain debates are being weaponized by certain elements of the political class, often for no... it seems it's not ideological so much as opportunistic. And I just think that's pretty disgusting, really.

Int: I couldn't agree more. What message would you like to send out to trans youth?

David: Please don't feel like you're not loved and that you're not accepted and that you're not... you know, most people in the world are good and kind and just want you to be able to be who you are. Most people in the world don't really care. I mean... you know what I mean?

Int: We're all narcissistic.

David: Exactly. Everyone's so self obsessed that really, the sort of noise that comes from a certain area of the press and of the political class is... it's a minority. It really is. And please don't let that make you feel diminished or dissuaded or discouraged, because, you know, you just... you have to be allowed to be yourself, and you are, and you are yourself and you must thrive and flourish, and we're all here for it.

Int: Amazing. I think, yeah, it's so important .I think sometimes it feels like there's so many people, but it is a minority. It's such a minority.

David: It's a tiny bunch of little whinging fuckers that are on the wrong side of history and they'll all go away soon.

Int: Like what happened with gay people 20 years ago.

David: When I was a kid, when I was a kid, exactly. You know, I was at school when Clause 28 came in and it all felt like being gay was something to be terrified of. And gay men in particular were demonised as paedophiles and now that just feels historic and ludicrous and, I mean, I don't see all those... all those battles aren't won, but we're in a very, very different place. And I feel like.I feel like history is on a progressive trajectory and it might get knocked sideways now and again by people for all sorts of reasons, which are often quite selfish and quite, as I say, not coming from a place of any sort of genuine belief system, but other than a place of opportunism. And that's something that we... I hope that in 20 years time, we're talking about, you know, these culture wars as something of the past.

Int: I believe we will. I'm a huge Doctor Who fan, so.

David: Oh, good, me too!

Int: You are my Doctor.

David: Oh, thank you very much.

Int: But recently, obviously, you came back for the 60th anniversary and you got to work with Yasmin Finney.

David: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Int: What was it like working with her?

David: Oh, she's brilliant. She's fantastic. Yeah. And she's in the show again now, she's back in it, so that's fantastic to see. She's lovely, talented, cool as a cucumber, articulate, brilliant. I learned a lot from her as an actor and also as someone who, you know, who's become a sort of de facto activist just because of who she is and where she is, and she becomes a sort of symbol of hope, and she's wonderful.

[aparticularbandit]

Genshin downloading on the new phone with New Players Get 20 Free Wishes! and me over here like where are my free wishes, why don't I have any free wishes—

[apatheticsunday]

Single Dad Dead on Main

AKA "Danny is the ghost-equivalent of a foster parent for de-aged Dani and Dan. Jason's just wondering who the hell these two feral meta children are." prompt idea!

Danny thinks he's doing an okay job at being a single dad of two. They're living in a quaint two bedroom apartment in Park Row, he's managing his Ghost King money well, and the kids haven't died (again). (He's definitely not getting a "World's Greatest Dad" mug anytime soon, but, hey, at least the house hasn't burned down yet!)

...Until he wakes up from his nap to an eerily silent apartment.

If there's one thing he's learned over the last few months, it's that silence is not good. He's scrambling off the couch fast enough to give himself a headache, practically flying down the hallway so he can get to the kids' room. Ellie is wedged halfway under her bunk bed. Dan's also squished under the bed but quickly squirms out when he realizes Danny's standing in the door way. He's holding... a socket wrench??

"...do I want to know what you two are doing?" Danny deadpans.

Ellie scrambles out as well, smears of something oily on her cheek. For a seven and eight year old, they have surprisingly convincing I'm innocent! expressions.

"I dunno," Ellie singsongs while Dan simultaneously barks, "Nothing!"

Danny squints. The kids squint back. Yeah, there's definitely something under the bed that's not supposed to be there. Since Dan's holding a wrench (and where the hell did he get that?? Danny doesn't even own any tools aside from maybe a little rubber mallet he found in the hallway closet), Danny hopes thinks it's not an animal.

It takes a minute of arguing in which Danny promises not to be mad, let them eat ice cream, and let them stay up an hour later than curfew for the kids to even let him near the bed without biting him. (Jokes on them, the ice cream is sugar free and Danny's going to reset the clocks to an hour before. Check and mate, bitch! Parenting is so easy.)

And then Danny pulls out... a tire. No, a rim. Two tire rims. Oh, Ancients. Engraved on the tire rim is a red Bat symbol. His stomach nearly drops to the floor; everybody in Crime Alley knows what the Red Hood's symbol looks like. "Eight Heads in a Duffle Bag," Crime Prince of Gotham with a gang big enough to take over all of Park Row. And yeah, Danny could easily beat the guy, but that doesn't mean he wants to. He doesn't want to uproot Dan and Ellie from their schools, move cities, run from yet another organization that wants them dead.

"How did you get this?" Danny asks, utterly dumbfounded.

"I dunno," Ellie says, just as Dan's saying, "Nowhere."

(Danny takes it back. Parenting is definitely not easy.)

"Danielle. Daniel. Where did you get these tire rims?" Danny asks again, more stern this time, to which he only gets shrugs. And that's when he notices the window is open and the screen his missing. "You're kidding me. Did you climb out the window? We're on the third floor!"

"We flew, duh." Ellie rolls her eyes, only shooting a wide-eyed, guilty look to Dan when he elbows her with a vicious shuddup!

"I-okay. Here's what we're going to do. We'll... just return the rims. It's not like the Red Hood saw you two steal them-," Danny stops when Ellie and Dan give each other a side-eye. He knows that look. It's the same look he and Jazz used to give each other when they had a silent agreement about something. Oh, no. No, no, no.

"...he didn't see you, did he?"

Another side-eye look. Oh, Ancients. At least there's no way the Red Hood knows where they are, right?

(Jason stares at the kids playing with his bike. He's not stupid enough to think they couldn't have been paid to sabotage it, but the way the little girl hikes herself up onto the seat and pretends to rev the engine makes him think otherwise. It's cute. The boy mostly seems interested in the engraved bat symbol on his tire rims, scraping at it like it's a 3D decal.

"I wanna be a bicycle-rider when I get bigger. I'll wear the jacket and everything!" The little girl laughs, deepening her voice before saying, "I'm a bicycle-rider! I'll beat you up!"

Jason snorts. He's leaning against the fire escape balcony overhead and it's dark enough for them not to see him, but they both freeze at the soft sound. When nothing happens, the kids relax again.

"It's a motorist, stupid. C'mon, help me take this off and I'll build you one."

"You wanna take the tire? Why?"

"'Cus of the symbol! It's the Batman symbol, do you know how scared people are of 'em? Show 'em this and nobody'll mess with us."

The kid's got a point. Crime Alley knows Red Hood's symbol like the back of their hand, but somehow Jason doesn't think rolling around a tire rim is going to have the same effect. Jason's about to step in when the kid bends the fucking metal with his bare hand. His fucking bike. It looks like the kid barely broke a sweat, too; just wiped his hands on his jeans and started prying apart front of his motorcycle.

Jason's voice is more biting than he means for it to when he shouts, "Hey!" He swings over the fire escape, landing with a heavy thud, before hauling ass towards the kids. Almost immediately the boy yanks the girl behind him and snarls... and his eyes go Lazarus-green. Jason stops abruptly. His voice is softer, gentler, when he tries again.

"Hey, kid. Don't you know not to go tearing apart people's bikes? C'mon, at least do it the right way."

That makes the boy pause, looking momentarily baffled and the green turning into bright blue. Jason takes that as an in and says, "Y'know, it's a lot faster when you use tools. I've got a wrench in my bag. If you use it like this..."

Jason spends the next thirty-five minutes helping the kids steal his own damn rims. He shouldn't. But he's curious about who these meta kids are and they're almost painfully easy to talk with, they just blabber like they've never heard of keeping a secret before in their lives. They talk about their dad, school, their favorite tv show. And then they talk about "the bad men" and Jason's stomach drops. "The bad men" who drive white vans, capture people, and experiment on them. And that sounds an awful lot like a meta-trafficking ring in his city, dead set on coming after the kids and their dad.

Then he's very, very grateful he's letting the kids take his rims home. After all, what Bat doesn't put GPS trackers in their symbols?)