DP x DC Prompt #9
When Phantom joined the Justice League, he wasn’t prepared to be approached by Batman of all people. He had been warned to not take everything Batman says to you personally, but that he was a great hero.
Batman had a request. A simple one, at least according to Batman. He asked Phantom to meet an anti-hero who had come back from the dead and had some … nasty side effects.
Phantom, intrigued, agreed. Batman set a time and place, and Phantom showed up. But, Phantom thought Batman had said the one in the red helmet was the undead.
He doesn’t understand why everyone freaks out when Phantom approaches the vigilante with half a cowl dressed in black and red. This boy reeked of death, did Batman seriously not know?
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oh you know it's all latestage capitalism but the thing is. how are you supposed to be a person inside of this. a person trying to be a better version of yourself.
oh, you started working young, which was kind of hard, but it's just the way stuff works sometimes. and it was 2008 and your family couldn't afford heat. but it's fine, you grow a spine and get used to the professional world and besides it was the suburbs we're talking about here, like, your life could have been actually hard, so what if your father lost his job and you can't afford to move or turn the lights back on. and once you start making money, it's good. you keep doing that. because now they're relying on you. so you have to do that.
oh you were in thousands of dollars of debt at 17 years old so that you could go to school, because you have to go to school if you want to get a "real" job. you even did it "right", you worked parttime and attended community college before you transferred to a public school. you were under so many merit scholarships.
which is fine. you pick yourself up and you say like, okay. i graduated college. i'm holding down a job. i'm doing the Adult Thing, which looks and acts like this, according to all the books i've read. you start with the shitty job and then you climb that corporate ladder.
but the shitty job doesn't cover rent and you stretch yourself too-thin so you get sick. good luck with that. the shitty job no longer pays for your meals. everyone asks why you don't just move, but there's nowhere to move to. and with what money are you going to be moving? and then the loans come back, because they were never going to forgive them, because you were 17 and trying to do the right thing, which was stupid. people are now saying you shouldn't have even gone to school.
which is fine. but because you have no other option, so you do the shitty job, and you apply every day for like 5 new ones, and despite the fact everyone says "there's no one who wants to work!" it's actually just that nobody is fucking hiring so you can either work for 13 dollars an hour in the shitty place you know (where at least you have a passingly friendly relationship with the manager) or you can start from scratch again with a different 13 dollars an hour without knowing how much abuse from the new job you'll be taking.
and if you quit you lose your insurance. if you quit you lose your housing. if you quit, you'll be another burnout kid. the lazy ones. these assholes, look at them!
and you come home to a family dinner and you hear from your father the same old thing. how he worked hard at his job and yes it sucked for a while but he was able to provide for the family and then the house and the dog and the rest of barbie's dream vacation. how the insurance did cover some of it. how you just really need to start speaking up more in manager conversations so they know you're a go-getter. you want to tell him - did you know we're actually doing more now hourly than any previous generation? - but you can't remember where you heard that statistic, and you're far too tired for the fucking argument. and then he starts in on his usual bit. where's the house? where's your kids? where's your ambition.
the same job the same money the same hours doesn't do it anymore. the same nose-to-the-grindstone now just shreds your face off. there's no such thing as upwards mobility, not really. and as far as you're aware, the money certainly is not trickling. you do the soulless stupid shit you signed up for because you fucking have to or else you literally risk your life (food, the apartment, the insurance), but it's not getting you anything. you download the stupid "save more" app and you budget and you do every right thing and then the price of eggs is 7 dollars and you say - oh great! another thing i have to fucking worry about now!
and you go to your stupid job and everyone in your father's generation just tells you to be better about being an adult. they have their homes and their savings account and their bailout and they say. well have you tried not drinking starbucks. well your generation just spends too much on clothing. well you might just be too addicted to travelling. and you - because you need the job - you bite your tongue and don't say i am being held prisoner and you're suggesting i stop pacing my cell if i don't like the scenery and you don't say what the fuck do you think i've been doing with my money and you don't say i haven't spent a cent on something nice in literally forever much less coffee you arrogant asshole. you open and close your bank app and check your loans and check your credit score and check fucking zillow and ziprecruiter and apartments.com just one time more. and still they give you that demeaning little grin and say - see, what you need is -
what you need is for your meds to stop being so fucking expensive. what you need is for the housing bubble to explode into dust. what you need is for billionaires to choke on their wealth. what you need is actual help. what you will get is more economic advice from people who are older-and-wiser.
and above you, almost in a glimmer, you can see the wedged smile of your debt getting toothier, wider.
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That viral post that's going around about how people who write "book quality" mlm fic are too "normal" to publish and have real jobs so only "weird" people publish their "shitty" fanfic is so completely out of touch with reality and I am giving a massive side eye to everyone reblogging it.
Not only is it completely, easily verifiably untrue (you cannot enter any professional writing space without tripping over a dozen grizzled scifi writers who got their start by filing off the serial numbers and publishing their Star Trek fanfic even going back decades ago??? it's a whole thing?? plus how can you look at the mlm category on Amazon right now and say with a straight face that people aren't publishing shitty Spirk and Stucky fanfic??? Oh, honey...) it's also the perfect example of this kind of sneering elitism that true artists would never sully themselves by seeking profit, they do it only for the purity of the thing that always somehow leads back to, "no one should be paid to make art, actually."
The only reason you're seeing more published fanfic right now has nothing to do with the idealistic purity of your hypothetical government employee written smut of the past vs the debased scribbles of those awful straights of today and everything to do with the fact that a) self-publishing has created a voracious readership that wants a ton of content so it's become a viable, flexible income stream for many, especially disabled people b) anyone can publish now with self-publishing tools so there are less gatekeepers and c) lockdown got a lot of people into fandom and therefore writing who never tried it before.
And if you really think there's no "shitty" published mlm and no "book-quality" m/f writing out there that started as fanfic, then you are clearly not a reader so why are you even talking about this?
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I know she's divisive, but Jaina Proudmoore is truly The Most Character of all time. She had sexist magic rules changed in her early teens. Her boyfriend broke up with her twice and the second time was because she wouldn't commit genocide with him. She built a city of refugees when she was like 25. She was exiled from her home country for helping kill her own father so that he wouldn't commit genocide. She loves to make sarcastic jokes and is the living embodiment of 'not to worry i have a permit' 'this just says i can do what i want'. She and one of her best friends hated each other half the time until he died. She once tried to kill her other best friend. People were upset with her for being angry and traumatized when the city she built was annihilated. She fucked a dragon. She almost committed genocide and her allies were more angry about the fact that she once gave some money to her adoptive nephew's friend. She's switched back and forth between political sides three different times. Her mother nearly executed her for treason. She was handed the leadership of her home country that she hadn't lived in since she was a young child. She now spends all her free time with her work husband from like 25 years ago even though he has a wife and two kids. Who is doing it like her
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I like bloodweave. Okay. But I DON'T like the version of them in fanfic where Astarion is a dick and Gale is like. Whining and pleading for him to be emotionally vulnerable (or just. Nice to him) prior to the relationship being established. Because that is just not accurate. Gale needs the player to express interest in him during his weave-teaching scene before he even considers hitting on them properly. Gale is entirely resigned to his fate and needs someone else to pull him away from it. Gale only starts being sweet and romantic and devoted after you accept his love confession and give him hope for the future. Gale says fuck all and then slinks away to cry privately if you break up with him.
Like he isn't chasing after people lmao. He isn't dropping to his knees and crying about anything much less this dickhead he met a week ago. He is overwhelmingly passive about literally everything personal to him up to and including his own death (provided there are no casualties/there is a good reason) until after the player expresses that they care about him. Astarion is not doing that in any of these fics.
Like Gale is friendly and a dork and doesn't wanna get murdered but he fully has a suicide plan. He thought the artefacts would help him survive but he didn't believe he'd ever truly live again. If Gale confessed and Astarion said/did like one (1) mean thing afterward Gale's romance is closed off forever. He's wandering into the forest to cry. He's killing himself immediately. His fragile ego and self worth can't take it. You have to understand that when we joke about him being pathetic it's not bc he's like. Sopping wet and chasing people down and begging for a scrap of attention. It's because he craves affection but would literally rather die than ask or even hope for it until someone else forces that hope back into his serotonin-deficient tadpole brain.
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thinking about Eddie, who because of the upsidedown was in a coma for effectively the rest of '86. When he woke up he had to re-learn a lot of shit, since even after he could open his eyes and sit up, moving was still hard.
Steve and Robin go with him to all of his PT appointments as he works on moving and standing up, but not walking yet. The therapist overhears him complaining to Steve about how he misses writing, since his hands are too shaky for the words to be legible.
She tells him that if he wants to write better he should practice more, and maybe pick something else up that requires small, repetitive movements, like sewing or crocheting.
Eddie is about to open his mouth to say that sewing might be a good idea, because he can work on putting his old patches onto the new vest that the kids bought him as a "we're glad you're not dead present", when Robin comes back from the bathroom and pipes up that she has some crocheting stuff from when she and Steve tried to learn together a few years back, and that's the end of that conversation.
crocheting is his least favorite part of the night, even if Robin and Steve are patient and let him pick the movie in the background and don't get frustrated when he drops the hook between the couch cushions for the thirtieth time in an hour.
Eventually he gets the hang of it, but--out of spite--refuses to make anything other than a very long line with his yarn, telling Steve and Robin he's going to strangle them with it when he's done, because crocheting "is literally the least metal thing in the world."
He stops threatening to strangle Robin after she makes him a little bat.
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