1) martian manhunter. this is obvious. he wears hot pants, some boots, and a cape, and his full martian form is most often depicted starkers. martians were probably nudists.
2) wonder woman. prays to the gods naked. literally, she takes off her clothes and goes outside and prays to the gods, tiddies to the wind.
3) green lantern, guy gardner model. went starkers once because his power ring ran out of juice, simply did not give a fuck. once, pulled down his green lantern pants to moon batman.
4) hawkman. he does a good job of keeping his pants on, but he clearly doesn’t believe in shirts.
5) plastic man. plastic…… man. what’s going on with that dude.
6) black canary. conversely, she doesn’t believe in pants, but the fishnets give her some coverage.
7)
aquaman. again, good with the pants, he believes in those, but he likes to forget about shirts sometimes. much less of an occurrence than hawkman, but notable.
8) green arrow. he’s got a reputation for nakey, but he’s not routinely naked, you know what i mean?
9) green lantern, the hal jordan model. probably the kind of guy who watches sad movies in his boxers.
10) the flash, wally west model. wears khaki shorts and shortsleeves sometimes, keeps the naked on the DL.
11) green lantern, the kyle rayner model. not prone to shorts, prone to hipster jeans and shortsleeves. naked is mostly reserved for commonly appropriate naked times.
12) the flash, barry allen model. mostly in the same boat as kyle rayner, except he wears dad jeans. the two could be swapped easily.
13) superman, was raised in a working-class farming family and is generally used to layers. lois saw him wear a t-shirt once, and there was no flannel on top, and she cried.
14) shazam. he’s, like, 3.
3,405,678) batman. would wear kevlar that covers everything but his mouth 24/7 given the chance, otherwise he settles for a turtleneck. being naked offends his paranoia.
what’s the betting that potterwatch was just a radio project lee jordan was doing in his spare time and never actually stopped after the war
“Harry Potter was spotted at the local farmers market today, good choices in produce Harry! Gotta love the organics”
he’s the only reporter harry will talk to other than giving official statements when he has to as an auror
“I’m speaking to Harry Potter today after the long-awaited conclusion of the trial of quadruple murderer Waldorfus Grenoble. Harry, may I ask you a question regarding the trial?”
“Sure, Lee, I have to be back at work in ten but give it a go.”
“What is in the curry you had for lunch yesterday during the recess? It smelled fantastic and I have to know.”
“Thanks for asking, Lee. I’ve recently come across a book of my great-grandmother Priyanka’s notes on her Punjabi cooking and I’ve been trying to recreate her food. I liked that one but Ginny said it was too sweet so I’m making adjustments.”
“Fantastic. Great stuff. Next up we have an update on You-Know-Who’s whereabouts. Not Voldemort obviously– he’s six feet under, it’s been around 2500 days now and he’s still going strong, no sign of him being not dead any time soon.”
“You’re correct, Lee, he’s dead as a doornail and he’s going to stay that way. You do realize you don’t need to refer to your infant daughter as ‘You-Know-Who,’ right?”
“Sophie starts screaming if either of her dads talks about her and we don’t know why. Any suggestions, and any idea where she is now?”
“Oliver was walking her up and down the hallway outside the World Cup Regulatory Office last I saw her. As for the screaming, with James we gave him the miniature dragon from the Triwizard in ‘94 and that entertained him pretty well.”
“You heard it here first folks, Harry Potter thinks dragons are an appropriate substitute for pacifiers! Thanks for your time, Harry.”
“Any time, Lee.”
“Next week’s password is anything that will make our six-month-old go to sleep for longer than four hours. Signing off, this has been Potterwatch with River and the man himself, Harry Potter.”
I read it twice and a heart just wasn’t enough. Have a reblog of something with no connection to my blog at all – it is delightful.
Your wife changes her hair color every season and her personality adjusts slightly. You’re secretly only in love with Autumn wife. She just came home sporting her Winter color.
it’s my fault. it’s just that when we met it was autumn; her red-orange hair and crackling laughter. there’s a little spooky in her, a lot of play. and what a better time for falling?
i didn’t realize it for the first few years – something shifting, something so subtle. the winter makes us all cold, the summer makes us all a little out of our minds. i just loved her, because she was incredible, and i was the luckiest person alive.
it’s just that i realized that spring came with sudden bursts of cold. it’s just that summer frequently raged in with fire sprouting from her lips. it’s just that winter was the worst of all, her eyes dead. it’s just that autumn loves me different; throws herself into it without the clingy sweat of summer. i used to love that summer girl, you know? i loved how wild she was, the way in summer she took every risk she could. but i carried her home drunk one too many times, cleaned up one too many of the messes she made for no reason than to enjoy the sensation of burning. and winter was worse; the shutdown, the isolation. how she became distant, a blizzard, caught up in her own head, unable to tell me what was wrong and unable to think i actually wanted to listen.
she comes home, her hair bleached white. a dark smile on her lips. the shadowy parts of her are back. they loom like icicles overhead. she kisses me with her body held at a distance, a peck on my cheek that feels like an iceberg. she makes polite conversation and we go to bed early, our bodies untouching.
it is a lonely season, i think on the ninth day of this. winter is cold. winter is known for the death of things. when i look at her, i see the girl i fell for, inhabited by an alien. she was the first women i loved so much i felt it would kill me. i can’t leave. when i wake her up with my crying, she tells me to shush and go back to sleep. she’s different like this, quiet, doesn’t eat.
three days later i stare at myself in the mirror. i wonder if it’s me. if the fat on my body or something in my face or the wrinkles and she doesn’t love me. i try prettier lingerie, lean cuisine, i try different hair, more makeup, try harder. it doesn’t work. she looks at me the same; that empty gaze that neither loves nor condemns my actions.
somewhere in februrary i lose it. we’re fighting again, from car to restaurant to car to home again. we fight about stupid things, small things; i tell her i feel she doesn’t love me, she says i’m not listening. the circle goes around and around, old pain peeling back, new pain unhealing. i sleep on the couch.
i wake up when i hear her crying, white hair around her all messed up. the kind of sobbing that only comes at two in the morning, heavy and thick and hurting. my winter girl. my heart is breaking. she looks up at me like i’m her anchor. “i’m sorry i’m like this,” she says. and i start saying, it’s okay i’m here we’re married, but she just shakes her head and says, “I know this isn’t the real me.”
i hold her cold hand. she stares at the blankets. “i am different in winter,” she whispers, “i know i am and i’m sorry.” she looks at me. “why do you think i dye my hair? cut it off? get rid of the old me?”
i tell her it’s okay. we’re together and it’s okay, and then she whispers, “i’m sorry you married four of me.”
we lay there like that, her head on my chest. she falls asleep. i stare at the ceiling, thinking of the way she sounded when she was crying. how i helped put her in that pain. how i promised in sickness and in health and everything in between.
the next day i spend at the library. there aren’t enough books on how to love someone with seasonal affective disorder so i make my own, notes and pages and little ideas on post-its. and i take a deep breath and make myself a promise.
she comes home to her favorite dinner and we kiss and she’s uneasy but that’s okay. the next day i bring home flowers and the next day she finds little love notes in her pockets. i love her quiet, the way winter demands, understand her sex drive is faltering; spend more time just cuddling. we drink wine and we kiss and some part of her starts relaxing.
the truth is there is no loving someone out of their mental illness. the truth is that you can love someone in despite of it; love them loud enough to give them an excuse to believe they can make their way out of it.
and i learn. i remember the rebirth of spring, when she starts thawing. we kiss and have picnics in pretty dresses. i remember her joy at little birds and her rain dancing. i fall in love with the flowers in her cheeks and the little bursts of cleaning. i fall in love with summer’s slow walks and milkshakes and shouting to music playing too loud on the speakers. i fall in love with her dancing, with the sunfire energy. and when winter comes; i am ready. i remember that snow used to look pretty. i fall in love with the hearth of her, with the holiday, with the slow smile that spreads across her face so shyly. i fall in love with how she looks in boots and mittens and every day i find another reason to love her the way she deserves – they way i always should have.
she comes home with her white hair and dark smile and a package in her hands. i ask to see what it is and that small shy grin comes creeping out. it’s a sunlamp packed in with medication. she looks at me with those wide eyes and that beautiful winter blush. “i’m trying to get better,” she whispers, “i promise.”
recovery doesn’t look immediate. sometimes it isn’t neat. i can’t say we never fight or that we’re suddenly complete. but each day, that tiny girl’s strength gives me another reason. i love her. i love her while she tames the roller coaster of spring; i love her for reigning in the summer storms; i love her for taking her winter and trying to be warm. it is hard, because everything worth it is hard. she spreads out her autumn leaves; mixes the best parts of her into everything. learns to take winter’s silence for a moment before yelling in summer. learns to take autumn’s spice and give it to spring. we are both learning.
one day she comes home and her hair is different, but it’s a style i don’t know. i kiss it and tell her that she’s beautiful and the inside of me swells like a flood. i’m so glad that she’s mine. every part of her. the whole. i am the luckiest person on earth. and i always have been. but she’s hugging me and saying, “thank you for helping me,” and i can’t explain why i’m crying.
this is what love is; not always an emotion but rather your actions. the choices we make when we realize our lives would be empty if the other was absent. this is what love is: letting them grow, helping them find their way in out of the cold. this is what love is: sometimes it takes work to see how the thing you planted together actually grows.
this is what love looks like in an autumn girl: it is winter and she glows.
I’m actually sobbing jesus christ
my heart is aching??? this is gorgeous
Wow. Worth the read, don’t scroll.
This is everything.
Everything about how to love.
I was not prepared
Nor was I.
“this is what love is; not always an emotion but rather your actions. the choices we make when we realize our lives would be empty if the other was absent. this is what love is: letting them grow, helping them find their way in out of the cold. this is what love is: sometimes it takes work to see how the thing you planted together actually grows.”
Honestly, if you scrolled… Go back up and read it.
I’ve read this again and again, and it just wrecks me every time.
This is beyond beautiful. Thanks for doing this prompt @inkskinned
I had to stop reading and sob for a while. I said all the swears I know, the ones I never speak, because the emotion was making it impossible to breathe and I needed it out.
The pain is ugly and jagged and hurts coming up.
My baby was sick once – just a cold. A booger was stuck in his snotty nose and everyone told me to leave it, to stop bothering him. But it kept growing. He cried if his his nose was touched. I finally had to hold him and pull it out. He sobbed and tried to pull away. The thing was hard and sharp, the places it had been digging into were infected – an ugly and gross metaphor for the ugliness and grossness of my self-hatred.
I never get enough of these stories. A decade of having a spouse like the narrator, one who accepts and loves me and gives me the strength to get a little better. Still I need these stories telling me that loving someone like me is worth it, that I’m worth it. I’m not just a leech, people who love me do get something in return.
“The truth is there’s no loving someone out of their mental illness” –
That transition from fairy tale to real life hit me like a brick.
Bull hears the door open – in this house a damn courtesy given the silent creepers who somehow manage to never make noise – and lifts his head a little to say, “I told you, I don’t know where Ellana put your stuff. If she has something of yours ask her about it. I literally cannot tell your beauty products apart. I have no hair, I can’t help you on this one.”
He somehow senses the person who just entered the room pause, but continue and then a dip on the bed as a body shimmies up.
able-bodied people don’t seem to realise the nuances of disability, they look at it as such a black and white issue when it’s really not. like, i don’t need a wheelchair in the sense that i can’t physically use my legs and i don’t need a walking stick in the sense that i would fall over without one. but i do need a wheelchair in the sense that it could make the difference between my being bed-bound for a day and being bed-bound for a week and i do need a walking stick in the sense that using one today might enable me to do more tomorrow. disability and chronic illness aren’t black and white; using things out of necessity can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
All this goes for most other disabilities too. For example, many people don’t realize that many deaf people have at least a little hearing. And many blind people have at least a little vision. And so forth.
So if you’re deaf enough that you cannot understand speech just by listening alone (because there is too much of the sound missing) then you most likely really NEED captions to have any chance of understanding anything said in a video, TV program, movie, etc.
If you have enough hearing to hear SOME speech, well, hearing 10 percent of what is said still won’t help enough to do without captions. (Some of us might hear vowels without really hearing consonants, or may hear only certain consonants and not others, because some speech sounds are higher pitched than other speech sounds. For example, “s”, “sh”, “ch” are all higher in pitch than “m”, “n” or any of the vowels, etc. Some of us may hear lower pitch sounds better than high pitch sounds. So, yes, many of us hear SOME speech but not enough to understand.)
But suppose you are not deaf, but only hard of hearing, i.e. only a mild hearing loss? So that you can understand most speech by listening alone, without needing visual input? Well, if you’re hard of hearing (and not hearing) then you need completely PERFECT listening circumstances (everyone is speaking clearly, there is no background noise to distract you, etc.) because even minor problems that would only annoy a hearing person can completely disrupt your understanding speech. And even in absolutely perfect listening conditions, a hard of hearing person still needs to invest a LOT more concentration and physical energy into listening. That can make it harder to really process the content of what is being said simply because there’s no bandwidth left over after all that listening.
This is bad if you’re trying to learn really complicated new ideas because then you need to both listen AND do a lot of thinking simultaneously. It’s also harder to really relax and enjoy a movie if you have to work so hard just to understand. So all of this is why even people who can still understand most speech most of the time may still NEED captions.
This is so, so important for blindness and white canes, too. This concept applies so broadly to all of us.
Because you know what? I went 16 years without a cane.
The first 16 straight years of my life were spent without even the shortest singular lesson on using a cane and my vision was no better then than it is now. And you know, I survived. I never broke any bones or had a catastrophic fall down the school stairwell or got hit by a car, and if I wanted to go somewhere without my cane now I could probably live, if it was somewhere familiar and during the day and the weather was just right. I could probably make it to my school and back without any major issues and I would get home in one piece.
But you know what else? During those first 16 years I was terrified. Not actively shaking and consciously thinking about how afraid I was, but it was there, every time I avoided going somewhere new or going out at night or when I stared down at the sidewalk while walking down the street and wondered if people thought I was depressed about something. I didn’t explore, I didn’t try new things, I didn’t feel like it would be easy to go out and check out something new to handle unexpected changes or changes in plans. I stayed inside a lot, and in order to get around somewhere new I had to take a whole day and have a teacher or a parent walk me around it first so I could do it later myself. I didn’t like new places and I didn’t like going out, because there were too many poles and staircases that blended in and broken cracks in the sidewalk and trash on the ground and children running around.
When I got training and learned how to use a cane and gather information from my ears it was life-changing. Using a cane meant the difference between being careful and cautious and avoiding new things, and being out at any hour of the day and walking confidently and comfortably and exploring my neighborhood. It meant the difference between being worried about tripping down the steps at a new place and being able to decide on a whim and I feel like going to this new place because it’s cool and I can. It meant the difference between constantly overthinking and planning my whole day around how I was going to get around and being able to just be normal and just BE without even having to think about whether I’ll be able to get around. It meant the difference between waiting two weeks for somebody to finally be free enough to give me a ride and hold my arm throughout and being able to go where I wanted, when I wanted, without inconvenience to myself or others. It meant the difference between sheltering myself and being actually free.
So yes. I suppose you could try to argue that maybe a cane is not an absolute necessity for me to exist and do the absolute bare minimum, but you would be wrong, because life isn’t just about the absolute bare minimum. Thousands of blind people have this exact same journey with canes and realizing the difference it makes, blind people ranging from those who are completely blind to people who just barely crossed the threshold into legal blindness. So yes, I don’t need a cane in the sense that I am completely blind and entirely unable to do anything without it, but I absolutely need my cane in the sense that most of us do, the sense that that came makes the difference between a stressful experience that was avoided until it couldn’t be and an incredibly comfortable experience that allowed me to do way more, travel way farther, and get a whole shit ton more out of it.
Disability is never a black and white thing, and both abled and other disabled people alike would do well to remember that. and
“Shh, it’s alright,” the villain said. “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me – you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”
The ancient and powerful villain may have had a calm and gentle face as he spoke, but he was furious, not at the hero, but the gods for continually sending kids and teenagers to fight their battles.
What is a beta reader? What do they do? Are you stuck in you story, do you need another set of eyes to hunt those pesky extra commas, are you struggling with tenses, do you need help with canon? That’s where you need a beta. A beta is not here to rewrite your stuff, just to point out things that could help improve it – be it grammar, sensitive topics, or plothole. Take a look at Fanlore’s article on Beta, or a link to a post about different types of beta-ing.
Our goal is to make it easier for people to get in touch, so we’ve created a formthat betas can fill in. You can then search the Beta File by fandom and beta-type (the Find function, ctrl-F, is your friend here!), check the possible betas, look at the time stamp and/or their blog to see if they’re active, and politely contact them with your needs 🙂
We have to trust everyone not to abuse this resource because we are providing it but *not* moderating what happens afterwards. We have to trust everyone to play by the rules, because we are not able to intervene. This is not an opinions or complaints blog, just a tool among others. We will not answer or reblog opinions or complaints about betaing.
We recommend each party be very clear about what they need and can do before starting to collaborate. If you need a gentle beta, say so! If you dislike AUs and don’t want to beta one, say so too! If you only have time to beta a short fic, if you’re not available at the moment, if it’s about a ship you’d rather not work on, say so! There will be other times, other fics, other plots. No hard feelings!
Do not forget to thank them once you publish, of course!
kiragecko 