#you wouldn't be able to stop me

[abluehappyface]

Man I wish I could find a website that'll let me combine touhou midis/add existing midi parts to each other, do you KNOW how many themes would sound FANTASTIC with one another!?

[monst]

Hopefully there's some Bridgerton fans here:

You know how each season has that one confession scene. I know people would hc Jason as saying Anthony's "Your the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires" but I firmly believe he'd be on that farmer George shit.

"I love you! From the mo- from the moment I saw you try to go over the wall. I have loved you desperately. I cannot breathe when you are not near, I love you, (your name lol). My heart calls your name..."

[diazsdimples]

Fuck It Friday

Hello and happy very belated FIF, in which I introduce yet another new wip. I made this post a month or so ago, in which I outlined an HC of mine that after the first, Bobby and Athena buy a ranch. That AU has been consuming me every since so I've decided to write it! Welcome to the Bathena Ranch AU, featuring every other member of the 118 and some very wholesome ranchy vibes.

Tagged by @theotherbuckley and @actuallyitsellie

Bobby’s eating breakfast when he sees it. Like every morning for the past two months, Bobby makes himself some eggs on the too-small stovetop, brews some coffee in their tiny coffee machine, and plonks himself down at their two-person table with his laptop. He opens his favourite rural real estate site, not expecting there to be much change from yesterday, and settles in for a morning of meaningless scrolling while getting increasingly frustrated at America’s housing market. This morning, though, there’s a new listing. Perking up, Bobby sits forward in his chair and reads the blurb with interest. It’s in an area they haven’t looked before, out near Kagel Canyon, but claims to still be within an hour’s drive from central Los Angeles. Bobby clicks open Google Maps and plugs in the ranch’s address, then Station 118. It’s 8:30am, so traffic is about as bad as it’ll get, but even then, it’ll still only take him an hour and 10 minutes to get in. It means an early start to the day if he wants to get to work on time, but that’s never bothered him before. Bobby allows the tiniest bit of hope to trickle through his veins as he does one final once over of the listing. Usually he’ll try and get a vibe based off the initial presentation of the listing, before he allows himself to click on it, just in case. Everything about this ranch catches his eye. He clicks in and holds his breath as he begins to scroll through the photos. It’s perfect. The home is just about everything Bobby’s dreamed of. From what he can tell, it’s been made in the typical style for a ranch home, with a long veranda out the front, complete with a swing chair and planter boxes. The kitchen and bedrooms look like they’re out of a western film – and yeah, maybe it’ll require a little bit of touching up, but there’s potential. Shoving the last of his eggs into his mouth, Bobby scrolls back to the beginning and leans back in his chair. “Athena! Come here for a second?” His wife wanders in from the bedroom a moment later, looking sleep-rumpled and her face split in a wide yawn. “Whassamatter?” Bobby pulls out the chair beside him and pats it eagerly. “C’mere. I think I’ve found our dream home.” “Your dream home, more like,” Athena comments, but she takes a seat regardless, resting her head on Bobby’s shoulder. She’s silent for a moment as she scrolls through the pictures, her expression neutral. She quirks an eyebrow at the shot of the backyard – overgrown and full of weeds – and scoffs when she sees the kitchen with it’s frankly offensive pink and green colour scheme, but other than that, it’s hard to get a grasp on what she’s really feeling. Bobby talks her through the amenities, the amount of land the ranch has, their commute time to the city and, most importantly, the fact that it’s within their price range. Athena listens, making noises of affirmation when she needs to and nodding her head. When Bobby’s finally finished, Athena sits back in her chair and crosses her arms, looking contemplative. “Well? What do you think?” Bobby asks. He tries not to seem too eager, but this is the most excited he’s gotten about something since he and Michael busted an illegal surgeon across the road.

np tagging

@dangerpronebuddie @hippolotamus @daffi-990 @bidisasterevankinard @neverevan

@watchyourbuck @spotsandsocks @bibuckbuckgoose @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @bucks-daddy-issues

@bucksbignaturals @wikiangela @loveyouanyway @exhuastedpigeon @kitteneddiediaz

@thekristen999 @slightlyobsessedwitheverything @inell @tommysdaddykink @lonelychicago

@elvensorceress @rainbow-nerdss @underwaterninja13 @steadfastsaturnsrings @bigfootsmom

@monsterrae1 @wildlife4life @actualalligator @cal-daisies-and-briars @perfectlysunny02

[silverwhittlingknife]

How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?

Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake.  He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life.  This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.

Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...

Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis

“I could tell the truth.  But I don’t.” - Robin 66

...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.

And I think that’s great.

Below the cut:

Shorter version - key points about Jack

Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)

Final thoughts

Shorter version - key points about Jack:

He’s a bad parent.  He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.

But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way.  He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters.  Jack’s not a monster!  He just...kinda sucks.

He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset.  He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.

And Tim loves him, a lot.  Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!). 

...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in.  Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.

The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)

Very long version:

(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)

Okay!  So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation.  You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in!  I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.

My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area.  Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away.  He's just...not great.  Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.

I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD

My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)

Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values.  Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.

This is a great setup for an ongoing comic.  It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:

Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play; 

Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance; 

Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...); 

Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);

etc. etc.  

The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism.  Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.

And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.

I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever.  Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot.  And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...

...but also he ends up lying more and more.

(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)

Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation

(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)

Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do.  When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.

And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV.  If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really.  So what do you do?  Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around?  Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?  

Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy.  Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out.  How would you react?  Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts.  You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him.  You’re upset with his dad.  But also... what should you do, exactly?

Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.

My Harsher Take

Jack never hits his son.  But his temper is a big deal.

In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it.  When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.  

This is bad behavior!  It is Not Good!  

And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.

Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.

More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake

Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either.  Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust.  When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified.  When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem.  Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious.  And so on.

This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person.  So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.

The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.

Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations.  When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies).  When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him.  So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!).  It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.

Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.

For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy).  Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.

I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.

If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).

[faradyke]

Listen, make the jokes about Souji Mikage/Nemuro being an arsonist all you want bc he is. However, if MY boyfriend died and ppl were partying and his older sister either: A. wasn't there when her brother/my bf died and was instead sucking face with AKIO or B. Was there but left me to wheel his dead body to (supposedly) the mortuary in the building and I saw her, again, SUCKING FACE WITH AKIO OHTORI I would've set that bitch ablaze right then and there. He showed restraint.

[hussyknee]

Bisan's video yesterday broke my heart entirely. Over the last two months this girl has become friend and family and the one of Gaza's brightest stars for people all over the world who follow her social media. She's the kind of person most of us only see as protagonists in books and shows; her force of will, determination, her insistence in finding the smallest hope (usually children and cats) and happiness among the ruins and terror have made millions fall in love with her. People like her and Hind Khaudary and Motaz makes you feel like things can still be okay as long as they're alive and fighting.

Yesterday, the bombs and massacres resumed. And reminded us once more than this is not a hero or a protagonist or beacon but a cold, scared, heart-broken girl who wants her life back desperately, even though everything she knows and loves is destroyed. I have never seen her so broken.

Please don't stop talking about Palestine. Don't give up on them, on her, on Motaz and Hind and Saleh. They're real people like you and me, going through an unimaginable horror, and we are the only hope and witness they have. We are all just drops in a vast ocean doing our best to change the current, but every drop is vital, and our only job is not to evaporate. If our friends in Gaza must survive, we can give them a reason to do so.

Bisan's Twitter

Bisan's Instagram

Bisan's TikTok

[coquelicoq]

just had an intense unflooding-the-street experience. i actually got out there before the storm drain was completely covered, only to watch it cover before my eyes in a manner of minutes as i futilely removed leaves at a much slower pace than they were coming due to the insane speed and volume of the water. then i had the standard experience of removing a handful of leaves at a time and having to stop and retreat every time someone drove through so they didn't splash me, and then wait for the waves to die down so that i could get close enough to the drain without filling my boots with water, and then here comes another car, etc. this time there was a crew here doing work on my building, and one of them offered me a rake, which was very nice and did eventually come in handy, but i had to make some progress on the drain first to reduce the amount of water in the way, which took forever for the aforementioned reasons. the best part (sarcastic) was when a guy who had parked on the street came over to complain that he couldn't get something out of his car, and i was like "if you want this to go faster you could stand over there and direct cars not to drive through here," and suddenly it was all oh i can't i'm busy. lol. some nerve to come and complain about the situation to the one person trying to do something about it and then not be willing to do anything at all to assist. the actual best part was when another guy came over, and he said something about the drain on the other side of the street and i didn't hear him exactly so i thought he was just complaining that that one was also blocked, which like, no shit, so i was like yeah i'll get to that one next, and then he held up the rake he was carrying that i hadn't noticed and was like no i mean, can i help you out? and i was like omg yes please!!! it went much faster with two people and was also excellent for morale. i was in such a rush to get outside before the street completely flooded that i didn't have time to eat first and am now just completely soaked with rain and my own sweat and like. shaking all over lol. so i'm going to try to take a shower without fainting. wish me luck.

[snackugaki]

oh y'all thought i was kidding, huh?

(h elp)

EDIT: ... you lucky 10,000 gonna know who the kids from Fort Greene are.

And if y'all wanted to see what we were watching in the early and mid 90s? Here you go:

It had everything, stilted acting so the kids at home can solve a case with the cast before Dora ever put on her li'l backpack, shirts so blousy and long you could hide a circus in 'em, what people thought surfing and chatting on the web was like, people typing that slow back in the day, Salt N Pepa was on this show, a yoooung Julia Stiles, motherfuckin' Samuel L. Jackson played Jamal's dad for an episode

and just for them's that didn't know: Trio and their clan roosted in Manhattan, Spidey is a guy from Queens, Brooklyn got the TMNT and the GW Team

Ghostwriter taught me about cyphers, wordplay, puns and it's rolled downhill from there. UvU ehe

[skeletalheartattack]

so for like, a decade plus, i've been searching for a youtube video i remember seeing back in 2007, and i've finally managed to make some headway:

good news: i've found it

bad news: it's lost media

[dreamlogic]

...

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

sometimes you, a person happily in a long-term committed monogomous relationship, meet someone who is so firmly Your Type that you can see an entire alternate reality in which you met that person when you were single and you would have been a total heart-eyed dumbass about it, and your immediate thought is "oh thank god i'm taken. that would have been exhausting"

[yourfavehasanosmia]

nothing funnier than posting about how studying anthropology gave you divine insight into the biological evilness of men when two posts earlier you were complaining about not being able to get a research position or become a scientific communicator because you didn't get into the masters. like damn wonder why they didn't want you.

[itsalongwaytotipperary]

No idea whether I can do super/evil boops on mobile but IDC I CAN DO BOOPS!!

[pa-pa-plasma]

kind of frustrating that people took "fat does not equal unhealthy" to mean "fat is not unhealthy." sometimes being obese IS unhealthy & excess fat can cause a lot of problems. ignoring health issues isn't progressive. real "oranges kill people with depression" moment

[genderqueerpond]

amyeleven fivenyssa crossover

[triglycercule]

the procrastinator's urge to not do any of the schoolwork i have to do because this is what happens when i miss only THREE days of school (loss of motivation and flow,,,,,,)