beckory comic based off of this line from GGY. i hope you get what im trying to say lol. i was kinda going for tony and gregory trying to NOT be popular for obvious reasons. just like a new way of seeing the line from the book even though this is not what the book meant.

(book snippet under cut)

As an eligible young noble of no small fame, Ambroys had a number of arranged courtships and suitresses in his youth, but any nascent marriages always fell through.

It's not that he didn't try; he certainly knew how to court a lady (perhaps too well, according to many fathers and husbands), and when he lacked knowledge on the affairs of womens' hearts, he sought counsel from a young woman who was a dear friend of his (perhaps too much counsel, according to his own father). Nonetheless, all he garnered for his efforts was separation after separation.

Ah, well. Maybe it was for the best.

Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.

His grey hairs are so earned

.

It is vitally, vitally important that Clark Kent is boring.

I don't mean 'boring' in an inherently bad way. A desk job is boring. Data analysis is boring. Due process is boring. All of these things are imperative for a functioning society but almost nobody will ever be praised for them.

When my car got stolen a year ago, the guy who took it stole a bunch of other stuff too. I was sitting with a cop in a backroom of the campus police station for almost an hour while he was doing paperwork (to make sure everyone would get their stuff back), and at one point he looked up at me and he said, "sorry about this. It's not all shootouts and car chases like on TV."

And I almost said, "well, due process is sexy" (I didn't, for obvious reasons). But he looked surprised when I told him I thought due process was pretty cool. Like nobody is supposed to think due process is cool. Things are only cool if they're glamorous or flashy.

The guy who stole my car was horribly addicted to meth. The sheriff told me, "you should press charges so we can put him away for as long as possible."

The sheriff was lost in a world of heroes and villains. He was the "hero." The addict was the "villain." But the person who helped people was the guy at a desk, who went back over the mile long paper trail and returned every stolen item to its owner. The important stuff is when some guy in an office writes an algorithm to save endangered whales, or when the third double blind test finally shows sufficient evidence for the efficacy of a new cancer treatment. The goose that actually lays the golden egg almost never cackles.

This is why the 'Glasses' comic is so important, to me. We live in a world which glorifies exciting acts of heroism but not "boring" ones. We live in a world that thinks people like Clark Kent aren't important, when they're often doing the most important work, solving the systemic issues, saving people who aren't lost yet. Sometimes we need firefighters, but in a perfect world, we'd only need safety inspectors.

And sure, Superman is necessary within the story. There are disasters and villainy he can prevent. There are lives he can save. But being Superman is ultimately a terrible sacrifice, and if the heroism wasn't necessary he'd be Clark Kent all day. That's what makes him not a cop: he's not enjoying the car chases and shootouts. He avoids letting things get 'interesting' at all costs. He avoids glory.

The comic Strong Female Protagonist (by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag, BRING IT BACK) has several fascinating pieces of philosophy on superheroes and society, but my favourite is this:

Kal-el, living solar battery, isn't just someone who contributes to society from the outside or the top. He plugs away at boring, everyday kindnesses just like other humans. (This can make for great contrasts with Lex Luthor, who is the epitome of a light bulb person and could never understand why Superman would want to be a battery.)

Clark Kent is boring. Clark Kent plays things by the book. Clark Kent is sexy in the same way that due process is sexy, and any character who thinks the Clark Kent side is 'less than' the Superman side, is textually a goddamn idiot. "No glory save honour" and he will always have both.

Every description about Nico (especially the canon ones) describing him as “cold” can personally fight me. Nico is jaded, yes, and often closed-off and sometimes stand-offish and defensive but he is not "cold”. He cares SO SO SO MUCH about EVERYONE. He loves and cares with his entire heart constantly and that is a core part of his character. He doesn’t often make public shows of his affection but he takes care to be kind when it matters and doesn’t hide that he does care (usually, the only exception really being him being in the closet, but even then he only hid his crush specifically and not the fact that Percy is important to him). He fine with hugging his friends in front of a crowd and will sit with strangers at a campfire just so they’re not alone. I mean, heck, he’s an extrovert! We know this! He actively seeks out people and gets lonely very quickly and easily! If he can’t talk to living people he will chat with the dead! That’s how much he thrives on being social!

The only time Nico has ever been actively “cold” was the couple of months between TTC and BoTL when he was actively mourning Bianca. Nico is not “cold.” He loves so much and he does show it, just in his own way.

actually no we don't talk about nico who likes pirates enough. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite pirate. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite ship. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite shipwreck too. we don't talk enough about how he probably spent all day on the canals with the gondole, asking the gondoliers all sorts of questions about their boats until his mother had to pull him away. how many hours did he spend on the port of venice just watching the boats come in and leave? just.... how far does the love of pirates go? is it a love of boats too? like we know he loves (I refuse to believe it's past tense) pirates, but we don't even know if he knows how to swim, or if he likes being on cruises, or at the beach or what. it's sad.

aftg au where everything is exactly the same but instead of knives Andrew carries around a bat

only bad thing about being in a fandom where one of the characters canonically has wings is the painful lack of classic wingfic. where is my everything's the same but people have bird wings watford au where one day baz notices simon hasn't been grooming his wings bc of an injury to his ribs so he sits on his bed and makes a whole fuss about how "i'm not doing this to be nice, snow, your wings are just a travesty to look at" and then proceeds to carefully and lovingly tidy his feathers in drawn out silence while they both pretend grooming someone else's wings isn't one of the most intimate things you can do for another person. will this heartbreak never end

hey Nightvale uhh what's up with your community radio host???

Jaybru for the ask game! Also extra question if you’re okay with it: post marriage head canons considering the Knead It fic?

hi anon! i truly was expecting people to ask some outta-left-field relationships but instead i get to talk about jaybru twice (heh heh heh)

Ship It

What made you ship it?

you can blame @setsailslash for it, they requested a charity commission for gen bruce and jason, which got me into batfam and got me looking at jason, and then their luscious body of work (kuro49 on ao3) and me digging through the dc kinkmeme (i love kinkmemes SO much) pushed me towards writing any which way and that was game over..... i fell into the (bat)hole and i can't get out :')

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

one of the things i really like about them is just how aggressively, flagrantly different they are!! rich vs. poor, old vs. young, bruce who keeps having people die on him vs. jason as the one who actually dies, to kill or not to kill.... it's a struggle to imagine anything that they would agree on, which makes it even better if one of the few things they do (agree on) is that they want to deeply deeply care for each other 🥲🥲🥲

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

i don't know enough about what's popular for the ship to say 🧐 uhmmm i'm only interested in post-pit jaybru, because i like them to have a more equal power dynamic bc this means they can whale on each other with the full force of their violence (and care) in a more equitable manner??? does that count???

re: post marriage head canons for an insistent knead

the fic itself is a secret sequel to a quarterly review, in case you haven't read that one!

as for after they get married.... i imagine they're still mostly the same! they don't move in together, bc they're both large predators that need some measure of space, but bruce absolutely stops manwhoring about and starts wearing a ring. when he gets asked about it he'll say he got married [true] and then talk at length about his mystery man [rampant and increasingly bizarre lies]

they want it to be honest but they want it to be secret, so they probably got their marriage registered in like ecuador or something, bruce with a fake b-name jason with his own, so when an interviewer asks bruce just winks and goes i'm legally married [somewhere? somewhere warm??] and then he'll just lie about every other aspect, talks about how his husband's much older than he is, they're never seen together bc his (elderly) man has mobility issues [segue into improving accessibility in gotham], they're very happy together, so happy together in fact that on their wedding night [it must've been spring! unless it was summer!] in a fit of exuberance his partner snapped his hip like a wishbone in bed.... he's rich [richer than bruce is, unless stocks have ??? deflated??? who's to say maybe he's richer again now haha] and handsome and bruce is just lying lying lying with gleeful abandon until a reporter asks uhm but are u happy though? do u love him though?

and bruce goes all melty and embarrassing and goes yes, then he leans over so he gets closer to the mic and looks straight into the camera and says i hope he knows i love him almost more than anything 🥺 and the interviewer goes almost? and bruce grins and says i have kids no one can be my favourite so everyone is second best 🥰

jump cut to jason w a coffee mug that says world's [added on in sharpee] 2nd best husband going baby i'll show u the type of loving that'll snap the hip of an older lover :)))) wow i got carried away but yes basically after they get married they're still mostly the same except in all the ways they get worse (affectionate)

ok tinhat time i kno shut up but.. hear me out.

u kno how the mind flayer is made up of dark particles? and how will could feel it everywhere? and it likes it cold?

and u remember how the teens used the light particles to communicate through the lights? and how they said they felt "good"?

well.

what if... those light particles... are another creature, maybe a different type of mind flayer / flayer-kin? but maybe this one isn't evil, and that's why they can communicate through to the other side with it and why it feels "good" to touch?

what if... those light particles, whatever they may be, are what helped will to communicate in s1? which could maybe explain why he was able to manipulate the lights like that, since it clearly couldn't have been in the same way the teens did? (and maybe they even had something to do with how he shaped the upside down and why his powers are related to it but not present in his realm? smth smth abt hiding from henry in the light + will is good at hiding + el saying that will is hiding in s1)

what if... vecna, the dark wizard, uses dark particles to fight in the name of evil... and will, the light wizard, uses light particles to fight in the name of good... what if 🤔

Sadie Sink as Her in All Too Well: The Short Film, dir. Taylor Swift (2021)

Josh Charles as Dan Rydell in Sports Night, dir. Thomas Schlamme (1998-2000)

just wanna say im obsessed with your mind and i read your posts about kiryu like the morning paper. thank you for your service

(Sweats) e-even the ones about him laying eggs ?

How am I supposed to focus on checking if my fic looks good knowing that the cute guy called me a good doggy in my dms