Watch out for children!
I’m so excited to share this with everyone!! This is definitely the biggest project I’ve ever done before and I’m so proud with how it came out
Enjoy the little gay ghost guys!!!👻👻👻
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(Updated link 3/11/23)
Periodic reminder that you are not immune to reactionary radicalization through fandom.
We all know the "jokes" about how old bronies either came out as queer or became fascists - except they're not really jokes, and a lot of the queer ones admit to having been in the pipeline before they came out (some in a way that implies they never totally got out of said pipeline and don't understand the gravity of it),
GamerGate was an entire right-wing reactionary movement that was - and this is not hyperbole - partially responsible for turning fascism into a "legitimate" position by the American Overton window, composed entirely of people who feared losing their fan spaces,
We've had terfs right here on tumblr dot com BRAGGING about how useful fandom is as a recruiting space,
TJLC was a big pipeline for acephobia on this hellsite in particular, when people argued that headcanoning Sherlock as ace was inherently homophobic because it was denying a TOTALLY GONNA BE CANON (while the creators were promising that it wasn't going to be canon) gay pairing, and puritanical, and just HAVING that headcanon was saying that people COULDN'T ship Johnlock, all in the interest of a "fake" sexuality and "pretending to be oppressed" and oh whoops there you went,
We see people who all but center their fandom activity and identities around figuring out which people in predominantly queer fandom spaces are SECRETLY PEDOPHILES AND GROOMERS, acting consciously or otherwise under the assumption that predominantly queer fandom spaces are just massively infested with them in a way that other spaces are not for SOME reason, who twist the definition of "pedophilia" in these spaces until it covers shipping a 17-year old fictional character with an 18-year old fictional character, or a 30-year old with a 45-year old, or including an autistic character in a ship, and drawing two 17-year old characters kissing constitutes "child porn", and who unironically say we should bring back the Hays Code and Censorship Is Good Actually And Our Problem Is We Don't Do It Enough and this often becomes a pipeline to "sex ed is child abuse; people shouldn't even know what sex is until they turn 18; you need my consent to wear certain outfits in public if I see them as sexually charged, and Pride SHOULD be an assimilationist sideshow for our corporate overlords family-friendly party with no sadness or anger or ESPECIALLY acknowledgement of sex allowed",
We've seen otherwise progressive people defend literal hate symbols in fanart when pushback against the above brand of reactionaries gets corrupted into zero-nuance "it's us vs. them so anything they don't like is Good",
Even outside of those examples some of the most vicious, unapologetic, blatant queerphobic abuse I've seen in recent years hasn't come from right-wingers but from LGBT+ people, dressing their deep, violent, seething hatred for queer people who aren't exactly like them in a thin veneer of progressive language, who have become so convinced that they're the main character of the fucking universe that they think writing or enjoying a queer story that doesn't resonate with them is more queerphobic than sending a queer person who writes or enjoys such a story countless rape and death threats and denying their identity,
We've seen these examples again and again and again, and we keep seeing it again and again and again, so I am once again on my knees BEGGING people to recognize that this is not Something That Happens To Other, BAD People, or Something That Happens To People In BAD Fandoms, or Something That Happens To People On The OTHER Side Of Perennial Drama; this is something that CAN happen to you.
These things are the result of the fact that fandom is, by nature, a place of heightened emotion and if you don't know what to look out for that is very exploitable; you need to know the methods people use to do this, simply Being In The Right Fandoms or Liking The Right Ships is not enough.
So, if you see someone trying to convince you that you have the ONLY valid approach to any specific character, or ship, or show, or whatever, that your ship is activism and your fanfics are praxis, and liking something else or liking the same thing differently is Only For Bad People, that is the single biggest red flag that YOU NEED TO RUN, THEY'RE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT WANT
Danny and Duke had been having a pretty okay day. Duke got a ridiculous packet to complete from his professor, and Danny tripped down the stairs in the library, causing a ruckus that got everyone’s attention.
So yea, everything was going well until they decided to push their luck and go to a new coffee shop a bit further away. It wasn’t the coffee shop itself, but the goons that came out of nowhere to kidnap Tim Drake-Wayne who was getting an order to go, which turned into a gang fight in the middle of the street.
Danny and Duke, along with Tim, ended up sheltered behind a car and missed the opportunity to bunker down inside the shop.
“Well, this isn’t what I planned today,” Tim comments.
“Same,” Danny agrees.
“Maybe we can wait it out?” Duke suggests.
The other two give a look that says that it was not going to happen.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors for peeking,” Danny says, already holding out his fist.
“Bet.”
They look at Duke.
Peer Pressure works and he groans with clear discomfort at the situation.
Duke loses. A bullet whizzes past his head.
“Nope! Nope. Not doing that again.”
Tim rolls his eyes at the dramatics, but with Danny still there he bit his tongue.
“What’d you see?”
Duke looks at Tim like he’s crazy.
“Lots of people with guns,” he answers hysterically.
“Need a hand?”
Red Hood had swung down from the nearest rooftop, hand gun in both hands. He pops off three shots before having to duck behind the car with them.
“Hood, what are you doing here? This isn’t Crime Alley,” Tim asks like they bumped into each other at the supermarket.
Hood shrugs, “Close enough.”
“Oh sweet, can I borrow that?” Danny randomly asks.
Before anyone can question what he was talking about he was already reaching out to take the handgun off of Hood’s thigh.
“Whoa-“
Danny turns to look over the car’s hood and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens.
The others pull him back quickly. He winces at the hard fall to his tailbone.
“Holy crap! Danny!”
“Dude, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Hey!” Danny interrupts their freak out. “It’s not my fault his gun is broke.”
“The safety is still on, idiot,” Hood tilts his head.
“The what?” Danny asks in genuine confusion.
The three brothers all pause and look at him.
“The safety? On the gun? So there isn’t a misfire?” Tim explains. He was stuck between shocked and judgmental.
“This is why people who don’t know how to shoot shouldn’t touch guns,” Hood says in frustration while reaching to take it away.
Danny pulls it back out of reach.
“I know how to shoot, thanks. My parent’s weapons just don’t have safety things. I’m not used to it,” he grumbles.
“What do you-“
But Danny was already finding the safety and flicking it off before trying again. This time he hits two goons, one in the shoulder and another in the leg.
The batboys glance at each other.
“So,” Hood tries to be casual, “what do your parents do?”
“They’re scientists,” Danny answers, mainly focused on shooting another person dressed in a mask, “but they make their own weapons.”
“Are they by any chance mad scientists? Or borderline rogues?” Duke asks as half a joke.
“Of course not,” Danny answers. Then he pauses to actually think about it. “I don’t think so.”
“Cool. That’s fine.”
**
After that Danny had a few more ‘meet and greet’s with the local vigilantes and saw some lingering shadows around their apartment. They had the weirdest questions about his family.
hobie brown studies :)
Not to sound like I was raised by protestants, but I think those kids who argue that it's animal abuse to put working dog breeds to work doing the tasks they were bred and born for have simply genuinely never encountered the concept that they, too, could be genuinely happier if they could do work they found wortwhile and enjoyable. Like engaging in useful and constructive activities might genuinely make life better than a life of doing absolutely nothing because nobody's making you do anything.
“Why won’t you grow?” Danny asked the little corner of fresh dirt he’d been allocated when he’d signed up for the community garden project. Sam had been the one to suggest it, and with significantly less ghost-fighting to do now that he’d moved away, it had seemed like a great new hobby.
“I gave you water, and all the other things Sam said to do, what more could you have wanted,” Danny said as he poked the desiccated stalk despondently.
Somewhere far off, there was the echo of screams, and something like a crash. Danny paid it no mind, thinking it might be an event or something starting. Gotham was a big city, and there was always something going on.
“I can’t tell Sam about this,” Danny sighed as he put his face in his hands. “She’d laugh at me.”
He sat in front of his failed tomato plants for a while longer before getting to his feet with a sigh. As he did, he turned to walk away, only to see a woman with bright red hair and greenish skin standing a few paces away. Behind her there was something like a cloud of something and Danny immediately stopped breathing.
Not having to breathe was definitely his favourite power ever, he hated hay fever.
“Hey,” Danny said with a little wave.
In response the woman raised an arm and a thick vine-looking thing shot out of the ground.
“Holy shit!” The halfa exclaimed. That was pretty cool. Controlling plants was seriously an awesome power, and majorly underrated if one listened to Sam’s rants.
Wait, controlling plants?
“Can you revive my tomato plants?” Danny asked the woman enthusiastically, before remembering himself. “Uh, please?”
The woman stopped moving and frowned.
“It’s just that I really tried to keep it alive, but this is the first time I’ve taken care of plants and I was really looking forward to fresh tomatoes,” the halfa babbled.
She tilted her head.
“Please? I can get you a smoothie in exchange, I know a great place, they also do ice cream.”
The woman’s lips twitched and then she waved her hand and continued walking.
Danny turned around to find his tomato plant green and alive.
“Oh my god, thank you!” He yelled, but she was already leaving.
Danny owed her the best smoothie in town.
in general the idea of jason as a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of character is really crazy to me. his plans don't fail because he doesn't think them through they fail because they're crazy. because he's crazy. it's literally why he's hot