There are a lot of fics about the Justice League finding out about Batman's children via a series of circumstances leading to Nightwing joining the League (usually against Batman's will)

and I LOVE this trope, don't get me wrong, but I'd like to imagine a situation where it doesn't happen like that. I want a situation where Nightwing joins the League, but he and Batman play it off well enough that the JL doesn't put them together. They notice that they work well together, sure, and Batman seems to trust Nightwing easier than the other new members, but no one questions it because Nightwing is good.

And the JL reaches a point where it's been months or even years and they still don't know.

Until Nightwing gets hurt. They've seen him hurt before, but he gets hurt. Bleeding out, affected by fear toxin, whatever, the point is, he's in bad shape. And Nightwing - strong, crooked grin, happy facade - screams. He screams for his dad - a word that he never uses, but that doesn't matter now, because he's scared, and he's hurt, and he just wants to go home.

And nobody knows what to do. Every single League member very quickly realizes that they know nothing about this guy. Everyone wonders about Batman because he seems so mysterious, but Nightwing always seemed so open, and it's only in that moment that they realize they have no actual information on him.

But that only last for a split second, because, of course Batman reacts first. He runs to his side and starts to stabilize his injuries while assuring him in a voice that they've never heard before, a voice that is distinctly not his Batman growl, that he's right there and it's all going to be okay.

And Nightwing... well, he stops calling out for his father. And he doesn't stay in the watchtower infirmary after that. When they ask Batman where he took him, he just tells them home.

Nightwing's back a few months later, and that's when they start asking him if he's really Batman's kid, and he just smiles the same crooked grin and says, Of course. You didn't know?

Can someone write a fic where Bruce is on a JL mission and they somehow get a baby that they need to take care of until they find their parents. And all the JL members just cannot stop this baby from crying (this is before Clark has Jon so he’s pretty clueless with babies still) and eventually Bruce is like, “give them to me.”

And the JL is like “uhh, we don’t know if we should trust BATMAN with a baby, but at this point… fuck it.” And hand the baby over to him.

And Batman tucks the baby into his chest and softly bounces them, talking to them gently in a deep rumbly voice. “It’s okay sweetheart. Shhh, you’re safe.” And eventually, the baby doesn’t just stop crying, but falls asleep.

And the JL just stand there, gobsmacked. Because what the fuck??? Why is the Batman so good with babies??? And the rest of the mission Batman just has the baby because a) they don’t want them to wake up and start fussing again. And b) because Batman looks genuinely happy (as happy as Batman can be without deeply horrifying the JL).

Just so we’re all clear, it is okay to miss people you no longer want in your life.

this is so important

some people genuinely have trouble with never being told this. i am reblogging this post in case that includes any of you in my audience.

You’re missing the memories, not the person them self

You miss the person you thought they were, not who they turned out to be, and that’s okay.

Sometimes you just miss the person you were around them, or the things that happened when you were with them, and you don’t really miss them, and that’s okay, too.

sometimes you really miss them but it just isn’t worth it

A Vulcan named Stork works at the Terran adoption agency. Parents always request that he be the one to deliver their child to them.

It’s years before anyone explains it to him.

People keep gifting him robes with long white birds on them.

The fun thing is he would understand why people were getting him outfits with storks on them. That’s a word, it’s his name, straightforward. All the humans get him the same gag gift, but like, they’re putting effort in at least. This is a genuinely nice outfit. Stork will be a walking zero-effort pun sometimes, rather than waste a perfectly fine robe.

It’s fine. This is a readily comprehensible human illogic. Exactly the kind of thing he expected from moving to Earth.

Six years in he finds out about the stork bringing babies.

Stork has a good long meditation session about this myth, his name, his job, the outfits, the whole shebang (or whatever Vulcan concept is the equivalent).

And he decides he’s honored by it, in a humanly illogical way.

The humans are asking him to do what is after all his job, and specifically requesting him for the joy his name brings them on top of an already agreeable and satisfying task. He has no objection to engendering positive emotions in others. Harm hastens the heat-death of the universe, Surak teaches, so happiness must logically slow it down. 

Plus, Vulcans of his generation love puns. There were two decades of punning competitions in colleges across the planet. So when he realizes that he is a walking zero-effort pun, and that the humans also love the pun, he is all for it. He is the Joe Cool of the entire Vulcan population in his city. 

And via this pun, the humans are including him in a cherished and traditional myth, by casting him as the literal bringer of life and the expander of families. 

There’s no downside. Stork wears his robes, pins, keychains, and other bird-related tchotchkes with genuine pride. 

YES IT’S BACK ON MY DASH AT LAST

For real though working together with some human social workers, a Vulcan would be an excellent caretaker for children in an adoption center.

Child has a meltdown? Imagine Stork, perfectly calm and unbothered, approaching the kid and saying “You appear quite upset, Eliza. If you would please allow me to relocate you to the ‘bean-bag-chair,’ we can discuss the source of your distress.”

A Vulcan educated in medicine and child psychology would be endlessly patient with a kid with behavioral issues. Stork wouldn’t get or upset or frustrated. After all, these are children with medical and psychological conditions. It would be illogical to blame the child or to not treat them with the appropriate care.

Even if the a little one was having a bad day or was just overtired, Stork wouldn’t get angry. He might even be a calming presence. Any new kids acting out would learn real quick that they’d have better luck trying to arm-wrestle a Klingon than get a rise out of Stork.

Not only that, Vulcans live much longer than humans. Imagine Stork looking virtually unchanged as decades pass. Kids he’d helped years ago would turn up fully grown, maybe there to adopt their own kids, and run into Stork, looking almost exactly as they remember him.

And he’d probably remember them too. “Welcome back, Eliza.”

“…Harm hastens the heat-death of the universe, Surak teaches, so logically happiness must slow it down…”

Will reblog every time it crosses my dash 🖖🏾

star trek heritage post (November 14th, 2020)

if you don't get many (or any) asks, tags, comments, or chain mail, and especially if you ever feel left out, this is for you. you're worthy, you're a valuable part of your fandom(s), and i'm glad to share a corner of the internet with you. ty for being here.

💐🌷🩷💕🫶

the text post: guys we love gifmakers you are the backbone of this site! we need to appreciate gifmakers more you put in so much work </3 (28,591 notes)

the gifs: 87 notes. 67 likes and 20 reblogs.

not to hijack OPs post but I wanted to add on. as a gifmaker, it can get kind of disheartening. Reblogs get gifs into the eyes of more people. My top 3 gifsets look like this:

This site is meant for sharing. So many posts want to thank giffers and beg people to give giffers more credit, but from my experience nowadays, the notes ALWAYS look like so. I love getting credit where credit is due, but the lack of SHARING gifs is discouraging and feels thankless at times.

the text post: guys we love gifmakers you are the backbone of this site! we need to appreciate gifmakers more you put in so much work </3 (28,591 notes)

the gifs: 87 notes. 67 likes and 20 reblogs.

not to hijack OPs post but I wanted to add on. as a gifmaker, it can get kind of disheartening. Reblogs get gifs into the eyes of more people. My top 3 gifsets look like this:

This site is meant for sharing. So many posts want to thank giffers and beg people to give giffers more credit, but from my experience nowadays, the notes ALWAYS look like so. I love getting credit where credit is due, but the lack of SHARING gifs is discouraging and feels thankless at times.

reblog if you enjoy napping, being cozy, being conked out, snoozing, wrapping up in blankets, sipping a hot drink, catching some z's, hugging a plushie, or otherwise relaxing and resting

i like how this post gets circulated the most around evening. like yes gang settle down! we know when it's bed time!

PSA:

People who support/are LGBTQ+ but are rude/biphobic to bisexuals for being in a heterosexual relationship/having a bigger attraction to the opposite sex doesn't actually know what it means to support the LGBTQ+ community.

Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home.  The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”

If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese.  Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.

Also, most American restaurant portions are 100% intended as two meals’ worth of food. Some of my older Irish relatives still struggle with the idea that it’s not just not rude to eat half your meal and take the rest home, it’s expected. (Apparently this is somewhat of an American custom.)

Until you’re hitting the “fancy restaurant” tier (the kind of place you go for a celebration or an anniversary date), a dinner out should generally also be lunch for the next day. Leftovers are very much the norm.

From the little time I’ve spent in Canada, this seems to be the case up there as well.

the portions in family restaurants (as opposed to haute cuisine types) are designed so that no one goes away hungry.

volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.

so in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.

of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of american hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.

it’s not about pigging out until you get huge. treating it that way is pretty disrespectful of our culture. and you know, contrary to what the world thinks, we do have one.

Reblogging because I honestly never thought about it but yeah, this lines up.

This is also why the idea of “pay a lot for fancy food on tiny plates” pisses so many Americans off. Unless you are rich enough not to care about throwing your money away, it’s not just a ridiculous ripoff in terms of not filling you up, it’s stingy. Restaurants are places of hospitality. If I pay that much for a plate it had better be damn good and it had better be generous. Otherwise they are just trying to fleece me out of my money AND saying they don’t value me as a customer.

If I go to IHOP or Olive Garden or whatnot, I absolutely don’t need to eat again until evening if I had leftovers, and until the next day if I did eat everything (you can’t really take pancakes home as leftovers).

But EVEN IF I DID EAT EVERYTHING and then ate a full meal on top of that, later, it’s really not anyone’s place to criticize what other people eat. It just isn’t. Let it go. It’s old.

Making fun of American food culture and food habits isn’t original or surprising or witty or funny or getting one over on us or crafting a clever retort or whatever. It’s lazy and petty and childish.

Yeah, we eat a lot of hamburgers. They’re fucking delicious. Cope.

The fossil is not the animal.

The fossil is not the bones of the animal.

The fossil is the stone's memory of the bones of the animal.

And that's a poetry older than words.

🩶🦕🦖🩶

@matzahball

For a second I didn’t realize it meant “high” as in a stoner–I thought “High Geologist” was like a rank of geologist or something and he was insulted you would challenge him to naming stones

great poast every one👍

I have drawn him…. The High Geologist

Can’t believe he’s ace

He is now And here’s the photo evidence:

hey guys…https://twitter.com/MatthewLillard/status/1322648148364324864 so does this make it canon?

the high geologist has ascended

every time i see this post it gets…. better? but also weirder.

I always gotta reblog the High Geologist once in a while.

I love this too much.

Reblog to get to look at a cool rock from the High Geologist

This is all part of The Tumblr Experience

Watching from afar

Reblog, click the picture, and prepare for battle.

after a while i became convinced that the words were mocking me

Nothing happened. 

I WAS PROMISED A BATTLE

*throws down gauntlet*

Edit: Went back. This is the best thing to happen to my dashboard ever.

Reblogging again because my followers need to see this. To be clear, rebog, go to your actual blog, then click the picture.