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incarnateirony · 9 months

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So here's the tea on the whole #WhatYouAren'tWatching thing, and what fandom, even people I consider intelligent, is having a brain hemorage about historically.

Back when I ran SomethingToSay and the subsequent elements of the CW boycott, maybe the public didn't realize it, but BTS I was getting a LOT of legal advice on what I could, and couldn't say, without getting blasted off the fucking planet. And I also had to constantly weigh my options on what to say, do, or instruct within grey areas or things that were Too Risky For Them To Squeeze Blood From A Turnip about.

For example, I couldn't say, "hey guys, call all of CW's advertisers and threaten to cancel your subscriptions with them if they don't stop advertising on CW." I had to go WOW, I JUST TRIPPED ON THIS AMAZING LIST OF ADVERTISERS, I WONDER WHAT PEOPLE COULD DO WITH THIS and let the internet numpties work through it. Why? Retaliation/damages/etc there's a fuckton of entanglements on that shit.

Now, what does this have to do with anything? Well, right now, WGA/SAG are in the fight of their lives trying to change an entirely busted system. As Adam Conover said, though--they won't starve us out, we'll starve them out.

I've tried to stay out of this on the public front praying and praying that people would figure it out but when I see some of the most intelligent people I know having brain damage about how this works even though they were in the inside of an identical proposal/movement before, I'm just. I gotta. I gotta say something.

No. If you ask any author about it, they're going to say it's Just One Guy. If someone is a rando in a union of a dozen-thousand people, they are not the word of god either. But why would even someone biggish say Just One Person or Not Entirely True?

Well, that does mean partially true and why yes, Just One Person posted it. Because Just One Person is all it takes to get the fucking ball rolling if people slow down and use their noodles for a second. Just One Person isn't worth the studios going after, blood from a turnip. But if the WGA officially announced it or everybody publicly acknowledged it like yeah we agreed on that shit, that means these studios, currently locked in back and forth litigation between writers and studios all the way up to the federal level, can actually fucking fire shots on the WGA/SAG and just completely fucking derail shit.

They literally Can Not Tell You to unsubscribe from big streamers specifically; it's wrong to do it generally (#notallstreamers(arebigstudios)), and they can't single out and directly say "here's how to damage their bottom line" without blowing up their entire fucking operation. And if you guys are going to flood their inboxes untli they answer, they're gonna say who, don't know her. No shit. They literally cannot say.

They are literally fucking relying on everyone to stop making excuses to keep glutting themselves on favorite shows for One Whole Month. Do not cry "but their royalties!" when Bev's creator shows you the whole three cents she makes on a quarter. Or "but their reputation!" the goddamn world knows about the strike it's not gonna be breaking fucking news to them that it affected viewership. I promise you the authors do not care about the three cents they will lose for the big studios to lose 3 billion.

But but but-- no fuckin buts. "But a podcast said we can write meta and fanfic still" the fuck??? what the fuck does that have to do with streaming why is this bloating the argument. Get all that shit out of here.

"But random writer mcgee said they didn't know about it. But a few names we recognize made vague statements that didn't really say no, just talked around it. But but but--" no, no fuckin buts goddamnit. No shit every knucklefuck in the kingdom isn't gonna be told, that's how leaks and legal attacks happen and fucks your entire operation up. It's called plausible deniability, fuckin figure it out. Anyone demanding it be posted on WGA officially is going "please sue the union into collapse", anyone demanding their favorite face to say it is going, "please be a fucking scab and sell everybody out to convince me, stubborn internet rando hugging my blorbo plushie."

"But my opinion." I don't care. It's a shitty opinion. Deal with it. "But my blorbo" I do not fucking care about your favorite blorbo.

The ONLY way to make change here is to make the STUDIOS crack before the creators do, and that only comes by gouging out their quarterlies and making them cascade losses in investors. That's the only fucking way guys. There's not going to be a moment where someone farts pixie dust and it gets better. No, studio CEOs aren't going to have a disney movie crisis of conscience and come around. The creators are protesting BECAUSE they are being exploited for this and getting NOTHING back, you are literally not hurting them if you turn off their stuff for a while.

It's the same note as studios crying "BUT THE POOR SUPPORT STAFF" fuckin. no. No goddamn buts, goddamnit. Get out of the way. Revolution comes with cost, they know it, they're the ones sweating for it, all I see is blogs kneejerking to find excuses to watch their favorite shit with selection bias and transient global amnesia on how this works in some people's cases.

It costs you nothing to turn off your TV/streaming through september. It loses the writers a penny. It hits the corporations for billions. Do the fuckin math, sweethearts.

Figure it out. I ran this model before. [clears throat] CALLING ALL FANDOMS-- oh wait.

Deadass guys. Fuckin. order of events. use your noodles.

Adam Ruins Everything: "They won't starve us out, we'll starve THEM out."

WGA Guy Running For Leadership: "CALLING ALL FANDOMS"

Fandoms: But--royalties

ResDogs Writer: FOR THOSE WONDERING ABOUT MY ROYALTIES HERE ARE MY THREE CENTS

Fandoms: [spams faves begging for guidance]

Studios: [waiting to pounce]

Fave with a gun to his head: what who i don't know her

#wga strike #sag strike #whatarentyouwatching #what aren't you watching

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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While i was rifling thru your fic tag like a half-starved raccoon in a cake tin I found your clone Damian's fic & i'm in LOVE! And like, do u hav anymore meta on that verse? like how do the rest of the fam find out? how do they REACT?! how does Damian? does the heretic clone still exist? Just reading abt tim with a bunch of tiny dami's gave me heart palpitations. Thank you for this gift.

(In reference to this post.)

Why thank you!

It’s vaguely inspired by some meta @cerusee and @audreycritter did about what if Damian was one of several identical clones, but I’ve been fascinated by the character potential suggested by Damian having been cloned since Talia first revealed it, so.

Let’s see.

I don’t think the Heretic still exists, not in the form we saw. This story fragment sort of assumes Talia went less crazy than they made her for the whole Leviathan storyline; she doesn’t regard the clones as sons the way she does Damian (she totally relied on cloning to get him perfectly matched organ replacements, like that spine) but she’s not “sons are born to die in battle” “let’s grow him big inside a WHALE” levels of whacked out.

She hasn’t fully committed to having them compete to be selected as the official Damian #2, either, because she’s still attached to the original, though the growing prospect of that was a lot of the reason they ran for it. One of them might have wound up as the Heretic, in another timeline? But it was a timeline that diverged long before they fled the League.

So they make it to Tim’s emergency van without being intercepted, and get as far as his secure site on city limits, but they have to fight their way through the last leg of that trip and to make it inside the bunker, and it’s supplied for a siege but not really big enough for eight people, even if seven of them are small, and also staying there and being besieged would draw the attention of the Bats, which defeats the whole purpose of not making for the Cave/calling reinforcements.

So he calls his friends for extraction, and they all wind up in Kansas.

Tim puts off contacting the family until the clones have with his guidance sorted out exactly how they want to present themselves.

Unfortunately, the last stage of the ninja battle was showy enough not to be overlooked, so his absence was noticed much sooner than he expected, and regarded as more worrying. On the second day Dick calls Kon to see if he knows where Tim’s gotten to, and Kon fails to lie adequately.

Dick can’t pressure Kon as easily as he can most people because last time he asked Kon for a favor Kon came to the North Pole and died for him.

Which is the kind of thing even Nightwing isn’t veteran enough not to take seriously.

But he still calls his bluff and asks a bunch of questions, and winds up very suspicious and worried, so at this point Tim and the Damians have to hurry up and figure out how to announce the situation or go on the run from the Bats as well as the League, which would be. Not smart.

Tim explains the situation over videochat with the Cave before having the cloneboys join him on the feed; this spares them the worst of the yelling.

Bruce, Dick, and Damian all respond pretty badly. Bruce because he doesn’t like change and he’s reflexively suspicious, and having eight Damians to raise is a justly horrifying notion. Also anti-clone prejudice. It’s unfortunately an established trait of his, though not like. A strong one.

Dick because he’s really defensive of Damian, and perceives this first and foremost as an emotional threat to his bab’s fragile identity.

Damian because he knows exactly how he was raised to react to someone being in a place he wants, and he knows how many opportunities his father’s household policies gave him to take shots at Tim, and they may be six years old but there are seven of them. He is going to die.

All things considered, Damian’s being the most rational here.

He’s wrong though. The clones were raised as disposable ninjas, not princes; they’re perfectly well aware killing him would gain them nothing, and they have very little sense of entitlement.

Bruce and Dick do try to be nice to the kids once it’s finally settled they will be staying at the Manor at least for a bit, because they need to be somewhere safe and Bruce can’t leave them at Clark’s house forever. Even Ma Kent has her limits.

But Bruce blows bewilderingly hot and cold and Dick kind of makes a point of of not being too warm to them, because he’s loyal to his demon brat. Damian starts staying at his place a lot and consequently working with Nightwing instead of Batman.

Bruce has no idea what to do about this or if he even should do something. Damian’s thirteen, right? Teenagers are supposed to rebel??? This is a pretty harmless way to do that?

But he misses him.

This does lead to making more time for the Seven Identical Six-Year-Olds.

Their sense of morality revolves around having made the breakthrough to valuing on another’s lives; they aren’t as opposed to not-murder as Damian was but they’re also a lot harder to coax into seeing things his way because they don’t need as much from him, emotionally.

This makes them ironically less terrifying for Bruce, even if he’s still having trouble actually bonding with them the way he normally does with his kids.

Barbara meanwhile is cautious. She always takes a while to warm up to new people, and she doesn’t have Tim’s history with clones to get her over that speedbump. She tries very hard to be fair, but she’s not really welcoming. She’s Reserving Judgment.

Jason thinks this is the funniest thing ever and goes out of his way to tease Damian about it. Privately he’s super creeped out, but as that wears off he starts getting mad about Bruce and Dick making the kiddos feel unwelcome and at some point does a rant, and after that is vaguely protective in a useless sort of way.

He enjoys being a bad influence. The septuplets also enjoy this. They think he’s funny, too, and he’s easier to communicate with than most people around here. Achieves a fairly high tier on the Favorite Non-Clone Brother list they aren’t exactly keeping.

Cass is super about these kids. She can relate to them even more than to Damian, because they weren’t raised as heirs to anything and don’t have the sneering put-down form of pride going, and also she’s actually around to meet them at the crucial getting-to-know-you stage.

She thinks sparring one-on-seven is an excellent sibling bonding activity. There are assassin-child puppy piles once they’re all worn out. Many photos are taken.

She’s doing much better than Bruce at getting them to extend their nascent sense of empathy beyond one another, without actually making an effort. It’s not like they’re actually much behind their cohort when it comes to social development, they’ve just got murder conditioning flattening their affective empathy. (And are ahead of cohort intellectually, which contributes a lot to the dissonance.) Cass’ accidental therapy involves butterflies.

Tim continues to be around, a lot more than he has been for a while because he’s kind of obligated to see this through. The septuplets trust him, which is more than they do anybody else for a while, so he winds up with a lot of childcare duties.

Since this amounts to ‘showing them where to find soap’ and ‘being in their vicinity’ rather than i.e. brushing their teeth for them and making sure they don’t steal each others’ snacks, he’s fairly okay with this.

Sizdahum sticks especially close, which is fine because he’s not a big talker; he winds up getting a lot of absent lessons on detective work.

Tim gets yelled at for having murder scene photos open in front of him; both of them and Haftum, who happens to be there at the time, roll their eyes a lot throughout.

Tim’s friends also visit the Manor a few times specifically to visit the kids, since they already met them. At one point the Damian clones, Tim, Kon, Wonder Girl Cassie, and due to rumor mill Anita, Cissie, and Greta all have a picnic in a rare afternoon of sunshine on the Manor grounds.

Alfred packed the picnic so it has ludicrously expensive cheese, a fruit salad featuring freshly pitted cherries, and thermoses of milkshakes in the favorite flavors of everyone who got one, even the ones he’s never met before. In response to this bounty Anita threatens to come to visit every time she can get babysitters for her parents.

Then she considers introducing her parents to the clone kids. They’re turning out almost as weird, even if in theory they don’t remember their previous lives. We’ll see how that turns out.

Bruce got used to how all his sons’ friends know his secret identity over a decade ago, it’s…fine.

Steph thinks they’re creepy but she’s far enough from ground zero to laugh about it, especially about their occasional appearances as Tim’s row of ducklings, and also she trusts Cass’ judgment.

Everyone does, to a certain extent; it helps the septuplets’ cause incredibly over the course of the first few weeks. It wins Alfred off the fence about them after about three days, which is quite a coup; even before that he was fast catching up with Tim in the ‘learning the differences between the septuplets’ sweepstakes.

(Cass is the only one who can even semi-reliably tell them all apart if they’re not wearing their nametags, or catch them switching, but learning things like their individual preferences in weaponry or cake is arguably much more important.)

Speaking of names, it’s a difficult issue. Bruce would (with considerable angst and self-doubt) be willing to name them all if asked, and they’d probably be open to it if he offered, but they’re not quite comfortable naming themselves and he’s too insecure and weirded-out to suggest anything else.

The other members of the family are varying degrees of not okay with the numbering system. Steph’s main issue with it is she has trouble remembering them precisely, because she doesn’t speak Farsi and learning seven unfamiliar similar-sounding words at the same time doesn’t play to her strengths.

Damian has a tendency to call them by their numbers in English, which only some of the clones actually mind but it offends the hell out of Bruce.

The necessity of keeping them secret until they have actual public-ready names and a story has been settled on wears on everyone’s nerves a bit. The issue that there exists no story more believable than the actual extremely weird truth stands in the way.

Barbara actually crafts an entire cover about rescuing the products of an illegal cloning operation by people planning an overly complicated ransom scheme for Damian, and Bruce going ‘well dammit they’re my kids too,’ which doesn’t get deployed for a while because:

1) everyone’s still hunting for something a little less weird and

2) they have to review the entire body of legal precedent relating to clones to make sure this won’t put the kids in jeopardy down the line or undermine Bruce’s chances of getting custody somehow.

Meanwhile, Bruce absolutely forbids the clone squad from getting involved in vigilante fighting. Because they are six. They’re not quite on house arrest but they have strict supervision and a curfew. They mostly accept this; they’re used to discipline and they did come here for refuge.

He tries to take away all their live weapons. Because they are six. This fails to stick. It threatens to become a serious bone of contention.

Cass, Tim, and Damian (somewhat unwillingly) wind up having to broker the issue; explaining to Bruce that the kids think he suspects them of plotting murder, and to the kids that Bruce doesn’t think they can be trusted not to hurt themselves with sharp objects is. Fraught. On all sides.

Why does Bruce never get any kids for whom normal responsible parenting guidelines are fully applicable?

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