#and the way this character is SO alfred coded is making me cry even more

[kingslionheart]

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. That's why bad things happen to me. It is about the sins of my father. And my sins.

[farshootergotme]

Can I just say thank you thank you. 👏👏👏

I grew up with the 2004 Batman cartoon and I have thought Dick and Bruce had a parental relationship whether it be father/son or Big brother/little brother it depends on the adaption.

I have just recently got back into Batman and into comics in general and I was honestly a bit shell shocked to see so much well adopted family incest which is just wow but I’m just numb to the internet at this point so nothing surprises me anymore.

What I can’t stand is liars, I swear these people who ship dick and Bruce together are just straight up in denial in some places just accept you’re shipping something taboo. Don’t lie to me about how much they hold a place in queer history which is greatly exaggerated given how it happen based on a lie by a quack and his horrible book note the beds were separate I checked the infamous comic panel it’s just draw really badly but given how tight the deadlines for comic back in the day were I will forgive that poor artist. Also another book they source from the 2000s book written about the queer coding of Batman and Robin seems to really like to leave out the fact that Dick is a child and is written as one. No matter what gen he was written as young lad with hobbies similar to that generation and time period mostly.

Like yes at the time it was done because homophobia but don’t pretend there wasn’t another issue aka it would be the grooming of a minor like for context homosexuality was see as connected to pedophilia. Like seriously when I was looking into this topic, it honestly felt like telephone because how much the original context of the panel was lost like seriously does no one check sources anymore.

Another thing they don’t bring up is how in the 1940s adopting was very uncommon and seen as weird to many it wasn’t as accepted back then which is why ward was used because that was more acceptable back then. It’s also the reason why Jason was adopted by Bruce because it was more acceptable when he was created. Also it was such a non issue to the writers at the time that even though technically Dick wasn’t adopted by Bruce on panel he still treated as one by the writers mostly before Marv Wolfman decided it make for interesting story to have Bruce not adopted Dick and have Dick have a whole hang up on it and is confused by why Bruce didn’t at that time.

Like literally I am tired of people claiming Dick doesn’t want to be adopted by Bruce or that he never wanted him to his father to him it’s simply just not true although it is complicated. Like Dick won’t call Bruce dad but in his eyes as he got older he saw Bruce as a father figure as well as his second dad and Bruce has always seen Dick as like a son and to his actual son blood or no blood for crying out loud he bloody raised him along with Alfred for over ten years like how could Dick not develop a parental bond with him and Alfred ahh. He may not be father of the year but he still cared and look after him all those years like no wonder Dick felt hurt in the original Marv wolfmen story when he wasn’t adopted.

Now, I will say in the early adaption of Batman and Robin and even the silver age to an extent. Did betray them as brothers because well the age gap was closer in 1966 version and late 70s cartoons of them so I can see why older fans can see it that way and the silver age mostly do a big brother little brother dynamic with them. While golden age seems to flip flop and if they were father/son or Big brother/little brother and the Bronze Age they went to father/son by the end because that was probably more interesting to write. Like a son repelling against his overly critical and overprotective father figure was probably relatable to lot of teens and young adults reading Dick stories at that time. Then the rest of eras after that just settled with them being Father/son duo mostly. We don’t talk about Devin weird ass takes in their relationship I swear she is just inserting herself in some characters just to be creepy towards Richard and well she nearly destroyed Oliver character by writing him being weird about Richard when he was Robin which was just yikes.

I also just find it so gross how she took a very reserved and very ace coded character like Dick Grayson and sexualised him, like making his exotic and making him overly sexual is just huge yikes to me and making him Romani because circus is such a huge stereotype and quite harmful. I have such mix feelings about Richard being romani because of how it was done and Tom Tyler has done a poor job in my opinion as well. Like originally Dick was just pure American then his mother became european notable french in one of them which makes more sense to me. I don’t know, I will eat my socks when it’s done well which would be wonderful but right now it’s just no to me. Also, why Richard like what just because he’s sexy Devin and he is romani because circus. Like my ass is as white as snow but even I know that is a weird ass take and honestly fetishy in nature I feel.

Which leads to me being so weary of people who do use it because like yes some people do it so well take notes writers at DC. But others well… I feel just sexualise him for the sake of it and I get very suspicious of people who make draw Dick overly feminine or straight up make him the wife in the relationship. It just makes my trans man heart nervous because usually they also ship Richard with older man (Bruce with him as well probably…) which in Canon he has called creeps and acts super uncomfortable around them. Like whatever ship your taboo ships just keep a safe distance from me okay. It just sadden how Richard is written as overly sexual and slutty like that is not my boy. 😭

I think the reason it also upset me so much is Bruce in a lot of ways is like my dad when he is written as a well meaning father figure. I relate to Dick being the eldest of many siblings and also my Dad is my stepdad but he has raised since I was nearly one. I know it’s not the same but to me he is my father and nothing will change that. It’s why I can’t stop people who act like Bruce and Dick aren’t father/son because well he’s not adopted by law so it’s doesn’t count but to Bruce already is and honestly I just wish in modern adaption just get adopted as a early teen at this point. Like even modern DC doesn’t hide or exclude Dick Grayson is Bruce Wayne eldest son and I’m so happy for that. (Even though he has been adopted by law but as an adult but I digress.)

I will shot myself mentally if I see another person claim it is DC heteronormative doing their relationship like shut up. You who says this bs you clearly don’t care about queer history or adoption history in general and it’s so harmful how people try to undermine adopted families like that. Like seriously ship what you like just don’t pretend it isn’t taboo as all hell. 😤 Also, anyone who claims this don’t you dare call young queers homophobia because they’re saying how it is. You don’t see people defending pedophilia and incest in Greek mythology do ya.

(Then I think in my head how strange it always the ace coded characters that get sexualised or made the secretly horny seductress/playboy type food for thought.) 🤔

Oh apologies for the kinda rant there but this honestly this has been bothering me about the bat fandom. I will say I’m still a noob when it comes to comic book history and I haven’t read most of Dick and Bruce books but I have done my best to do my homework on them and the rest of Batman history and it members. I have honestly only read modern books like world finest and short teen titans spin off book. I’m currently pre order Mark Waid latest book Batman and Robin year one which I am so excited for truly he is saving me given me some good Father/son moments with Dick and Bruce. Also maybe the new Nightwing which I hope will be good, I read TT run online free because I’m poor :p and it was so boring, Richard just feels so bland in that book. Like I will give TT credit their some good panels and moments but that’s just it. My inner Dick Grayson fanboy is showing ha ha. 😅

Anyway, sorry my rambling but honestly this fandom baffles me sometimes.

I have nothing to add—you said it all. Loved the rant and I agree with all of it! Thanks anon!

[zahri-melitor]

Oh my god, Gotham Knights #26. I’m screaming, crying, throwing up.

Just this. This is so damn crunchy. It’s a reminder that the core of the post-Crisis Batfamily revolves around the dynamics and dance of tensions between Dick, Babs and Tim, and how each of them relate to Bruce.

Dick’s on the upswing of his relationship with Bruce, after the adoption and the two of them hammering a bunch of issues out.

Tim’s at a low point where he’s been frozen out and deliberately hurt. Bruce revealed his identity to Steph! Plus Alfred, who’s been staying with him to punish Bruce, had just announced he’s going back to the manor, leaving Tim even more alone.

Babs is in one of her “I’m here for the rest of you; Bruce is aggravating me by being high handed again” phases (admittedly that’s…her default position unlike the other two).

And wow does the way the three of them negotiate the debate over “did Bruce kill someone” just show off both their best and worst character traits (and also they’re all acting way more adult than Bruce, which isn’t a surprise, but what can you do).

Tim and Dick talk! Tim worries Dick is a jumper! They find out they have different opinions on Did Bruce Do It!

(I just want to EAT UP the implication that Tim is worried that Dick might be about to attempt suicide over the fact Bruce killed someone, especially just after the whole ‘killing Joker’ situation)

Dick is Extremely Offended Tim might think Bruce Did It. So what does he do? Go off to talk it through with Babs.

Babs gives Dick the reality check that Bruce has been in one of his push-everyone-away loner modes again and that Dick off in Blüdhaven isn’t having to face it personally, but Batman isn’t even patrolling with Robin right now. Also that Tim’s experiences with Bruce are necessarily different to Dick’s.

When suddenly… Tim arrives to ALSO thrash this conversation out with Babs (They are such mirrors of each other I swear).

Dick takes the opportunity to try and touch base with Tim and find common ground, leading to one of the best/most devastating pages of the Dick & Tim relationship at this point.

Dick is trying to make his baby brother feel safe. Dick would do anything for Tim. Tim however is all too aware of how hollow this promise is, as well meaning as the sentiment is, because they’ve lost people before. (And as I noted, Dick’s actually still in a GOOD cycle with Bruce while Tim really isn’t)

Which leads to THIS angst.

Tim believes in Dick. He can get by just trusting in the detective work he’s been taught and knowing that Dick holds to the Code (and we are LITERALLY only 3 months real time on since Last Laugh, Tim you have phenomenal levels of belief in Dick). Dick however, has that same level of trust in BRUCE, and so can’t cope with Tim not also feeling that way.

(And then Dick goes off to cry to Alfred because he also needed reassurance)

God I love all three of them so much it’s hard to describe. They’re so functional together even when they’re fighting as they all, at their core, trust each other implicitly.

(Alfred and Leslie have some very meaty conversations together and apart also in this, when Gotham Knights was on its game it was one of the best Bat books out there)

Finally: Babs is not having a great time here either, as she’s having to coordinate and run the investigation on Vesper Fairchild’s murder without any assistance from the primary suspect.

Working out some anger issues there, Babs? (Robin #99)

[swimmingleo]

Harry Styles and Two Loves - A love that dare not speak its name.

‼️Disclaimer I am in no way an English literature expert or student for that matter and can barely organize my thoughts but I’ll try my best. If something doesn’t make sense or is regretful thinking please tell me‼️

Basically Harry is a fervent reader that does not limit himself to Buk*wski and Mur*kami though for some reason he loves to bring up those dudes. Queer literature seems to play a big role when it comes to his inspiration and I love that about his music. A good example is his Shakesqueer Sweet Creature madness. But another one that I hold close to my heart are the parallels he draws with Alfred Douglas’ poem, Two Loves.

Here is the full poem. Give it a read if you can because I won't break it down verse by verse for this post sorry :(

To make it short, the poem is about the narrator (let's say Douglas) wandering in a garden where he meets a young man that turns out to be his lover. For context, Alfred Douglas was very much queer and in a romantic relationship with Oscar Wilde. Both developed their own coded language to express their love and ''sexual tendencies'' through their art (been this way foreverrr will we ever leaarn). However they were not always so sneaky about it and Two Loves in particular was so in your face that it was used against Wilde to prove his homosexuality in trial. He did get away with it this time. Here is his defense. Blueprint of denials. No iPhones at the time.

In Two Loves, two different personifications of love introduce themselves to Douglas and his lover:

The first love is loud and cheerful and sings about pretty women and men that love the said pretty women.

The second love is discreet, almost erased by the other’s presence but is beautiful and draws the attention of the narrator.

Obviously the first love is Heterosexuality, the one that is openly praised by society and the second is Homosexuality who is bullied into silence by Heterosexuality if he tries to speak. The poem ends with Homosexuality saying "I am the love that dare not speak its name." Yeah. And isn’t that the story of H’s career.

HS1 opens with MMITH which ends on "We don’t talk about it, it’s something we don’t do". And from there follows SOTT, "We don’t speak enough". And right after we get the very loud, very explicit and very well documented Carolina. So far the album narration goes "There is something painful going on but we can’t talk about it, I say ‘we’ because there is a you and I and yeeEEAAH THIS GIRL I MET ONCE GETS A WHOLE SONG THE WORLD DESERVES TO KNOW HOW GOOD SHE FEELS FOR A LADDY LAD LIKE ME ALSO HER NAME IS TOWNES YOU CAN CHECK FOR YOURSELF SEE IF SHES REAL I LOVE REAL WOMEN AS IN WOMEN THAT EXIST". Heterosexuality is loud and sings about pretty women right.

But then, THEN we get Two Ghosts. Which is the center piece of this whole post. I mean, the title... Two Ghosts//Two Loves Two hearts in one home ? Sick.

The parallel that hits the most is the physical description that is made of Douglas’ lover and of Homosexuality (which are technically two different characters in the poem).

Douglas’ lover / Homosexuality

Same lips red / Same eyes blue / Same white shirt

Red were his lips / His lips were red / His eyes were clear as crystal / His large eyes were strange with wondrous brightness / White as the snow / His cheeks were wan and white

In Douglas’ poem, it is meant to be understood that the young boy he meets first, his lover, is related to Homosexuality through their physical appearance. Douglas’ love is therefore inherently queer. With Two Ghosts, I’ve always wondered why Harry chose specifically to point out a white shirt as it comes across a bit generic and not really personal yk? But if you compare it to Two Loves, it checks out the recurrent descriptive color scheme: red, blue and white. In both works, red are the lips, blue are the eyes, and white is the ~envelopp. RIGHT. I suppose Harry didn’t feel like describing his lover with pale white skin since it’s brown with lemon over ice when under summer skies so he went with a plain white shirt instead.

I’m not going through a whole analysis of Two Ghosts yet I can safely say that it deals with unspoken words. Not saying things is a recurrent theme in H’s songwriting but within the album, Two Ghosts is the first song that deals with it through the undeniable prism of romantic love. Right before with Carolina, H had no issue being straightforward and wanted to "scream and shout it out", but with Two Ghosts he’s tongue tied and doesn’t say what he really means. Communication issues go on with the following track Sweet Creature, btw may I just:

But oh, Sweet Creature (!), Sweet Creature

Would he […] cry "O sweet creature!", Othello

I cried "Sweet youth…, Two Loves

Queer Literaturry is going wild(e).

Expanding this post with Sweet Creature allows me to speak about the garden metaphor. In lyric poetry, the expression of emotions is often done through nature. It is a process that Harry seems pretty fond of when singing about love (ie Olivia, Adore You, WS, Canyon Moon and Sunflower are good examples) but it’s way more subtle with TG and SC. In Two Ghosts, nature is the moon, and in Sweet Creature it’s the garden.

Would you look at that, Two Loves happens to combine both:

Moon dances over your good side and this was all we used to need, Two Ghosts

Running through the garden oh where nothing bothered us, Sweet Creature

Flowers that were stained with moonlight / Alone in this fair garden, till he came unasked by night, Two Loves

For Harry, the night is where the moon enhances his lover’s beauty, when it’s just the two of them and they need nothing more than each other. The garden is where they run (free?away?), once again alone, unbothered. For Douglas, Homosexuality took form and began to occupy the garden at night, while Heterosexuality who thrives in the golden light (um I- nvm) wasn’t paying attention.

It is also interesting to note that Homosexuality is associated with the night but also with death. And he’s super pale. So like… A ghost ? ANYWAY.

The garden in Two Loves is where love happens, it is a piece of heaven. It’s elevated on a hill and untamed with flowers of various colors growing everywhere. There is sunshine and moonlight, there are "pools that dreamed" and by pools I assume the author means vernal pools which are habitats where flowers grow and oh look over there:

Nice ruffles on that white shirt by the way. Very Victorian.

Two Ghosts, 2017 Mularry so true

So yeah. I don’t want to go into full analysis mode but I find it all interesting. Once again, Two Loves holds a great significance regarding the Oscar Wilde’s lore, and Harry is probably very familiar with anything Wilde related (don’t even start) and by that I think about the Carnation business.

I’ll just conclude with that quote from Maurice by E.M Forster whom I love very much:

"I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort."

[wolf-and-bard]

The Geraskier divorce attorney AU of my dreams (hear me out):

-Geralt doesn't have regulars. Of course, he doesn't have regulars, he's a divorce attorney, a good one at that; sure sometimes there are clients that hire him twice because of mistakes or short-lived marriages, or he will have the odd person whose ex-partner he once helped, but in his ten-year-career, he's never once had a person come to him more than twice

-He has never married. The few long-term relationships he had didn't amount to anything in that regard and perhaps his job has spoiled the whole affair for him; there's never been a need either, he has his daughter Ciri, has his horse Roach which he rides on weekends, he couldn't be more content (or so he thinks)

(-Jaskier knows that many people would and do call him a whore, an adulterer, but he isn't. He is a romantic, a fall-in-lover, a dreamer, a free spirit. Which is why he gave himself the name 'Jaskier' (much more befitting of his character than Julian, what a common name) and why he tends to end up at the altar... more often than is strictly normative)

-The first time Jaskier enters Geralt's office, he acts as though it's the beginning of a Broadway show. He walks in, stands in the middle of the room and opens his arms wide. "Good day," he twitters and flashes Geralt the brightest grin. Geralt raises his eyebrows, but he isn't about to turn away a guy who looks affluent enough he can charge him a little extra. "Hello?" - "Julian Alfred Pankratz, call me Jaskier." Jaskier settles into the chair opposite Geralt's desk and puts his leather-clad feet up on them. Geralt pushes them off and asks: "Mr. Pankratz, what can I do for you?" - "Ah yes. My lover and muse, the Countess de Stael, has left me for another. The problem is that we got married just last month and I'm afraid she is going to bleed me dry if I don't have a proper attorney. You've been recommended to me by a friend. What do you say? Help out a fool?" What? Countess? Well. "Fine," Geralt says. "Let's talk fees."

-Jaskier is a lot and when the divorce is through and all aspects of their working relationship are settled, Geralt calls his babysitter - Yen's always happy to jump in on short notice - and invites his colleagues Lambert and Eskel to get drunk. Jaskier was annoying and exhausting, constantly babbling and flirting with Geralt and, god, he never wants to see him again.

-Of course, Geralt sees him again. By the time he does - half a year after the first time - Geralt has almost forgotten about Jaskier and his stupid Countess and how utterly drained that job left him. Jaskier sounds cheerful on the phone, not at all the common cadence for Geralt's clients, and comes into the office with two Macchiatos and a box of donuts; disgruntled, but unable to say no to sugar, Geralt allows for them to have the coffee over their conversation about Jaskier's upcoming divorce and it makes it more bearable. "So," Geralt says. "Give me a rough outline of the situation." Just to be prepared. Jaskier grins, wipes a sprinkle off his lips and takes a sip of coffee. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but hear me out. So about two months after you helped me last time, the Countess de Stael gave me a call..." Geralt wants to smack the man when he is done his well-embellished tale. Jaskier is obviously being used. But he's not here to judge, he's here to do his job and Jaskier pays well.

-The third is a woman called Molly. Geralt never gets to meet her, Jaskier never talks about her, it is as though she doesn't exist as more than a job to get done, a contract to fulfill. Aside from the topic of his soon to be ex-wife, Jaskier is more talkative than usual. He asks questions about Geralt's personal life, talks about his job - of course he's a broadway performer, 'star' doesn't quite apply - lingers. Geralt finds he... doesn't mind this time. It's nice to socialize for a bit, even if it is within the general bounds of his job. Jaskier makes him laugh somehow.

-"You should give me a discount," Jaskier jokes when he's there to leave a paycheck for Geralt for the fourth time (that Countess again, Geralt doesn't understand how they got married three times in a span of two years (in addition to that Molly woman)). "I don't give out discounts," Geralt replies. - "Why not? I'm a loyal customer, you should have a system for this." - "Mr. Pankratz, do you realize that you are the only person I know who goes through this many marriages in such a short amount of time?" - "Always knew I was special," Jaskier laughs and leaves with a small wave.

-"Okay, Geralt, what the hell?" Lambert asks, strutting in after Jaskier's gone with a bad temper written across his face. "Who is this man? And why does he keep coming back? You know I can hear his voice from my office. So if, like, you're having some sort of strange workplace affair, cut it the fuck out." -  "He's just an idiot who keeps getting married," Geralt says and waves Lambert away. He doesn't add that he kind of starts to miss the idiot.

-Priscilla is very nearly a different story, something Geralt only finds out after the fact. Jaskier breaks down before their court appointment, sobbing into Geralt's shoulder that he can't do it, he can't let her go, why doesn't she want him; by that point Geralt has known Jaskier for almost four years and the thought of him staying in a marriage for longer than half of one makes him queasy, gives him little bursts of pain against his breastbone; in truth, he's glad Priscilla's leaving Jaskier, antsy that it took almost a year for them to split up; she approaches him after the divorce is through, while Jaskier's in the courthouse bathroom crying his eyes out. "Tell him I'm sorry," Priscilla says and Geralt scowls at her. "Tell him I wouldn't have left him if I didn't have to. Tell him to wait for me." She leaves and Geralt doesn't even know why he should be the one to relay that message to Jaskier and so he doesn't. Jaskier never mentions her again.

-The sixth time is the Countess de Stael again and Geralt already prepared his case from the e-mail Jaskier sent ahead. The last three times all went in favour of the noblewoman who was able to protect her fortune, but Geralt thinks he can make a case for emotional manipulation and get Jaskier at least a sizable indemnity. "Mr. Pankratz," Geralt says when Jaskier comes for their appointment.  "Are you ever going to call me Jaskier?" Jaskier replies with a sigh and drops into the chair. His hair is tousled, there are deep half-moons under his eyes which look like he spent the whole night crying. Geralt's heart feels bruised, but he can't get involved dammit. "That would be inappropriate," he grunts. They get to work and Jaskier walks out with a broken-heart and a swollen bank account.

-"When will you give up on that woman?" Geralt asks when Jaskier saunters into his office one Friday, not three months after the last divorce. It's late afternoon and Geralt's ready for a weekend of watching Disney movies with Ciri, but Jaskier's always a sight for sore eyes these days. Not for the first time does Geralt consider asking him out for coffee, but the fact that he's only ever seeing Geralt because he's in need of a(nother) divorce somehow poses a barrier. "Now that is not very professional of you. To answer your question: right now. That's why I'm here." And for the first time with these two, it's Jaskier that wants the divorce, Jaskier that takes the initiative. He's only ever been the one to get dumped. Geralt's up all night thinking about that.

-For an entire year, Jaskier does not return and that annoys Geralt. He finds himself fretting, distracted, hoping Jaskier will turn up with another marriage to be dealt with, but he doesn't. The thought that Jaskier might have found someone he wants to stay with makes him physically ill. His code of conduct forbids him from using Jaskier's contact info though. Maybe this is for the best and anyway, Geralt is down to earth while Jaskier is... well, Jaskier. An emotional roller-coaster. He has his daughter and his horse and all is well. Only it isn't because Geralt managed to fall in love with Jaskier. (When Lambert and Eskel find out they laugh at him for two hours straight)

-Jaskier does turn up eventually, but not to get divorced again. He waits outside the building where Geralt works with two cups of coffee in hand and a tired smile. Geralt lets himself be led to a nearby bench, lets Jaskier speak. "I considered proposing to random strangers just to have another botched marriage for you to get me out of," Jaskier says. "But that would have been rather inconsiderate and there are easier ways to see you." - "I thought you might have found one that sticks," Geralt replies, tracing the rim of his coffee cup with a finger. "I might have."  Jaskier winks at Geralt and Geralt decides to throw caution to the wind. He leans over and kisses Jaskier's lips, then mutters, "I don't ever want to see you in my office again." - "And here I thought that your desk would make such a great hmph..." Geralt shuts him up with another kiss. It feels right.  

[coralcatsea]

re: America in doujin >.> so. I don't know how prevalent this knowledge is, but Japanese Fandom/Pixiv artists/J-fandom is Like That for a reason. If you read ukus doujin, you'll find Arthur gets the same treatment... the difference is he carries it better (imo). This does not exist in isolation and it has almost nothing to do with the actual characters, regardless of fandom.

The tropes seme and uke (not just positions top and bottom) are the way they are to appease Japanese censors. Or at least that's how they originated. The seme is *always* kind of a bastard and the uke is *always* kinda pathetic. (Obviously not literally always, but you get the idea). There's some element of dubcon almost 100% of the time.

So many moons ago, there were similar things in the west. Think of the Hayes code in Hollywood. More particularly, western publishers would publish queer literature, for example: lesbian romance novels, as long as one of the women died at the end and the other got married to a guy. This contributes to the whole "bury your gays" thing.

Japan is pretty homophobic. The dubcon elements, the toxic relationships, the cruel seme and the weak, feminine uke dynamics were originated so that male/male romances could be published but so that they uphold society's stereotypes about those romances. If you want your doujin published, if you want to get paid for your work, you would also have to follow these guidelines (however official or unofficial) as a fanartist.

And even if the tropes aren't as enforced or as relevant, they still shape the portrayal of male/male romances and ships because... well, now, they are tropes. Tradition. What readers expect. They are, to some extent, self-perpetuating.

>.> anyway that's why America's always a dick when he tops in doujin. In ukus ones he's a total cry baby virgin most of the time XD I hope this helped give some context. It frustrates the hell out of me too

Yeah, I've heard about that stuff before! I just...graaahhh. 😂 I feel like if they're literally just fanworks they should be able to get away with more, and even if they've become tropes, there are so many better tropes to explore. I can't fathom how such a dynamic would be appealing enough to stick with, but ehh, it is what it is.

I just felt the need to rant a little because I recently read some old doujins after so long of not doing so and felt like I was slapped in the face, ahaha. These days people are a lot better about not making Alfred super mean and insensitive regardless of whether he tops or bottoms, though, thank goodness.

[nyacat39]

So I get bored at work a lot, and normally when I have someone to talk to I can filter ideas and shit to them so I can refine the ideas I have for fanfics or stories in general and keep them relatively sane….

But for the past year that hasn’t happened so I have crossover fic ideas where you would never even think of the potential crossovers or settings. I have yet to start writing these ideas (yet) but I’m gonna share them here and if I ever do write these stories I might post the first chapters here and then the links to the AO3 and FanFiction.Net for the rest of them.

The first one is a Miraculous Ladybug Kingdom Hearts crossover. Okay normal thought process, the miraculous holders being keyblade wielders or like Sora going to this world or something right? Nope fuck that, Vanitas after basically dying in KH3 gets reborn there as Miranette’s twin brother and shit changes. We are entering crack treated seriously territory with this story, as well as Vanitas redemption. I have been rewatching the Miraculous Ladybug series to take notes on what would change in each episode or if some of them would even happen at all with Vanitas being there!

Big events that may definitely happen: Vanitas blowing up at Chloe. Adrian having a friend in this dark boy from Fencing Club(?). “He was a skaterboi” Vanitas. Miranette being less stalker like and getting a bit of a chill pill. Vanitas: “Sis come on, we know I’m supposed to be the evil and less responsible twin here. You’re making me look like the good one here!” Mom: “Don’t think you’re not in trouble as well young man.” Vanitas “And all is back to normal.” And still more.

Likelihood of this story being made: Already planning out the first chapter that dives into the twins childhood before the series starts. Might take a bit though. But this is one I’ve been thinking about the most and longest.

The next one is an idea of possible one shots/short stories of a crossover between Batman and Devil May Cry. Normally people think “Dante meets DC hero’s/villains”….. NOPE Complete AU where the twins and their mom were attacked by demons way earlier, Yamato was used to get them to safety by sending them to another world (whoops) Eva still dies but Dante and Vergil are adopted by a not yet Batman Bruce Wayne. Twins are four when they get into his care and don’t entirely remember much of their home.

Ideas include: little snippets of a vaguely normal life with Bruce learning to parent much earlier on, and Alfred learning much quicker on how to deal with the twin terrors. Vergil “So am I to expect a father at my violin recital? Or the Batman and whatever criminal he’s fighting that night?” Bruce “I’ll try to make it.” Dante “Ooh that’s code for Batman bro. Harsh.” Entertaining the idea of the twin demon Robins that seem to only part time due to life and stuff. Can you all not see the potential familial fun/chaos of all the Robins and Dante and Vergil just acting like brothers and getting on each other’s nerves?

Potential of this being made: Kinda? Like I tried writing it a while back but I haven’t touched it in a while. Working title is Sons of the Dark Knight.

Next idea is one I’m still refining and working on. It’s basically a Bleach, Overlord crossover and I’ve been on this idea for about two weeks now. Basically it’s a story that has two different variants but I’m leaning more towards one of them then the other for convenience, but I’ll get to the main points of it first. How many here have played Bleach Brave Souls? Well for those that haven’t there’s like alternative forms for some characters for like different events and stuff, but the one I’m focusing mostly with is Spirit Society designs. Mostly 4 in specific and well I was planning out an OC that makes NPCS for Nazarik based on them (cuz if you ask me Spirit Society matches the kinda them of Inhuman NPCs of Nazarik) but sadly she kinda dies leaving them alone.

Still planning out moments and stuff so it’s a little to jumbled up together at the moment with nothing to planned out. However like I said I’m still working on it mentally and will definitely have a bit more focus for it eventually.

Possibility of being made: Maybe…. Just maybe…

Aaaand those are the big fanfics I’ve been thinking about for a year now. Should I write them? Do one of you guys wanna try writing them (I’m okay if you do just send me a link and I’d love to read it) either way just thought I’d share what my mess of a mind can be like.

[realitywarpinq]

(reposting bc tumblr removed my post from the da tags and I’d really love to know other people’s thoughts on Thomas and O’Brien bc I wasn’t here when s1&2 were airing so missed all the fandom stuff)

I had a lot of thoughts about this and in trying to put them into words I had even more and yeah needless to say it got quite long so… anyone who wants to read some character analysis and my thoughts about why Thomas and O’Brien’s relationship played out Like That pls see below the cut!

I think if Siobhan Finneran had planned to stay on the show we might’ve got a better arc for the two of them. S3 to me plays entirely like, upon hearing she wanted out, jf scrabbled around for a way to make her exit organic because he hadn’t previously considered O'Brien ever leaving Downton. Then, for lack of something better, he discovered a great old plot unsticking device, Homophobia.

O'Brien displays two key ‘positive’ traits throughout three seasons - 1) loyalty and 2) the softer side of her that appears when looking after those she cares for/is sympathetic to (s1 Cora miscarriage - though ofc there’s a large element of guilt to that - s2 Cora’s spanish flu, Mr.Lang’s ptsd and s3 when Alfred arrives)

While O'Brien’s 'blood is thicker than water’ ideology towards the Alfred/Thomas situation makes sense for her character, I’ve always seen the progression of s3 as an absurd overreaction. I mean, while it would be frustrating that your friend was unwilling to help give your nephew a leg up in his profession it’s like… not the end of the world? And Thomas has a point - he worked hard for years to earn his position and Alfred barely knows where to put the serving spoons.

Thomas actively sabotaging Alfred’s work (ruining Matthew’s jacket) is definitely something to fall out over, but trying to have him exposed, fired, arrested and sentenced to years of hard labour???? Hello???? A Bit Much, perhaps??? Also, from whom do we think Thomas learnt to behave this way in the first place??

She’s a ruthless person who will use anything against someone to achieve her goals - in this case revenge and humiliation. To get Thomas to make a move on such an performatively masculine and heterosexual man is the ultimate power play. It communicates that even though they aren’t friends anymore Thomas still listens to what she has to say. She’ll always be the wiser of the two, like she’s been the puppet master behind their schemes, and as much as he thinks himself too smart to deign to help Alfred, she can manipulate him as easily as she would someone who hasn’t spent years as her accomplice (and should know exactly what she’s like and capable of.)

If Siobhan hadn’t been leaving the show this would’ve been the perfect “checkmate” moment for her. It’s the ace in her deck?? (idk anything about cards) it’s her final move. She’s clearly known about Thomas’ sexuality for years and this is her saying “See how easily I can use this against you? Exactly so get back in line.”

Of course then Thomas could’ve pulled out his trump card, the soap. And then O’Brien would choose whether or not to call his bluff, ultimately settling on shifting the power dynamic in their relationship to more equal footing - if it wasn’t such a terrible secret for her I honestly think she’d be impressed by his threat. She’d underestimated him and it appears he’s actually learnt well.

So, in this bad timeline in which she left the show, when Jimmy wants to put the issue to bed and she seems hell bent on seeing Thomas behind bars, that’s the part where it all seems excessive to me, stumbling into ooc behaviour.

But they had to raise the stakes in such an ooc way in order for the wedge between them to be irreparable because she HAS to leave. Since s1 they’ve been thick as thieves, and how do you break a bond that strong? Betrayal of the highest order, which is not something we’ve seen to such a degree from O'Brien until now. It’s vicious and unrelenting, and comes right after we’ve been introduced to a more empathetic side of her in s2. A backwards step for her character. It’s totally fine for characters to go forwards and backwards in their progressions as people, in fact it’s more realistic that way, but she runs away to India and is never seen again.

We know O'Brien has been at Downton a long time from the way everyone talks about her, and in explicit canon Thomas has been there for ten years at this point. So how could such a fiercely loyal person do such a complete 180 on the only friend she’s seemingly ever had, downstairs or up?

Because of this it’s only at this point that I truly cry bad writing. Everything up until then could possibly be worked out between Thomas and O'Brien - they’re both strong-willed, goal oriented people with very specific moral codes and loyalties, they know how it is; cross them and they have to get you back somehow.

It’s just a shame that Siobhan wanted to leave, really, even though I completely respect the decision.

I’m so curious as to where Thomas’ storyline would’ve gone if she’d stayed. Baxter never would’ve replaced her and he would’ve had at least one friend/ally during the conversion therapy/depression/social isolation storyline that led to *what it led to*, if they’d even decided to go down that route at all with Thomas still having someone on his side. I also wish we’d got to learn more about O'Brien as a person, seen the more human sides of her that we got glimpses of in s2. There would’ve been ways to do that without reducing or overdoing the antagonistic role of her character.

tldr; looking at their relationship in s1&2, I think the only reason it went wrong was because it had to. If it wasn’t for Siobhan Finneran leaving I think Thomas and O’Brien would’ve had some entertaining ups and downs but ultimately stayed friends or at least allies. Maybe they could’ve even helped one another achieve lives outside of service if the show wasn’t written by an upper crust Tory who punishes any of his working class characters who dare to dream above their station and repeatedly uses gay suffering as a narrative device ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jasontoddiefor]

Summary: In which I fulfill every college student’s dream and make Bruce Wayne my Glucose Father.

AN: Self-insert challenge done with @theauthor97 . Requirements: minimum 500 words and the SI must be good friends at least with the canon character.

It started when he was twenty-one, broke, and having a minor break down about his student debt in a small café near the Gotham U campus. Elias had failed one of his summer classes, which theoretically speaking didn’t have much influence on his further studies, he could just pick it up again next semester, but he’d moved out of his family home because of not so accepting family members, his cat had died and he was just having a bad body image day all around.

So, crying in a café it was.

Most of the other visitors had started looking very uncomfortable about his outbreak, not that Elias noticed, but eventually he was pulled out of his misery by the sound of someone moving a chair away from the table and sitting down right next to him.

“Hey, is everything- can I help you?”

Elias looked up into the face of a man who, standing up, must be at least two feet taller than him, and whose right eye was looking pretty bruised.

“Not unless you’ve got like ten grant for me,” he replied and promptly started hiccupping again.

It just wasn’t fucking fair. Couldn’t his dumbass of a professor waited one more week to announce the exam grades?

“Oh.”

The man was still there when Elias looked up, now awkwardly putting his hand on his shoulder while setting a rainbow colored cake right in front of him.

“There, there.”

Elias stared at his hand, his brain trying to catch up to the fact that some random stranger was trying to make him feel better. He couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Bright and too high-pitched and a tad over the top, but it was the best he’d felt all day.

“Better?” The stranger asked.

“Better,” Elias replied. “Thank you, - uhm.”

“No problem,” the man said, falling into an awkward silence. A few moments passed, Elias still staring at the man, hoping he’d catch the verbal clue while the other most obviously did not.

“So…” He trailed off. “I’m Elias.”

The man blinked, incomprehensibility written all over his face until he finally introduced himself, though he looked almost a little delighted about the fact that he had to.

Weird.

“I’m Bruce. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Silence again. Elias started to eat the cake Bruce had brought him because there was nothing else to do to cover up the awkward tension.

Bruce didn’t really look like he knew what he was supposed to do either, but it wasn’t like Elias couldn’t relate. Conversations just sucked. You never knew what to say, especially to a random person who you just met.

“Mr. Elias, may I request something of you?”

Weird way of speaking, but his best friend had spoken Early Middle English for two weeks just to annoy a professor.

“Sure. I owe you one after that, don’t I?”

Bruce shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. I just did what every good citizen would do.”

The café had gone surprisingly silent, Elias only now noticed. Everybody seemed to be staring at them. Usually, he always imagined everybody’s eyes lingering on him, but right now he wasn’t so sure this was fake.

“Either way, shoot. How can I help you.”

“I need a date for the gala tonight due to some unfortunate circumstances, and I was wondering whether you had the time to spare. I just need a distraction for a short while, two hours max. I’ll pick you up, pay for a suit too of course, and bring you back home.”

Bruce frowned and appeared lost in thought for a short while. “Or maybe my butler will drive you home. I’m willing to accommodate for the stress I cause you. Would 2.000 dollars be enough.”

Elias stared at Bruce, who looked unreasonably calm and not crazy. Oh, gosh, was this a new villain? Was that the reason everyone was staring at them? Ever since that Bat-guy had shown up last year, Gotham’s criminals had apparently started to stick to aesthetics. Elias wasn’t particularly good at remembering faces, hell, he couldn’t even keep up with the local rich people.

“Or 4.000? I’ve never done this before, I’m not sure how much money is appropriate.”

“Appropriate for what?” Elias managed to stammer out. This was not how he had expected his day to go. Maybe he should have just stayed in bed.

“Going with me to the Wayne Charity Gala tonight. Alfred said I should get a proper date since I can’t take Dick because he’s having a sleep-over, but properly asking someone out is just a waste of time and recourses when I can hire someone to be my distraction. We enter the party, smile for the camera and when I say an agreed-upon code word, you pretend to faint so I can get out of there. How does that sound that to you?”

Wayne Charity Gala. A Butler. A kid named Dick of all things.

Holy fuck.

“You’re Bruce Wayne.”

And Bruce A Capital B Billionaire Wayne nodded seriously. “Yes. And I’m asking you to be my date tonight.”

“For money.”

“Yes.”

“And I only need to what? Smile and pretend to faint.”

“Yes, you even get to enjoy the good food.”

Slowly, this offer was starting to make sense, even though it actually didn’t. Real life was a bitch and this was too good to be true.

“Smile, faint, food, and I get 4.000 bucks for it – that’s all?”

And Bruce Freaking Wayne actually looked honest to god confused. “What more could there be? I mean. You could ask Alfred to pick up ice cream on the way back. That’s what Dick does when he’s awake enough still. Not more than one scope though.”

Bruce What Is Awkwardness Wayne looked Elias over like he was examining him. “I suppose you can have more than one.”

Elias was pretty sure he’d gone made somewhere in the last five minutes, but if this was actually true – fine. Alright. 4.000 bucks for not even a whole day’s work. If he ended up kidnapped by Bruce Weird Rich Man Wayne it was his own fault.

“Okay,” Elias agreed. “Alright. Sure. Sign me the fuck up. What do I gotta do?”

This was how it ended: They kept the act up for a rather long time. It was an enjoyable arrangement in which Elias could pay his debts and then afford to stop living on instant noodles while Bruce had someone as his date whenever he needed one. And if somewhere down the line Elias gets hired as an English tutor for Batman’s ever-growing army of Robins and Batgirls (“I’m not stupid, Bruce. I’ve got a PhD and you literally carry your fucking Batarangs everywhere.”), well, then that was just fate.

[daringyounggrayson]

Family Dinners

Ok so @flashhwing has this really cute headcanon that Dick and Wally have dinner together every night. They were also kind enough to let me take that sweet headcanon and angst it up a little bit

Warnings: Mentions of past abuse, character injuries and intubation

(AO3)

Wally always loved the idea of family dinners. He remembers being very little—maybe six or seven—and going over to his friend Jeremy’s house one day after school. He had stayed for dinner and Jeremy’s whole family was there. Both of his parents and his younger brother. It wasn’t this magical moment straight out of a movie, but it was . . . nice. And so, so different from the few family dinners he’s had. He doesn’t remember what they ate, but he remembers the atmosphere of the room. They were relaxed and the parents asked all of them about their day and they listened. There was no yelling or tenseness, just a family eating dinner together.

Jeremy didn’t see the novelty and kept asking to be excused so they could play outside before Wally had to go home. Wally remembers feeling nervous as he waited for the inevitable yelling, but it never came. Instead, Jeremy’s dad was smiling and shaking his head in what seemed like amusement, assuring Jeremy that there would still be time to play after dinner. After the second or third time, Jeremy’s mom pursed her lips and took a look at his plate, then told him to take three more bites.

Jeremy shoveled the forkfuls into his mouth and then they ran outside to play, Wally offering a quick thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Whoever as he went. Later, he saw the couple talking quietly as they did the dishes and put away the leftovers together. They both had soft smiles as they caught up and listened to music—and Wally knew right then that he wanted that. He wanted the family dinners, wanted the shared clean up as soft music played in the background. He wanted the normalcy of happy, comfortable family dinners.

He didn’t really think about how he didn’t have family dinners until that night. A lot changed that year, though. He started to realize that his family wasn’t normal. He realized that other dads didn’t hit their kids and threaten their moms. He realized that family dinners that ended in broken glass and tears weren’t normal, and fuck, he just wanted a little piece of normal.

When Aunt Iris started dating the guy who would soon become Uncle Barry, he got to see that little piece of normal more often. He spent a lot of time over there. They had happy family dinners and routine clean up with soft music playing in the background just like Jeremy’s family. Wally knew that those dinners didn’t happen every night, but they always happened when Wally was around, and he got the feeling that they happened a few nights a week even when he wasn’t there.

Dick had family dinners, too. Alfred made them dinner every night, and Bruce was there almost always. Dick used to joke that Alfred forced him into it and that if Dick hadn’t been there waiting, Bruce wouldn’t leave his study. Wally would laugh, never once bringing up how much he wanted that. Wanted family dinners, wanted a dad who would force himself to do things just because his kid would be there.

He never got them, and he’s still working on accepting the fact that he never will.

He’ll never forget that first family dinner he was invited to. He and Dick had just been kids back then, far too young for dating. It had been intimidating, eating chicken across the table from the Batman, but Dick brought that feeling of comfort and normalcy Wally’s come to associate with other people’s family dinners. He talked about his day and traded dumb jokes with Wally that made Bruce’s lips twitch, but mostly they ate and sat in each other’s company.

He had a lot of family dinners at Dick’s after that. The first time after they started dating had been weirdly anxiety-inducing, but Dick had later assured Wally that it was just him and that Bruce didn’t hate him. Though, looking back, it had still had those key components of family dinners. Maybe even more so with Bruce acting as a protective father. (Another thing Wally would never get.)

Now that he’s older, he thinks about family dinners a little differently. He still looks at them with this sense of longing, but he’s also able to step back and analyze why he feels the way he does about them. Where it’s all coming from. And yeah, he knows those dinners won’t make every night magical or ensure that he’ll have a happy (healthy, safe) relationship, but getting to spend every evening catching up with and just being with someone he loves sounds amazing.

When he and Dick decide to move in together, it dawns on him that he’s now in a position where he can have that if he wants. And he does.

The two of them just finished dinner and are currently doing the dishes—that soft music playing in the background and those small smiles pinned on their faces—when he lets it slip. “I really like getting to spend time with you like this. We should do dinners together every night.”

“Aww, babe that’s really sweet,” Dick says, drying off a pan with a towel. “We should definitely do it as often as we can.”

“No.” Wally shakes his head firmly. “Every night. I mean it.”

“Look, I just don’t think it will work realistically. I mean, we’re vigilantes. We both have day jobs, you have school. It just won’t happen every night. Maybe we move our goal to twice a week?” Dick tries to comprise.

Wally wraps his arms around him, pulling Dick close against his chest with still damp hands. “You eat dinner every night, right?”

Dick huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, usually.”

“Then I’ll just eat whenever you eat dinner. I don’t care if it’s six p.m. or three a.m., I want to make time for this.”

“Wally,” Dick starts with a sigh.

“Look, relationships take time and work, and I know how both of us can get; if we don’t make it a priority, we’ll push it off until we solve all of the world’s problems. Dinners are just one way to prioritize us, and we are so worth the effort.” Wally turns Dick around and leans his forehead against his. He ends his speech in a quieter voice, saying, “Plus, I really like knowing I’m going to get to be with you at the end of the day.”

Dick tilts his head up and catches Wally’s lips in a kiss. When he breaks, he nods and says, “Okay. We’ll make time for it.”

And they do. They don’t even miss when Dick is in space for three days (thank you video chat). It’s hard, and sometimes they eat dinner from hospital beds or rooftops. Dinner schedules are weird, and what food counts as dinner really cut it close some nights, but they do it anyway. They catch up, talk about whatever’s on their minds. Some nights they’re too tired to talk, but even just sitting with each other is enough to give Wally that now-familiar sense of warmth and calm.

Wally also learns a lot about Dick during those dinners. The third week into it, Dick had actually thanked him for talking him into it. Apparently, it reminds Dick of his parents; they had always made sure they ate dinner together, too. Even with their crazy performance schedules, they would find time to eat together, even if it was cold spaghetti on the porch at two in the morning with Dick fed and tucked into bed hours earlier.

Dick still has his family dinners at Wayne manor, too. A few times a month they go over and have dinner with everyone. It’s usually fine, but every so often, Dick and Bruce get into a fight. The first time it happens, it makes Wally unreasonably angry, like they were ruining something sacred. It isn’t until a few weeks after the second one that he realizes it’s because it reminds him of his own family dinners, the ones with his dad.

Dick found him crying in the living room that night. He tells him about the secret “family” dinners he never told anyone about. Dick holds him tight and listens and whispers loving promises to him that Wally clings to. Wally never said anything back when they were kids, but he’s sure Dick had suspected; that night on the floor was just confirmation. And it feels good to finally acknowledge it out loud. It’s out there and real now, and Dick is still here. Things are going to be okay, and now Wally is getting those family dinners that Dick tells him he always deserved.

One night, Wally is at the library with a few classmates, trying to finish up a group project. It’s mostly finished, but it’s due in two hours—so cutting it close. He and Dick haven’t eaten yet, and it’s looking like it will end up being a too-tired-to-talk kind of dinner.

Wally’s phone buzzes. He drags his eyes away from the laptop and slides his phone off the table to check it. He knows it’s going to be a message from Dick, and really, Wally is just expecting a picture of something funny he found on patrol. He usually does that when Wally is stressed with school and stuck in the library. Sometimes he’ll also send pictures of a finished dinner that will be waiting to be reheated when Wally gets back, but it’s still a little early for that.

He doesn’t get a picture tonight, though. Instead, what he gets two words: Home early

Those two words alone are code for “Something bad happened and you need to get to the cave now.” It’s so that, if something happens on patrol, they can get ahold of each other’s civilian identities without drawing attention to themselves. But Wally still knows what it means. He knows it means Dick is hurt. Badly.

Wally feels dizzy. “I need to go.” His voice sounds weird and his mouth is dry. He swallows and starts packing up his stuff.

“What do you mean? We still have like an hour left on this.”

“It’s fine.” Where are his keys? He knows he put them in the front pocket—where did they go?

“Is everything okay?”

“Don’t go, you’re the only one who knows what we’re doing.”

Screw the keys, he’ll leave his car here. Not that he was actually planning on driving all the way to Gotham anyway. “See you Tuesday.”

“Shit, he is actually leaving right now.”

He’s gone.

oOo

He calls Dick’s cell, but, unsurprisingly, no one answers. He tries one of his comms, but no one is on. Calling the cave is no good either. When he comes racing into the Cave, he finds Tim sitting on some sparring mats, hands gripping his hair like that alone is keeping him together. His Robin uniform is torn and covered in blood.

He should ask if Tim’s okay, he should make sure the kid’s okay. “Dick?” is all Wally can manage to croak.

Tim’s lip quivers. “I don’t—it happened so fast, I—” he shakes his head and his eyes are staring at a memory Wally can’t see. He sits on the mats next to Tim and they wait in silence.

oOo

He doesn’t know how long he and Tim sit there like that. Long enough for the adrenaline to start tapering off and make Wally yawn.

When Alfred comes out of the makeshift OR, Tim immediately tries to run past him and toward Dick, but Alfred grabs him by the shoulders and says something to make Tim head toward the showers instead. Then Alfred is walking toward Wally, but Wally can’t bring himself to stand and meet him halfway.

“Has Master Tim told you anything?” Alfred asks.

“No.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask. He didn’t even know Dick was going to be in Gotham tonight, and after getting a look at Alfred, he’s wondering what Dick’s chances of ever leaving Gotham again are.

“Alright then.” Alfred sits down next to him on the mats and fills him in.

Apparently, they had been breaking up an underground auction, but comms went down. Dick had gone to find Tim, but when he did, Tim was caught in a losing fight. Dick got him out, but not before a bigger group had gotten Dick down. Tim left to get Bruce’s help, and by the time they got back and found Dick, he was beaten unconscious and being auctioned off. He hadn’t been breathing when they got him back to the cave.

As far as injuries went, recovery would be long. One kidney had been hit so badly they had almost needed to remove it. On top of that, he had a bruised liver, a broken femur, a linear skull fracture, blood loss, a crushed left hand that might require more surgery later on, and then too many bruises and cuts to count. His chest got the worst of it, though: significant bruising, multiple rib fractures, flail chest, one punctured lung, and pulmonary contusions. He has a chest tube in and is intubated, and probably would be for the next few days.

And now Wally has to go in and see it.

Alfred had made sandwiches at some point, and somehow one has been pushed onto his lap. He has one of Dick’s hands trapped within his own, rubbing it with his thumb like that back and forth motion will remind Dick’s heart to keep beating.

He hasn’t eaten for hours and his stomach is starting to feel like it’s collapsing in on him. He rips off a piece of the sandwich and pops it into his mouth. He eats his dinner next to his boyfriend, but they don’t catch up and the silence is far from comfortable. He doesn’t really taste the food, just rips, chews, and swallows. Then repeats that mechanical process until it’s gone and his stomach is temporally silenced.

This is the worst family dinner he’s ever had. And he’s had a lot of bad ones.

oOo

“How’s your IV?” Wally asks the body lying in front of him. “Does it taste nutritious?”

It’s just him right now. Him and Dick. Bruce and Tim are on patrol, and Alfred is manning the comms. It’s day three of this, and Wally just misses him.

“Oh, mine is okay. Some kind of vegetable soup and bread with what you would think is too much butter. But really, is there such a thing?”

The monitors beep and Dick doesn’t smile around the tube.

Wally sets the empty bowl down on the table, then leans forward onto the bed, right next to Dick’s head. “You know, you promised me family dinners. You’re really going to quit, what, four months in? That’s not like you.”

The monitors beep and Dick stays still.

“I know you’ll be okay and you’ll get through this, ‘cause you’re you and I personally think you have some kind of contract with Gotham where in exchange for protecting her she protects you, but that’s not the point. The point is that I’m going to be here no longer how long it takes. We’re a team now.”

He looks over his shoulder, not quite sure why. Whatever he finds or doesn’t, he decides it’s safe to climb up onto the cot. He pushes himself close to Dick sets his hand on top of Dick’s hair. He reaches for his phone with his other hand and pulls up some music. He turns the volume down low, then settles the phone between their ears. He relaxes against Dick again, stares at him until a small albeit pained smile comes to his face.

“You’ll never guess what I found in the library earlier.”

oOo

Dick is on the ventilator for five days. Wally doesn’t leave the manor during that time, and Wally eats all of his dinners down there right next to Dick for every single one. He spends most of his time there with Dick, dinner or not, but he always makes sure to be there for dinner. He knows it must be ridiculous, but it’s habit. He finds he can’t eat dinner without Dick anymore. And maybe the routine will help Dick heal. Talking is supposed to help, right?

This has been the first time that talking to Dick hasn’t been easy. Part of that is that most of the time someone else is down there with them, the exception being dinner; everyone has caught on that that’s Wally’s time. Wally doesn’t know why it surprised him—house of detectives and all that. Everyone has carved out their own alone time with Dick, and everyone respects it. But being apart from Dick is hard, being with Dick is hard. It all comes down to the fact that while Dick’s body is there, Dick isn’t. And that’s what’s putting everyone on edge.

Needless to say, he doesn’t even have the energy to think or worry about the lectures he’s missing. He’s sure he received an angry email from his classmates about their project, but that’s for later-Wally to deal with. Right-now-Wally is watching his unconscious and unbreathing boyfriend.

That last part should change soon, though. Alfred started weaning Dick off the ventilator yesterday afternoon, just a few hours after he removed the chest tube. Dick’s lungs have been doing really well, too, so Alfred has decided it’s safe for him to come off of it.

“All right,” Alfred says as he puts on a pair of gloves. “Will you be staying for this, Master Wally?”

Wally nods and squeezes Dick’s hand a little harder. “Uh-huh.”

“Very well.” He turns to Bruce, tells him, “You can suction now.”

The procedure doesn’t take long, and Wally can’t help but grimace when they finally pull the tube from Dick’s throat. They put an oxygen mask on him and adjust the medication (again) so that it will be easier for him to wake up. The fingers on his right hand start twitching not even an hour later, but he’s still nowhere near consciousness. Wally sits and waits in a tense silence, Bruce and Alfred right across from him. They have no idea what to expect when Dick wakes up. He could be fine, there could be serious deficits, he could be vegetative.

These facts swirl around Wally’s head, but they don’t seem to have an effect on him. None of it will be real until it’s happened, and right now, Dick is just sleeping. (Just sleeping.)

Wally has switched to petting Dick’s hair when Dick’s arm suddenly jerks and his head turns to the side. Wally straightens and takes his hand away while Bruce leans forward, his chair squeaking against the floor in his haste.

“Dick?” Bruce asks, and he’s rubbing his thumb into the side of Dick’s wrist. “Dick, if you can hear me, open your eyes.”

“Nngh,” Dick mumbles through half-closed lips.

“Dick,” Bruce says, louder and firmer than before. “C’mon, chum, you need to wake up now.”

Dick’s eyes peek open, then fall again before rising again and focusing on the face in front of him. “Hhh.”

“Shh.” Bruce pushes Dick’s hair back. Tells him, “You’re alright. Does your throat hurt?”

Dick nods.

“You had a tube in for a few days. But you’re okay now.”

“Breathing hurts,” Dick insists, closing his eyes again and bringing his hands to hover shakily over his chest. And his voice, fuck, his voice is so quiet and barely there. Like it hurts too much to breathe deep enough to talk.

“Your chest took most of the damage. Broken ribs, flail chest, pneumothorax, bruised liver,” Bruce lists off. His eyes flick to his watch, then he stands. “I’ll get you something to help the pain.” He rests his hand in his hair for a moment, then Bruce looks over at Wally, saying, “Wally’s here.”

Dick follows his gaze and finds Wally. He reaches out his hand. “Waa.”

Wally just buries his face in Dick’s offered hand, kissing it gently and never letting go. “Thank god.”

Alfred checks Dick over, eases their worries by confirming that there are no signs of brain damage. The biggest problem will be preventing pneumonia, but with everything Dick’s chest has been through, there’s not much else they can do but wait and see. (And by see, Wally thinks they mean start treatment as soon as something looks suspicious.)

Just coming out of sedatives, Dick isn’t really with it. He’s in a lot of pain, though, and he falls asleep again pretty quickly. After his vitals remain stable for three hours, he gets switched over to a nasal cannula and Alfred says it’s okay to move him up to his bedroom. Wally couldn’t anticipate how relieving that little change in scenery would be.

oOo

Late that afternoon, Wally is just starting to doze off when he hears the sheets rustling.

He pushes himself off of the arm of his chair and sees Dick’s blue eyes scanning the room. “Babe, hey.”

“Hey,” Dick says with a smile, eyes focusing on Wally. His voice is still quiet and soft, both from exhaustion and the pain Dick must be in whenever he inhales.

Something makes Dick frown. “Did I miss dinner?”

“You’ve been out for almost a week, babe.” Wally frowns and blinks at him, thrown and concerned by the question. He woke up during Bruce’s designated time, and while he had still been in a lot of pain, Bruce had said he was coherent. Had things changed? Is something wrong? Where’s Alfred?

“I meant tonight,” Dick clarifies, nodding over at a tray where Wally’s dirty dishes are still sitting. Wally lets out a relieved breath as discreetly as he can. “But, yeah, I guess I missed a lot of dinners. Sorry about that.” He brings his hand up to rub at his throat.

“Don’t worry about it.” Wally pushes a strand of Dick’s hair back. “But—and this is just for the record—I ate dinner next to you every night, so, technically, our streak is still going. And you didn’t miss tonight’s dinner; that was just from lunch. Well, second lunch.”

Dick breathes a laugh through his nose, but it still makes him wince.

“Do you need anything?” Wally asks. “I can go find Alfred if you need more meds.”

“No,” Dick is quick to assure.

“Are you hungry?” Wally asks.

“I don’t know. I guess I should be.” Dick rubs his forehead with his non-broken hand. “Definitely nauseous, though. Morphine?”

“Think so,” Wally answers, peering over at the bags. “Alfred gave you some anti-nausea stuff. I take it it’s not doing anything?”

Dick is biting his lip and staring into space; Wally knows he’s not really listening anymore. “It was bad this time, yeah?”

“Yeah. Recovery is going to be a few months, and I don’t think Alfred is going to let you out of the manor anytime soon.”

Dick closes his eyes, shakes his head slowly instead of speaking.

“Do you want to rest some more?”

Dick shakes his head again.

“We could watch something, or—”

A knock on the door and Alfred steps in.

“Good afternoon, Master Dick. How are we feeling?” Alfred asks, a tray in his hand.

Dick looks over at him, shakes his head and mumbles something too quiet to make out.

“I know it hurts, sir, but you must try to take deep breaths.” Alfred inclines the bed a little more and then hands Dick a pillow. “Try placing this over your chest while you take some deep breaths; it will help with the pain.”

Dick does as he’s told, and while it doesn’t make him wince, it doesn’t look comfortable.

“Has the pain been tolerable?” Alfred asks. “It’s about time for your next dose, so now would be a good time to adjust it.”

“What you gave me last time was fine,” Dick says. Wally was told he asked for more when he woke up with Bruce, and that in itself says something. “Talking just hurts.”

“Yes, between your chest and the intubation, it likely will for a while longer. Is it in your throat or your chest?”

“Both, but more here.” Dick points to his chest, which the pillow is still covering.

“I brought up some ice chips and a throat spray. Would you like those now, too?” Alfred asks.

“Uh,” Dick looks over at the tray. “Just the ice, thanks.”

Alfred nods and starts checking Dick over while Dick soothes his throat with the cool ice. When Alfred finishes, he starts stacking Wally’s dishes onto the other tray and hands Dick his lunch. “Anything else?”

“Is Tim back yet?” Dick asks. He stayed home for school on Thursday and Friday, but Bruce has been forcing him to go since Monday. Dick hasn’t seen him yet, and the last time he did see him, he was pulling him out of a mob. So, understandably, he’s been a little anxious.

“Master Bruce should be back with him in less than twenty minutes.”

Dick nods, checks the clock.

“I’ll be back in an hour. Do call if you need anything.” And then the man is gone.

They end up putting on some nature documentary, and Dick does his best to eat a sufficient amount of food while breaking for the occasional deep breath. When Tim comes home, Bruce pops in to check on Dick and then he and Wally excuse themselves to give them some space. After that, it’s Alfred’s turn, and by the time everyone else comes back in, Dick’s sleeping again. He sleeps through the regular dinner time, so Wally snacks on an apple to tide himself over.

The others are having a pre-patrol nap and Wally is finishing up some reading for tomorrow’s class when Dick finally wakes up.

“Hungry?” Wally asks, snapping his book shut with a grin on his face.

Dick smiles back. “Starving.”

Alfred made some kind of noodle casserole for dinner. Easy to swallow and absolutely delicious. Seeing as Dick can’t really focus on breathing, eating, and a conversation right now, it’s one of those quiet dinners where they mostly just enjoy the other’s company. But it doesn’t matter, the shared dinner still makes Wally feel all warm and like Dick’s finally home.

When they’re done, Dick asks him to put on some music. Wally does, then he puts their dishes on the side table and lies down next to Dick. Wally tells him about all the weird things his family did while he was out, and Dick makes a comment every now and then, but mostly just listens to Wally talk. When he runs out of things to say, he pulls Dick a little closer and they just listen to the music and take each other in.

They have full bellies, small smiles, and soft music. For the first time in days, Dick is truly here and Wally is truly happy. Everything is as it should be.

[damian-lil-babybat]

I don’t know what to feel about this issue. First off, love the art. The artist got Damian to look like a child (his casual clothes is adorable here! gdi). That’s why this is much more painful to read.

On the onset of the premise -- underground secret prison, breaking ambiguous moral codes here and there -- I already get that this won’t end well with Damian. Someone’s gotta beat some sense to him, asap. That’s why I have high hopes with Jason.

For the record, I think it’s normal Damian regressed back again from pre-Tomasi run. Afterall, a lot of his support is gone.

First. He has lost faith with his father. I think its during the Justice League: No Justice Series, where Batman went along with Brainiac’s plan, which Robin did not approve of. So Damian declared that Teen Titans has nothing to do with the Justice League anymore. It’s more of an off-panel thing. Next thing happened, Justice League recruited all his team mates. Beast Boy is now in Titans. Starfire is with Justice League: Odyssey. etc. I think the only reason Wallace ‘Kid Flash’ got left behind is coz all the teams have speedsters already (even if one of them is gone…please let it be temporary). And no, I don’t think Batman nor the Justice League explained what their arrangements are either. It’s frustrating what can be read between the lines.

Next. Jon is gone off (aged) in Bendis’ Superman run. Dick is now Ric. Damian just pissed off Alfred in utter complete disappointment, which is worse.

It just felt like all his moral compasses and pillars are just non-existent anymore. He was left with no haven or someone to feel at home to, or even a place to belong. And for that to happen all at once paints a bleak picture that could actually lead to this…mess.

I think that’s why he turn to Jason. Because he’s family.

He trusted Jason first. And Red Hood’s alleged betrayal really struck a raw chord to Damian. I mean, I’m fine with Damian confronting Jason, but suicide..? No, this is just…ugh. Strapping a bomb to himself? poor taste dc *sigh. And them brushing this off as a so-called strategic move from Damian, when a frickin’ thirteen year old child threatened suicide..! At least address it properly! If a Robin pulls this thing off, regardless of who it was wearing that insignia, I know Jason would be enraged, but the way he just scoff at the threat as a non-issue irks me. I wish the beating he gave to Damian has a more, stop-this-bullshit you ingrown baby. You’ve just died recently, and I almost die trying to whip your ass off death hole. Its more insulting that way, but at least he showed he cared! Maybe not at Damian, but at Robin…at least.

Like wth (okay I could rant on this for hours…am I blowing this off out of proportions, because its just like what four-five panels? But it’s just disturbing, im sorry. this is just stretching everything i know about these characters i love)

And what’s with this fluctuating power dynamics with the batboys. Are we just gonna have suspension of disbelief everytime some fistfights among the bats happens. Damian has the strength of a grown man, and a known combatant at par with the best of LoA. And lately he’s been getting beaten by those he’s known to have already got beat (hah reminds me of Talia…please allow me to cry a little inside).

I know he’s a child, so I would accept it if his brawn and fighting skills depends on his mindset (well that’s my take anyway). So can you please already establish that first before pitting them with each other, so everything will makes sense for once?!

(PS. Djinn and Crush should be honest with each other already. I approve of Damian being the trigger for these two cuties to have their happy ending…just a fan musing, don’t mind me.)

Teen Titans Annual (2019)

Robin Wars (2015)

[reallyautomaticvoid]

Calling It: Good Intentions Chapter 3: There’s Tim!

Characters (in order of appearance in this chapter): Conner Kent, Bart Allen, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson

Chapter Summary:

Conner and Bart find Tim.  Or, rather, Tim finds Conner and Bart.

After checking the dozen safe houses that they knew about plus a couple of old ones that Tim had abandoned (shocking an old lady when they burst in through her front door, though they did get pie…) Conner and Bart are out of ideas.

“I’m telling you,” Conner runs to keep up with Bart, “I don’t think he’ll be there.”

“It’s as good as any to regroup,” Bart counters as he punches in the security code.  “Besides, I don’t want to miss Tim’s apartment being this clean.  It might not ever happen again.”

Conner snorts because yeah, Bart has a point.  

Conner follows Bart into the living room.  Conner walks towards the perch’s entrance and stares at it again.  

How bad could the security be?

Conner hesitates for half a second before using his X-ray vision to see through the door into the stare case.  Or trying to use his X-ray vision.  

He couldn’t see anything.  

“Shit, Tim lead lined the goddamn door.”

“Because, of course, he did,” Bart snorts, staring at the door, “that’s our paranoid bird.”

“It’s not paranoia if someone is really after you,” a new, weary voice came from right behind them.  

Jumping, Conner and Bart before turning to see, “Tim!”

It’s something to be said that two of the fastest people in the world couldn’t catch Tim before he collapses onto the couch.  Tattered suit pants and collared, long sleeves hung off of Tim’s frame making him like he’d lost ten pounds.  

Clammy skin?  Check.  At least a half a dozen new scratches, some infected, covering his arms and face?  Check.  Giant fresh gash covering Tim’s forearm?  Check.  

Conner knows there was more but didn't trust himself to use his x-ray vision.  With how shitty Tim looks, literally the last thing Tim needs is for Conner to fuck up and fry him instead of scanning him.  

Instead, Conner gently puts his hand on Tim’s forehead.  

“You look like shit, Tim,” Conner mildly says.  He mouths fever at Bart who nods before running off to get supplies.  “You know, when someone is missing their spleen, normal they do little things like gee, I don’t know, eat.  Sleep.  Take a shower.”

A faint smile twitches on Tim’s face.  “I’ll be sure to let Ra’s know that you’re not interested in his vacation package.  He was so hoping that you'd be going next.”

“You were with Ra?”  Bart reenters the room but freezes at Con’s words.  

The exchange a look; both knew the Demon’s Head has an unhealthy interest (obsession) in Tim.  Tim’s never been keen on sharing the hows and whys of that interest which pisses Conner off to no end.  

“Yup.  Not the best vacation I’ve ever been on but still not the worst.  That still the time that Bruce tried to make us all go on that family retreat when the Demon tried to leave me in the woods to starve.”  Tim’s voice gets higher as he mimics Damian in a dead-on impression.  “But Father, why do we even need Drake here.  I’m here now; you don’t need a cheap replacement.  Grayson, I don’t care if you like him; he’s weak and should be removed.  Fuck, that was a long week.”

Conner and Bart exchange an awshiiiiiit look.  

They know some of the Batfamily drama.  

No, that’s a lie; they knew very, very little about the Batfamily drama.  Tim rarely (if ever) talks about the ins and outs of what actually happened once Damian arrived at the Manner.  All Conner knows for sure was once Damian moved in, Tim had slowly, but surely started spending more time in San Francisco and less and less time in Gotham.  

Fuuuuuuuuck, Tim must really be fuck he’s talking about it so freely.  

Bart grabs the thermometer and gives it to Tim.

Tim makes a face.

Bart arches an eyebrow.  “It’s your mouth, or I’ll find someplace to put it.”  

Tim takes the thermometer, putting it under his tongue.  After thirty seconds, it beeps with a temperature of 101°.  Bart and Conner exchange a knowing look.

“Oh, don’t look at each other like that,” Tim moans.  “I’m fine.  I just need a little sleep.”

Conner snorts.  “No doubt, but let’s get you something to drink first, okay?  When was the last time you ate?”

“Had a salad with Tam,” Tim grunt.  

“Salad doesn’t count.  When was the last time you had real food?”

“Salad does so count.  It had chicken on it and everything.”  Tim whines as he rolls over and shoves his face into the back of the couch. “Sleep.”  

Conner looks at Bart who mouths fuck.

Little known Titan lore: if Tim Drake whines about wanting to sleep, it means some shit has gone down.

“Man, you really gotta learn how to take care of yourself.”  

“I’ll be sure to let Ra’s know you don’t approve of his solitary confinement package.”

Conner files that away for future discussion (which Conner’s sure won’t get him anywhere) before hoisting Tim up bridal style.  “Come on, man.  Let’s get you some food.  Can’t take your antibiotics on an empty stomach.”

Tim hisses.  “I hate those things.  They always make me nausea.”  

Bart shakes his head, muttering, “sure it's not the whole not eating anything for a week things?”

Tim’s head lulls back to glare at Bart.  “Nope.  Defiantly the antibiotic.”

Conner doesn’t say anything, as he’s too busy trying not to laugh.  Or cry.  He isn’t sure which.  

“Here you go,” Conner deposits Tim at the table where Tim slumps, face first, into the table.  “What do you want—uh, what do you have to eat?”

“Coffee.”

Bart snorts.  “One, that’s a drink, not a food.  Two, you know the rules: no caffeine on an empty stomach.”  Bart zips around the kitchen opening cabinets, looking for food.  He finally ends at the empty fridge.  “Power bars, energy drinks, and coffee?  Really Tim?  That’s all you have in your kitchen?  Even I can’t make something out of that.  More importantly, how are you alive if that’s all you eat in Gotham?  How have you not had a heart attack?”

Bart’s— the best chef among the Titans—could do wonders in the kitchen. Conner once saw Bart make a mouthwatering casserole out of an orange, licorice, tofu, and a few other ingredients that Conner missed.  As Bart put it, “if you had to eat twenty thousand calories a day, you’d get good at cooking too.”  

“Coffee,” Tim stubbornly repeats.

Rolling his eyes, Bart says,  “I’ll be back,” before zooming out of the room without another word.  

Conner goes over to the cabinet that holds some of Tim’s emergency shits hit the fan supplies including bags of saline solution and an IV.  Tim eyes Conner as he moves around but doesn’t object when Conner gently put the IV needle into Tim’s arm.  Although, Conner isn’t sure that Tim has the energy to object to anything that the Meta might do to him.  Conner sits down, watching the IV drip.  Tim closes his eyes; head resting on the table.  

“You want to talk about it?”  Conner murmurs.

“No.”  It’s the strongest thing Conner’s heard Tim say since Tim had stumbled back into his apartment, so Conner doesn’t argue.

After about ten minutes, Bart comes charging back in.  “You know, fast food places really aren’t that fast.  It took them FOREVER to get the food done.”

Conner snorts, “I’m surprised you didn’t go behind the counter and make it yourself.”

Bart tosses Conner a burger before handing Tim some plain toast.  “Thought about it.  Decided that it would probably just draw too much attention to myself.” 

“You guys know I’m off of carbs.”  Tim groans.

“Shut up and eat your toast or I’m calling Cassie.”  

Tim flinches but starts nibbling at his toast.  “I still want some coffee.”

After a long talk with Roy, who didn’t believe that Jason was okay which he was, Jason’s suiting up for the night when he feels his phone vibrate.  Fishing it out of his pocket, the new text alert flashes from an unknown number.  Jason opens it and read:

Got Tim.  Heading back to the Tower.

Jason blinks, a knot that he hadn’t known was in his lower gut loosens, before he fumbles with his phone for a minute, trying to figure out what to write (things ranging from where the hell was he to get his ass to the cave now all floated through his head) before finally settled on:

Is he okay? 

Jason had finished zipping up his jacket (contemplating the best way to go and find those ‘heroes’) when his phone went off again.  

He says we’re inhuman because we won’t give him coffee.  See you around. 

Jason punches the front of his locker.  

Luckily, it didn’t dent; otherwise, he’d have to deal with disappointed Alfred sighs for the next month.  He didn’t like being brushed off especially by a couple of pip-squeaks.  

Jason’s Robin Sense went off before he saw anything.  “The fuck you want?”

Dick appears right next to him because fuck him Dick had been goddamn Batman.  

“What happened to your phone?”

Because shit he’s still clutching his cracked screen phone in his hand.  

Jason glares at Dick.  “Nothing.”

 Dick hums. “Okay.  You seemed distracted.  Everything okay?”

Jason slams his locker shut.  “I’m fine.”  

Dick gives Jason a smile that only an older sibling can. 

Fucking hell, why is Jason here again?

Alfred’s food.  

Right. 

Fucking hell, say it already.

“I was just thinkin’ about Babybird.”  

That got Dick’s attention.  

Jason grins to himself.  

“Why were you thinking about him?” Dick nonchalantly asks which he mighta bought if Jason couldn’t see Dick’s back stiffening and his muscles were twitching.

“Just trying to remember the last time I saw ‘em in the cave is all.”  

Jason isn’t one for sublet.  

It takes for fuck ever for someone (cough, cough, Dick…Bruce) ta realize the fucking point you’re trying to make.  

It’s much more satisfying when you could smack someone in the face with their stupidity.  

Preferable with a fist.

The Bats, however, like to believe that they were fucking perfect (especially Dick, especially in the brother department).  They didn’t take it so well when they get caught being stupid.

Dick, for his part, gives Jason a look like Dick clearly question if Jason’s lost his mind.  “What are you talking about, Jay?  He was just here last week.  He ran a virus sweep on the Batcomputer.”  

Jason had to fight the urge to smack Dick.

Repeatedly.

With his fist. 

Instead, he cocks an eyebrow at his brother.  “That was six months ago.”

The reaction is instant.  Dick recoils like Jason had punched him.  He stares at Jason for a full minute before slowly shaking his head.  Though it looked like there're ‘bout a billion thoughts flashing behind Dick’s eyes.

“What?  No, it wasn’t.  It was last week,” Dick insists, his voice rising.  “Do you honestly think that I haven’t seen my brother in more than six months?  I would have noticed not seeing him for that long.”

Jason pauses, giving Dick one of his patented, you’re full of shit but whatever you need to do to let you sleep at night looks before raising his hands.  

“Sure, Big Bird.  Whatever helps you sleep at night.”  

Opening his locker, Jason looks for his rubber bullets.  

Where the fuck are my motherfucking rubber bullets?  

Days like today make him reconsider rejoining the Bats.  Before all Jay had to do was shoot the asshole and move on.  

Now, he has play nice with the Bats.  

Some days, Jason wonders if it was worth it.  

Then Alfred makes Jason’s favorite dessert, or Bruce would give him one of those goddamn almost smiles (which was like a goddamn hug from the old grump), and Jason found himself coming back home.  

Home.  Jason mused to himself.  

It’s weird after all of these years to have a place that he’d consider a home.

“Jason?” Dick's voice sounds off.  

“Yo,” Jason grunts without looking at Dick.  

There was a pause.  

Dick shifted uncomfortably as Jason finally found his bullets.  

Damnit, Damian must have gotten into his locker again and moved shit around just ta fuck with Jason. 

Again.

Maybe it was time for Jason to teach Titus how delicious Damian’s slippers were.

“Has he really not—did I miss—er—never mind.”  

Jason looks up in time to catch a glimpse of Dick disappearance (showoff) before Jason he could say anything.

The next morning in Red Robin’s room at the Tower, Tim’s fever’s back down to normal.  He was still coughing but he fine.  

Really, he doesn’t understand why Bart and Conner are hovering.  He’s in bed just like they want him to be.  

Snug as a goddamn bug.  

It’s Hell.

Tim does, however, have a company to run and needs to catch up.

“Don’t you have school,” Tim coughs.  

“Flex day,” Conner answers while Bart nods along.

Damn.  Tim thinks.  “Why don’t you guys go catch a movie or something?”  

Conner’s lip twitch and Bart gets a glint in his eye.

Shit.

“A movie does sound like fun.”  Bart turns to Conner, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Marathon?”

“Marathon.”

“Good, bad, or terrible movies?”

“Mix, of course.”

“Perfect.”

“Food?”

Bart drums his thumbs Tim’s desk.  “Give me half an hour.”  And Bart dashes off.

Tim looks up at Con.  “Do I get a vote in this?”

“Nope,” Con pop the p.

“Fantastic.  I do have work to get done.”

“You were kidnapped and torched.  You can take the day off.”

“Red Robin, maybe, but Tim Wayne?  Didn’t you hear?  He just got back from a lovely whirlwind vacation.”

Conner rolls his eyes.  “Really now?  Were there any hot models there?”

“Not a one sadly.  There was some lovely time to meditate though.”

“Don’t they call that solitary confinement?”

Tim shrugs, “eh, if life gives you lemons.”

“You say ‘what the hell?  I ordered oranges.’”  Con smirks.

Tim rolls his eyes.  “Well, I did order oranges.”  Tim laughs which was a mistake because it set off another round of coughing.  Before he could ask, Conner was handing him a glass of water.  Tim grimaces.  “Coffee would be better.”

“You know the rules:  No coffee for twenty-four hours after a fever spike.”

Tim hisses.  “It was only 101.  That’s barely a fever.”

Conner looks utterly unmoved by this argument.

Bastard.

“Close enough.”

“I’m a mature twenty.  I can take care of myself.”

“Uhuh.  And what show did you leave as a parting gift to Ra’s?”

“Teletubbies,” Tim grins.  Not his new business-friendly smile but a real grin that let the former Robin shin through.  “I thought he’d enjoy it.  Plus he could use a refresher on how sharing is caring.”

Con laughs at that before sobering.  “You know, I was thinking,” Tim internal winces, but keeps his face smooth.  He knew this was coming but it did make the experience any more enjoyable, “maybe it’s time you move out of Gotham?  You could move to the tower full time or something.”

Tim keeps his expression smooth.  “Aren’t you the one who’s always nagging me to get out of the tower?”

Con glowers at him.  “To see a movie, take a walk in the park, go on a date.  Not to go back to one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world.  Hell, in the universe.”  Con took a deep calming breath.

Tim thinks about it.  He really thinks about it.   He considers moving out of Gotham permanently.  What would the ramification of leaving the city that's rejected him several times over?  And while the idea is tempting, to be free of the Bats (fuck yeah that’s an excellent thought now, isn’t?), of all of the baggage that came with Gotham, but—

“It’s home, Con.  I’m—I’m not ready to leave it yet.”  Tim’s voice sounds young, even to his ears.

Con sighs.  “Yeah, that’s what you always say.  Had to ask though.  I think you should still move though.  Ra’s knowing—” Tim cuts him off with a snort.

“Ra’s make it a point to know what laundry soap I use.  Hell, he makes it a point to know what kind of cough drops I take.  He’ll know if I move.  Might as well stay where I’m at for now.”  

The rest of the argument is cut short by Bart reentering the room carrying way, way too much food.  Bart then speeds back out of the room only to reappear in a blink of an eye with a rather large stack of movies.  

Tim stares at the pile.  

No way they’re getting through that stack in one day.

Bloody hell.

Thanks for reading!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106355/chapters/43592294

[hollerace-blog]

The Shed

One of the salient advantages at growing up at 314 Midfield Avenue was that surprises were many and close between. My dad (and his friends) always seemed to have something in store. Add my mom’s brother, Uncle Buzz, to the mix, and adventure, usually concomitant with fun, was ever on the menu.

That spring Saturday so many years ago stands out. My brother and I awoke to the sounds of carpentry coming from the backyard. Various implements banged in a striking cadence of metal on wood.

Still pajamaed, we raced into the yard, mindless of our grandma’s call to breakfast. We scarfed down her velvety scramblers posthaste. A handful of men worked at the project. Uncle Buzz (a reputed carpenter by trade) led the tradesmen as Dad handled some plans and made measurements.

“IT’S A TOOL SHED. WELL, GONNA BE,” Mom offered. “BUZZ, YOU DON’T NEED A BEER! IT’S GOING FOR NINE!” My mother had a unique way of telling time. For years, I had no idea of actual numerical chronological increments. Our household was limited to a number of phrases that merely approximated real times in hours and minutes. We deciphered code phrases like “going for”; “a little after”; “not quite,” among others.

The concept of a tool shed did little to boost the morale of the Hollerkids, but it’s not every day a new edifice arises in your yard. So, jeaned and sneakered, we ventured out. This foray did not last long, since Buzz delivered yet another hammer blow to a gnarled, already indigo fingernail. A raft of curses ensued, accompanied by Dad ushering us out of earshot. Snagged.

Buzz came to the rescue, proffering his seemingly endless supply of silver coinage for us to go to the matinee at the Marilyn. We celebrated with Milk Duds, Junior Mints and popcorn doused in semi-buttery, mucilaginous petroleum product. A few Roadrunners, some Stooges and jutting-jawed white men shuttling fighter jets in dazzling array kept us at bay for the afternoon.

Back at home, the skeleton was complete. This seemingly massive structure spoke of more than a mere tool shed. My brother and I conferred in our bunks that night, sharing dreams about this mysterious new building.

By the time we got back from Mass the next day, our future shed was just about done. But the mystery lingered on. Over Mom’s paprikas, the subject stayed off the table. After the meal, I noticed Dad had left something behind. It was a clear piece of lucite. A small key dangled from one end. On the plastic, hand-etched in my father’s precise fashion were the words:

CLUB HOUSE AND TOOL SHED

“A CLUB HOUSE!” two boys screamed in concert. We burst out the back door and hit the shed. It was actually a two-room affair; the larger space was for the “club.” Someone had put a couple of old folding chairs and a rickety table about the room.

Somehow, the silent signal made its way to both our noggins. We owned this! No rules! No grown-ups! Nirvana! My brother and I were hootin’ and Holleran. We stomped, danced and otherwise caroused. With nobody trying to simmer us down.

Mom had to drag us out to the real world at suppertime. I made sure to secure the lock; no strangers could violate our Valhalla.

Our fortress was spare. A single, sliding window was the only outlook. To that end, we left the door open most of the time. The wall dividing the shed was made of Homasote, a dismal, gray fiberboard affair, but begging for thumbtacks.

Not to fear. One day, Tom and I retreated to our castle to see some color photos affixed to that wall. Willie Mays, Al Kaline, a crookedly grinning Larry Berra. All these borrowed from Dad’s Sport magazine. We cautiously decorated to our own tastes. A grinning, gapped Alfred E. Newman did not go over well, but remained. For some reason, adults viewed this character as a denizen of some warped Sixties Gehenna.

As school ended in June, we looked forward to quality time in The Shed, as Mom had dubbed it. One day, my brother brought up a touchpoint. “Do we have a club, or what?”

Whoa. The idea of an organized association of any sort was foreign to us. But heck, the Little Rascals had clubhouses. They even put on shows! But what about nomenclature? A cool handle meant everything. We both descended into deep thought. Which didn’t last long.

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Tom. “The Night Crawlers!” Debate over. We both had seen the sign advertising these varmints at Ted’s Bait Box for years. The moniker was menacing enough, with no swears or other nastiness that might upset adults. Perfect.

Tom voted me president; I voted him sergeant-at-arms. Politics done.

Prospective members became a problem. Word ignited around the neighborhood. I got skinny that guys we didn’t even know—from the other side of the Avenue—were claiming to be members. Of course, Lloyd and Barry Tichey from across the street were charter Crawlers. We had to let in Linda Fortune, who lived in the three-top above the Ticheys. Her dog, Hercules, became our unofficial mascot.

We discussed others. Tom wrote the name of every vaunted associate in chalk on the fiberboard. Inky O’Doul, Johnny Sabo and Swedey Johnson, who was by popular mandate the most popular kid in Park Terrace.

I can’t accurately describe the Night Crawlers as an organization. We never had a meeting. No charter, no dues, no mission statement.

As luck would have it, things eventually went dark. One day, I returned from a sojourn to the local playground (better known as “The Field”). The door to The Shed lay open, as it often did. Only standing in that doorway was one Michael Fanelli.

I could hear him muttering something to my brother, who cowered away. Fanelli wasn’t the most hated kid in the neighborhood; he was just the least liked. He was not of any type other than rodentine. He could have been twelve or sixteen. Black clothing, engineer boots in summer. He seemed to belong to no school or family. . 

He was tolerated by the Dirt Kids from Tin Can Alley, mainly because he would treat for candy at United Cigars. Otherwise, no one claimed him as a friend. And I didn’t want him in my backyard.

His mouth was a slash of a sneer as he kept calling my brother “kid” in the snottiest way. I didn’t hesitate. “Clear out, Fanelli,” I said. “Hit the road.” 

“Screw you and your crappy club, kid,” said my nemesis. Nonetheless, he shambled down our driveway. I felt Tommy’s sigh of relief in Fanelli’s wake. I clutched him instinctively. He was already tough stuff but I could feel a tremble.

He said, “Fanelli said we had to let him in the club or he’d kick my ass.”I knew the interloper  was all mouth and no action. Word was that he would talk trash to guys at The Field and sidle away when anyone had a problem.

I saw no need to consult Bucky Maraglino and Rats Müller about Fanelli bothering my brother, knowing that these older guys would intervene for us. For a while, Fanelli faded.

The Shed served us well that summer. We’d hang out on drowsy days. Our grandmother would make us pitchers of iced tea, levering cubes out of trays to fill an old enameled pot that served as a cooler. Chips and other salt-laden treats were always on hand, and slabs of meat on Wonder were always available for lunch.

 Kids would come and go throughout the day. Tom and I ruled over this tiny kingdom. I just enjoyed sitting back, inhaling the still-fresh woodsy aura of the building. I felt safe, protected and independent.

 Guys supported us. Wifty Schultz, already a budding artist, dolled up a Newman poster with our club name in two-toned type! Some cool flame decals appeared for window decorations. The space became our castle, our keep. Dad would putter in the tool quarters but pretty much left us alone. 

These were heady times, for sure. The days seemed warmer, brighter. The two sturdy maples in our yard brought relief from city heat, slicing sharp sickles of sun that darted through the sparse, dusty patch where grass could find only a timid purchase. In those days of innocent clarity, nothing could stop us. We were indeed Dukes of Earl.

We were fortunate that Michael Fanelli never made a return visit to The Shed. One day, biking up to The Avenue, I peered down an alley behind stores. We used to flip baseball cards back there. I saw Fanelli kicking the wall, his black boots looking odd and scrufty in the heat.

I couldn’t resist, and approached the kid. He looked especially feral; his sneer seemed  nastier, more menacing. “They kicked me out of United,” he said. “Caught me stealing.” It was a neighborhood tradition not to nick anything from United Cigars. Old Mr. Kessler, no humanitarian himself, treated the kids with benign neglect.

Fanelli cast his eyes away from me. I was astonished to see he was crying. He said, “I guess I can’t be in your club.” I felt badly for him, for some reason..

“No. You can’t, “ I said. “Not when you threaten to beat up my brother,”

“I didn’t mean nothin’.”

I said, “You should think of that before you open your mouth.” I decided not to make fun of his tears, as much as I wanted to mock him. But I couldn’t resist a final dig. I  added, “Just stay away from our house, our club. Or I will kick your ass.”

He shied away, sniveling. I went into United and got a Tru Ade and a couple of Fireballs.  I wasn’t sure of any physical prowess over Michael Fanelli. I don’t even know if I ever saw him again.

I rode home and went right to the shed. For some reason, I gave my brother a Fireball and held him close. I said, “Nobody’s gonna bother us anymore. We’re the Night Crawlers.”

Tom and I stood there, clinging to each other, protected by The Shed.

And it was all good.

***

We had a few good summers in that shed. Soon, my brother outgrew me and became MY protector. After Mom sold the house, the new owners tore down The Shed. They also put a statue of a saucy jester in the front yard. That would have driven Dad up a wall.

Many years later, on a visit home from the Left Coast, I stopped by the Sons of Sweden. A lot of the old gang was there; drinks were hoisted; jollity ruled.  Some guy I didn’t recognize was reminiscing about the old neighborhood. “Where did you live, anyway?” said Hook Grywalski.

“Barketine Lane,.”said the guy.. This was up on the Hill, a small enclave for the monied set.

Swedey Johnson jumped in, “But you were never a Night Crawler.”

[chiseler]

SYLVIA SIDNEY: Jailhouse Blues

“She always looked like she was gonna cry!” my grandmother would exclaim whenever Sylvia Sidney came up. In her 1930s heyday, Sidney was constantly cast as the victim of circumstance, hovering at the very bottom of the economic ladder, mixed up in crime and usually winding up in or near jail. “I was paid by the tear,” Sidney joked later, and that knowing comment is a measure of just how different she was from her on-screen persona. “My mother and I adored her and her films,” said Tennessee Williams. “She was always so fragile and plaintive. She appeared to need protection. Let me tell you: Sylvia needs no protection. She may look frail, but look in that exquisite purse she carries with her: it contains the balls of thousands of men who annoyed her; the hearts of those who crossed her; and the locations of those who betrayed her.”

Sidney was born Sophia Kosow in 1910 in the Bronx to a Russian-Romanian Jewish family. She studied at the Theatre Guild School as a teenager and was acting on Broadway at age 17. Sidney was unhappy with her screen debut, Thru Different Eyes (1929), a film made at Fox where she played a murderess, and she returned to the stage. While acting in the play Bad Girl, she was spotted by Paramount head of production B.P. Schulberg, who promised that if she signed with his studio that she would play in an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Tempted by that, and by Schulberg himself, she signed with Paramount and was soon rushed into the lead role in Rouben Mammalian’s City Streets (1931), replacing Clara Bow, who had had a breakdown.

Sidney gets quite an entrance in the arty City Streets, winking at a criminal accomplice before being seen in a screen-filling close-up where she is closing one eye to fire a gun in a shooting gallery. Her heart-shaped face looks vulnerable, but when she talks in this movie, the toughness of the Bronx comes through: “You oughten to be wastin’ yer dough in these joints,” she tells Gary Cooper, as they wander through a carnival and start to fall for each other. On a beach with Cooper, Sidney treats us to one of her secret weapons, a sunburst of a smile that transforms her face, puffing out her cheeks and nearly shutting her eyes with pure joy. Such joy never lasts long for Sidney on screen, however. She gets sent to jail here and then suffers some more and tears up most fetchingly when she realizes Cooper has joined her father’s criminal underworld. Sidney rarely played smart women in her youth. The girls she pretended to be were always a little dim so that fate could sock it to them as hard as possible. “I didn’t mind playing unhappy characters,” she said later. “Every young actress thinks she’s a tragedian—the more tragic the roles, the more you cry, the more you suffer, the better an actress you are.”

In Josef Von Sternberg’s version of An American Tragedy (1931), Sidney makes a far more appealing victim than Shelley Winters did in the remake, A Place in the Sun (1951). Her Roberta is an innocent girl, looking wide-eyed with shock when social climber Clyde (Phillips Holmes) first kisses her, but she falls deeply in love with him, pleading soulfully, “Please don’t go,” when he wants to sleep with her. Lovely as she is, Sidney’s Roberta is also a bit of a clinging vine and seems fated to turn slovenly and bitter through lack of money and opportunity. Sidney is alarmingly good at being pitiful here, and she’s particularly pathetic when Von Sternberg actually shows her drowning after a boat tips over, calling out for help several times before finally going under. In King Vidor’s adaptation of Elmer Rice’s play Street Scene (1931), Sidney is a bit of a flirt at first, but she soon suffers to the utmost. These three movies were all carefully made and designed to show off Sidney’s best assets, and together they made her a star.

She was framed for murder and sent to the hoosegow again in Ladies of the Big House (1931). Off screen, Sidney became Schulberg’s mistress, and you’d think that might have won her special privileges, but she started to get a reputation for being difficult when she complained about being stuck in bad movies like The Miracle Man (1932) and Madame Butterfly (1932). “They considered me a bitch,” she said, and the studio loved putting her in punishing positions in films. She wound up in jail once more in Pick-Up (1933), and in the sleazy Good Dame (1934) she is accosted by the infamous Pre-Code sex fiend Jack La Rue, who offers her a part in a girlie show. “I’m not a cooch dancer!” she protests to Fredric March. “I gotta take a job cuz I’m broke!” Thirty Day Princess (1934) was one of her few changes of pace, a bit of froth that might have made a meal for Claudette Colbert or Carole Lombard, but Sidney can’t function in screwball comedy. Her eyes look habitually anxious in Thirty Day Princess, as if she fears she might be thrown in the slammer at any moment.

Her relationship with Schulberg ended in 1934 when he returned to his wife. Sidney signed with independent producer Walter Wanger, who had produced her last credit on her old Paramount contract, an archetypal Sidney film, Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), where her bad lot boyfriend helps to railroad her into prison for a crime she didn’t commit. At this point on screen, Sidney was starting to seem like a regular paranoid, constantly looking worried and speaking tentatively in her high, strained voice (all traces of the Bronx had been wiped out of it by this point).

While in New York, Sidney entered into a very brief marriage with publisher Bennett Cerf, who advised, “One should never legalize a hot romance.” She looked beautiful in three-strip Technicolor as a mountain girl in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) and then followed that film with two masterpieces in a row, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936). As Spencer Tracy’s sweet fiancée in Fury, Sidney ably carried her usual load of suffering, believably fleshing out her love for Tracy in the first scenes and then looking memorably stunned in close up as she watches a lynch mob try to burn her man up in a jail.

As Mrs. Verloc in Sabotage, Sidney runs a cinema, and she makes it very clear that this woman, who is only known by her married name, has made a loveless marriage to Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka) solely so her charmingly mischievous little brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) can be taken care of. She’s nice but not very bright, and so she doesn’t discern that Mr. Verloc is a terrorist until after her brother has been blown up by one of his bombs. When she realizes what has happened, Sidney faints. After she’s revived, she says, “I want Mr. Verloc, I want to see Mr. Verloc,” in a trance-like voice. This is a truly tragic film that does not let either her or the audience off the hook, and Sidney goes the full distance with it. She has the sort of face that looks like it knows the worst before it happens, and so when the worst does happen, it just confirms the anxiety in her eyes.

Sidney’s Mrs. Verloc sinks down into sheer misery when Mr. Verloc talks to her about her brother’s death in a callous, sociopathic way. She stumbles out into her cinema and hears people laughing at a Disney cartoon. Grateful for any distraction, Mrs. Verloc sits down in the theater herself and laughs a little at the cartoon until a bird is shot and a bass voice sings out, “Who killed Cock Robin? Who killed Cock Robin?” The smile on Sidney’s face dies away instantly—she looks like she’s been stabbed in the back. It’s an unforgettable moment, as is the piercing little cry she lets out when she stabs Mr. Verloc with a carving knife, not vengefully but fearfully, as if she has no control over what she’s doing, and what she’s doing simply needs to be done. “Stevie, Stevie,” she cries, in her high, helpless voice, after executing Mr. Verloc. This is Sidney’s finest hour on the screen, her flair for suffering put at the center of one of Hitchcock’s most unsparing looks at evil and its consequences.

Sidney then entered wholeheartedly into the l’amour fou of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) as a faithful lover of a convict (Henry Fonda) on the run who becomes a criminal herself. In William Wyler’s Dead End (1937), she wears little make-up and is not afraid to appear totally downtrodden, alternating between toughness and tears. Her third outing with the tyrannical Lang was You and Me (1938), a strange movie where yet again she is an ex-convict involved in crime. In …One Third of a Nation (1939), where she plays opposite a very young Sidney Lumet, Sidney looks dead tired of this type of socially conscious leftist ‘30s film. Watching a bunch of Sidney’s 1930s movies in a row, I couldn’t count the number of times I said, “Poor thing, poor thing.”

Nearly ten years of cinematic suffering had taken their toll on Sidney, and she had made many enemies. “I used to fight,” Sidney said later. “Yes, it’s true. I even used to throw telephone books and anything else I could get to at the time. Everything that didn’t go smoothly annoyed me terribly. And I flew off the handle and got myself terribly disliked.” She married the actor Luther Adler and returned to the theater for a number of years, making a brief comeback with James Cagney in Blood on the Sun (1945), where she played a glamorous half-Chinese woman. She was still typecast for suffering as Fanzine in Les Miserables (1952), and this was the beginning of an awkward period where her looks had changed and slightly coarsened so that she couldn’t play leading lady roles anymore but was still too young for character parts.

Sidney survived on stage and on television before making a second and very successful film comeback with a brief but flashy role as Joanne Woodward’s acidic mother in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), which won her her only Academy Award nomination. This was followed by a steady stream of parts, some thankless, some juicy, in a variety of films and TV projects. A long-time smoker, Sidney’s high voice had lowered to a gravelly baritone, which was particularly amusing in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), where she played a caseworker for the dead who smokes through a long slash in her throat.

Burton used her again for her final film, Mars Attacks! (1996), in which she played a spacey, ill-tempered Grandmother in a wheelchair who foils the alien monsters with her favorite Slim Whitman records. “They blew up Congress!” she cackles at one point, seemingly glad that “the system” which landed her in jail so many times on screen was being destroyed. Off screen, Sidney enjoyed being thoroughly not nice, not the victim anymore but the gleeful victimizer. “She was a bitch on wheels!” says film distributor Gene Stavis, who knew her a bit. “A naturally nasty lady. She could never let an opportunity pass without laying a zinger on someone. I guess she didn’t want to be thought of as a sentimental old lady, so she went wildly in the other direction.”

by Dan Callahan

[audreycritter]

:o CAN YOU TALK TO ME ABOUT THE BATFAMILY AND TRAUMA because it feels like this is a subject in which you have a great deal of knowledge

Okay, I could talk for hours about this, honestly. There are so many lettered disorders that fit the Batfamily (OCD, RAD, FAS, SPD, PTSD, ASD, plus bipolar, depression, anxiety, insomnia, etc) and they can all be the RESULT of trauma or the result of innate brain structure. There’s so much that I’m actually tempted to write a few essays about it. But for the sake of answering the ask, I’ll hit a few major points and I am 100% open to questions/more specific asks.

Canon is a mess, obviously, but there are some things that either consistently track or show up regularly in fanon for each character. I think first we need to differentiate the kinds of trauma each character has experienced because both the type of and duration of the event and the age at which it’s experienced can make a difference.

Bruce and Dick both are portrayed as having loving, stable parents and backgrounds that were taken from them by abrupt violence. This means that they have event-based trauma like PTSD or other things that it can trigger but they do not have chronic or infancy-related brain damage (because this, essentially, is what most trauma is: brain damage). The age at which they were exposed was mid-adolescence so there are many crucial developmental stages that the probably hit appropriately.

Tim, while born into a home with money, is written as often neglected emotionally which is an important detail. Meeting physical needs does not prevent trauma when there is gross emotional neglect. If there is one stable caregiver, like Alfred with Bruce, it can resolve (to some degree) a missing parent even if there is bitterness or hurt. But with a rotation of attachments of varying interests or levels, the reality is that there are going to be long-term attachment issues. The kind of trauma that missing attachment creates in the brain can have all kinds of affects and trouble regulating sleep is one of them. It’s highly likely, in the context of realistic trauma depiction, that Tim’s coffee habit, sleep troubles, and anxiety predate his tenure as Robin and are rooted in the lack of attachment to a consistent caregiver. When a child’s emotional needs are not met, they often have trouble regulating themselves and in some personalities this results in the physical component of difficulty recognizing a need for sleep, water, or food or seeking them at odd times/in crisis states.

Cass, my darling. There is a very fundamental danger in separation from a mother at birth. Even infants experience grief and to be separated from the smells and sounds of the womb even within minutes or days of delivery severs the first and most basic attachment. This is why even children adopted at birth can have attachment issues, even if they are very mild in a loving adoptive home. But to be separated from a mother and then raised in a home with minimal language or comfort (remember, she tells Bruce, “he never held me” as far as her memory goes) does two things that are present in Cassandra Cain’s story. Children with that kind of physical and mental trauma often have sensory issues with input, so when Cass doesn’t react to pain the same way the others do, it might be that her brain actually doesn’t register pain. A common presentation of this is that actual pain (a broken arm, a deep cut) go unnoticed for hours while a soft hand on the back or a gentle tap are perceived as deeply painful. The other thing the absence of spoken language/dialogue does is affect memory. Memory storage relies heavily on repetitive recollection and the strongest positive/neutral memories are the ones that are discussed and shared. Her childhood, the most traumatic memories aside, is likely a blur or a composite.

Jason. Ooh, boy. Because his return is (relatively) recent and there are three separate but very strong iterations of him, I’m going to focus on his character pre-death just for this. Partly because we’re told the Lazarus Pit changed things significantly for him and each of the current versions have very different, equally valid explanations. So, pre-death, he’s a bit of a punk. We know that he dealt with, like Cassandra, a separation from his birth mom in infancy and then Catherine’s drug problems and Willis’ instability probably worsened those things instead of helping to heal them. Children with reactive attachment disorder and early trauma often have issues with cause and effect, appropriately placed blame, and emotional illiteracy coupled with stress hormone overdrive resulting in explosive anger and deep self-hatred/mistrust. They often pendulum swing between self-blame (“I’m an awful person, I don’t deserve anything, everyone hates me”) and violent shows of external blame (“this is all your fault! You just like to punish me!”). The problem is that with the missing cause and effect cycle and the high stress state of the brain, this means that most things that make the child even mildly uncomfortable are perceived as massive threats AND misappropriately blamed. For example, a child with a healthy brain may forget to do their homework and if the parent asks in the morning about it, may feel slight panic or annoyance in response. A child with RAD might snap: everything is stupid, nobody cares, this is all YOUR FAULT. They may throw or break things or storm off and then defend themselves with “you MADE me do that!” Decisions made to protect or help the child can be interpreted as threats or hate.

Okay, Damian. While it might seem like he is the most traumatized of the lot (and in some ways he is), he also has the benefit of being with Talia and Talia genuinely caring for him. She holds him, she talks to him, etc. It does important things for his brain. Unfortunately, he also has massive physical abuse and the war zone/refugee stress of being forced into dealing with adult violence and adult decisions while he is still small and developing. This is why he seems more mature for his age– he has huge social and emotional gaps as a result. His trauma means that his brain likely considers every input a threat, resulting in massively high stress hormones, chronic exhaustion, and defensive anger. Everything he does is coded as a survival mechanism.

Stephanie Brown! I’m guessing that she is dealing with some form of Fetal Alcohol/Drug Syndrome as well as basic neglect. Inconsistent care is dangerous because the cause and effect pattern in an infant’s brain is disrupted (healthy: baby cries, is fed and changed; unhealthy, baby cries, is SOMETIMES fed or changed– baby learns that crying doesn’t mean much and everything seems arbitrary). FAS means that there is physical brain damage she’s probably had to learn to route around, so mild learning delays. She isn’t stupid but she has to work twice as hard to retain the same academic things others do. Because of the cause and effect gap, she probably has a loose innate grasp of how dangerous things are. I’m guessing if she hadn’t gotten into crimefighting, she’d either be a thrill-junkie or have the reputation as being “wild” even though in basic self-care like sleep and food she’s very self-regulated and responsible. When Bruce or Tim tell her things are dangerous or beyond her skill set, it is probably not just her bravery at work– they might actually have accurate assessments that she cannot and does not see, but through sheer luck, force of will, or discipline she’s managed to escape more severe consequences. That isn’t to say that she isn’t good at what she does, just that she might actually NOT consider the worst-case (or even likely case) scenario when attempting something.

I could go on for hours– there are so many aspects of each of these that I haven’t even touched on but this is getting super long, so I should probably divide it up!

[shobogan]

Having finally caught up on Detective Comics, I figured I’d share my thoughts. (They’re largely positive despite a few major criticisms.)

Pros:

Most of the characters. Tim felt a LOT closer to preboot Tim than in most of the New 52, and while his relationship with Steph was incredibly under-developed I enjoyed them together anyway. It reminded me of Lewis-era Robin, and that’s always been my favourite take on their relationship. I love his dynamic with Bruce. His death and the aftermath tore me up in the best way, even knowing he survived.

Steph herself is amazing. Her sense of humour bouncing between dark and dry and light and silly, her desperate drive to be a hero no matter what that means. I think her decisions by the end of the Victims Syndicate arc should have been built up to more, but I loved the focus on her anguish and uncertainty, and I’m excited to see her as a very different kind of outsider to the Batfam. (You know, in a way that makes sense and doesn’t just make me want to punch Bruce in the dick.)

Speaking of Bruce, I think Tynion mostly does a good job of balancing his flaws and strengths. He can be controlling and manipulative and aloof but he’s called out on it, there are consequences. We also see him being supportive and encouraging and respectful. He backslides a lot after Tim dies, but it makes sense. 

Kate is the one doing most of the calling out and I love it. I love her wry humour and solid pragmatism and quiet dedication, her complicated relationship with Renee, her leadership and mentorship. 

Before 950 I would have said Cass has been criminally under-utilised, and I do think she could have been used a lot more in previous issues. But this one was damn near perfect. Her guilt and her drive and her isolation and her compassion, her friendship with Steph and Harper, her yearning to be something more but not knowing how, her fear that she’ll become a killer again. It even made me almost like the Orphan code name. (Almost.) 

I was delighted to see Harper again, and I love that she’s allowed to quite vigilantism and still be a close friend. That we get to see her helping people in different ways. And she’s CANONICALLY BISEXUAL NOW and I’m still giddy. I can’t wait to see more.

I’ve had a soft sport for Jean-Paul ever since No Man’s Land and seeing him working in Leslie’s clinic made me downright giddy. Then we got that backup with him and Luke, and its exploration of his faith and trauma and recovery, the contrast between how they see the world and what drives them, it was awesome. Also I ship it.

Leslie herself is basically perfect aside from the fact that she still looks, like, thirty.

The art! I really enjoy the blend of panels and portraits. The colours are gorgeous in most issues. Everyone is dynamic and expressive. (When Steph starts crying, after Harper talks about ending up in a clinic bed - my heart broke all over again.)

The crossover story was basically “the first Gotham Knights arc but with monsters” and I was totally fine with that. :D I loved how the team worked together, and all of the dynamics. (Especially Cass and Steph, but also Dick and Steph, Duke and Alfred and Bruce, Kate and Bruce, Dick and Bruce.) I loved seeing Duke interact with the Tec team if only a little, and being instrumental in saving Nightwing and Gotham Girl. I loved Dick’s swan dive into victory based on knowing Bruce so well. 

Cons:

I’m going to get my biggest con out of the way first, and that’s the treatment of Jacob Kane. 

I adored his relationship with Kate in Elegy. A vigilante having a loving parent who knows exactly what they’re doing is pretty unique, and it was a really enjoyable dynamic. (And on a personal note, a parent supporting their queer kid is always going to make me choke up.)

Jacob had his flaws and he could make mistakes, and Elegy didn’t even end with them on good terms. Because he kept something important from her.

I do not at all buy the leap to the Colony, or secretly grooming Kate to be a part of it. It twists their canon interaction in a horrible way and takes away a lot of Kate’s agency. (I also don’t by the Colony operating for years without Bruce having any inkling at all. Really?)

The really frustrating thing for me is that I really enjoy how Tynion characterises Kate, for the most part. But making Jacob a villain (no, not just an antagonist, he was willing to murder hundreds of innocent people) puts a huge damper on it. 

There’s also the fact that you made one of the very few Jewish characters part of a shady government conspiracy, like goddamn. Holy unfortunate implications Batman.

On basically the opposite side of the spectrum is Clayface. I adore redemption arcs, but you need to put the work in. You need to show their change of heart, and show why other characters believe in it. There are some poignant moments I do love, but they’d work a lot better if Tynion made any effort to justify and explore Basil’s place on this team. In most issues he’s used as a convenient plot device, and I need a hell of a lot more than that if Bats are tossing their real names around in front of him.

His discussion with Leslie was genuinely compelling and tragic to me, but why wasn’t any of that in the preceding issues? 

Lack of build up in general is my other big problem here. Steph and Tim only work for an audience who knew them pre-Flashpoint. We have no idea how or when they actually got together, we never see them talking about making the world better or working on the Belfry together. He and Kate have a nice dynamic but they don’t really talk about anything besides Bruce. Cass cries for him but they barely interacted at all. Give me more than that before they see him die, Tynion!

Show me Steph questioning things long before the Victims Syndicate arc starts, instead of bluntly introducing it at the tale end of saving hundreds of people from monsters. Yeah, I realise Strange created them to target Batman but as a justification for “ARE VIGILANTES BAD” it’s pretty weak for me. 

Bruce calls Steph someone he cares about a great deal and I do believe it in that moment, but again - show me more of that beforehand. 

In general Tynion tries to go for moral ambiguity but is often very clumsy with it, so it falls flat. 

Overall

As a story-teller Tynion has some issues that really dampen my enjoyment, and he’s made some choices I really dislike. 

But I adore these characters so much, and he clearly cares about them too. He’s drawing from an era of canon that has a lot of things I love, and even fixing some of my major issues with it. 

At the end of the day this still isn’t preboot. There’s no Oracle in Cass’s story, David Cain was a one note villain right up until his final sacrifice, Crystal isn’t a part of Stephanie’s life and may have helped ruin it, Steph was never Robin, Tim isn’t the kid who led Young Justice. Some of this may change, who knows - but as of now, I’ve got to contend with it.

But I’m still looking forward to Detective Comics every month. I’m still excited to see how these characters develop and where their stories go.