#anyway I had a really shitty start of the year within my family so I've been kinda slow at getting anything done

[artharakka]

Detail from a Middle Llehian fresco depicting the sea goddess Maare rising the wind from the crimson morning sea, so that the birds may lift the sun to the skies.

Style testing cultural art style for a story project I've rotated for a while. I've posted some character art of that to my Patreon, but I've been planning to slowly start posting the oldest ones here as well. This was originally a ttrpg setting, but since I've made it a setting to rotate and plan without secrecy with my sibling, it doesn't have to be behind the scenes material only anymore.

[newty]

dion fic ch2 meta and edit process!

this chapter kicked my butt! i did not expect it to get so long but overall i like the places i went to a lot. overall i think that in a perfect world, there's a lot i would have extended and lingered on more, but the work it would take + the return it would give wouldn't be that different. i wanted to move on rather than beat over the same themes in the name of a smoothly completed scene. i think this choice is evident in the way each scene ends a bit abruptly.

this was the hardest chapter to keep my limited 3rd person pov active tho omg. terence and kihel had so many thoughts that i had to hold onto for later while dion made everything about himself. this chapter was full of demands on terence, but it also will be the end of dion's passivity after he realized that he was party to his own 'uselessness.'

i like that i was able to keep dion's relationship with kihel a little fraught, too. i didnt want them to be immediately buddy-buddy in some kind of Destined Together vein, so it was important for me to keep giving them misunderstandings and things that isolated them from each other.

their conversation while gathering yarrow is also a mess i enjoy. kihel doesn't have the ability to express herself as succinctly as dion does, so it becomes extremely one-sided, awkward, and confusing with too many emotions that don't get properly tied up. walking away and not addressing that (beyond some lousy attempts) was important to me. they're all in an extremely uncomfortable situation and nothing will relieve that but time (and more earnest but lousy attempts).

i think that the aether floods disappeared within a few weeks or less of the game's end. people still avoid those areas from superstition, which freed up moore for some bearer irony. at first i wanted to fill the town with branded while the chapel operated like a sanctuary for those in worse health, but then i narrowed the whole operation to the chapel and ahmed. the dragon was also irony re: doing its job rly bady and being a confused angry disabled weapon that terence has to smack down with

speaking of terence. hes exhausted. i wanted to give the dragon fight some Real Repercussions but after dion went thru his whole church monologue i was like. yeah no i dont need to add another thing to the pot rn. i also wanted him comparatively healthy to dion and his rock skin.

anyway. worming in part of the eucharistic prayer/roman canon into dions orgasm was probably top tier blasphemy im ngl. that sex scene was an absolute MESS of half-conversations and lifelong guilt. at some point i sat there like. if these bitches dont stop being sad abt the One good thing ive allowed them, im gonna have to find Another way to get them to be shitty dads and leave a re-traumatized girl home alone so they can try again.

have i mentioned lately that i love writing idiot men that find increasingly convoluted ways to validate their increasingly selfish decisions. bc. theyre back.

regardless, the bit of prayer after my shameless lifting of ascension lyrics is from an intersession to st george. shout-out to the prof dragon killer himself but hes got good violent prayers. i also made a really accidental shout-out to ffx tidus/yuna kiss and had to stare at a wall for 15 minutes until i decided i was NOT going to rewrite it into smth else. i just like the ocean and wanted to incorporate part of its danger into snapping dion out of his emotional suicide plan. and terence's tattoo is ffiii bahamut by amano.

next chapter is The Family Problems I Ignored And Compartmentalized For 30+ Years Are Coming Back To Bite Me In The Ass Now That I've Started My Own Fantasy Family. and TERENCE POV, FINALLY

[mechanicalinertia]

STMPD Recommends Ranma 1/2 Fanfiction: Nemo Blank's Chaos Factor (Or, Ucchan is Best Girl)

Okay. Time for some changes around here.

Yes, that's right. You're not dreaming, dear reader. In my neverending Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath to waste my own time on the internet, I've decided to expand on beyond writing reviews of Bubblegum Crisis fanfiction to review... other fanfiction. My powers grow, and grow, and grow.

Okay, huge forewarning, let's just get it out of the way, I don't actually read a whole lot of Ranma fanfiction. I used to read a lot more, but my tastes always tended toward the somewhat shitty fanfictions, not the actually good ones. So I'm probably just gonna recommend two incredibly good Ranma fics, and then move onto other pastures. There's a particular Homestuck-Pacific Rim crossover I've always wanted to sell people on, stuff like that.

Anyway! Here's a good Ranma fanfiction, incomplete but uproariously funny and maybe too clever by half: Chaos Factor.

Well, then. What exactly is Chaos Factor about? It... um... well... fuck. Hang on.

Were this a fic with weaker writing, I would have a pretty hard time overlooking CF's tendency to veer wildly all over the place in terms of setting and what its attention is focused on. So let's start at the beginning: Ranma goes off to train in the mountains, is accosted by a soul-stealing demon, is saved by his Neko-ken being a giant spirit tiger that mauls the shit out of the demon - and wakes up to Ukyo Kuonji, everyone's favorite crossdressing Kansaiben okonomiyaki chef childhood friend waifu, holding him close to ensure his well-being with a side of pressing her cleavage into his side.

Of course within five seconds Shampoo, Akane, Genma, Soun, Mousse, and Ryoga all show up. Of course there's an altercation where Akane falls into a river, Ranma saves her, and she yeets him into the stratosphere. Reader, Akane is many things in this fic, but she's hardly a kind soul. Which - is okay?

Yeah, let me just get this out of the way, I don't really like Akane. She's a girl out of her depth in Ranma's insane martial-arts world, a normal, sane human being whose dignity is constantly put to the test by the irrationality that is Ranma, his rivals and fiancees, and their goofy superpowers. Oh, sure, she can be cute at times, but more often than not she's the worst sort of tsundere, the childish one who treats any entreaty towards what little order she has left in her life as an affront on her person and then proceeds to beat up Ranma. Oh, sure, the manga probably treats her better, but that doesn't change the fact that Ranma saving her again and again and again and neither of the two admitting they might like each other over and over and over again is not really a healthy relationship dynamic. Sure, the other girls are possessive and jealous too, but at least they can keep up with Ranma to a closer degree, at least they're honest with their own affection. Well, whatever, this argument has been had since Internet Time Immemorial and will likely be thus for years to come. So... Yeah. One of the best quotes from CF (and there are so, so many) speaks to this: "It was true love, all right. True love for eight-year-olds."

Anyway, Ranma lands in his mom's backyard (this is after the manga's failed wedding ending, mind you), and they talk. Turns out Ranma thinks he's got this duty to the Tendo family to join the schools (his dad lied), turns out he doesn't know how to deal with love (he likes the Tendo sisters, but only knows that he doesn't know if he loves Akane), and... suffice to say that Nodoka finally says: No, Ranma, you're staying with me from here on out, and each fiancé will meet me in person and I'll determine their suitability one at a time.

Which would be a perfectly interesting pitch for a fic, you'd think, Ranma having to arrange all those meetings and Nodoka meeting the girls as they try to be on their best behavior. Only, we only get to Kodachi and Shampoo in interviews, because other plot threads are introduced fast. Very, very fast. Blisteringly fast. Among the things that just happen and don't stop happening:

Ranma gets yeeted into the middle of the Sailor Senshi, assumes they're a bunch of fiancés or pervs or whatever, and proceeds to avoid their attacks effortlessly. As Ranma's rivals and the Senshi get more and more intertwined, it becomes clear that a) Crystal Tokyo relies on wiping out everyone save a few million loyal to Serenity, something Sailor Pluto is largely hiding from her charges, and b) The Senshi are terrible at actual fights. Ranma simply summons Happosai (calls his name three times) and misery is had. Now, I don't especially like how the Senshi are sort of the butt of the joke here, especially since many gags are made out of how utterly unstoppable Kuno is by conventional standards, and those jokes are quite funny. But you can't have everything.

As such, when Ranma beats up a Youma without trying very hard, he ends up on the national news. Nabiki's having the time of her life playing the tour guide for the Tendo Dojo, right up until the government decides Ranma could be a useful asset in the war against the supernatural.

Washu from Tenchi Muyo ends up in a time warp where she inadvertently becomes Nodoka's mother (and Ranma's maternal Grandma!) Ryoko thinks having a nephew-niece is nothing short of awesome, and she and Sasami hang out with him and Ryoga for a bit.

Ryoga's wandering capacity is played up as a space distortion, to the point that he can end up in anywhere while going to anywhere else. Kasumi follows him to the bathroom of their house and ends up going through Egypt for a few moments, Mihoshi follows him to an alien planet, things like that.

Ranma flees normal life again, is tracked down by Ukyo using a somewhat terrifying ninja technique involving sympathetic ki, and they fight a samurai ghost together. Ranma figures out how to turn into a dragon and Ukyo falls even more head-over-heels in love with him, because, uh, dragons amirite? Meanwhile, Ranma is convinced that Ukyo wants Ranma to be a waitress for her, and that's cleared up... but Ranma still is afraid of her world, especially because Ukyo wants to become the head of a national okonomiyaki restaurant chain.

And it's all... funny, and sweet, and even if the tone it nails isn't exactly the manga's irreverent tone, as far as harem-adjacent tales go let it be said that Chaos Factor has a tone, and it nails that tone, and it keeps on that tone for 81k words. even if it ends somewhat anticlimactically before, if I recall correctly, Ranma and his fiancés are to have an audience with the emperor.

Look, I'm having trouble describing this fanfic that I've read a half-dozen times over because it's simply that good. I don't just encourage you to read it -- I implore you to do so. You won't regret it.

[bigskydreaming]

Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again. 

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit. 

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family. 

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more. 

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh. 

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason. 

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write. 

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives. 

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.

[dear--charlie]

Dear Charlie,

Today is June 14, 2022.

I wish I was writing under better circumstances. I wish I had only positive news. But for all the good happening to me right now, there's something bad that I need to get off my chest.

When I was in high school, I had a relatively small group of close friends. I am still friends with some of them, others have gone away over the years. One disappeared and came back. For anonymity's sake, let's call her "Jen". Jen moved away after high school and lived in the western part of the US for a few years, but within the same time frame that I moved to the small town that I did, she happened to also move to this town. I moved here due to rising housing costs in my mom's area and because I actually have some family out here.

Jen got engaged at some point, I don't remember when, I just remember seeing the post on Facebook. It's been a couple years now, and this is probably partly due to Covid. Anyway, one of my step-brothers is their roommate (he used to live with my brother). Last week, he sent me a text asking if I wanted to go shopping with him. I said "sure, but I need to be home around 6ish to start making dinner"- this was at 4p.

Come to find out, Jen is getting married on Thursday. I figured he was invited because they all lived together and it might be awkward if he wasn't invited. I went with him to pick out shirts to wear to the wedding. I had no issue going with him, but I was more than a little surprised to find out from him that she's getting married so soon. He sounded like he had just found out, but I don't think he had.

Unfortunately I spent the whole trip listening to their wedding playlist, which was....not very good. I had to hear all about the wedding and the plans with that. I've been feeling rather insecure listening to others talk about marriage for months, that's why I've been off of Facebook. I know it probably makes me a shitty person and a shittier friend, but I really am just tired of hearing about it and then wondering "When will it be my turn?"

After that excursion, we had to go to my stepmom's house. We were talking about stuff and she asked me how it was going out with my step-brother, because she knows he wears me out mentally. I was telling her about everything happening, and how I was surprised to find out that Jen was getting married, and her response was "Oh yeah I forget you two know each other!" She started telling me about the wedding and how they've got it set up. My family was invited, and they've known about this wedding for weeks or possibly even months. My family, who have known Jen maybe a year now, got invited to her wedding. And I've known her more than a decade and didn't get invited.

Needless to say, I am shocked. I'm confused. I'm hurt. Most of all, I feel so betrayed. How long has this been set in motion? Why didn't my family say something? I just don't know anymore. I guess I need better friends. Even though I've been off of Facebook, I'm debating deleting Jen and blocking her. My boyfriend absolutely agrees with me that it isn't right and it doesn't make sense. He told me "That's fine, we won't invite them to ours either." I know it's petty, but it was like a punch to the gut to find that out and to watch my family act like it's not somehow super fucked up that this is happening. I've been very short-tempered with everyone lately and this whole stupid, confusing situation is why.

I am still trying to figure out how to navigate this situation. I don't feel like I can trust the people I used to be able to. I don't know what to say or how to feel. I don't even know if I'm being rational. I feel like an asshole for being this upset. But I still just can't help but feel hurt. I just don't know anymore, Charlie.

Your friend, with love, as always, Ann

[sakuric]

tslmty. | sorry doesn't fix shit.

warning: this chapter contains strong language, mentions of abuse and other triggering topics.

suna got a call the next morning. he opened his eyes, slightly squinting them as the light from the phone irritated his eyes. it was a call. he hoped it was from y/n, but it was quite opposite. it was his mother.

fifteen missed calls within the last half an hour, he slept through all. he picked up the phone and heard his mother sigh in relief.

"i was going to call an ambulance over there, oh my god, suna what were you thinking?!" his mother's irritating voice blasted into suna's ear.

"mom i was asleep."

"at three pm?"

"yeah..." suna yawned. "anyway what do you want?"

"i wanted to ask you to come over."

"why so?"

"well, you haven't gathered all your stuff and we're renting your room."

"mm," suna hummed, slightly irritated that his mother was selling his room for someone else to use. "i'll come by in like an hour, let me get ready."

"good." with that, his mother hung up.

"this couldn't have been a better fucking day." suna said sarcastically as he laid down and physically face palmed himself.

—

"ah, you're here." it didn’t take a genius to notice the ice cold venom lacing through her words when she’d finally acknowledged him. ever since he’d begun dressing the way that he wanted to, his mother had always made snide comments, saying that he’s never going to go far in life if he continues to be a sleazy and unkempt piece of shit. yes, his mother had said it to his face.

"yeah,” he curtly responded, not really caring for another one of her bitchy episodes. he just wanted to move on and get out of there as soon as he could. “i’ll go get my stuff and leave."

"hold on, rin." his mother stopped him. some years ago, it took everything in him to maintain the neutral expression on his face and not scowl in annoyance. now, he didn’t even think twice about displaying his displeasure towards her. “we need to talk about something important."

"what is it? have you finally gotten that shitty job of yours? or have you finally found someone to replace me as a son?" he spat, his emotions boiling restlessly in his chest like scalding water.

"i've gotten it a long time ago, and who are you to talk to your mother like that? what kind of person are you to think i would do such a thing?" suna scoffed in disbelief.

"i'm your fucking child! what kind of mother are you to fucking envy me like this?” he raised his voice at his mother, he could feel the anger slowly rising and he was so sure that he was going to erupt at any given moment. not wanting to escalate things further, he took a deep breath before continuing in a more tamed volume and tone of voice. “you don't even fucking call unless you need something from me."

"why would i call you? you don't even act like my son, let alone treat me like a mother!" oh, she was going to pull that card out? that’s fine. he had his own and he’s going to show her.

"because you're not acting like one! when was the last time you congratulated me for my birthday?!" suna's voice cracked. he couldn’t keep the tears at bay anymore, hot tears now streaming down his face. he wanted to do punch a wall, the seething anger bleeding through his lungs and caging him like a suffocating trap.

"last year..?" it sounded more like a question than a statement. he didn’t expect anything more from her.

"five years ago, mom. five years ago, back when you thought i was something special... back when you were proud to call me your son." suna sniffled, wiping his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.

"i- rin... i'm sorry."

"sorry doesn't fix shit, mom."

"see, you didn't even take my apology into consideration." she was quick to flip her switch, thinly pencilled in eyebrows furrowing together in a sickly frown as she crossed her arms across her chest.

"was it honest?" suna cocked an eyebrow upwards.

"what?"

"was your apology honest?" he repeated himself. she only stared back at him, lips pressed into a thin line and jaw clenching at the brutal truth of his words. suna weakly scoffed. "that's what i thought."

his blood still boiling and heart beating rapidly, he stomped upstairs to his room. packing the stuff hurriedly, he couldn't help but tear up again. he hated fighting with his mother. it was exhausting for him. he never raised his voice at anyone, but his mother made him feel like the whole world was crashing down at an immeasurable pace.

he stepped back downstairs to find his mother opening a bottle of whiskey, like she usually would whenever something pissed her off.

"are you sure that's gonna help?" suna spat, rolling his eyes at the way his mother grew more infuriated.

"you don't know what can help me- you don't know shit, rintarou!" his mother's gaze burned holes in suna's chest, her voice as harsh as ever. suna was ready for whatever she decided to spit at him next. was it gonna be another snide comment about him? or something partially insulting?

"you're just like your father, ungrateful and pathetic. do you know how much i've done for you?" she spat and took another large gulp of the whiskey. "the least you could do is respect my decision and move back in with me!" her eyes gazed at suna's teary ones, suddenly looking him up & down, and chuckling to herself. "pathetic fucking bastard..."

"i'm not moving in with you." suna's voice was stern and monotone, he was trying his best not to show any emotion. his mother stood up, the anger taking over her body. she stepped closer to suna and not hesitating a second she slapped him harder than ever before.

"did you not fucking hear what i said?!"

"i did." suna pushed her away. "i'm leaving and this time it's for good. you'll never see me again."

"good! fuck off for all i care!" her strong voice with a mix of slurred words was the final thing to break suna. he scoffed to himself before picking up the fallen suitcase and running out of the house.

he didn't care where he ran, he didn't care where his legs would take him, all he cared about was getting far away from that hell hole and his bitch of a mother.

masterlist.

suna's dad left their family when suna was very little.

his mother had always hated his guts and tried her best to contain herself, but after he started doing worse in school there wasn't a day where she wouldn't remind him how useless he was.

taglist; @elianetsantana @soranihimawari @ichorizaki @haengbokpixie @icedberrytea @bebegi @sadraging-wh0re @heyatsumu @anngelllla @admiringlove @erens-piss-cleaner @sunasthing @kac-chowsballs @honeydrip

special thanks to @icorizaki for helping me with this chapter.

[seacreek]

I don't want to write anything where irl friends would see (no one is gonna see this here anyway) but I need to get this out of me.

Liiiikeeeee

I was (am?) literally the most suicidal I've ever been in my life today (is today over if it's 2 am?) and not only can I tell that to NO ONE, but it's like God was fucking rubbing it my face all day. I actually laughed at one point bc I was driving behind someone thinking of whether I should try to do it at home or somewhere else when I noticed their license plate said KYS and then a mashup of my birthday numbers.

But like I've already been feeling this building bc I'm behind on bills and have no heat and it's gonna snow soon and it's the holidays which remind me that my family is all spread out and I don't really talk to my parents anymore and somedays I talk to no one at all but my cat and my life is going NOWHERE with no way to change that but to work myself even harder when I don't even feel like I have anything at all to give anymore.

And I already felt like calling out bc even though I chose to work Thanksgiving yesterday knowing I'd be the only one there, it was still depressing to know that normal people are with friends and family and I'm not. But I also didn't want to take up my neighbors/friends on their offers to join them bc I did that last year and got all the questions about what I was doing with my life and at the time I actually believed I'd be going back to school the next year but now I realize how I can't possibly afford that without accepting help from someone which would BE my neighbors bc my parents would not help and I can't pay for it alone. And I can't accept help from them bc I feel like I would just get overwhelmed and depressed and flunk out and waste their money anyway. And the other reason I couldn't go over there/can't is bc I already feel like such a burden to them. They do all this nice stuff for me all the time and I catch myself even EXPECTING it at times which is fucking disgusting. Even if I'm grateful and say thank you, it's not like they owe me anything just bc I have no one else to give it to me. So I need to stop accepting their help and gifts, but then I know they are judging me for that bc even though their really nice, they are also super judgmental and they really like me bc they think I have "potential", but if they knew that I'm actually just a natural born idiot and failure, they'd never want to talk to me in the first place. And also it's unhealthy probably how much I rely on their validation bc since I've known them since I was little, I'm almost using them as surrogate parents which is also fucked up bc they are not my parents, they have their own kids who actually have their lives together unlike me who is just like a pet project of theirs.

Soooo anyway I already had all this on my mind and more going into work today and when I get there, I look at the schedule and realize everyone called out but me!!!!

And so I had to make a frankenstein schedule out of all of theirs to prioritize what needed to get done and was still trying to do little favors for people in between that I didn't want to disappoint bc it wasn't their fault that their staff wasn't there to do it with them and it was getting super overwhelming. And then I'm super sensitive so when I'd have to tell someone that I COULDN'T do something extra for them that they really were looking forward to, it was already punching me in the gut to see their disappointment. But then the worst part is that they don't fully get that I'm not just choosing to do that out of spite, but I legitimately had negative amounts of time to get everything done so they would blame me for what I couldn't do for them. EVEN THOUGH I WAS WORKING LIKE 4 SCHEDULES IN 1. Like they don't have the capacity to think past what's in front of them sometimes which I understand it's not their fault, but it SUCKS bc then they are pissed at me even though I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to do everything for everyone and keep them all happy and they should really be annoyed with my coworkers who didn't come in but I didn't even throw them under the bus bc it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I'm the person in front of them who is "refusing to do what they ask" so it's my fault.

So that's how my day is going everywhere I go as I rush from person to person and place to place, answering calls, improvising on the spot, and constantly having to tell someone that whatever they had planned on today isn't possible and dealing with the result of that. And the WHOLE TIME I am DAYDREAMING about how I'm gonna kill myself when I get home. Maybe slit my wrists, wait no my leg because I know I'll chicken out on the wrists, wait no, I'll drive out to the ocean and just swim out until I'm drowning too far out to save myself, wait no, what bridges could I jump from let me google that, wait no, I could take all of the pills at home together but then I might throw them up so wait no, maybe I'll drag this out and just not eat or drink til I just die nah that takes too long etc etc etc. And I'm really thinking this is gonna happen tonight bc I already wrote a letter monday or tuesday and I'm sure they'll find that pretty fast when they look in my journals so I don't even have to worry about that part, just the doing. So I'm contemplating my end of life and getting more anxious and sad with every hour passing bc I'm really thinking this is it, this is the day I'm out. But really I keep getting caught up bc my CAT who is sadly the one being on earth that I love who could never understand, is at home. And I'm thinking about how if I kill myself while she's there and it takes time for people to realize I'm missing/find me, she will be sad/hungry/thirsty in the meantime. Which is so unecessary and all of my suicide plans get scrapped if they involve direct trauma of another being and she's the one that means the most, so how could I be so selfish as to not make a plan for her?

So I'm thinking of how I have to sneak her to my sister's place while she's still at work and that's stressful enough but more so bc then I'll have a time limit on getting this done bc as soon as she comes home and sees kaiya there without me and no explanation, she'll start blowing up my phone and when I don't answer, she'll call someone. And I don't want to do that in a pressured state, I need time to process everything and think about life and what I'm doing. Plus, what if I decide not to??? (Which is what ended up happening for tonight anyway) I would've done all that for nothing and then had to confess when she found kaiya anyway and have to go to a psych ward or something which would just ruin my life faster but make it harder to get out.

So I'm thinking ALL this ALL day while working my ass off yet still disappointing everyone and swallowing tears that would turn into sobs every hour until it's time to go home.

Then I drive home and even though I pray to God to send me some sign that he cares, he doesn't.

At this point, I've already lost the fire under me so I know this is another night where I just get through it, cuddle kaiya, and wake up the next day to do it all over and I've accepted that in a way.

Then 1 am rolls around and my sister calls me to say she stopped by a party where she ran into my old best friend and friends from high school. None of whom cared enough about me to even ask what I was up to these days, even though they were talking to my SISTER. And that whole growing apart thing took such a toll on me mentally and I do feel like I'm over it now these days, but it still brought up these gross sad feelings of when I was first realizing that they didn't really care about me anymore and then fully understanding that I didn't matter to them. Which hurt SO MUCH bc they were a ride or die for me, like I would have done anything for them and I never even DOUBTED they didn't feel the same until it was so obvious I had to stop pretending around it. And that fucked with ALL of my relationships with people. Every single friend I had, I started pulling away from bc I was so insecure in myself that I felt like I had to get away from them before they had the chance to drop me which I now felt was inevitable. To this day, I feel like I have a body count of of people that I desperately want to talk to, but don't let myself bc I feel like they don't deserve to have to put up with a person as shitty and worthless as me. And I do that in every possible relationship I have, platonic, romantic, and even familial. And I can't blame them for that bc they were just a normal person growing apart from someone I guess, but I think it triggered something laying dormant in me so badly that it was actually the catalyst for my inability to connect with other people in meaningful ways. I never meet a new person anymore with the belief that they will be in my life for more than a few years at most. Most people I expect to be gone within a week or two. My walls are up so high that it's actually selfish that I even talk to people at all bc I only end up hurting them when I pull away for seemingly no reason at all. And I'm too much of a coward to tell them that there's nothing wrong with them, I just can't get that close to people anymore. Like it actually makes me physically sick to think of carrying on normal relationships with people which is SO fucked. But then I turn into the villain bc I'm worried that they'll develop the same fear of people and I'll be the cause of it. Like I'm a vampire. But I isolate myself and then get to a certain point where I think "I'll try again!! And this time will be different!! I'll really have someone new in my life!" And then I am super friendly and doing my best to be good and making plans and whatever. But then I start getting that sick feeling again, like what if what if they just haven't realized how much I suck and how disappointing I am yet, they'll definitely realize it soon and I come up with some random specific reason why they'd actually hate me if they knew "THIS" about me and I start detaching myself and then flake on plans and then disappear. And then spend weeks worrying myself sick that I permanently damaged their trust in people!!! But then I get lonely again and the pattern starts again!! All traced back to this moment in time where it actually hit me that people's affection for you can disappear in the blink of an eye no matter how much you thought they cared about you. So clearly love is conditional and just that thought alone is enough to make me want to end it all!!

So yea, just a shit day with shit cherries and cream on top.

And now it's 3am and I have to wake up in 5 hrs to do this again.

And all of this is still something no one will know if or until it comes spilling out and then my life will either be changed forever or over.

But yea, drew that lion the other day.

[preciousroy2]

Thanks for the tag @ssomestuff and @iamtrashyartz ! This is a cute little idea.

2016: Had to sit and think back some. But was my third year in Japan. Had not long started dating my now husband. Was working a sweet as job that was rewarding, just the right amount of challenging and best off all the pay was GREAT!

The summer before, I lost my grandpa to a terrorist attack in Tunisia. He and my grandma were on vacation there when some piece of shit went loose with guns and grenades. While that was 2015 rather than 16, the effect carried on, I think. I've always been a quiet, introverted homebody but after that I went through a big phase of ''you never know what life will throw at you" and "tomorrow is promised to no one". So started going to bars and clubs and all that stuff feeling like that's what people my age did and should be doing. Was wasting my youth if I wasn't doing what everyone else was doing. Cause going out and getting shitfaced is clearly how you get fulfillment out of life, right? (What a dumbass). I don't regret it though, wouldn't have met my hubby if I hadn't turned in to a pisshead for that stint.

Also was the year I made the mistake of trying bangs. Looked ridiculous.

2020: This is been a year. Jeez.

So that sweet as job had a 5 year policy. No matter how good you were, once 5 years were up you were out. So 2018 meant trying my best to get another job to keep my visa to stay with my partner. Managed it, but the job sucked. Was working til 10pm every night and weekends. Never saw my partner and didn't enjoy the job. Left within 6 months for a new, better sounding job. Mistake.

My boss was a tempromental demon firing people left and right. If she took a dislike, she'd ruthlessly bully people (it only took a change in wind direction to piss her off too). She loved me, which was great except that because she thought I was some kind of superteacher, she added more and more responsibility to an already heavy pile and basically was in charge of managing an entire school. I was working over 20hrs a week unpaid overtime just to keep up and all for a pretty pitiful paycheck at the end of it. Not to mention I was constantly terrified of displeasing her incase I would be the next victim for her to bare her fangs to.

My existence became solely my job. I didn't want to do anything weekends, too tired and worrying if I had everything ready for the next week. I started having bouts if insomia just laying awake feeling like I couldn't breathe or actually throwing up or just would break down feeling awful.

I've struggled with anxiety and depression since uni. Another reason why the phase of clubbing was stupid. "Why am I feeling sick to my stomach and jittery just sitting at the bar? Oh yeh. Social anxiety."

But this year it exploded. I have to psych myself up to go grocery shopping, had random bouts of panic several times when I have ventured out and avoid everyone like the plague. I've damaged friendships majorly by staying away and found it a struggle to enjoy anything. Weirdly can't even really listen to music anymore. Which is just sad. I always loved music.

So finally got the balls to say enough was enough. No job is worth losing yourself or making yourself sick. Any position is replaceable.

My boyfriend and I signed our marriage papers at the end of July this year. We moved out the shitty apartment filled with mold and rusty pipes my work provided and moved in to a small but really cute and cosy apartment in November. I'm currently playing housewife and taking some time to just breathe and fix myself a lil bit. As best as I can anyway.

I was supposed to go and spend a few months with my mum over Christmas until my brother's wedding. But that got cancelled due to the virus annnnnd my mother ended up moving to a Greek island (the suddenness surprised her too XD).

I'm really sad I can't see my family. It's been three years since I last saw any of them. Christmas in Japan is a regular work day, so my husband always works. Its a shit time to be alone.

But, my wedding is happening November 2021 and my brother has rescheduled for April 2022. Stuff to look forward to.

Man, did not expect to ramble this much.

Conclusion, this year has been a lot of change and challenges. But honestly being in the fandom has been a huge escape for me. And since socialising is difficult, my poor bey friends have had to listen to me whine, complain, cry and vent constantly.

If its any consolation darlings, you make the weight feel so much lighter and your value to me second to none. It should seem odd to love people you've never met as much as I do, but it doesn't.

Reading through people's posts with this, its so sad to see the trials and crap people have had to face and shows just how common mental health problems are. It's also good to know you're not alone though. Fandoms are key, man. If anyone ever wants a chat, hit me up. I'm always down to meet new people. Online. XD

Starting up a Picrew tag game… you, but four years ago versus now! 

The purpose is to tag at least five to 15 users that you are friends with, and to create a tag chain of our character development!

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Me, four years ago: a middle school student who was a little TOO obsessed with Uncle Grandpa; super long hair that was unfortunately cut short

Me, right now: letting my hair grow out; figuring my own identity out and making cool friends; hyper-fixated on the Switch; big glasses and in high school AP classes

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I’ll like to tag:

@femalesonicexe2, @thelittlepetfan, @komorumono, @redkitty50, @cockyroaches, @noroalia, @maries-universe, @jiosephfan63, @pizzasteveofficial, @eggnogg1112, @samstarium, @cloudtopcruise, @jawz-breaker, @cuddleslover1738, @wibblywobblyyy, @sweetlovelygirl

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Picrew to use:

https://picrew.me/image_maker/100365