#Letters To Barbara

[apoemaday]

Letter to a Lost Friend

by Barbara Hamby

There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened between us, like ostyt, which can be used for a cup of  tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room, and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet, which is to want something so much over months and even years that when you get it, you have lost the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky, “It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.” What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men, who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote all night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke in the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books everywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de Sévigné, so that now, on a train in the taiga of  Siberia, I see what she sees  —  all my books alphabetized and on shelves, feet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins, neck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends are young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’, and who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved for even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin, a rough ball of  lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books and saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes close and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding the gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.          

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Las chicas están bien (Itsaso Arana, 2023)

[littlefankingdom]

I need more fics where Dick acts just like in the comics when Jason comes back.

No more "Little Wing! I missed you so much! I'm fine with you killing people, I don't care! You're right, B is an asshole."

Bring back the original "Jason?! Wtf are you doing??? Stop killing people, you little bitch! I'm gonna kick your fucking ass! B is way too nice to you, because it would be me, you would be in jail!"

[the-dynamic-duo]

Barbara’s love letter for Dick

[elliesdin0saur]

Ellie leaves behind a letter for Dina....

[farmhouse aftermath]

Dear Dina,

I don't know where to begin. I'm sitting here in the farmhouse, surrounded by the memories we built together, and it feels like the walls are closing in. The echoes of our laughter, the warmth of our shared space, they all seem distant now.

I came back after finding Abby. After all that time, after all the pain and sacrifice, I confronted her. And you know what? I let her go. I let her go, Dina, and I thought it would bring me some closure, some peace. But all I feel is emptiness.

I walked through the door, half-expecting to see you and JJ waiting for me, your smiles lighting up the room. But the silence greeted me instead. The rooms are empty, and the air feels heavy with the weight of what's been lost. I searched every corner, called out your names, but there's no answer. Just the quiet reminder of a life, our lives, that's slipped away. I didn't want to leave bu And it's all my fault.

I understand, Dina. I understand why you left. My pursuit of revenge took me to a place you couldn't follow. I can't blame you for wanting something different, something safer for JJ. It hurts, though, realizing that I've pushed away the people I care about the most.

I'm writing this note because I can't stay here any longer. The farmhouse holds too many ghosts, too many memories that I'm not ready to confront. I'll leave everything as it is, the way you left it, and I'll take only what I need.

I don't know where I'm going, Dina. I don't have a plan, a destination, or a purpose. Maybe I'm running away from the pain, or maybe I'm running toward something I can't yet see. All I know is that I can't stay here. Not now.

Thank you, Dina, for everything. For being the light in the darkness, for giving me a reason to keep going. I'll always cherish the moments we had, and I'll carry them with me, even if the weight becomes too much.

Take care of yourself and JJ, he's lucky to have an amazing mom to take care of him. I hope you find the peace and happiness I couldn't give you. Maybe our paths will cross again someday. Until then, know that you were the best part of my life.

With love,

Ellie

.

[havendance]

oooo au where babs ends up taking over the suicide squad from waller permanently and how that would effect her relationship with the rest of the birds?

Oooh, this is a fun one. I used this as a reason to finally read the last few issues of Suicide Squad that I'd been saving.

When Amanda Waller decides that she wants to wash her hands of the suicide squad and that it's time to disband it, Oracle approaches her. She thinks that there's still potential in the idea. She still thinks the squad could do some good. Waller says she can have it.

The makeup doesn't stay the same. Some people stay. Others go. Oracle recruits some new faces. Poison Ivy, Count Vertigo, and Captain Boomerang are probably among the ones who leave. Bronze Tiger and Deadshot probably stay. I think Zinda would get recruited fairly quickly. The suicide squad are the sort that could use a good pilot.

Barbara is not like Waller; she keeps her identities separate. Oracle runs the squad as a mysterious figure who knows everything. She relies on her lieutenants and staff to take care of face to face negotiations. Amy Beddoes is a woman in a wheelchair who is a member of the support staff. The old guard know the truth, but eventually as they move on to other things, that is forgotten.

Eventually, she does recruit Black Canary. She needs someone who she can trust and rely on. Someone to keep the more amoral figures she has gathered together in line. What was initially intended for as a single mission turns into a longer partnership as the two strike it off. Barbara appreciated Dinah. Dinah helps her keep from falling to deeply down.

This Barbara does not have the same issues with Helena that she has in canon. She's less tapped in to the Gotham network of heroes and she doesn't have the same moral qualms. That being said, she views Helena the same way that she does many members of the squad: as, well tools is a strong word, but as a piece on the board to move in order to bring about the greater good. Helena still does not appreciate being controlled, though their relationship does smooth out with time.

[eightyfours]

The Girls

in The Karate Kid, dir. John G. Avildsen (1984)

[veikkoalen]

imagine buying a nice cottage on the lake island with the intent of making your little weird shroom movies and end up carving your lover's heart out, drowning both of you in the lake and lending your corpses indefinetely to the metaphysical entities as meat suits. and all that might be just because one of these entities has a slight disdain towards finnish people

[shapethings]

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1916 – Letter written by Thomas MacDonagh to his family.

Signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Revolutionary leader of the Easter Revolution, Tomás Mac Donnchadha: Letter written about midnight on 2nd May in Thomas MacDonagh’s cell in Kilmainham Gaol, approximately 3 hours before he was shot. The original is on loan to the Kilmainham Gaol museum. He was given 2 sheets of paper and started to write a statement, but was told he could only…

[wienschrift]

MARIA FRANC:

GEB.25.9.1906, GEST.8.1.1971

ERSTE BEZIRKSVORSTEHERIN WIENS

[forever70s]

Barbara Parkins in "The Kremlin Letter" (1970)

[just-call-mefr1es]

barbara doodle i did a few weeks ago bcuxz i remembrered to bring my french binder home today💫

[gh99st]

One of the things that Barbara does in trollhunters that pisses me off is about the letter Jim wrote for her

When Barbara found the letter in the cook book she presumably didn't open it

She knew what Jim had been doing, as per the battle of two bridges episode, and has told us that she was terrified for her son and she also knew that the answers to what jim was doing was in the letter

And why didnt she open it? Because she wanted to hear Jim actually tell her in person, to me that's pretty fucking stupid

Jim doesn't tell her about trolls when asked, and then Barbara gets mad and tells him he is discharged from hospital

Jim is given silent treatment after that, because he didn't tell her? Except he actually has told her in a letter, but she won't open it out of stubbornness/pettiness

And when she does find out in the season one finale I don't like how she ignores instructions given to her by strickler and causes angor rott to be out of a stasis trap, and I understand that Jim is her son and all that but she has no idea of the situation and also I feel that she doesn't need to protect jim, because of his huge sword and suit of armour that he was trained to use.

Other then that Barbara is awesome, totally badass, 10/10

[drbatsponge]

Call me crazy, but Batgirls #18 was recently #5 on the Amazon sales chart for DC, so like... they could potentially walk back on cancelling it and relaunch it instead.

Probably me huffing copium, but it is funny that DC probably cancelled Batgirls because it wasn't selling well and now that they've cancelled it they've brought more attention to it, classic DC blunder, lmfaoooooo.

I got these analytics from here:

https://twitter.com/CainArchives/status/1649123877555953664?t=U2jl0F2WpfZYXQVgTqT3RQ&s=19

[havendance]

For the DC drabbles- Babs and Cass Cain?

“Here,” Barbara said. “Try one.”

Cass oblidgingly put a cookie in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

“So?”

Cass shrugged. 

“Good? Bad?” Barbara prompted. “Too sweet?”

Cass took another. “Crunchy,” she said finally.

Barbara eyed the batch dubiously. That wasn’t promising: they were supposed to be soft. She tried one herself— it was rock hard.

Cass was on her third.

“You don’t need to eat that.”

“Tastes fine.”

Barbara sighed. “Try something new,” she muttered. “How hard could baking be? No!” Cass was reaching for a fourth. “Look, how about we go out and get some real cookies?”

Cass shrugged again. “Okay.”