more, more, more

rough drafting it here but i think Batman has a special connection to the concept of child sidekicks in a way that defies modern feelings about child soldiers because he was the child who lost everything and felt he needed to make a change in the world but was denied the agency and choice to do anything. child Bruce would have fit right in with any of the Robins if he'd had a Batman and it's the fact that he didn't that ultimately drives him to extend the choice he never got. it was never about soldiers or "refusing to protect the children from themselves," it is, within the acceptable morality of the genre, respecting a child's personhood and ability to make decisions for themselves and giving them opportunities their adult never had. it's why you can't take the Robins away from Batman without significantly changing the character, because Batman was born from child Bruce's most heartfelt wish to be able to DO something about all the injustice in the world and so to deny other children that is to deny himself

traditional yelling-and-hitting abusive parent bruce wayne is SO boring to me okay. give me a man who is doing his best and his best isn't good enough. the harder he tries the worse it becomes. he wants to do right by them. he is constitutionally incapable of doing right by himself. he cannot begin to comprehend what it does to a person to see a person they care for, who has cared for them, destroy himself. you are the child and you thought he was the adult but he's never been the adult. he locked himself in stasis so he could hold his trauma forever and he'll never accept that he's allowed to let it go. he's hurting himself and he's always been hurting himself and you can never let on that it hurts you because he won't stop, he'll just put more distance between you, enough that he thinks you won't notice anymore. you thought he was going to save you but he was drowning before you even got here. you love him and you hate him for making you love him and for making you watch him stagger under the weight of all his masks. but as long as there's a crisis, as long as there's someone else to save, it's fine. it can be fine. you can save someone, somewhere. you can do it together and it can feel like helping. you have all these feelings and nowhere to put them because you can never tell anyone. because that wouldn't be fair to him. they wouldn't understand. he's doing his best.

i think the thing about batman's no kill rule is that its essentially bruce saying "guilty people don't deserve to be murdered on the street either, actually." and he's not wrong.

I love the idea that if Bruce had picked any other way to cope, Alfred would still have been ride or die for him. Bruce wanted to become a doctor? Alfred would be up helping him crunch before the MCATs at 3am. Bruce wanted to become an actor? Alfred would be enrolling him in all the best schools and getting Sir Ian McKellan to coach him. Bruce wanted to fight for the environment? Alfred would be showing him learn how to dismantle deforestation equipment. Alfred loves that boy but it's just Alfred's luck that his boy wants to dress like a Bat and fight crime with pointy boomerangs and a bitching car.

It deeply saddens me that "pdf file" has become slang for pedo. Don't you dare disrespect my wife the beautiful portable document format ever again

and to the children in the notes saying we need this fucking baby talk to get around censorship online; there's been no credible evidence that any site other that YouTube (which will only demonetize your video, ftr) will actually censor or hide content that include words like rape, pedophile, gun, terrorist, etc. etc. and even if we take as a given they were (which, again, they are not), do not fucking comply in advance, you absolute fucking coward. and ESPECIALLY do not comply by altering your real life fucking vocabulary. don't let the technocrats dictate what words you say holy fucking shit dude!!!!!!!!!!!!

Additional reminder that this kind of self censorship makes it harder for people to block content they do not want to see.

"all you ever do is complain" that's not true. I also resent.

why do US patriots think they own "red white and blue" there's a lotta red white and blue flags out there. "i stand for the red white and blue" yass me too let's go costa rica 🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷 let's go laos 🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦 fuck it up liberia 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷 nepal get triangular with it 🇳🇵🇳🇵🇳🇵

Happy birthday Haymitch Abernathy, I guess.

That “cringe” nonbinary xenogender genderfuck therian who uses neopronouns and may or may not go on HRT while being loudly, proudly themselves will always be more revolutionary and subversive than a binary trans person who aggressively reproduces the cis status quo and shames anyone who doesn’t do the same.

By the way, I threw “therian” in here as a bit of a litmus test for those responding to it as something widely regarded as “cringe” but ultimately completely harmless and benign that’s often maligned by people with conservative beliefs. And well. It did its job quite amazingly given how many of the negative responses I’ve seen have focused on that rather than the overall message of shaming people for their identities is bad and counterproductive. It’s almost like these people view all of those stated identities this way but used the silly furry one as a “weak point” they’d get minimal pushback on to dismiss the very clear point of the post. Literally hilarious honestly

katniss is given grace for being a seventeen year old girl thrown into war (as she should!), but gale is never given any grace for being a seventeen year old boy who suffered the exact same way she did all his childhood and then chose to walk into the fight for whatever he had left. gale didn’t have a cinna or an effie; he didn’t see capitol people growing to care for katniss, he saw them walking her to a death match and then dolling her up as a child bride who got pregnant at seventeen. he had three younger siblings and a mother to take care of, he was hunting way before katniss. he’s the revolutionary people want katniss to be when in reality her story is about the effects of war on innocents.

Today the medicine ran out, and my baby Qais fell unconscious. At hospital, doctor said anemia from bleeding caused this, and I need help to get treatment before it happens again.

The doctors said severe bleeding and weakness caused this terrifying moment, and without urgent treatment it could happen again anytime, so I ask, can you help me get treatment for my baby Qais??, please donate now.

Today I used torn clothes on my baby Qais’s wound instead of bandages because I cannot afford them. I feel helpless watching this. Please donate now and help me save him.

Every night, I promise myself I will stop begging and somehow find another way. Then morning comes, Qais still needs medicine, and I return with the same broken heart, asking for help again, please donate now.

I’m saying this with a heart that can’t take more pain. If you read this and scroll away, I won’t forgive you. My baby is slipping away. Please donate now, please share—save Qais.

PLEASE help Esraa to get Qais the medication he needs to survive. Donate if you can, or share this post!

One of the things I found so interesting walking away from Supergirl 2026 is how the movie portrays Kara’s use of her powers. With Clark they always feel innate, part of him, like they are him. He is Superman because of his powers. Kara meanwhile treats them as this rad tool she now suddenly gets to use to make her invincible. And she can turn them on and off just by going to a different solar system! You can feel her struggle with home and identity in each and every aspect of her usage and that makes the fact that they are powers so visceral. Again, we’re all used to Kryptonite and red suns as comic fans but I feel like this movie helps showcase the powers as mere tools because they are. It’s the person who makes the powers. Yes she’s Supergirl but she’s actually Kara Zor-El of Krypton and Argo and when she’s around a yellow sun she has powers she can use to do some good.

Unreliable everyone

The «fuck it, we ball» energy of supergirl is so important to me