Bruce: "Our adult sons wish to prove themselves by following in our footsteps, but they're still young and untrained enough that mine didn't even notice Alfred bugged his clothing. Our wives want us to give them a chance -- let's send them out to San Fransisco Sparta City on a milk run so they'll feel good about themselves."

Superman: "But if they mess up it'd be to the detriment of an entire city. I know! It'll be much safer for me to make a space-time paradox duplicate city for the boys to play in. BRB I'm gonna go snap the San Andreas fault like a bed sheet."

This happens in the first issue of the saga BTW.

every time

So I've started reading Saga of the Super-Sons. Not that one. This one:

And it's taking everything in me not to just straight-up live blog it because there's little things on every page that I want to comment on and blab about with people, it's really interesting.

Like, I can't put my finger on it because I don't know enough about art and I know even less about hair, but there's something about how the boys are drawn in contrast to their fathers where they should look exactly the same, their hair is the same length and parted the same way and everything, and yet, somehow, the Juniors are just so... 70s in comparison, even in the superhero suits.

Or about how they do this interesting thing where the mothers/wives are present but always framed so their faces are off-panel or in shadow so nobody's ship gets sunk (though if you ask me it's kind of obvious Mrs. Kent is supposed to be Lois -- we see her from behind and she's got black hair, unlike Lori or Lana)

Side note, this page made me decide that Bruce Jr. sounds exactly like Zagreus from the Hades series. Also, look at this horrible trick he (maybe accidentally) plays on his mother it's hilarious:

This series is fun. And gay.

Not kidding about the gay thing.

Wish there was a better social shorthand for “I’m sure they’re a lovely person in their own way but we are so baseline incompatible that being around them longer than five minutes makes me feel like exploding into smithereens.”

a few months ago i told my straight cis bf i wanted to live more as a dude verses just gender neutrally. told him i wanted top surgery. he said he didnt know if he would still be attracted to me but he loved me and wanted to stick it out no matter what.

2 weeks ago he kissed me and said "bro you can i can feel your mustache. thats so cool"

sometimes things take time and its worth it. love goes beyond gender and the laws we put around it. the lines blur, and its beautiful.

trans and intersex people, we can and will be loved. there are people that do find us attractive.

"why are people suddenly saying kink isn't always sexual" hello! you seem to have picked up on something that is actually de facto considered true in IRL kink scenes and often trotted out as one of the basic foundational truths of kink in educational contexts (i.e. beginners' workshops, it'll be in guides for first-timers at dungeons, etc). come take my hand and let me introduce you to the vast and wonderful world of IRL kink.

"kink," contrary to what a lot of internet-only kinksters seem to think, is not referencing your relationship to a concept--it's referencing the concept itself. for example, "bondage" in this context is not referring to "being turned on by tying someone up/being tied up," it's referring to the concept of being tied up/tying someone up itself. this is one of the most common kinks you'll see people playing with in entirely nonsexual contexts--most rope groups have at least a handful of players who are asexual or entirely sex-repulsed, for example. at a lot of rope play sessions, sexual activity will be banned entirely & you'll generally be expected to not show signs of sexual arousal while in that space. because it's not the space for that--sexual play parties are their own thing.

so what makes something a kink vs. a "normal" interest, if it's not a sexual aspect? mostly social stigma. the group of interests considered "kinks" have developed a shared umbrella due to a shared societal pathologization of those interests in similar ways, and one of the ways that pathology manifests is by considering those interests fundamentally sexual. there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a sexual dimension to your kink, to be clear--but society sees sex as inherently disgusting, and sexualization is frequently weaponized to pathologize all kinds of people.

portraying interest in domination/submission as inherently sexual, for example, means those explicitly navigating consensual d/s play are relegated to the realm of "the bedroom" and signifiers of their relationship (i.e. a collar) are considered "obscene" and not fit to exist in public--even when equivalent signifiers of vanilla lifestyles are allowed and not considered obscene, i.e. a wedding ring. if you portray an interest in roleplaying as a dog as inherently sexual, it means anyone roleplaying as a dog in public is subjecting the public to nasty, perverted sex, it can be classified as obscene, you can arrest people for barking and wearing leashes even if they are deriving zero sexual pleasure from it whatsoever and are not exposing themselves or harassing anyone.

why are most kinks expressed sexually to some degree, or have a sexual dimension to them? because sexually active adults tend to enjoy sex. i don't know how else to explain this, genuinely. if you are a person who experiences sexual arousal and sexual attraction, then you will often be aroused by your interests in a sexual context.

like, i am really into fandom. i love a lot of different things about fandom. one of the things i love about fandom is that it's horny; i'm a big enthusiast of smut, horny cosplay, et cetera and so on. but that doesn't mean that i don't like fandom in completely non-horny contexts, or that my interest in fandom is always sexual and can never be separated from sex. just because i cosplay erotically doesn't mean that i don't also cosplay in other contexts entirely. cosplay turns me on, and i also love cosplaying at conventions and for entirely non-horny reasons.

kink is the same. sometimes the exact same person is both turned on by petplay and interested in it nonsexually. this is actually like... really common, it's not even just "sometimes," i would say it applies to the vast majority of IRL kinksters active in my local scene, and i would hazard a guess that this isn't a major outlier, it's fairly common in scenes across the world. but if you can understand "i like cosplaying, and sometimes i'll cosplay at a convention, and sometimes i'll cosplay for sex, and sometimes i'll cosplay for fun alone in my room, and sometimes i'll cosplay to jack off, and sometimes i'll cosplay for money, and none of these are The Only Reason I Like Cosplay, and sometimes when i cosplay i will do it in a way that only includes some of these reasons and not the others at all," it shouldn't be too hard to apply the same reasoning to kink.

anyway, trying to relegate "kink" to only and solely refer to "this set of stigmatized interests and relationship dynamics, but only in reference to sex specifically" is closing the barn door after the horses are gone. sorry y'all but the kink community developed in response to medical pathologization and severe social stigma. there's no post-hoc way to turn it into an ontological classification of some form--kink is messy and abstract as a category because it isn't a category based in, like, scientific observation or ontological meanings of words. it's a category based in "we think these people are freaks and we need a diagnosis for their freakishness" lol. the forcible sexualization of every aspect of kink is part of the initial classification of this loose social realm as "fetish" and/or "paraphilia." sex is not evil or scary or bad but equally the structures doing the pathologization do consider sex to be evil and that's not something you can just ignore when discussing how sex is utilized rhetorically in these discussions.

Happy 24-6-01!

When my mother forgets a word, she is the queen of coming up with new words. Words that would take a third National Treasure movie to fully decipher. I was talking to her yesterday, and she said this: “You know the time for los jibbities is coming up. You must be so excited!” Oh, is it time for los jibbities already? I must have missed it on my calendar. Are we celebrating something? “Of course! We should all be celebrating, shouldn’t we?” OK, so los jibbities is a happy thing. It’s not like something is giving you the heebie-jeebies, which would have been my one and only guess. “Los heebie-jeebies? Now you’re making things up...and this is my show.” You’re right. The time for los jibbities is coming up. Is this a season? “Yes, the season for love. The season for pride.” OK, los jibbities. “Yeah, sound it out.” Los…jibbities. LGBTs! “Sí, mira cuz you’re gay!” “You couldn’t just say pride season? You couldn’t just… *laughs*

Stuck on the idea of vampires as a kind of reverse fae, or like someone's twisted, perverse attempt at moulding humans into fae.

They're repelled by liminal spaces.

A vampire could never enter fairyland, not just because they'd never be welcomed, but because most of the usual entry-ways are naturally barred to them.

They can't cross running water. They can't be seen in mirrors. They will wait forever at a crossroads, unable to pick a direction to go in. They can't even step over a thresh-hold unless there is absolutely no ambiguity about whether they are welcome inside.

They crave human blood, iron and salt, but are repelled by herbs and plants. They are supernaturally prevented from harming you unless the rules of hospitality have been invoked.

A fairy may replace your newborn child with something unnatural and ever-hungry. A vampire will do the same, but with your grandmother's corpse.

The fae are typically associated, even in stories where they're the bad guys, with flourishing and purity. Vampires, even in stories where they're the good guys, are typically associated with decay and corruption.

The fae turn ancient human burial mounds into fancy halls for their courts. Vampires take ancient human castles and let them grow mildewed and cobwebbed, exchanging the beds for coffins, turning them into burial places.

Fae don't tend to live among humans, but can generally pass for them with relative ease if they so choose. Vampires nearly always live among humans, but tend to find not revealing themselves a huge struggle.

I can't think of many stories I've read where fae and vampires even exist in the same universe, let alone ones where they actively interact. I feel like their enmity is almost more inevitable than that between vampires and werewolves, however.

The rivalry between vampires and werewolves is, essentially, the rivalry between two apex predator species who share a territory. (Even in stories where the werewolves aren't actually hunting humans.)

The vampires hate the werewolves because the werewolves interfere with their access to prey. The werewolves hate the vampires either because they consider themselves aligned with humans (the prey species), or because they are also predators and the vampires are competing with them.

By comparison, I think there's some story potential in the fae finding something genuinely creepy and uncanny valley about vampires.

They're immortal, like them, but also dead. They can be beautiful, like them, but that beauty is something they actively require humans to sustain. They like to inhabit beautiful and ancient ex-human dwellings, like them, but they actively work to make those places dark, damp and empty.

Fairies who are unflappable in the face of all sorts of Otherworldly monsters, can look an eldritch horror in the eye(s) without blinking, and have never been phased yet by any human, but will recoil from even the weakest vampire.

Vampires who hate fairies just as much, but in a more envious way. The way that the creature for whom immortality is a curse is bound to hate the creatures for whom immortality is an eternity of sunlight and laughter.

Maybe their touches burn each other. Maybe vampires can't stand physical contact with anything so alive and vital. Maybe immortal fairies become ill from too much exposure to the undead.

Maybe they fight over the human population when their territories overlap. The fairy need for servants and people to make deals with, competing with the vampire need for thralls and blood to drink.

Just… fairies and vampires. We need more stories about them interacting.

Reading the first volume of Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe. So far his reimagined Justice League are named Wayne Williams, Maria Mendoza, Leonard "Len" Lewis, Mary Maxwell, and... Clark Kent. Who had a 50/50 shot of naming himself Peter Parker as a joke.

By 2001, Stan was in just, full-on self-parody mode, huh?

Mind bogle at some of these claims level at tim when others had done just the same if not worse than he.

Anyway,

If you could have included something in the tim robin era (like lets say around yj era) what would it be?

I read this ask while very tired and then forgot it was in my inbox for a while. 😅 Sorry about that!

Barring the obvious "let Tim come out of the closet earlier," I would've liked to see more exploring his relationship with Janet and feelings surrounding the absence of her in his life. I know she turns up as an illusion with the Obeah Man in the last issue and there's that dream during the Clench, but a whole storyline digging into that juicy drama would have been fab.

Hilarious, to me, that you didn’t include Jason in the favorite child rankings because I just ran across several people saying he was the ~obvious~ favorite. I don’t see Bruce having a favorite child (though I do stand with Stephanie and Barbara being disqualified as they *aren’t his, vocally*), but it’s interesting to see who and why people say get ranked highest

I left Jason out of the "rankings" discussion because by my account (again, starting from the assumption that Bruce doesn't have favorites, but if he did) Jason floats, going up and down the rankings depending on how good his relationship with Bruce is ATM and when/how badly he last decided to be an asshole. Sometimes he even ends up on the bottom, but he's usually somewhere around the middle. He's too much of a problem child -- and he chooses to be too much of a problem child -- to go any higher.

Fandom these days is wild.

I remember how Jaydick used to be the go to vanilla, childhood-crush-to-lovers soft ship for young, first time shippers that wanted something simple and completely unproblematic.

Now going by the general consensus if you ship Jaydick you're a fucking freak of nature and you should repent or burn in hell.

Do you block people in the same fandom as you just because you don't like their takes?

I love your opinions on comics and how sane they make me feel because we share most of the same opinions! I’ve come here to join the anon salty rants you get sometimes! Thanks btw for letting people rant to you about fandom salt! 🫶

To start this off, this is something I do to myself by going on TikTok to look for animatics. I genuinely enjoy them and won’t stop going through the cursed TikTok tags to find them but it does come at the cost of having to see some of the most annoying trends that get popularized on characters. Right now it became a thing for people to make videos on how awful “90s Tim” was and how poor Steph suffered SO much having to date that terrible misogynist. How people think Steph was anywhere near a progressive“girls girl” is beyond me. They’ll always vaguely talk about Tim being horrible and then never bring up the panels they are even talking about?! It’s the same in the comments of people just parroting what the video says without bringing up anything he said that was offensive. I know pretty much any '90s comic (and comics still today!) is going to be a bit misogynistic but I really don’t remember Tim being anywhere near the “raging misogynist” they think he is. He’s Helena and Babs little brother and he has a great relationship with both. There’s a Babs panel making a point of saying Tim was the only one who thanked her for all she does for the team. Kon even complained that Tim lectured him on respecting women. 😂

Thank you. I'm glad that you get catharsis out of reading the rants I throw out into the void. Which makes it a little hard for me to say this next part because I really, truly don't want to make you feel bad, I haven't said anything before and it's 100% not you, it's a me thing.

I need to ask that people not send me anything about what's happening on TikTok, ever.

I had the app briefly, years ago before the pandemic, and I deleted it for a reason. I find the environment on that app to be deeply toxic and unhealthy. I've never seen a comics take there (again, other than PandaRedd's) that didn't make me feel sad, lonely and angry over how much ignorant people love to shit on a medium and characters that I love. The only thing that thinking about them ever does is derail my focus for the rest of the day, and it's just not healthy.

So I really don't want you to feel bad, anon, but I need this to be the last TikTok related rant that ever lands in my inbox please.