#freeidea

Tim hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours. He knew this because he’d counted every one of them, down to the minute, watching Gotham’s skyline shift from black to gray and back again through the café window.

Janny’s was supposed to be neutral ground. A place where villains, vigilantes, and civilians all existed in this fragile little truce powered by caffeine and exhaustion. You didn’t start fights in Janny’s. You didn’t bleed in Janny’s. You sat, you sipped, and you pretended the world outside didn’t exist.

Tim liked it here. The barista knew his order. The hum of the espresso machine covered the sound of his typing. The coffee was terrible, but in a way that felt like home.

He was halfway through another cold cup and an even colder case file when the ceiling exploded.

Glass rained down. The overhead lights flickered. And in the middle of the chaos, someone crashed straight through the skylight—smoke, green sparks, and all—right into the table next to him.

Tim froze, because that’s what you do when someone literally drops out of the sky.

The guy groaned, rolled over, and blinked blearily at him. He was glowing faintly, like moonlight through fog, and his white hair was sticking up in all directions like he’d lost a fight with static electricity.

“Do you—uh,” he mumbled, “do you serve ecto-infused espresso here? Asking for a friend. Me. I’m the friend.”

Tim just stared. He should have called Bruce. He should have hit the panic button in his watch. He should have done something other than blink stupidly at the glowing boy lying in a pile of coffee stirrers.

“Are you… okay?” Tim finally asked, because apparently his brain had checked out hours ago.

The guy sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. “Define ‘okay.’ My portal shorted out, I haven’t slept in two days, and I think I owe someone in another dimension twenty bucks. But hey, at least I didn’t phase through the espresso machine again. Progress.”

Again.

Tim’s mouth opened. Closed. He took another sip of coffee like maybe caffeine could explain what he was seeing.

Batman’s voice crackled through the comm in his ear. “Report.”

Tim glanced at the glowing boy, who was now sipping his coffee. His coffee.

“I think,” Tim said slowly, “I just found a ghost.”

There was a long pause. Then: “Do not engage.”

“Right,” Tim muttered. “Totally not engaging.”

The boy looked up, smiling faintly. “You’re talking to Batman, aren’t you?”

Tim choked. “What—how—”

“C’mon,” he said, leaning on the counter like this was a perfectly normal Tuesday. “The posture, the earpiece, the trauma eyes. You’re one of the Bats. Which one though…” He squinted, and Tim’s heart did something deeply inconvenient in his chest.

“Don’t tell me,” the ghost boy said, snapping his fingers. “Let me guess. You’re the one who doesn’t sleep.”

Tim stared. “…That’s not a defining trait.”

The boy grinned wider. “It really, really is.”

Tim should have been wary. He should have been pulling out a containment field, or at least running a scan. Instead, he found himself smiling back, just a little.

Outside, Gotham’s rain hit the window in soft, steady taps. Inside, the ghost boy—Danny, apparently, according to the nametag half-phased into his hoodie—was asking the barista for more whipped cream like this was just another night.

And maybe it was.

In sport we trust

The human spirit 

That never surrenders 

Not when winning

But when losing.

It takes more 

COURAGE 

To be a loser

Who never surrender

But keep striving

To face stronger rivals

again 

and again. 

#herewhenyoufall #refusetosurrender

[content warning for mention of sexuality, abuse, men’s issues, social justice discourse]

This post on what a nonabusive men’s movement would look like and responses reminded me of an idea @isaacsapphire and I had a few months ago.

When I was a teenager, I benefited a lot from feminist-slanted books like Our Bodies, Ourselves. It discussed, frankly but gently, all kinds of issues that were relevant to me. Anatomy, sexuality, sexual orientation, sexual fantasies, intersectional issues like race, disability, class, age, et al, and abuse (including ones almost never discussed in most discourse, like adult children abusing their older disabled parents). It included both general sociological conclusions and lots of personal anecdotes from women on various issues, and those stories were allowed to disagree with each other (quotes from women who regularly masturbated/sexually fantasized were placed side by side with quotes from women who didn’t see what all the fuss was about).

It’s not perfect; I don’t remember my edition of the book talking about any trans issues (though that may have changed in later editions), and there may be more problems with it that I’ve left out. But it’s a really valuable resource, and I think it would make a good starting template, if genderflipped, for creating books and resources for men who would like to be happy, healthy, knowledgeable, able to protect themselves from abuse, and able to love whomever they wanted.

Basically, I want a book on male sexuality and gender issues I would feel comfortable giving to my son.

I am not sure how one would go about creating such a book, or if such books already exist and simply haven’t been publicized. But I’m getting the idea out there just in case someone wants to run with it.