no.1 emperor claudius stan

We are not canaries in the coal mine whose deaths you can dismiss while you frame groups you actually care about as the sole human casualties of these policies. I need you to care that laws like the Online Safety Act lead sex workers to have to return to abusive third parties to find clients or to work in brothels we hate or to such poverty that we starve. I need you to care about payment processors refusing to pay out for adult content because it means sex workers cannot rely on online work when selling sex in-person becomes too much for our bodies or too risky.

i am writing someone an explanation of how fandom acts about devin grayson and why they act that way, and within less than 20 minutes of skimming the devin grayson tag i am so overwhelmed by disgust at people's malice and derision towards her that i have to take a break. the level of vitriolic hatred on the leftist fandom website for a woman who wrote a sexual assault arc rooted in her own experiences of being sexually assaulted is unreal.

for reference and so it's clear how abhorrent the last two screencaps are, she changed her name to distance herself from her family after she was sexually assaulted and changed it years before she even thought about working in comics. she was open about this from the time of her first interview with wizard magazine (in, i believe, the 1990s) and they chose not to publish it because it was "a downer" to bring up sa. the following quote was published on cbr, a major comics website, in 2005:

if we didn't have musical scene there that was both willing to give financially and do a lot of unpaid organizing relatively quickly, it's likely the ticket would've gone to warrant, which would've probably resulted in criminal charges as it wasn't something we could afford without fundraising. that's permanent record shit. like, potential job denial for the rest of your life and potential current job loss, as the cops will generally stick you in jail for a bit when picking you up on warrant.

and those consequences don't even consider police brutality! like, the pigs only work as "mediators" because of their legitimized threat of violence and you just sent them to go deal with a drunken crowd. that's frankly fucking hopeful that it gets resolved peacefully. they are not effective mediators and it's completely disingenuine to pretend that they are.

Is a noise complaint worth your neighbors life? Those people sleeping in the parking lot... if you call the police cuz you think theyre high and they get murdered, will you be at peace? The people at the apartment pool who don't live there, are you okay with them dying there just because they don't live there and you think that deserves a call to the police?

No?

Then mind your business.

Go somewhere else. Take a walk. Finish your shopping. Let them swim. Let them party.

But don't sit there in someone else's tags saying "I wish murder was okay sometimes" over some noise and act like the OTHER person is the danger, like they're the one unfit for society.

But there's one major exception, which is when you're clearly joking.

If you say something like "I'm going to forcefem Richard Nixon for his crimes", you will be subjected to a person who fully and entirely believes that:

You possess the infrastructure and resources necessary to operate a real life forcefemming dungeon sophisticated enough to forcefem not just any captive, but a US President

You intend to wield the power of this forcefem dungeon over political disagreements, and are taking active steps to do so

Your intended target is Richard Nixon, famously a corpse who has been dead for 30 glorious, Nixonless years, and you are apparently going to be able to put him in a state that would be receptive to forcefemming, which is generally understood to require a subject who is alive

Despite the evidence that you are a necromancer with substantial kidnapping abilities, you are receptive to being informed, in a strongly worded post of concern, that necromantic forcefem is immoral.

….

…

… Anyway, here’s why I think Harvey Dent should be in the BatFam.

For starters, I think it would be a wonderful way to incorporate Bruce’s long-standing love for Harvey in a situation where he gets to interact with a variety of young people who either have personal beefs with Harvey and/or have little sympathy/reason to care about him. We’ve already seen the potential of Harvey and Jason interacting and how fantastic that was for both characters.

I want to see Harvey (specifically a Harvey whose good side gets to be present and distinct, if not in complete control for the time being) interact with Dick, who hates him and—like some of his fans—completely disregards Harvey’s history of mental illness and internal struggles to overcome Scarvey. Extra points if they incorporate the Robin: Year One origin with Dick being beaten by Two-Face (which is not currently canon, btw), something that Harvey would never have done if he was in his right mind or even in control at the time. He was subsumed by his worst side to the point that Two-Face outright genuinely considered Harvey “dead,” but Dick neither knows nor cares about that, and I’d like to see that explored outside of a typical hero/villain environment.

I want to see Harvey interact with Damian and Cass, who each might have his own opinions about Bruce’s ongoing belief in someone’s inherent goodness, heroism, and worth, no matter how much blood is on one’s hands or how they were raised.

I want to see Cass and Steph both reckon with Harvey’s own history of abuse at a father’s hands, and how one tries to struggle against the cycles of violence. Is Harvey a victim of how he was raised, or is he a monster for not overcoming his trauma like they did? I want know if the compassion Cass extended to Clayface could also apply to Harvey. I want to know if either woman would have any empathy for Harvey, or condemn him as being reprehensible and irredeemable.

I want Babs to have a backstory where she, as a kid, knew and liked Harvey, and the two bonded over having alcoholic fathers, something which no one can understand if they haven’t experienced it.

I want to see if Duke has any feelings about a once-good man who was transformed into something he does not want to be, much in the way his own parents were victims of Gotham’s monsters.

I want Tim to better understand Harvey’s psyche, to see if he still thinks that Harvey is someone who “chooses” to become Two-Face again after every redemption attempt.

I want more interactions between Harvey and Jason, acknowledging them as twin symbols of Bruce’s failure who both became murderous mob bosses. How many orphans has Jason created? Why is Jason welcomed back in but not Harvey? Is it because Harvey nearly beat a Robin to death, just like Damian did with Tim? Is it okay to excuse/forgive a brainwashed child but not a severely mentally ill adult who had no control over his worst side? Why or why not?

I want to know which BatFam members would even notice all the ways that Bruce and Harvey are so similar, mirrors to each other with Harvey being the one who lost everything, including his own identity and sanity. I want to know what their takeaways would be, or if they’d even care. I want to know if any of them would realize that Bruce could easily fall like Harvey without the love and support they provide as a family, which Harvey lacks?

Remember A Lonely Place of Dying? Harvey without Gilda and Batman without Robin, both evenly matched in a mutually-suicidal death spiral, broken only when Tim emerged in Bruce’s life? Would Tim draw those parallels? Would any of them? Would it even matter?

Because not all of the BatFam can or should have empathy for Harvey. No family, not even the BatFam, should end every disagreement with Full-House-style hugs and apologies. Sometimes you just hate or don’t even care about other family members, and that’s fine! But I still want to see those relationships explored and hashed out within the context of family.

On top of it all, I want some acknowledgement that Harvey was Bruce’s first and only ally back in Batman: Year One before Gordon came around to Bruce’s side. That Harvey was the ONLY person in Gotham trying to fight against the forces of the mob and cops alike before Bruce returned and Jim rolled into town. That he, as Batman’s ally and the youngest DA in Gotham history, was the original Boy Wonder of Gotham City. That Bruce’s failure to save Harvey has hung over each and every one of his relationships and connections in the BatFam.

Finally, I want to see Harvey in the BatFam because I want to know that, no matter what you’ve done or become, there will still be some people out there who are holding out for you to come back. That you may not be forgiven by all or even most of them, but you’re still worthy of love. And even if/when Harvey loses his battle with himself again, I want some of the BatFam to react with sympathy, some having changed their perceptions about the man they only knew as Two-Face. That maybe, occasionally, the criminals they fight aren’t monsters but just broken people, lost to some combination of circumstance, upbringing, mental illness, and personal choices. I want to see them reckon with that. I think that would be important.

And okay yeah sure I’d also like to see Harvey take them all out for pizza and games at Chuck E Cheese’s or something like that. I just think that’d be neat.

Anyway. I hope that all makes more sense now for anyone still wondering. I’ll finish up with proof that Harvey being in the BatFam has actually been touched on in comics, from the gatefold cover of Hush (that’s Harvey, not Hush, with the bandages), DC Future State, and DC Bombsells.

cut to two weeks later and Bruce is concerned because Tim seems to be having trouble with bullying at school and Tim doesn’t know how to tell him it’s because Jason fucking Todd, the actual Red Hood of Crime Alley, keeps fucking targeting him during dodgeball in gym class.

Batman: i can’t allow you to work in Gotham if you kill people, Hood.

Red Hood: suck my nuts

Red Hood, whispering to Robin once Batman’s turned away: here my half of the joint assignment’s on this flashdrive let me know if the powerpoint gets fucked up