Willow

Mostly random thoughts, they/them, biology/critter enthusiate, starwars nerd

[possumtion]

*beats them up

[glitchedoutvoid]

Ok so I'm drawing this idea I have for a fanfiction I'm writing because I don't know how to describe a character but why is mandalorian armor like that? Literally all of your squishy organs and joints are exposed! Like some armor is better than no armor but freaking heck! This is supposed to be a warrior culture. That's not even a proper freaking chest plate! Not even a gorget! I keep having to remind myself that they basically live in that armor and so obviously it has to be lighter and allow a wider range of movement and chainmail doesn't work against blaster shots but really? Not even all the way around the ribs and back? There's nothing protecting the back of the legs and it drives me freaking nuts!

[asinglebluefeline]

Am I the only one who thinks of perfectly peeled citrus fruits whenever comic book superheroes' muscles are shaded like this?

Like -

???

[getanshi]

hi! im curious, can you explain more about the difference between bruce's relationship with robin dick and his relationship with jaybin? 👀

i’ll be honest anon, there is no short explanation i can give better than this image by @cobalt-knave:

…with the caveat that even with jason, bruce’s relationship with him is ‘batman & robin’ before ‘father and son.’ the batman & robin relationship has primacy over whatever familial relationship bruce has with the robins as individuals with maybe the exception of damian (which is also partially why they’re so dysfunctional as a b&r duo). or to quote malihah:

going back to pre-crisis when their dg+bw and jt+bw relationships are allowed to be more fluid, the difference between the two is pretty obvious. dick is bruce’s ward and is consistently referred to as such because that’s what he is, and while they will occasionally break out a father-son or brotherly language in-universe, the narrative stays consistent that bruce is his guardian, friend, partner, mentor, etc.

“big brother image”. not “big brother.” very different!

jason, by contrast, leans towards a father-son relationship with bruce almost immediately; one of my absolute favorite pre-crisis jaybin story arcs centers around jason’s custody as bruce tries to adopt him, and as we know, eventually succeeds. and it should be noted that for a very long time, jason was the only character to have this status with bruce! but even when the story is literally about bruce trying to become jason’s legal father, it’s always very clear that to jason and bruce that that is just legal accessory to their primary relationship of batman & robin. the language used is kind of interesting throughout the arc because while characters are quick to talk about natalia (competing for custody, long story, you should read it!) as jason’s “adoptive mother”, they rarely use the phrase “adoptive father” for bruce; they more consistently say “wanting custody”. this panel was the closest i found in that arc to either jason or bruce being explicit about a father-son dynamic, and as you can see, it doesn’t even hit that mark:

in-universe, bruce has a lot of hang-ups about dead parents for obvious orphan reasons. he never wants to replace john grayson or joseph todd (and later willis todd, jack drake, et cetera) for the same reasons he would be gravely offended if he felt that someone was trying to replace thomas wayne in his memory. bruce has a lot of love in his heart and cares so damn much, but he’s so emotionally distant and he needs that distance to protect both himself and, in his mind, other people from him. having the batman & robin relationship allows him to bond with dick and jason that he actually feels comfortable in without the all-consuming anxiety of am i fucking this up am i a fraud oh god i’m not fit to do this because bruce is the only one who can be batman (for now), which is why even when he becomes jason’s legal father there’s always a bit of a wink about it to the primacy of the b&r relationship. again, this is a reason why his relationship with damian is, frankly, the worst out of his “sons”: there is no distance, no other father that bruce can pass the buck off to, and it freaks him out and is why we get 1000 repeating comic storylines of bruce beating himself up over whether or not he’s capable of raising damian.

out-of-universe, the distinction between why dickbin is a ward (and thus nebulously bruce’s friend-partner-brother-son) and jaybin is adopted comes down to simply the passage of time. dick and jason might only have a seven or so year age gap as characters, but they have forty-three years of real world time in between their creations. in 1940, adoption was a long, bureaucratic, pretty stigmatised slog that had a very heavy focus on erasing the birth family with sealed records and new birth certificates; it was mostly something done for couples adopting very young children to pass off as their biological child. guardianship and wardship was far more common and appropriate for an orphaned pre-teen being raised by a bachelor. adoption became more common and less stigmatised around the 1960s, and guardianship became more of a probate role than a child-rearing one. by jason’s creation in 1983, adoption was now the appropriate measure culturally. wards have largely vanished as individual relationships; i can only think of one wardship circumstance in my life, and literally everyone who knows about it makes batman & robin jokes because bruce & dick are really the only lasting fictional wardship out there (the only other one i can think of is the little orphan annie comic strips of the 20s, but those have been subsumed in cultural memory by the 70s musical adaptation, which ends in adoption!).

there’s also the evolution of comics readership over time. in the 40s, superhero comics were overwhelmingly for children aged 6-11. dickbin (and all other kid sidekicks) was a reader viewpoint character, and part of the power fantasy of robin was that he was super cool and largely unparented. the kids weren’t there for emotional melodrama about custody battles. compare that to the 80s, and the same 10 year olds who were buying tec for a dime on a newsstand were now headed to comic shops to buy tec for $1.25 at age 50. readership skewed older, or at least more all-ages, and they were people who might have had kids of their own by then. they probably learned that their parents were also fellow human beings a while ago, and thus could handle a gothic melodrama about custody battles in their batman comic.

back to in-universe, as we know bruce does eventually adopt dick, but it’s not until dick has long since stopped being robin and is a grown man. it’s a very sweet little arc of gotham knights… minus the anti-māorism and antiziganism, thanks devin grayson. it should be said that bruce’s decision to do so is haunted by jason’s death, quite literally:

and, importantly, this is only a clear-eyed decision that adult dick and older bruce can have. bruce took in a pre-teen in his twenties or so. imagine being tasked with guardianship over a child about 12-15 years younger than you. smaller parental age gaps have (unfortunately) existed, but it makes sense that bruce would shy away from really thinking of himself as dick’s dad and vice versa. nonetheless, bruce did raise dick for his whole adolescence, which is something dick acknowledges often after he’s done being pissed at bruce. dick needed time away from bruce to reflect on their relationship, which he got during jaybin’s tenure and then after jason’s death. by the time of prodigal, dick is already making tongue-in-cheek references to tim about bruce being their shared dad while neither are adopted:

this is not a joke that 18 year old dick grayson could make without wanting to throw himself off a building. 22 year old dick grayson has largely accepted it. similarly, i think that pre-jason bruce would have immediately freaked out if someone seriously tried to convince him that he was dick’s dad, because what? bruce isn’t a dad. he’s an orphan. he’s an adult orphan who was helping out his friend who was another orphan. i have a lot of thoughts about how bruce sees himself in relationship to children because of his trauma but this response is already quite long so i will leave it at saying that i think it took until jason, who had a much larger age gap with bruce than dick had, for bruce to really feel squarely paternal in his heart. however, it was through that solidly paternal feeling toward jason that bruce was able to identify the portions of his relationship with dick that were paternal but he could never identify previously or distinguish in the complicated mix of their relationship.

[celezart]

Velen

Illustration of Velen province and Crow's Perch castle. I'm charmed that gloomy atmosphere of swamps, rotten gallows and war-torn villages. What a wonderful countryside! p.s. As always my doge is hidden here as Easter Egg, you can found it, hehe :3 p.s.s. If anyone wants a poster with this, send me DM.

[bishopony]

my really funny and original concept

[c7arisse]

was reading YJ98 and i quite like his pose

[burins]

the Entire Point of the batman mythos to me is making something meaningful out of a random and pretty senseless act of violence, and then helping a bunch of other people do that too. every time a writer makes joe chill a time traveler or dick grayson have a magical tooth or gives jason todd the blood of the ancients and everything is just a massive conspiracy or whatever the fuck they're just completely missing the point, which is that painful things happen, for reasons we may never understand, and we have to contend with them.

that's the staying power of the fantasy! it's not actually being a billionaire who can beat up a million ninjas with his bare hands and has a really cool car. if you think that's the fantasy you got caught up in the trappings. it's that you could take the worst moment of your life and make meaning out of the howling empty void of grief by using it to help people!

[vamptits]

they want you to make fried rice

[memser]

who is "they"

[vamptits]

the wok left

[solongandthanksforallthefish42]

how am I supposed to make fried rice if the wok left

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[specialagentartemis]

this isn't really the same thing as intentionally/unintentionally a-spec characters but it is interesting thinking about how intentionality does dramatically change how characters read regarding a-spec identities and themes.

So: repurposed vaguely Kinseyesque scale describing your aromantic and/or asexual protagonist's awareness of and relationship to their own aromanticism/asexuality:

Unaware That This Is A Thing People Can Be. Type specimen: Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl. Has never once considered that "not wanting romance or sex" is a thing people could feel, let alone identify as. He is normal, which means straight. It's just a coincidence that his relationship with his girlfriend was a disaster and now he's just way too busy in this new nightmare dystopia world for any of that! Anyway!

Aware They Have These Feelings, Assumes Everyone Else Also Does. Type specimen: Doug Eiffel from Wolf 359. Firmly believes that his aro-allo experiences are universal and everybody else is just better at acting like a functional human being than he is. Being a huge movie nerd also leads him to believe that "romance" as we understand it is massively exaggerated for drama in movies and people in real life don't actually do and feel that stuff any more than they mind-meld or can use the Force. He's just a fuckup at everything; why wouldn't relationships be included in that? For most of the show if you told him about aromanticism he would NOT be comforted about it, he'd probably take it as a diagnosis that his fuckup-ness regarding relationships was innate and incurable. (This doesn't have to be negative; this is also where Andy Wheyface from Arden falls and he is having a GRAND old time.)

Aware They Have These Feelings, Realizes That It Sets Them Apart From Others, Doesn't Conceptualize It As Part Of An Identity. Type specimen: Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary. His reaction to other people having sex is mostly "why would you do that." His single attempt at a serious romantic relationship didn't work out and he has a nagging sense that there is something in him that can't maintain serious relationships; attributes it to cowardice and fear of commitment. Ironically he does know what asexuality is. He's a middle school teacher in 2020s California, he has absolutely gotten LGBTQ+ Sensitivity Education at least in "pamphlet listing queer identities" form, he for sure has students with pride flag pins on their backpacks and pride stickers on their notebooks, and he is also not immune from the Culture War Bullshit around gender in schools. Knowing that asexuality exists did not even slightly lead him to apply this to himself.

Aware They Have These Feelings, Considers Them Significant, Attributes Them To Some Existential Feature Of Their Existence Rather Than A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot is very confident it does not want anything to do with romance or sex, and it attributes this to Being A SecUnit, and romance and sex are Human Things SecUnits Don't Do. Has not yet realized that this is an itself thing and not a SecUnit thing. Probably willfully at this point.

Considers These Feelings A Significant Aspect Of Their Selfhood, But Doesn't Name It. Type specimen: Sister Carpenter from The Silt Verses. Clearly confident in who she is and what she wants in her personal relationships, recognizes that as something that makes her different from others and out of step with what others expect from her, and is basically like, that's their problem. She knows who she is. Sometimes other people try to make it her problem but she has so many other problems that societal amatonormativity keeps getting pushed lower and lower on her list of Problems.

Recognizes Themself As Aromantic/Asexual As A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Nova NoStar from InCo. Clearly considers this part of her identity, but is allergic to talking about her feelings even at her therapy android's insistence and besides that's not anybody else's business is it?

Publicly Identifies As Asexual And Describes It With Period-Correct Sexual Orientation Language. Type specimen: Sally Grissom from ars PARADOXICA. The only character I've ever heard come out as asexual and lay out the definition in terms of sexual orientation and attraction to another character on-air that made me go "yeah she would do this, this is in character for Sally." Strongly feel like she would be an active commenter on the 2010s ace blogosphere. Would get in an argument about the correct definition of asexuality on AVEN.

X. Their Culture Conceptualizes Intimate Relationships In A Fundamentally Different Framework Than We Use. Type specimen: Breq from the Imperial Radch Trilogy. Whatever model of gender and sexuality the Radch is on it is NOT ours. Breq is still not interested though.

[mcd217]

I was recently reminded of this collage I made for a design class I took. Thought it was fun.

[legofemme]

Shitty comic day i didnt forget you this year

[legofemme]

Reblogs r back on so BEHAVE.

[astriiformes]

Been thinking today about where some of the wires get crossed when aro and/or ace people talk about wanting more low-to-no romance stories and other, allo queer folks get mad at us for it--because while some of it is just plain hatred of aspec folks, I'm absolutely willing to consider that some of it is more unintentional lateral striking out--and I think I'm stumbling into something I want to articulate. Not that it's an entirely new thought, or even something I've never considered before, but something I haven't quite framed this way in the past.

Because, like, okay. It's 2026. There's rising queerphobia of all stripes--which is undeniably one reason I'm thinking about the lateral violence of it all, and we'll circle back to that--but the media environment of today does still makes it more possible than ever before to find and enjoy queer fiction. And this is critical to what I'm about to say next, so I hope those of us that grew up in times where that was not true can sort of table our thoughts on what things were like when we were kids.

My point it, if I'm an adult who isn't in the closet (and even if I am in the closet, plausible deniability is higher than it was pre-2010 or so!), I can go see a gay movie. I can go buy a gay book. There are members of the community, like kids/teens or people in unsafe situations that might not have that freedom, but at the very least, finding the gay media isn't the hard part for anyone. Heated Rivalry is one of the biggest TV shows of the year (and the books that it's based off have since seen a huge jump in popularity, too), queer romantasy is flourishing, and even classic queer media is getting revamped (pun intended) in series like the Interview With the Vampire TV series. And if, for whatever reason, none of the current professional stuff is doing it for you, Ao3 has approximately 8.4 million M/M stories and 1.7 F/F stories--which isn't the greatest ratio for the femslash fans, but is still nothing to sneeze at. And that's not even getting into the many gay podcasts and audio dramas, self-published books, comics (indie and otherwise), and other, nicher options. Long story short, if you only want to watch, read, or listen to media with prominent gay characters in it, you can establish a very healthy media diet, with everything from fun, trashy romance to acclaimed TV miniseries to weird podcasts to RPG actual plays, and everything in-between. This has very much not always been the case, so it's really cool we're here!

As an aro/ace person I... can't do that with stories about people like me. Like I really, seriously can't do that. I guess if I was content to enjoy less media, maybe, but I love stories, which I'm sure a lot of people on this website can relate to. And I love participating in fandom, too, so sometimes I do want to be into something that's big enough for me to chat about it with other people, or get more than a handful of kudos on my fanfic. So at the end of the day I don't limit myself, and that's honestly a good thing! It's great to be into things about characters who don't exactly share your identities, too.

But like. This year I've bought* exactly one book with an actual, canonically aro and/or ace character in it--the short story collection Tales From the Folly, which is a part of the Rivers of London series and features the aro/ace character Thomas Nightingale. (*I say bought, because I'm yet to actually read it--I'm sorry, Thomas!). That's it. I've enjoyed various other stories, but as far as ones with people like me go, I've gotten my hands on exactly one. And it's not for a lack of trying! There just... hasn't been much on my radar. This is a huge reason I've gotten so excited about Project Hail Mary recently--it doesn't have any canonically queer characters, and the original author definitely didn't intend to write the main character in a way that resonated with so many aro/aces. But it's a story without any canonical romance of any kind, where as a result, I can watch a fun movie and pretend for a little bit that Ryland Grace is like me. There are so few aro/ace characters that most of what we get. Playing pretend.

This is where I think some of the wires are getting crossed. When people hear someone like me say "I'm really exhausted by all the emphasis on romance and shipping in fandom," I think what some of you are hearing--because it's historically been true, and we're at a scary time in the world where it feels more and more like it's threatening to become true again--is "I want there to be fewer gay stories." When what I'm really saying is "I want there to be more aro/ace stories--or at least stories where I can pretend the main character is like me." And to even further hamper understanding, when aro and/or ace folks say we want stories about people like us and we hear other, allo queers object, what we aspecs often hear is "I think people like you aren't worth telling stories about"--even though many of you have valid reasons for liking the stories that you do, too.

I think that those of us who belong to older generations (especially millennials and above) can all probably relate to what aspecs are experiencing here on some level. There was a point in time where gay books were extremely limited, and gay characters in TV and movies were unheard of. Even as things crept in a more progressive direction, the Bury Your Gays tropes meant not everyone could enjoy the stories those characters showed up in. That was really hard for a lot of people, and I never, ever want us to go back to that. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that gay media just isn't at that point right now. Media with actual aro/ace characters in it.... kind of still is. It's different, because society is in a very different place, and also cishet people have historically demonized aromantic and asexual people with very different tropes--the heartless villain incapable of love, the cold lover that the protagonist abandons to be happy with someone else, the boring stuck-up prude, etc. And there are people, especially in the indie sphere, who are making some good stuff. But at the end of the day, I have a lot fewer choices than you do. Which is why it really hurts to get told that my headcanons and readings of canon--which are most of what I have--are actually problematic.

Anyway. None of this is groundbreaking. It's been said before, by people more eloquent and more persuasive than me, and it'll probably be said again. It just feels worth reiterating, considering some of the blowback I've been getting to expressing this sentiment. Because I really do think a lot of us want the same thing--for everyone to be able to enjoy whatever kind of stories they like most about people like them. (Without losing sight of the fact that media can be a great way to understand the experiences of people of other experiences, of course). When the scales are so unequally weighted, however, it gets really messy to talk about.

So instead of projecting our own fears and insecurities onto each other and letting them dominate the conversation--let's actually talk about it.

[astriiformes]

Pulling these tags out because I think they further articulate some of the points I was trying to make here really well:

#There definitely is a suspicion and resentment towards the idea that stories with No Romance are valuable#because many many people hear ‘there shouldn’t be all this gay shit’#And then they treat you like that’s what you said#Treating stories without romance—or with main ace and aro characters—as a cowardly in-between step#between Straight Media and Gay Media#as if they just weren’t brave enough to make it Actually Gay#rather than welcoming it as something with real value in itself#And yeah it comes from real fear because there ARE a lot of conservatives in the world saying there shouldn’t be all this gay shit#but then there are people who treat this as the ONLY thing anybody is saying so anything that reminds them even a little bit of that#is suspicious. And a lot of those people haven’t fully shaken off the 2014 attitude that aces and aros are Just Straight People Really#It’s rooted in real fear but then it turns into uncalled-for viciousness about their fellow queer people who are Being Queer Wrong#I also think… there’s a lot of fear that someone who is very similar to you but reached a different conclusion is Judging You#by a lot of people self conscious about their place in society#That causes a Lot of the lateral cruelty between ace people and gay people (via @specialagentartemis)

[rosstmcd]

As someone who is alloromantic and allosexual, I suspect that another factor in play here is that allo people may not know what aro/ace/aroace stories look like.

Like, you mentioned PHM as an example of a story that doesn't have romance or sex in it, not because the characters are canonically aroace but because those just weren't parts of the story, and said that it was better than nothing because you could at least pretend that the characters were aspec.

And I think a lot of allo people tend to think that an aro story is just a story that doesn't have romance in it, and an ace story is a story that doesn't have sex in it, and from that viewpoint it seems like you're advocating for taking things away from stories.

But--I'm assuming--a story with actual aro or ace representation is a story that adds something, namely a character who is canonically aro or ace. And--again, I'm assuming--it would not have to be a story about Aroace Alice and Her Aroace Struggle, although it could be that; but it could equally well be just be about Alice and reflect the ways in which being aroace affects her life an an international spy or dinosaur hunter or college professor having a midlife crisis or whatever Alice's story is about. But either way, it's not a story-without, it's a story-with.

And I think that may be an important distinction in this conversation.

[astriiformes]

This is a reasonable insight and so I hope you don't take my "yes, but" here as an outright refutation! But I'm thinking that in emphasizing representation specifically, I may also have unintentionally downplayed another hugely important aspect of all this, particularly when it comes to interactions in fandom, which is that even stories without explicit aromantic representation can have hugely important implications and resonances for aromantic people.

I guess the simplest way to put it is like. A story like Ursula K le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness doesn't exactly have trans "representation" (in that transness is a social and cultural phenomenon separate from the speculative gender system she explores in the novel), but it does nonetheless have a lot to say about gender, in a way that definitely resonates with some trans/gnc people. Specifically, it shines a light on gender in a way that is of interest to people who want to have important conversations about the topic, and that makes it important and/or interesting to many queer folks. And in the same way, stories without explicit aromantic representation can absolutely say some very important things about relationships, particularly platonic relationships, especially when they show characters choosing to prioritize and value explicitly or even implied-to-be platonic connections.

So to return to my example above, I liked Project Hail Mary in part because I felt like I could pretend the protagonist was like me. But while the movie doesn't actually have anything explicit to say about aromanticism or the experience of being aro, it does ask another really interesting question -- namely "What if you were someone who was always sort of isolated and didn't have a lot of connections, and then you made a friend (who, it should be noted, already had a bond with a romantic/reproductive partner) who cared about you so deeply that they made it clear they valued you just as much as their partner?"

That's aromantic catnip! And not just because it's sort of a fun wish fulfillment fantasy, but because it raises super important questions about who gets to be significant to you and what it looks like to have friends who also have romantic partners that still value you. And so even though it's not a story with explicit aromantic representation, it's chock full of aromantic resonances.

And this is exactly where things get snarly with fandom. Because aro and/or ace people are in a weird position where there are very, very few characters that represent us, but there are still some stories that feel important to us all the same. So we don't really get to "claim" them as ours, but it still hurts when all the fandom wants to do is to seemingly erase the themes that feel so significant to us by making those stories romantic or sexual after all. To other queer people, it looks like we're getting upset over nothing -- that's not that character's canon identity, so why do we feel like we get to lay claim to them? But what we're really struggling with is watching stories that genuinely have interesting things to say about relationships get interpreted in a way that erases that -- and especially in the absence of actual canon aromantic and asexual characters, that really hurts.

I don't know what the answer to all this is. Obviously it's not particularly kind (or feasible) to tell other queer people they're never allowed to insert queer romance into stories that don't have any. But when the ratios are so skewed in favor of the people who do want to do that, and so skewed against those of us who would rather we talk about the stories as-is, it really starts to feel like nobody cares about us, and that our narratives aren't seen as important, or valid, or even queer -- not just in fiction, but in real life, too.

So yes, what I'd really love to see is more canonically aromantic and/or asexual characters, doing things aromantically and asexually and written by authors who want to explore experiences like mine. But I'd also really like to be able to point out that there are already stories about experiences like mine out there, and that's something that other queer people are actively erasing.

[astriiformes]

To be quite honest with you all I do think that aro/ace-spectrum fans in fandoms where people are desperately inventing crossover ships and humanizing non-human characters in order to have a conventionally attractive guy to ship the main character with, instead of possibly having to enjoy a story with no romance in it, have the right to refer to everyone else as cowards.

[libraford]

Googled something about quick hydration and it suggested big jug of water, couple tbsp pickle juice, dash of lime juice.

Its surprisingly tasty????

[libraford]

Pleased to report that after a day of this i am not longer craving caper brine and my mouth is not dry as usual. There's some good suggestions in the notes too that I want to try.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-Agua pepino: water, cucumbers, lime, sugar, optional mint.

[libraford]

I have been reminded of:

-shrub: vinegar, sida water, elderberry (or other berry), sugar.

[libraford]

I have now been informed of

-sekanjabin: honey, vinegar, mint, water.

[libraford]

"Wow, I wonder why this post was popular this week."

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-

"... ah."

[papayafromtv]

people don't talk enough about how fucking funny it is that bruce can sub in his kids as batman when he's too busy. like can you imagine it from the league's perspective? imagine you have this really mysterious, geniusly scary guy that you know next to nothing about, never cracks a smile and yet always comes out on top, and one day he shows up to a league meeting and there's just something... off. about him.

you can't pin it down because he's literally acting exactly the same as usual and there's no reason to think there's anything wrong, but maybe he shifted in his seat one to many times, or he looked just a tad bit too bored during green lantern's case review, but something's just... odd. so you quietly ask superman after the meeting if anything's up with the bat bcs you know those two are closer and also clark can hear heartbeats so if something's wrong surely he'll pick it up? and without hesitation he leans over to you and mumbles 'yeah batman was busy, that's his 17 yr old son. he's a crime lord and kills people sometimes though so we're not allowed to let him into the weapons department.' and then walks away like it's normal.

like the whiplash the league must go through every time they realise that no, this is not their fearless dark and brooding leader, this is in fact one of his dipshit kids being forced to sub in bcs the real batman broke an ankle, is incredible.

wonder woman: so that's my proposed plan, what are your thoughts batman?

batman: hn. i think that- *voice raising two octaves* oh shit hold on my phones buzzing

the league:

batman, answering the phone and immediately dropping the Bat Posture™: what do you mean- aw come on little wing that's not fair! but- no, NO DON'T YOU DARE TELL ALFRED I'LL BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU- IM SORRY OK I'LL BUY YOU MORE- *catches sight of the league watching him, baffled* *stiffens* ok listen i promise to replace them but i gotta go, please show me mercy iloveyoubye *hangs up*

the league:

batman:

batman: *coughs awkwardly*

superman: *sighs*

batman, to superman: ...red hood found out i ate his chocolate pretzels-

superman, shaking his head: just... just stop.

the flash: so this isn't batman either, is it?

wonder woman: if this one's also a criminal im losing my mind.

superman, tiredly: no no, this one isn't a criminal. this one's actually a cop.

batman: *sinks down in his seat* b's gonna kill me

green lantern, mystified: where does he keep GETTING you all from!?

'batman' dick, who made a pact with jason to Always Fuck With Bruce Whenever The Opportunity Arises: batman is a whore.

they think they've finally sussed out all 2 of batman's kids and then one day during a meeting 'batman' ends up on a 30 minute rant about different hacking methods this tech villain could be using that results in him half way through a sentence breaking off to say '-oh uncle clark could you pass me that pen- thanks, anyway so-' and then five minutes after that when the league have all been exchanging incredulous looks he finally freezes and is like. SHIT.

wonder woman: you're different from the other two, aren't you?

batman: maybe i am maybe i'm not, you can't prove it.

wonder woman:

green lantern: so like, are you new or have you just managed to avoid sub duty up until now?

superman, coughing: actually, this is this ones ninth occasion of replacing batman. you've just never realised before.

the league:

batman: yeah actually the other two are kinda mad i lasted longer than them...

the flash: how the fuck does he keep getting kids with the exact same build as him!??!?

'batman' tim, spent 20 minutes padding the suit out so he would look the part, still mad that bruce keeps palming WE work off on him: oh he forces us to take steroids for it.

the league, concerned:

superman, pinching the bridge of his nose: now come on red robin-

batman, fully tearing up and looking distraught: PLEASE uncle clark, it HURTS, you can't keep COVERING FOR HIM!

superman, frantically to the league: this one lies.

bonus

the league, squinting at batman:

the league: ...

superman: *head in his hands, too disappointed to do anything*

the league: *silently exchanging looks, wondering if anybody's brave enough to say anything*

duke as batman, fully aware this is fucking stupid but jason and tim fell on the floor laughing when dick came up with the idea and frankly, he wanted to see if anybody would have to guts to call him out: so, are we all ready to start the meeting?

[samstigmata]

uhhh tried something new