(Art Is By The Amazing @dahtwitchi. This Is A Freeform Collab With No Real Goal)

Hey! Hey you!

Yes, you! The person who thinks too much about comic book characters and deep dives into esoteric subjects in order to create a free work of art?

How's your typing speed? How quickly could you learn a new way to type? Do you like knowing things, often terrible things, that other people don't? Can you bear the weight of both banality and daily tragedy? Does the idea of a stressful job make you bare your teeth in a feral grin, welcoming the challenge?

Do you get fed up with the American court systems? Does the frustration of injustice and the feeling of helplessness choke you out at night?

Now is a fantastic time to look into the field of a Stenographer, or a Court Reporter.

Every court case must be legally and accurately documented and frankly there aren't enough stenographers to go around. Especially since a great number of them will be moving into retirement age in the coming years.

It's a no-breaker that the government is on fire, but we can't just shut it down until a roiling mass of different peoples somehow agree on a better way to get shit done. There are people in the now who need to have their cases heard sooner rather than later and Court Reporters are essential to that happening.

***I'm not claiming that this is or has ever been my job, either! There's like one person on this site who has confirmation of at most which state I lived in years ago and that's because we're personal email-level friends. Please be careful about what info you share on the Internet.

***That being said, I've held some fairly atypical jobs over the years and so have many friends of mine. They can be honestly fun to talk about and it's always fun to make someone realize that yes, that thing would have to be a job, that's an actual job thing to do. And I like to talk up my friends' wild experiences as well!

So, it's been some time since I read that Justice League arc that has The Batman Who Laughs. Can anyone tell me how canon that dude's existence is nowadays? Because I'm pretty sure that due to time travel, he's the specific reason Superman stopped Batman from killing the Joker after Jason's death.

And did anyone remember what happened to the Rabid Robins? Was one of them confirmed to be an alternate Tim or was that fan speculation? Did they all die or get sent back to their shitty world without being helped or what? I know that his version of Damian got Joker Jr'ed, but I don't remember what happened to him, either.

And the big ask. Is Joker's living body still boobytrapped to release enough Joker Venom to Jokerize whoever is near him when he dies? Because I thought that that was why Batman revived Joker when Nightwing killed him - not just because the act would have wrecked Dick at that point in time but because otherwise Batman, Nightwing, and Robin all would have been in danger.

Like I said, it's been awhile since I read the comic, I might be misremembering things.

If you can read them online you can buy them online.

I get that it can be troublesome without a local store, so I encourage everyone to buy their comics from other brick-and-mortar stores and have them conveniently delivered to your door through the mail. Or go ahead and buy the PDF!

Pirating comics contributes to a future with even fewer comic book shops and an even greater dependence on bloated businesses like Amazon. It makes it more difficult for people to become comic book artists and writers in general.

It's a short-term savings for the individual vs the long-term protection of the genre.

Why are comic fans so against piracy and reading online like dude there are literally no places to buy comics where I live I have no other option

YES, PERFECTION!

Because damn I have this headcanon about Bruce's being panromantic ace that I'm going to have to write up someday.

And ofc he would speak up to protect one of his kids from the things he's not willing to protect himself from, that's just his default setting. Tim being caught between laughing at the concern and probably a little touched at the concern is also so cute.

And then you bless me with Jason being a little shit out of left field. 100%, no one knew he was in the house. He breaks in at random, calls it haunting.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I think we're friends now

Hot Take: Bruce doesn't support freakyTimBer not because he doesn't like Bernard. It's because Bruce has to pretend to be the freak in all of his civilian relationships to explain away his scars, so he keeps accidentally making his partners think he's into that and then he's too awkward to correct them, and he's worried that Tim's doing the same thing.

This is genius, I love it!!! My original thought process was Bruce just couldn't fathom his babies ever having sex like?? No?? His kids!? Never U_U

But I absolutely adore this so much. You have no idea.

Pre identity reveal shenanigans (aka, before Bernard tells Tim he knows and also Tim is a goof)

—

Bruce, looking at the bruises and obvious bite makes and cuts along Tim's visible neck and arms: . . . So, where'd the, um, new... bruises come from..?

Tim, not even looking up from his laptop: Bernard. Bruce, I told you this already. Don't question any injury I don't put in my reports.

Bruce:

Bruce: You know, if you ever feel... Pressured into things—

Tim, slowly looking up:

Bruce: I understand keeping our identities secret is important more than any one, you know this, but you shouldn't make sacrifices to this degree to keep it in tact—

Tim, moving a hand over his mouth to stop from either laughing or crying, he isn't sure:

Bruce: It's important to... Enjoy yourself with your relationship safely, and consensually. If you feel like you have to do or comply with certain things for Bernard to keep your identity safe... Why are you laughing?

Tim, trying not to laugh: Bruce, I promise, anything Bernard does to me I give full permission to. Enthusiastically, in fact.

Bruce: . . . What?

Jason, from another room, who read 50 Shades Of Gray once when he was fourteen: YOUR SON IS A FREAK WHO BEGS ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES FOR HIS BOYFRIEND TO CHOKE HIM OUT, YOU IDIOT!

Tim: HOW'D YOU KNOW THAT!?

Jason, popping his head in: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU ACTUALLY DO THAT!? I DIDN'T KNOW S#&$ BUT NOW I DO WHAT THE F$&%, TIMOTHY!?

Tim: STAY OUT OF MY SEX LIFE!

Jason: I WISH I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A SEX LIFE!

Tim: I HOPE THE JOKER BLOWS YOU UP AGAIN!

Jason: I HOPE I'M CREMATED THIS TIME!

Bruce:

Bruce: what

—

“The last time I checked my textbooks, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food”

—

Dr. Jack Geiger, quoted in Rebecca Onie’s Ted Talk  What if our healthcare system kept us healthy?

“In 1965 Dr. Geiger founded one of the first two community health centers in this country, in a brutally poor area in the Mississippi Delta. And so many of his patients came in presenting with malnutrition that be began prescribing food for them. And they would take these prescriptions to the local supermarket, which would fill them and then charge the pharmacy budget of the clinic. And when the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C. – which was funding Geiger’s clinic – found out about this, they were furious. And they sent this bureaucrat down to tell Geiger that he was expected to use their dollars for medical care – to which Geiger famously and logically responded, “The last time I checked my textbooks, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food.“”

(via mdintraining)

New potential vigilante just dropped.

Wdym they don't invent new birds whenever Batman gets a new kid? How else do you explain so many birds?

Dude has a death wish

Hey, heeeey. This fic is so freaking good. I love me some cryptid Batfam and this one is like.

*insert hand flapping*

It's like that? Like, it's such an excellent look at humanity and masking and people being different aspects of themselves throughout their lives, but it's all hidden in the subtext of a story about spirits and I love that even more?!

I love that sometimes we see humanity best when we strip away what we usually define as human.

Fucking. Love this. I'll write a comment on it in a bit, gotta hit that therapy appointment but I loved this so much I wanted to share aaaaah

Prompt commission from anon on ko-fi:

“Totally love your idea of Tobi with a baby or toddler :) Could I request for a little comic strip of my favourite pair, MadaTobi with the toddler or baby? Maybe, Mada opinion of Tobi (he’s such a cold hearted bastard) changed when he sees Tobi interacting with a toddler?”

So here we are, Madara a month in coming by the Senju household to make sure the baby isn’t treated badly, or catch Tobirama out being actually bad enough to make a case the baby should be taken from him. That’s not what happens :D Who knew Senju Tobirama could smile, or be silly? Lovely prompt, thank you!

Such a good take, I love how Bernard can be used to address the standard difficulties of life. He's a complimentary character to Tim, who will look at all his hero shit and be like "but that's the real trauma", and Bernard will be like, "Babe, no. That is additional trauma. That is the Trauma à la mode."

Adding my headcanons:

Bernard is absolutely the type of conspiracy theorist who does psych profiles for funzies. He's worked on himself enough to know that Tim needs his own set of self-help books. He's going to be supportive as heck, but he's also not going to let himself become Tim's sole point of mental stability.

Basically, Bernard is pulling a Tim, on Tim, and Tim recognizes it, and is even more touched because he knows how much you gotta love someone to go that far.

Headcanon: TimBer Parents' Parallels

Tim: His parents loved him, but their actions (constantly leaving him alone) created emotional distance, making it sometimes feel as if they didn’t.

Bernard: His parents didn’t love him, but their actions (wanting him to come back home and pretend to be a family) made it seem like they did - until he learned to see right through them.

Tim: Learned to cope by being a "perfect, angelic son" so as not to let his parents worry about him. This allows them to go gallivanting without any guilt, while he learns to shove aside his trauma as if it means nothing.

Bernard: Learned to cope by NOT following his parents’ expectations of a perfect son. Instead, he became the sort of individual (his high school persona, bathroom jokes made loudly in a public place) who agitates them and forces them to acknowledge his presence, even if the attention is negative.

Where that leaves them both:

Tim: Struggles with the idea of "loving someone despite the distance." He sometimes falls into habits of loving someone to a choking degree (stalking them, trying to remove them from the vigilant world, withholding information of his emotions/superhero identity to maintain a tenuous balance) or puts up more distance when he feels the relationship can’t be fixed (quitting his Robin career, pushing Stephanie away harshly, running away from Young Justice/Gotham).

Bernard: Doesn’t believe love is something you should just expect from someone else, because obligations of love (like in a family) just leave everyone hurt. Instead, he freely loves other people without caring if it's returned (he still wants a relationship with his parents despite their regret for his birth, admits to "Robin" his romantic feelings towards Tim without ANY assurance that he would be accepted). However, at the same time, he doesn’t do so blindly or without recognizing that sometimes you have to keep a distance for the sake of your own wellbeing (never contacted his parents during that year apart despite that it hurt him, refusing to move back home no matter how much he really wants to unless some changes are made).

I feel like these are the sort of issues that they can really only talk about to one another, common bad childhood/messy homelife scenarios that have nothing to do with vigilantes or supervillains. Just the dichotomy of bad parenting and how a child copes as best they can, even though it leaves a lot of deep scars.

At least, that’s my opinion on all this.

So JKR is anti asexual now to