I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

I feel it is only fair to warn you that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

[decompose1]

real exchange i overheard between two of my bosses. ????

[decompose1]

why is this getting notes again everyone STOP talking about white collar & rich guy shit i am a BLUE COLLAR DYKE!!!! THIS IS A JANITORIAL COMPANY!!!! i will NOT let you make this about white collar businessmen the poors are funny too ok

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for 🦄 behind the cut; “obligatory sugar baby Kon”. (( chrono || non-chrono || AO3 ))

"Oh my god, Ciss, chill, it was a joke. Dunno about you, but I only play dress-up for my sugar daddy," Kon snickers as he leans back casually against the bottom of the couch and shakes his head without taking his eyes off the stalker vs. werewolf confrontation that's currently happening onscreen. Unsurprising, given said confrontation is happening on a rainy football field while Wendy is wearing a sequin-bedazzled white cheer uniform and doing a lot of very acrobatic kicks and flips. She's also cracking a genuinely disrespectful amount of "wet dog" one-liners at the werewolves, though Tim thinks he can safely assume that part's less attention-grabbing for Kon, even with as much as the guy likes a terrible one-liner himself.

Unfortunately, objectively breaking down the "so-bad-it's-worse" movie scene piece by piece does not actually help Tim not feel like an insane person about what Kon just actually said.

Cissie pauses mid-push, stopping halfway through getting out of the chair, and Bart and Suzie both visibly perk up in curiosity. Tim decides he just must actually be an insane person and that he's just experienced an auditory hallucination, and therefore will not be reacting to any of said hallucination.

Cassie just falls off the couch again.

Honestly, that's really the only valid reaction to be having right now, Tim can't help feeling. If he had another laundry pile to slither under, he'd probably join her.

"'Sugar daddy'?" Cissie repeats incredulously, which does not bode well for any previous statements being any kind of auditory hallucination.

"Yeah, he's weirdly into buying me shit, but like he's especially into buying me clothes," Kon replies with a casual shrug. Tim has no idea how that's what he thinks Cissie was asking about, but is too busy attempting to disassociate to really focus on figuring out the other's logic there. "He got me this shirt, actually."

"What about the shorts?" Bart asks with a concerningly attentive expression. Tim silently resolves to find a fourth redundancy plan to back up the base's data on.

ASAP.

"Oh yeah, and those," Kon says, then thumps a heel against the floor once with another shrug before tilting his knee from side to side with apparent intent to show off his . . . something? His . . . ? "Actually he got me the boots too. They're pretty sick, right?"

The boots. Right. The boots make sense for Kon to be showing off.

"Okay," Bart says as he watches Kon tilting his knee with a both very clear and unfortunately understandable lack of interest in anything about said boots. "Hey you should get him to buy you more clothes while your laundry's all sprocked-up, then."

"Oh, that's a good idea!" Suzie says brightly, clasping her hands together in excitement and beaming at Kon. "Those ones look so pretty on you!"

"Suzie!" Cassie hisses, sounding horrified. "Don't call a guy that! Guys aren't pretty!"

"That's what pretty is?" Bart asks, looking Kon up and down with literally zero shame about it. Tim has no idea how, but once again Kon apparently just . . . doesn't notice him doing it? Somehow? Which is sort of psychologically fascinating and psychologically depressing, considering everything he actually knows about Kon's literal entire personality. And life experience. And—"Huh. That explains some stuff. Actually that explains a lot of stuff, wow."

"I thought people wearing makeup meant they wanted to be 'pretty', though?" Suzie asks with a frown. Tim, again, decides to believe he's having auditory hallucinations. A potentially-brewing psychotic episode would genuinely be less of an issue to handle than thinking through any of the implications of anything that is happening in this conversation.

"'Makeup'?" Cassie repeats blankly, then flicks her eyes towards Kon's face and immediately turns absolutely crimson. Tim assumes she wasn't previously registering the eyeliner and nail polish in self-defense, since they're not especially subtle.

"It's whatever, but he's into it, so . . ." Kon shrugs dismissively, then smirks smugly back over his shoulder at Cassie. "So hey, Daddy thinks I'm pretty."

Cassie hasn't actually made it back onto the couch yet, so mostly just falls off the floor this time. If he were capable of higher thought processes or literally any thought processes whatsoever, Tim would empathize.

He mostly just keeps telling himself that he's having auditory hallucinations, though, because Jesus Christ.

"And . . . 'Daddy' would be . . . ?" Cissie trails off meaningfully as she raises an eyebrow at Kon, which is the kind of question Robin should be asking Kon right now, because admittedly a teammate who's a fellow teenager explicitly using the phrase "sugar daddy" in cold blood would normally be something that Robin would need to be concerned by. Though in this situation the only actually concerning part is the part where Kon's using the phrase "sugar daddy" in front of other people, which is really not something Tim wants to encourage and definitely wasn't something he'd expected Kon to ever actually do. "Like is this a guy from Cadmus or . . . ?"

"Naw, he's an out-of-towner," Kon replies with another shrug, twirling his ring and index finger through the back of his undercut. Tim is briefly incredibly distracted by the visual of the other's chipped black nails and fingerless gloves twisted through his own curls and arched over his own curls, and wonders if—"Met him when he was in Metropolis for a thing that went south and he was very chill about things while I did the superhero shit about it. Bought me coffee after to say thanks, then we just started hanging out after that."

"Ah-huh," Cissie says, eyebrow staying raised. "And 'coffee' involved him buying you . . . clothes, somehow?"

"I mean, he used the coffee to con me into letting him buy me clothes, so kinda?" Kon says, then rolls his eyes with a snigger. "Dude never met a check he didn't wanna cover, I swear. Pretty sure it's the only way he actually knows how to flirt but it's kinda cute, not gonna lie. Last time we went out he bought us fifty bucks' worth of grilled cheese sandwiches to split and then took me to the skate park, and the time before that he got us into an after-hours event with fake IDs and got me the fanciest Japanese food I ever had in my life."

Note to self, Tim reflexively thinks: take Kon to fancier restaurants. He still feels like the buffet tour angle has promise, but he's sure he can find some high-end options for all-you-can-eat restaurants if he looks around a little, so that—

"A—guy took you to the skate park?" Cassie says in a slightly weird voice, which makes Tim realize just how much Kon's actually said about this already, which is . . . weird, definitely. Like—yeah, he didn't mention that the "after-hours event" was a sensory exhibit at a museum and "the fanciest Japanese food I ever had in my life" is a very subjective description that people can interpret to their own personal scales of "fancy", but maybe that's deliberate obfuscation or just Kon trying to sound cool and keep up his image, and both of those options would make sense.

Then again, he did admit he wasn't the one who paid for any of that, so . . .

"What kind of parks have skates?" Suzie asks, looking puzzled. "I thought you had to use those in rinks?"

"You can just use a lake, actually, but the weather's not that great for it right now so I don't know why you would unless somebody'd fought Captain Cold or Mr. Freeze or whoever lately," Bart says. "I guess then it'd be whatever."

"A skateboard park, you weirdos, oh my god," Kon says with a snort of laughter. "Daddy's into that, he's real good at it. Showed me some tricks and everything. Even taught me a couple, it's way different from surfing. But he's cool like that, he's a real funny dude. Likes photography and museums and classy shit like that but is also totally down for, again, grilled cheese at the skate park."

Is Kon rambling a little, Tim wonders? He can't tell if Kon's rambling a little. He's not sure why Kon would be rambling, but also he has an all-hands-on-deck Arkham breakout going on in his brain right now and it's making it very difficult for him to concentrate very well on the conversation. Just—why is Kon talking about Tim Drake this much, that makes absolutely—oh wait, okay, he gets it. Duh, him. Kon's just still trying to sound "cool" about this, that's why he's describing Tim Drake like he thinks he's cool.

He'd really assumed Kon was going to be keeping this whole arrangement under the radar and spare his sanity, though, because he is not prepared for anything that bears any resemblance to Kon liking Tim Drake enough to tell people about Tim Drake. That might make for some secret identity issues, for one thing. But in his defense, in what world was Kon ever going to like Tim Drake enough to tell people about him? Seriously! In what world does that happen?!

Aside from this one, apparently. Which still makes zero sense to Tim but is apparently just . . . a thing that is happening, he guesses, and therefore a thing he's going to have to work around.

Just—whatever, Kon's done weirder, he guesses. Probably. Probably crushing on the tiger prince/king guy and regularly hanging out with a war hero circus act who happened to be a dog at a rave were weirder things than just mentioning he has a sugar daddy in casual conversation. Like . . . somehow. Somehow those things are probably weirder than this, Tim figures.

He can't actually figure out how they're weirder things than this, but he really needs to keep telling himself they are anyway.

It's—okay, it's fine, Tim tells himself. Kon's just . . . making small talk. About Tim Drake. Instead of paying attention to the movie he was really excited about Suzie bringing tonight. That's . . . perfectly normal and not-weird and very Kon-like behavior, and he is perfectly capable of handling that perfectly normal and not-weird and very Kon-like beha—

"He's also real good in a hostage situation and I swear the dude will roll with anything, no matter what, I dunno how anybody's that chill," Kon continues as he inexplicably keeps rambling to the point of practically gushing. "And he's so hot when he's got a plan and so cute when he blushes and it's like, fucking ridiculous, I swear, like what even is this dude and why does he wanna buy me coffee?"

Tim's train of thought crashes through the subway wall head-first into a generator and blows up about thirty-five percent of his mental downtown. Emergency services are stuck in traffic.

"I didn't know you dated guys," Bart says. "Given the twenty-first century being grifin' weird and also, like . . . literally everything I know about you and every single time we've ever talked. Ever."

"Yeah, well, the going-whatever-ways thing is admittedly not a conversation I ever really wanted to have with Superman, but fuck it, Daddy's the best," Kon replies with a shrug, digging out another lollipop from somewhere Tim chooses not to think about and twisting its wrapper open. Going for another lollipop seems like a very mean thing to do, in his opinion. "So if Superman actually cares about me hooking up with a dude then he can go get super-fucked."

. . . what the hell, Tim thinks blankly. Is he feeling feelings right now? Like what, some kind of dumbass twelve year-old who isn't even an emotional support sidekick yet? That's not in his fifteen-year plan!

"Anyway, it's whatever," Kon says, paying a very unreasonable amount of attention to the process of unwrapping and rewrapping the same lollipop and for some reason only looking at the lollipop. "I know you guys don't care if I have a boyfriend, so why should anybody else?"

. . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

Tim finishes running through the mental exercises to rule out various forms of mind control, hallucination, and auditory processing failure. None of the options appear to currently be a concern. Kon appears to be genuinely displaying actual vulnerability to the team, and also there is no level of Bat-compartmentalization that Tim can shove all this down into because—because what does Kon mean, "BOYFRIEND"?!

Does Kon think they're boyfriends? Does Kon think Tim Drake is boyfriend material? In cold blood and without even any "shared near-death experience emotional confessions" being involved? When no one's even been maimed or anything, even?! Is that a thing Kon thinks? Is that a thing they, like—are?

"Of course we don't, have as many boyfriends as you want," Cissie replies dismissively, waving him off, which is definitely her being the closest thing to an emotionally intelligent person they have available right now. "As long as they're not Bart, anyway. Bart would be an awful boyfriend, even your horndog ass deserves better than Bart for a boyfriend."

"Oh I absolutely would, yeah, date literally anybody but me," Bart agrees with a nod.

"Well don't date, like—I dunno, Harm," Cassie says, looking torn somewhere between flustered and discouraged.

"Definitely don't date Harm," Cissie agrees.

"Boyfriend away, yeah," Tim belatedly realizes he should be saying before an awkward pause happens, because basically everyone else has said something at least obliquely supportive of what is, he is very belatedly realizing, Kon actually coming out to them. Like . . . deliberately, and again, without any maiming or near-death experiences being involved.

He is so confused right now.

He really, really hopes his domino is enough to hide the blush he can feel on his face.

"Okay, cool," Kon says, looking very unsubtly relieved and very unsubtly grateful for just a moment before quickly hiding the expression behind a deliberately casual one. "Like—yeah, obviously I can have a boyfriend. Duh, I know that."

Tim is fairly certain that Kon did not, in fact, know that, but really doesn't have the glass houses to spare for throwing stones right now.

"Yeah, um—as long as you feel, um, safe dating a civilian instead of another superhero or—I mean not that that's not safe, just I mean—I mean—!" Cassie cuts herself off, looking mortified. Tim sympathizes, and will also not be opening his own mouth for literally anything aside from being directly addressed in conversation.

"It's okay, Robin's girlfriend is a civilian too!" Suzie says. "If Robin doesn't worry about dating civilians, it's fine."

"Robin's WHAT?!" everyone else yelps at the exact same time, all whipping their heads around to stare at her.

"Um . . . girlfriend?" Suzie repeats, looking nervous. The heads all whip towards Tim instead, all of them looking incredulous.

"You have a girlfriend?!" Cassie demands in disbelief. "Since when?!"

"An actual girlfriend, or is this an undercover thing?" Cissie asks suspiciously. "An actual on-purpose girlfriend, even?"

"Yes," Tim says, because that does unfortunately count as being directly addressed.

"And she's not secretly an evil telepathic ninja who's gonna eat your brain waves and kick your butt?" Bart asks.

"Not to my knowledge, no," Tim says resignedly, because that also unfortunately counts as being directly addressed.

". . . are you sure?" Kon says skeptically.

Tim is not actually sure what it says about him that every single one of their team members is apparently significantly more shocked and alarmed by the concept of Robin having a "girlfriend" than they are by Superboy getting a boyfriend.

Is that something he should be looking into about himself? Is that something he should be concerned by?

. . . maybe he'll pencil it in for when he's a supervillain and has more downtime to spare for that kind of thing. Being a supervillain is definitely going to leave him with a lot more downtime than being an emotional support sidekick has.

It'd be hard for it to leave him with less, considering.

[spicy-apple-pie]

Bruce realizing that he has 4 gen z children.

Important amendment about Duke’s AAVE please read

Commission Info / Kofi (members get comics a week early)

[castielrisingabove]

I just keep thinking about how Ryland Grace used to be a regular at his local diner.

[bugwolfsstuff]

Amaze amaze amaze but devastating wtf statement

@i-put-the-hyper-in-hyperfixated @meepmoopmaap

[phthalopathos]

fledgling disciple

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

I feel lied to. This is where the bugs bunny NO meme cokes from

[an-enigmatic-mind]

[liquid-geodes]

Ah lads they fucking rotated him

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

[kalianos]

[yan-town]

[ythok]

Me, reading this whole post:

[pope74220]

NOW it’s you

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

Oh yea? Well guess what bro

[polyphonetic]

[fallenwillow44]

Best post I've seen all day

[dat-physics-gal]

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

[ericvilas]

[honeydewdrops333]

what doesn’t kill you makes your nervous system more sensitive for the rest of your life

[soundclown]

[teethwreath]

[swarnpert]

i put the trans in pennsylvania

[ashenmind]

I don’t know what’s crazier: that at least 200 species names had this specific slur, or that 205 of the 556 votes wanted to keep it

[ashenmind]

???

[cinturongazo]

[liberalsarecool]

Graham had some dirt on Trump, no doubt.

This is Mafia family shit now. The dirtiest of the dirty. The rot is the only thing holding it together.

[cheglok-art]

Kākāpō believes in you ☀

[autumngracy]

Saw this twitter post and instantly started looking for pictures of Stratt to use it with

[nebulations]

[ID: Stratt from Project Hail Mary, at the scene where she tells Grace he's the third scientist option. Overlaid is a tweet by @/worldreads that says, "terrible time to have a history degree & pattern recognition skills." End ID]

[strawberriesandstarsart]

Dead Wife Club

[idlelizard]

coffee creature cup

[bugwars]

It is imperative that the customer remain unaware that employees drink water, it frightens and scares them to think of an employee as having human needs

[justinspoliticalcorner]

‘Gestapo tactics’: ICE is killing innocent people—and trying to cover it up

DHS officials cite mistaken identity in latest death at the hands of ICE agents.

Alix Breeden at Daily Kos:

When Lorenzo Salgado Araujo arrived at a Houston hospital after being shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Tuesday, he was admitted as a John Doe.  The federal agents may not have known his name when they set out to the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood to apprehend immigrants that day, but they were extremely aware of who Salgado was as they stripped him of any form of identification and his belongings after shooting him. That move kept his family from claiming his body, according to news reports. “That is Soviet gestapo tactics when you want to hide a crime or victim,” Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in a conversation with Daily Kos. The organization is supporting the Salgado family in their quest for answers. 

The details around this latest ICE shooting are murky at best.  When news first broke that the 52-year-old Mexican national was shot, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE agents were en route to detain a different man who drove a similar vehicle as Salgado. Officials also claimed that Salgado tried to ram an officer with his vehicle, although they have offered no evidence to prove it. It’s unclear who the actual target was—or why ICE agents zeroed in on Salgado as the veteran builder drove employees to a construction site that morning.  “There are thousands of those trucks around Texas,” Proaño told us. What’s clear is that this case of mistaken identity had tragic consequences.

“There were two men—one in the driver’s seat and one in the passenger seat—that were of brown complexion and of Latin descent. This is very clearly a case of racial profiling, very clearly a case of civil rights violation and due process violations, and excessive enforcement on behalf of ICE and its agency,” Proaño said. “It’s very clear that they have not changed their tactics since [Kristi] Noem and [Greg] Bovino were in charge.” [...]

The Salgado family knew the risks of being Latin American in the U.S. under the Trump administration.  “The family had a protocol in place should there be an encounter with ICE,” Proaño told Daily Kos. Salgado, who had lived and worked in the U.S. for 35 years, was “weeks or possibly months away” from obtaining his citizenship.  As they anxiously awaited that day, Proaño said, the family—including Salgado’s three U.S.-born children—was told to “not overreact” and to call a family member and the family lawyer if they were detained by ICE. “And they knew that even if he was detained, they could always get him back. But the escalation here clearly got to a point where the families now had to suffer a terrible loss, a family that never wanted this national attention,” Proaño said. Now the Salgado family, with the help of LULAC, is reluctantly in the spotlight seeking what justice there is left to claim.  And DHS, in a similar response to the shootings of Pretti and Good, has continued to deflect responsibility.

[...] As it stands, LULAC and other community advocates are demanding an independent investigation. So far, LULAC has obtained over 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for just that. Similarly, the organization has pushed a GoFundMe to help foot the family’s legal and household bills.  “They’ve lost a husband, a father, a provider, a protector,” Proaño said. “Something that no one would ever expect on a normal, routine day for Lorenzo and for his family.” Salgado’s death prompted Mexican government officials to announce that Mexico will file criminal complaints in the United States on behalf of 14 of its citizens who have died while in custody at U.S. detention centers. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday said it’s time to “go further than diplomatic notes.”

ICE’s coverup of its killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is the duplicitous play they pulled in the aftermaths of the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.