bite the hand

acrylic on paper

Okay so apparently it's fucking impossible to actually get real answers on this. So:

Use the poll for your main answer, use the tags, replies, or reblogs for secondary answers.

All answers are regardless of the sexuality or emotion of the daydream.

PLEASE reblog for a larger sample size. Seriously I tried so hard to get concrete answers on what people daydream about and every single link just says "fantasy scenarios".

Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like "if you think you might lose, avoid doing that", "being outnumbered is bad generally", and "consider lying."

My personal favourite is his lengthy lecture on the subject of Supplies Being Very Important I Cannot Stress Enough The Importance Of Protecting Your Supply Lines But Also Supply Lines Are Expensive As Shit So Steal The Enemy’s Supplies At Every Opportunity. 

via- @elidyce

One of the more important things to consider about any historical work is the audience it was published for. The Art Of War was aimed at fancy nobles high on philosophy with little practical military experience who were nonetheless leading armies.

Sun Tzu, after desperatly trying to explain extremely basic logic to a bunch of upper-class twits, basically sat down and wrote the most elaborate "As per my last email" ever

Stop Having a Concussion and Get us Home!

Tim works as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Tim has a secretary, and then he has another one to help her because holy shit, the amount of crap Tam puts up with is insane and she needs an assistant of her own.

Tim's second secretary is one Danny Fenton.

Tim, Tam, and Danny are the last ones in Wayne Enterprises, as the building had to be evacuated due to Superman being mind-controlled and targeting major corporations.

Superman targets Wayne Enterprises.

Tim looks out the window as he his secretaries make their way towards the emergency exit, and there he is.

Floating there.

Staring at him.

Tim swears he can see his Uncle Clark sobbing as his eyes heat up.

Then Danny grabs him, yanks him into the stairwell, and just as the building starts to crumble around them, shoves both Tim and Tam into a glowing green portal.

Danny takes a blow to the head.

They land on a floating island, in a swirling vortex of green, and the one who got them there is unconscious on the ground with a nasty headwound.

Meanwhile, after the Justice League manages to snap Superman out of it, the man throws himself at Batmans feet and just...sobs.

Breaks.

They get the story in bits and pieces.

Tim was in the building, still. The burning, twisted wreckage of Wayne Enterprises.

And Clark can't hear his heartbeat anymore.

Batman spiraling is something all the batkids except Dick are experiencing for the first time. And then someone mentions how it’s not actually as bad as after Jason because technically Bruce still has the rest of them kind of anchoring him.

But consider this, maybe he’s worse than when Jason died. Not only Is this the second son he’s lost, in a burning building, but it was at the hands of one of his best friends.

Bruce can’t bring himself to kill Clark because he knows he was mind controlled, doesn’t stop him from attacking Supes though. The Bat boys have to use every ounce of strength and training to pull him off Clark while Cass grabs at the kryptonite knuckle busters. He allows it but doesn’t return to the watchtower and Supes stays clear of Gotham. Batman hits Gotham’s streets even harder than after Jason. Cutting all communications with the Justice League, even Diana can’t get through to him and had to leave Gotham in a rush.

Tim was also the one who brought him out of his spiral and continued to be the one who stayed with him the longest even with all the bumps along the road. Tim also risked his life to bring Bruce home after his stint in the time stream.

So my point being, Jason has a front row seat to Batman’s brutality and Dick is there to witness it first hand this time instead of Tim’s reports. Damien is shocked to see Bruce using, not only near lethal strikes but also the league training coming through the longer Bruce spirals. There is also no body found so they are all worried about the implications and possibly another Jason situation.

Jason has to reevaluate his thoughts on Bruce’s strict no killing rule and why he has it. He also has to think back to Tim’s stories from back in the early days after he was found out as Red Hood. Tim had told Jason once that Bruce had almost killed the Joker, thought he had at one point but the bastard came back, but Superman had stoped him. Tim had also tried to get him to understand that if Bruce killed as Batman he wouldn’t stop. Jason hadn’t believed him but he was starting to realize that it may be true.

Dock knew Bruce had been bad after Jason’s death, felt guilty for not seeing it past his own anger, he had heard Tim’s stories and had taken them with a grain of salt because Bruce couldn’t have been worse than before he became the first Robin. He was wrong. Oh , he was so much worse and the guilt tripled knowing he had left a young Tim to deal with this alone.

Damien is shocked. And after being away from the LoA and growing used to his father soft but firm guidance… he hates to admit it but he is afraid. Thoughts of the League and the possible threat of his father becoming like Ra’s, even just the slightest… poor boy is starting to wish for Tim to still be alive, somehow, someway, just so he can return to the comfort of a storm but loving father, not this cold blinded by rage being. He also has a new respect for Tim, to be able to deal with and handle Bruce in this state, from what he’d heard from the other, after Jason’s death. Tim was either extremely brave or plain stupid to blackmail Batman in that state.

Everyone can understand Bruce’s grief but they are all worried about him. With Clark out of the picture and Diana having no luck… no one knows how to help or stop him. From hurting others and himself.

bonus if they still haven’t found out who was behind the mind control.

Alfred is in the background watching and supporting them all as best he can, all the while grieving the loss of another grandson and the potential loss of the man he views as his son. He will continue to provide food, comfort and medical attention as he always does. And pray by some miracle, Tim comes home to them. Be it a body or alive. Alfred’s last shred of hope is resting on the capture of the one responsible and the lack of a body or rather bodies, as Tam and her assistants bodies were never recovered just like Tim’s was never found in the wreckage. All three will remain as missing, in his mind, until solid proof of death or life is found.

I don't know why, but I just had this idea of Tim trying to reach out to his family and friends from the Ghost Zone and it coming across...off.

Danny is still out cold, and Tim & Tam are pretty sure even if they do get him back from...wherever the hell it is he took them, he isn’t going to survive. His pulse keeps slowing, his body temp keeps dropping and even though the wound itself seems to have healed disturbingly fast Danny's just not waking up.

They're on a floating island in an endless world of impossible geography and mind fuckery, but they're not totally without luck. There's a building on this island, a brownstone like what they'd see back on earth but with some strange additions to it. A giant green and chrome... observatory? It looks like a flying saucer but that's definitely a giant telescope poking out the top of it. There's also a giant sign attached to the side of it claiming the building "Phantom's Lair" which is...concerning. but it's not exactly like they have a lot of options.

The front door is open and thankfully (?) it looks like no one is home. They manage to carry Danny inside and lay him down on a large couch in a fairly normal looking living room. Tam finds a kitchen stocked largely with junk food and seemingly endless vials of what looks concerningly like Lazarus Water.

Tim searched the place from top to bottom, which takes much longer than it really should. The building is larger on the inside, with endless rooms and halls and stairs. He's worried about getting lost but every time he thinks he might have lost the path he finds himself right back at the living room where he left Tam and Danny - which is impossible, considering he was on entirely different floors during some of those mix-ups. Good news at least he finds some medical supplies - normal, human medical supplies - and even better, various bits of tech that he's pretty sure he can use to try and contact his family.

They decided to hole up in the living room - the couches are big enough for all of them, access to the kitchen and living room and easy enough to block off from any potential unfriendles that might show up - and Tim gets to work. Some of the tech he finds boggled the mind a little, it looks like whoever made it is powering it all with Lazarus Water somehow, but he's figuring it out.

He knows, logically, that chances are slim that he'll get a message out. That even if he does the odds are it won't be his family or the League that gets the message - he's pretty sure they're in an entirely different dimension at this point - but he has to try. He records a message and starts playing it over every frequency he can remember the Bat Clan or Justice League ever using, using his own comm as a means of trying to anchor it all down somehow.

Back on Earth, things get...strange.

Barbara is monitoring the city, trying to keep everyone going while Bruce spirals, and for a moment - just a second - she sees Tim's face on one of her monitors.

Damian is in his room, comm in his ear listening to those of his siblings that are out patrolling, staring blankly down at the sketch of Tim he'd just completed. A crackle of static and then he hears Tim's voice, faint and tinny, "-here, - here, -here"

On all channels that the BatFam and Justice League uses, Tim Drake in quick, half-realizes seconds, appears as a ghost. Haunting those left behind.

"Here...here...here..."

Tim's voice echoed through the comms, tinny and distorted, and Bruce felt his heart break a little more. One of his children must have been listening to an old recording of Tim, and the comm had picked it up. That was the only logical conclusion.

He couldn't bring himself to go out, not after he'd nearly snapped a man's neck in front of Damian.

He knew he wasn't the only one mourning, he knew that. But it was so fucking hard to remember it in the middle of a fight.

He kept...forgetting.

He would allow himself to go just a little too far, a little too violent, in the faint hopes that he would hear Tim crop up and scold him. Like he had done after Jason. Like he had done after Jason came back.

But Tim did not pop up.

It was just Damian, his youngest, staring at him in horror after being forced to come between Bruce and the criminal they'd been trying to apprehend.

And then it was Jason, who looked too tired to say anything beyond a quiet "Just...go back to the cave, B."

Bruce had done just that. He'd gone back, sent Damian upstairs with Alfred, and then locked himself away.

He couldn't take his anger out on Clark. He couldn't. The man was already guilt-ridden and Superman hadn't been seen since the incident.

But he was Bruce Wayne, the Goddamn Batman; he would find out who had forced his best friend to murder his son.

And then.

Well.

He had plenty of contenders for the title of Batman, and Cass, while quiet, was the best option for a successor.

He would go after the culprit as none other than himself, not Batman. He would kill them. And Cass would fill the cowl he left behind.

~~~~~~

Clark buried his face in Jon's hair, hands shaking as he clutched his son to him. Lois ran her hands up and down his back, and Jon not only humored him, but clung back.

Ma was down in the kitchen, stress-baking.

Pa was down in the barn, stress-fixing.

Clark was home, was so far removed from the city where he'd...

Where he'd...

After, when they'd pulled Bruce off of him, he'd gone to Lex. Had begged Lex to put him down.

Only for Lex to raise an eyebrow at him, pity in his eyes, and tell him no.

Tell him that he had to live with what he'd done, and what made this time so different from the others anyways?

Clark hated the man even more after that.

That hatred had turned on himself when Lex had a gleam of understanding and told him to go home. To mourn without dragging a city down with him.

To grieve the way so many families had to every time Clark lost himself.

So Clark had fled.

He'd run home, grabbed Lois and Jon, and ran all the way home to his parents.

Kon had passed him by on the way, and his....eldest hadn't even looked at him.

Clark couldn't blame him.

His breath caught in his throat, and Lois leaned fully against him.

God.

He'd killed Tim.

He'd killed his nephew.

He could still see the shock and dismay in the boy's face, the absolute second he'd realized he was going to die.

Clark couldn't do this. He couldn't. He had to...he had to be put down, or-

What if he hurt Lois next? Jon? Kon?

How many more people would he be forced to maim or murder?

He-

His phone rang.

"Leave it, Clark," Lois muttered, glaring at the device, "Whatever, whoever, it is; it can be handled tomorrow."

But Clark could not.

What if it was Bruce?

What if they'd found the body?

Oh God, what if it was Kon?

Clark shakily let go of Jon and picked up the phone, holding it to his ear.

"Hello-?"

"Not....fault...Clark! Clark, it....fine...help...trapped-" The phone went dead, battery completely drained.

Clark kept holding it to his ear anyways.

"Dad?" Jon asked quietly, eyes wide.

Clark didn't say anything.

That had been Tim. That had absolutely been Tim. It had been staticky and faint, but it was Tim.

Tim had said he was trapped.

The phone shattered in his grip and his hand went back to cradling the back of his sons head.

Not only had he killed his best friends son, but said son was trapped and unable to move onto the afterlife.

~~~~~~

Damian felt like...well. Damian did not know what to feel like.

Watching his father utilize lethal moves on a civilian, one improperly armed, had struck a chord in him.

Damian would not say he was afraid. He was...cautious.

Whenever Ra's had been infuriated enough to fall back on training otherwise unused, it was only wise to vacate the compound until he had settled.

So Damian had asked Alfred for a lift, and let himself into Grayson's apartment.

He knew that Grayson would have known the second he let himself in, and decided to pass the time waiting for patrol to end by sketching.

But his hands would only draw one person.

It was Drake.

...

It was Timothy.

Eyes crinkled as he laughed at something, mouth in the middle of telling a stupid joke.

And Damian could not stop making it more and more detailed.

He and Timothy had not...gotten along in the standard sense of the word. But they had gotten along in their own way.

After he had settled from his....brainwashing. It had been brainwashing, and he had to refer to it as such lest he be tempted to fall back to it. After he had settled, he and Timothy had struck an antagonistic accord.

They did not wish death or severe injury upon the other, but they were free to snipe at each other with words.

Damian refused to acknowledge the moisture gathering in his eyes, just like he refused to acknowledge Grayson sliding into the apartment and draping himself over Damian's back.

Grayson let out a choked off breath and hugged Damian.

"Mind if we get that framed, Dami?"

Damian did not answer.

Words...were not enough to encompass what he desired to say.

Talking was an impossibility, though he did not know why.

Instead, Damian turned the page and started sketching Timothy anew.

~~~~~~

Jason had resorted to using real bullets again.

He knew that he was sliding back into old habits, but he really, really could not bring himself to give a shit.

He hadn't killed anyone.

Yet.

The night was still young, and perhaps some of them had bled out after he'd left.

Oracle wasn't saying anything one way or another.

She'd stopped saying much after Damian had requested help. Help to stop Bruce from killing some rando criminal.

Which.

Jason did not know how to deal with that.

When he'd answered the call, hed been furious. Where had this murderous revenge spree been when he'd bit it? What, was he not good enough to warrant it? Was Damian not good enough?

He'd stepped in, fired a rubber bullet square at Bruce's spinal surgery scar under all that armor, and just...deflated.

The man that had turned around to face him...had not been Bruce.

The lines of grief were too stark. His hands shook, his shoulders hunched, and the man looked three steps away from collapse.

In the end, Jason had told him to go home.

There really wasn't anything else to do.

"Hello? Anyone there? I'm here! I'm right here! I'm trapped, but I'm here! We need a pick up!"

Jason froze.

Clear as crystal, that had been Tim's voice.

"Oracle, did you-?"

"Yes, although it wasn't very clear. B might be...watching a recording."

Jason could hear the disbelief in her voice.

"It was clear," Jason muttered, standing on the rooftop of a half-finished building as he looked over at where Wayne Enterprises used to stand tall, "It was loud and clear. Tim's trapped. He's-Kon!"

It only took a second, but Tim's little Super maybe-boyfriend was suddenly there.

He looked wild, unhinged. His hair was a wreck, he was covered in dirt, and Jason could tell just by looking at him that his powers kept incrementally shorting out due to stress.

Good to know that falling into insanity with the absence of one of them wasn't just a Timmy thing.

"Take me to Wayne Enterprises; I think Tim's alive."

~~~~~~

Tim threw the toaster at a wall.

"Danny, sweetie, focus," Tam goaded their semi-conscious meta, "We need to go back. Can you get us back?"

Tim was reminded, rather abruptly, of Dora the Explorer.

Unfortunately, toddler TV-show talking verbiage had nothing on the headwound his second assistant had sustained.

"Frostbite..." The man whined, before forcibly pulling his face out of Tam's hands and trying to stand up.

Tim went back to disassembling what looked like a PDA. There had to be something, anything, to get a message back home.

The massive, migraine-inducing banging on the front door distracted him.

"Punk, open up," Someone called out, "I know you're in there. You, and the two illegal entries you brought in with you. That's against the rules."

Tim felt a chill go up his back.

"And you know what happens when you go against the rules."

There are rules about entering another ghost's liar.

Walker has those rules, as he does all the others, memorized. A ghost's lair is about the single most protected space in the Zone - legally speaking. Entry without permission is not only taboo, it's illegal - punishable by a minimum of four eons in Walker's prison. And that was a very, very light sentence for such a crime.

That was not to say that law breakers in the Zone could evade justice by simply hiding out in their lairs forever. Especially when the laws being broken are done within said Lair. There are, as with all things, rules to follow.

Walker started with requesting entry - loudly, with increasingly more forceful slams of his fists against the door - running down the clock until he could move on to more...direct methods. It would take a bit to get through all the steps that the rules required, but that was fine. The punk wasn't going anywhere.

And neither were the illegal entrants with him.

-

There was a giant...man? Outside. A giant, glowing man-like individual with a skull (?) for a face and a dozen or so armed...green, glowing men-like things. They were dressed like a riot squad. They didn't have legs.

If they got out of this alive, Tim was going to sit Danny down and they were going to have a very long, very detailed discussion about just where exactly he'd brought them. He hadn't decided if that would be before or after he strangled the other man with his bare hands.

Tam was doing her level best to barricade the doors and windows to try and stave off the coming assault, but Tim wasn't putting a lot of faith in it holding. They might be able to evade the - men? Entities? - entities by going deeper into the endless maze of this impossible building, but Tim wasn't totally sure that they wouldn't be looped right back around again to where they started.

Danny wasn't any help, slurring and stumbling about, talking about a walker - did he need one? Was he more injured then they thought? - and otherwise swearing about rules.

Tim was desperately trying to find something - anything - that he might be able to use as a weapon to defend themselves, the haphazard system he'd setup to reach out for help had started glowing a few minutes ago. Considering the tendency for things to suddenly go concerning luminescent in this hellscape, Tim was half expecting for him and Tam to start lighting up too soon. God he hoped it wasn't some kind of interdimensional radiation.

He was in the process of leveraging a leg off of the kitchen table - fuck it was something at least - when he heard a deep, reverberating rumble echoing out from behind him.

Spinning he found himself frozen in place as a creature disturbingly dog-shaped loomed in a doorway that had not been there moments before. Easily the size of a minivan - bigger even - blindly green with terrifyingly red eyes, fangs as long as Tim's forearm as it lowered it's massive head and snarled at him, so loud and deep Tim could feel it reverberate through his chest. Around him the random bits and bobs thrown about the kitchen rattled from the dangerous low warning.

It was settled.

He was going to kill Danny when this was all over.

-

There was a tall, red-headed woman arguing with the police crew cordoning off the scene of the wreckage.

Jason recognizes her. Jazz Nightingale. A social worker that had been making waves over the past couple of years. Pushing hard on reforms, aggressively protective of each and every kid that crossed her path, nearly arrested half a dozen times during stand offs with officials or parents posing more risk than rescue to the kids in her charge.

She was one of the good ones. Someone he'd had on his list to try and work with one of these days. Try and get something more sustainable setup for the Alley kids, someone other than a Crime Lord for them to reach out to for help.

He had half a second to wonder just what she was doing there at the smoldering ruins of the WE building before it clicked.

Nightingale had been Tim's assistant Danny's last name. Gordon had mentioned having to break the news to a sister - no other family to tell.

"You don't understand, I need to search the debris."

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, I understand how hard this must be for you, but we can't allow you past the barrier, the rubble is extremely -"

"I'll be fine, I need to find something. I know it's there, Danny had it on him, if I could just -"

Jason had seen people try and go through rubble themselves in the wake of tragedy, desperately trying to find the person they lost. Trying to prove that they weren't dead. That if you just looked hard enough that their loved one would be alive and well. Merely trapped out of reach and in need of rescue - he ignored the voice telling him that he was doing the same thing, he heard Tim, he knew he was alive.

Jazz Nightingale wasn't looking for a body though. She wasn't asking to search for her brother. She was asking for something else.

"Start looking." He grunted to Kon, turning to start heading toward's Nightingale's direction. "I'll be there in a second."

Clone-boy didn't need the encouragement. Jason wasn't even sure he'd heard him. He'd already been diving towards the ruined building with that haunted, desperate look in his eye Jason remembers Tim having when his sorta-maybe-boyfriend had kicked it.

He pulled Nightingale away from the cop. She didn't even seem to care that Red Hood had suddenly appeared at her elbow and inserted himself into the situation. Just gritted her teeth and pressed on.

"Look, I need to get in there. I need to find -"

"Something your brother had on him." He interrupted. "You said." He titled his head at her, eyes sharp on her every movement beneath the hood. "You don't seem very upset that he's dead."

The red-head's fists clenched hard at her side, heckles up immediately as she all but spat, "Danny's not dead. He's not. He and the people he were with aren't. Dead." She looked like she was ready to bolt and hurl herself into the wreckage just like Kon had. "If you just let me search, as long as he didn't have it on him - and he shouldn't have, he doesn't even need it, he was supposed to drop it off - I can get to them, I know I can, I just need -"

"You know where they are?"

Nightingale pulled up sharply, hands clenched tight enough at her sides he half expected to start seeing blood drip down from between her fingers. She cast a nervous look towards the cop she'd been fighting with before, shuffled away to leave Jason to deal with her - undoubtedly hoping Red Hood could scare her off where the cop's bland condolences couldn't. After a short beat she took a breath, bending a little closer to him and lowering her voice as she said, "Yeah. I know...I know where they are. I can get to them, I just need a device my brother had with him."

Jason glanced over at the smoldering, torn apart building. Kon darting in and out of view as he searched. Rubble the size of houses, cement and rebar and steal beams all a pile of ruin.

"And if this device you're talking about was shot to shit by debris?" He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, but they could wait. Right now all that mattered was getting to Tim. Getting him out of wherever the hell he was trapped.

Nightingale looked weary at the question. "Then I'll have to take the long way." She scowled, "It better have made it. I really don't want to have to go deal with that Fruitloop in Wisconsin."

Dick had managed to wrangle Damian to bed, but hadn't been able to make himself leave the room after his little brother son fell asleep.

He just sat on the bed, running a hand through Damian's hair.

Damian hadn't spoken at all. Not once.

Nor had he signed.

Dick had shot a text message to Bruce, alerting him to the new development of Selective Mutism, and he hadn't been entirely surprised when there hadn't been a response.

Dick himself was mostly running on autopilot.

Uncle Clark had killed Timmy.

Timmy's corpse was somewhere under the lead-lined concrete of Wayne Enterprises, broken and out of reach.

For as big as the building was, Dick was under no illusions.

If they wanted to host a funeral, they would need to redefine their definition of a corpse.

Dick couldn't find it in himself to find anymore tears to cry.

He knew Clark hadn't meant to. Hadn't wanted to.

He knew Clark was probably on the brink as it stood.

But he couldn't bring himself to send a text message absolving him of his sins.

Dick, for all that he knew it wasn't Clark's fault, could not forgive him.

After all; however sorry his Uncle was did not change the fact that Timmy was dead.

The only concession Dick could give Clark was that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the older man had not wanted to do that. That he had absolutely been mind controlled.

So while he could not send a text saying he forgave him, Dick did the best thing he could think of at that time.

He eyed the safe where he kept a stash of kryptonite bullets and a kryptonite dagger, courtesy of Jason.

Indeed, a text warning Clark away was the kindest action Dick could take towards the man.

Dick needed to spill someone's blood, and if it wasn't going to be the mind controller, it was going to be Clarks.

~~~~~~

Cass watched the red-head woman speak with her Little Brother.

She had been digging through the rubble on her own, searching for proof before Kon had arrived.

But Jason's demeanor was not angry-sad-closed. It was hopeful-confused-cautious.

Cass narrowed her eyes and refocused her attention on the woman.

Her demeanor was honest-stubborn-frustrated.

So she wasn't lying to her brother. Or, at least the woman did not think she was.

Jason called for Superboy.

Superboy did not hear him.

Superboy was terrified-desperate-hurt, and could not hear outside of his own head.

She slid over next to Superboy and captured his attention with a hand lightly wrapped around his ankle.

"Red Hood wants to tell you something," she said, pointing at Jason.

Superboy's head snapped towards Jason and he disappeared out of her hand, only to reappear next to Jason.

Cass let Jason tell Superboy the hopeful news and continued her search.

She paused.

There was...a thing.

It looked like a ray-gun, broken cleanly in half by a piece of bloodied concrete.

Cass fought past her instinctive despair and made herself search for any...other signs of a body.

There were none.

And when she angled her body just-so, so that the light from the spotlights were completely blocked out, the blood had glowing green flecks.

"Superboy, this is not Tim," Cass started, feeling the burst of air as her little brother's more-than-friend-but-not appeared at her side, "But this thing; what is it?"

Superboy's shaking hands took the ray-gun from hers.

"I don't know," his voice was a wretched thing, cracking and hoarse, "I don't know. I have to-"

"Take me too," Cass interrupted, holding out her hand.

Superboy did not hesitate before he took it, and she felt his TTK protect her as he took them both to the Red Head at super speed.

The Red Head turned to look, and her face lit up at the sight of the gun.

"You found it," she breathed, reaching forward to take it from Superboy. Then her face fell into...annoyance?

Her body language had switched to annoyance-disappointment-exasperation.

"Damn," she hissed, and Cass saw a flash of fangs, "It's beyond what I can fix. We have to go to Wisconsin."

~~~~~~

"Okay, so just so I'm clear; the law here also states that ignorance of the law is no excuse?" Tim called through the door, buying time.

The cop-because that was definitely what it was-sighed in irritation.

"Correct, mortal; ignorance of the law is no excuse."

Tim pushed Danny away from the door, the man letting out a whine as Tam redirected the poor concussed man back to the overly large canine.

The dog had been a surprise, to be sure, but Tam's quick thinking had saved them. Namely, she'd bodily shoved Danny at the dog in shock. The dog, in return, had started wagging it's tail.

They were running on the assumption that the dog belonged to Danny.

"Okay. Alright. So what are my rights? I'm the citizen of another dimension, are there extradition treaties in place?"

There was a pause as the cop actually had to consider it.

"If you don't know, are there any lawyers I could speak with prior to speaking with you?"

The door visibly caved inward just a bit with the next hit.

"Ask the punk!"

"I can't, he's injured! Doesn't that mean he's entitled to medical treatment?"

There was another pause.

Tim braced himself for the door to receive another hit, but instead of that there was a flurry of voices in a language that hurt his ears.

"Mortal, how long has he been injured?"

Tim narrowed his eyes.

It could be the cop asking for judging whether or not a doctor was needed, or it could be a distraction.

But if it was a distraction, what could Tim realistically to about it?

And there was a chance that this dimension had a law where injured convicts had to be seen to by a doctor.

Worst case scenario, nothing changed.

"...Since we got here."

"So he is weak. Good. It will be easier to apprehend him this time. I will now start stage four of gaining access, do not move."

Tim frowned, looking around and slowly piecing together mentally all of the home-alone-esque traps he could build to keep the cop out.

"Not like I can go anywhere else," he muttered, making his way back to the living room to find more electronics to gut.

He had to get out. He had to make sure Danny and Tam got out. He had to do it soon, as he knew Bruce better than almost anybody, and he knew that the man was probably about to do something monumentally stupid.

He had to hurry, he had to-

"What are you doing in my house?"

Tim screamed and dropped the TV remote he had started to dismantle, turning around to face the voice.

Floating before him was a white haired, green eyed girl about Damian's age.

"Uh..." Tim tried to come up with a plausible reason for breaking and entering, but ultimately came up with "Hiding from the police."

The girl just nodded sagely.

"Understandable; Walker's an asshole. Why's Danny fucked up?"

Oh thank god she knew who Danny was.

"He took some concrete to the head," Tim winced, deliberately not thinking about the statistics regarding permanent brain injury, "And we don't have the supplies to treat him here, but the cop-Walker-"

The floating girl grinned maniacally.

"Hey, wanna learn how we treat authority in the Infinite Realms?"

Tim suddenly did not want to know.

~~~~~~

Tam screamed with delight, forcing her co-secretary to stay on the back of the overly large dog as it raced them towards a doctor or something apparently.

Tim was in the front, because of course he would insist on that seat, and the girl had stayed behind to fight to police.

From what Tam could see as they left, she was winning.

The dimension made no sense.

It was full of doors and paths and islands, people and creatures she had only heard of in myths, and the more she stared into the green void the more she could feel it staring back.

But it wasn't scary.

No, it was laughing with her.

It welcomed her.

She felt something in her welcome it back.

And something changed.

Not noticeably, but enough that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she had a place in this strange dimension, that she would always be destined for it one way or another.

She barely noticed the temperature start to get colder, and only started actively paying attention once a big fat snowflake got her right in the eyeball.

Ah, the frozen island that the other girl had been talking about. It was...snowy. Full of ice. Had some weird buildings. People wandering around...

Wandering...

"Are those Yetis?" Tam gasped, reaching forward to shake Tim.

Tim stared down at the Yetis in question, looking...nervous.

"...Tim, you've never tried to start shit with Yetis, right?"

Tim didn't answer.

"Tim!"

Apartment Building Dollhouse, c. 1900, maker unknown

The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, Kansas City, MO

Yeah quiet quitting is great and all but have you tried chaotic working?

Like. I remember back in my grocery store cashier days I did so much crazy shit.

When WIC (Women, infants, and children voucher program to help low income mothers/families with children) people were in my line I would pretty much know who they were. Before the cards they had to tell us upfront they were WIC and show us their vouchers for what they were allowed to get (it was awful some times. Like. 2 gallons of milk. $4 worth of vegetables etc etc). They’d always have items hanging back, waiting to see what the total was and if they would have to take it off the belt.

I began to place the fruits/vegetables a certain way on the register scale so that like 1/2lbs of grapes read as like .28lbs or something. Then act shocked when I said that they still had X amount of lbs left. They got all their fruit and vegetables.

I think it started to kinda? Catch on to the women? Because I would have the same moms in my line month after month. And even after they switched to the cards (they worked like food stamp cards?) I’d still do the same thing. They were able to get more produce for whatever shitty max amount Indiana gave them.

Anyways. Be chaotic. It’s more fun that way.

Abuse the bosses' dollar as much as you can. Give things away for free. Use your work's "Cop/Military Discount" for regular ass people. Let people steal food.

Fuck'em it's a worker's world.

[Image ID: Text reading: "Good Work" Strikes

One of the biggest problems for service industry workers is that many forms of direct action, such as Slowdowns, end up hurting the consumer (most of them are also members for the workering class) more than the boss. One way around this is to provide better or cheaper service -- at the boss' expense, of course.

Workers at Mercy Hospital in France, who were afraid that patients would go untreated if they went on strike, instead refused to file the billing slips for drugs, lab tests, treatments, and therapy. As a result, the patients got better care (since time was being spent caring for them instead of doing paperwork), for free. The hospital's income was cut if half, and panic-stricken administration gave in to all of the workers' demands after three days.

In 1968, Lisbon bus and train workers gave free rides to all passengers to protest a denial of wage increases. Conductors and drivers arrive for work as usual, but the conductors did not pick up their money satchels. Needless to say, public support was solidly behind these take-no-fare strikers.

In New York City, I.W.W. restaurant workers, after losing a strike, won some of their demands by heeding the advice of I.W.W. organizers to "pile up the plates, give 'em double helpings, and figure the checks on the low side." /End ID]

Plain text: you have power as a wage worker

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

I cannot imagine how freakin tired these two must be

the curse of the artist is that initially I just made this as a meme using the handshake template but then my brain was like "you could draw it and it would make it funnier" so. here we are.

hate to say it but the key to having things solved by big company customer service is you just gotta stretch the truth with them. or straight up lie. actually. was on the phone for 3 hours because they sent something to the wrong address and spoke to 10 different departments trying to figure out if anyone could go fucking get it and they’re like “uhhh but can you go get it” bitch I’m 8 hours away by car, I don’t live in the house where you sent it.

took a moment to think, called back and was just like. Hi. My package was stolen off the porch!!! Saw the cunt steal it myself!! Anyway can you please send new things to this other address for free since that’s your policy for stolen goods thank you~☆ ! and it was immediately solved.

actually my tags are too good not to include

follow me for more customer service tips and tricks

THIS is how it’s done!!!

A gang of gougars

Hot cougars in your area

I know these are dangerous wild animals that deserve to be given their space, that it would be both stupid and cruel to try to interact with them...

...but damn if I don't want to cuddle them so badly.

Concept: Jason Todd lives, possibly never went to Sarajevo in the first place, and grows up into young adulthood. He makes a decision to leave the vigilante life behind and becomes an EMT, still fulfilling a desire to help people but in decidedly less overtly dangerous ways. Still, Jay could do without the regulars. He tends to see some of the same people on his route a lot, mostly folks down on their luck getting in increasingly worse situations.

But then there's the goddamn kid.

His name is Tim Drake, Jason knows that by heart from the number of times he's picked this kid up in his ambulance. Parents aren't super involved, possibly don't even know their son is in and out of Gotham General's emergency room every other week. Jason files a DCF report about it once or twice, doesn't know if it goes anywhere, but assumes it hasn't because the kid keeps showing up at injury accidents and crime scenes sporting injuries of his own. Eventually Jason asks him what he's doing gallivanting all over Gotham City on school nights. Tim shrugs, like it's obvious. "Getting pictures of Batman."

Jason could kill his dad, he really could. But he settles for calling him up when his shift ends to yell at him instead.

Okay, that is hilarious. I can just picture Jason's 'I am so done' expression.

Via @WritersGuildF at Twitter. (Not that this’ll help NBCUniversal, particularly when the LA City Department of Urban Forestry comes after them…)

This move, it seems likely, is damage control aimed at attempting to mitigate the situation before LA-based TV news crews show up.

(BTW: images in other threads here and on Twitter apparently confirm that Universal also did this illegal trimming three years ago, and the trees were in the process of trying to recover from it.)

*sip tea*

googledocs you are getting awfully uppity for something that can’t differentiate between “its” and “it’s” correctly

oho and now you’re questioning my adverb usage? you? you?

you fucking dare?

you try to change ‘tears’ to ‘years’ for no reason but don’t catch ‘imporint’???

hey quick question gdocs

what the fuck

1. how the fuck did this post become so popular

2. everyone just commenting ‘QUERCHED’ is delightful

3. some people have suggested i use grammarly. this is letting the robots win and also would deprive me of the opportunity to complain about insignificant technical things instead of just wanting to scream over writing all the time

4. i use googledocs because i want access to my writing on multiple platforms and also because fuck microsoft 

5. the difference between [its] and [it’s] is that [it’s] is always used as a shortened form of [it is] and [its] is used as the possessive of [it]. yes, this goes against the usual practice of just tacking on an [‘s] when you want to indicate ownership. yes, english is absolutely a trash language.

btw, gdoc’s most recent transgression:

noooope

LITERALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE MEANING OF WHAT I WANT, GDOCS

i’m sorry what kind of AI FUCKERY is going on here that you are trying to ADD IN ADVERBS FOR ME that could ENTIRELY CHANGE THE TONE from a neutral ‘He’d been young’ to something that would put emphasis on just how young he was and how long ago it was you cannot just THROW EXTRA WORDS IN LIKE THAT

‘he’d been so young’ I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU

OH MY FUCKING GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS

me @ everyone else using googledocs:

YOU

🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

you know what. i am physically sick as hell this week so i'll bite. i read the original slate article, which is free to read so i don't know why OP chose to screenshot instead of let people draw their own conclusions. i agree with MANY of the writer's points on the need for comprehensive criminal justice reform, but i also care a lot about numbers and stats and increasingly, this bullshit "democrats are the same as republicans" messaging is straight-up delivered using propaganda tactics

this is going to be an incredibly long post and i had to use GOOGLE SLIDES and GOOGLE SHEETS which i hate so so much so in the words of twitter kpop stans please don't let this flop

let's look at the numbers, claim by claim

claim #1: "the number of people held in ICE detention has increased by 70 percent since Biden took office"

claim #2: "the federal prison population has grown for the first time in a decade"

last claim: "federal covid relief funds are being used to pad local police budgets"

SO all of that to say

Some time has passed. Have your views changed, at all?

i think this question is for me so i will try to answer briefly, though lmk if it was intended for op lmao

also i'll answer on the assumption it was asked in good faith:

do i still think that democrats and republicans are not the same? yes; i don't have the time today to refresh charts etc., but a very quick glance at the same sources i used the first time around looks like the numbers have remained more or less stable. happy to take correction here if anyone has more time to delve

on immigration specifically, do i think reform is still needed? yes; in particular i do think there should be close scrutiny of how the numbers trend as the biden admin continues to announce and enact its proposed policies if the PHE does indeed expire in may

on criminal justice specifically, do i think reform is still needed? yes; and importantly here it's worth keeping track of what the dem white house and dem congresspeople are trying to do vs what is able to happen (e.g. George Floyd Act)

do i still think dems-and-repubs-are-the-same reeks of voter-suppression propaganda? yes, and even more so when the evidence continues to pile up that dem legislatures and leaders at every level are making real progress on issues that we all purport to care about. who benefits when certain types of voters feel like their vote doesn't matter? the people who want to disenfranchise them!

do i still think it's important to contextualize data and question sources and stats? yes!!!!!!!!!! yes!!!! and i know it's not easy and it's time-consuming, but again: who benefits when we don't approach information with a critical mind? not us!

do i still think it's important to vote? yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

am i still going to abuse bullet points? yeah

not to be pedantic but it annoys me so much when people talk abt how chatgpt is "lying" or "making things up". or esp when people say it "refuses to admit" to lying. like girl that is a toaster oven

"it REFUSED TO ADMIT that it LIED to me" it is a line of code generating letters in the most algorithmically probable order

The program is designed to simulate the existence of a sapient and self-aware person that is conversing with the user. And a person who provides false information and refuses to acknowledge it as such is called a liar.

ChatGPT is intended to be anthropomorphized, and marketed to us as an accurate and reliable tool, a trustworthy friend which can be used to parse data, research facts, and navigate the world.

Describing it presenting the user with false information as 'lying' is technically inaccurate, true. But it is a concise and useful way of describing chatGPT's hallucinatory output.

Last night I had a dream I woke up to find that my house had been turned into a Smart House with every wall being a digital screen including the roof so I could see it even laying on bed and the Siri voice said “Don’t worry. You are perfectly safe in your Apple Smart Home™️” knowing I have a BIG phobia of intruders especially at night and it continued with “Let’s explore the neighborhood from the comfort of your home” so it opened google maps and accidentally zoomed past a shitty jpeg of the girl from The Ring standing outside my house and it said “ignore that”. woke up laughing

I think Anakin and Padme deserve to Stay Besties in any AU that isn't Anidala specifically because their love languages are absolutely buckwild and insane to almost anyone else, but match up to each other pretty perfectly, which means that if they aren't dating each other, they are the exact right person to have egging the other on and enabling whatever unhinged bullshit they're planning on doing in the name of romance.

Anakin thinks he needs to serenade his partner? Padme hires him an orchestra.

Padme wants to meet daringly under the cover of night with her new secret lover because that's the only right way to do it? Anakin is staging a kidnapping for her, zero questions.

Anakin is swooning over how his love interest was kissing him! but it was actually lips-to-leg attempts to suck out the venom of a bad bite (something you're not even actually supposed to do, but hey, the Force slowed his heart down enough that maybe it helped! and he survived anyway, it's fine)? Padme is over the moon for him, that's so romantic!

Their brain cells are so, so allergic to each other. Put them in a room and all common sense flees in the face of "okay, but if I challenge her to a sword fight--" "Padme you can't challenge a Sith to a sword fight." "No no, but if I challenge her and then you swoop in for me as my substitute, and I promise a kiss to the winner and you throw the match--" "Okay I don't want to lose to Ventress but oh my god, I love it."

Move aside, Idiots to Lovers, there's a new ballgame in town!

Friends to Lovers to Idiots

This one goes out to my manager for formatting a customer drive without checking what was on it. Always keep your degausser pointed in a safe direction.

If you really need the data gone, after formatting have a three year old hit it with a hammer

This smells like the voice of unexpected experience

No it was on purpose. We can now add "data remediated by toddler violence" to our quality assurance

My current place used to dispose of hard drives by shipping them over to this one guy who had a gun, who would shoot them full of holes and send back photos of the perforated drives and their serial numbers. We stopped doing that because solid state drives can still contain retrievable data if there are big enough pieces left; now we have old SSDs run through an industrial shredder.

Remember: when it comes to data storage, the data isn't gone until the storage device is. If someone else's personal information is on a device in your control, you have moral, and potentially legal, responsibility to keep it secure.