Daftydraw

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

I do have notifications still on for this post because I love the sense of community it gives me. We're all just staring at each other blankly and occasionally screaming.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Consider: the aristocratic werewolf. She has acres and acres of land for her private use, denying hunting rights to everyone else. She spends hours running free on her property and hunting whatever—or whoever—she sees with no thought to the ramifications. And if it is a person who meets her teeth and claws, then that’s a fitting punishment for trespassing on her land, no?

AO3 complains about funding, Tumblr listens and puts the word out to customers. Tumblr gives AO3 a new book, something they wrote themselves, and AO3 adds it to the archive with a smile. Most nights, they are intertwined, so close they can't tell one from the other.

Sometimes AO3 gets sick and needs to take a day off. Those are long days. Tumblr takes the burden of chores, worrying about AO3 as they give AO3 space to recover. When there is nothing to do, Tumblr sits outside their door to wait.

Bedside tables full of medicine, wondering if they will ever wake up again, or if they will lose the one person they care for most and all the years they spent with them. They know it's likely nothing, but Tumblr can't help but worry. They've seen a lot. They've almost lost AO3 before.

When AO3 wakes, healed and healthy, Tumblr nearly cries with joy. They check up on them, make sure they're ok, before making breakfast for them.

You extend your hand. “I noticed you’re new here. What’s your name?”

Clark’s introducing her around.  “This is my good friend, Diana, she’s in from out of town.”

Clark stops a few feet away and squints at you worriedly from behind those ridiculous glasses you’re 99% sure he doesn’t actually need, and asks tentatively, “Everything all right?”

You ignore him in favor of staring at the inky dark numerals hovering over the beaming fool gesticulating some fantastic yacht story for a gaggle of secretaries and minor columnists.

Meanwhile, your paranoia gets to you. You start working out. Training in self defense. Studying the Justice League, trying to find its members. Finding out all their identities so you can be ready.

One day you wake up with a ten above your head.

That day you get a call. You recognize the area code. Gotham. Your heart is in your throat. You should throw the phone away, run. They’ve found you. You’re doomed. You might be a ten, but you can’t beat them all.

You pick up the phone anyways.

“Hello?”

“Hey, this is Clark Kent. I was wondering if we could talk.”

Your mouth goes dry. “About what?”

But they’d find you. You know they’d find you. They’re goddamned superheroes. They can carry buildings. They could probably manage finding you.

“Hello?” Clark’s voice returns, tinged with concern, and suddenly you stop. Calm down. They’re the good guys. At least they’re supposed to be.

“Yeah, sorry, just a little shocked you–”

“Caught up to you?” Clark asked. He laughed a little, but it wasn’t teasing. His voice had his regular ease, the same casual tone he would employ to talk about the weather in the break room. “Yeah. Lois noticed your odd behavior, actually. We didn’t realize it was linked to the League until you refused to interview Bruce, and then we knew something was up.”

“Speaking of Bruce Wayne, are you using his phone? Your area code is Gotham, not Metropolis.”

Clark laughed. “Damn. Lois wasn’t kidding when she said you were the best investigator working for the Daily Planet.”

“I just notice things is all.” You laughed nervously. You still can’t shake your general unease. This guy could kill you without any effort. You’re no match for him, or for any of his friends for that matter. Hell, Batman didn’t even have powers and he’d still fuck you up.

“Yeah, and that’s a skill we could use around here. Would you like to talk about joining? Bruce can send you a car, bring you here–”

“No,” you say, sharper than you intended. “Sorry. I’d rather meet in public, if that’s okay with you.”

“Of course. Lunch or coffee? It’s still early, but it’s a bit easier to cram all of us in a restaurant than a coffee shop.”

“Lunch, I guess. And no superhero stuff.”

Clark pauses, then sighs sadly. You’ve heard this sadness before in rare amounts. When bad things happened and fear and greed overtook people, he’d always frown and sigh, like someone watching their best friend self destruct, unable to help or save them. “You’re afraid of us. Aren’t you?” His voice is concerned and hushed.

A pang of guilt starts to replace the fear. “You can throw around buildings like a sack of potatoes, Clark. Your friend is powerful on an impossible level, Bruce’s kid is a fucking eight–”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Clark said, the sadness disappearing. “You have a number system for us?”

“Look, it’s a whole thing. I’ll talk about it over lunch.” You grab your laptop bag. “Where are we meeting?”

Clark said something to someone else. “Got any restaurant ideas? They want lunch.”

Bruce Wayne – you’ve heard enough interviews to recognize his voice – said, “Saffron’s pretty good.”

“Jesus,” someone else said. You’ve heard the voice, but you couldn’t place it. “I keep on forgetting you’re rich.”

“You don’t think it’s a little much, Bruce? The pay at Daily Planet is good but not that good,” said Clark.

“I’ll cover their tab.”

“Okay…” Clark returned to the call. “Saffron, in…thirty minutes? You’re downtown, right?”

“You can get a table to Saffron in thirty minutes?” said the strange voice. “Boy, am I glad I made friends with you guys.”

“Yeah, that works.” You’re a bit hesitant, but you swallow your nerves. At least for now. Your thoughts about threat levels made you forget that Clark is a decent guy. All you could do is hope that he thinks you’re decent, too. “See you then.”

“See you then. Be safe. Bye.” Clark hangs up, and you’re left in your room. The worry is starting to turn into something different. Excitement.

They aren’t wearing masks or uniforms, no bright colors and costumes. Clark Kent is in his usual office wear, Bruce Wayne is wearing a tailored suit, Diana Prince dons a nice blue dress, and Oliver Queen wears a nice button down. You don’t recognize two of them – a twenty something in jeans and a hoodie, a man in a green shirt, and a burly guy in a baggy t-shirt and old jeans who looks like he had just washed up from the sea. All of them, aside from Diana, are tens, of course.

Clark Kent stands, shakes your hand when you come in. “Glad to see you made it.” He introduces you to the others, and they all shake your hand quite happily and greet you like a friend. You learn that the guy in the hoodie is Barry Allen, the dude in green is Hal Jordan, and the beach dude is Arthur Curry. Waitresses, all ones, twos, and threes, come in with drinks, and one plops a mug of coffee in front of you, along with a small menu. Clark Kent gives you a knowing gaze.

Once the waitresses clear out, Bruce sits up straight. “Clark, would you rather I do the honors?” His silver watch glitters in the light from the windows.

“No, no, Bruce,” Clark says, setting down his glass of water. “I think it’s best if I ask them myself.”

Within a moment, you piece it together. “You want me to join the Justice League?”

Clark Kent cracks a smile. “How’d you guess?”

“You call me out of the blue, mention the Justice League, invite me to Bruce Wayne’s place, and then here, where you introduce me to a group of people who all look strikingly similar to the members of the Justice League.” You take a sip of coffee. “Subtlety is hardly your strong suit.”

Barry Allen laughed. “They got you there on that one.”

“Well, you’re right. At first Bruce wanted to handle the situation himself,” – you’d rather not think about what handle was a euphemism for – “but I insisted we do some more digging. We did, and what we found was…surprising. To say the least.”

You look at him oddly. You aren’t normal – no one else saw numbers floating above people’s heads – but you weren’t surprising. Your parents were the only ones who knew about your ability, and they’re long gone. You’ve got no checkered past, no odd history–

“You have powers.” Clark’s voice was clearly impressed.

“How did you find out about that?” The fear comes back, forming a knot in your stomach. “I’ve never told anyone else about it.”

“It’s not hard to notice,” Barry Allen says in between sips of soda. “Most of the information we got we got from Lois after she’s hung out with you.”

“I’ve never her told her anything about the numbers, though.”

Oliver Queen sits up, flashing you a confused look. “Numbers?”

Okay, something’s not right here. “The number I see over everyone’s heads,” you say, keeping your voice low. “It ties into how dangerous everyone is. Usually it’s just a one or two, maybe a three or four or five if they’ve got some kind of training or if they work out or whatever. Almost everyone at this table has a ten.”

“Almost?” Diana furrows her brow.

“You have an eleven,” you add.

Diana nods, smiling with a bit of pride and making an “I told you so” face to Bruce Wayne, who rolls his eyes. Oliver Queen clears his throat as Bruce and Hal pass him a couple bills.

“Ignore them,” Barry says, rolling his eyes at the three of them. “What you said was interesting – I might have to ask you a few questions on that later – but it wasn’t what I found. Remember the sensory and memory study you did when you were ten?”

You do remember it. Your parents were contacted by a scientist friend of theirs who needed kids to run a study on memory and stimuli. You remember it clearly. The large sterile room, the tests, the person conducting them, a handsome woman with a four above her head, the questions, the smell of latex gloves and fresh bleach. But you don’t remember the results. You were never told the results, other than that they were good, though with a test like that it was hard to say.

Do you tell your villains?

Following the ridiculous and inhumane news out of the UK yesterday, two out of the top 3 petitions on the UK parliament petition site relate to trans rights:

Let me point you in the right direction!

1. Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services

Sign here

See graph of signatures here

Deadline: 28 July 2025

Signatures so far: 24,709 of 100,000

2. Allow transgender people to self-identify their legal gender

Sign here

See graph of signatures here

Deadline: 12 June 2025

Signatures so far: 22,107 of 100,000

Who can sign?

Anyone living in the UK, regardless of citizenship

Sign here

Deadline: 28 July 2025

Signatures so far: 49,862 of 100,000

Graph of signatures:

~

2. Allow transgender people to self-identify their legal gender

Sign here

Deadline: 12 June 2025

Signatures so far: 51,970 of 100,000

Graph of signatures:

~

Who can sign?

Anyone living in the UK, regardless of citizenship.

UK citizens living anywhere in the world.

It is NOT helpful to fake signatures. Please do NOT sign unless you meet the above criteria.

~

And these two petitions are dominating the competition, this is from the front page of the petitions site showing the most popular petitions right now:

The self-definition one is getting a signature every 4 seconds.

~

It is worth bearing in mind that over 6 million people signed the UK parliament petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU (about 9% of the UK population), and we still left the EU. 100,000 signatures gets you a debate in parliament, but it's not the kind where anyone can make a law, it just raises the profile of the issue in parliament itself.

Having said that, the EU petition was a very, very big issue and they might have listened if it approached half the population. The bar is probably lower with trans rights petitions for taking-it-seriously. If these petitions could get a few million signatures it would probably prompt a significant change in law.

@domsdickey thank you for these tags. Really displays how much one's thoughts can be unwittingly shaped by their environment, it really didn't cross my mind that it'd just as well be women making these jokes.