#I’ve honestly grown to hate this trope where another person has to SPELL OUT how their friend feels

[nikkiruncks]

I’m a Jay stan, but it’s weird how he was the one telling Nate to move on from Nikki only to be like “you’ll feel lost forever until you deal with the fact that you still love Nikki”.

Jay was the one telling Nate to move on from Nikki, and when he goes on that journey, he snaps him out of it???

[bigskydreaming]

I'm not the anon from last night, about Ionaperidot's story, but no offense I kind of feel it shows how you are pretty quick to judge stuff. And that's maybe why people have such strong reactions to your posts about Ao3. Nobody likes seeing the stuff they like criticized and you're no exception so I would hope it'd be understandable that when people do respect your opinions on stuff & they see you shutting down things they like without giving it a full chance, it does seem kind of hypocritical.

LOL. Quick question.

Are you freaking KIDDING me?

Okay, see this is EXACTLY what I was trying to avoid and why I was doing my best to be vague and circumspect last night and shift the topic away from just that story in particular, because I’m actually not out here trying to start things about other writer’s work just because they did something that bugged me. I’m blunt as hell. If I want to say something, I say it. If I want to condemn something, I condemn it. If I want to criticize something, I criticize it.

I don’t play games about this shit and so I was legitimately TRYING to refrain from going into specific issues I had with a specific piece of fanfic. But what I’m not gonna do, is sit here and be told I’m a hypocrite who doesn’t give things enough of a chance before forming my admittedly strong opinions, because LMFAO.

You want the truth? I actually read a LOT of that particular story, AND even checked back in on its sequel in the hopes it’d addressed the specific issue that killed my enjoyment for it, because I WANTED to enjoy it, I enjoyed a LOT about it and how the other characters’ stories were played out.

My specific issue with that story ONLY arose at the point when Bruce stopped his research into trying to find a way to undo the Talon changes to Dick...on TIM AND JASON’S RECOMMENDATION. One of the things I actually really loved about the fic before that was how much it prioritized the personal agency of the kids as they coped with their various traumas, such as when Bruce made a conscious effort to let J’onzz ONLY use his telepathy enough to let JASON make the choice if he wanted a ‘quick/sci-fi fix’ to his brain damage related issues, or if he wanted to heal from it naturally and organically and in his own time. 

But all of that went out the window with Dick and Dick’s character alone, as the good Batdad who prioritized letting every one of his other kids heal naturally in their own time and on their own ways....listened to his two teenagers’ take that it would be too damaging for Bruce to undo the Talon changes to Dick, as they and the ways it had changed his brain were in THEIR OPINION the only things that made him able to cope with what he’d done as a Talon. Let me reiterate. Two teenagers with acknowledged mental health issues AND their own personal skews to how they viewed Dick that were born entirely of the version of him THEY’D known in their alternate universes....were given the deciding vote on how Dick was allowed - or rather not allowed - a full range of options in whether or not he got to heal from his trauma naturally and organically - the way they were allowed to.

That was what I was not okay with. That wasn’t their call to make, it wasn’t their opinion Bruce should have sought - especially not when he’s got alternate reality tech that gave him access to multiple other versions of DICK to ask HIS OWN ACTUAL OPINION on what he could or could not cope with. His own reality had a grown up version of Dick Bruce could have consulted. He could have asked the Dick from Tim’s universe when he visited. He could have asked the Red Hood version of Jason to ask his Dick. He could have kept searching through universes until he found a version of Dick who HAD been a Talon, and who found a way to undo the Talon changes...and ask HIM if he was glad he’d done so or if he regretted it and should have stayed the way he was.

But none of those things happened, or were even considered or raised as potential avenues of exploration, and even though I gave the fic a good long while after that before calling it quits in the hopes that it was leading up to somebody pointing out that there was a clear double standard underlying the logic used there....eventually it just seemed more and more like the reason Dick’s storyline was treated differently was because it allowed for keeping him as ‘cute and little and kinda broken’ and thus made it unlikely that he was ever going to grow up to be much like other versions of Dick...and thus unlikely to ever take any kind of lead in the family dynamics, which here would potentially ‘take away’ from say, Tim’s position in the family. THAT is what bothered me enough to quit the story. That a fic that was so fundamentally about mental health and recovery and allowing traumatized children the courtesy of applying their own damn agency to their methods of recovery....didn’t blink about doing the exact opposite to one specific character who’s noted for more usually occupying the position in the family ‘hierarchy’ that others were now able to occupy instead....and that seemed to me like the kind of character preference - that while totally understandable - is a mistake to allow to play out in a story with these SPECIFIC themes.

(Also, I’ve been pretty damn regular about expressing that I personally have a huge problem with the trope that Dick is ‘too good/too pure/too filled with light’ to ever kill, and that being made fully aware of what he’d done in the past would have broken him in the story...like, obviously falls into all my issues with that particular trope. 

I hate that it off-handedly implies that every character that HAS killed as a child, like Damian or Cass or even Jason whose first kills happened while he was a teenager....like, it basically suggests that they’re fundamentally LESS good, LESS pure, LESS filled with light....or else they would never have been able to kill in the first place, or else would have somehow been damaged or broken or irreparably LESSENED by doing so. And I think that throws all of THEM under the bus, rather than actually doing anything to uplift Dick’s character or express anything positive. 

Honestly, its just another form of infantilizing him. Especially when you consider that per Last Laugh, he has killed in canon and he ALREADY WORKED THROUGH having killed someone...like, it literally happened. On panel. It wasn’t easy, it did affect him, he did angst about it, but it didn’t fundamentally CHANGE him as a person or make him any LESS of who he’d been before.....and all of that is just further reason why I push back against the idea that Dick ‘just couldn’t kill someone ever’ or the tendency to sweep Last Laugh and what happened with the Joker under the rug. 

Because it doesn’t actually do Dick or his character any favors. Actually, its more that while nominally its said to be in defense of him and his character....its really more like people are saying ‘Dick can’t HANDLE killing someone’ - especially when you consider how much fandom as a whole celebrates and glorifies the characters who are able to kill in the name of victims and obviously doesn’t see it as a slight against Jason and others).

So yeah, THAT was my real issue with the story and why I dropped it and what I was trying to refrain from spelling out because I’m actually NOT out here trying to tell everyone what to think and DIDN’T have any interest in trying to turn people off the story or give them reason not to read it and form their own opinions about it, without mine clouding the issue.

But fuck that, if its gonna just lead to people giving me shit about how I don’t give things enough of a chance before making a judgment call against them, because lol actually, the last time I peeked in on that series was just two weeks ago, where I skimmed the latest updates to the sequel in the hopes that maybe the introduction of Roy had brought that issue to light, like he compared this Dick to the one he’d known and disagreed with their assessment of what Dick could or couldn’t handle, or else at least just flat out said no version of Dick he knew would ever be okay with his brothers deciding for him what he was capable of overcoming and what he needed to be protected from. Especially not if the end result was going to leave him permanently altered by what his abusers had done to him.

So...is THAT having given the story enough of a chance before forming a ‘snap judgment’? Did I do it right, per your official overview of the situation? Or should I still be reading it and waiting to form an opinion, same as I apparently should be still waiting for SOMETHING before deciding that....I don’t like how people react to criticism of Ao3?

Idk, I mean, maybe I actually AM pretty consistent about the things I do and say and post about and believe. And maybe the problem ISN’T that I’m kinda hypocritical.

Maybe its just that like you said, nobody likes seeing stuff they like criticized, and rather than working through that for yourself, you’ve decided to make it MY problem, SPECIFICALLY.