#and what he wants is the same rehashed 'bruce cares about them' moment

[thenonbinarydetective]

Gotham War is shit and all, but I'm starting to get tired of people complaining that Bruce was OOC that was like literally one of the main points

complain about literally anyone else being OOC because they don't have an excuse

[bigskydreaming]

Tom is already rehashing some things, like too many homages to the nineties run, Zucco's daughter plot point, Beatrice had ideas for societal reform he's taking that and giving it to Dick. It'll probably be half hearted, but it stings that Beatrice left just a few issues ago and she's already completely forgotten for the sake of DickBabs or a love triangle.

Like the thing about the nineties runs is I mean, as much flack as we give various elements of them, there’s so much from that time period that was good? Great, even! Just....myself and the writers seem to have very different opinions on what the most interesting elements of the nineties comics were, oh well.

And omgggggg I’m still so mad about Bea, and its literally Shawn Tsang all over again. The writers keep introducing new, interesting characters, investing just enough time and focus into them to have us interested in them and wanting to see more.....and then they toss them aside to go back to drawing from the same well as always.

And the thing is, this isn’t even about me not really being a Dick/Babs shipper, because honestly, I’m not enjoying the Dick/Kory stuff in what I’ve seen of Titans Academy either, and for the exact same reason:

When they create new characters like Shawn and Bea, they KNOW they’re starting from scratch and need to build interest in those characters from the ground up. So they’re forced to put their best foot forward. There’s no short cut there, if you want people to care about a brand new character you have to give them REASONS to care. You have to make those characters likable, you have to make people WANT to root for them, you have to hook them with intriguing backstories that don’t feel formulaic and new angles that don’t feel just derivative of older characters, and that’s how we got stuff like Shawn’s history as a former sidekick to a villain and now running a support group for rogues trying to turn their lives around, and Bea’s work in societal reform.

But then the second they stop having the patience to build the new characters up enough that the interest in them can actually start to reach the levels that lets older characters last and grants longevity....they just toss them aside and move on....except they never really move on, just backwards. Because the problem with so MANY superhero couples, far from just Dick and Babs or Dick and Kory, is just....how lazy it seems to make so many canon writers. They just fall back on rehashing the same old tropes and just updating popular moments that resonated with fans in the past, now just recreated with a slightly more modern twist but without ever really being anything new. 

Even with ships that I’ve never really been sold on in the past like Dick/Babs, I’ve always said, there’s usually nothing stopping me from GAINING interest in them.....its just....the writers have to GIVE ME A REASON TO. And so many of DC’s writers just aren’t even trying. They’re just moving parts around and pushing characters together in various arrangements like everyone’s just a puzzle piece that you can mix and match however you want......and then just basically expecting readers to be interested purely because of who the characters are, or because it hinges on a nice moment that they then milk the hell out of without ever expanding that into building actual STORY around these moments but rather just squeezing each one til they get everything they possibly can out of it and moving on to the next as though its all just about chasing the next soundbite...because it is! LOL.

And honestly, this problem extends far beyond just the Nightwing title or the Batfam or Taylor’s run or writing in particular.....its a company wide issue right now. In fact I would bet just about anything that its a matter of editorial edict, that even before Taylor started his run DC said okay here’s the approach we want everyone taking with their stories right now:

And that’s like.....its all about banking on nostalgia and the comfort of the familiar right now. I think Taylor is drawing all these elements straight from the 90s Nightwing comics, like Blockbuster and Dick having been a cop, etc, because these are the elements of past Nightwing stories that are so well known. Its the same reasoning behind why they put Tim back as Robin and so many of their new characters are just new spins on old faves like Punchline and Harley Quinn, and why they’re pushing all these older ships that haven’t been together in ages and why specific team lineups are reappearing....its because nostalgia is the name of the game for DC right now, and all their writers are just pulling together threads of classic stories that have stood the test of time, figuring anything that landed particularly well with fans in the past will sell with people here and now, and weaving these threads together and brushing over them with a modern social issues veneer. 

As an approach, its basically all just about repackaging previously successful story moments and elements with just enough changes or in just new enough a configuration that readers aren’t likely to complain en masse that like “hey we literally already read all this. We’ve already BOUGHT these issues. When we were kids.” Its minimizing creative risk while maximizing monetary profit. Spend as little creative capital as possible outside of anything that’s already been successful in the past and as such is a relatively proven quantity, instead of testing new material that’s an unknown and runs the risk of falling flat and thus not being profitable.

And see, I’d almost guarantee that all THAT, that whole line-wide approach to DC’s storytelling, is because the powers that be looked at the last several years of stories and how many of THEM fell flat with readers, and decided that the problem was they’d BEEN trying too much new stuff and readers just didn’t like it. Because they WERE concentrating on presenting totally new stories and building up new ideas throughout their books.....but readers have been pretty vocal for years now about being disenchanted with most of DC’s major stories. And so DC I think looked at that and came to the conclusion that okay, people just don’t want new right now, they want the familiar.

But like.....DC’s problem IMO was never that they were trying new stuff? The reason so much of their new and original storylines weren’t gaining traction or bringing in readers and kept shedding old readers had absolutely NOTHING to do with them being new and previously unseen storylines, which makes falling back on nostalgia very much a non-solution to entirely the wrong problem.

No, DC’s problem for years has been that they’ve been all about spectacle instead of story. There’s ZERO emotional pay-off to any of their biggest plot twists or character beats, and emotion is LITERALLY what people read stories for. Its all about racing to the climactic action packed finish of every storyline and then immediately resetting everyone back to square one and jumping straight into the next big story, without ever giving the events of any of their stories time or reason to MATTER to the characters.....and if they don’t matter to the characters, our proxies that we’re viewing these stories through, then why should any of it matter to us? Why should any of it linger, dig in roots, resonate with us as moments that left an impact and that we accordingly want more of?

And again, like because I’m a Dick Grayson focused blog I’ve obviously largely been focused on how much I dislike the SPECIFIC reactions or non-reactions to so many of the major beats in his stories.....but it was spread throughout their entire line.

Bruce and Selina almost got married....but why should anyone care outside of Tom King’s title when nobody else seems to, no other characters feel anything about this, and Bruce in none of his other appearances seems the same as ever without any reminder that he just almost got married but then didn’t.....and if the characters don’t ever seem to be affected by or feeling a need to revisit or reflect on recent stories, why should we bother remembering them either? 

Jason was dramatically and fucked-upily (yes its a word, I totally looked it up and everything) exiled from Gotham....and then all of that is undone in a single issue with one low-stakes awkward conversation between him and Bruce. Damian quits as Robin and goes off the map and everyone in his family is like “hey don’t we have a littler brother, I feel like we did maybe” for one panel per story arc, and that’s it. Roy’s back from the dead and everybody’s like oh hey cool instead of the kind of return we used to get like when Donna came back and everyone was like oh shit, this MATTERS, because we MISSED you....just like Dick’s death never mattered to anyone but fans of his character because much like I was just saying earlier with them not really giving me a reason TO emotionally invest in Dick and Babs’ relationship if I wasn’t already, same thing with the aftermath of Forever Evil. They didn’t give anyone else reason to emotionally invest in that as something that HAPPENED to Dick and that he was AFFECTED by....because the writers didn’t bother writing him as all that affected by it and it was just like oh he’s a spy now, all that was last year’s content, we’ve moved on, keep up.

And on and on it goes. Ric Grayson was the same problem all over again. Rinse and repeat down the line with everyone from Wally to Donna and etc etc etc.

THAT’S why DC’s stories have been falling flat. It has nothing to do with people not being interested in new ideas, characters or directions, its that’s ALL they were giving us, but it was like just reading wiki summaries of events just alongside pretty art, but no real emotional weight or substance to anything we were reading....and thus, literally nothing that we couldn’t get much the same outcome from if we just...stuck to reading wiki summaries after the stories were over, with no real need to follow along with them. For years most fans have basically just been about keeping up to date with changes in the characters’ lives, but without feeling any real need to watch those changes unfold and play out.

And so honestly I worry we’re just gonna be subjected to a company wide rehashing of old and familiar storylines, directions and character beats, but repackaged and delivered in the exact same way DC was delivering us their new stories and ideas these past years....and its basically going to have the same results, because its the same problem. They didn’t actually fix anything by switching gears, they just shuffled around the actual issue.

And DC’s just gonna be like well now wtf are we doing wrong, we were so sure this would work, everyone LOVES nostalgia right? Did we pick the wrong stories and character beats to bring back?

When really its like......it honestly doesn’t matter WHICH stories and beats they rehash, because its not about them picking the ‘right ones,’ the real keepers, the stories that everyone really WAS eager to see brought back or made new again.....

Its about like, the only reason any of those stories or beats or dynamics stood the test of time and are still familiar and well-known....is because the stories AROUND those moments and ideas gave us reason to emotionally invest in them and retain them as crucial to our view of the characters and things that would resonate and stay with us for a long time.

It was never that any of those ideas or stories were just so innately brilliant that they couldn’t help BUT linger in the overall reader consciousness...it was the fact that we CARED about what happened in those moments and stories.

*Shrugs* But I mean hey, what do I know? I’m just a dude on the internet lolol. 

[our-happygirl500-fan]

I love Duke but DC really could have handled him better, they keep moving him around and putting him in different places and stories it’s hard to get a grasp on him.

Like Duke had a really cool supporting cast and they sort of threw all that away for him to be on the Outsiders.

DC where are the other We Are Robin kids who all had super cool backstories and personalities that I wish were explored more, other than Izzy and Riko who we see once or twice in Duke’s stories the others only get mentions at most.

Like We Are Robin ended with the squad deciding to fight crime together as their own heroes their own way by themselves and then Rebirth happened and Bruce was like "hey Duke I want to train you" and Duke was like "oh shit bye guys!" to all his friends, where are they? We touched a little upon Riko being jealous of Duke in the Batman and The Signal mini but then DC threw away everything that was mentioned their to the point where I’ve seen people debating whether or not we should consider the mini canon.

Also we need to learn more about his uncle/ cousin who is an ex soldier, Duke was in the foster system because the guy was on tour in whatever war america is fighting and when that ended he moved to Gotham to take care of Duke and now we just... don’t know where he is while Duke’s with the Outsiders. Is Duke even still living with him? It’s unclear.

Is Duke even still going to school? We saw him going to school in We Are Robin but we’ve gotten barely any mention of his civilian life since Rebirth and him moving into the manor for a bit.

Don’t get me wrong but I’ve really liked Duke in Outsiders, I’m just really not sure about DC changing his powers when we’ve barely understood his original powers along with DC throwing Duke from one story to the next.

Duke has an amazing supporting cast and set up and DC didn’t use it! Duke even had his own secret base called the Hatch what the heck happened to that?

I’ve seen a lot of people upset about how DC keeps on giving Damian the same storyline of ‘will he be good like Bruce or evil like Ra’s’ over and over again for the past 10 years but Duke has a similar problem where since We Are Robin which started in 2015 Duke is constantly thrown into the position of ‘new kid on the block’

It worked in We Are Robin because he was quite literally the New Kid getting involved in the We Are Robin movement and learning and growing more until he eventually became the leader and he and his friends decided they didn’t need the Robin colours and wanted to make Gotham better themselves.

Then Rebirth happened and Duke moved into the manor and started training under Bruce and while that had good bits and was enjoyable, it took all the growth and he had gotten at establishing himself as a leader in We Are Robin and turned him into another one of Bruce’s kids and like I said there were some good moments with Duke and Bruce but it still doesn’t change the fact that DC practically threw away everything Duke had before with all his friends and put him into the New Kids position again where he tried to figure out where he stood with Batman and if he could really trust Bruce or not.

Then Batman and The Signal happened and that was good, it brought back Izzy and Riko, introduced more supporting cast and Duke was back in the New Kid position again as he tried to figure out who The Signal Gotham’s Daytime Protector was, it gave Duke a nemesis completely his own and set up other story lines like what was going on with that Dayshift detective and how more and more kids in Gotham a previously no meta zone were getting their metagene activated and Riko’s jealousy of Duke and how even though they were both Robin’s and she was the one that believed in the movement the most he was the one who got trained by Batman and she kept on trying to get Duke to focus more on his superhero activities and was frustrated whenever he let his own doubt get in the way.

Yes Batman and The Signal was rehashing the storyline of ‘what’s my place with Batman’ and ‘can I even trust Batman’ which was a constant while training with Bruce but it was written well and there was a lot of potential there.

But then Outsiders happened and DC threw everything away again to make Duke a New Kid on the team and trying to figure himself out as a hero for like the forth time. They even changed his powers and while the shadow powers are cool it’s literally throwing away his daytime theme he had before.

Duke has all these cool concepts and ideas and storylines and DC keeps on throwing them away to start new ones and the new ones are always cool but there’s no consistency and Duke deserves better

[janiedean]

HELLO ANON, I’m delighted you wanna participate in my week-long springsteen birthday party celebrations!!! and since you took care to leave me such a long, well-put, thought out message that I’m sure you thought I couldn’t wait to read, I decided to talk to you about a truly absolute classic and if you don’t know it I even picked for you one version where he’s hot as hell, isn’t it darling? ;) so, without further ado...

badlands is the opening act of bruce’s fourth (and most likely turning point) record darkness on the edge of town from 1978. it’s one of his truly most known classics, a hell of a concert opener/piece (believe me, I’ve tried it seven times and it was always a mystical experience, you should too!!) and a perfect summary of... pretty much all of his favorite themes. sounds good? believe me, if you ain’t experienced badlands in your life you’re missing something. ;) now, shall we go through the lyrics? (ps: really, listen to it while you read my explanation or you won’t get the full experience :( )

Well, lights out tonight Trouble in the heartland Got a head on collision Smashin' in my guts, man I'm caught in a cross fire That I don't understand

so, we have one of those openings of bruce’s that cold kick you into the scene that imvho are one of his trademark points and I love him dearly for it which immediately projects you into the scene: we’re in the heartland and the lights are out tonight, which means that it’s night and it’s dark and already from the first two lines you can contrast the upbeat rhythm with the utter bleakness of the opening. by the way, if we all failed geography like jon and sansa, this is what we mean with badlands:

and with heartland we mean that part in the US that goes from north dakota/iowa to kansas/missouri roughly, so we can assume that our narrator comes from some small town in center-USA and he’s not enjoying his time there that much. see, two lines and you already have situation, mood and location - this guy knows how to write a song, amrite?

so, other than that, it’s lights out and this guy has a collision in his guts, which makes you immediately think of a car accident inside his body in one of the most tender parts of it/in the part that gets upset when we feel sick first, which is supposed to make you feel his visceral unhappiness at his situation. also, he’s caught in a crossfire ie he feels in the middle of a bunch of different problems that jump at him and he doesn’t understand them, which also means that he hasn’t straightened them out and he doesn’t exactly know what’s wrong with him, but he knows that he has problems and that his life isn’t what he wants.

But there's one thing I know for sure, girl I don't give a damn For the same old played out scenes Baby, I don't give a damn For just the in-betweens Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul I want control right now You better listen to me, baby

so: now he addresses a girl, which means he’s talking to a woman who’s supposedly his love interest, and he tells her he knows one thing at least, which is that... as before we have guessed he’s in some situation of stasis that he dislikes while he feels caught in a bunch of problems he can’t face/figure out/have a grip on, and his visceral reaction to it is that he wants to cut away with all of that, he wants to stop rehashing his old life (the same old played out scenes/just the in-betweens), and he immediately states it as he says that he wants the heart, the soul and control, as in: he wants to have back his feelings (his heart), his life (the soul) that he feels he doesn’t have anymore and mostly he wants control over them, as if until now he’s felt like he didn’t have it and everyone else was taking all the decisions, and he presses to his girl saying that she has to listen to him. seems like he’s decided, right?

Talk about a dream Try to make it real You wake up in the night With a fear so real You spend your life waiting For a moment that just don't come Well, don't waste your time waiting

now, here we have one of the most iconic lines bruce ever put to music (the first four verses) which would deserve treatises, but anyway, for what we can do: he tells her that they have dreams that they shouldn’t forget and that they should try to make them real ie they shouldn’t be there worrying about played out scenes and in-betweens, but then they wake up with a fear so real that they can’t do it, and at this point you feel their fear too because he’s singing in a way that about throws all of that in your face. but then he says you spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come and that hits you even more because don’t we all wait to do things/wait for the right moment to experience things/throw ourselves into what we want to do and then it passes and you think it’s gone? yeah, that. and with that he says that we shouldn’t, and we go into the immortal refrain, as in:

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday Let the broken hearts stand As the price you've gotta pay Keep pushin' 'til it's understood And these badlands start treating us good

now: living the badlands every day (look at the above) is obviously a way to say suffering through your life while feeling overwhelmed (don’t you feel overwhelmed just looking at those pictures?) while the broken hearts stand as in, your heart being broken is the price you’ve got to pay because life is shitty, but if you *push until you get it* then the badlands might start treating you good and you might turn your life around. that’s the message, but it becomes even more obvious when you go ahead with the rest:

Workin' in the fields That'll get your back burned Workin' 'neath the wheels 'Til you get your facts learned Baby, I got my facts Learned real good right now You better get it straight, darlin'

so: our narrator has a physically demanding and hard job (working in the fields/’neath the wheels) which causes him physical problems (back burned) and he had to suffer through that to learn his facts real good, which he stresses repeating it twice, and then explains:

Poor man wanna be rich Rich man wanna be king And a king ain't satisfied 'Til he rules everything I wanna go out tonight I wanna find out what I got

admittedly, it’s not the most original moral but it’s because it’s true: poor people want to be rich (of course), the rich never have enough and want to rule over the others (be king) and the kings/rulers/people in power have no satisfaction until they have everything under their rule because their ego is out of control and power breeds power and no one ever has enough of it (seems like grrm likes bruce). our dude, who’s definitely poor and not a king, just wants to go out tonight and find out what he’s got. and what does he have?

Well, I believe in the love that you gave me I believe in the faith that can save me I believe in the hope and I pray That someday it may raise me Above these

so, he has three things: the love his girlfriend gave him so we can suppose she definitely has an agency in this relationship and he didn’t expect her to give it to him, he has faith that he can be saved from his crap life (could be faith in god or the love he feels for her or both) and he has hope and prays that all of this might raise him above the badlands, ie: that the fact that he has love in his life and that love gave him hope might give him the push to leave his crap life behind and get to something better that he desperately yearns for.

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday Let the broken hearts stand As the price you've gotta pay Keep pushin' 'til it's understood And these badlands start treating us good

now you see that the refrain repeated at this point has a new layer added to it, right? now, you should really be listening to the song because that’s when clarence clemons’s immortal sax solo happens and brings you to another dimension and then it slows down before the last part is basically a whole crescendo which believe me in a concert is a mystical experience. also, get ready for one of the Best Lines Bruce Ever Wrote In His Life:

For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me I wanna find one place I wanna spit in the face of these

now: here we get the nail on the head ie he sums up the entire deal in two lines: this song is for the people with a notion deep inside ie a need so bad it’s etched inside them and nothing can carve it out or take it from them that there’s nothing sinful or bad in being glad you’re alive as in, in being glad you are because then you can keep on living and make things better for yourself rather than just give up and die in a life that you hate, and those people should find a face that doesn’t look through them (as in, someone who sees them for who they really are and loves them for it), one place (as in, a place to live that they want to live in), and they should spit in the face of the badlands ie the horrible life they feel like they can’t conquer but that they need to leave behind.

I mean, it’s basically spitting in the face of what hurt you until now and go off to live your life and trying to be happy, what’s to hate about it? and if you listened to that song, you’d know that at this point the crescendo ends and it kicks into the last refrain:

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday Let the broken hearts stand As the price you've gotta pay Keep movin' 'til it's understood And these badlands start treating us good

which is the same as before obviously, but now has three different layers more to it and tops perfectly a gem of a song that is deservedly one of bruce’s most beloved ones by us all fans and that should be more known to the casual listener because it’s truly iconic and speaks to all of us because we all felt like that at some point, didn’t we?

thank you so much for indulging me in my springsteen extravaganza anon! you might find it a little difficult to do it again I fear, but if you find a way I’ll be delighted to find you some other iconic song to dissect. happy early springsteen birthday!!!! :)

[violetsmoak]

Tabula Rasa [2/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183281/chapters/47822500

Blanket Disclaimer:

Summary: Tim and Jason have known they are soulmates for years, though neither has said anything about it. Tim thinks Jason doesn’t know, and is just trying to live with it. Jason thinks Tim knows but doesn’t care, which is fine with him, he thinks the soulmate thing is a crock anyway. But one night, a minor mishap forces them to confront the issue head-on, leading to a series of events no one could have predicted.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: #bright vivid colours #danger #enemies to lovers #soulmate aversion #soulmark tattoo

First Chapter

Beta Reader: I’ll get back to you on that.

________________________________________________________________

Tim is exhausted.

It’s not the semi-permanent fatigue he’s been living with ever since becoming a vigilante, the ‘constantly tired about something’ background noise of his life. It’s more of an utter doneness with everything.

His head is pulsing like someone took an icepick to his left eye and punched through to his brain stem, and he’s got a bit of fever. Damian’s cat bit him in the early hours of dawn when he stopped by the Cave to drop off some intel. It’s taking his antibiotics longer to kick in than he’d like.

He’s been in meetings since seven this morning discussing the next year’s budget, sitting across the boardroom from the old guard of shareholders and Bruce. Bruce, who’s been attending more of these meetings in the past month with the implied goal of scrutinizing every move Tim makes. He spent hours today grilling Tim on every judgment call, made him argue for every cent of allocated funds and second-guessed projects months in the making.

And then the board members—even those who disliked Bruce—joined in and it was like a fucking ambush.

Tim didn’t even have someone in his corner to give him five minutes of breathing room, and he’s never missed Tam so much as at that moment. But she asked to transfer to a different department not long after the whole faking her father’s death thing. Tim doesn’t want to call her in for matters he should be able to handle himself.

Kon’s canceled their plans to hang out this weekend because he forgot his and Cassie’s anniversary. It was meant to be a videogame and junk food fueled marathon, and Tim had been looking forward to it for two weeks now. It’s the third time this month they’ve had to call rain check.

Though to be fair the last two instances were because I got dragged into something Bat related and time-sensitive.

At this point, all he wants it to get home, eat a whole pizza himself and sleep for at least eight hours. He’s even picking out toppings as he heads for his car in the employee parking lot.

So, of course, that’s when the notification system on his phone chimes. Patched into the GCPD frequencies, he’s informed that Killer Croc is rampaging in the University District.

And at City Hall?

Crash!

And apparently now in the WE Building.

“What the hell?”

The lingering staff members scream and flee to their offices, barricading themselves in as the growling, pebble-skinned thing bursts out of the nearby stairwell.

Okay, that’s not Killer Croc, but it looks a heck of a lot like him. Maybe shorter.

The elevator bell dings, opening on an empty car, drawing the snarling man-shaped beast’s attention. It makes an immediate run for Tim, who backs into the elevator and glances upward; there’s a cage across the ceiling to block access to the ceiling panels, the spaced between the metal lats wide enough to reach his fingers through.

He bends and jumps up, swearing at the bite of metal as he grabs hold of the grille, just as the creature barrels into the elevator. Tim uses the momentum to plow his knee into the creature’s jaw.

Its head snaps backward, blood spraying as it bites down on its tongue, but it doesn’t pass out as Tim had hoped. Right as it’s gearing up to take another run at Tim, there’s thwip! sound and two darts lodge themselves in its throat from somewhere outside.

The croc-person goes rigid and passes out. A moment later, Bruce strolls down the hallway toward him as casually as if he’s heading to dinner. He folds a compact knockout dark gun back into his breast pocket. Luckily for them, all of the doors remain shut tight and there are no windows for the other employees to see any of this.

“What did you hit him with?” Tim wants to know.

“Carfentanil,” Bruce replies, stepping over the unconscious body and reaching for the thumbprint scanner at the bottom of the elevator panel. “Lucius will see to that one.”

He engages the override to skip every floor on the way down to the sub-basement.

“What’s going on?”

“Based on Batgirl’s intel, some idealistic grad student wanting to change the world. She believed the best way to kick-start the proletarian revolution was to mix Waylon Jones’ DNA with a version of Langstrom’s prototype serums, test it out on the homeless and then release them in various locations considered to be bourgeoisie strongholds of Gotham.”

Tim blinks at that. “Eat the rich?”

“Somehow I doubt that’s what Rousseau meant.”

The elevator vibrates as it speeds downward, and Bruce considers Tim out of the corner of his eye. “How long has it been since you slept?”

Twenty-three hours.

“I’m fine, B.”

“You were nodding off during the presentation by Powers Tech.”

“Because Warrick Powers is a pedantic drone that’s rehashing all of the same proposals he made last month. Even you were playing Candy Crush on your phone for half of it.”

Bruce’s expression doesn’t change. “Anyone going out tonight has to be at their best. Killer Croc is a challenge on a good day, but Oracle’s saying there have been a dozen sightings of these hybrids—”

“All the more reason you need me out there,” Tim cuts him off. As the door to the elevator opens, he strides away before Bruce can offer reason he doesn’t want Tim going out tonight. He’s been questioned enough today at work, he refuses to be called out on his night job.

Things go from weird to complicated to unbelievable within hours. As it turns out, Killer Croc is involved…but he’s working with them for once. Red Hood’s voice comes over the comms early on to caution everyone not to go after him unless he makes a move on a civilian.

“Arsenal vouches for him,” he insists, and things are so crazy no one has time to argue with him. Everyone separates into their various zones, though corralling the croc-man-bat hybrids often has them overlapping with one another.

It takes all night.

By the time the last of the test-subjects has been subdued, ready for transport to a treatment facility, dawn is just peeking over the edges of the buildings. Tim’s body aches like one big bruise. He’s got something bigger than a cat bite that needs treatment, and if his head hurt before, now it’s like his brain is bubbling out of his skull.

Everyone has checked in, which is a relief, but everyone sounds like they’ve been put through the wringer. Those that Tim can see look even worse.

Batman is on the ground, conversing with Commissioner Gordon, and from the way he’s standing, it’s clear he’s taken some damage to his ribs. On a rooftop in the distance, Tim can see Robin with his arms crossed, cape in ruins and shoulders hunched inward. He doesn’t have to see the kid’s face to know he’s scowling. Beside him, Red Hood is laughing, helmet missing and body armor ratty and torn. Tim taps his visor to magnify his vision. Hood’s entire left arm-sleeve is gone, along with the gauntlet, and he’s bleeding from a wound above his bicep.

But he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He even reaches out to ruffle Robin’s hair, then easily dodges the knife the kid swipes at him. There’s a flicker of relief that flits through Tim to see him unharmed.

Despite their past, despite the fact Jason avoids him, Tim still tries to stay hopeful about the whole thing. It’s possible things will get better and they can be friends one day, or at least tolerate each other in the way Jason and Damian do. He could handle that.

“Well that was fun,” Steph groans, dropping down beside Tim on his chosen rooftop. “I need to sleep for the next six weeks, though.”

“What are you, a groundhog?” Duke quips, alighting on the other side of him.

“If it gets me out of midterms, hell yes. Just…not the same day over and over thing.”

“I don’t understand,” Cass sighs. “Either of you.”

The usual post-Arkham-level emergency banter starts up, all snarky jokes and witty rejoinders and Tim’s just…not in the mood.

“I’ve got a final sweep to do before turning in,” he mutters. He doesn’t care if anyone hears him as he hops over the edge of the building and grapples away. There’s some chatter and questions in his ear, but he ignores it.

His adrenaline from the night’s activities is dropping, and the exhaustion he was experiencing earlier in the day is hitting him like a Mac truck. He doesn’t even want the pizza anymore, just the sleep.

There’s a dreamlike quality to the way he sways through the air like he’s not actually present in the moment. Perhaps he’ll skip the last leg of patrol too, tonight. And he can write the incident report up tomorrow, and—

Right as he hits the highest arc of his swing, there’s a snap and sudden give to his line.

It should be an automatic thing, hauling out his redundant grapple gun and fixing it to a new anchor point. This is all about timing, a practiced movement all of them trained for before Bruce even let them out of the cave.

And yet.

It’s as if time slows for just a moment.

As if he has all the time in the world to contemplate the intricacies of each separate action, the pull of his muscles and movements of his fingers. Or even the ramifications of simply letting himself fall.

For that one moment, Tim isn’t Red Robin or Tim Drake-Wayne or any number of things he’s supposed to be, he’s just. There. Existing in a void of sound and sensation, adrenaline blocking it all out, weightless and empty.

Floating.

A sudden desperate wish hits him to freeze everything like this, at this high-point forever. To stay forever frozen in the peace of a not-quite-flight.

Gravity pulls at him then, making his stomach flip, and he reaches for the redundant grapple, even as he realizes he’s too slow. The air rushes past him, the ground rises to meet him and he’s still drawing out the line, and it will be too late—

As he’s about to hit to point of no return, something clasps around his arm and yanks. Someone wrenches Tim up and forward, a hand grasping his whole forearm in a vicelike grip and it’s reflex for his fingers to clasp around it. Warmth tingles in his fingers and radiates the entirety of his arm, like laying his hand on his own personal sun. As they swing through the air, Tim’s eyes fall upon the literal lifeline that saved him.

The first thing he sees is a swirl of red and gold, the familiar winding knotwork pattern of his soulmark.

Except it’s not his.

Jason’s left arm and shoulder are bare, the mark blossoming seemingly out of nowhere halfway up his forearm. But Tim recognizes the uneven streak of hastily applied cover-up from wrist to elbow-crease—because it turns out, Jason covers his mark at all times as Bruce does.

The warmth in Tim’s hand and arm grow, stretching tendrils of heat through his body, but it burns the most where he and Jason touch. Steph once described the sensation as a lock and key interlinking, and he finally understands because there is a very physical click inside him, like tumblers slamming into place.

It’s distantly familiar, and he wonders if he might have experienced this before, but couldn’t focus on it due to being bleeding out at the time. The way their marks reach and wind about each other now, Tim doesn’t believe there’s any way for it to be ignored anymore.

His heart flutters at the idea.

Then Jason is swinging them to the nearest rooftop and abruptly lets Tim go, snatching his hand back the instant his boots hit the gravel. Tim stumbles forward, barely stopping himself from tumbling to his knees from the momentum.

He skids around to face Jason, who is already turning away, shielding the mark. When he faces Tim again, the colors recede once more beneath the spray cover-up.

“Geeze, Replacement. You gettin’ enough sleep?” he asks lightly, mouth crooked. “You almost let yourself become pavement art.”

Tim blinks, still a little lost in his head.

“I mean, I’m sure you could have engaged those tacky wings of yours before the worst happened, but cuttin’ it kind of close, don’t ya think?”

Tim’s not really thinking anything. His eyes are on Jason’s arm, where the colors of his mark have already slipped away. Because Jason is putting a very conspicuous space between them. And asking something inane, as if he’s trying to distract him.

Which he shouldn’t be doing.

He saw the mark. He would have felt what Tim felt. It should be a shock, he should be confused or angry or surprised—

Tim freezes in realization.

“You’re not surprised,” he says, the words somehow disconnected from his mouth.

“Surprised about what?”

Tim bristles at Jason’s feigned ignorance now, indignation rekindling some of his spark. “Seriously? You’re just going to—you’re really going to pretend we both didn’t see that? That we both don’t know…?”

“I think that fight rattled you,” Jason says, slow and placating. “How many times did you get hit in the head tonight?”

“You didn’t even flinch!” Tim snaps, taking a step forward. “If you hadn’t known, it would have surprised you! You might have dropped me, or yelled, or…”

Jason is backing away now, not even trying to disguise his intention and Tim darts forward, hand snatching to grab hold of Jason’s wrist. Incredible gold and deep scarlet bands of color creep up his left arm, threading along the capillaries of his skin, connecting the freckles and scars across his bare arm. There’s a corresponding warmth in Tim’s right wrist and arm.

Before either design can fully manifest, though, Jason snatches his hand back and punches Tim in the chest.

“I’m not a fan of handsy guys,” he says, though his joke is lost in the ice of his tone.

Tim barely reacts to the blow, because he’s had worse from Jason, and right now, he’s honestly too furious to register it.

“You knew the whole time, didn’t you?” he accuses.

“Knew what—?”

“Don’t! Don’t lie! You’ve known—you had to have known ever since the day we met, at the Tower!” There is no argument this time, only a head-on gaze. “And you never said anything.”

“Well, it’s not like you did either,” Jason defends, discomfort coloring each word.

And there’s the confirmation; it’s more of a blow to the gut than Jason’s punch. It’s an aching, gnawing hurt, and Tim tries to tamp it down, tries to focus more on the simmering rage that is welling up alongside it.

“Because I didn’t think yours had activated,” he manages to get out. “At the time I didn’t think you were capable of…I thought if I said anything, you’d…you hated me then, and—” Comprehension smacks into him. “That’s why you didn’t bring it up, isn’t it? And then the other night, when I said all that. About soulmates. You knew what I thought about it, and that’s why you didn’t say anything.”

Jason coughs, backing away again. “Okay, glad we cleared that up.”

“If you’d said something—if you’d even acknowledged it, maybe—”

“‘Maybe’ what?” Jason challenges. “We’d magically be on track for a house and picket fence and adopting our own passel of neglected orphans?”

“Wait!”

“Yeah, no, I’m over this—”

“Jason, don’t—” He reaches out once more, hand clamping down on his shoulder and in his madness, he’s forgotten everything he knows about Jason and personal space. It all comes back in a rush when he’s suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun.

“I said I’m done,” Jason growls, and Tim swallows reflexively.

Slowly, carefully, he takes a step back.

Jason doesn’t move right away, simply stares at him, then the gun in his hand, which he lowers after a breath.

The tension doesn’t leave his shoulders though.

“This whole soulmate thing is some bullshit,” Jason snarls at last. “I hope you’ve got another option on the other arm, Drake, because I ain’t it. And I want shit-all to do with you. Follow me, and I’ll shoot you.”

He leaps from the building, and a beat later Tim watches him swing away between the skyscrapers.

It takes a while to remember how to breathe, more because of the crushed glass sensation in his throat than of any fear Jason would have shot him.

The rejection isn’t unexpected.

Honestly, it’s like a door being closed on something he hoped for even when he tried not to. There’s a finality to it that should be cathartic even.

It doesn’t hurt any less.

Well. At least now I know for sure.

Really, it’s a relief. He knew Jason didn’t like him, but he kept fooling himself with hope and occasional daydreams. And now he can’t anymore, and that’s that. It isn’t like losing Robin or no one believing him about Bruce or butting heads with Ra’s; those had workarounds. This, though, soulmates…it’s not something that can be learned or memorized or forced into being.

Time to move on.

Because Tim doesn’t get to be happy.

Body on autopilot, he returns to the Nest and sees to any obvious wounds. He concentrates on careful stitching, and then on meticulously writing up his report on the night’s events. No need to mention his argument with Jason. Tonight’s going to take his strongest sleeping pills and painkiller, he decides, the kind that will keep him from dreaming.

He considers not setting an alarm for the next morning—surely he deserves a day off, doesn’t he? Considering everything that’s happened today?

No. That would make it too easy to dwell on this, to mope. Work will keep him busy.

And he has to stay busy.

He’s meticulous about following his routine for the next few days. Immersing himself in new product designs, revising by-laws, defending more of his decisions from Bruce’s nitpicking, volunteering down at the Neon Knights shelters. He visits the remaining Titans, spends time with old school friends in Gotham and goes through the motions with his family. Outwardly it’s working but it all seems…hollow. It doesn’t sit right. Something is missing and he knows exactly what it is but can’t do anything about it.

With every fake smile and encounter with the paparazzi, always being the reliable one and having to think and plan everything through to the tiniest detail. It’s exhausting as ever.

And by night, he throws himself into every fight that comes his way.

He very deliberately avoids looking for Jason.

And it’s fine.

Really.

But at the oddest moments of the day, either at work or diving into the middle of a brawl, he remembers that crystalline moment, just after his line missed. When he was just…floating.

Tim knows that’s not a good sign, knows that he isn’t in the best headspace right now. He thinks of reaching out to Dick, the way he always does when it gets bad. He wants to tell him everything that’s going on with his day and night work, wants to admit the truth about his soulmate—

Then he remembers Dick is on his honeymoon and he doesn’t want to bother him and Barbara over this. So he heads to the manor because Alfred is always a willing ear and wise counsel. And Bruce might be making his life misery at work, but he can always be counted on to have some cases that could benefit from a second pair of eyes.

Except when he gets there, Damian informs him that Alfred is driving Bruce to some political fundraiser.

“It seems you made a wasted trip, Drake. Perhaps next time call ahead and spare yourself the trouble,” he drawls from his seat at Bruce’s desk where he’s sketching, Titus curled at his feet. The dog lifts his head and wags his tail when he sees Tim, but otherwise doesn’t move. “I’d show you to the door, but that would require me to care.”

“Always a pleasure, demon boy,” Tim sighs and sets off down the hall. He decides to take a nap in his old room; at least here the place isn’t as empty as his apartment. Damian might not be the best company, but he’s another human being within his vicinity.

Sort of.

As it turns out, Cass is still home. He can hear her laughing at something in the family room, followed by Steph’s familiar guffaws. As he passes by, he sees that they’re curled up together on the couch, arguing over the Netflix selection.

Steph catches sight of him and calls out. “Hey! When did you get here, Former Boy Wonder?”

“Uh, ten minutes ago,” he replies, leaning against the doorframe. It hits him immediately that he’s just interrupted a date night, so he doesn’t make a move to enter.

However, Cass’s all-seeing eyes rove over him and she purses her lips.

“Come and sit,” she tells him. “We have Krispy Kreme.”

“And Cass bought ketchup chips at her layover in Montreal.”

Normally the lure of donuts and chips would have him vault across the room and settle on the couch, but tonight the idea of food makes his stomach rebel.

“I might just go get some coffee,” he replies, trying to back away.

“Do that later,” Cass orders. “Stay for a bit.”

“I don’t want to interrupt anything…”

“You’re not interrupting anything,” Steph rolls her eyes. “Except our weekly argument about what we should watch. Besides, we haven’t seen you since the croc-mutants thing.”

“How’s your head?” Tim asks, giving a mental sigh of defeat and shuffling into the room. Steph sustained a pretty bad concussion that day.

 “Still having dizzy spells and can’t move too fast,” she replies. “The ushe.”

Tim doesn’t take a seat on the couch, though, instead sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table and dutifully taking a handful of chips. They don’t taste like anything.

Cass is frowning at him. “You okay?”

“Just tired,” Tim says, forcing what he hopes is a comforting smile. It’s not a lie, not really, but he doesn’t intend to tell her exactly what’s making him tired.

Cass accepts it, though she continues to eye him with concern. He does his best to distract her by suggesting a film he knows both of them hate, forcing another round of arguments about viewing choices.

They really don’t seem to mind him being there, and for a little while, everything’s alright. They throw popcorn at each other and complain about Bruce’s uptightness and gossip about their respective villain drama and mock each other for failing at their New Years Resolutions after only three weeks. 

Eventually the girls become engrossed in the movie. Of course, it’s one of the token soulmate plotlines that he immediately skips over on the rare nights he has time to watch television. And Tim becomes more and more conscious of how Steph and Cass lean into one another. Cass’s fingers run through Steph’s hair and Steph hides her face in Cass’s neck when a truly cringe-worthy sappy scene comes up.

They look so…content.

Happy.

At peace.

I’m never going to have that, Tim realizes and it’s this that makes his stomach twist, want to throw up and scream and cry.

Because he’s always been alone, but there’s always been that lingering hope that one day he wouldn’t be. That even if it wasn’t a romantic soulmate relationship, he’d still have someone.

Everyone he has loved has left him behind; even the one person in the world who was never supposed to.

“What would you have done?” he finds himself asking, staring at the screen where the male and female lead are mired in their stereotypical big-misunderstanding-fueled fight. They hurl words at each other that they obviously don’t mean but were clearly written to be devastating.

Cass and Steph look up, both somewhat startled by his question.

“What would we have done for what?” Steph wonders.

“If Cass had hated you. Or if Steph had hated you.”

Both their faces go blank. Cass’s mouth turns downward as if she is puzzling out a difficult question, while Steph shudders. “I can’t even imagine it.”

“Me neither,” Cass adds.

Tim hums, having expected that answer even if it doesn’t help him.

“Hey—what are you so worried about?” Steph asks, nudging his shoulder with her foot. “It’s a big world. It’s not your fault or the end of the world that your soulmate died.”

 Tim’s hand strays to his wrist. He’s covered it up around anyone in the Family since he woke up and learned that Jason Todd had almost killed him. As far as Steph or anyone in the family is concerned, he no longer has a mark.

“You can still have fulfilling relationships,” Steph goes on. “You know, if you get over your secretive and control-freak ways and your tendency to eat Hawaiian pizza.”

Tim snorts. “Says the girl who would eat waffles every meal of the day.”

“Hey, that’s a valid meal choice—do you realize how many different types of savory waffles are out there?”

“No wonder you’re beginning to spill out of your uniform,” Damian’s voice disdains from the doorway. Titus lopes at the boy’s heels. “You and Cain have been colonizing the couch for three hours now. I intend to play Inquisition without your hovering, so leave.”

“You mean you intend to spend three hours on character creation before getting stuck in the Hinterlands for the next week and finally throwing the controller at the screen in frustration and not touching the game again for another month?” Tim asks.

“If I want your input, Drake, I’ll—” Damian considers. “I’ll never want your input. Now shut up and stay out of it. Brown, I demand you all vacate the room immediately or I will force you to.”

“Rude.”

“Eleven televisions on this floor,” Cass adds. “One in your room, even.”

“This one has the best resolution for gaming. You go to one of the other ones. You’re not doing anything important in here.”

“There’s nothing more important than Netflix and chill with the boo,” Steph replies. She’s playing with her phone and then chuckles, angling it so Cass can see, earning a bright laugh in return.

Damian looks disgusted. “I sincerely hope when I meet my soulmate, I am not so ridiculous about it as you two, or Grayson.”

“We are not ridiculous,” Cass replies. “We are normal.”

There’s immeasurable pleasure in that word; Tim knows it’s not often she gets to use it in relation to herself. Once again he thinks himself a complete tool for being jealous of her and Steph.

“Hopefully I will take after Father,” Damian continues, sitting in the armchair across from them.

“Emotionally stunted and anal-retentive?” Steph suggests, earning snorts of laughter from everyone but the blood scion of Wayne.

“In terms of soulmates,” Damian emphasizes; Tim notices he didn’t bother correcting Steph’s assessment of Bruce. “I will not make a total fool over the person I have been assigned.”

“First of all, soulmates aren’t assigned,” Steph says, “and second, B is totally foolish over Selina. Why else does she never get sent to jail? And what do you call Alfred putting up with his bull after all these years?”

“Tt. Perhaps you have a point.” Damian seems to reconsider, before glancing at Tim with a frown.  “I suppose in this, you’ve had some luck, Drake.”

That brings him up short, both the implied compliment and the sentiment behind it. “…How?”

“Your soulmate is dead.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence in the room.

“Damian!” Steph cries, sitting up and dislodging Cass’s fingers to stare at him in horror. “You can’t say stuff like that!”

“Why not? It’s true.”

Now would be the time to correct everyone. Tim doesn’t bother.

“That’s not—I meant you shouldn’t wish your soulmate was dead, especially since you haven’t even met them yet.”

“I hope I never do,” Damian insists. “Look at Drake—his soulmate cannot be exploited as a weakness by some clever criminal. He will never have to lie about his identity if the individual turns out to have questionable morals—consider how long Father was forced to hide his identity from Catwoman. And Drake is now free to pursue or avoid any relationship he wishes, without having to worry it will be interrupted by the untimely arrival of a soulmate.” His expression smooths a little, becoming more thoughtful than petulant. “He is free in a way none of us are.”

Cass tilts her head to one side. “That is oddly…insightful of you.”

“And really kind of depressing,” Steph groans.

“And my cue to leave,” Tim says, standing. He forces an easy tone. “If Damian starts envying me, the Apocalypse must be about to start. I should get an early start to patrol just in case.”

“No, Tim! Stay—see what you did, Damian? Apologize.”

“That’s not happening.”

“It’s fine,” Tim dismisses, already leaving the room. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Be careful,” Cass cautions, her tone somehow knowing.

Tim flees before she decides to really focus on him, but not before Steph can hurry out after him.

“Hey, ignore what he said,” his ex-girlfriend says, looking both worried and intent at the same time. “He’s never had a soulmate, so he doesn’t understand how serious it is to say something like that.”

“No…it’s actually fine,” Tim assures her.

In fact, far from being insulted by Damian’s words, Tim finds himself latching on to them and the logic they represent. The last thing he wants to be is that cautionary tale, like the kid people pity who shuts down his whole life because their crush didn’t like them back.

“Are you sure?” Steph asks. “Because Cass is right, you don’t look okay tonight.”

“I really am just tired,” he insists once again. “I think I’ll skip patrol tonight. Get some sleep.”

She lets out a relieved puff of breath. “Well, that’s something at least.”

“Enjoy your movie—or your impending war with Damian over rights to the family room. Whatever.”

“Oh, he’s in for it if he tries,” Steph smiles a truly fiendish smile, similar to the one she turns on criminals before she breaks their jaw. “Night, Tim.”

“Night.”

He continues on his way to his room, while Steph turns back to the family room. She pauses though, and says, “I was thinking…if she did? Hate me, I mean?”

Tim turns his head to acknowledge her.

“I’d probably still stick around nearby,” Steph says; she rubs at her shoulder, clearly discomfited by the idea. “Just to make sure she was happy, I guess? It’d give me peace of mind, even if I couldn’t be with her. You know?”

Tim’s carefully maintained façade of functionality wavers a little. His eyes soften a bit and he offers Steph a small smile. “I do. Good thing you’ll never have to worry about that, right?”

“Yeah…”

They exchange bittersweet smiles for a moment. Tim bets she’s remembering the day it became clear she and Tim wouldn’t ever be anything more than friends. Then Steph disappears into the family room.

Tim strolls down the corridor to his quarters, frowning with a new resolve. He doesn’t have it in him to stick around and make sure Jason is alright and happy; he can’t even think about the situation without the growing lump in his throat slicing into him.

So, it’s best to focus on filling his life with other pursuits.

From that point on, he renews his goal to immerse himself in work.

WE by day and Red Robin by night. He loads up case after case, reasoning his way through elaborate mental games with villains and rogues, and sends in work for his correspondence courses at Ivy University.

He exists on coffee and sleeping pills and four hours of sleep a night, but he’s too exhausted to fixate, and that’s the important part.

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

This blog isn’t my primary, so my reblogs don’t show up very well. As such, please reblog the fic, otherwise not a lot of people are going to see it :)

<3 Violet

[dreadhaus-literature]

{A/N}

I’ve already talked about this before but I have more to say, so.

I don’t often cite “being old” or “getting old” or whatever. I don’t care about changing trends or hating on what’s become popular “with the kids” like some Boomer. Idc what everyone else is doing, that’s pretty much been a staple for me my whole life. I do me, you do you, we’re good.

But one thing that just continues to confuse me and my bitter old ass, and has my whole life is this concept of romance and what’s considered “romantic” or I guess, idk, “acceptable” to put into romance.

Now, let me preface my post with a couple things:

I grew up reading romance novels. Damn good ones, thank you Miss Christine. So I’m used to not only real sappy, happily ever after stories, but also the idealistic way someone ought to treat you.

A lot of what I say can be taken lightly or as a joke. For some reason this seems to be lost a lot in translation with me so let me just be clear. A lot of my points aren’t serious and are mostly just light-hearted jabs at what I’m talking about.

I’m not a complainer. I’m typically happy with anything and if not I ignore it and move on, so keep that in mind, too.

I’m not gonna waste my time with the whole “romance is different for everyone” because we all fucking know that already. This is just me talking about me.

So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s sample the tea.

A lot of people are fucking awful at romance.

And I’m saying this having sampled a plethora of media on the subject. Bear in mind, I don’t consume media that doesn’t have some form of romance in it. I don’t read novels that aren’t romance or have SOME aspect of romance in it, I prefer ASMR videos that have personal attention triggers or are affection roleplays, I sample a fuckton of otome/dating simulation games, I consume x you/x reader headcanons and fanfiction constantly, I unironically watch rom-coms--I’m a sappy bitch. Love and affection are really the only thing that matter to me and it’s ironic as fuck considering how often I’m single, but whatever.

We already know fantasy > reality so we’re not gonna rehash that.

But that is my point. I don’t understand this sweeping trend of needing realism and shit in our escapism. That just...doesn’t work for me? It never has. I have a wild, vivid ass imagination and I know not everyone does, but it’s so fucking tedious for me to consume media and see people constraining themselves by reality because “this wouldn’t make sense in every day life”.

Bitch why do you think I’m here.

I’m a 6′2 lesbian of color with a hormone imbalance and a terrible family. I don’t fucking need reality for a goddamn thing. That’s the whole reason I’m here, to escape it.

And I’ve asked this question before, multiple times, but what is the fucking appeal of making characters mean to your audience? I know I’m probably in a minority here, but I will immediately lose interest in a character if they treat me like shit, even slightly. I am never and have never been one of those people who is all, “they could do whatever they wanted with me and I wouldn’t care,” like, nah. I’ve been treated like shit enough in my life, I come to a relationship to be treated well so you can fuck right off treating me like I don’t matter.

It’s so bizarre. Because I see it across the board. Like, all forms of romantic media is guilty of doing this, of creating these tropes of asshole types who are like, “I’m barely going to look at you. Date me,” and it’s like, my guy, you’d be talking to thin fucking air. That shit ain’t cute.

I ain’t a 1950′s housewife. You act right or you get to steppin’.

And I’m aware my independence likely has a lot to do with it. I’m 100% fine on my own so I don’t put up with foolishness, generally. Don’t have a need to, not scared to be by myself.

I very rarely get seriously invested in a lot of these otome/dating simulator games because the story is so flimsy or it’s very obviously just a ploy to “look at these pretty characters who’ll mildly ignore you” and that just ain’t for me. Looks are very much secondary in my book and if someone is attractive but they act like garbage they immediately become unattractive. If Tom Hiddleston was revealed to be some douche canoe that’d be it. I feel myself souring to characters when they act a certain way, and their appearance changes, to me. They become unattractive to me. Personality’s much more important, so the pretty pictures just aren’t enough to reel me in or keep my attention.

Monster Prom was the first one I can genuinely say I was wholly invested in. One, because I’m a monster fucker (thank you, Silent Hill during my formative years) and two, there was genuine care taken into the story. As a writer, especially a romance writer, I can be super particular about story-telling. It’s very easy to lose me to a bad story. But I loved the character concepts and designs in MP, a lot. I still do--but I will admit, the more I played, the more I got a little turned off because I started to uncover it was less about making the characters love you and more about “look how witty our banter is” or “watch how many times this character can give you the brush off or insult you, isn’t it funny?”

No. No...it isn’t.

Escapism, remember? But I’d have to be careful when I played MP because if I was having a bad day, it stung to be insulted or dumped/literally laughed at when I’m trying to feel better by escaping to a fantasy world with characters I love and who are supposed to love me.

I know I’m sensitive. And being emotionally abused my whole life has also left me with some pretty...well. Idk the right wording, but there are some things I don’t want to hear or be told because it puts me in a really messed up headspace. And so I take my opinion on what’s “mean” or “rude” with that in mind. I know these things about myself and there are times I’ll catch myself side-eying a response I get in these games, then laugh and be all, “Nah, that wasn’t a big deal.”

I have to do that in real life, too, so.

But that’s my whole point. I shouldn’t have to take myself out of the fantasy to remind myself that I’m not stupid just because some pixels on a screen are trying to be cutesy “mean” to me. No one likes to be called names or made to feel dumb or ugly or...idk, I just, that’s never been my style of writing romance and I don’t understand the appeal of it.

I always write to make my reader feel the best they’ve ever felt. No one in real life can adore and love you in the perfect way a fantasy character can. I learned that a long, long time ago. That shit really is only in fairy tales. So if you’re escaping a reality where people treat you shitty or make you feel unimportant why the hell would you choose to go to a fantasy life where characters you love are going to do the same thing?

I don’t understand writing characters, ANY CHARACTER, as being cold or aloof or mean to your reader. I don’t give a fuck who it is or what their character type is. I’ve said it before but love changes who you are, so whose to say a character who is cold and aloof and mean to everyone else wouldn’t be warm and affectionate with their lover? But that isn’t generally what I see, what I see are characters who remain exactly the same with their partner as they are with everyone else and so much for feeling special.

I can genuinely say there’s not a single character I’ve come across that I couldn’t write any way I wanted to, most especially romantically. Hell, if DC can write Bruce fucking Wayne initiating “I love you,” then you can write a character not being a bag of limp dicks to me.

The other otome game/DS I’ve gotten into is Obey Me! Been playing that for a while, and same with MP I love the character designs and the story. It’s engaging, it’s funny, the brothers are all diverse and adorable and I love them all ♥, but the same issue with MP I’m seeing with OM, too. There are times when the brothers are downright mean to you and I turn the game off for a while because I didn’t open it up to be insulted.

I can’t tell if it’s bad writing or if there’s actually people out there who enjoy that sorta stuff. I don’t talk to enough people to know who the hell this is for--and I’ve seen community comments along media where the readers just laugh it off and I generally do that, like in OM when Levi gets all tsundere or Mammon IS ON HIS BULLSHIT AGAIN (I love that idiot boy) but other times I’m straight up shut down by them and if that were me, IRL, that would be the end of a relationship.

Again, might just be preference. I don’t do hot/cold people, I spent my childhood dealing with an unpredictable household where one moment it would be okay to be in the same room or even look at my parents and the next I’d literally be shut up in my bathroom to have two sets of doors between me and them because it was safer.

Case in point? Earlier tonight I was spending time with Asmo in-game, who is just...an absolute flower and I love him so much, he’s so cute, but every single alone/personal time I spend with him he’s been fine to be touched, does that whole super cute, “More, more!” beg. So I went to touch him like always and he rejected me. Out of nowhere, after being thrilled with everything else we’d done together. And I immediately felt myself turn cold to him and had to stop myself--which is something I do IRL, too.

If you immediately switch up on me like that, don’t expect me to stick around. I can’t/won’t do it. Grew up with it, have no tolerance for it now.

And again, after I closed the game down, I was sitting there like, who is this for? Why is that even a thing? If I designed otome/dating sim games, the characters would all be receptive of MC because that’s the fucking point. If I wanted to be rejected I’d just fucking date IRL, I’m here to see pixels because I like feeling wanted, not insulted and told to go away--especially out of nowhere. That’s just...idk, mean to be mean?

It’s not that I get my feelings hurt, lol, I’m 30 years old and I know the characters aren’t real. It’s more that I’m just baffled by it. It’s illogical and leaves me scratching my head. I don’t understand what is so hard about making things perfect or why that’s so unappealing for so many people. The argument, “It’s unrealistic,” shouldn’t even be a fucking argument. None of this is real.

It’s like Joker, and how up in arms people get about seeing him written obsessive but still able to not be abusive to Reader. Like, writing him with his craziness intact, but making him obsessively in-love rather than abusive and people lose their goddamn minds.

“It’s unrealistic! He’s a psychopath, he’d never really be able to love you! He’s supposed to be abusive! This is OOC!”

Right okay but he isn’t fucking real? And your imagination is pathetic.

Going the opposite end of the spectrum, and you get a cold, aloof character like Crocodile and authors have zero issue with telling you he would never love you and he’d likely be mean to you a lot.

Cool, get away from me then. Also, why? You don’t treat the person you love the same as everyone else, otherwise...that’s not the person you love.

You wanna be realistic, let’s be realistic.

I’ve always considered my relationships like ripples in water. The people closest to me get the best of me, then further out will get some warmth and kindness but they’re not #1. Beyond that will get politeness and beyond that? Acquaintance-level. It’s like how ripples start out large and get smaller the further out they go. That’s how my heart works. I’m not going to greet my best friend the same way I greet a friend, because she’s more important and should know it.

And I wouldn’t treat my partner the same way I’d treat some rando on the street, but so many authors are guilty of writing characters so poorly there’s no discernible difference between me and some random.

And I hate it. ಠ_ಠ

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you struggle writing any character in-character and still able to be in a loving relationship, you’re a bad writer.

And I’ll say it louder for the chuckleheads in the back.

If you struggle writing any character in-character and still able to be in a loving relationship, you’re a bad writer.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t be...idk, 100% surprised that there’s someone out there who is actually fine with this sort of thing? Like, I know some people are fine with being denied/rejected, given the brush-off, etc, but my childhood has taken that off the table for me. It goes really south for me, really fast. It’s to the point I have physical reactions to it, I wind up feeling so bad.

But I mean, they have to be writing it for someone, right?

Let me give you two examples, though. Picture your favorite character (FC).

Example A:

FC comes up to you before you could react to their arrival, home at last, and greets you with a chaste but soft kiss. “I missed you,” is said quietly, almost secretly, against your mouth--an admission you knew no one else had heard from those same lips. The words are backed up with action, an arm swept around the small of your back, fingers cinched against your hip to keep you locked to their side so when they straightened up, they took you with them. Tethered together as you’d been apart long enough.

Example B:

FC was home, had arrived home hours ago, but had made no attempt to come see you or speak to you. Finally, you’d figured enough time had passed they’d be all right with a small interruption, but the knock on the door goes unanswered. After a second try, a brisk, “Come in,” is your welcome. Once inside, a glance is spared for you but no more words exchanged. “I missed you,” is your attempt for more attention, met with a silent nod to show it was heard, and a gesture you could be on your way. They were busy.

I would argue that, given the choice, most would go with Example A. Which is insane, considering the majority of fanfiction and game play I see tends to lean toward B.

And the wording is super particular, too. In B, the wording “be all right with a small interruption,” implies the Reader is actively bothering their lover. The brisk greeting could be said to anyone, but shouldn’t be said to Reader if they’re meant to be someone special. And the lack of reciprocation speaks volumes. You missed them? Who knows if they missed you.

And again, if you’re really into defending realism, a relationship where a character wouldn’t speak to you or if they do, they’re treating you like shit? You’re not going to form a relationship to begin with. It’s almost like how we, now, look back at those old time housewives who put up with/made excuses for their husbands who barely paid attention to them and ignored their kids altogether because “that’s just how men are”. We’re repeating it, just modernizing it.

Well, y’all are. I’m not.

Because I am of this wild idea that escapism should live up to it’s name. That I should be able to disconnect from my depressing ass reality to go somewhere that people are always happy to see me and then treat me like they are.

Reality is often disappointing and I am of the belief fantasy shouldn’t be.

And like I’ve said before, you can write any character in a loving relationship without making them OOC. It’s about the way you make the character show their affectionate side, their loving side, that matters--making a cold character a fucking frigid cockthistle isn’t the right way to do it.

Using Example B, a cold character who may not express themselves as openly, when written properly, might not say, “I missed you too,” but they might put their work aside, set their pen down, and hold out their hand for you. The attention they pay you there is how they show you they missed you, too.

An aloof/busy character who came home and couldn’t immediately come to see you, who still had work to do, might text you from their office and tell you--

“I’m home. Come here.”

No flowery language needed, you know they missed you. And idk about you but I’d get all tingly from that text. (♡´艸`)

And that’s what I’m talking about! How hard is that? Apparently very! I see glimpses of it in media, from the games to shows to movies (fanfiction leaves much to be desired but good writers are few and far between) but they always chase it with some unnecessary rude bullshit and then I’m like, well here we are again, me ignoring lines of dialogue because you cain’t act right.

But I digress. Getting into certain things at least allows me to cherry pick characters out of it and then rewrite them in my own head--hell, I’m a comic book fan. I’ve been doing that shit for decades, lmao.

Canon? Nah son.

So yeah. That’s just been tumbling around in my head for a while and I wanted to talk about it proper.

OM was the reason I finally decided to sit down and write this all down, and I have been seriously restraining myself from gushing in the midst of all my commentary--because I really do love the Demon Brothers something awful ♥ they’ve taken over in a big way. But this isn’t the place, unless I start analyzing the stuff OM does right--and that’s partly why it kept my attention where other otome/DS games can’t. Despite running into the same blocks as the other, similar media out there, OM does a lot of things right.

I won’t go into everything, just a handful of examples, because there’s a lot of subtlety that I think is masterfully done:

The way Lucifer is first to defend you and check up on you

The way Mammon turns from calling you “human” to “my human”

The way Levi shares his personal collector’s items with you

The way Satan invites you to events that mean something to him

The way Asmo values your compliments over anyone else’s

The way Beel shares his food with you

The way Belphie actually smiles at you

Out of context some of those could sound super unimportant, but the game does an excellent job setting it up so that you know all of those things? Mean that you mean something to the demon it’s coming from.

Lucifer has a million things to worry about but he leapt to my defense (before Mammon, who is technically in charge of me) and he goes out of his way to walk by my room and then texts me if I’m too quiet to make sure I’m okay--and offers to accompany me if I happen to leave my room for any reason. Lucifer is a super great mix of, “Come here. It’s lonely without you. Spend time with me,” and “I’m only asking where you are because I should be with you...for protection.” Like, okay. I’m onto you, old man. ♥

Mammon has little respect for humans and initially begins calling me “Human” rather than my name (despite being told to call me by name because yes, I did tell that ill-mannered boy to call me Dot) but then it gradually changes to “My human” and now I’m annoyed my heart skips when he does it. Him going so far as to say as “his human” I should only let him protect me because “It’s me or no one, understand?!” I hate you made me love you??? Plus he’s a masochist and I could obliterate him for it.

Levi is gonna get enough of calling me a fucking “normie”, aight. I’m not an otaku like you, kiddo, but I’m a fucking comic nerd so could you maybe chill--but the more you progress with him, the more he waits for you because he wants to show you his new manga or show or game. Someone wanting to share something personal with you is everything--god and he’s so tsundere he’s so easy to fluster. “It’s not what it looks like! I wasn’t waiting for you!” Outside my door? Right. Okay. “What, is that supposed to make me happy...? I-I’m sorry, don’t stop!” I love it.

Satan was one I wasn’t initially sure of. He’s very obviously hiding something beneath that cool, collected exterior (haha probably a lot of rage if you’ll ignore my Wrath pun), but he won me over pretty fast by inviting me to multiple events because, like Levi, he wants to experience things with me. Plus, when I get excited he appreciates it rather than making me feel silly. “That’s the answer I was looking for.” ♥ And he invited me moon-gazing so like, psh, yeah let’s get married.

Asmo I knew, immediately, I would have zero issue with. He’s the Avatar of Lust, which is one sin I’m real into. So while I wasn’t worried about him, finding out he had so many fans and lovers and the like, that I was worried would bother me. I’m possessive~♫ But the game did a huge service to me by showing Asmo wants my compliments more than anyone else’s. Him saying that to me made me coo, out loud. I’m typically not into narcissistic folks, but when it’s done a certain way? Like Tony. You can be important to a million people but if you show me I still come first? I’m smitten. With Asmo, the adorable way he’s almost like a puppy in wanting, “More! I want more! Just from you!” It’s so fucking cute.

Beel is best boy. Like, hands down, immediately crowned Best Brother. He is adorable, like the total giant teddy bear trope. And being the Avatar of Gluttony, food is everything to him. So when he started offering to share his food with me? Like boy oh my god. Freaking Sam hugging gif x100. I CAN’T EVEN EAT ALL THAT MUCH BUT YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES. It never fails to make me smile when I give him his favorite food and he goes, “You’re going to eat with me, right?” NOW I AM. Sobbing. While he tells me being hungry around me “isn’t so bad.” I’m not going to touch on the vore fetish he’s feeding in me every time he starts drooling and calling me a dumpling.

Belphie. Oh, Belphie. My difficult boy. Like Damian from MP I fucking knew you’d be a problem--WHICH IS DUMB YOU’RE A SLOTH, I’M A SLOTH. YOU LIKE NAPS, I LIKE NAPS. But he’s so aloof, he’s hard to pin down initially--but I was gonna get ‘im. I love how the game makes you glean Belphie’s caring for you from the things he says. “You’re late,” when you show up, because he was waiting for you. Or, “What were you doing?” because he wants to know what you’re up to and who with and why it wasn’t him. I adored his line, “I want to sleep but...come see me in my dreams or I’ll get mad.” Like baby I will live there. That and my other favorite is when he smiles and simply says, “Welcome back,” because he missed you and is happy you’re here.

That ^ is all quality. It shows that different character types can love and love well in their own way, without having to be assholes. Belphie loves differently than Asmo but you still know he loves you. The game falls into the same traps as others do, I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it definitely has my attention and I love the brothers now the same as all my other characters--where other games I’ve set aside and given up on.

I think I’ve rambled on about all this enough, it was just buzzing about in my skull and while I guess this is discourse? Really I wouldn’t even say it’s a hot take, it’s just confusing why this isn’t talked about more or why so many characters and games and stories and media are ruined by badly written attempts at romance.

My rule of thumb, or one of them, has always been similar to the golden rule:

Write your romance the way you’d want your favorite character to treat you.

I feel like, most of the time, you can’t go wrong with that. I certainly haven’t had any complaints, at least.

[treeplays]

spoilery Batman: The Telltale Series thoughts below….

With the Wayne family plot twist I like that they’re doing their own thing and not just rehashing for the billionth time. But at the same time they kindof… are… just rehashing for the billionth time. The only scene we have with young Bruce interacting with his family is this same scene we’ve seen every other Batman incarnation ever that everyone is sick of by now. So why not show other scenes in Bruce’s life with his parents or even give the player control over Bruce in these scenes? They drop the twist on you and then that’s just kindof it.. you see a tape w Thomas Wayne being evil and you hear from other people how he’s evil but that’s it. I actually WANT to feel invested here guys! It’s like with the other characters, I feel like I’m expected to automatically care about them just bc of who they are and not bc of actual interaction with them. Batman is hot for Catwoman bc she’s Catwoman, Bruce cares about Alfred bc he’s Alfred, Bruce broods about his family bc he’s Batman, etc etc etc. Like yeah ok I get it, but I want to care about THIS Alfred, I want to be conflicted about THIS Wayne family. And there wasn’t as much set-up as I’d have liked for the big moments to really matter as much as they should have.

I liked the thematic element of the Batman vs Bruce choices, also makes lots of room for divergence in the plot but then again they ran the risk of being repetitive by constantly repeating the same choice of Go as Bruce or Batman, and ofc we have the old problem of branches that don’t actually make a difference in the story. I’m probably repeating myself here but imo it’s fine and understandable for these types of games to be somewhat railroaded but the problem is when your “tailored” story is only actually “tailored” in one branch and super clunky and awkward in the other, it’s painfully obvious which route is the one the creators were expecting to you to take so the opposite route just feels purposely wrong. And I feel like this wouldn’t be a difficult problem to fix if closer attention was given to the flow of dialogue in relation to all previous choices and not just the one that the writers try prodding you into doing. (Which btw is a separate issue from bugs like Alfred chewing you out for supposedly beating up a guy you barely touched lmao. ughhhggggg)

And I’m a bit iffy on this repeat of The Wolf Among Us-style “good cop or bad cop” thing, I mean, it totally fits but it just feels so been there done that. And again irritating that just like in TWAU the game treats you like you’re being a ‘monster’ even when you’re not, regardless of whether it’s a case of bugged dialogue or just the feel of the plot in general. So by first episode’s end when I realized this was the road they were going down again where people are going to treat u like a baddie no matter what then I mean fuck it I’m going to brutalize the mobster anyway since that’s apparently the only valid choice, I just didn’t care anymore so it was just like screw this. And that sucks bc it just ruins the whole thing, the illusion of choice just gone and my investment goes completely down the drain.

I get that it makes for more drama or whatever and normally I would gladly comply, but not when the only difference is characters being pissy with you for a bit and then continuing on with no noticeable difference in the plot. In TWAU it worked better for me because there were situations where they make you genuinely WANT to give in and go the “bad/violent” route, but here it’s different. I don’t want to go around beating the shit out of mentally ill people lmao! Especially when it feels like TTG is actually putting more time and effort into villains’ tragic backstories than the terrible things that they’re doing right now. Idk maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention I just wasn’t convinced that these people I’m supposed to want to beat up are actually that bad, I guess I just didn’t see the evil things they did because the entire time I was po’d that there was no “Hey Oz has a point!” option. It’s like Telltale is expecting you to be so invested in the “I’m Batman” role that they expect you to step right into the grimdark beat-em-up version without giving you a reason to.

I guess I have to give credit where it’s due here tho bc I did appreciate that we can also be compassionate like telling Harvey to talk to his therapist and chances to empathize like in the scene with the Vale kid, the Episode 5 Harvey confrontation, and in the end battle. I guess it’s really Oz here that I’m mostly thinking of, they just didn’t give me enough to reason to resent him as much as it seems you’re supposed to and there are barely any options to be nice to him. He’s introduced as an old friend and the conversation goes fine but suddenly in the next episode I’m supposed to believe that he’s a terrible person and I hate him? It just feels odd especially since the Wayne family plot twist comes so early that you know he’s right the whole time and yet you’re supposed to be all offended that he’s badmouthing your family when he’s actually 100% correct????

I actually really like the idea of interacting with the Joker before the whole arch-enemies thing, him and Bruce meeting each other before they interact as hero and villain is an interesting dynamic and gives a lot of meaning to their potential future encounters. I didn’t especially mind the plot convenience there bc i Mean, he’s the Joker lol. Although I have to admit I kindof facepalmed at the fact that he’s still just hanging out in Arkham even though no one knows who he is or where he’s from lol. That’s Arkham for you I guess.

I found it weird how in episode 5 Catwoman’s “betrayal” is treated like some big reveal but then shrugged off immediately and she just hands back the device to you no problem. No fight or quick time event and it was just a repetition of their previous interaction I felt like it was more anticlimactic than anything tbh.

Also kindof odd how Harvey becomes Two Face even when you choose to save him. I’d assumed he would just get the scarring another way but instead he gets the behavioral issue without the actual look which is a little weird when at one point the tv reporter refers to him as Two Face even tho his face is fine lol. 

And there again, the issue with the “tailored” story being only tailored for one branch, all the foreshadowing indicates TWOFACE INCOMING or BATMANxCATWOMAN HERE so it just feels anticlimactic when that doesn’t happen, and the plot line continues on very similarly anyway so it’s just like ok what’s the point then? That imo is what Telltale needs to work on most here, making their multiple storylines more cohesive and not so obvious which works best and is intended as the ‘default’ or 'right' choice.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

This movie was not supposed to be good. Here’s the plot: A middle-aged cardiovascular surgeon’s wife is killed by a one-armed man, and said surgeon is sent to death row. But his bus crashes on the way to prison, then a train crashes into the bus crash, then Dr. Richard Kimble escapes to go on the run with five U.S. marshals on his heels. This is literally the opening 20 minutes of The Fugitive.

Not even the actors themselves were convinced The Fugitive was going to be good. Harrison Ford thought it would be his Hudson Hawk, Bruce Willis’s $51 million flop from 1991. Tommy Lee Jones, who plays the lead marshal, thought The Fugitive marked the end of his career. But then this action thriller, the one that was written off as quickly by its stars as its hero is by the law, became the third-highest-grossing film of 1993. And then it was nominated for seven (seven!) Oscars—including Best Picture. And then it actually won one of those Oscars (well, Jones did). Perhaps even more surprising is that this piece of $70 million popcorn amusement from the ’90s is still a cultural touchstone 25 years later, largely because action movies like it are so rare now.

A year before The Fugitive arrived, its director, Andrew Davis, didn’t think much of the genre. “The basic underpinnings don’t have any soul or value,” he told The New York Times. “They’re totally incredible so you don’t believe them. They’re dumb stories.” He himself had worked with Steven Seagal twice and Chuck Norris once, two icons of black-belted brawn that sparred with Hollywood for a spell, until they were knocked out by the metastasizing blockbuster industry. As Ty Burr wrote in his 2013 book on fame, Gods Like Us, “To protect that opening weekend and the larger investment, the [movie] business needed stars to be inclusive rather than divisive.” This, he notes, was “one reason why there was a gradual move away from the bulging ’80s cartoons like Stallone and Schwarzenegger toward more believable Everyman action heroes like Bruce Willis in the Die Hard films.” And, though Burr does not name him as an example, like Ford in The Fugitive.

The writer points to Ford as the first modern-star brand: “the action figure with attitude.” Whether as the rumpled and roguish Han Solo or the hunky scholar Indiana Jones, Ford had imbued the genre with sardonic sexiness. And by the early ’90s, he had appeared in no fewer than two thrillers—Presumed Innocent (1990) and Frantic (1988, as another Dr. Richard)—about men mixed up in crimes they were racing to solve. It was this man who eventually handpicked Davis to adapt the ’60s TV series The Fugitive after seeing his work in Under Siege, a film that prompted the Times to identify Davis as the “Director Who Blends Action With a Bit of Art.”

“Does this guy ever quit?” one of the marshals asks toward the end of The Fugitive, and the answer is no—both for Dr. Richard Kimble and for Davis. For two hours and 10 minutes, this film does not relent. Not even for a cup of coffee (that scene was cut), not even for some shopping (cut), not even for romance (also cut). There is no hanging out here. Everything rushes. If it isn’t the actors, then it’s the camera with a Where’s Waldo? view of Chicago, the hometown of both Kimble and Davis; if it isn’t the camera, then it’s the swelling orchestral music. And the urgency is a good thing because every pause introduces a new threat—a passing cop, a skeptical doctor, a nosy guard. Even the exposition speeds by. The instigating murder itself, presented in slo-mo monochrome over the opening credits, unravels in concert with Kimble’s interrogation and his conviction, a simultaneous chronology that compresses time. As Matt Zoller Seitz wrote of The Fugitive on rogerebert.com last year, “The multilayered, at times prismatic way that it delivers information feels like an evolutionary leap forward for thrillers.”

The Fugitive’s success relies as much on plausibility as it does on velocity. Despite the soaring set pieces, the film somehow manages to remain grounded in a kind of palpable reality. “It is just so nice to watch a movie about normal smart people instead of insane super geniuses,” The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg tweeted in 2016. And though the characters’ antics could scarcely qualify as “normal,” significant portions of the film’s budget were spent on bypassing CGI in favor of creating real sets—like for the train crash ($1.5 million) and the dam jump ($2 million). Ford also insisted on performing his own stunts despite having a double and being 51. That is him flying through the air as if to jump from a train (on ropes, but still), that is him standing on the edge of North Carolina’s Cheoah Dam (a rope attached to his leg, but still), that is him limping through much of the film because he tore a ligament and refused to treat it. And that is him acting the hell out of everything in between.

“It’s the moments between actions that I think are really important,” Ford says on The Fugitive’s 20th-anniversary disc. With so little dialogue, the actor essentially resorts to silent-film acting, which is only buoyed by his hangdog handsomeness. “Rare among action heroes, Ford is believable both in control and in trouble, someone audiences can simultaneously look up to and worry about,” Kenneth Turan wrote in his 1993 Los Angeles Times review. Watch as Kimble, about a quarter of the way into the movie, painfully deliberates on the lip of that dam as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Jones) points his gun at him, waiting for Kimble to surrender because, Gerard posits, there’s no way this guy would do “a Peter Pan.” Right before that, their positions are reversed when Kimble grabs Gerard’s gun in the confusion of the dam’s water-logged tunnels. Face to face with the marshal for the first time, the doctor points the pistol at his pursuer and proclaims, “I did not kill my wife!” Gerard, his hands up, half-kneeling in water, a look of bafflement on his face, responds: “I don’t care!” To this, Kimble issues a faint smile: Game on.

While Kimble speaks through his actions, the man chasing him has all the best lines. Gerard was supposed to be a solo Javert-esque force, but Davis gave him an entourage to accentuate his leadership, and the result is some of the best banter in any contemporary action film. Jones, a Texan who graduated from Harvard with an English degree, had worked twice before with Davis, who knew Jones did a lot of rewriting and improvising. The cast—which was ethnically diverse because the director wanted to reflect the demographics of his birthplace—established their characters alongside Jones, coming up with dialogue on the fly. The four marshals include Jones’s right-hand man Cosmo, played by Joe Pantoliano, whom Davis told he cast because he needed “somebody who’s gonna have the stones to banter with Tommy Lee Jones.” Cosmo and the others highlight Gerard’s humanity and tenacity while also gift wrapping the film’s exposition in wit. One of the movie’s more frequently quoted lines, which Jones conjured the morning of the shoot, has him telling a marshal who claims he is “thinking”: “Well, think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut with some of those little sprinkles on top, while you’re thinking.”

Gerard and Kimble’s symmetrical relationship is enunciated by the film’s six editors (all of whom were nominated for Oscars). Each chase scene cuts back and forth between the two characters. Even when the pursuit lets up and Kimble is contacting old friends and crisscrossing Chicago to find out why his wife was killed, Gerard’s investigation parallels his. As the film progresses, Gerard’s affinity for Kimble grows, too. “What makes their relationship fresh is that it is constantly evolving,” Gene Siskel observed in his Chicago Tribune review. Twenty minutes before the end of the movie, a neat flip occurs in which Kimble goes from being followed to being the leader. He directs Gerard to one of the men responsible for his wife’s death—Dr. Charles Nichols, Kimble’s colleague who actually wanted him dead in order to cover up a failed drug trial. Another flip takes place in the climactic showdown where Kimble confronts Nichols: Kimble saves Gerard’s life, despite believing that Gerard is intent on taking his. In the end, the marshal escorts Kimble out of the building as his protector.

Though The Fugitive established Chicago as the place to shoot, it’s perhaps more notable for being the best of a genre that no longer really exists: the character-driven Hollywood action movie for adults. As Davis told Mandatory in 2013, the industry has gotten to a point such that if a film “doesn’t have tons of eye candy where a 22-year-old in some other country can just enjoy watching it, then [it] hardly get[s] made.” This is the world of tentpoles and franchises and event cinema, a world in which everything must bow to the demands of accessibility.

While “old-man action” movies like Taken and The Equalizer could be considered descendants of The Fugitive, they lack its character development. Those thrillers that are character driven—say, No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water—are less popcorn, more art. The Fugitive acts as a placeholder for a time when adults could be entertained by action heroes without being condescended to (see Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Firm, Patriot Games), which is why many viewers who saw the movie as kids in the ’90s, and who are adults now, wield it as a nostalgic marker of taste.

In 2015, the same year a Fugitive sequel was announced, the comedian John Mulaney released a special called The Comeback Kid in which he digressed mid-joke into an explanation of the original film’s plot. “Why does Kimble confront Nichols?” he asks. “Well, I know we all know this, but … ” And then he goes on to rehash it anyway because The Fugitive is the kind of movie that can be rehashed voraciously over and over and over again. Siskel watched it twice before reviewing it in 1993 and already wanted to see it again; Seitz saw it 10 times in the theater upon its release; and I have replayed it upwards of 30 times over the years. What I once believed to be a guilt-ridden affinity for a mindless puff of Hollywood excess, I now understand as an appreciation for a kind of modern-day moveable feast. As Gerard’s relationship with Kimble transformed, so too has mine. I thought I didn’t care, but I do.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2LZYMVJ