Traveler

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Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs about them. Friedrich Nietzsche (1828-1900)

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

[Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina are] loose, baggy monsters. Henry James (1843-1916)

Well who is it meant for, then? The cross-dressers? The kinksters? The ones who don't pass? The sex workers? The "ugly" ones?

Maybe it's for the rude ones, or the "loud" ones, or the ones who never came "out", past their middle-aged years and slipping on nice stockings under their khaki trousers, putting on a bit of blush in the bathroom mirror and then quickly washing it off again before anyone can see?

Maybe it's for the "traps", the beautiful ones who keep it secret and don't tell you until after the third date, when you can stab them to death for the crime of being human and plead "Gay Panic" at the trial to get off scot-free?

If we're going to call people "tranny", but not the ones like me, then who exactly are you thinking of?

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

like, i feel like Jason was the only one he got to be a proper big brother too, rather than more of a mentor/guardian figure. when Jason was around he was barely even an adult, and Jason was a little shit of a pre-teen that gave as good as he took. Dick 100% was a piece of shit to him in the brotherly sense. with all the others though? after losing Jason and growing up and being the one that had to hold everything apart every time Bruce got lost in grief/a timestream or something, he is a completely different type of brother to the others than he is to Jason, and i think it would be funny to see the others slowly start to realise how different Dick's relationship is to Jason compared to the rest of them.

like, just the little things. they're all at the manor for a weekend and Dick makes Tim and Damian breakfast, ruffling their hair and sliding pancakes onto their plates. then Jason comes in and makes himself a piece of toast and Dick instantly jabs him in the ribs before stealing the food from his plate.

he always lets the others win at mario kart, chuckling easily whenever he's beaten at any game and actually seeming more proud at them for winning than sad for losing. then Jason picks up Damian's abandoned remote and suddenly he's all focus. snatching the player 1 remote and making Jason be player 2 and the two are literally trying to shove each other off the couch with how hard they're trying to beat each other. if Dick wins, you can hear his yells of mocking from across the manor. if Jason wins and he tries to say anything at all? Dick body slams him to the ground and they're fighting for a solid half an hour.

he steals Jason's shit all the time, and yet the one time Duke saw Jason walk into Dick's bedroom to borrow a shirt, Dick clocked it from down the hall and just yelled 'FUCK OUT MY ROOM' and Jason pivoted and left without even faltering in his movement, like he'd fully expected to be denied. it's worth mentioning that that very same day Tim asked Dick if he could borrow some socks and Dick told them all sincerely that they could go in and take whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. it's just Jason that isn't allowed, apparently.

for the record i think it goes both ways, and i think Jason is also the only guy who knows how to get under Dick's skin in that Specific Little Brother Manner. like that's his big brother, his only big brother. i think the others he either views as little kids to protect or just... random guys that were adopted while he was gone that he didn't even properly meet until he was an adult and out of the house, so he never really built a proper antagonistic sibling relationship with anybody else. Dick though? he pours salt into every glass of water he sees Dick drink out of. he steals his stuff. he stands just outside the doorway of Dick's room just so that when Dick yells for him to get the fuck out he can say 'i'm not in your room, you can't make me do anything'. he snitches on him to Bruce whenever he can, and whenever he figures out Dick has a crush on anybody he relentlessly tries to embarrass Dick in front of them.

issue is, Bruce is just so happy to see and talk to his kids at any point that he doesn’t even notice the breach of privacy, and the kids just end up feeling really awkward about how happy their dad is to see them.

Jason will bring up something in conversation with Bruce that was only privately relayed through texts between Bruce and a colleague, smirking because he knows Bruce is gonna be really paranoid about who’s watching his texts, except Bruce just smiles and happily chats with him for thirty minutes and he’s in a good mood all day because Jason willingly had a casual conversation with him, and when the JL ask why Batman’s in such a good mood at a meeting later that day Jason just goes bright red and doesn’t know what to say because he didn’t realise how much Bruce genuinely craves just catching up with him every now and then.

Dick will stalk him for weeks and wait until Bruce has a really tough busy day at work, specifically so he can wait for the evening where Bruce finally has a single moment to himself in a bar somewhere to relax, and then he busts in loudly sitting down next to Bruce and talking non-stop while ordering a drink, thinking that Bruce is going to be mad because this was his one peaceful moment and Dick ruined it by constantly tracking him. but instead the second Bruce realises Dick’s there all his exhaustion disappears. he gets a really wide genuinely pleased look on his face and happily offers to buy Dick a drink because ‘it’s so rare that they get to hang out!’ and Dick is left floundering because he was trying to be an asshole but now he just feels bad that he doesn’t spend time with Bruce outside of patrol business.

Tim keeps watching him through security cameras and updating him through text on his location in an attempt to make him tired of the constant supervision, but every time he texts Bruce like ‘you just walked into starbucks for the second time today.’ Bruce will just openly smile at his phone and respond like ‘would you like me to get you a drink? i can drop it off at your office if you’d like :)’ and Tim has to give up almost immediately.

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letting people be wrong

letting people be wrong about YOU

letting people have a bad impression of you (see above)

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