you have not failed this city

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

Chapter 2: Days 4-6

Rating: T Fandom: 9-1-1 Ship: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz

Chapter Summary

The tribes adjust to their environment as the first major storm rushes in, and Tsunami continues to fight among themselves. Meanwhile, tensions rise over on Earthquake, as one member begins to show their true colors.

read here

And here’s another poll to effect the results of Chapter 5!

real estate agent: chill, its me.

ghost: oh hey. have you sold it yet.

“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”

“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”

I want to see Bruce Wayne go off

For all his billions, for all his activity, for all his efforts, Gotham is a bonfire fed by the madness of mortal people, cultivated by dark powers and just existing there makes living souls like kindling for it. And left to its own devices,it’d become a breeding ground for supernatural unrest that no mere social service system or social awareness of activist campaign, no government program, no actions of a singular vigilante, could ever hope to undo.

Like. What if, because Gotham is such a shitshow, anyone looking to improve their lives has their eye on being able to move out of Gotham, so whenever Bruce Wayne’s charitable endeavors come somebody’s way, they take it, pack their bags, and move the fuck away, and take that money with them.

Meanwhile there’s an ongoing influx of people to Gotham primarily because they’re flat broke and real estate in Gotham is dirt fucking cheap because it’s a shitshow, and there’s always places hiring because 1) they’ve got Bruce Wayne money to try to make a difference, 2) there’s no shortage of places that need to be fixed up a little, and 3) villains are always in the market for new henchpeople.

So you’re a broke millennial from any other town in the country, and you have student loans, a job that hasn’t kept up with inflation, and your landlord has raised the rent three times this year so far and it’s eating up two-thirds of your paycheck. You look for housing on the internet and discover that one-third of your paycheck will get you the mortgage for an actual house in Gotham, a house you own and will never have to deal with your scummy rentjacking landlord again. And Wayne Industries is hiring, and so are sixteen different disaster remediation places, and six staffing services with a sort of weird vibe to them but they offer benefits, since when do temp agencies do benefits, and sure the crime rate is high but the rest of the world’s heading in that direction anyway, especially if you’re homeless, which you’re gonna be in like four months if that jackass your landlord raises the rent one more time, so get in losers, we’re going to Gotham!

And you settle into your bigger-than-expected apartment and get a job that brings you a comfortable paycheck and you learn to live with the terrorist attacks and the explosions and the gunfire and the neighbors and the drunken billionaire swimming in the restaurant fountain, and you pay off your student loans, buy a car, suffer a few months’ unemployment when your boss goes to jail for trying to assassinate the mayor and then your partner loses their job for a few months when the office gets smothered in a jungle’s worth of climbing plants and you develop hospital bills when you both get caught in a hallucinogenic terror gas eruption at the mall, but hey, you’d be homeless by now in any other city, so you live with it.

And then it’s a few years later and you’re wanting to start a family, but the neighbor three doors down owns pet hyenas and the park was firebombed last week and someone froze all the water pipes and you crashed your car into one of the impromptu ice sculptures and you’d really like your kids to grow up in a normal city where they don’t have to receive advice like “don’t talk to strange plants.”

So you visit one of the social work offices and get yourself a bit of assistance, save up your money, sell your house for the price of a down payment to the sort of incoming fool you were six years ago, and use your polished resume to get yourself a job someplace that doesn’t have What To Do If Clown Attack on their safety training syllabus.

Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE

Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted

Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative

just like they didn’t have to parallel Buck and Eddie with a freakin stray beagle looking for where he belongs all episode and then his family finding him. just like they didn’t have to specifically draw attention to the fact that Buck is overreacting and hurt and spiraling but finds some momentary relief in helping these two people he loves without actually truly loosening his grip on them at all by literally moving into their home. all while reiterating once again they would never occur to him as anything other than a package deal. just like they didn’t have to make it clear Eddie is ALSO overreacting because he is the one feels like he’s wrenching himself in two every step closer to Texas and further from LA he gets, and as much as it’s a weight lifted some part of him hates the solution because it means he can actually go. and Buck, now in the most balls to the wall blatantly literal way positioned as Home, will stay. just like they didn’t have to put pictures going back years of Buck and Eddie and Chris on every goddamn surface of that house and Buck’s loft this season and force you to remember just how long they’ve been a unit.