Screaming, Cackling, Joyous!

With all my Batman et al. posts, I'd like to make a statement about real life vigilante justice.

Gonna cut it for heavy topics. I'm rambling again, but this is something I still have trouble finding the right words to explain.

I greatly admire Batman's no-killing rule because it speaks to what he knows about himself and also that he recognizes the power of a symbol.

If Batman can non-lethally take down criminals, even a corrupt police force will be expected to follow suit.

Vigilante justice inspires copycats. We're seeing it live now, with that guy who shot a Walgreens employee to "protest big pharmacy".

And that's the shit Batman's trying to prevent. The impotent copycats who want the attention without putting in tactical effort. The people who will take and twist a rule until it lets them do what they want to do.

Red Hood has rules. Red Hood kills pedophiles and people who hurt children. I can guarantee that someone in his territory is going to take that rule and use it as an excuse to shoot up a gay club. I can see his words being quoted by the person who murders an abortionist.

One man's idea of a child groomer is another man's trans child.

"We're protecting our women!" Is why Emmett Till was murdered so horrifically. The Antilynching Act that was named for him was only signed into law in 2022.

So. No killing. Because Batman knows he's not a mentally healthy person. He's come face-to-face with evil versions of himself who killed. He is allowed to safeword out of killing people. He's an intelligent person who can see what history has already taught us.

And because he doesn't kill, people are safer with him. If your loved one is having a mental health crisis, you want Batman to show up, not the cops. If you're a person of color doing pretty much anything, you would probably prefer pointy ears over "protect and serve".

Real life vigilante justice? It most often targets people who are already some sort of vulnerable minority. I just. I think it's important to acknowledge this.

Damn, I'm gonna hafta stop joking that Batman's a furry because after some thought, that's a disrespectful joke. Batman is clearly not a fursona and I should know better than to kink shame like that anyway.

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.

The only acceptable reason for this is if this character is actually a demon who seduces men and then eats them. [source]

(Art is by the amazing @dahtwitchi. This is a freeform collab with no real goal)

The two Madara with their original eyes might have briefly sharinganed that image. SugarTobi tries not to laugh at them too much. "Oh dear...did he really have such reservations? How quaint. How gentlemanly."

Older SugarMadara chuckles quietly, "Oh, I would...I did." and catches his lover's eyes. He smiles, enjoying the way the man blushes even after an entire year together. "Don't be so harsh, Big Brother; he really was quite an inexperienced young man back then. Very reserved and proper, even when he wanted to learn so very much~"

The youngest truly blushes at that and looks almost angry at the taunt. The older SugarTobirama hums quietly and looks at the eldest Madara with a mocking raised eyebrow, "Ah yes, and you are so very familiar with undefiled versions of us. Fifteen years his elder and yet I am sure you are tempted..." Privately, he wonders again about whether he has spent too much time around his lover, to pick up on this sort of talk. Still. It is quiet fun to watch the shortest, oldest Madara squawk at him.

YoungMadara smirks and crosses his arms, standing a little apart from his other selves, "Two years older than I am and all you've done is talk. Do you even know what to do with those pretty young men or do you still need Big Brother to hold your hand and tell you how your dick works?"

I might have entered a murder pact with a 14-year girl old last night to kill her 12-year old sister, but honestly, this is the third time she's used Fireball in an enclosed area with the entire party in range.

Strawberry milk is so good frfr is better than actual strawberries because it doesn't make your mouth spicy afterwards

Strowburry melk

This is extremely niche, but I love a fic that has social media aspects. (The Crime Alley Kid series, with the oc's addiction to Reddit comes to mind) I love the unique way that Twitter fics get to tell us a story in piecemeal stages, by conversation. I love the worlds where the Bats get to be tiktok cryptids, as a treat. I fucking adore when Jason comes back from the dead and updates his fanfics (raven_of_hydecastle has an amazing version of this).

It's a new form of storytelling and that's so rare. It's amazing and so cool and I love it.

Anyway, someone should consider writing one about Jason secretly writing OCxRed Hood mpreg fanfics and cheerfully getting into flame wars with people criticizing him for writing smut about real people.

Sure, it's weird. He doesn't care; he's got a kink and he's fulfilling it in a creative and healthy fashion. He might not even be embarrassed if anyone finds out. "You found my AO3 account, Oracle? And what were you doing at the Devil's Sacrament? So? What are you going to do about it? Tell anybody and the next story is going to be about you getting me pregnant; body hacking could be hot."

Okay, hear me out. I know it's not canon that Jason drugged the other Titans during the Titans Tower Incident; he electrocuted two of them and then drugged the third.

But we're playing in the au's like bitch whatever, DC retcons and rewrites at the slightest provocation and we are here for stories, right?

And a lot of Titan's Tower au's have Red Hood drugging more people than in canon. And every time it happens there's an absolutely terrible little voice in the back of my head going, "Jason is so lucky that no one he drugged was hiding a substance abuse issue like Roy did. Jason is so lucky that none of these teenagers-to-young-adults who are incredibly physically active and who have so many traumas took some physician-prescribed, completely legal pain medications or anxiety pills or muscle relaxants. He is so lucky that any daily upkeep medication didn't cause a catastrophic drug interaction with the unknown. Heck, Jason is so lucky that whatever drugs he used were perfectly tailored to each individual's body mass and species."

I'm not saying I want a fic where Jason accidentally makes a young hero OD, but I think it would be interesting and darkly funny if Tim made him think he might have.

"You drugged everyone? Wait, even (X)?! What did you use, did you check to see if they took their benzos before you drugged them? (Y) Is allergic to propofol, was that part of the stuff you used?"

"Look, you can have the fight you want, just let me make you none of my friends are choking on their own vomit first."

Is there any way to say “I have a raging Internet crush on your fanfics” without it being weird?

Asking for a friend.

Edit: And how many people would a person be allowed to say this to before being legally known as a 'FicHo'?

Still asking for a friend.