#Real talk tho I credit being into comics with a lot of my brain becoming more analytical about what I read/watch and if/why I like it

[cephalog0d]

(I'm just moving into the actual response because I'm on mobile and doing tags is hard XD)

Batkid backstories are all SO FLUID even without taking all the retcons and reboots into account, I think the best way to approach it is to just decide which one you like the best and take that as canon, because it's not like the writers are going to be consistent with it XD I'm a firm believer in Selective Canon Acceptance (or what I like to call Canon Casserole, where I throw together the bits I like and ignore the stuff I think is boring or bad) because if DC is allowed to rewrite and remix their own stuff whenever they want so am I. (New 52 did a lot of very strange things to the Batkids, a bunch of which was unretconned in Rebirth, it's kind of a giant mess tbh.)

As far as the DCAU -> comics, ooh boy. Disclaimer that my brain is Full of Bees so while I can remember hyperfixation details like Babs's middle name (it's Joan) my memory for my own childhood is fairly fuzzy. XD

Batman the Animated Series started airing on TV when I was in daycare (around 3?) and apparently that was acceptable toddler tv and I fell in love and I blame my mother for who I am today because of that and showing me Star Wars at like 5. (I have one VERY vivid memory of a specific episode of BTAS from the time.) (It's also weird, in hindsight, how much I specifically loved Robin considering he's not even in it that much, but kids are weird. And this is why I will always have some bias towards Dick, I can't help it. My other favorites were Harley and Killer Croc so.)

And then when I was older I saw JL/JLU (Wally 5ever because of that) and Static Shock and Batman Beyond and all those. I didn't actually start having access to/*reading* comics until probably college? And I honestly don't 100% remember where I started. I read a lot of early wiki stuff online, I watched videos in the early days of that being a Thing online that talked about comic stuff, and I think I just kind of started reading things? (I definitely remember the first thing I actually owned was Secret Six which is a very weird entry point for literally anything, although I had read stuff before that, it was just the first one I bought.)

I'm trying to remember my first exposure to any given Batkid and besides Dick and that weird version of Tim from DCAU I really can't recall, they're all just things I know now with no memory of learning. XD I've been a little more systematic in the last few years going back and filling in things I missed in my very scattershot approach but there's a lot.

(I...might have built myself a giant sortable spreadsheet of character appearances because I'm THAT kind of nerd. It has a master list tab where I can sort for multiple characters at the same time to see where they've appeared in the same thing. I'm very proud of it.)

(It's been 7 years and I'm still mad about SS because that's the only live action Killer Croc I'll ever get and it's THAT MOVIE and because I'm one of the like four people who cared about that series prior to that and it has so much lost potential and also Jared Leto and his...everything. Although the absolute trash fire that is the New 52 version is still worse somehow. Stunningly terrible.)

Okay, maybe its just that I'm a kid of an immigrant so my cultural touchstones aren't the same as everyone else's but being a comics fan feels surreal.

Like. Stephanie Brown is my blorbo right now, and she's a minor c-tier character, with a whole lot of comics under her belt but about three tv appearances. She's not nothing, but to call her a big deal would be A Stretch. Because I read everything with her in it, I picked up tfz, a book ft Jason Todd, an antihero who I've heard quite a lot about through fandom but who's stories I haven't actually read till now. Because I vibed with that I picked up the man who stopped laughing, and read about his arch-nemisis the Joker.

Then panels of the Joker show up on Fox News and I feel like I'm having a stroke.

[mcrmadness]

Oooo, how about two from each of them? Fanfic asks: J and P, film asks: 15 and 16, music asks: 20 and 26.

OMG thanks!!! :DDD

Ask games: Fanfic asks, Film asks and Music asks. (People you can still send me asks if you want, asks are fun to answer to!)

***

FANFIC ASKS:

A little background before we get to the questions: I haven’t written too many, actually only 6 quite short ones (and one of them is a bit longer than usual) about Die Ärzte (Bela/Farin FTW) and all of these I have written between the years 2009 and 2012, so I was 18-21 which means they are not that good. And there’s lots of things I wouldn’t write anymore. I also have a WIP on my computer, I started it in 2012 but stopped writing altogether only to start writing again in the end 2018, it has bit over 28k words currently and tbh I have written 90% of that when I started writing again two years ago. I still have my old ones up on LiveJournal (ask for a link), but I haven’t published anything fron this later one as I’ve just been writing down all kinds of snippets whenever I have had an inspiration. I think those are also a lot better in quality than what I wrote before, the old ones are quite cringey.

J. What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I guess we talk about those fics I have also finished, now. It’s actually hard to decide but I would say my favourite is either Why not even once? or The Boring Book Freak. I think the latter is actually The favourite.

The first one (was actually my second dä ff overall) is set to happen in 2003 and in that one Farin is leaving for another vacation somewhere and Bela wants to go with him, but Farin wants to travel alone and Bela is struggling with that, as well as with Farin finally leaving and having to somehow survive his time at home without Farin there. The writing itself is bit stupid and I feel that the end got bit too far but otherwise I like the idea.

The second one (came actually after the previous one) is set to happen in the early/mid 90s (my fave Bela/Farin era btw) and on that they just are at some random summer cottage. Now, fuck cottagecores and such, I wrote it because summer cottages are a thing in Finland and I wrote it when cottagecore was not even cool yet. Somehow I imagined that it would be very Farin-like to rent a cottage from the middle of nowhere, in a forest and then spend a weekend or so there with Bela. Who then is not entertained at all and is bored because Farin won’t put away his book and won’t give him any attention, so he tries everything to get Farin’s attention. I especially like the visual images this fanfic gives to me, I can see their hairs and outfits so well and those are also aesthetically very pleasing. (They look the same as in that Absolut Live interview from the 90s, I don’t control their looks with my fics usually, I just have an idea and then my brain creates how they look in that particular scene :D)

I have also written a short songfic around the lyrics of their song “Ich weiß nicht (ob es Liebe ist)” and it was fun to imagine that as Bela/Farin. That was fun to write.

This got a bit long so I put the rest under a cut:

P. What are your favorite tropes to write?

(Had to google what a trope is lol. I’m old-school and no longer know most of the terms unless they’re old terms.)

Angst - I put my own angst, sadness and angriness into my writing often. It’s when I feel like in real life I would need other people but I don’t know how to reach out or don’t just feel comfortable about opening up, I open up a file and start writing. This is also where we get to the next trope...

Hurt/Comfort - But not so that X hurts Y, but that Y feels hurt for other reasons and then X comforts them. I kinda got obsessed with this theme after being bullied at school so I was always hurt but never comforted, so I often go back to those feels and emotions with my text to look for that comfort (hug, nice words, whatever) I never got in real life.

Fluff - This is bit complicated because I like writing fluff but I also hate reading fluff I have written. Because it does not sound like me. And sometimes when I write, I feel like standing behind my own back and vomiting a little on the inside because of how cheesy and disgusting that is but still I can’t stop writing. And then I feel like a different person when I read them because I can’t believe it’s ME who wrote them. The same way when I watch movies and people kiss, I always look away. And I want to look away when I read my fanfiction. But I can’t, especially because I know I looked at that scene in my head when I wrote it.

Humour - I love humour so much and I like to include this to my writing. Normally I put the humour in my comics but some of that fits also in the regular texts too.

***

FILM ASKS:

These are super tough but also fun - I have been trying to think of what to answer to these for days.

15. A film everyone loves but you hate?

The Avengers (-12). Sorry but not sorry. Well I don’t hate it but I don’t understand why everyone says it’s the best Marvel movie ever. It’s not. It’s full of clichés and stupid forced heteroromances and whatnot and the plot was just so, so predictive I don’t understand why it’s often talked about as some sort of cinematic master piece. I literally was able to tell everything that was gonna happen next when I watched it for the first time. Only cool things in that movie are Loki and Iron Man, whose character I already liked as I had seen the Iron Man movie and liked it. But I hated both Thor movies (the third one is awesome tho). 

I like Marvel and I have seen I guess most of the movies - before MCU all good Marvel movies to come out were The X-Men movies and Spider-Man movies, and because I saw so many terrible Marvel movies, I was avoiding the whole MCU and I got into these movies much later and still, after seeing them all, I say The Avengers is one of the worst ones. Thor and Thor 2 are pretty much even worse (and I haven’t even seen the Hulk movie because it looks terrible), mainly because I just can’t stand the fact they’re mainly just built around Thor and his love interest...

16. A film you love but everyone else hates?

Spider-Man 3 (or the whole trilogy with Tobey Maguire). I see we continue with Marvel here but seriously I don’t understand why everyone is always picking on Tobey’s version of Spider-Man? And people especially hate the third movie and how Venom was portrayed in it (I’m obsessed with Venom’s human teeth pls I want his teeth), when it’s actually the best one for me. The second one is bit boring because it was again all about whining and Mary-Jane... Anyway, the reason why I am so attached to these movies is that I saw the first Spider-Man movie from TV when I was a teenager and in junior high myself, and I was bullied and a bit of a nerd so I could relate to Peter Parker a lot, and it gave me just so much strength to see him become Spider-Man and to stand up against the bullies and other assholes.

I also saw the third movie in the movie theater and there was one scene during which I started hysterically laughing with my friend because of an expression Tobey made as he was sitting on a bed, I don’t know why but somehow I just totally lost it at that :D It still makes me laugh so much when I see it! And when the movie ended, I heard a The Killers song “Move Away” for the first time during the end credits and TK was one of my favorite bands at the time (and still is).

***

MUSIC ASKS:

20. a song that empowers you

It gotta be Dead! by My Chemical Romance:

This album was what got me through all the shit that happened when I was 15+ and especially this song always made (and still makes) me feel so good. I often listened to my old mp3 player while walking to school and back home and every time this song came by, I just felt like nothing can harm and that life FINALLY was so great! It’s so energetic and still makes me feel that living is actually super awesome.

26. a song that taught you a lesson

Hmmm. I think I will answer to this with Dusche by Farin Urlaub.

That thumbnail is terrible but... And why did I choose this song? Well, I’m all for the sound what comes to music and I’d say at least 80% of all lyrics go way over my head. I just don’t have the skills for understanding poetry and also very poetic lyrics make me go crazy. I hate not knowing and when I have to assume, guess and interpret something. I don’t want to guess but I wanna know what someone has actually thought.

Dusche was the first song that had lyrics that for the first time ever actually spoke for me. I probably saw some video with English subtitles a fan had made and it just blew me away because holy shit, people are capable of writing lyrics even I can understand??? And that way I realized I can like lyrics but only if they make absolutely no sense (aka are funny or somewhat crazy, like Dusche) or when they are written in a story form or sung from the 1st person view or to “you” or in passive - but only if I can get behind the idea there.

After Dusche, Farin’s song Porzellan followed. And one of my absolute favourites is Karten. So, Farin is one of the only few people whose lyrics I have been able to understand. I still don’t hear lyrics and don’t understand a majority of the lyrics my fave bands write, and I have understood only a couple of Bela’s lyrics and I’m not sure if I’ve understood any of Rod’s lyrics. It’s not even about the language barrier anymore really, it’s just the topics or wordings I cannot comprehend.

Thank you again for the ask! This was very interesting to ponder and answer to :)