this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it
and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?
anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode
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Can I kiss you?
[DP x DC fic]
[Love at first... murder? - part 1]
Next >>
Ao3
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“—so sorry! I swear I didn’t mean to kill him! It was an accident! He just jumped me out of nowhere and I have had bad experiences with clowns in the past so when I saw it was a clown trying to kidnap me I kinda just panicked and punched him! I swear, dude, I didn’t mean to hit him so hard—“
Jason, much too calmly, likely in some form of shock, rises from the crouched-down position he had been in to check the clown corpse’s pulse.
He had seen the poor, still rambling, twink getting grabbed from a distance and was about to step in as Red Hood, not even having been aware it was the Joker who —shouldn’t he have been in Arkham? There has been no announcement of him breaking out yet— had grabbed the guy until he had run close enough to the scene.
Which was after the guy had already been startled so badly by the Joker trying to kidnap him that he sucker punched the Joker into the wall of the alley so hard the clown died.
Said twink then realized what he had done and that he had a witness, that witness being Red Hood himself, and had started his frenzied speech on how it was an accident and to please don’t take him to jail he’s only just started his scholarship at Gotham U. and he can’t have murder on his track record yet.
Breathless, Jason looks at the nervous twink in front of him, who's still trying to plead his case, and who just obliterated the Joker with a punch.
Before his brain can catch up to his mouth, he’s already cutting the distressed monologuing off.
“Can I kiss you?” He blurts out.
Danny, taken off guard, breaks out of his panicked—oh, Ancients, I just killed someone— stupor and lets out a startled laugh.
“Take me out to dinner first” came the automatic joking reply, Danny still largely in shock of what he did.
Jason, either not picking up on the joking tone or ignoring it, nods seriously, already trying to come up with the best place for a dinner date with the cute twink to thank him for his service to the city.
Danny, who has calmed down slightly by now, glances between the red-helmed vigilante and the clown corpse. His gaze lands on Red Hood and he hesitantly speaks up again.
“So, uh, what happens now? Do I need to go to the station to make a statement orrrr?” He pauses awkwardly.
Jason, who’s still trying to figure out whether the Bat Burger would be a good place for a first date or not, doesn’t reply.
“I’ve got school in the morning and I only have like,” he pauses to check his phone for the time, “3 more hours before I have to be up for my first lesson. Soooo, I’m just gonna go. That cool?”
Again, he waits for a reply. But it doesn’t come.
“Right. Cool cool. Uh, see you later? Mr. Red Hood dude sir?” Danny gives a clumsy and awkward salute before turning tail and speed-walking away.
It’s not until 30 minutes later, once Jason has finally decided on the perfect place to take the guy to dinner to, that he realizes the twink is gone.
Fuck, he forgot to ask for the guy’s name.
…
And number.
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