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taffywabbit · 3 months ago

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I finally watched breaking bad (all within the past week or so while I worked, finished it and watched el camino last night) and I'm confident this isn't a new thought I'm expressing or anything but genuinely how DID an entire generation of dudes convince themselves Walter White was cool and admirable and intended to be sympathetic. I know ppl just lack media literacy sometimes but I'm still so confused

I don't think I've EVER watched a piece of media that so blatantly depicts a guy making the worst possible decisions at every turn and having his life ruined for it and not being redeemed or made sympathetic in any significant or lasting way. the kinds of justifications villains USUALLY give that make people consider them "morally grey" or "tragic" or whatever (everything I did was for my loved ones, I did what I had to to survive, once I was in this I couldn't get out, I just needed you to trust me so I could keep you safe, etc etc) is ALWAYS framed as complete self-serving bullshit when Walt says it, and one of the only shreds of personal growth he ever exhibits in the whole series is when he finally fucking admits that. every time he does something even remotely cool or drops a quotable one-liner, something terrible immediately happens that makes everything worse and makes him look like an unreasonable idiot asshole again. by the end of the series the ONLY characters they can still contrast as being morally "worse" than him are literally a bunch of bloodthirsty neonazis who kept a guy in a cage for several months. this show is practically SCREAMING at you the entire time not to admire Walt. why did every dude I knew in highschool have his face on tshirts and Facebook pfps.

I just don't get it. at least with The Dark Knight's Joker it was like, a feature-length movie and that's it. you spend a lot less time with the Joker and it has a lot less time to delve into his motivations, so there's way more room for flanderization and misinterpretation as people extrapolate the few cool/interesting/sad things they saw into a whole nuanced misunderstood guy in their heads and online. Walter White has 5 seasons' worth of 45min episodes to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a miserable fucking loser who ruins everything he touches because of greed and selfishness. if you weren't watching it for that, what WERE you getting out of this. what DID you think this show was about. am I just missing some key piece of context from 2012 or whatever that would help me understand this

#buny text #breaking bad #also I'm vaguely aware there was a big movement of fans who blamed everything on his wife and said she was the worst #which like. obvious misogyny from the primary audience of teen boys and young men aside #she's not really worse than any of the other adult characters?? she sucks real bad in the first couple seasons but so does everyone else #half the point of having all these characters be so shitty and rigid and unwilling to grow or accommodate others is so that #they can serve as landmarks to show how rapidly walt is abandoning his morals and spiraling into self-justification as the series goes on #the people you hate in season 1 are largely people you sympathize with in season 4 and 5 because compared to walt they're saints #idk. it's just weird having grown up around the fan culture for this show for the past decade or so and then finally watching it #and just being completely baffled now that i know what they were responding to

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batchilla · 2 months ago

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Your new partner is Grayson.

He’s a weird guy.

Not necessarily a bad guy, but a weird one.

He’s not cold, in fact he’s rather friendly. However, when you really consider it, he volunteered very little information on his personal life. Reasonable, you suppose. So long as he has your back in the field and gets his reports done, you don’t need to be best friends.

Your new partner Grayson is a recent Gotham transplant. You’d never personally been, but you weren’t oblivious to how utterly mad the city was. You could hardly blame him for getting out.

Your new partner Grayson, tenses up whenever someone mentions the Batman, or any of the nutcases he fights. You don’t pry.

You do your own research.

Your new partner Grayson watched his parents die. He’d been taken in by Gotham’s favourite son, a man he seemed reluctant to speak of. He’d had, and lost a brother, to the most deranged man Gotham, if not the world, had ever known.

You stop mentioning Gotham around him after that.

Your new partner Grayson is a weird guy, who seems constantly surprised whenever you demonstrate competency.

At first you’d suspected sexism. It wouldn’t have been your first partner to have that failing.

After a few days though, you catch him being equally surprised when officer Jackson makes a connection on a string of breaking and entries, and realise that perhaps he’s just not used to the cops not being utterly reliant on a very scary angsty furry and a small child without pants.

Your new partner, Grayson, is a weird guy, who disappears sometimes. Middle of a chase he’ll be gone, and you won’t see him again for sometimes as long as hours, before he’s back. More often than not, somehow through some insane luck, the perp will have been taken down by Bludhaven’s new vigilante, and tied to a lamppost for you to find. You both hated and envied his luck.

Your new partner Grayson was a weird guy… and he was a damn good cop.

He made connections like no one else. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. You’d asked him once, about how he seemed to know all he did. How he seemed to have access to a whole other database of clues you just couldn’t see.

And he’d smiled that cheeky smile of his, and told you he’d been consulting an oracle.

Your new partner, Grayson, moves like nothing you’ve ever seen.

You’d initially attributed it to his past as an acrobat. The way he could simply parkour over and around anything in his way, run faster then he had any right to, chase down a perp like a bloodhound.

It was more than that though. You’d say without hesitation that if you were in a firefight, he’s who you’d want at your side. You must’ve owed him your life three times over by now. Even in those situations though, when no one would have blamed him for the use of lethal force, he never had.

You’d been pinned down by a smuggling ring. You, Grayson, and ten of them - all armed to the teeth.

He’d been incredible. Superhuman, almost.

Someone had shot out the lights. He’d told you one of the smugglers must have missed. You’d never once believed him.

Ten smugglers. You’d managed to knock out and cuff one, unwilling to risk taking a shot blind.

The other nine? Those had been your partner. He had them unconscious in a heap by the time your eyes had adjusted.

No bullet wounds. He’d done it hand to hand.

You didn’t know exactly what he was hiding, but you knew he was hiding something. You decided not to call him out on it. Not as long as you trusted that whatever he was using his … inexplicable skills for was good.

And trust you did.

Grayson was a good man. Even knowing little about him

Which was why this betrayal hurt so badly.

“Say again?”

You’d sat in relative silence in an unmarked police car for about half an hour on a stakeout, and Richard Grayson had just said the worst sentence you’d ever heard. You’d never been so utterly horrified.

“Peeps popcorn.” He says, holding up the tupperware containing an atrocious biohazard, grinning from ear to ear.

“One more time please?” you fight to keep up your faked anger, but fail in the face of that fucking smile.

Honestly, it should be some sort of crime to smile like that. Like everything would work out in the end, so long as you could keep him smiling at you.

“Peeps. Popcorn.” He says it a third time. He’s trying and failing not to laugh at her, at the way her mouth twists and flails to maintain a frown.

He was tempted to tell her it was in vain. He’d broken Batman, and he’d make her smile too.

Honestly, she had such a pretty smile. Not that he’d say that, she was his partner, and they needed to keep things professional.

“It’s my turn to provide stakeout snacks, and so,” he lifts the lid of the peeps popcorn balls.

“Peeps popcorn.”

She rolls her eyes, and looks out the window of the passenger side. But she’s smiling. “It is one of life’s great injustices,” she huffs “that you can eat like that and maintain your… impressive physique.”

Dick feels his chest puff out a little. While he had been able to tell all along that she had a crush on him, but he’d never risk acting on it. Still, it felt nice to be complemented by her.

“Seriously, do you clock off and just do the ninja warrior course all night or something?” She muses, her head against the window, looking at him out of the side of her eye.

“Not exactly,” he replies, sitting back in his seat, bringing his foot up onto the cushion. “Try one.” he presses, poking her side with the container.

She takes one, rolling her eyes and nibbles at the neon cluster of popcorn.

“No. no.” she gags, “oh that's nasty. Oh, it's so sweet. Why? Why Grayson. Why would you do this to me?” she asks, setting the sticky concoction on the divider between their seats.

Dick just laughs “I am determined to make you a peeps convert.”

“Never, regular marshmallows are fine.”

“Peeps are rainbow.”

“How old are you?”

“There is no age too old to enjoy whimsy, Detective.” he responds, biting into his own.

“Besides, are you implying that rainbow marshmallows are irregular? In this day and age? Tut tut.”

“We are not making me out to be a homophobe over peeps!” she protests, still laughing, slightly taken aback at the audacity.

“If you say so.” he says, stretching his arms over his head and into the backseat. Stakeouts were terrible. He was not built to sit still in a confined space for hours at a time. However, this one provided a useful opportunity he cannot afford to waste.

Not to torment her with his war of attrition for peeps supremacy - though that was fun.

He needed to be sure of something else.

“Well. You being wrong about peeps aside. I … wanted to check back on a file from a few months ago. You uh… you didn’t move the Holt murder file, did you?”

“Holt.” she clicks her tongue in thought “the guy with…” she gestures to her chest.

“That's the guy.”

“Not knowingly. I haven’t had cause to reopen it. No new leads. I tried to track down the kid… He didn’t want a bar for me. Guess I can’t blame him. I offered the help I could… but well… the last time someone helped him his dad got brutally murdered. He’s staying in the tent city by the docks, best I can figure.” She seems to feel guilty as soon as she says it, but Dick doesn’t blame her.

He had paid for that room. If he hadn’t… who knows what might have happened?

“But if someone moved it?” he prompts, not wanting to dwell on that gnawing guilt.

“Wasn’t me.”

Your new partner, Grayson, was a weird guy who ate strange and terrible foods.

He blames himself for what happened to poor Mr Holt. Because he was good to the core, and somehow that had led to something utterly twisted.

He’s also standing on your balcony. On the 20th floor.

And it all makes sense now.

Your apartment isn’t particularly nice. It was small, and frequently disorganised. Especially when you got overly invested in a case.

You’d been texted many gifs of the conspiracy board meme by friends over the years.

Work life balance? Not something you’d ever seen much value in.

And now, your unfairly attractive new partner Grayson was in your apartment, in full vigilante getup.

You need to find a way to be normal about that in ten seconds or less, because he’s staring at you, and you're staring at him, and it's starting to get awkward.

“Hello.” you eek out.

He greets you as Detective, followed by your first and last name.

Unusually formal, for him. Unless… unless he somehow thinks a few inches of fabric in the shape of a wingding is going to fool you.

Unless he thinks he’s got you hoodwinked.

“Nightwing… to what do I owe the pleasure?”

He leans in the doorframe, his hands braced against its top, so he is leaning into your space without touching you, and giving you plenty of ability to step back if you so chose. You don’t.

“I have reason to suspect there’s a serial killer moving though Bludhaven. And that whoever they are, they have someone in your precinct on the payroll.”

You fold your arms, bristling.

“Not sure I appreciate the accusation.” Sure, the bludhaven police department was ridiculously corrupted. But you’d hope that your partner would have at least the trust in you not to think you’d help a serial killer.

“No accusation.” he reassures “a request for help. I need someone I can trust inside the department. And my source says that’s you, sherlock.”

His source? Was he kidding?

No. No he wasn’t.

Oh this was madness.

This was hysterical.

He really, truly thinks that you can’t know him outside of his streetwear. And he’s trying to pass it off like he doesn’t know himself either.

Perhaps you should tell him you know.

But… Grayson and his peeps tomfoolery isn’t the only one who can have fun.

“So… you’re asking me to… what, exactly?” You prompt, unfolding your arms, willing to give him a chance.

Nightwing offers you a smile. It’s slightly different from Richard Graysons.

It’s just as sunny, and it makes you feel just as warm and fuzzy and giggly inside. You have to fight even harder to stop yourself blushing, given how much less this getup leaves to the imagination then his usual dress pants, shirt and tie.

But it’s a little more … brazzen. Flirtatious. More… cocky. Sure, He was always at least a bit of a show off, but as nightwing? He was one of the most capable, incredible people alive, and he wasn’t shy about it.

Oh, you were doomed. But that was a problem for later.

“I’m asking you to keep an eye on the ‘heartless’ case. Holt… he’s not the only one and I think there’s going to be more. And, to be blunt?”

He stands up straight, and puts an arm on your shoulder.

“It’s a big request. But you might be the only person in that station who I have real confidence in.”

You wonder what that says about his relationship with himself, but like so many things with Richard, you don’t ask.

“I can do that.”

“And I understand that it’s dange— I’m sorry, did you just agree?” he cuts himself off, staring at you.

You laugh then, just the once.

You owed him your life many times over as his partner. But as nightwing?

Since he’d come on the scene, you’d actually felt like something mattered. Like change could happen.

Like someone was willing to help the people of Bludhaven not to reap a profit, but because the system you’d once hoped to help restore was broken at its very core, and restoration wasn’t the solution - reformation and fundamental change was. And you didn’t know how to do that.

But then Nightwing had come onto the scene, and started kicking the asses of the worst of the worst, and you had felt like you had when you’d joined the force, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and determined to make a difference.

Before the incident. And every other day, when you’d felt that optimism slowly being crushed to death, into a fine powder and blown away in the wind.

“Yeah.” you say, and agreeing to help is one of the best feelings in the world. You get to help. To make a real difference.

“Bludhaven owes you a hell of a lot, Nightwing… seems like the least I can do is tell you if anything weird comes up.”

“Right. Thank you.” he clearly wasn’t expecting this. Maybe he’d thought it would be a harder sell.

“If I do… have anything for you, how should I alert you?”

He passes you a wingding. “Put this in your window. I’ll check in every few days.”

You raise an eyebrow “all your fancy tech and you don’t have a phone”

He shrugs “phones are traceable. Plausibly just something you picked up on a case as a trinket that you ‘forgot’ to log in evidence left on a windowsill? Lot harder to trace.”

“Fair.” you acknowledge.

“Besides.” he steps backwards onto your balcony once more “your place is on one of my main patrol routes. Can’t let anything happen to the best looking detective Blud’s got.”

You scoff, without any real offence. You know he’s only playing, and that he does, as Richard, respect your intellect more then your appearance - but you suppose as ‘nightwing’ he doesn’t know you that well.

“I think you mean best detective full stop.” you respond, and he gives a small bow of playful deference.

“But of course, sherlock.”

And then he’s gone.

That night, you don’t sleep.

You felt so stupid. He’s nightwing. He’s been nightwing the whole time.

The skills. The disappearing. The way he seemed to just… know things.

The way he tensed whenever someone mentioned Gotham.

… the timing of Robin reportedly becoming a child again.

Had your new partner, Grayson, been Robin?

Had he been using the Batman's archives to solve cases? Was that his so called oracle?

… wait.

Was Bruce Wayne the FUCKING BATMAN?

You screamed into your pillow. You were laying awake, face down in your bed, because now you had realised far too many things in one night.

The first: Your new partner is Nightwing.

The second: Bruce Wayne might be Batman.

The third: you, enchanted by that fucking perfect smile, had agreed to help track down a serial killer stealing hearts.

The fourth: Your new partner, Richard Grayson, between his stupid snacks, the Alfred Pennyworth foundation he’s been working to get off the ground, and his work as Nightwing, will save Bludhaven, you know it to your core.

And the fifth. The worst, and scariest part of your night: You may very well have fallen in love with him.

Chapter two

If you read this far, reblog?

Divider credit: @strangergraphics

Tag list:

@jasontoddproblems

@sunnie-angel

@stormz369

First time writing Dick! Feedback is welcome.

#dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #dc x reader #detective reader #a tentitive part one #idk what to call this series yet #or if it’ll be more then three chapters #but here goes #reblog fics

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