We're all dumbasses here!

Except

His significant other wants to beat him to the punch, so they go and make contact with some Gotham folks who can get THEM in contact with people willing to use a specific ritual to sacrifice them to The Ghost King (Danny) as a bride.

Cue the Bats, having heard of whispers of this new cult who rose up trying to give a "bridal" sacrifice and doing their thing to swing in and stop it. Only the "sacrifice" is mildly panicking yelling for the cultists to finish it quick.

The ritual works and the "sacrifice" is gone. Bats aren't happy, Cultists are cheering even as the bats ziptie them.

Anyway a few minutes later as the Bats are cleaning up and collecting evidence and the ritual circle lights up again and suddenly the sacrifice is back with a Eldritch-adjacent being with a crown next to them that is basically RADIATING with happiness and embarrassment in equal measure. The sacrifice looks at the cultists and just goes, "He said yes!!!" The cultists cheer.

Meanwhile Danny, Ghost King and mildly Eldritch fiance, is talking with the bats and getting all the cultists freed and falling all over himself apologizing for the trouble, really, but it was all consensual and nobody got hurt and his partner really does have a flair for the dramatics don't they? It's very obvious to the Bats that Danny isn't THAT sorry about all of this because of how happy he seems to be to be engaged with said dramatic partner.

Said partner is already talking with the cultists about being in their half of the wedding party. (They've all really bonded during all the work leading up to the actual ritual.)

"Maybe not every household needs its own industrial-grade leaf blower."

"Maybe we should accept denser housing and shared infrastructure."

"Maybe private lawns should become community gardens."

all the way to

"You don't get control over your schedule."

"You don't get privacy."

"You don't get to choose your own aesthetics."

"You don't get to decide who has access to your emotional life."

"You don't get to opt out of communal activities."

"You don't get to have tastes that aren't socially approved."

Those are not remotely the same category of thing.

Some people treat all preferences as interchangeable units. They imagine a giant pile labeled "individual desires" and then talk about reducing it by 15%.

But preferences aren't equal.

Wanting three power drills when one shared drill would do is different from wanting control over your schedule.

Wanting a third car is different from wanting a bedroom door that locks.

Wanting a private yacht is different from wanting the ability to listen to music nobody else likes.

Wanting a 10,000-square-foot mansion is different from wanting to spend an evening alone.

The fact that these get lumped together is what makes the discussion so frustrating.

Because someone says, "Well, people will have to make sacrifices."

And I ask, "Okay, what sacrifices?"

And they think I'm being difficult.

No, that's the entire question.

There is a vast difference between "You can't get out-of-season produce on demand, because the resources needed to make that available are unsustainable" and "You can only eat food obtained locally or grown yourself or cooked yourself."

There is a vast difference between "We don't need multiple iterations of the exact same product under different brand names" and "We don't need gluten-free or high-protein or low-fat or vegan or kosher or other specialized food because those things don't' matter."

There is a vast difference between "Fast fashion with oil plastic fabrics made in sweatshops with quasi-slavery conditions needs to be abolished" and "People should only wear handmade bespoke clothing."

There is a vast difference between "Everyone should have the free time and space and resources to pursue hobbies like gardening, canning, cooking, sewing, knitting, and other crafts" and "People should have to rely on small-scale crafting to survive."

Jason: *learns he has contaminated ectoplasm and an only partially formed ghost core* can I get that in writing?

Frostbite: Certainly!

Later

Jason: *rolls up to the Batcave where everyone is meeting* GUESS WHAT? I DID come back wrong.

Dick: Jaybird, no you didn’t-

Jason: Of being partially dead? No. Or, technically yes. By becoming fully dead. So, no.

Bruce: Hhhhnn :(

Jason: Of the contamination and stunted core growth? Doc says not only yes, but also necessary if I want to keep being partially alive.

Dick: I, for one, would like you to keep being partially alive.

I know i see a lot of Danny hating the Joker on sight and immediately feral raccoon attacking him, but consider this - Joker has died a couple of times now.

Extremely liminal Joker seeing Danny and having his fight instincts kick in.

He'll be mid speech and race off to square up against this random guy.

Joker goes to walk past the coffee shop Danny's in and jumps through the window to attack him.

Joker is hiding from the Bats as he plants bombs in the sewers when he passes directly underneath Danny. He goes straight for the nearest manhole and climbs out to chase him down.

Meanwhile, Danny is taking these attacks entirely in human form. Joker is entirely hind-braining it, so the combat skills his mum taught him are enough to hold off the deranged clown until a Bat or a Bird can come and take him. He hasn't needed to go ghost or use any overtly obvious powers, so from the outside it looks like Joker has just decided to hate this one civilian in particular, and the civilian is using skills from self defence classes to survive the attacks.

At 19, Danny is an intern at the Watchtower. Hes no longer a hero himself, but helping the Watchtower helps him fulfill two aspects of himself; being a protector spirit, and his space obsession. Danny is the least nervous about interacting with the Justice League, so Danny is usually tasked with interacting with them if its needed, and has unintentionally wormed his way into a "little brother" role without realizing.

Okay, so technically there is one member of the Justice League he is nervous about interacting with; Martian Manhunter. To Danny, Martian Manhunter "smelled" like space, so he would light up and his core would sing whenever they talked. The same thing happened when Danny rarely interacted with Starfire, and- well almost any alien. The reason he didn't react to any of the supers that way was because they "smelled" more like Eather, enough so that Danny's core didn't registered them.

Unknowingly, though, from an outside point of veiw, it looked like Danny had a crush on the Martian. His face would flush pink, and he'd listen to everything J'onn would say with his full attention, while tripping over himself to do anything J'onn asked of him. To the rest of the Justice League, it would almost be cute- if the age difference wasn't so big, J'onn wasn't one of Danny's bosses, and if they didn't see Danny as their little brother. So now the Justice League is trying to think of how to go about talking Danny down from his crush, and about power imbalances without crossing any line, since, yaknow, they're also his bosses.

Now, the way this goes is that I have everyone show up around 4:30pm. People show up, it's a big crowd, it's pretty warm out because the sun is still up and the mingling is great. People eat, share food, the kids run around in the trees and check out the lake, and we all just generally enjoy ourselves and catch up. Then the sun starts to go down.

People start getting under the pavilion, it starts getting a little chilly, and maybe those with really young kids start to pack up and say good-bye. This is usually when I light up the fire in the pavilion's fireplace and people will begin gathering around there. I let the grill burn down and sit down with everyone as everything gets a bit more mellow. Maybe we make s'mores or have cookies or something but this is usually were you start having more people say their good-byes and head out. That's how it goes for the next couple of hours, little dribbles of people winding up and heading on home until it's 9:30 at night and there's just a few people left in the pavilion in the woods sitting around a little fireplace quietly talking.

You know what? That's the best time at these things. Some years we'll be out there until almost midnight, just chatting quietly and staring into the coals. You learn things about people then, you hear interesting things, and you just feel closer.

So what does this have to do with fandom and moving on? Well, I see it like this. The show is still on, that's the early part of the day. Plenty of people around, lots of activity where art gets made, headcanons and meta fly fast and furious, and tons of fic gets written. Then the show ends, people are still creating but a few peel away, they have other things they have to do or just aren't interested in sticking around. Slowly but surely it goes until it's just a few people left.

That's when the interesting things really start coming out. You still have the other stuff but you start to get off the wall headcanons and wild meta, you get odd art, you get fic the person finally decided to write, and it's good. And hey, every once in a while, someone shows up late and you grab some food out of the cooler for them and warm up a burger for them over the coals while others grab a chair for them and you get them up to speed on the conversation and maybe show them some pictures from earlier in the night and they get to have some of that glow from earlier even if they missed the original.

Tiny houses.

Not the concept, the notion, the Platonic ideal of a low-cost low-impact high-efficiency dwelling. That’s great. That’s awesome.

What really imagines my dragons is that in practice about 9 times out of 10 tiny house communities are just a way for rich hipsters to finally fulfil their greatest fantasy: