#duke is not here bc i have not read many comics with him in it and though i do like him

[sporkberries]

Some Bat(and bat related ) characters as Mitski songs( THE CORRECT AND OBJECTIVE LIST)

Dick Grayson- Drunk Walk Home(or Brand New City)

Barbara Gordon- Working For The Knife

Helena Bertinelli- Crack Baby

Jean Paul Valley- Abbey

Jason Todd- Why Didn’t You Stop Me

Cassandra Cain- A Pearl

Tim Drake- First Love / Late Spring

Stephanie Brown- GoodBye My Danish Sweetheart( or Love Me More)

Damian Wayne- Class of 2013( AUDIOTREE VERSION)

[welcometogrouchland]

Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.

Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).

Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**

That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???

I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.

Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.

(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)

*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench

**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious

[freedvmrouge]

the one thing i noticed about joining the dc fic fandom on ao3 and tumblr* is that it’s small enough that you can create such a big impact. changing the course of fanon and even perceived canon.

like have you seen the female jason todd tag? inky_dreams made this fantastic long-fic where they named fem!jason medea, as well as some other fem!jason oneshots using medea. which sparked other creators to use the name medea for fem!jason.

similar thing happened with the “different mentor” aus where jason could be hemlock (poison ivy) or tim could be stray (catwoman). the only time i’ve seen wally as flamebird was if he was in a relationship with dick. and hey? those are all fanon. but now there is not an insignificant amount of fics written of them like this, and i’ve seen people believe they were actually canon.

the other thing is that most dc fic writers i’ve seen on ao3 have never read the source material and/or do not want to. i’ve seen a few people complain about characterization bc authors didn’t read the source material. but even the ones who go out of their way to cite all the comic issue references draw similar characterizations.

all that said— fic writers hold some power here. don’t like that duke thomas isn’t being written? write him in your fics! harper? colin? they’re also members of the batfam, but most people don’t know them bc they’re not written about in fics. it’s kinda left to the comic readers to introduce these characters into fic bc like i said, a lot of people have not and/or will not read the comics.

* i do believe the dc fandom on ao3 and tumblr is very different from a movie or comic book fandom. i joined the dc fic fandom bc like many may relate to: it’s very accessible.

[strawberrytalia]

omg! i wanna do a few:

top 5 dc characters!

top 5 comic series!

top 5 animals!

OMG hi ella!!! 🫶 OH THESE ARE HARD

Top 5 dc characters (omg I feel bad ranking them)

Duke Thomas - who’s surprised 😭 no but he’s without a doubt my fave bat. i think there are just so many inspiring things about him, and he represents the aspect of comics I love most - stepping up and doing what’s right even when all odds are against you

Carol Ferris - I used to talk about her 24/7 when I was heavy in my GL phase, but I never stopped loving her. I love that she’s deeply flawed and angry and passionate, and she gets to be messy. Also she influenced me to be more comfortable expressing myself femininely which was hard as a brown girl ngl anyways carol <333

Ollie Queen - LMAO idk why but I feel so cliche putting him, but he’s my favorite Arrow and he always has been. I relate to him a lot. He’s really introverted, in his own head despite being is outspoken, he loves nature, cares deeply, and he isolates when he’s sad. I also like his very black-and-white thinking, esp when it gets challenged. live laugh love ollie queen

Talia Al Ghul - I won’t say much about her lmao bc talia stans are like sharks here, but she is also very important to me. Like you ever get that character that just seizes your heart???? Yeah that’s Talia for me 🥺 i don’t post abt her often either, but i love her sm

Khalid Nassour - it’s hell being his fan, but i’ll do it anyways 😭 so Khalid is rlly interesting bc i read his “cool” appearances first then read Dr Fate 2015 where he was more of an annoying 22 yr old. And it was so satisfying watching him grow from someone who was more narrow-minded and whitewashed to an intelligent, capable, and enlightened person. I really enjoy his character’s spin on what fate means in regards to one’s identity, heritage, lifestyle, and faith.

Top 5 comic series (THIS IS ALSO HARD OMG)

Day of Vengeance - this is the one currently living rent free in my head rn bc it’s so FUNNY and random, but also a really interesting storyline in regards to magic in the DCU. It’s just so enjoyable watching this group of mystics handle the hugest threat ever and barely get along, and they’re all weird, and then Lori joins and she’s like the group teenager and it’s so funny

We Are Robin - I honestly wish it was longer ngl but I really wanted to see more of the group together and their stories, especially Izzy and Dre. The premise and duration of this story is SO dear to me bc ofc Duke, but also I love watching kids band together against authorities bc they love their city sm.

Batman: Son of the Demon - as a Talia and sometimes Brutalia fan, how can I not 😭 It’s so sad and actually heartwrenching how happiness was so close to them but taken away, and how much Bruce and Talia sacrificed for each other because they are both loving people, they just love in the wrong way

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters - perfect Ollie. Perfect depiction of his mind. Really good storytelling. SHADOOOOO she served cunt and dc didn’t like that so they ruined her. Her initial appearance was so charming i literally made it my header. I like ethical dilemmas and the one in this story is so good. Also shoutout to Eddie fr

Green Lantern: Blackest Night - OKAY THIS IS THE ONE I WAS AFRAID OF SHARING 😭 I’m SORRY i love this for so many reasons, nostalgia mostly bc I re-read it over and over again at the peak of my hal obsession era idk why, I like the giant white entity, I like when all the Corps leaders have to team up and they’re all side-eyeing each other sm, and I also love when random heroes get involved and help save the day like Mera, Ray, Barry, Diana, Grant, watching them all try to survive it while battling grief in front of them. It is NOT THE BEST GL COMIC EVER but it’s one of my faves.

Top 5 animals (I love this question!!!!)

CATS 🫶 I used to have a cat when I lived in the states!! his name was austin, he was 8 years old, and he was the cutest thing ever. we had to give him away when we moved 😭 i still hate that my mom did that sm

SEALS!!!!!!! 🦭

Orcas 🐋🐋🐋 I like them a lot, they’re so adorable

Otters!!! 🦦

Flamingos 🦩 (hehe my username for a reason) they’re pink and i like all things pink also they’re so pretty

[necrotic-nephilim]

reblogging bc there are so many *fantastic* points added here and things i want to riff off of just because you brought up so many fantastic things in this whole discussion i want to ramble about in no particular order

i am *absolutely* with you on the "canon!Helena is fanon!Jason" posts. i'm a huge Helena Bertinelli fan, i'd go so far as to say she might be my favorite character of all time and i care about knowing everything there is to know about her. like i'm a Batfamily fan, but i'm *really* a Huntress fan. and while i think the lighthearted jokes about how women in the Batfamily get ignored for the men, as you said because of the misogyny in Migratory Slash Fandom, and how you can draw similarities to Jason and Helena, i think it's such a *wild* disservice to Helena to call her fanon!Jason. and frankly, what fans like about fanon!Jason (his relationship with Bruce, his trauma, how he reacts to it, his childhood as Robin) are *not* things you'll find in any Huntress comic. besides some surface parallels you can draw about "elder Batfam kid who's got a weird complex about Bruce and is pro-murder", she exists on her own.

then again, as you said, i see people wanting fanfic for things that exist in canon comics. i have seen headcanons where "Jason is Catholic and becomes an English teacher and protects women and children and adopts a kid and totally tells Bruce off while still being close to Tim/Dick/etc" and my impulse thought is. a little pained that these people haven't heard of Huntress, when she canonically is all of the things people headcanon Jason as, particularly the headcanons that make little sense for him. that said, i don't think you're going to convince any fan, Jason stan or not, to read a Huntress comic by dragging him down. it feels sort of reactionary? like people are course-correcting *too much* to fix the racism and misogyny in fandom by boosting up the women and characters of color, but still only doing it through the lense of comparing them to the popular cishet white (or whitewashed, in the case of Damian and Dick) male characters. which, if the only way you feel you can convince people to read about women or poc in comics is by comparing them to men, i don't think you're making the point you think you are about them. because frankly i think creating so much fan content about Helena surround Jason defeats the point of her existing on her own. and it's not like these fans are purposefully stealing traits from Helena to make Jason cooler in their head, most of them don't know she exists. so shoving her in their faces both makes it harder to find genuine content about Helena, and makes Jason fans reactionary toward the mention of her.

which is frustrating, when fanon-only fans start trying to include the women and characters of colors they flat out don't understand, for fear they'll look bigoted if left out. but because they don't understand these characters whatsoever, we end up with popular headcanons that make *no* concept of sense. see specifically: the idea of Duke being "the normal one" because fanon-only fans don't really know what to *do* with him. they know he exists but they don't seem to want to learn about him outside of that, they just want the brownie points for including him. the same extends to Cass, for me the painful fanon is with her using ASL to communicate which makes *zero* sense for her disability and is a headcanon that at best is cute but misguided, and at worst views all Deaf/mute disabilities as interchangeable and easily "fixable" by ASL. (this one may be a tad personal to me as a Deaf fan lol, but this post really gets into the nuances of it) like honestly: i'd far rather fanon-only spaces just flat out go back to leaving these characters out because at least then, they were honest about not knowing or caring about them. whereas now you only get this half-hearted, shallow "the only content for this character is posts that mass tag every single Batfamily member mentioned even once" inclusion for the brownie points.

i think your point about fanon changing is *fascinating* because it's something i've noticed so heavily. i got into the Batfamily in my early teens, dropped off for a bit when the MCU and Winter Soldier comics became my primary special interest, and then as an adult when i came back into the space i was *baffled* by how things had changed. because i actually *do* remember a time when the fanon Jason Todd was a sexist horndog who was so mean to poor Timmy but also his protector. i remember when you couldn't *escape* where every interaction Jason had with Damian in headcanons, incorrect quotes, or fanfic culminated in a "well I fucked your mom" joke. (which, was so *weird* in the first place but i'm begging people to let go because even Winick, the guy who wrote that comic, agrees it shouldn't have happened and it was weird.) i distinctly remember everyone agreeing Jason was the mean, violent Robin who got himself killed with his own recklessness (which tbf, some canon DC content still agrees with this, Death in the Family was frankly a messy comic in hindsight and if not for its cultural significance, i firmly believe would be regarded as poorly written) and was a big mean asshole as Red Hood. and like, to be honest if you went off of RHATO (2011), yeah, i'd see why Jason being a weird sexist freak sort of became a thing. but now we've done this complete 180 and it feels like people are course correcting too hard. now, it's all "Jason was a sunshine boy as Robin, look at this out of context panel where he says being Robin gave him magic, and as Red Hood he's a sad depressed traumatized boy protecting women and children, who's mistreated by everyone" which feels just as incorrect. Jason's Robin years were a shitshow of inconsistent writing (imo the only good story of Robin!Jason is Batman: the Cult) that's hard to parse anything out of, but to act like Jason was this ball of sunshine ignores his most important arcs as Robin. (how he reacts to believing Two-Face killed his father, how he reacts during the infamous Felipe incident, so on) i recently had a *very* long argument with someone in a TikTok comment section because they refused to believe Jason was a villain and kept insisting he wasn't, even when i was directly quoting the *writers of his comics* at them (comics this person admitted they hadn't read) simply because they were so attached to Jason being this misunderstood antihero.

and the same has happened to Tim too. Tim has always been all over the place in fanon, but like you pointed out, there's this spike in a *ridiculously* cartoonishly evil portrayal of the Drakes for the sake of projection onto Tim. at their worst you could say the Drakes were possibly neglectful out of sheer cluelessness rather than malice. but to act as though they never even hug or look at him and he's a poor boy who had to raise himself is so wild. it's a complicated headcanon for me because there are certainly versions of the "Tim's parents were kind of shitty" headcanon i enjoy (and i'm not ashamed to say that's entirely projection) but it's become so ridiculous you can't find content where his parents genuinely care. or worse, you end up in arguments with people about whether or not his parents were neglectful, and their sources are shaky at best. Tim has suffered the most from the blorbofication of fanon, specifically how fanon likes to take a character and give them an "oh everyone has been mean and awful to you and lookit how terrible they treated you except this One Character who Understands You and yells at everyone for mistreating you and is now your Protector". and, i understand the projection fantasy of that, this idea of someone suddenly noticing how mistreated you are and using Tim as a slate for that. usually it's Jason who's the savior of Tim, or any other character you can slash him with, like Kon. so you have to create fanon like "Dick tried to send Tim to Arkham" or take canon moments like "Damian cut Tim's line as a murder attempt" (nevermind the genuine justification Damian had for his anger, as well as the fact this wasn't even a real murder attempt and Tim wasn't hurt or bothered by it beyond a "what the hell???" moment) just to strip Tim of people who care about him to stick him in that unrealistic scenario.

honestly, not to sidebar too long but as a lover of Red Robin (2009) it's one of my biggest gripes about how people misunderstand that comic. the point of that arc for Tim is not "look at how awful everyone treats him and no one believes him so he has to work alone and be this uber badass who's so isolated and misunderstood bc everyone is just so awful to him". the *point* is "look at Tim who is purposefully self-isolating because of his grief and consistently pushing away his loved ones trying to reach out because Tim's worst fear as a character is becoming like Bruce, hyper-paranoid and driving everyone away and that is what he is actively doing in this arc and his turning point is being willing to accept help and verbatim saying 'i'm not like Batman, i have friends' because he breaks the cycle of self harm that Bruce can't". it's so *frustrating* to me, the recent fascination with taking this comic so out of context for fanon, because the whole *point* is Tim is his worst enemy. not how supposedly awful characters like Dick are for... saying Tim might need therapy or for telling him he's ready to move on from being Robin because he's grown past the role. but instead of delving into Tim's actual arc during this run, people tout around a few panels of it so they can force him into the fanon arc they *want* him to have. which isn't really an arc at all, it's just a stereotype of a character that Tim isn't to begin with.

and then the fanon shift has also badly clocked Bruce- we went from at least managing to agree he was sort of the worst as a dad to now if Bruce is a bad dad in the comics that's OOC and terrible and awful and why do you want Bruce to be mean to his kids. the meme you shared from 2014 feels so funny in hindsight a decade later with how Bruce is the one fanon has flipped the hardest on. and my personal theory on why that change has been so vicious is because initially, Batfanon was a victim of Migratory Slash Fandom, people moving in on these characters because they were pretty boys who you could ship together, to it now being a victim of... i guess for lack of any other name, Migratory Found Family Fandom. there's this real want in fandom nowadays for found family to come first and to be highlighted on. it's becoming a marketing term at this point, and i regularly see people say they got into the Batfamily because they wanted a cutesy found family. (i also blame this for the rise in antis in the Batfamily fandom as of recent- if people are here for the found family and these sibling bonds they've constructed in their heads, they react with hostility to headcanons/ships that disagree with that, like batcest) so if you want a cute found family, you have to convince yourself Bruce is a good dad all the time and actively push against any content that says otherwise, even canon content.

and oh my *god*, the Titans Tower Incident and all its AUs. dare i say, my most controversial opinion in the Batfamily fandom is this: i don't think that comic is actually that OOC for Jason. he's over the top and garish about it, but really, when *isn't* Jason being dramatic during this era. if you compare it to Jason's actions during this era, specifically how he reacts to other teen sidekicks (see the whole kidnapping Mia Dearden and blowing up her school in a Green Arrow arc) it really isn't out of form for him. the only part of it that feels cringey is him well, wearing that ridiculous Robin suit. but i think that existed for meta reasons of reminding readers who Jason Todd was. (if you're only a Teen Titans reader and not keeping up with the Batman run, Jason's revival is still fresh enough that you may need to be reminded who the hell he even *is*. we all forget that during that era of comics Jason wasn't known how he is now. i was speaking to a relative who used to read comics decades ago about the Batfamily and passingly mentioned Jason and he was blown away Jason was revived and didn't know at all Jason was alive. i had that conversation only a year ago. putting Jason in the Robin suit wasn't because he's a dramatic rat, it was to show readers who he was in the first place so i defend the choice, personally.) when you actually look at Jason's actions, he's *not* trying to kill Tim. he's testing Tim and making a point about how easy it is for anyone to just break into Titans Tower and target a defenseless teen sidekick- because one of Jason's main beliefs at this point was there shouldn't *be* teen sidekicks. his death should've been a wake up call to the hero community. and by the end of it, he has an honest respect for Tim, there's no real hatred on Jason's side for Tim as a person, he just hates the idea the Robin mantle didn't end with his death. and as for Tim. Tim is really... nonplussed by the whole thing. he's mocking Jason the whole time, even as he's getting beaten and it clearly holds no lasting effects on him other than giving him a distaste for someone he didn't like in the first place. but all these AUs from fanon-only fans who only understand the incident as "omg Jason went to Titans Tower and beat Tim up for no reason" make just... painful fanfiction out of it. which sucks because i'd love exploration of that moment that *actually* considers Jason's canon motivations and feelings, as well as Tim's canon reactions and feelings in fanfiction, shipping or not. but instead everything is about how Tim was so battered and defenseless and Jason was a horrible person. or, if the fanon is trying to be transgressive, it's Jason for some reason deciding to take Tim in after this moment and deciding to be Tim's savior. because once again, that seems to be the only way Tim and Jason can exist in fanon. Jason is big and mean to Tim until he Sees The Light and saves Tim from the cruel world because he's the only one who sees Tim for how he is.

and of course, the "Justice League meets the Batfamily" thing. besides what i already said -how it uproots characters of important relationships for silly crack- i think the weirdest part to me is it forces every character to be a Batman clone. they must be this weird cryptid crawling around Gotham who never leaves the city and never makes friends. and worse, it gives Bruce a *freakish* level of control over them. like i always read these fics (bc i swear, i've given them the college try.) and my lingering thought is "this is supposed to be silly fluff/crack but somehow it's created a deeply insidious implication about the Batfamily) because you're telling me every single member of the Batfamily, with their own agency, their own views on what being a hero should be, their own goals, has whole-heartedly nodded and agreed to Bruce's loner ideologies? they're fine with Bruce playing ball in the big Leagues while they all sit and only exist at his beck and call in Gotham? that's so fucking *weird* to me. (and granted: the only way i think i could get behind this AU is if you went just balls to the walls with how fucked up that is and making it weird and dark and abusive. now if someone wrote that. that i would fucking devour.) at that point they're not characters with agency, they're just Bruce's little minions. which is *weird*, given the fact half of them don't like Bruce on any given day, and the other half definitely are *not* listening to his orders or wanting him to father them. like, if i can pretend for just a second that the League doesn't ever read the Gotham Gazette or look at the news in Gotham to notice there's definitely other heroes crawling around. if I can pretend for a moment Nightwing can totally exist without Superman knowing him even though Clark *gave him the name*. if i can suspend that disbelief. i *can't* suspend the disbelief that every one of these characters can remain in character, expressing their own agency, and yet never leave Gotham/never interact with the League. Bruce has to be holding a power over them to be forcing them to stay in Gotham which is both no fun and weird. which i think fanon consistently misunderstands about all of these characters. there's this belief everyone in the Batfamily has a loyalty to Bruce and will always defact to following his orders. as if most of them are not actively doing the opposite. because Bruce isn't really the patriarch of this "family". there is no patriarch. they just co-exist and build relationships and then fight about it.

of course, the point of that concept is that you're not supposed to think about it too hard. it exists because there's this fun to the fantasy of "omg the League has no idea the totally cool and badass Batfamily exists and could totally school them" in that projection sort of way. which is why i think it exists. it's the projection and the comedy potential of cardboard cut outs with the names of canon characters doing slapstick routines. which is what a lot of the Batfamily fanon is. no deep thoughts about the canon, just whatever silly ideas you can plaster onto it. this isn't unique to the Batfamily, it's really just a thing of how fandom works and always will work, but it feels particularly worse in a fandom driven by fanon. because like you said, comics can be difficult to read on just a simple craft level. i also don't actually love the medium as an art form, i regularly cannot tell what order shit is being said in. and some older comics are just. hard to read. they flat out are difficult to even understand. i love Huntress (1989) and Batman: the Cult on like. a story level. but as for actually enjoying how the comic read? ngl i was not having fun. but that's just the medium, take it or leave it. and some fans are going to leave it, hence voraciously consuming adaptation content, but not the comics.

funnily enough, i once actually saw a fan go on and on about how much they loved Jason and how they were an expert because they'd... memorized his fandom wiki. like that goes to show the lengths people will go to, to not read the medium. and i'm not saying that's a bad thing or you're not a real fan, but to say you're an expert from a wiki feels... presumptuous, is the kindest way i'll put it. but it exemplifies what is important to fanon. knowing the events that happened, but not their contexts and their emotional impacts. you can react about something in a wiki and decide to run with it, insisting your headcanon/fanfic is based on canon. canon moments don't exist to genuinely be interacted with, just used as malleable concepts you can shape into whatever best fits your fanon opinion.

and like you brought up, some fanon only fans will start to pick up comics and shape their interaction with canon through the lense of fanon. sure, if you stretch it hard enough, you can say the Drakes neglect Tim in canon. but that's clearly not the intent, and that interpretation exists on the predication of the fanon you already believed. and you can do that with any Batfamily character, all you have to do is sweep under the rug comics that don't fit your purview with the "well it's OOC" argument, or "that writer sucks though" argument. which just isn't how comics as a medium work, but even if that is true, an OOC comic can still be very important canon that you need to be willing to interact with at least a little bit to understand the character. (see: Battle for the Cowl) and i get why that can be so frustrating, to beginners. it feels easier and safer to fall back onto the simplicities of fanon where you don't have to critically think about it all. that's not a dig, there are times i don't want to critically think about my blorbos, i just want them to kiss. but if that was the only way i interacted with fandom, i personally don't think i'd be having a lot of fun. and like you said, it's weird we get interpreted as rude for politely suggesting people read comics. or worse, politely correcting people on misinformation about comics. the arguments i have had about comics simply because i wanted to politely correct someone and i was seen as a buzzkill fun hater. when the issue isn't with the fanon, it's with saying the fanon is canon. (not DC related, but i got into a heated argument because someone repeatedly claimed that Peter Parker was "only recently" an adult in comics and when they were corrected on no, he's been an adult since the 60s you just clearly don't read comics and that's okay just don't talk about what you don't know, they backtracked and claimed their issue was with fans portraying him as a minor in a specific ship. which, is a different conversation and not the one they started and made them point fingers at the people correcting them. it's exhausting and i've had the debate constantly.)

it's so weird how comic fans have been turned into the bad guys of a fandom *centered around comics*. assholes will be abound for any opinion camp, and sure i've met comic purists who made me roll my eyes a little bit because at a certain point, do you like fan content at *all*. but i've also run into fanon only fans who are very negative and rude about not reading comics but also defend their headcanons supposedly being canon compliant. it sort of feels like you can't win. a part of me dies when i see posts asking for fic recs for a specific Batfamily member so they can write that character well in their own fic. it's like watching the blind lead the blind. recently, a tiktoker, when a comment asked them honestly how to get into the Batfamily, said with their full chest to go straight to Ao3 first. and i can't help but wonder if some fans are so disconnected from the source material they don't even know how it exists. sure, comics are hard to get into, but like you said, there are approachable ways to do it. but because some fans are playing fic of theseus (i'm stealing that btw that's delightful) they've convinced themselves The Comics™ are this nebulous and unapproachable concept they never go near because it'll just never ever make sense. and it pains me a lot to witness that.

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[hexhomos]

okay your post (from twt) about the 2010s and american propaganda has been rattling around in my empty noggin rent free what did you MEAN by that? i'm so intrigued like did I fully miss something?

Oh, i mean that it's fairly obvious that the collection of character traits riot used to conceptualize jayce and viktor as a duo of silly game characters upon release fits play-by-the-book red scare / cold war propaganda tropes. Even though Jayce was released later. Bear with me, here we go:

to the left we have THE DEFENDER OF TOMORROW (superman type, piltover aligned, Representing The Hope of the Nation, very blatantly introduced as the strong boastful charming american man with the big hammer) and to the right we have THAT ONE CREEPY GUY WITH THE RUSSIAN ACCENT AND THE DEATH LASER (zaun aligned, cartoonishly 'evil' inhuman antag, whose 'evil plan' involves the conversion and later sublimation of the masses into his ~alienating personal ideology~, oh hey look its literally just the scary communist russian boogeyman that has come to take over america story but we made him a robot that wants to make more robots this time or something.)

My bullshit meter is probably hyper-sensitive by this point because I've been deeply into cape comics and it is such... a prevalent old ass shorthand there lmfao. Legitimately too many to count. The consequences of it being So Old is that we get the dissemination of these archetypes into all sorts of shit; there's hundreds of books movies tv shows etc that utilize this kind of 'antagonist building' to quickly signify which guy you should mistrust bc he sounds 'vaguely immoral communist-russian' and which guy you should root for because 'HE FIGHTS FOR LIBERTY AND PROGRESS AND THE GOOD-NATURED AMERICAN DREAM,' and that's just like. c'mon man. (IIRC during jayce's initial release this dynamic was *already* seen as a concern/problem or in the very least Cringe and people spoke up to have it tweaked, and later during the massive lore overhaul when jayce's first new stories came out talking about viktor doing 'amoral' 'experiments' the same red flags popped up again)

For the sake of comparison: OG viktor can be summarized with "russian grad student goes insane after his work is stolen, locks himself in room, comes out of it a mechanical beast with warped ideals" while OG jayce is "good-hearted american piltovan boy is offered a deal with the devil (viktor)! He rejects it, but the villain steals his crystal! what he doesn't expect is for the boy to teach him a lesson! (everybody claps)" and that was it. They didn't have a big buildup or anything, viktor just showed up in full mecharegalia one day and said 'hey i need that crystal for my crazy experiments' and then jayce beat his ass.

Their settled lore rework has made them a lot more nuanced and palatable as full-fledged characters in my opinion, mainly that by making jayce into the star studded fuck-up and viktor into the guy you're at least inclined to feel sorry for (and by giving them an actual years-long connection) you drum up empathy and tend to think of them as people.

Arcane is... look opinions get really heated here because it's new, and people are allowed to be attached to previous versions of characters, but since i tend to look at it as a movie adaptation set into it's own universe (because it is) i'm mostly just going like heyyyy this looks cool i like this they're nice and touchy feely and doing intricate rituals :) ! yay !

But say you're a casual player in 2012 and you're Not Fucking Reading Bullshit Character Bios; all you know is that shitty knock-off captain america and shitty knock-off red skull are duking it out on the middle of league of legends and you think it's funny because hey, you know these guys! you know this story! 'haha. nice.' you say. tale as old as time. That was the intended vibe.

anyway, what matters is that the internet loves gay little communist bitches these days, and they're most definitely eroding jayce's pure-hearted american goals. life comes at you fast

[autisticcassandracain]

Batfam rated by how good their solos/comics they have a primary role in are (based on what I've read and my opinions):

Cassandra Cain: Batgirl (2000) FUCKS, it's the best Batfam comic, I will not be taking criticism at this time. Even the post-Flashpoint and Evil Cass nonsense won't take this spot from her.

Duke Thomas: We Are Robin is SO good for the first six issues and okay for most of it afterwards. Batman & The Signal is pretty good. I really hate his Secret Files but that's only one issue, do he's here due to a lack of bad comics and having some pretty good ones.

Bruce Wayne: He's here solely because he's got so many fucking comics statistically at least some are great. Some of his comics are better than Duke's but also he's got some fucking awful ones so he's below him for that.

Damian Wayne: Robin: Son of Batman's first 6 issues are some of my favourites in comics, the rest is pretty good. His post-flashpoint Batman & Robin is generally pretty good. Robin (2021) was boring to me and I didn't bother keeping up with it so who knows it could be good now maybe possibly I guess. His Pre-Flashpoint Batman & Robin sucks ass for the entire Morrison run and is okay afterwards. Overall most of the other series he's been in have ranged from meh to ugh. Has some highlights but is mostly in the pretty mediocre or bad range.

Barbara Gordon: Admittedly haven't read through all of Birds of Prey but what I read was pretty good. Oracle: Year One CARRIES her spot though I'm cheating bc its a short story not a full comic but it's SO good I love it so much. Sadly she's got all the post-flashpoint nonsense dragging her down.

Dick Grayson: Look he's been in some pretty good stuff but imo it was not usually good because of him if you get what I mean. Also his solos have been long as hell but I've never read any where I was like 'yeah this is great!' It's always been fine or pretty good at best. Has some decent Robin stories and some pretty good Batman ones though. Was a victim of Devin Grayson and is getting points reducted for that.

Stephanie Brown: Her Batgirl solo is pretty good but nothing spectacular. I haven't been reading the current Batgirls series so that's all this ranking is based on. Perfectly serviceable, not horrific to read.

Tim Drake: His Robin solo sucks ass sorry to Tim enjoyers but I simply do not like it. I haven't read all of it but I've read enough to make the call that I don't want to read more. Haven't read his Red Robin solo so that's not adding or subtracting to the ranking.

Jason Todd: This man has never gotten a single good comic. Under The Red Hood was fine but Jason fans are so obnoxious about it it's retroactively made me hate it. I'm sorry but RHATO was his longest running solo this man's comics have no rights

[dilfbatman]

dil ik ur in ur kpop era but if i wanted to get into dc where would i start i don’t trust what the men online are telling me

AUR FIRST OF ALL I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU TO GET INTO DC!!!!! it has one of my top two dilf’s of all time in it <3 (bruce & toji heyyyyyy) and MFNFNFNFNND kpop era i fear bts have a hold on me that’s stronger than anything i felt before… ANYWAYS

honestly the way i got into dc at first wasn’t through comics but actually tv shows & movies! “young justice”, “justice league action”, “lego batman”, “under the red hood” were some of the first few pieces of media i consumed of dc and they were actually pretty decent! i found myself getting really into them and wanting to know more!

& this is where i really got into fanart & edits & ultimately COMICS! i found masterlists of some of my fav dc characters that people have made which give comics in order + best comics to read! i’ll link some at the end of this for some of my fav characters but i do wanna warn you that for me PERSONALLY comics don’t hit like mangas do so if you’re used to mangas, comics can be a bit :/ either cause of the writing, pacing, terrible storylines & retcons but i digress bc some of them are still fun & cute! ALSO READ COMICS ON readcomiconline.to! it’s a free site and has ALL your fav characters & their comics <3

if you find yourself really getting into a character i recommend finding reading lists bc they are the EASIEST & most comprehensive way of learning abt your favs! for ex: “jason todd reading list”, “dick grayson reading list”, “supersons reading list”, “batfam reading list” & batman… batman is a special one bc his lore is SO extensive dear LORD 😭 i like dan mora’s urban legends run, jorge jimenez had a cute run w supersons, & there’s apparently a WEBTOON of bat family! i haven’t read it bc i got into anime/kpop but my moots really love it!

here’s a comprehensive masterlist of many dc characters: https://comraderecs.tumblr.com/post/18865609991/dc-comic-recommendations

- jason todd (MY HOLY GRAIL): https://dailyjasontodd.tumblr.com/comics

- dick grayson: https://dickgreyson.tumblr.com/post/181828849357/this-list-is-by-no-means-extensive-or-exhaustive

- damian wayne: https://yicruz48.tumblr.com/post/622909569337819136/it-was-a-genuine-question-i-havent-read-a-lot-of

- supersons: https://wonderstrevors.tumblr.com/post/179575583272/the-super-sons-is-the-name-of-the-duo-conformed-by

- batfamily (really comprehensive!): https://hood-ex.tumblr.com/post/172730736323/how-does-one-get-in-to-the-nightwingbatkids

- conner kent: https://stephbrown.tumblr.com/post/175552866201/the-death-and-return-of-superman-1992-1993

- duke thomas: https://batfamilydaily.tumblr.com/post/167779386458/who-is-he-duke-thomas-is-a-vigilante-and-a-member

- bruce wayne: ok so. for bruce specifically since his lore is so incredibly huge dating back decades it’s intimidating to get started for him but if you want you could totally start from the beginning but i found myself just reading from whatever posts i found interesting on @why-i-love-comics (for ex: ghostmaker & batman comic, tomasi’s run, jorge jimenez’s run, dan mora’s urban legends run etc…) also this reading list is really decent so here you go as well! https://uncannycarrot.tumblr.com/post/655621762721136640/so-i-recently-got-back-into-the-batman-fandom

this is gonna sound silly but at the end of the day you get into dc & comics themselves bc they’re FUN! <3 while i personally have many gripes w dc i also loved it so much & still do! at the core of batman & the whole batfam there IS genuine love & a genuine want for family! they’re good people wanting to do good things for the betterment of the world no matter what their moral code is - i love them a lot they’re very dear 2 me! <333 i Hope you have fun reading/watching and if you have any questions PLEASE feel free to ask! :D

(also if you ever want bts/manga recs you know where 2 find me <3 a heehee a giggle) gonna add bts gifs just cause i want to hehe love you mwah

[marimopeace]

there's a limit on how much you can be an isekai intellectual...

a bunch of analyses have been popping up before me all day so i wanted to throw my hat into the ring. all love to ppl who are exercising their creative minds + ppl like geoff here who just talk about these things because of fan interest but i feel like there reaches a point where exploring the "types" of isekai is pointless? i've seen ppl list out the different types of villainess revenge isekai or fantasy mmorpg isekai but eh why fit them all into separate boxes like that?

i think it's easier to think of isekai as a "type" (genre) of itself with only two categories: 1) a focus on isekai (lit. another world) 2) tensei (lit. to be reborn). this allows for a variety of applications and thus tropes that ppl see so many trends of!

with isekai - in another world

you see everything from:

pure fantasy (inuyasha, digimon wait maybe not the best example but in my childhood mind i count digimon as pure fantasy, fushigi yugi)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (.hack//legend of twilight, sao ugh, log horizon, overlord (LOVE OVERLORD!)

otome game-esque worlds >>> this is where it gets complicated with "villainess routes" since i admit there are multiple villainess tropes but this is why it's nice to not think of this as a "sub-type/genre" bc it frees you from those complications! (the saint's magic power is omnipotent, the white cat's revenge as plotted from the dragon king's lap soso cute!, the savior's book cafe in another world, i'm a villainous daughter so i'm going to keep the last boss wait i can't remember if she's reborn in this one lmaooo see this is why rules make everything hard)

with tensei storylines - being reincarnated/reborn in another world as *insert character/role*

you see...

the same tropes!!

pure fantasy (a returner's magic should be special, reminiscence adonis, the lady and the beast, light and shadow, i can't think of a manga off the top of my head for this ah)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (so i'm a spider so what i stan kumoko so hard, her majesty's swarm, can't name another off the top of my head ah i hate lists shorter than two things...)

self-insert based games/novels (fiance's observation log of a self-proclaimed villainess, who made me a princess, death is the only ending for the villainess, the villainess wants to marry a commoner, honestly games vs novels are different applications but i'm not in the headspace to try to remember a bunch of both lol)

*insert line break to give random ppl a break from scrolling but tl; dr just enjoy things for what they are no need to micro analyze*

similar variations occur in both genres (if ppl want to be super technical i guess i'm arguing that isekai itself is a massive genre that has the "another world" subgenre and "reincarnation" subgenre tl; dr) so i think it's honestly a huge pain to try to separate all these trends into so many different types of stories. for me personally it's easier to not get overwhelmed by this gigantic umbrella of "isekai" that spans light novels, manhwa, manga, and mobile games by just stripping each story down into its trademark tropes (aka character archetypes, story structures) and slapping "oh this is a person going to a world that's not ours" and "this person gets reborn as blank in another world". none of this "omg this power fantasy is such a this kind of isekai moment" or "there are 14 different types of villainess revenge stories and this series fits into this" bc AH labels! limitations! circle-jerks via ppl trying to compartmentalize everything and sound smart for leaving a comment on story analysis instead of ooh-ahhing over a character's face! dividing things into light novel manga vs manga vs korean manhwa ft. female characters!

the last bit is mainly why i feel frustrated by ppl's insistence to group everything?

the video linked at the beginning of the post (honestly good video essay, i enjoyed it, i just kept thinking in my head the whole time "marimo these are tropes do not take the genre talk literally") has a baby comment thread talking about "korean isekai manhwas" as a genre featuring nothing but reincarnated villainess' and i can't.

like i cannot acknowledge that as a genre of any sort. the energy i felt reading through some of those insights takes me back to 2012 when all yt americans discovered k-pop and deemed all korean music k-pop from then on! (ppl still do this now, yes you are seen and don't talk to me pls i don't like you. k-pop is korean pop music and nothing less and nothing more. take a few seconds and try to parse apart aspects of korean culture instead of slamming everything into a monolithic label that has the letter k and a hyphen.) it feels so odd to see a bunch of young ppl on ig and tiktok acknowledge korean media that happens to be in the form of a webtoon as "oh stories all about young girls becoming villains in stories they made/played" bc it feels so reductive u.u

(positionality disclaimer that i'm praying isn't actually necessary: i am a 3rd-generation korean of japanese descent do not fite me i am exhausted irl of ppl asking for validation/verification bc massive shove off.)

breaking news! korean manhwa...is just as multifaceted as japanese manga...bc how can comics as an art-form not have multiple genres...huh such a shocker?!?! same likely applies to media in other parts of the world like chinese manhwa and french comics--not my place to explain either of those i just know those industries exist bc of wakfu and donghua shows by Tencent.

at the end of the day it's not like analyzing any kind of isekai is wrong--absolutely not!! i think it can be super fun to think about how isekai elements complicate a story (MCs trying to go back home, ppl from the og world, reincarnation plot-twists) or maybe even bash a series for including some kind of other world element when they could have just written a super fun fantasy.

insert marimo's brief ramble that hey you can get sick of truck-kun's hitting disillusioned guys who happen to be super duper smart or girls who happen to be master chefs/craftsmen but transporting a fully-grown being into a fantasy setting is the ultimate cheat code for making mundane modern technology seem cool and overpowered, and being reincarnated as a fully grown person in a world with a pre-made story/game set-up completely bypasses the need for an author to slowly flesh out world-building in a natural progression so isekai is actually a really smart writing tool it's just that there are some series where the author didn't use it well at all and it's cheesy or clearly isekai was misused as a vehicle for character/story development and it was pointless *DEEP BREATH OUT*

in this essay i will argue...lol i am such a culture studies major!! if i were an english major i would be talking all about writing but here i am having a side-tangent about world-building via someone being reborn wow i love this for me (don't get me started on when an author has someone reincarnate as a baby and the story is mostly them having warm fluffy moments with their family--typically father figures--and getting lots of powers i could and would and probably will rant about east asian toxicity)

but anyway am i crazy????? like yes for being passionate about the technical use of a word like genre (i am a scorpio rising let me be fussy pls) but i don't think it's a lot to ask for ppl to not unironically see "villainess revenge isekai" as the definition of korean manhwa.

idk as someone who resonates with why japanese isekai is so popular domestically + why a lot of korean manhwa feat. the same tropes (it's not for great reasons lads it's actually depressing tbh) i'm just starting to feel kind of pained by the generalization and need to separate "cute japanese girl in an otome game"/"japanese boy finds a harem in another world" from "korean girl dies and comes back as a villainess" bc they are just! applications to the same story device!!

recommendations for any who makes it this far down below <3

// also gladly recommend any of the examples i've listed in the above rant as i've read/watched all of them and adore them v much! //

save me princess

super refreshing fantasy manhwa ft. a princess and her ex-boyfriend having to save the world!

the beginning after the end

an AMERICAN web novel turned into a comic (but see it being not korean/japanese doesn't really matter when you just consider isekai as a genre...isn't it nice to not overthink it?) ft. a super-powerful wizard king reincarnated into another world and starting from scratch--gives mushoku tensei vibes but huge twists!

the reason why raeliana ended up at the duke's mansion

love love LOVE this story--read the title and you'll learn how this girl reincarnated as the character raeliana in a book gets married to a duke!

trash of the count's family

such a good novel!! a guy gets reborn as a lazy oaf and he takes the hero of the story under his wing...plot twists come up later on!

this time i will definitely be happy!

v good and refreshing for a shorter series! she's been reborn 3 times and remembers every time the hero's stabbed her in the back, and now she just wants to break up with him!

silver diamond

older manga but v good adventure w intrigue! a boy who loves plants get sucked into a desert world with demonic lizards and a mysterious bodyguard by his side. shonen-ai not BL but wonderful vibes nonetheless + great side characters!

the princess imprints a traitor

adore everything in this from the world (not in that way this society makes me so angry) to the machinations at play and the dynamic between the fl and ml

[dukethomas]

oh my goddd i really want to read comics w duke and cass can you rec me some? I really miss them

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH BEST SIBS OF MY HEART <33333

unfortunately there aren't actually that many comics out there with duke and cass working together DDD: unless you count all of those big batfam working together moments. off the top of my head, there's

batman and the outsiders (2018). this is a MUST for duke & cass bc this is where their sibling relationship gets featured the most!!! they love each other so much and make such a good team <333

detective comics #983-987, which is the on the outside arc. mainly deals with the formation of the outsiders, which duke and cass are part of! altho i'd more recommend this for context for batman and the outsiders, bc duke and cass don't really have any one on one scenes iirc :((( but they are a team <3

batman secret files: the signal. duke & cass train together in the beginning and hug each other goodbye!!!

dark nights death metal robin king, but just the backup, "the quiet ones" which features duke. not rllyyy duke & cass but cass (along w steph and tim) does help him out here!!

[ectonurites]

hey what kinda comics do you recommend to a dc newbie, like I've just read fandom wikis and have love fanon tim but you recent post has thrown my a little lol ,, idk which continuity to go for

if you're interested in more of comics tim (as opposed to fanon tim which while like, of course theres traces of actual tim in there is prettyyy seperate) I'd recommend reading his origin story first (its an arc called Lonely Place of Dying, if you look it up you can find the issue numbers) to kinda find out how he got involved in everything, and then I'd also highly recommend his Robin run (theres a few mini series and then his comic that ran for a long time) and Young Justice (1998 - core four and friends !!!! i would die for this team)! 

later for him comes Teen Titans & then Red Robin That's all stuff pre reboot and just in general I recommend more things from before the new 52 bc that era was.... rough on timbo. it got a bit better with rebirth and if you're more interested in like Current Tim then Detective Comics Rebirth is a good place to go for Tynion's run (although admittedly tim is MIA for a long part of it) 

 for more general batfam/comics recs i'd probably need to think on it more but a few that come to mind as staples that I like are Under the Hood, (jason ,,,) Batman: Hush (so many characters show up here), The New Teen Titans (dick and friends!), Batgirl (2000 for Cass and 2009 for Steph), and Super Sons (jon and damian are so precious and i love them)! If you're interested in Duke as a character then We Are Robin + Robin War is a good place to start 

 that is SO MANY THINGS i just listed though and idk exactly what's the 'best' starting place because I kinda just jumped head first into a lot of this stuff and it didn't all make sense until later but thats kinda the fun with comics, just reading something randomly and then later putting all the pieces together as you learn and read more stuff!

[heleizition]

I demand for fic recs from you!!!!!!! *excited screaming*

im guessing we’re going for dc fics here bc thats the only fandom ive posted for in a while sefojfseosjef sorry haikyuu u_u

ive been inhaling a few 1000k+ words of dc fics over the past three months so have this whole list because i couldn’t just choose some i had to give all of them

many of these were in the most bookmarked fics of the tags i was looking up so u might have already read them......

Damian Wayne sneezes like a kitten 

Gen, 3k, exactly what the title says, adorable, damian and tim shenanigans

Liminal Spaces

Serie, Mature, 195k, TW for violence, depression, tim really isnt doing so well, reference to attempted assault in the second big fic Compression. 

Bruce from the Young Justice cartoon rescue Tim from comics (but like worse) from letting him just, slowly kill himself with work and Depression, except the situation is worse than that and tim needs a hug.

Oh Brother

T, 10k, reference to the all for the game/the foxhole court books, but can totally be understood without any knowledge of them (idk shit about them). jay goes to college far away from gotham and his family just drops in and hes Annoyed.

Tim Drake is the saddest person I’ve ever met

Gen, 5k7, heavy references to depression. Damian gains some empathic powers for a little while and learns that Tim is really not doing so fine.

Aemulatio

Gen, 4k, Duke and some moments with the members of his new family !!!!

Repeat your favorite mistakes and love them all again

Bruce/Clark, T, 160k, the kids get deaged and Bruce has to deal with them but Clark ends up helping. Dads.

hold him close.

Gen, 4k, ABO AU, Bruce gets hit with cuddle pollen and his victim is tim.

I’m alone here, I think

Tim/Kon, T, 93k, Witch AU, stuff happens and Tim ends up forgotten by his loved ones on a greek island, and then one day Kon shows up, even tho he doesn’t remember Tim. (honestly its a hard fic to explain without revealing that much but MAN its amazing)

Don’t touch me

T, 13k, Tim gets hit with a pollen that gives him unbearable pain when he doesnt have a skin to skin contact with another person, which causes problems when he’s never been fond of it to beging with

Love Song

Gen, 2k8, Tim is determined to make Damian call him a big brother, but Damian is stubborn.

The Antonym of Philtre

M, 3k, attempted assault. Dick gets roofied at a gala.

Watch this

Gen, 2k4, Hal and Barry are worried about Batman’s new partner.

Leap, Fall, Fly

Tim/Kon, E, 12k3, Tim and Kon figure some stuff out.

Two Bird, One Stone(d)

Gen, 5k8, mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.Tim ends up stoned after a drug bust, and Dick and Bruce take care of him.

Bat Naps

T, 6k8, all of the batkids have learned to take naps in their own personal different way.

The Vulnerable

T, 3k2, attempted assault. Everyone is out of town so Jason is in charge of looking out for Tim.

Conner Kent VS the menstrual hygiene aisle

T, 1k, Trans Tim asks Conner to get him tampons because thats what bros do.

Juneberries

T, 68k, Tim gets kidnapped while helping Damian escape, mind break follows.

When you’re in pieces (and still falling apart)

Serie, M, 9k, mentions of assault and sex work. Dick disappear from Gotham and Bruce’s life after he gets kicked out.

free (as a bird)

T, 11k8, mentions of child abuse. Autistic Tim growing up as Robin.

On my chest, on my heart

T, 20k3, Tim/Kon, no capes or powers AU, high school AU where seniors get assigned a pen pal.

Mind you head, i’ve lost my mind

M, 9k6, Tim helps Conner deal with his anxiety.

Implications

T, 19k, Tim/Bart. Bart has a Tim related revelation. Teen angst follows.

Boys of Summers

T, 5k4, Tim/Kon, side Kon/Cassie. No capes/powers AU. Tim gets sent to summer camp and meets Conner.

The Stand-In

M, 2k3. Depression. Sometimes Tim feels like Tim Drake is just a stand in for Robin.

“no” and other four letter words

M, 24k, past abuse disussions, coping with trauma. In which Dick Grayson learns about consent.

(this last fic is actually the one my friend made me read and that got me really invested . .. these are my KIDS your honor)

ayyyy here we are i could have added much more but its half past midnight and i work tmrw .... hope i at least made you discover some fics!!!!

[lookforanewangle]

HI

BATFAM THE OLD GUARD AU PLEASE

idk how this would all play out (and I'm thinking this is aaaaalll gen here, but to each their own), and sorry if someone has already done this, but:

Bruce is the Andy equivalent (thinking about his stint lost in time)

Alfred is Lykon, I'm so sorry. there are theories (or maybe comic canon, I haven't read the TOG comic yet) that says Lykon was the first immortal, so he could have helped Bruce, but then B lost him :(

Dick is another og immortal that was around w B and Alfie before Quynh/Jay shows up, Dick shows up maybe 600-1000ish years into B's immortality

Jay is Quynh (Bruce's and Andy's biggest failure was not saving them). Dick is with Steph and Dami when Bruce and Jay are captured.

Dami is Joe. I was originally going to have Dick be Nicky (hardcore thinking of the fight w Heretic: "we were the best Richard" and "touch him again and I'll kill you!!") but I need DG around at the beginning bc B and DG's relationship is so important

Either Steph or Tim is Nicky. I'm leaning more towards Steph being Nicky bc she gets closer to Dami then Tim ever does, but Tim and Dami growing into an unstoppable duo would also be cool to see

Tim I think is better as Booker (more tech savvy and more depressed; instead of wife and kids, his parents were furious w him he couldn't share his gift, and then he had to go and lose Kon and Cassie and Bart too, and then Bruce loses his immortality a la TOG canon and Tim just isn't having a good time right now, or for the last,, century or so--)

Cass is Nile!! or switch her w Steph 🤔

Duke is either another immortal? or since he's the only one in the fam w meta powers, we can have him have some other powers, but he's another new addition. still trying to decide on this

Babs is Copley (and maybe ends up being immortal too, who knows. just make everyone immortal at this point)

Lex is Merrick? Or Tommy Elliot...many options here

obviously it would need to be reworked a bit to adjust to their specific back stories but like I think this fits really well?? now someone write it please and then tag me so I can read it please!! lmao 🙏🙏

[redroseworks]

got anything to say about the flashfam in earth 116? 👀

Okay so I've done a post a long time ago about the flash fam but I have changed some shit about them 

And also there's so many of them but here's some random shit

Meloni Allen (I ain't gonna call her a thawne) become a hero version of Cobalt Blue and appears at random moments in time

Jesse Quick becomes the Flash after Wally West retires to live out his life as a happy family man

Jai West died at age 13 and is the last Kid Flash

Bart Allen goes by Max Mercury as a hero name when he's older

Thad Thawne (bart's clone boi) changes his name to Thad Allen and gets taken in by Max plus Helen

Dox the dog aka Plavo is the best boy

Bart, Thad, Max, and of course Helen all have a deep southern accent

There are technically two timelines bc of fucking barry and iris and the og dawn and don allen

Whose birth names were as bad as the name barrance but also their idiots who decide naming themselves Don and Dawn would be funny

Oh yeah they trans

Dawn and Meloni are Barts bio moms. Don and Jeven are Jennis bio dads.

Anyway bc speedforce and time travel reasons there's a version of barry and iris that raise dawn and don in the normal timeline

Yeah

Idk

I'm not sure how to explain it?

I kinda take from the yj cartoon and say that bc bart showed up something in the timeline changed but it didnt necessarily erase him and jennis timeline? Like it existes and will happen on top of dawn and don existing in the past

Time ain't a straight line

Owen Mercer is an unofficial member bc bart and thad are his half brothers who definitely decide to bond with him

They call it force family fun time

Jesse Quick is somehow the best bart and thad babysitter

Actually in genral she becomes the best babysitter for speedster kids who like to get in trouble

Wallace West exists of course btw

He becomes the Flash after Jesse

He was also Kid Flash after Barts short lived run

Heh short lived cuz in the comics everyone thought he was dead I think or some shit after whatever event

Btw can yall tell I've mostly just read impulse?

Bc I've only read a few other comics w the others

But impluse is wheres it's at for me

Anywho Wallace

That boi

He's bi

His best friends are Emiko Queen, Jasckson Hyde, Duke Thomas, and Damian Wayne lol (I put him like fighting in between duke and Damians ages so he gets to be an annoying friend to both)

Wallace fucking naruto runs

Iris and Linda once got asked how they put up with all speedsters and they just laughed

They (and the other non speedsters) I the flash fam love the speedsters but have you ever tried chasing a toddler that can run at light speed

Btw Bart and Thad are autistic and have ADHD

Iris, Don, and Dawn, all have ADHD as well

Onay that's it that's the post I'm done for now

[stealingyourbones]

@welcometosasakiworld ok bet. Also just to reiterate for literally anyone who uses any of my ideas: blanket permission on literally everything I write that you’re free to take an idea and run with it. All I ask is to be informed that it was written so I can read it. If anyone wants to take just an individual idea from the thing I write here, you’re free to use that by itself as well :D

Also for anyone else who does this for other prompts that I have made and is truly genuine about writing a fic, I’m truly down to help write more ideas that expand on the initial one and help get the inspiration flowing! (Please actually be planning to write a fic tho bc I’d rather not have to write like 50 of these and only have 2 have an end product ya know? I don’t mind how long it is I would just prefer something in response rather than silence.)

- Damian now has a core. Is there an implication or possible issues with suddenly getting a core? Probably. He might get incredibly sick for a few weeks, he might just be perfectly fine, he might have issues controlling his ghostly abilities.

- Damian now gets pit rage (at least initially. He just gained a lot of power very quickly and he’s adjusting to his new cores flare ups and emotions)of this and this scares the shit out of Jason. He thinks he’s infecting people.

- Fright Knight simply prefers a sword in combat. The Soul Shredder can actually turn into literally any weapon or item that the owner wills it to turn into, as long as the item would be useful to protect their King, it could transform into it. Sword, shield, grappling gun Lance, rifle, you name it dude. Offensive, defensive, ranged, or martial, Genuinely endless possibilities. Imagine a Lantern ring but it’s a physical object that can only be used for combat based situations.

- The Soul Shredder also always returns back to the owner at will. Percy Jackson’s Riptide or Thor’s Hammer style type deal.

- Damian now has a sick as fuck set of ghostly armor that can just appear on him at will.

- Damian unknowingly now has a very high role in the ghost community, so much so that he can command ghosts below him to do his bidding. Literally every hero that has ever been revived falls under this category. Including: Batman, Superman, every Batfam member besides Duke and Tim, every fucking Flash to ever exist (only bc of technicality of time stream fuckery), and so many more. Anything from making them tell the truth, making them do an action/task, or forcing them to use their powers. Literally anything if it’s justified for the Ghost King’s safety and better health.

- the Fright Knight can step in for the Ghost King during a summoning since they are the second in command and they are there to help delegate the Ghost Kings responsibility. Damian could be summoned by a random person, the Batfam, League, summoning and just so happened to have a hero in the area, etc. is Damian already dead? Then getting summoned would give other heroes quite a shock. Is Damian alive? Well same thing but a tad less devastating.

- yeah the Batfamily really think something’s wrong with Damian. Their kid is acting really odd and they want to genuinely help. Alternative ideas:

- 1.) Damian is dead and they aren’t aware.

- 2.) Damian is alive and they’re comically oblivious to these changes happening to Damian

- 3.) Damian gradually becomes more and more eldritchy and inhuman and-

- 3a.) the batfamily think something’s genuinely wrong an try to fix/stop whatever is happening

-3b.) the batfamily just think that it’s because of his exposure to the Lazarus pit as a kid and kind of accept it and don’t think of anything wrong. Sure it’s concerning, but Damian isn’t worried.

- 4.) Damian isn’t really thought about much and the batfamily is completely oblivious to all of this.

Short DPXDC Prompts #488

The title Fright Knight is passed down to Damian Wayne. Sword and all. 

[madame-kiksters]

Rules:

1. always post the rules

2. answer the questions given by the person who tagged you

3. write 11 questions of your own

4. tag 11 people you want to get to know better (or however many you want)

I was tagged by @burntsugarandhalfawilltolive

1. What fandom has had the most positive impact in your life?

I think the fandom that has had the most positive impact on me is probably Natsume and the Book of Friends. Apparently there’s discourse [or so I hear] but I’ve only ever experienced wholesomeness...and everybody thirsting for Natsume [in the anime and in the fandom xD]

2. If you could pick any talent to be good at (that you don’t already have), what would it be?

Studying. I have always been able to read things once and retain everything I need, even in my college courses, but the program I’m in... I had no experience studying so I’ve had to try many different things, still haven’t found what works for me. 

3. What do you think is the closest thing we have to magic currently?

Medicine. There’s a med that can stop and restart the heart and meds that can wake someone up from a stroke like *snaps fingers* THAT!

4. Cool or warm colors?

Cool colors, specifically blue and purple.

5. What fictional animal/creature do you wish was real?

Dragons. Mayyybe griffons >.>

6. What is the longest you’ve ever slept?

12 hours in my younger days. Now I hit 8 and I physically CANNOT sleep anymore. 

7. What is one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

It’s okay to not be the smartest, or the most special, or the best at anything. Just try your best and know that you did the best you could. Because you have people that care about you that think you’re just the bees knees.

But also:

DON’T OPEN THAT CABINET WHERE THE SPIDER WAS AS BIG AS THE ENTIRE DOOR, FOR GODSAKE, PLEASE! I’M... WE’RE STILL SCARRED BY THAT IMAGE!!!

8. What was your favorite toy growing up?

Hmm, well. I guess it would have to be this stuffed dog with a blue bandanna that I got from one of my dad’s coworkers who’d dressed up as Santa for all the employees’ kids one year. I named him Blue and I still sleep cuddled with him :’)

9. You win half a million dollars, what would you spend it on?

I would try very hard to save it... but would probably end up buying games and such that I can’t even play right now bc time and the lack thereof.

10. If you eat fries with ketchup, do you put it on the side or on top of the fries?

>:U THE SIDE! WHAT KINDA HEATHEN??

Look, I’mma level right here. Ketchup directly on the fries makes ‘em soggy. And I don’t disrespect potatoes like that.

11. What is one thing you like about yourself?

I like that I am a loyal friend. Even if you’re mean to me, I’d rather duke it out, let the dust settle, and be friends again than to just cut ties.

12. what is your favorite juice?

Cranberry.

13. is there a certain texture that makes your skin crawl?

I don’t like nuts in my baked goods because when the textures mix.... i just don’t like it okay? xD

14. apple or samsung?

Samsung.

15. do you prefer typing or writing with a pencil?

Typing. As a left handed person, typing doesn’t cause more strain on me to write in copious amounts.

16. where do you keep your phone? (back pocket, purse, jacket, etc.)

Back pocket. Jacket pocket if I am wearing a hoodie.

17. do you move your hands a lot when talking?

ALL THE TIME! *flails wildly*

18. what do you do to pass time?

Honestly? I just stare into nothingness with a blank mind. I wish I could say I was thinking. And sometimes I start out thinking of fantastical stories I could write. But it’s nice to just sit there quietly every once in awhile.

19. mechanical or wood pencil?

Ticonderoga black number 2 pencil, bb. Good for writing and sketching!

20. what is your favorite thing to wear?

An over-sized hoodie. It’s like a blanket I get to wear out in public without getting too many odd looks (I do live in Florida so... if the forecast isn’t imminent rain, you get odd looks).

21. make up or barefaced?

Barefaced. I don’t really like makeup and fully believe it should be an accessory that everyone can wear if they want to.

22. if you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Oh gosh... ummm. The power to levitate myself at will. Even if it’s just a few inches off the ground. I think that would be a nice ability bc I could finally reach things I am too small to get without strain.

-----

Now for 11 questions.. hoo boy.

1. Dogs or cats?

2. Snakes or rats?

3. Cartoon Network, Disney, or Nickelodeon?

4. Cartoons or live action?

5. Comics, books, or fanfiction?

6. Were you in on Vine before all the Vine comps on Youtube?

7. Ever experienced the black hole you fall into while on Youtube?

8. Do you doodle? If so, what do you find yourself doodling most often?

9. Deku. Be honest. Did you think I meant the tree from Legend of Zelda or the MC from My Hero Academia?

10. How would you rate the name of a turtle named, “Sheldon”?

11. Do you like stickers?

Okay, now to tag 11 peeps... uhhh, well. I really wanna know what @burntsugarandhalfawilltolive would answer to my questions, so her.

@redawilo, @oinkyblanketpig, @app-jelly, @thesoundofthunderstorms, @metalwarrior22, @dliessmgg, @birdwives, @fandommother7, @salemq, and last, but never least @alwaysjustnerdythings