#most of these are pre-crisis but the past 2 are post. and i think the titans crossovers are still canon to post crisis?? idk

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Jason Todd, the second Robin

[moonstruckme]

Hey! I LOVE the comic you posted of the reader going to a club pre-relationship! I was wondering if you could write a part 2 to that of all of them going to a club together. With some jealousy, like when the reader goes to the bathroom on her way back she is getting flirted with by a random guy and the marauders reaction. Feel free to ignore

(Also I adore you comic that make my day every time I have re-read all of them at least 3 times!)

Hi lovely, thank you so much ! This took me forever to get to sorry, hope you enjoy it <3

part 1

cw: alcohol, unwanted/nonconsensual touch

roommate!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 1.3k words

Your shriek cuts through the loud music, and you turn to Remus with an open-mouthed grin. 

“This is my favorite song!” you shout. 

He laughs. In the past half hour, four songs have been your favorite. “Yeah?” he asks. 

You nod happily, throwing your hands above your head as you spin. You’re tipsy twirly, surprisingly sprightly considering you’ve downed enough shots to get Remus hammered, and he’s got several inches on you and has been drinking since he was thirteen. 

Sirius is in a similar state. Remus and James have been steering the two of you around for most of the night, but now James has put himself in charge of crisis prevention, playing goalie between either of you and the bar. 

“Oh be fun, Prongsie,” Sirius wheedles after getting spun around by the shoulders for the upteenth time. “I know you can be fun.” 

“I am fun,” James agrees. “I have my most fun when I’m not cleaning up your vomit. Go dance with y/n.” 

You’re game for this plan, giving Sirius an enticing smile and moving your hips to the music in a way that makes Remus’ mouth go completely dry. He knows he’s not the only person in this club who’s noticed, but thankfully the little circle the four of you have made in the dance floor stays clear of intruders. Thus far, your prediction has proved correct; no other men have come up to you with your roommates around. He’s not particularly distraught about it. 

You seem oblivious to your own allure, laughing when Sirius hurries toward you like a called puppy. You take his hands, letting him twirl you around and then holding your arms up to twirl him in return, and at the chorus, you both jump around so that your hair flies all about. Your laughter is loud and sparkling. Remus sips his drink, entranced. 

There are two more favorite songs before you careen towards him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. He hastily grips you by the elbow, wary of a fall, but you seem to have done this intentionally. You beam up at him, your smile lopsided and far less shy than anything he’s ever seen from you. 

“M’gonna go to the toilet,” you tell him, one word leading into the next like they’ve been sloppily tied together with string. 

“Oh, okay.” Of its own volition, Remus’ hand coasts up the back of your upper arm, then down to your elbow again. “Do you think you’re gonna be sick, honey?” 

Your face screws up as if this is taboo to mention. “What? No.” You make a funny pffting sound. “I’m miles off from that, I’m fantastic, it’s just,” you lower your voice, expression turning grave, “I think it’s time to break the seal,” you tell him meaningfully. 

This time it’s entirely intentional, but he also can’t help it. You’re just too cute. Remus sets his hand on the top of your head affectionately, grinning at you. “Alright, love, sounds good.” He looks around for the women’s bathroom, locating it a short distance away. “Want one of us to go with and wait outside for you?” It’s not like he can’t see it from here, but a girl as intoxicated as you probably shouldn’t be going anywhere by herself. 

“No, no, I’ve got it,” you say, patting his chest lightly. “Back soon.” 

It’s like you’ve disappeared into a mist, the way you fade into the crowd so quickly. It takes Remus a moment to spot the top of your head moving towards the bathroom. You turn around just before you go in, giving him a dazzling smile paired with a dorky thumbs-up. 

“Where’d she go?” James asks, holding his drink aloft while Sirius grabs for it. “And what has made you smile like that, Moony?” 

Remus makes a dismissive sound, but he feels his face heat as he takes a long sip of his own drink. James’ grin widens. 

“Ooh,” Sirius catches on. “What’d she say to you?” 

“Nothing. She’s gone to the toilet.”

Sirius’ kohl-rimmed eyes bulge, and James laughs, following his train of thought immediately. “Did she ask you to follow her? I didn’t think that was your style, you rake.” 

Remus rolls his eyes. “You’re depraved.” 

It’s not long before you reappear, catching Remus’ eye on your way out of the bathroom like you knew he’d be looking. You give him another of those heart-stuttering smiles and head his way, weaving your way through the crowd with a drunken expertise. 

A happy glow of anticipation starts up in his chest, but you’re intercepted on the way. Another head, taller, steps in front of you, blocking Remus’ view. He cranes his neck, but he can’t see you. 

He must make some sound or simply be emanating discontent, because James is back at his side in an instant. “What’s wrong?” 

“Someone’s talking to her. I can’t see her anymore.” He sounds ridiculous, like an overprotective douche, but he can’t imagine one can be too cautious when a drunk girl is surrounded by guys in a place like this. Remus is being purely practical. 

“Let’s go get her.” James is on board immediately, taking Sirius by the elbow and beginning to bulldoze his way through the crowd. Sirius grabs Remus’ hand just before the gap closes behind them, dragging him along. 

Remus hears you before he sees you. 

“Really, I appreciate it, but I’m not looking for anything.” Your voice sounds slightly tight, and Remus knows you well enough to tell by the sound of it that you’re giving whoever you’re talking to one of your big, fake smiles. 

A man’s voice says, low and sure, “You don’t mean that—” and that’s as far as he gets, because you interrupt to exclaim, with no small amount of relief, “My friends!” 

“Hi, sweetheart,” James says, and you’re right in front of them. You’ve cleaned up your makeup in the bathroom, the eyeliner that had transferred sweatily under your eyes now pristine again, and your smile is indeed giant and thin-lipped as you look between them and the man in front of you, subtly flaring your eyes. He reads the look clearly: Help, please!

Remus looks you over. The man has his hands on your hips and one of yours is around his wrist, a cautious touch. Sirius takes care of that quickly, wrapping his forefinger and thumb around the wrist closest to him and removing it like it’s a piece of trash he found on the street. 

“Do you two know each other?” Remus asks. Without permission, his voice comes out gruff and accusatory. 

“No,” you say speedily, taking a step towards Sirius. Towards them. “I was just on my way back to you guys, actually.” 

“We were talking.” The man looks between the three of them scrutinously, like they’re threats. Remus doesn’t hate the thought of being a threat to this guy. 

“Sounded like you were done talking, mate.” James smiles easily. You’d have to really know him to hear the sharpness in his tone. 

Sirius snakes an arm around your waist, but you don’t shy from the bold touch. In fact, you lean into him, your smile slowly beginning to resemble the genuine article. “Wanna get another drink, baby?” Sirius asks you, gaze salacious. 

“Mhm.” You bob your head eagerly, and he leads you off, James and Remus following. “Thanks for the help,” you tell them as soon as you’re away. “He didn’t, like, do anything, but it was a bit intimidating.” 

“Anytime, sweetheart,” James replies, expression going a bit stormy now that he’s done feigning lightness. “And I wouldn’t say he didn’t do anything, he shouldn’t have put his hands on you like that.” 

“It’s whatever,” you wave it off so easily Remus’ heart gives a little throb. “What’re we drinking?” 

“Oh, that was a ploy,” Remus says. “We’re done drinking, remember?” 

You pout, and Sirius hugs your side sympathetically (entirely for your benefit, Remus is certain). “You mean we’re done,” he sneers. “You and Prongs get to have however much you want. Who made you king of the beer?” 

“I think you did, actually,” Remus says thoughtfully. “At Mary’s New Year’s party, remember?” 

Sirius sniffs, presumably because he does not.

[tomwambsgans]

part 2 to this post

so, i think it's already a common understanding that tom won succession in part through his deep understanding of everything laid out in that original post. hierarchies. he knows his place very well, ie he knows whom he's under.

-and because he knows how to utilize his position on the ladder, he's also able to climb it. particularly through shiv.

...which i feel begs the question: why? why is tom ultimately more intuitive with this system than the roy siblings?

there are multiple answers, including 1) class - tom has lifelong experience climbing up whereas the sibs were born at the top and only have experience flipping between 3 or 4 rungs; and 2) tom specifically has lived outside of logan's world and in the end is contending with those other than logan anyway, meanwhile the sibs are lost with their dad gone; but what i want to talk about most of all is the answer that factors masculinity back into it, and which concerns tom as a whole person rather than simply a corporate agent:

3) tom's innate desire for other men and repression of that desire, having grown up in the midwest during the peak of the AIDS crisis, has made him only capable of functioning within a hierarchy. he has long since carved a space for himself in the framework of heterosexual masculinity and is incredibly vulnerable without it.

what i mean by this is that tom, like many men in hypermasculine environments, recontextualizes expressions of desire into displays of power as well as ritualistic displays of submission. this is common even in outright homosexual environments due to how many men spent their lives beforehand with these hierarchies being 1) the most intimate that they ever got with other men, and/or 2) the safest way to be close with men at all. within hierarchies, there are pre-established rules, and if you touch or are touched by men in ways that follow those rules - as in, you're either exerting power or knowing your place, then you're safe from the notions of true desire. the existence of the hierarchy also implies that you will do both, once you're past the absolute bottom rung. experiencing the control of other men is simply a trial that you endure in order to be in their place one day.

and once you do this for a long time, you become blind to what desires even are. you become essentially a high-functioning depressive.

but tom also snaps on occasion, effectively utilizing his power at those times... and what's interesting is that in spite of his need to not be vulnerable, and in spite of his need to have the power in the situation, we see him shaken by his own actions. we see him not only apologetic for going too far, but on top of that, a consistent willingness to break the rules of the hierarchy and make someone else his equal. that someone, of course, being greg.

tom is clearly a romantic to his core, and this definitely extends to greg despite there being no formal romance between them, with his consistent efforts to bring greg up to his level. or rather, as close to his level as he can before he starts panicking. because as much as he clearly craves that partnership of equals, tom literally does not know how to comfortably exist in intimacy with another man unless he has those rules.

on multiple occasions he's shown to panic at the end of an otherwise equal (and therefore vulnerable) interaction and bring up notions of his position over greg to feel safe. what's notable is that even as he does so, they are simultaneously expressions of love and desire that get progressively undeniable as the show goes on:

and finally, for the whole of season 4 i think tom is in a constant state of panic that is partly due to how high up he's taken greg. there's the factor of not feeling certain that greg will stay once he no longer needs him (which i also would say is, itself, a factor in tom's comfort within a hierarchy), but also a general sort of uneasiness because he's just broken down a wall that was previously keeping him safe from his own desires. he's got to look greg in the eyes now, basically. the more power and mobility he hands to greg, the more tom has to acknowledge that being around him is just what he wants.

...and he's been keeping greg at this level for at least 3 months, so it's also definitely circumstances that tom wanted to keep nevermind the discomfort. we obviously don't know much of what happened between them offscreen but we do have those vague allusions to the disgusting brothers - evidently nights together at the bar, aka a place where businessmen can get drunk enough that it's appropriate to become equals. this gets more into headcanon territory but i gotta imagine that alcohol is a big factor in how tom grows to cope with the change. in the same way that you still take pain medication after an elective surgery.

of course, not only is tom still in the process of accepting the changes to his dynamic with greg, but season 4 also takes place over an extremely hectic and stressful one-and-a-half weeks, so it's all-around reasonable that tom continues to lash out to reinforce the hierarchy.

but once again, even moreso now, the way that he lashes out is an undeniable expression of attachment, of a desperate need to keep him close... of love. so undeniable that in the end, even greg fully understands.

[aboutzatanna]

can we get a summary of Zatanna’s interactions with Swamp Thing? And/or Madame Xanadu?

(Sorry it took a while to answer to this. Not being able to answer this has been bugging me for a while)

Outside of JLD, the most notable interactions I can think are:

-For Swamp Thing:

Although her Dad died as a guest star in a Swamp Thing, Zatanna and Swamp Thing never really interacted in that specific arc.

There was a Swamp Thing mini series in 2011 by Len Wein (Swamp Thing's other Dad) and artist Kelly Jones (perfect fit for the title) which revolved around Swamp Thing/Alec Holland looking for a cure for his condition with his friend, Matt Cable which leads the two of them to Zatanna's place.

Continuity wise, it a bit of a mess. What with Matthew Cable being...well....alive...human and...not one one of Morpheus's crows. Plus references to Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run but ST is a human turned to swamp creature instead of a swamp creature who thought it was human. That said, Alec Holland was brought back to life thanks to the events of Brightest Day so that's not as egregious as Matthew Cable.

Zatanna is the magician who gets the biggest focus. Her characterization is the same as her preNu52, same goes for Phantom Stranger and Etrigan. But this mini fits neither the Pre Nu52 continuity nor the Post Nu52 continuity. I think it can be enjoyed and read on it's own. It's just stuck in a weird middle ground continuity wise because it was published in a time when nobody at DC was sure if the Nu52 was a full, clean slate reboot or partial reboot and no one could decided what should remain in continuity and what shouldn't.

-For Madame Xanadu:

The first major story to have Zatanna and Xanadu interact with each other was Spectre Vol 2 #7-8 titled 'Pieces of Zatanna'. It's a rare body horror story involving Zatanna where she finds her limbs and other parts of her body disappearing and returning but she knows they are not her original limbs.

So Zatanna quickly runs to Madame Xanadu for help. Although this is the first time readers see Zatanna and Xanadu interact, the two are already aware of each other.

The story is meant to resolve loose ends from Zatanna's final appearance in Justice League of America Vol 1 #257 as well as give Zatanna some closure for her fathers death in Swamp Thing #50.

Zatanna later appeared in Spectre Vol 2 #11, this time, of all things, the limo driver who chaueffer's Xanadu, Bronze Tiger and June Moon to a meeting arranged by the Spectre involving all the magical beings so they can discuss their roles in the human world. Not sure why Zee couldn't have just teleported them there, but then again, maybe they just wanted to enjoy a nice drive and limo is implied to be Zatanna's.

Years later, in Madame Xanadu's own series Madame Xanadu #9 we learn that Xanadu and John Zatara had dated in the past which goes a long way towards explaining how Zatanna knows her.

In Spectre Vol 3, around #16, there was a story arc where an Eclipso possessed Spectre went on a rampage. Zatanna appeared in the story arc but didn't get to interact with Xanadu as she was recruited to by Phantom Stranger to be on his team alongside Etrigan and the Inza Nelson Doctor Fate. Xanadu made her own team with Father Creamer and Ramban. Notably it's Xanadu's team that ends up succeeding at stopping the Spectre's rampage but cutting to the heart of the issue and confronting Corrigan's spiritual crisis directly.

Aside from that, Xanadu and Zatanna often appear together in ensembles during events like Obsidian Age and Day of Vengeance but they are not always notable.

I always thought that Xanadu could be a cool step mom figure for Zee since the latter operates in a male dominated world.

I haven't read Bendis Justice League in full yet but around the time the JLD back up feature was getting cancelled we did get to see Zatanna and Xanadu team up to fight a possessed Black Adam in Justice League Vol 4 #73:

[luvo27]

behind the scenes of stress vs love

because i am going insane working on this fic. i am losing it. have a little behind the scenes of the outlines copy pasted from my brainstorm doc for the first couple of chapters of my fic, on the stress of being seventeen vs the immutable law of love on ao3!!

first concept outline: kristen through adaine's chapters

Start with kristen pov? Struggles academically, stress baking, study session with fig? Both of them are bad at studying, possible lofi night at seacaster? 

Insecurity about riz, little heist with fig to get sklondas number starts texting sklona

Stress baking: accidental corn muffin

Goes into figs pov: studying with kristen? Disguise self? Body modification and not recognizing herself and identity crisis and missing ayda- piercings?

Kristen stress baking? Lets something slip to adaine, adaine starts worrying? Leads to her boiling and boiling-maybe talking to either fabian or gorgug-maybe fabian makes the most sense, leads to the confrontation 

Maybe has a conversation with aelwyn about it instead of kristen? Maybe kristen makes her think she should talk to aelwyn?

Adaine confrontation goes bad. She feels bad. Everyone feels bad. Boils and boils until breakdown at basrars. Jawbone and fear of academic failure as a result of financial troubles

second outline: kristen through adaine's chapters

Kristen’s section:

Opens with cafeteria scene

Scene with kristen struggling to do work- solved by Riz! Yay riz!

Kristen texting riz because they haven’t study sessioned

Kristen struggling pt 2

Kristen texting sklonda

Kristen stress baking scene

Kristen confrontation with riz- post? Pre? Rejection! Sadness!

Struggle pt 3? Lead into

Jawbone and kristen academic help? Kristen texts riz to let him know she’s doing okay. She’s starting to get worried!!

Fig’s section

Gradual worry about riz. Has anyone seen riz? Fig is going to look for riz!!

Rogue class search shenanigans. Finds riz first? Conversation with riz?

Cafeteria talk pt 2: tells the bad kids what happened

Rogue class search shenanigans pt 2: maybe a scene where fig disguises self as riz? Finds ayda carving and cries about it

Everyone’s getting more worried about riz. Tension! Fig disguise self scenes, identity crisis!

Mistaken identity? Maybe sees someone she was friends with when she was younger pre tiefling? Triggers the diy piercing scene

Diy piercing scene! - maybe have sandralynn try to say something

Scene where fig is crying by ayda carving

Scene where kristen heals fig’s piercings

Adaine’s section

Adaine is worried about her friends. Adaine walks in on kristen stress baking, thinks about figs new piercings. Nightmare king revelation

Texts aelwyn about it? Gets 0 help

Observes riz. Observes friends. Stressed in class because of her materials. B+. panicking

Decides that things are bad: maybe show her saying things are bad to fabian. Confrontation. Panic post confrontation

Has to go to work post confrontation. Feels bad the entire time. Work panic attack scene! Jawbone comes, jawbone comforts! Yay!

[inevitably-johnlocked]

You have all the best lists, I think that is what I need? I want to read fluff, fluff that makes me laugh out loud, could be long, could be short, doesn't matter, just intelligent funny fluff (which doesn't even have to be that intelligent if it makes me laugh).

Do you have a listicle for me?

Hi Lovely!!

AWW, you're so kind, thank you!! I'm so happy you enjoy my fic rec lists :)

OKAY I have a TONNE of fluff fics, all of which can be accessed from my most recent All Fluff Fics (Oct. 2021) Masterpost (I do concede that it is a bit outdated so will make a new masterpost with the next ask I get for them), and because I don't have an ask-list ready this week, I'm going to use your list to release another list I've already got done without any asks attached! :)

EDIT: Just realized you asked for Funny Fics (sorry my brain tends to filter out words)... AHHHHH I hope this list is still okay? I do have lists you can check out:

Funny, Crack and Humour Pt. 1

Funny, Crack and Humour Pt. 2

Let's update the Domestics list, since it's got a lot of fics on it :)

Hope you enjoy this list anyway! Apologies for the abundance of FFNet fics, this list was built while I was sorting through some old links I had. All the links are working at the time of posting.

DOMESTIC JOHNLOCK Pt. 6

See also:

Long Domestic Johnlock (50K+ w.) (March 2023)

Platonics and Domestics

Platonics & Domestics Pt 2 / .../

Platonics & Domestics / Bromance / Friendship Pt. 3

Domestic Johnlock Pt. 4

Domestic Johnlock Pt. 5

A Perfect Figure by ecb327 (K, 622 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, First Person POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Introspection, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Light Angst) – Sherlock build a spot in his mind palace for John.

Octopus by glass_rose_paperweight (G, 705 w., 1 Ch. || Established Relationship, Fluff, Bed Sharing, Limpet Sherlock) – A week after Sherlock and John finally get together, and John is finding sharing a bed with Sherlock Holmes to be ... difficult, sometimes. If not downright suffocating.

Tidying Up by mattsloved1 (K+, 951 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Friendship) – John comes home to a thoroughly cleaned flat. Or so it seems.

Texts and Tea by JillianWatson1058 (K, 959 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Texting, Humour, Fluff, POV John, Cranky John) – A John who is woken up at 2:30 in the morning is not a happy John. Sherlock, frankly, doesn’t care. He just wants his tea.

My Unfortunately Average Sized Cranium by Haelia (K+, 996 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Headache, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Past Drug Use, Doctor John) – In which Sherlock has a migraine. ALMOST Johnlock. Not quite.

Poppies For John by grannysknitting (T, 1,102 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship) – Rememberance Sunday fic - John notices a discrepancy between Sherlock's stated intent and his actions. Sherlock, for once, explains himself. Friendship or pre-slash, your choice. Intended in honour of those who defend us.

Peacock by ClassyGirlsWearPearls (T, 1,189 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Cranky Sherlock, Soft John, Hand Holding, Soft Sherlock) – A study in Sherlock and John.

Our Bodies Bend Light by lovetincture (G, 1,211 w., 1 Ch. || Established Relationship, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Beekeeping, Retirement) – They got married. Of course they got married. Snapshots in a relationship. There's a jar of bees in the bookstore and a cottage in Sussex. Sherlock's not the marrying kind, and John's tried this once before, but they're Sherlock and John. Of course.

Mizzle by MrsNoggin (K, 1,233 w., 1 Ch || Friendship, Fluff, Platonic Johnlock, Humour, Slice of Life) – John can't decide if it's raining or not. Sherlock doesn't understand.

A Better Fate Than Wisdom by flawedamythyst (G, 1,339 w., 1 Ch. || First Kiss, John’s Sexuality Crisis, Pining Sherlock, Happy Ending, Fluff) – Nearly four hours pass between their first kiss and their second.

Here to Stay by MockJayPhoenix12 (K, 1,574 w., 1 Ch. || Post Reunion, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Headache, Bed Sharing, Care Taker Sherlock, Hand Holding, Fluff) – On Sherlock's first day home, John wakes with a migraine.

Evermore by SosoHolmesWatson (G, 2,068 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S4,  5-Year-Old Rosie, Love Confessions, Song Fic, Parentlock, Oblivious John, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Disney Songs, Beauty and the Beast) – For the past years, John and Sherlock have lived at Baker Street again, raising Rosie together--as friends and nothing more. Ever since the little girl has watched her first Disney movie, she is obsessed with princesses. When John comes home one day, he finds his friend and his daughter in the middle of a reenactment of her current favourite. Part 1 of Made of Music

The Imminent Danger of a Tumblr-Night by Loveismyrevolution (T, 2,135 w., 1 Ch. || Tumblr Fics, Friends to Lovers, Sherlock is Out of His Depth, Humour, Fluff, Pining Sherlock, Military Kink, POV Sherlock) – Sherlock gets into trouble when he pretends to know all about John's favourite social media site - tumblr. To save face he seeks help from one of the bloggers and gains more answers than he had aimed for.

Living Musical by VeeTheRee (G, 4,149 w. 1 Ch. || Established Relationship, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Hobbies, Summer, Song Fic, POV Sherlock, Painting, Play Fighting, Soft Sherlock, Dancing, Love Declarations, Hair Petting, Promise of Forever) – A one-shot of John and Sherlock being domestic during summer. There is paint, fluff, and music from Imagine Dragons, namely from the album 'Speak To Me', specific song in this one-shot is 'Living Musical'. Part 1 of the Happy Fluffy Johnlock Time series

Date Night by inevitably_johnlocked (G, 4,451 w., 1 Ch. || Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Caring John, Schmoopy Fluff, Fidget Cube, Baking / Cooking, Date Night, Established Relationship, POV Sherlock Holmes, Understanding John, Grumpy Sherlock, John’s Bum, Kisses, Hugs, Domestic Fluff, Touching, Hair Petting, Light Humour) – It's John and Sherlock's first Date Night as an official couple and Sherlock needs it to be PERFECT. Mrs Hudson helps. Part 7 of I-J's Tumblr Ficlet Collection

What John Doesn't Know (Won't Hurt Him) by blueink3 (NR [T], 4,392 w., 1 Ch, || S3 Fix It, Pining Sherlock, Snippets of Life, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Fluff and Angst, Five and One, Hopeful Ending, POV Sherlock) – Five people who see Sherlock's scars before John Watson. But Sherlock's secrets were never something he could keep from his blogger for long.

Storytelling by amythedork (T, 5,126 w., 1 Ch. || John’s Past, Friendship, Humour) – Five times John Watson opens up to Sherlock Holmes, and one time Sherlock Holmes opens up to John Watson. Gen, though could easily be read as pre-slash. 

This Year by DiscordantWords (T, 6,283 w., 2 Ch. || TEH Divergence / No Mary, New Year’s Eve, John’s A Mess, Jealous John, Awkward Conversations, Trapped in a Closet, Estranged After Return, John POV, Semi-Reunion, Angry John, First Kiss, Reconciliation, Clueless Sherlock, Happy Ending) – Last year, Sherlock Holmes showed up at the Landmark with a fake moustache and a bad French accent and threw John's entire life into disarray with two words: "Not dead." This year, there are more surprises in store.

Cabin Fever by A Wandering Minstrel (K+, 6,343 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Friendship) – A massive storm keeps John trapped in Baker Street with a half-blind (for science!), very bored Sherlock Holmes.

Bridges by sussexbound (M, 6,602 w., 1 Ch || Post-TLD / S4 Fix It, Love Confessions, Mending Relationships, Moving Back In, Pining Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Past Abuse, Shaving) – The silence between them is deafening, interrupted only by the hum of the traffic outside, and the soft click-clunk of the plastic cups Rosie is playing with on the floor beside them. It is the first time they have been alone together, since Sherlock’s birthday. It’s only been two days, but it feels huge, important, like there is a precarious bridge stretched out before them both that they need to at least attempt to traverse.

A Study in Linguistics by rizandace (T, 12,425 w., 1 Ch. || S1 Canon Compliant/S2 Divergence, Friendship, Slices of Life, Communication, Cranky Sherlock, Hospitals, Sherlock Whump, Pet Cat, Jealous John, Sherlock’s Violin, Anxious Sherlock, John Whump) – Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had their own language. It was a language of few words and minute facial expressions, and John had learned that it was nearly the only way to have an honest conversation with his eccentric flat mate.

holding steady by darcylindbergh (E, 12,724 w., 4 Ch. || Post S4, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Growing Old, Gone Fishing, Mood without Plot, Soft Sherlock, Caring Sherlock, POV John Third Person, Anxious Sherlock, First Kiss / Time, Touching, Feeling Old, Sherlock Worship, Crying Sherlock, Cuddles, Comforting, Introspection, Retirement, Hand Holding, Forehead Kisses, Caring John, Bed Sharing, Emotional Love Making) – Sitting on a thick wool blanket at the end of a rickety dock side-by-side, legs dangling over the edge, a styrofoam container of wet, dark dirt between them, they’re fishing. John knows what this is about. This is about finally figuring it out.

On The Fence by BeautifulFiction (T, 13,770 w., 1 Ch. || Fencing, Case Fic, First Kiss, Insecure John, Pining John, Hug, Greg Finds Out) – The murder of the King's College fencing champion leads to revelations about Sherlock's past. Will it be the point that tips them from friends to lovers, or will they remain on the fence?

Kintsugi by distantstarlight (E, 14,772 w., 1 Ch. || Post S4, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Regret / Remorse, Loneliness, Separation, Drug Use, Healing, Protective John, Sad Sherlock, Dev. Rel., Complicated Relationships, Love, Angst With Happy Ending, Sherlock is Called Freak, John’s Penance, Voyeurism, Doctor/Caretaker John, Guilty John, Detox, Fingering, Love Confessions, Cuddling, Slight Non-Con Turns Enthusiastic Consent, Virgin Sherlock) – Sherlock Holmes becomes estranged from the man he had once considered his best friend after John lets him down horribly in public. It seems that the world's only consulting detective will be on his own once again...or will he?

The Burning of the Leaves by blueink3 (M, 15,915 w., 3 Ch. || Post S4, Angst, Reichenbach, Parentlock, Past Jolto, Idiot John, Sherlock’s a Mess, Puppies, Fluff, Possessive / Jealous Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock POV, Matchmaker Sholto, Melancholic Feelings, Emotional Sherlock, Domesticity, Love Confessions in the Rain, Kissing in the Rain, Pet Names, Panic Attack) – After the events of series 4, Major Sholto invites John and Sherlock to lunch one day. It nearly proves to be too much for their tenuous relationship as the past haunts the present, putting the future that Sherlock so desperately wants at risk.

Permanent Fixture by vitruvianwatson (E, 18,836 w., 9 Ch || Post-S4, Parentlock, Slow Build, Friends to Lovers, They’re Good Parents, Blushing Sherlock, First Kiss/Time, Explicit Consent, Sexual Content, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Big Feelings, Crying, First Kiss, Fluff, Anxious Sherlock, Inexperienced Sherlock, Emotional Communication, Love Confessions) – Now, as Rosie sat curled up against Sherlock’s side, John watched and wondered exactly how he had ended up here. Domesticity had never suited him before, not at any point in his life. His disastrous marriage had been proof of that. But somehow, here in the warmth and safety of 221B Baker Street, here with Sherlock Holmes reading medical jargon to his daughter, Sherlock’s bony feet nudging against his leg, John couldn’t imagine anyplace that would make him happier. 

A Quiet Life by DiscordantWords (M, 25,176 w., 6 Ch. || Post S4, Retirement, POV Sherlock, Awkwardness, Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, Minor Character Death, Questionable Parenting Choices, Non-Linear Narrative, 20 Year Old Rosie, Meddling Mycroft, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Angst, Sherlock Whump) – There had been three days of silence and a funeral. Sherlock had the terrible feeling that whatever happened next would depend, entirely, on him.

How To Unfold a Heart by elwinglyre (E, 25,477 w., 7 Ch. || Post S4 Fix It, BAMF John, Mentioned Eurus, POV First Person Sherlock, Case Fic, Fluff, Slow Burn Topping from the Bottom, 3 Yr Old Rosie, Introspection, Sexual Fantasies, John Worship, Ogling, Hand Holding, Kidnapping, Domesticity, Sherlock Whump, First Kiss/Time, Doctor John, Caring John, Soft Sherlock, Sensuality, Touching, Crying, Love Confessions, Anxious Sherlock, Rimming, Toplock, Fingering, Bossy Bottom John) – To Sherlock’s dismay, John’s return to Baker Street with Rosie is only temporary. Sherlock’s daily visits to Regent Park with John and Rosie illuminate his lost childhood memories and missed opportunities. But with each trip to the park, Sherlock also feels a growing sense of hope. That is until the past horrors return unexpectedly in a cryptic note folded in the shape of a heart. To decipher the message, Sherlock must uncover the nature of the hearts around him, including his own.

Domestic Matters by ohlooktheresabee (M, 29,404 w., 6 Ch. || Fantasy AU || First Meetings, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Domestic Fluff, BAMF Sherlock, BAMF John, Idiots in Love, Misunderstandings, Supernatural Elements, Implied / Referenced Child Abuse, Elf Sherlock, Human/Elf Politics, Emotional Abuse, Possessive Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, Buddy Greg) – All flatmates need to work out domestic matters between them - who does the dishes, who takes out the rubbish, how often does the carpet need to be vacuumed - these are part and parcel of sharing a living space together. However, when you’re an elf and your flatmate is going to be a human you just met, this rather complicates things…Very loosely inspired by 'The Elves and The Shoemaker' by The Brothers Grimm.

Deck the Halls by itsalwaysyou_jw (T, 31,018 w., 24 Ch. || Advent Fic / Multiple One-Shots, Assorted Tags) – One Johnlock ficlet for every day leading up to Christmas. Who is ready for pining, first kisses, established Johnlock, and everything in between? This collection of stand-alone ficlets will have it all. 

A Study Of Living With Sherlock Holmes by  AllesandraQuartermaine (T, 50,234 w., 22 Ch. || Post-ASiP/Pre-TAB, Domestics, Friendship, POV John) – Learn about what happened between John and Sherlock January 31st and March 22. From John's pov on how to survive and learn to live with one eccentric mad genius known as Sherlock Holmes. 

Points by lifeonmars (E, 53,791 w., 42 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || HLV Rewrite / Canon Divergence, Married Life, Pregnancy / Baby Watson, Drinking to Cope, Boxing / Fisticuffs, Clueless John, Angst, Minor Medical Drama, Tattoos, Christmas, First Kiss/Time, Eventual Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Doctor John, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Case Fic, Drugging, Blow/Hand Job, Emotional Love Making, Parenthood, Passage of Time) – What if His Last Vow never happened? This fic picks up a few months after John and Mary's wedding, in an alternate universe where Magnussen doesn't exist, but Mary is still pregnant. Life continues -- just in a different direction. And slowly, Sherlock and John find their way to each other.

Isosceles by SilentAuror (E, 56,609 w., 7 Ch. || Post-S4, POV John, Original Male Character / Sherlock Dates Another Man, Love Triangle, Jealous John, Virgin Sherlock, Sexual Coaching, Angst, Romance, Domesticity, Unrequited Feelings, Miscommunication, First Kiss/Time, For a Case, Friends With Benefits, Bottomlock, Love Confessions, Spooning) – After solving a case for a major celebrity, Sherlock gets himself asked out. When John asks, he discovers that Sherlock has no intention of going, at least not until John agrees to coach him through whatever he might need to know for his date...

White Knight by DiscordantWords (M, 69,840 w., 13 Ch. || S4 Compliant/Post S4, Marriage For a Case, Jealous John, Pining John, Janine / Sherlock Fake Relationship, Serial Killers, Case Fic, Undercover as a Couple, Weddings, John is a Mess, Misunderstandings, Wedding Planning, Jealousy, Drunkenness, Love Confessions, Angst with Happy Ending) – Green. The word green was used to convey a great many things. Illness. Envy. Inexperience. Standing there amidst Janine's chattering bridesmaids, watching Sherlock furrow his brow and study fabric swatches, watching him smile and simper and flirt, John thought it a remarkably apt colour choice. Because he felt quite sick to his stomach, he feared the source of said sickness might very well be jealousy, and he had absolutely no idea at all what to do about it. Or: Sherlock needs to fake a relationship for a case. He doesn't ask John.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

Repairing the Broken Things by BakerTumblings (M, 75,252 w., 15 Ch. || S4 Compliant, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Hospitals, Big Brother Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Realizations, Severe Accident, John Whump, Pneumonia, Medical Procedures, Bed Sharing, First Time, Healing, Happy Ending) – "I'm calling today to notify you that there's been an accident."

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

Drawn to Stars by Silvergirl (E, 109,272 w., 60 Ch. || S4 Compliant to TLD / TFP Doesn’t Exist, Sherlock’s Italian Adventure, Sherlock/OC and Johnlock, Jealous John, Mutual Pining, Misunderstandings, First Kiss/Time, Idiots in Love, 3 Part Story, Slow Burn, Inexperienced Sherlock, Bottom Sherlock, Introspection, Alternating First and Third Person POV, Separation and Reconciliation, Emotional Love Making, Love Confessions via Letters, Angst with Happy Ending) – After the Culverton Smith case Sherlock is clean, working, and looking for a romantic partner—since John has told him that’s what he needs. Shame John didn’t mention he was interested in that role himself, before Sherlock went off to Rome with a gorgeous Italian copper to try to fall in love and become a complete human being.  Part 1 of the Drawn to Stars series

The Lost Special: Family Matters (As Do Relationships) by ShirleyCarlton (M, 144,688 w., 40 Ch. || S4 Fix It Fic / Meta Fic, Unreliable Narrator, John’s Mind Bungalow, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Demisexual Sherlock, Holmes Family, John Whump, Gay Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Drug Addiction, Parenting, TFP is a Nightmare, Virgin Sherlock, Slow Burn, Minor Character Death, Switchlock, John’s Past, Sherlock’s Past, Eurus, Love Confessions) –Sherrinford is not really the name of some high security prison. That was just a figment of John’s frantic coma dream. And Eurus is not actually Sherlock’s sister. That’s just something random she said to John before shooting him. Sherlock and John were never actually estranged. That was just their act to cover up what really happened to Mary – or Rosamund Moran, as her real name has turned out to be. Sherlock does have a secret sibling, though, and his name is Sherrinford. After finally eliminating Moran – though in a rather dramatically different way than they had envisioned – and exposing the truth about Eurus, John encourages Sherlock to delve into his past and to find out whether the reasons to keep Sherrinford away from Sherlock were the right ones, and to discover what really happened in 1981. Along the way, Sherlock and John gradually, finally, stop keeping each other at a distance, and eventually become a proper family of their own.

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

2.268 million…. Words

👀

Staring at you in amazement. How do you keep the drive going when writing drabbles, and multichapters? Do you have an outlining process, storyboard, character web?

I’m seeking advice, because these fests wips that I have (ladies of hp, Romionetrope, Jily) are just so hectic. I have the beginning and end of set and ready to go. I have the dialogue/plot however I don’t know how to keep organized. When I edit my work I go back to the beginning and change some parts same goes to adding in the middle.

Do you have any tips for a fellow fanfic writer? Anything will help 😅

Ok, so I do have to preface that a lot of my fanfic writing has been a form of productive procrastination. I don't necessarily recommend stress-writing tons and tons of fanfic and putting off your actual work. However, I will say what I do for writing as much fanfic as I do:

Keeping the drive going: part of it is that I write a lot of longfics out in advance. Not all of them - certainly not all of them - but most of them, I start writing and try to get to a good percentage of the words before I start posting. With Supernova, I promised 100k words pre-written before I even began posting. So writing in advance is a huge benefit. It's also one of the ways to really write for yourself, be happy with only you seeing it (and a beta, if you're lucky!) and then getting feedback on it. A lot of the time, I keep the drive going by having multiple projects at once. If I get stuck with one, I go to the next one, and so on.

Planning: I start with an idea for a story and then think about what the 'theme' of it is (besides the obvious torturing of my characters). What is the story I want to tell? Fundamentally, most stories come down to one or two things: new person moves into town (think Pride and Prejudice or Brooklyn 99, with the arrival of Captain Holt), person goes on an adventure (think Harry Potter, or The Good Place, with Eleanor and the gang going on an afterlife adventure), or both (Lord of the Rings or Stranger Things, new kid is Eleven plus the adventure of the Upside Down). There are variations on this theme, but most stories come down to one of those things. Start by figuring out which one you're doing, or how you're doing a variation of them, and then figure out what the story is, what you're trying to tell, what you're trying to say about your characters in general.

Some examples from my own writing:

The Nymph of House Black (time traveling Tonks): Tonks goes on an adventure to the past; overarching ideas: facing the reality of what time travel would be and what-if thinking. Learning that you shouldn't carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Cariad (postwar Remadora survives AU): Remus and Tonks go on an adventure, of being a couple in 'the real world' and facing stuff they haven't dealt with. Overarching idea: what does it mean to love when there's only normal life? turns out that love in the mundane is harder than you think, but it can be found.

Supernova (Tedromeda/Remadora AU): new guy in town is actually Ted, returning to Andromeda's life. Overarching idea: how do we find joy when it seems impossible to find? what are the lengths we're willing to go to for those we love?

Organizational ideas: this is probably my weakest area, but I'll give it a go. When you plan a story, use the basic five-act structure. 1) set the scene, where are we? 2) rising action - what's driving the story? 3) climax - what's the crisis point? 4) falling action - how are things getting resolved after the crisis? 5) resolution - how does it end?

The advantage of the five act structure is that it's very clear, but it doesn't translate to all stories and plots. For example, Supernova is currently in a very very long "rising action' stage. We are hurtling towards crisis and there will be an equally long falling action phase. But there will also be subplots that are sort of 'mini' five act plays within the larger narrative.

For longer stories, I prefer the snowflake method of plotting. Regardless, planning is your best bet for organization. Break it down into smaller sections and complete it section by section (not necessarily in order) and then weave it all together.

Other times it's better to just write, write, write, and don't stop until you can't keep writing anymore. I can't really say that there's a fully right way to plan or organize, it's whatever works best for you.

I hope some of this helps!

[boyfridged]

What do you think Jason would feel about mothers? Considering he was betrayed by one and then would have gone on and had figures in his life like a mother.

since someone brought up sheila yesterday, i just remembered that this ask has been stranded in my drafts for a while! sorry.

some loose thoughts on the topic, in a "chronological" order:

in the 80s canon, jay grieves after willis and catherine the same. while it's safe to assume that willis was (physically) more absent, there's not much indication that jay had any parental preference (neither of them really could responsibly parent him anyway.) so i believe in general terms jay doesn't really differentiate much between parental roles (and that's why, subsequently, my answer is more about parents in general rather than just mothers...)

i have a post talking about jason's parental relationship with bruce here but i just want to add that atp we also don't see jason having any specific longing for a figure of a mother. imo the reason he gets obsessed over seeking his biological mother out is that in this particular moment he does not feel secure in his relation with bruce. i think if he found out about a biological father instead, he would also want to find him. what he wants is simply a stable family (<- which he does have in bruce; but does not trust to be able to keep without robin.)

i have mentioned before that it's very important to me that jason most probably forgave sheila. of course, the fact that he tried to save her does not alone confirm it; he would probably do it for anyone, and so it's more of my headcanon, especially since the contemporary canon nearly completely erased her from the narrative up until cheer. but as i said, i prefer to think that he forgave her, as he forgave catherine (if he even ever truly blamed either of them.)

i like to think about his relationship with talia as a parental one too (ignoring the two infamous pages of the lost days), but there's not much canon material, and freshly post-res jason seems fixated on the idea that he is "no one's son." nevertheless, he is also just still a kid when first in her care, and i do think that they could grow into that kind of relationship throughout the years (despite his best efforts to deny himself the comfort of familial connections.)

tbh one of the reasons for which i headcanon that, compared with other kids bruce has taken in, 1. he is the only one who used to call him 'dad' regularly 2. he is the only one who actually settled into a more 'standard' parent-child relationship with him 3. he is the only one who got formally adopted (which "on page" happened only pre-crisis btw), is because jay had a rather traditional expectation of what a bond with a parental figure should look like (and because bruce wanted to overcompensate while working through on jay's attachment issues). the others were either older or did not have a past that conditioned them for such focus on keeping the parent close, so it did not matter much. i think in terms of parental relationships, jason needs to call them by that name and needs formal ways of them being recognized, or at least this is what his abandonment issues call for. at the same time, it also freaks him out because he was a parentified child before and he doesn't think he should need it, so it's a game of pulling closer and pushing away, testing the bonds.

my conclusion is that i don't have much to say about mothers in particular; i think he has plenty conflicting feelings about the parental roles no matter the gender.

[summerinbali]

I am so lucky. Everything works out in my favor. Even when something is not good, something better will come for me with it. Also, the Universe always got my back. Yes, I am so grateful because I am lucky.

It's February 2023 and I haven't write anything in here.

Anyhow, I welcomed this new year happily. For the first time ever. But for the first time ever also, I had to go to ER on 2nd Jan, by my own self, which was painfully sad. Life is great, but my body could not handle such a big energy of greatness coming on the new year. Also, my body couldn't handle the coffee I took on the new year's eve. Funny, ha-ha. But not funny ha-ha.

With that tragedy, I came up with my new year's resolution short and simple: healthy body. What is this healthy body that I'm going for? Glad you ask!

With my frontal lobe has fully developed, I am now able to elaborate this healthy body. It is not only eating healthy food (well, whatever that is!) or running until I passed out. It is finding balance in life. I healed my inner self for the past 2 years, which took a lot of myself. Quarter life crisis did it all well. But for just an update, I think I feel a lot better now. Hopefully, it's for good. Life is a rollercoaster, I know. But I hope I can always find the peace, forgiveness, and love I need within myself.

In matter of health, it is my body turn! She has to heal herself from GERD, vertigo, and all kinds of painful painful things that happened.

My goal is (i) to find exercise that effective, enjoyable, and doable most of the time, and (ii) to find balance of eating.

So this year, I am exploring. I said to my body that I will take time to relearn about myself and my body. The last time I did those two was when I was 17-18. And those information are now invalid. I mean, who take only 1 apple and 1 gum per day then call themselves all fueled up for the day?? Also, I don't think I am fully capable of forcing this body to run 5k immediately, she needs to take small baby steps to do that. Hence, I am exploring everything. All food, all exercises (as long as it is not a high intensity).

I also take mindful walking now, which not requiring any earphones with songs blasting my ears. I listened to the universe. Most of the time it's honking sounds of the traffic. But sometimes, it is me screaming that I am tired, but at the same time believing that I am capable.

I will definitely do Pilates Reformer, I heard that it's good for the spine. And yes, I had some issues with my shoulders and spine as well. I am also down to try more fun exercise, like Poundfit. Girl, I cannot imagine the amount of adventures this year.

One of the resources for my growth, especially with food, is @barrewithmich on Instagram. She is a great barre teacher, I followed her class few times during the pandemic. And I followed her immediately because she said something about growth. In a nutshell, healthy living is not a journey, not a marathon - so there's no need to rush. Her posts intrigued me to take slow steps, finding my own balance, exploring my limits, especially when it comes to food.

I used to label food with good food, bad food, guilty pleasure, cheating food, et cetera. I did not do me good. I was stuck with diet issues. I was on unhealthy diet for years and thought that 700cal per day was a lot. I was either binge eating or not eating at all. Boy, was I wrong.

Due to all the mistakes that I did in the past, I am now willing to take the road of the unknown and explore the wild wild world of the meaning of living itself - finding my balance and understanding my limit.

This could also mean me living with a full-time job, taking master's degree with 7 courses this semester, being a mom to a pre-schooler (WHAT), and being a wife to an amazing husband (who also has a not only full-time, but life-time, job while taking master's degree, being a father to a pre-schoolder, and a caretaker to the parents).

((side note: To B, I am proud of who you are now. I cannot believe we are here. Would you take the road to find the meaning of healthy living itself?))

Well, 2023. What a year. I've been here since 2008, I think? CRAZY. And been doing this new year shit posting since 2016 or 2017? Cannot remember. But hey. Another year to live, blessed. Super grateful and thankful. Let's do it.

[envysnest]

Snakeskin (Sephiroth/Reader) (ch. 6/?)

AO3 / Pillowfort

Rating: Explicit

Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14

Tags: First Time, Reader-Insert, Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Frank Discussions of Past Rape/Abuse, Everyone is Queer, Canon-Compliant (if you squint), Pre-Crisis-Core Seph, Slow Burn, i continue to disappoint my friends and family, sephiroth is a virgin and in this essay i will, Reader is a Cis Woman, fluffy sex, Praise Kink, Gratuitous Biochemistry

Summary:

You are a young biologist, fresh out of graduate school, working in Shinra's R&D Division under Professor Hojo. You had long since given up on finding a partner and starting a family, preferring instead the company of your cell samples and your scientific instruments.

As the conflict in Wutai worsens, you strike up an unexpected friendship with a First Class SOLDIER.

(Sephiroth/Reader Slow Burn)

TW's for this chapter: Drankin'/alcohol.

---

Almost all of your closet was in piles on your bed. You held up a pink blouse and stared at yourself in the mirror.

A few years ago, you jumped at the chance to mark your body as yours. Tendrils of the Lifestream climbed up your belly, over your sternum, between your breasts, flowering to life over your ribcage. The tattoo artist chose a vibrant green ink that seemed to glow against your skin. A matching tendril of vines and flowers climbed up your left arm from cuff to elbow. The pain of the needle had been exquisite, tearing you open from collarbone to groin in a baptism.

You usually buttoned your collared work shirts up high enough to hide the tattoo. Some of your blouses threatened the tattoo's edges, but unless someone looked closely, they wouldn’t be able to tell you had tattoos at all. 

You swapped the blouse for a turtleneck. Even so, you didn't need high-level executives asking awkward questions about what it meant, or if tattoos hurt. Worse still was Hojo himself: he didn’t need any more excuse to cut you off at the knees. No, best to wear the turtleneck.

You nodded in satisfaction and turned from the mirror. It was already 7 PM; you were running late.

The honeybee charm felt leaden in your back pocket. You hadn’t bothered to wrap it: Sephiroth needed to understand that this was not a gift, but a simple repayment of earlier kindness. A favor for a favor.

After this party, you could be alone again.

---

The 63rd-floor cafeteria was bustling. Meager streamers dangled across the floor-to-ceiling windows; cardboard snowflakes drifted along the glass. An enterprising intern had tied gold balloons along the stairway leading up to the employee lounge. Grating holiday music blared from the jukebox. Already, the space was packed with administrators, scientists, engineers, and others across all of R&D. Judging by the volume, most everyone was tipsy and intent on getting sloshed. 

You gave your coat and bag to the (overly-enthusiastic) coat check attendant and scurried through the crowd. No sign of the 1st-Classes yet. You waved feebly at the few people who greeted you.

Hojo was holding court by one of the windows. You opted instead to scale the staircase. The open bar and refreshments tables came into view, and you sighed in relief. The crowd was sparser up here, less peppered with people you recognized. If you managed to hide up here, you wouldn't have to make nice with anyone you didn’t want to see.

Without thinking, you snatched a glass of champagne off of the bar and took a swig. It was heady, expensive stuff, airy in your throat as it went down. You nursed your champagne as you walked the seemingly endless food table: a cheese plate with more offerings than you could name; a selection of fruit; endless varieties of sushi; tiny vegan sliders with company flags on red toothpicks.  An ice sculpture of the Shinra logo dominated the table, swimming in a bowl of red punch that reeked of sake even from where you were standing. An enormous sheet cake sat at the end of the table amongst the desserts:

35 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE SHINRA R&D

It already had generous portions sliced out. Evidently, you had missed some opening ceremony. 

“Professor!” A warm hand landed on your shoulder: Lazard in a light-up reindeer sweater. “Glad you could make it.”

You smiled. “Sir.”

He gestured towards your glass with his own. “Already filled up, I see. Smart girl.”

There was a foolproof script you followed at company events: be more excited than you actually were, drink more than you wanted to, and don’t talk work. You smiled gamely, lifted the champagne. “It’s the best part of being here, right?”

“Agreed.” The two of you clinked glasses. Lazard gestured towards the food table. “Eat, drink, be merry. Don’t let me keep you.”

“Thank you, sir.” 

Someone shouted for Lazard towards the sofas on the other end of the lounge, and Lazard drifted away. You sighed in relief and took another gulp of champagne.

The paper plates were laughably tiny; you could barely squish three cubes of cheese and a couple of crackers together. Someone had opened up the outdoor balcony; winter air danced around your shoulders as you browsed. Outside, you could hear people laughing, smell the acrid tang of cigarette smoke. You popped a cheese cube into your mouth.

A furor erupted downstairs; half the lounge rushed down the staircase. You retreated into the shadows. 

There they are. 

Applause and shouting greeted the 1st-Classes downstairs. You picked at the cheese on your plate, your champagne going lukewarm in your hands. Maybe, while everyone was occupied, you could go see what they had on offer for sushi before it got too warm.

As you picked through the food table, the crowd moved up the staircase, murmuring with excitement. You willed yourself not to turn around, becoming very interested in a spicy tuna roll. Just play nice, you thought to yourself. One hour, then you can go home.

Thankfully, the crowd seemed to disperse upon hitting the lobby. Several other people joined you at the food table: other scientists, some 1st-Classes you had never seen before. Yun clapped you on the back, causing you to lurch forward and nearly drop the dragon roll you had picked up; by the time you set it on your plate, he had disappeared into the crowd, his husband in tow. You gulped the last of your champagne and made for your secluded corner.

Sephiroth’s voice cut through the roar of the crowd: “Hey, you.”

His black sweater looked just this side of too tight on his frame; without the pauldrons, he looked much smaller, almost manageable. His hands were bare; he rubbed them together against a blast of cold air from the balcony.

“Hi.” You put the empty champagne glass on a side table, where a nameless waiter immediately whisked it away. Sephiroth’s eyes followed it.

He cleared his throat and gestured after the waiter. “Need a refill?”

A trick question. You glanced behind him, at the drink table. The adoring crowd had decided to disperse just before this exact moment, leaving you to fend for yourself. Near the balcony, Zack was chattering away to Angeal, who looked less than interested. Genesis was engaged with a gaggle of women from engineering. 

Was Sephiroth the type of man to spike a drink?

You grimaced. Every instinct in you told you not to accept drinks from other men, no matter how friendly. The shoulder-to-shoulder cluster of people in the lounge wouldn’t make you safer; if anything, it would provide him with cover.

You looked back at Sephiroth. He blinked at you, one hand still pointing towards where your champagne glass had been. How long had you been standing there, thinking this over?

“Yes,” you said. “I would love that.”

He seemed to deflate with relief. “Don’t go anywhere.”

You craned your neck to watch him go. The swarm parted like water to let him pass, a few employees looking up with adoration in their eyes. The bartender almost fell over themselves to pour him a fresh glass of champagne. Sephiroth smiled and pointed towards you, saying something imperceptible. 

When the attendant followed his hand, they looked straight through you. You shrunk back against the wall. Even with Sephiroth’s influence, you were invisible: just a nobody, unworthy of his attention.

Focus. Watch the drink.

You shoved the entire dragon roll into your mouth and put the plate aside. The bartender reached into a forest of clean champagne glasses, seemingly at random, and poured a fresh glass of champagne from the same bottle. You exhaled slowly.

Again, the crowd parted to let Sephiroth through. When he was within reaching distance, however, the crowd snapped closed: back to its impenetrable, tipsy chaos. For all you could tell, you may as well have been alone.

He leaned in as he handed you the glass. “Necessary provisions.”

You took it gratefully. When Sephiroth turned to examine the crowd, you wafted the glass under your nose: yes, that was champagne, seemingly untampered with. You took a small sip, and the alcohol exploded into light on your tongue, the same as the last glass. You were safe.

Your voice was hoarse when you spoke. “I think this is nicer than anything I could ever afford.”

Sephiroth snorted. “You are criminally underpaid.” He gently shouldered his way to the wall and leaned against it with you. You shied away, putting a hands-width of distance between the two of you. If he noticed, he didn't seem to mind. “What do you usually drink?"

You took another sip of champagne. His attention felt too bright, like an underplate sun beaming directly at you. From across the lounge, you heard Zack’s tittering laugh. “Just, um. Whatever’s on sale? I don’t know.”

Sephiroth didn’t respond to this. You fiddled with the glass stem and continued. “I used to want to like, drink for a living.” Oh, that sounds awful. You felt him turn back to you, and you waved your hands. “I-I mean. I wanted to like, use my degree to brew alcohol.”

He laughed, low and sweet. You felt warm, or was that the champagne? You couldn't afford to get drunk here. “How interesting. Anything specific?”

“I, uh.” You looked up. He was leaning towards you; you could count the freckles on his nose. You looked away. “I kind of wanted to work on a vineyard.”

“You probably would’ve gotten more sunshine there.”

You honked with laughter and covered your mouth. “I would give anything to just, like. Run away sometimes.” Bubbles crawled along the sides of your champagne glass; you watched them go. “Like, join the circus, without actually joining the circus. You know?”

Zack’s voice came from somewhere around the cheese selection. “Smile!” The flash of a camera phone went off in your peripheral; you squinted. Sephiroth seemed unfazed. 

God, but he was close. You weren’t this interesting. There was no way. You braced yourself for the inevitable up-and-down, the leering look, the step closer--

He cleared his throat and nodded. “I do know. I…” He looked away, seemed to roll the words around in his mouth for a moment before thinking better of it. “…do know that feeling.” 

When he turned to you, his eyes were wide, searching. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so boyishly young. You clutched your champagne glass to your chest like a shield.

Sephiroth’s tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip and— curse you— you looked. He opened his mouth. “You look—“

“There you are.”

The two of you turned at once, and your stomach dropped. Hojo was stomping towards you. Unlike Sephiroth, he had to push and shove his way through the crowd, sending people stumbling. Some openly glared at him in his wake.

“Professor—“ you started, but a wall of muscle blocked your vision. 

Sephiroth, casually, almost imperceptibly, had stepped ahead of you.

At first, it seemed as if Sephiroth had merely stepped towards Hojo; you knew better. From Hojo’s knowing grin, he knew it, too. You hazarded a glance up; Sephiroth’s warm demeanor from earlier was gone, replaced with a cool, stony neutrality.

When he spoke, his voice was like ice. “Hojo. I was just about to step away and go look for you.”

Hojo switched his champagne glass to his other hand and pointed to you, peering up at Sephiroth. “I was hoping to speak to my employee.”

“I’m afraid your employee’s not feeling well at the moment.” Sephiroth crossed his arms and looked down his nose at Hojo, who laughed.

“What, is she your pet?”

You stepped forward. “I’m alright, Seph. What is it, Professor?”

The two men stared at you in shock: Sephiroth, looking like you had slapped him, and Hojo, looking as if he had just won the largest teddy bear at the carnival. 

Your heart pounded in your chest. You hadn’t meant to say that aloud: it was just how you referred to him in your mind. It wasn’t a pet name, surely not, just a way around his long name, Sephiroth, a mouthful at the best of times—

“Say your peace,” Sephiroth said to Hojo, but he didn’t step aside.

Hojo straightened his glasses. “It’s quite confidential.”

“We’re in the same department.”

You raised your voice above them: “Professor, what was it you wanted?”

Hojo scowled. “I merely wanted to ask after your protein pull-down. Any luck?”

Of course Hojo would want to talk work during a party off-hours. You put on your most polite, work-friendly smile. Above you, Sephiroth rolled his eyes and looked away. “It seems to like glucose receptors,” you bit out, “but we won’t know until we repeat the pull-down in triplicate.”

Hojo seemed pleased by this and took a sip of champagne. “Well. And what repetition are we on?”

“The second one,” you replied, resisting the urge to grit your teeth as you said it.

“Very good, Doctor.” Hojo put his free hand behind his back and smiled up at Sephiroth. “See?” He patted Sephiroth on one broad arm. Sephiroth didn’t respond, eyeing him warily. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

A random engineer slung his arm around Hojo’s shoulders and, before you knew it, he was whisked away.

Sephiroth turned to you. “Are you alright?”

You couldn't look away from where Hojo had touched Sephiroth. He was like a god, and Hojo...

Hojo didn't care.

Your mouth twisted. You shook your head. “Yeah. Why?”

He huffed and tipped the champagne down, swallowing the entire glass in a few swift gulps. As he set down the glass, he said, “I’ve seen what he does to his employees. I’m just concerned for you.”

“What does that mean?”

But Sephiroth was already walking away. His hair fell in his face, obscuring his expression from you. 

The memory of the bee in your pocket hit you like a bullet train.

Now or never.

“Seph. Wait.”

He started. There was no way he had heard you over the din of the crowd, even with his superior hearing; you couldn’t shout that loudly, and anyway, why would he care what you had to say? He surely had better places to be.

And yet, miraculously, he turned to you, something gentle in his face you didn’t recognize. “Yes?”

You stuttered and reached into your back pocket. You had to do this quickly, or else you’d never work up the nerve. You couldn’t afford not to settle the score. 

“I, um.”

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. Your pulse rang in your ears.

Now or never. Now or never.

You bit the inside of your cheek and thrust the honeybee towards him. “For you.”

He reared backwards as if the charm was a piece of live materia. For a tense second, he stared at your hand, surprise etched into every line of his face. You shifted from foot to foot.

When he spoke, it was soft, wondering, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd: “You made that?”

“Y-yes. It’s got, um…” You reached behind the charm and pulled on the tiny chain behind its abdomen. Sephiroth started violently as it spread its wings with an audible click. “I t-th-thought of you? When you said the-- the bracelet was p-pre-pretty and, well.” You shook it at him. “Happy holidays?”

“You…?”

Sephiroth reached out, and tenderly (ever so tenderly) he took the charm from you. Your bare hands brushed, and you felt yourself rock forward onto your toes, as if there was an invisible string in you, some live wire he had tripped. That was right, you had to tell him that you were unavailable, but—

But you couldn’t. Not when he cradled the charm so close to his chest, not when he tilted his head as he examined it like a newborn. 

“Thank you,” he said, and when he looked up at you, he grinned. The bridge of his nose crinkled with joy. 

Oh, you couldn’t.

On the contrary:

You had it bad.

It felt like your limbs decided not to work all at once. You leaned back against the wall to steady yourself, trying to look as casual as possible when you were this close to passing out. “I added a pin back,” you said, and oh, he actually turned the charm over to look. “It locks, so. You can. Put it on stuff, I don’t know.”

He looked over his shoulder. The party whirled on around you two. 

When he turned back to you, he nodded. “I’ll wear it under my uniform.” He tapped his right pectoral, just over his heart. “Right here. If I lose it, you get a free punch. Sound fair?”

“A free—” You sputtered. “Oh my God! No! I wouldn’t do that!”

His nose crinkled again. “I’m completely serious.” He put the charm in his front pocket; you didn’t miss how his hand lingered over it, as if he would lose it if he didn’t touch it. “One free punch.” He held up one finger. “I’ll hold you to it, Professor.”

Your cheeks hurt; you were smiling, you realized, so much it made your eyes water. It had to be the champagne. “Fine,” you said. “One punch. Deal.”

He turned away from you. “The bet’s on.”

You watched him melt into the crowd. Your champagne had gone warm again.

---

THE INTERLOPER RETURNS! Dear members of the Silver Elite, Surely you all remember the mysterious woman who sat with Sephiroth at that board meeting? She has been spotted again, just in time for the holidays! The two were inseparable at Shinra’s holiday party. Inside sources tell us only high-level scientists and executives were allowed— along with 1 st -Class SOLDIERs and their guests, of course. Though our beloved angel entered and left alone, the two were spotted canoodling at the snack table by themselves. Could Sephiroth’s time alone be finally over????

There was an envelope on your desk Monday morning. You shrugged off your winter coat and draped it over the side of your cubicle wall. Just like the first envelope, there was no return address or any sign of the sender: just your name and office number, typed, on a sticky label.

You sat down in your chair. Inside this envelope was a five-million gil invoice for mako supplements. SOLDIERs had pre-allotted doses of mako sent to them in glass bottles; the amount varied based on R&D’s experiments (or the whims of upper management). Dosage instructions were printed on the bottom in bold, terrifying font:

REFRIGERATE UNTIL READY TO USE ONLY DRINK 1 BOTTLE PER DAY. SIGNS OF MAKO SICKNESS INCLUDE: LOSS OF APPETITE, LETHARGY, HIGH BLOOD SUGAR, SEIZURES, MUSCLE WEAKNESS, AND LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. IF YOU FEEL WOOZY, DON'T WAIT: CALL YOUR SUPERVISOR!!!!

A blue postcard peeked out between the second and third pages. You shook it out onto the desk.

THE JUNON CANNON. The blue, endless ocean stretched out beyond the golden cannon. The sun was high in the sky; seabirds flew in formation in the distance. The photograph had been taken from the very tip of the cannon; below it was a fifty-foot drop onto the cliffs. 

You turned the postcard over. The same elegant, looping scrawl dominated the left-hand side of the card:

This is an older postcard. Forgive me, but I’ve always wanted someone to send it to. I’ve scaled the cliffs below this picture a few times. The gulls like to nest in-between the rocks. The cannon itself is hard to look at, especially with the ocean looking so beautiful underneath. I daydream about it falling into the water forever. Maybe that’s my ‘run away and join the circus.’

“Professor?”

You shoved the card back into the invoice, heart pounding. How long had Marcie been standing there, watching you read this postcard?

Marcie was too short to look at you over the cubicle wall, preferring instead to peek around the corner at you, one brown eye and a delicate hand barely visible. She had her trademark nervous frown.

“The samples are gone again,” she said.

You pressed your fingers to the bridge of your nose. “Again?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you,” you sighed. “I know who took them.” Hojo. Again.

“Do you want me to look at 029's cells instead?”

“No,” you snapped. Marcie jumped; you kicked yourself for frightening her. In a softer tone, you added, “No, I’ll do it later. Can you just get me the data you took last week?”

Marcie shuffled past you into her cubicle. “I still need to process it.”

“That’s fine. You spend the morning doing that. No rush.”

You pulled up the Shinra instant-messaging app and clicked on Hojo’s name.

>> Did you need 017’s lysate? 

Hojo’s reply was instantaneous:

>>Yes. We took a few of 017’s cells from cryo as well. Will that be a problem?

A chill ran through you. Could Hojo have seen J - 180 - L - 9177? Could he tell you had messed with his samples?

Hojo’s icon blinked on the screen, awaiting your response. You typed:

>>No problem at all. We’ll push to tomorrow.

>>K.

You slouched forward and pressed your forehead to your crossed arms.

---

When the SOLDIERs returned from their latest mission, the lab emptied out. You looked up from your laptop as everyone rushed outside to the 60th floor escalators.

When you saw Sephiroth ascend the escalator in the window, you stood up so quickly the blood rushed from your head, and you steadied yourself on the bench. His usual crowd of admirers swarmed him. As he bent down for what you assumed was the five millionth selfie he had had to pose for that day, you wandered over to the windows, arms crossed around yourself.

When he straightened up, he craned his neck towards the lab windows, searching. You caught his eye.

The two of you stared at each other over the crowd. You lifted a hand and waved.

A smile tugged at Sephiroth’s lips, and he turned away. His hand moved to his chest and tapped the space over his heart. To any onlooker, it would have been a simple, throwaway gesture: nothing more exotic than an itch or a minute adjustment of his coat. 

You gasped despite yourself, and just like that, he was gone: back into the throng of fans, back into the mob, away from you.

---

When you looked up from your RNA samples, the lab had emptied out completely. You checked your watch and groaned when you saw the time: 6:29 PM. You had promised yourself you would go home at five today; you had gotten lost in your work again, and the cells didn’t even need feeding or dosing. You wiped your forehead against your shoulder. Beyond you, the 60th floor was empty, some of the motion-sensitive lights already going dark.

As Shinra drew closer and closer to the holidays, the building became emptier and emptier. You had noticed several of the cubicles sitting empty that morning. This late, you usually saw a few stragglers, middle managers and overworked interns, talking in low voices on their way to the escalators or staring blankly at their phones. The quiet of the lab pressed in around you.

Sephiroth hadn’t approached you since returning from his last mission days ago. You tried not to take it personally: he was likely exhausted and in need of sleep. Lazard may have even shuffled him to another mission. You ejected a pipette tip and capped the tube of RNA, gently inverting it back and forth between thumb and forefinger to mix its contents.

He seemed more a show pony than a man: always observed, always in demand. You couldn’t stop thinking about that tired, resigned look in his eyes when he was in the middle of a crowd. He had seemed so happy when he saw you watching him.

The door to the lab opened. Speak of the devil.

You turned in your chair. “You’re—“

But the person at the door was not Sephiroth.

You stopped mid-word, still holding your RNA tube. 

Genesis kicked the lab door shut behind him. “Professor,” he said. The smile on his face made you feel cold.

“It’s past six,” you called to him. “Everyone’s gone home.”

He tucked his hands behind his back, that satisfied smile only growing wider. “I saw the light on,” he said. "Is now a good time?"

Something in your mind was itching, clawing against the walls, screaming at you to Get out, leave immediately, it’s not safe, you’re not safe. You watched in horror as Genesis proceeded to ignore you, taking a slow walk against the lab windows. The click of his boots seemed overly loud against the instruments droning on in the background. You drew a mental map between yourself and the lab doors. Could you even outrun a 1st-Class?

You forced yourself to set the RNA tube down in its rack before you dropped it. “Did you need something?” you asked, and you hated the tremble in your voice.

Genesis pursed his lips and shook his head. “I just wanted to visit,” he said.

“You can come back during business hours. It’s just me here.”

“Actually,” he drawled, “you are the woman I wanted to see.”

You stared at him as he made his way slowly towards you. He seemed to move like smoke around the islands dotting the wide open lab: a dark parallel to how Sephiroth had moved through the holiday party. You felt stuck to your chair.

“Have we met?” you asked; your voice cracked on the last word: m-y-et.

“Where are my manners?” He stopped ten feet away and bowed, long coat sweeping across the tile floor. “Genesis Rhapsodos, 1st-Class.” 

“Okay,” you said softly. “I’m—“

“I know who you are.” Genesis straightened and adjusted his gloves. That damned smile.  “My good friend has many a nice word to say about you.”

You willed yourself to turn back to your samples. “You’ll have to remind me.”

“I think you and I are both aware.”

“Maybe.” You felt like you were going to throw up.

Genesis sighed. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched him cross his arms and lean against a lab bench, dangerously close to where you tested blood samples. “Sephiroth is distracted by you, you know.”

You reached for a fresh pipette tip. “Okay?”

He barked out a laugh. “‘Okay,’ she says. I know you two are becoming close.”

“We’re just…”

What were you?

You tilted your head just slightly. Genesis pounced on your hesitation:

“Just. Just what?”

“Just work acquaintances. We don’t really know each other that well.”

“Is that why he visits you nightly?”

“I…I don’t know why he does that.” 

“You’re humble, aren’t you, Professor?”

You pressed your lips together and drew your RNA into the pipette tip.

“No wonder Sephiroth’s sweet on you.”

And suddenly, it felt like he had dumped a bucket of ice water on you. Your lungs collapsed in on themselves; practice and experience alone kept you from dropping your pipette. 

“Excuse me?” you wheezed.

An expression of delight crossed his face. “You didn’t know?” Genesis seemed to dismiss that thought the second it struck him, and he scoffed. “Perhaps he isn’t as obvious in his affection. He’s usually very straightforward.”

Your mind spun. It took all of your self-control not to eject your sample onto the lab bench. You turned back to your tube and ejected the sample so violently that it splashed up the walls of the tube, nearly spilling over.

Genesis laughed when you swore under your breath. “Distracted, are we?”

You grit your teeth. “No.”

He leaned back against the wall and watched you work. You kept your head down, trying your damndest not to lose your sample from being flustered.

Genesis continued, “He’s not the most used to romance, unlike some of us. Several before you have tried and failed.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Sephiroth is truly a man committed to his work. I’m surprised at what he sees in you.”

“Genesis,” you snapped. Never mind that you could feel heat creeping up your neck; never mind that you were hunching further and further in your chair, trying to make yourself small. “I know you’re just trying to help, but I’m really stressed out here, and you’re distracting me.”

He continued as if you hadn’t spoken. “A mousy scientist and Shinra’s greatest warrior.” His voice was low. “Who would’ve thought you’d be the one to sway him?”

“Genesis.”

Genesis huffed and straightened up. “Well. I’ll leave you, if you wish.” He pressed a warm hand to your shoulder. When you stiffened in fear, you could see him smile in the reflection of the fume hood window. “If your work is so important, I’ll tell him to stop annoying you, Professor.”

“No need, actually,” you said, voice icy. You wanted to hit him: 1st-class-status and HR be damned. “I’ll talk to him.”

When Genesis refused to move, you added, “Alone.”

Genesis removed his hand. There was a warm impression left in its wake, even through your lab coat and blouse; you rolled your shoulder, trying to get rid of it.

It wasn’t until the double doors to the lab swung shut with a bang that you relaxed.

Sephiroth’s sweet on you.

You stared at the dozens of tubes in front of you, your meticulously organized lab notebook. Somehow, you could still feel Genesis’s warm hand on your shoulder, and bile rose in your throat. Sephiroth almost never touched you.

But the bill always comes due.

You screwed your eyes shut, opened them again. Yes, there were the tubes and the notebook, just the way you left them. You dropped your pipette and pressed your thumb to the inside of your hand. Your breath was shallow; dread welled up in you. Surely this was Hollander playing a trick— perhaps to undermine and cripple Hojo’s department? You knew Hollander and Genesis were friendly.

But Genesis was Sephiroth’s friend; his only friend, along with Angeal, if rumors were to be believed. 

Why would Genesis humiliate his friend for political gain?

Why you?

Shouldn’t I be happier?

You looked up at the lab windows. Even without Genesis there, you couldn’t help but feel small. Helpless. Men like him were good at that.

When you picked up your pen, your hand was trembling.

Go to next chapter >>>

[rayne-the-neutrois-nerd]

First Lines Game

Rules: Share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you've written less than ten, just share what you've got

I was tagged by @subatoism thank yooou!! I have written/started over 10 fics in my life but tbh lately most don't make it past the planning stage and a looot of my old ones were written by hand and I've lost those notebooks;;; I only have one fanfic actually posted rn and its from 2018 oh no. Maybe I'll fill it out with some of my ideas even though I haven't actually written any prose... Anyways here we go.

1) Chief Medical Officers Personal Log, Stardate 51306.65

Lieutenant Naxeha Maten has arrived on the station, after nearly a year of being promised that a crisis counselor was to be provided to the station to help those who went through the events of the Dominion War. (What We Bring Back, WIP. Basically my continuation after the finale of DS9)

2) "I can't believe you would set them up like that!" Julian was stomping around the room, hands plowing through his hair. (Unnamed WIP where instead of Miles, it was Garak who discovered Julians secret in Dr. Bashir I Presume)

3) The bright lights of the city flashed by the taxi window. Multiple skyscrapers, advertisements, and billboards sported their on unique set of colors. (Mein Herr, SHINee fanfic)

4) Persona 5 fanfic inspired by the story of the Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge album by My Chemical Romance. Ship is Akeshu (Akira x Akechi)

5) Pre- Danger Days (by MCR again...) fanfic following the lives of the Fab Four while they still lived in Battery City and how they became Killjoys

6) A Mirror!Garak x Julian idea where Julian was forced to stay after the first trip into the mirror dimension and M!Garak takes a liking to him and tries to use him to overthrow Indendant Kira.

7) I uh... do have a list of Kinktober stuff to try, mostly as practice for writing smut because I'm really bad at it...

I can't think of any more;; I do have a couple of original stories to turn into novels but this is fanfic specific so I won't add that here...

I also uh... don't know 10 people who write fanfic, or have openly shared they write it (even if they haven't posted) so I guess uh... @a-star-that-fell and @wanderingwriter87 if you haven't been tagged already. (You also don't have to do it if you don't want to;;;)

[5five5five5five5five5five]

thank you for this addition. I'm sorry that my wording was harmful and that i typed this post very impulsively with not much thought. You are right that his queerness in his fashion is very important and it shouldn't have been watered down or that i should have made a 1 for 1 connection to only his drug addiction. that is not true, I'm well aware he is genderfluid and pan and that it plays a big part of his character. I apologize for my wording and i admit my negative feelings towards my sister and my own trauma effects how i talk about such topics but i really need to correct myself when it comes to public spaces. it wasn't okay. i need to be more aware that my sister is an outlier, not the norm and i shouldn't be speaking so generally about a crisis that has impacted me and many others as much as it has. it was careless. (i currently have 2 homeless sisters + i was homeless for most of my teen years. its something i know all too well. i think to the point where i talk about it in a very numb and uncaring manner to cope. that is not an excuse.) the only thing i disagree on is "nail polish and eyeliner cost money, so his choice to use those as part of his style coinciding with homelessness does not make any sense." i feel like that's very much removing the community aspect of homelessness and drug addiction. and tbh feels a little dehumanizing. as someone around homeless people my whole life with make up, nails and flamboyant clothes, it makes sense to me? people can get all those things fairly easily from other homeless friends. Klaus is showed knowing who to get drugs from and a past of partying. those crowds form communities. those communities help each other. Klaus is a person who needs "stealables" (his own words) to get money for drugs, he doesn't fully have the luxury to 100% dress that way all on his own accord. Yes, its the style he chooses to wear and his queerness plays a factor but he is very much NOT just a flamboyant queer with a unique fashion sense. hes also a struggling, homeless, drug addict flamboyant queer. and a lot of his fashion reflects that and will be downplayed when recovering. his fashion is his queerness AND signs of a man who doesn't have much to him but tries to elevate his self expression with what he has. its BOTH. people who don't see the struggle in his attire and ONLY see the queerness are who i was pointing to. there is struggle in s1 Klaus's fashion. (pre war) that's a man who isn't JUST wearing what he's wearing because he's queer. he's not a celebrity who hand picks his attire at whim with luxury and 100% freewill. he's also an addict that elevates his personality, mannerisms and style to fit his surroundings. we see this in s2 with his cult and in Vietnam. he has a habit of easily forming to what life throws to him. Klaus is queer but also dresses with what he can get. it being a flamboyant style is him being queer. but removing drugs from the equation WILL change that. yes, recovery shouldn't just remove his queerness and i do wish they added a bit more queerness into him in s4 but we see him in a very transitional state in his recovery. some people don't know WHO they are after 3 years sober. Klaus really made drugs his personality. drugs can make you more boastful. that doesn't remove his queerness but i think people really only see his queerness and complaining are not seeing the fact that a addict is there too. without drugs and this pattern of behavior he's had since he was teen, he's going to feel different for a long time. he's going to change. s1 Klaus was not a happy man and people who act like he should go back to suffering bc he was "more stylish" are missing the point. that's what i meant by this post. i wasn't trying to remove one for the other. i just feel like some ignore his addiction in favor of him being a queer icon when he's both and they do overlap a LOT.

Thank you again for this addition, the resources and for calling me out, i honestly made this post then threw it to the wind without much thought, witch was a thoughtless thing to do. i hope i got my words out better here then before. i not trying to double down. i just really want people to understand that his drug addiction was a big part of him for a long time and his fashion very much reflects that ON TOP OF being queer and flamboyant. both can co exist in one man.

idk why but everyone going "the decuntification of Klaus is so sad" "why is Klaus's fashion always a downgrade each season??" really bugs me. like. that was the drugs. he dressed like that bc street life drug life. as someone with a homeless druggie sister (who LOVES KLAUS) and is straight as a nail, she dresses the same way. him being pan / queer had very little to do with how he dressed in s1. that's the drugs.

and its sad that i have a first hand look at the same type of person to know this. maybe I'm projecting but give rehab, softer germaphobe Klaus some fucking respect. THAT'S Klaus.

[the-amber-fox]

Young Royals Fic Rec List 2022 Edition

To tide you over the last four weeks of waiting for season 2 I have been making my way through the last months on AO3 and recommendations to bring you this part 2 of my fic rec list. All fanfics in this list have been published in 2022. 

Categories for this list are:

Canon

Canon-divergent

Post-canon (pre season 2)

Fix-Its

AUs

Slightly Unhinged but worth it

E-Rated

The dark stuff.

So there should be one for everyone here

Canon

My Youth is Yours (Not Rated) by evakayaki Simon wants to give Wille "firsts" that every kid should experience, but missed out on because he was prince. OR: Five times Simon gives Wille a first experience and one time Wille surprises Simon.

Canon-Divergent

Hope Against Hope (M) by demeterfics What happens when Simon doesn't follow Wille after his panic during Horror Movie Night? Simon has regrets, Simon frets, Simon thinks that was his one chance. Wille has a bit more of a sexual crisis, but luckily Erik is there to give some brotherly advice. Boys need to figure out how to communicate. Screwed (T) (WIP) by fandom_commitment_issues Erik lived, but things are still Royally screwed up.

Post Canon (maybe)

Wilhelm & Simon: An Interview with Sweden's Young Royal Couple by cali-chan (girls_are_weird) On the heels of Queen Kristina's announcement that she will be stepping down as monarch once her son and heir turns 35, Crown Prince Wilhelm and his longtime partner, Simon Eriksson, sit down with SVT's Signe Karlsson, for the first time since the future King publicly came out as queer and confirmed their relationship, to discuss their future and dispel any lingering misconceptions about their romance. His Royal Fucking Highness Prince Simon of Sweden (he will take none of your shit) (T) by notalotgoingonatthisinstant Simon had gone through most stages of grief over the past two days since that meeting, and his head would split open if he didn't sit down with his family and friends to let it out. He should be jumping at the opportunity to refuse the titles, so why was he so conflicted? whenever we're together (M) by waitingstar He does yoga, then shirtless yoga. He times his downward dogs for when Wilhelm is passing the lounge room, pretends he doesn’t smirk at Wilhelm's strangled “Morning”.

My Youth is Yours (Not Rated) by evakayaki                      Simon wants to give Wille "firsts" that every kid should experience, but missed out on because he was prince. OR: Five times Simon gives Wille a first experience and one time Wille surprises Simon.

Fix Its

always something left behind (T) by eleanna99That’s what love is, after all, he thinks. Always leaving something behind. or All the times Simon and Wilhelm almost call each other through the years, and one time they do.

A Royal Intervention (T) by AnxiousAnaconda Erik has made it his mission to call Wilhelm regularly and check up on him. The whole family seems to be in agreement that he is in a tumultuous and dangerous phase, that he could easily be steered in the wrong direction and cause perhaps unforeseen levels of PR damage, but Erik wonders whether his parents truly grasp how sensitive this life phase is for Wilhelm. It is a gut feeling, an inkling, that tells him to watch out for his little brother. Now more than ever. That broken piece, let go (T) by cali-chan (girls_are_weird), TheAmberFox Or five times Simon didn't communicate his true feelings + one time he did. OR Therapy Fic.

AUs

The greatest story never written (T) by NerdGirl07 writer! simon and reader wille: simon always has to try to not spontaneously combust whenever wille rambles about HIS OWN book to him

Play my song (G) by Elin98 It is 12.15 am and you’re listening to Late night Vibes with Simon on The Vibe FM, 104.6. I’m your host Simon Eriksson and I will be here with you all night. So for all you night owls, insomniacs, night shift workers, let me keep you company. I promise to only play good music and that we’ll have a good time.

Bloom where you are planted (T) by Cl0udyM1lk Wille is a plant boy, Simon has a black thumb. They both run semi-popular Instas.

There's a song in my heart (I feel like I belong) (M) by cali-chan (girls_are_weird) Concert pianist Wilhelm Berwald had no idea his entire life would change when he was paired up with pop star Simon Eriksson for a charity concert.

the way you look at me (T) by strummerjoe After spending his whole life in Bjärstad, Simon is excited to go to university. He wants to embrace all aspects of student life and he's ready for anything.Anything, except finding a disgruntled crown prince in his new bedroom.

Dancing Through Life (M) by pagegirlintraining After getting into a club fight that paints him in a less than ideal light, Wilhelm is forced into a living nightmare: being a contestant on Swedish reality tv. As if that wasn’t bad enough already, he’s supposed to dance on national television.Aka Wilhelm goes full Dancing with the Stars with Simon as his pro partner.

yellow paper daisy (T) by darlingdreamer21 Or: Wille and Simon meet in Bjärstad, under the most unnatural circumstances. Wille, who seeks solace in the sleepy town. Simon, who once escaped from the suffocating town.But with Simon's face plastered everywhere around the world in association with his successful music career, and Wille's own internal conflict and blissful solitude, they don't know how to deal with their mutual attraction.Inspired by the movie Notting Hill because these two dorks deserve their cheesy romcom story.

The Boy and the Bartender (M) by Spidaya Simon is a bartender at a local bar with a sunny smile and confident attitude that hide the darker side of his life he wishes to keep hidden. Wilhelm, the prince of Sweden, is a lonely boy with too much love to give and not getting much love in return.After they meet at a bar in not the most Prince-Charming way, their hearts are forever intertwined with each other, but not before going through the hurt, trials, and love that come with both of their lives.

Slightly unhinged - but worth it

Through Felle’s eyes (G) by crownedmoon Wille & Simon’s love story, witnessed by one of Simon’s fishes.

The Sound of you, an outlasting vibration (T) by TheAmberFox What if Wille joins the choir to be close to Simon? Only problem - he can’t sing to safe his life.

a whole new scandal (T) by EngelK Post? Wilhelm thought. He then remembers the notifications from his phone. Shakingly, he unlocks it. He saw tons of messages. Tons from Minou. He doesn’t even know what he has gotten into.

Open heart open mind never know who you will find (E) by simonscrown Wille deliberated whether he should be thanking the universe or cursing at it that a literal angel was standing in front of him, while his testicles were being tortured by a pair of objectively horrible booty shorts.

E - Rated

i hate accidents except when we went from friends to this (E) by cl0udy_mi1k Simon is Wilhelm's best friend, so when he confesses that he's insecure about his lack of experience Wille offers to help him. After all, it's what any good friend would do, isn't it?

Addicted to You (E) by yr_bb Simon missed him, of course he did. He knew nothing had really changed. But this forced separation was a new kind of torture, and he hated it. Hated that he wanted him still, but even in his whole setting boundaries thing, he hadn’t actually wanted to move on. He didn’t, he couldn’t, not if there was still a chance. Being this close was only bringing that all up again.

sorry about the blood in your mouth (i wish it was mine) (E) by witchjeons In the aftermath of the video, Simon falls apart. Wilhelm is there to put him back together.

There all along (E) by stretchoutandwait Kristina's death brings Simon back into Wilhelm's life after years apart. Wilhelm has to negotiate learning to become king and starting (or restarting?) a relationship at the same time.

The dark stuff

The spare (T) by Hannakin Erik can’t imagine anything worse than losing his little brother. He lives through his worst nightmare when Wille is horribly injured.

right where you left me. (M) by YourDemiurge When Crown Prince Wilhelm died at the early age of 18, he left three legacies behind: a video that he'd denied being in; a precautionary tale of young love; and a statue outside an otherwise unknown public school. **** Auhtors mentioned: @girls-are-weird @pagegirlintraining @simons-purplehoodie

@cl0udy-mi1k @ishotforthestars @cinnamoncoffees  @hanna-kin  @zee-has-commitment-issues @yourdemiurge

*** If you want to re-read the fic rec list part 1, you can find it here.

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

Timeline: Batman

google doc / ao3

This is my best attempt at a post-crisis timeline based on age-- specifically Bruce’s age every time he adopted and/or met one of his children. 

List of events:

Bruce’s parents die

Bruce becomes Batman

Dick’s parents die

Dick becomes Robin

Jason becomes Robin and is adopted

Jason dies

Tim becomes Robin

Cass appears

Dick is adopted

Tim is adopted

Cass is adopted

Damian becomes Robin

I’ll be citing my work by issue and panel. This isn’t my most organized work, and I don’t know how well tumblr will let me translate it, so I do recommend the google doc. I imagine the image quality here won’t be great. 

Notes:

This is a post-crisis timeline (1986-2011). I’ll be referencing a few pre-crisis panels, but I won’t be touching the New 52 or anything after it. That’s a different game of ball with its own, extremely bad, timeline.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 1985-1986 series that rebooted the DC timeline and altered some backstories, including Jason’s. Pre-crisis, his backstory was almost identical to Dick’s. Post-crisis, he changed to the “steal the wheels off the Batmobile” origin. Anything written before 1986 is a weak source for my purposes. 

My original question centered around Bruce’s age through the process of meeting and acquiring his children. In this timeline, those children are (1) Dick Grayson, (2) Jason Todd, (3) Cassandra Cain, (4) Tim Drake, and (5) Damian Wayne. I was envisioning an interview where the kids explain their family timeline to outsiders. I did not anticipate the project taking this long. 

We’re talking about 72 years of content here, which means decades of contradiction, conflation, and rewrites. I’m pretty satisfied with my work product, but please understand that there are no perfect answers. I’m going to cite my sources, and I’ll do my best to explain why I chose those sources specifically, but it’s pretty likely that for every panel I pull, there will be others with different numbers. We’re all going to have to live with that. 

Event timeline

*I’m defining Jason’s age by the time elapsed since his birth, but you could make an argument for using time he has been alive, which is, of course, different. That’s why the parentheses are there. 

Age differences

As Robin

----------

Bruce’s parents die

Pretty consistently, Bruce is written as eight years old the night his parents died. 

Detective Comics #0 (1994)

This is a zero issue where Bruce thinks back on his origin story. It was written long after Crisis on Infinite Earths (1986), and I tend to give a lot of weight to ages written in summaries of past plot lines, my reasoning being that it’s easier to be consistent in one issue than it is to be consistent through a month to month story. 

Bruce first appeared as an adult in Detective Comics #27 (1939), and the Waynes were already dead at that point, so flashbacks are the only available material anyway. 

Gotham Knights #6 (2000)

The text is Hugo Strange talking about Bruce, and the image is Tim and Dick playing at Wayne Enterprises. 

I’ll take a second here to note that I did find at least one alternate age for Bruce— in Superman/Batman Secret Files & Origins (2003), Bruce was 10 when his parents died. I’m disregarding that in favor of the stronger 8 year old timeline, especially in light of Batman #404 (1987).

Batman #404 is the beginning of Batman: Year One, which was explicitly written to clarify the Batman timeline post-crisis, and it’s the basis of most of my calculations for Bruce and Dick’s ages.

----------

Bruce becomes Batman

According to Year One, Bruce was 26 years old when he became Batman. I’m using his age at his parents’ deaths, his age when he returned to Gotham, and his 18 year timeline.

Batman #404 puts Bruce at age 25 when he returned to Gotham in January. 

Batman #404 (1987)

Bruce gives his dramatic, “Yes, Father, I will become a bat,” line in March. In the same scene, he says that it has been 18 years since his parents’ deaths. Knowing that they died when Bruce was eight, that puts Bruce at 26 years old the day he became Batman, which makes sense considering Bruce’s birthday is usually set at February 19th. 

He was 25 in January, turned 26 in February, and became Batman at 26, 18 years after his parents’ death. 

Batman #404 (1987)

Post-crisis, DC built timelines off the “Year” model. Year One is Batman’s beginning, and events after that are measured by how far away they are from the year Bruce became Batman. I’ll be using the Year model for Dick’s life events next. 

----------

Dick’s parents die

The Graysons died in Year Two. Using the Year Model, Dick was 12 when his parents died, and Bruce was 37. 

Year timelines appear a fair amount, especially in issues titled “Secret Files & Origins.” I pulled this bit from Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997) because it was the easiest to screenshot. 

Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997)

Year Two would place Bruce at 27 years old. I’m calculating Dick’s age backwards, based on him being 13 years old during Year Three. 

Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997) 

----------

Dick becomes Robin

Dick became Robin in Year Three, when he was 13 years old and Bruce was 28. I’m using two different issues to calculate the number. 

Batman #441 (1989)

Batman #441 is from Tim’s introduction story. It takes place “months” after Jason’s death. We’ll get to that part. In Batman #441, Tim asked Dick to be Robin again in order to help Bruce, who was visibly unstable after Jason’s death. Dick says that he can’t go back to being Robin, just like he can’t go back to being 13 years old. The strong implication there is that Dick became Robin at 13, which corresponds to Dick’s statements in Batman #416 (1988). 

In Batman #416, Dick as Nightwing returns to confront Bruce about Jason becoming Robin. He says that he was Robin for six years, and he stopped being Robin at 19.

Batman #416 (1988)

If Dick stopped being Robin at 19, after 6 years, that would put him at 13 when he debuted as Robin, the same number from Batman #441 (1989).

Dick was 13 during Year Three, so 12 during Year Two, the year his parents died. Those numbers answer the first bit of my original question. I wanted to know how old Dick and Bruce were when Dick became his child. It’s a bit more of a complicated question for Dick, since he was originally Bruce’s ward, then adopted as an adult. 

Based on the timeline so far, Dick became Bruce’s ward at 12 years old, while Bruce was 27.  

----------

Jason becomes Robin and is adopted

As previously discussed (see Notes), Jason’s timeline is complicated by Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986). Pre-crisis, Jason first appeared in Batman #336 (1983) as a former circus acrobat very similar to Dick.

Jason’s origin story reboots at Batman #408 (1987), which describes the switch-off between Dick and Jason. I’m building a lot of my timeline off of that issue. At the beginning, Dick gets shot by the Joker, and as Bruce carries him away, the media ask if Robin is dead. Dick isn’t dead, but back at the manor, Bruce decides to retire Robin as a role, based on the idea that crimefighting is too dangerous for a child. 

Batman #408 (1987)

This version is more or less from Bruce’s point of view, but there’s a contrasting version from Dick’s point of view later, in Batman #416 (1987). That one has a significantly different tone, and I already cited it once (page 13) because Dick talks about his age and the amount of time he was Robin.  

Batman #408 (1987)

The second part of the issue takes place “weeks” later. Bruce goes to Crime Alley to mourn his parents on the anniversary of their death. He comes back to find that somebody stole the wheels off the Batmobile. The somebody was Jason, and by the end of Batman #409 (1987), Bruce is calling Jason “Robin.”

Batman #408 (1987) seems to divide Dick’s departure and Jason’s introduction by only “weeks,” in the post-crisis reboot. Dick’s version of the story in Batman #416 (1987) is much less charitable to Bruce— instead of ending on a panel of Bruce smiling, it shows the aftermath of Dick in tears as Bruce walks away. Dick goes on to describe leaving the house, going to college for a semester, then dropping out. According to Dick, Bruce didn’t even say goodbye. 

Batman #416 (1987)

I don’t think the stories are contradictory; they’re just different experiences of the same events, separated by only eight issues. Dick tells us that he was 19 when he left Wayne Manor, and Bruce chooses his new Robin “weeks” later. 

As a summary, we know that Bruce’s parents died when he was eight, and that 18 years passed before he became Batman at 26. One year later, Dick’s parents died while Bruce was 27. One year after that, Dick became Robin at the age of 13. From those facts, Bruce is 15 years older than Dick. 

All of my calculations of Bruce’s age are based off of the age gap between him and Dick. Dick was 19 when Jason became Robin, so we know that at that time, Bruce was 34. We also know that at that time, Jason was 12. 

I can’t show a source for that number because it appears on the letter page of Batman #408 (1987), Jason’s introduction.

Even after a significant amount of investigation, I can’t find a copy of the letter page, but it’s cited by enough secondary sources for me to be comfortable using it. That issue is specifically written to show Jason’s origin, so it makes sense that it would contain Jason’s age at inception, even if the number wasn’t in the actual exposition. 

From Jason being 12, we can establish a seven-year age gap between Jason and Dick, who was 19 at the time. Now we know Bruce, Dick, and Jason’s ages, and the age differences between them.

Back to my original question— when did Bruce acquire Jason? We know that Bruce was 34 when Jason became his ward, and Jason was 12. The next question, however, is when did Bruce adopt Jason? On this one, I’m making an educated guess. 

Again we have to differentiate between pre-crisis and post-crisis timelines. Pre-crisis, there’s a full storyline about the fact that Bruce did not adopt Jason, although not for lack of trying. In Batman #374 (1984), the Child Welfare Bureau investigates Bruce when it notices that Bruce has not adopted Jason— and is not even, in fact, his legal guardian. 

Batman #374 (1984)

The rest of the storyline is about Jason’s custody. A villain named Natalia Knight (Nocturna) adopts Jason in an attempt to get Bruce to marry her in order to become Jason’s father. In the court scene in Batman #377 (1984), Bruce says that he filed to adopt Jason sometime beforehand, although it’s unclear to me whether he means he filed between those issues or the CWB documents were incomplete.

Natalia does adopt Jason in Batman #378 (1984), and he briefly lives with her before returning to Wayne Manor in Batman #381 (1985), directly before the reboot. 

I’m including all of that for two reasons: first, I do think it’s important to clarify both this version and the post-crisis version I’m about to address. Second, I spent years under the impression that Bruce adopted Jason pre-crisis because of one, well-known scene. 

Batman #377 (1984)

Batman #378 (1984)

Batman #381 (1985)

Donna Troy gets married in Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985). At the wedding, Bruce and Dick have a conversation about Jason and about their own relationship. A few of those panels get spread around because they contain what I would consider a defining moment between Dick and Bruce. 

I’m certainly not complaining about the amount of times I’ve seen the wedding conversation, but I think that, in regards to Jason, seeing just those panels has created a misconception.

Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985)

Without context, it looks, at least to me, like Dick is saying that Bruce has adopted Jason pre-crisis, which isn’t true. This issue takes place between the Natalia adoption in Batman #378 (1984) and Jason’s return to the manor in Batman #381 (1985), and the panels directly before the exchange make that clear. I just didn’t see those panels until I looked through the whole issue for this project. 

I’m reasonably certain that in the past, I publicly cited this issue as evidence of Jason’s adoption, and I was wrong about that. [Note: As it turns out, I was only partially wrong. See section Correction.]

Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985)

As we see, the wedding conversation is in the context of the Natalia adoption. With that cleared up, and with the pre-crisis timeline filled out, let’s move to post-crisis. 

In my brief read-through of Batman #404-427 (1987-1988), I didn’t find any direct references to Jason’s status. Those issues begin at the reboot and end at Jason’s death. However, Dick and Jason’s statements after the fact do tell us that post-crisis, Bruce did adopt Jason. 

In Batman #436 (1989), Dick returns to the manor in the direct aftermath of Jason’s death, and while he is there, he sees that Bruce removed any trace of Jason from the house. There aren’t any trophies in the Batcave, and there aren’t any pictures of Jason on the nightstand displaying Bruce’s family photos. 

Dick says that Jason was Bruce’s son.

Batman #436 (1989)

I think it’s fair to ask whether Dick is being literal here, because even if Bruce hadn’t legally adopted Jason, it would still be more than appropriate to call them father and son. I’m not going to place my opinion solely on this kind of statement, even if it does appear pretty regularly from 1988 to the end of the timeline.

Green Arrow/Black Canary #4 (2007)

We get a more definite answer later, during Tim’s first appearance. In Tim’s origin story, he deduces Batman and Robin’s secret identities after he sees footage of Robin doing a type of flip that only the Flying Graysons could do. Tim was at the circus the night Dick’s parents died, so he saw Dick do the flip there, then saw Dick become an orphan. 

Because Tim knew that Dick was the first Robin, he correctly identified Bruce as Batman and Jason as the second Robin. He tells Dick all of this in Batman #441 (1989).

Batman #441 (1989)

Tim does specifically use the word “adopts” here, and that’s good enough for me. The last part is guesswork— I don’t know for certain how old Jason and Bruce were when the adoption took place, but I’m electing to say Jason was 12, the same age as he was when he became Robin. 

I picked that number both out of convenience and because Tim seems to be putting Jason’s adoption and the second Robin’s appearance at around the same time. With that in mind, I think that Jason was 12 years old both when he became Robin and when Bruce adopted him. Using the age gap we already established, that would put Bruce at age 34. 

Circling back to my original question, Dick became Bruce’s ward when Dick was 12 and Bruce was 27. Jason became Bruce’s ward, then adoptive son when Jason was 12 and Bruce was 34. 

At this point in the timeline, Bruce is 34 with one former ward and one adopted son. 

----------

Correction 

A few days after I wrote my section about Jason’s appearance and adoption, I realized that I was missing a panel citation in my discussion of Jason’s death. The panel is from New Titan #55 (1989), and you’ll see me cite it when I talk about Jason’s death certificate. 

New Titans #55 (1989) is the issue where Dick, who is with the Teen Titans,  finds out about Jason’s death. While I was combing through the issue for the panels I wanted, I reread a scene I had completely forgotten about. Dick goes back to the manor to speak to Bruce, and it doesn’t go well.

New Titans #55 (1989)

I have three comments here. First, I do think this scene is inconsistent with the simultaneous story in the Batman title. In this version, Dick and Bruce have a very aggressive confrontation, but in Batman #436 (1989), Dick appears to be returning to the manor for the first time since Jason died, and there isn’t any reference to a prior fight. 

Putting that aside, Bruce does explicitly say that he adopted Jason, and that’s more, stronger verification of a post-crisis adoption. Lastly, it’s pretty clear that Bruce and Dick are talking about the wedding scene. 

I already explained that the wedding scene is pre-crisis, and in the original text, that conversation is about Bruce wanting to, but not being able to, adopt Jason. New Titans #55 (1989) carries the wedding scene into post-crisis canon, changing the language in the process. In this version, Bruce has adopted Jason. 

I was still wrong about the wedding scene because in the past, I used it as evidence of a pre-crisis adoption. It isn’t pre-crisis evidence, but it is, in a roundabout way, evidence of the post-crisis adoption. I wanted to clear that up before I move on to Jason’s death. 

----------

Jason dies

Jason’s death is by far the shakiest point on my timeline, but I’ve chosen to put him at 15 the day he died in Batman #427 (1988). 

I think it’s safe to say that Jason was either 14 or 15 when he died, and my basic conclusion is that running numbers doesn’t give me a definite answer. There’s a cop-out option based on an extraordinarily poor source, and I’m taking the cop-out. 

The general consensus seems to be that Jason was 15 at his death, citation to Jason’s death certificate. Jason’s death certificate appears in two different places, and I think most folks conflate the two. 

To my knowledge, the only copy of Jason’s death certificate in full appears in The Batman Files (2011), where it does list Jason’s age as 15. 

The Batman Files (2011)

Now there is a partial copy in Batman Annual #25 (2006), which I would argue is a very reliable reference when it comes to Jason. That issue is part of the Under the Red Hood story, the one where Jason returns to Gotham for the first time after his resurrection. In fact, the specific annual issue has a timeline for Jason’s events counting forward from his death. 

Here’s the problem: the issue doesn’t say his age at death. The partial copy of his death certificate looks like this. 

Batman Annual #25 (2006) 

I think that when most folks remember a death certificate, they think of this one, the one from a very important issue, instead of The Batman Files (2011) which, as noted, is a very bad source. 

I have three issues with The Batman Files (2011): the format, the publishing date, and the other information on the certificate. First, The Batman Files (2011) isn’t a comic book at all. It’s a commemorative book published in collaboration with DC in 2011. Now I don’t think that fact completely removes the book as a source, but it certainly damages its value as one. 

My problem with that date, 2011, is that it’s the year the New 52 premiered. I called it a commemorative book because it’s meant to be a look back at a fully complete timeline, a kind of “this is us saying goodbye” product. The date and format alone make me hesitant to cite the certificate, but on top of that, the certificate is inconsistent with prior canon. 

I am intimately familiar with retcons and conflicting numbers in the DC timeline. I made a point at the beginning of this paper to tell you that although this is my best attempt to make a cohesive timeline, assuming that I can carve out a cohesive timeline is fundamentally flawed. 

I’m not saying that a single contradictory number is enough to make me disregard a source. I am saying that in this particular conversation about an already suspect source, I’m going to take inconsistency into account. 

In New Titans #55 (1989), the issue from Corrections, Dick finds out about Jason’s death because a team member notices Jason’s status is set at “unknown.” Dick uses Bruce’s passcode to access restricted information, and he and the Titans see that Jason’s real status is “deceased.” 

The death certificate in The Batman Files (2011) marks Jason’s height at 4’6 and his age at 15. In contrast, Dick’s scene puts Jason at 5’4, and its only reference to Jason’s age is a very relatable question from Donna. “How old was he, anyway?”

New Titans #55 (1989)

There’s a substantial difference between the two heights, and I think it’s also worth noting that for a 15 year old American male, 4’6 is in the 0.1 height percentile. In the past, I and many others have tried to justify that height along the lines of Jason being malnourished or similarly afflicted. Personally, I liked the parallel between this height for Jason and Damian’s height at his own death in 2013, and I know I’ve talked about that in the past.

I’m not criticizing anyone for using the 4’6 number, but I do think the unlikelihood of a 15 year old that size is worth bringing up. 

In summary, The Batman Files (2011) is so bad of a source that I’m only willing to use it as a last resort. Unfortunately, it’s time for a last resort. 

I mentioned a timeline in Batman Annual #25 (2006) that counts forward from Jason’s death. I’m not going to use image cites here because they’re just isolated text boxes labeled either “six months later” or “one year later.”

Using that timeline, we know that Jason’s resurrection took place six months after his death. He spent one year in a coma, then one year on the street, then one year with the League of Assassins. Finally, he spent a nebulous time training before he returned to Gotham. 

We know that Jason was gone for a minimum of three and a half years, then whatever time “training” includes. Personally, I’m applying my best attempt at comic logic to say he was missing for somewhere between three and four years. 

To understand the next bit, I need to point out that from Jason’s death on, I’m going to be using Tim’s age to track time in the same way I’ve been using Dick’s so far. 

As a reminder, I know what age Bruce was when Dick became Robin (28), and I know Dick’s age at the same point (13), so I know there’s a 15 year age difference. As I track Dick’s age through the timeline, I add 15 to get Bruce’s. 

In the same way, I know what age Dick was when Jason became Robin (19), and I know Jason’s age at the same point (12), so I know there’s a 7 year age difference. I can use that number ongoing. 

I know that Tim was 13 when he made his first appearance as Robin, and I’ll get into that in the next section. After that, I’m placing Dick, Tim, and Cass’s adoptions based on Tim’s age. 

To do that, I need to know how much older Dick is than Tim, and I can only get that by knowing Jason’s age at his death, sort of. 

How long was Jason Robin? If I had that information, I could establish Jason’s age by counting up from 12, the age when he became Robin, then establish Tim’s age from there.  

I can’t really answer that question. There is a panel from Batman #436 where Dick, apparently in his first time at the manor since Jason’s death says the following. 

Batman #436 (1989)

My instinctual interpretation is it’s been two years since he stopped being Robin at 19, making Dick 21 and Jason 14. In my opinion, that’s straightforward plain language, but it seems like I’m in the minority on that one, and most folks read it as Dick saying it’s been two years since he was last at the manor. We know from Batman #416 (1988) that Dick’s last visit to the manor was 18 months after Dick left home. 

Batman #136 (1988)

I think the most honest thing to say is that Jason was Robin for an indeterminate amount of time that was somewhere between two and three years. I don’t know which number is closer. I also, if you remember, think that Jason was gone from Gotham for somewhere between three and four years, but I don’t know where in that range the real number is. 

Here’s why absolutely nothing I’ve said in the past seven pages matters: I need to build my timeline based on the age gap between Jason and Tim. 

I don’t know how old Tim was when Jason died. 

I know how old Tim was at his first appearance as Robin, and that’s a different number. 

We’ll finish this conversation in a moment.

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Tim becomes Robin

We begin, thankfully, with a straightforward fact. Tim’s first storyline spans Batman #440-442 (1989). The arc is called A Lonely Place of Dying, and we already talked about it. Tim, having watched Batman and Robin from the shadows for years, comes forwards in the aftermath of Jason’s death in an attempt to convince Dick to become Robin for a second time.

Batman #441 (1989)

We know that Tim was 13 years old at the time, but I do need to clarify exactly what time that was— an indeterminate amount of time after Jason’s death. 

The word that pops up a couple of time in Tim’s first arc is “months,” from Tim and Two-Face. How many months? Who’s to say. 

Batman #442 (1989)

So, from the top. We know that Bruce was eight when his parents died, 26 when he became Batman, 27 when he met Dick, 28 when Dick became Robin, and 34 when he met Jason.

Dick was 12 when he met Bruce, 13 when he became Robin, 19 when he left home and Jason became Robin. 

Jason was 12 when he became Robin.

Bruce is 15 years older than Dick. Bruce is 22 years older than Jason. 

Dick is 7 years older than Jason.

How long was Jason Robin? Unknown, but somewhere between two and three years. At that point, he died. “Months” after that, Tim was 13. 

Here, we need to acknowledge that Jason could have been either 14 or 15 at his death, and at the same time, Tim was either 12 or 13. We need to know how far they are apart to calculate Tim’s age in relation to Jason, Dick, and Bruce— ongoing, we will always know exactly how old Tim is, so (if we know how far apart Jason and Tim are) we will always know Bruce, Dick, and Jason’s age from there. 

How much older than Tim is Jason? Somewhere between one and three years, I guess, but I can’t really go beyond a well-researched guess. In my opinion, there isn’t a straightforward answer for this one.

Having presented my facts, here is my conclusion. Jason was 15 when he died. At the same time, Tim was 13. They are two years apart. 

Why? To begin, I’m more comfortable using the number we already have for Tim, 13, than I am dropping him to 12 on the mere possibility that he could have been 12. 

Second, even though The Batman Files (2011) is a terrible source, it does at least sort of indicate that the official DC position is a Jason who was 15 years old at his death. 

Third, visually speaking, Jason looks closer to 15 than 14 at his death. Is that good evidence? No, absolutely not. Comic book art is definitionally variable, but I am going to pull a few panels for you to look over. 

Batman #427 (1988)

Finally, I feel that Jason and Tim are, in later works, treated as if they are different ages. I’m not going to go into much detail on that one because it is purely a personal reaction, but I would refer to Teen Titans #29 (2005) as an example. That issue has Jason and Tim’s first meeting, after Jason comes to the tower specifically to attack Tim. 

Teen Titans #27 (2005)

Another well-known issue to check out is Teen Titans #47 (2007).

My basic position is that there are so many ways, all uncertain, to slice Jason and Tim’s ages that I can take my pick. I chose the ones that most closely mirror later canon, fall most squarely into the possible range, and feel the most intuitively right. 

They also have the benefit of simplicity, which was very much a factor. 

Don’t agree with me? Fair enough. I think I’ve given you enough information to make an educated judgment, and I’ve also gone ahead and made a timeline in the alternative. In this one, Jason was 14 at death, and he and Tim are only one year apart. 

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In the Alternative

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Cass appears

Having progressed beyond Jason and Tim’s age gap, we reenter simple canon. I hope you’re as pleased as I am. 

Cass was 17 years old at her first appearance, which we can establish easily based on two different issues. Cass first appears in Batman #567 (1999), during an arc called No Man’s Land. At the time, she is working for Barbara Gordon in the aftermath of an earthquake that destroyed most of Gotham. We learn Cass’s backstory through that issue. 

Cass’s biological father is David Cain, a villain, who raised Cass in isolation, never exposing her to a verbal language or allowing any kind of socialization. By comic book logic, her upbringing gave her a near-superhuman ability to understand and anticipate physical actions, as those actions are her only form of communication. 

Cain trained her as a child assassin, then took her to her first kill. Cass murdered a man and experienced, through his body language, the pain he felt at his death. Immediately afterward, she ran away from her father.

Batgirl #62 (2005)

We know that Cass was eight years old when she killed and ran. We also know that her first appearance in Gotham was nine years after she ran, thanks to Barbara Gordon’s file. 

Batgirl #1 (2000)

Simple enough. She was 17. How old was everybody else? We find out from Tim’s timeline. 

This next bit will come up a few times. We know that Tim was 15 from at least 1993 to 2003, established by three different issues. We know from Detective Comics #668 (1993) that Tim was 15 during Knightquest, the arc where Jean-Paul Valley was briefly Batman. Barbara tells us in 2002 that Tim is still 15, and Tim turns 16 on-panel in 2003. 

In Knightquest, Tim gets his driver’s license early, at age 15, because Jack Drake is in a wheelchair. I suppose the wording here is ambiguous on a technicality, but I don’t think there’s any significant argument against Tim being 15; if he was only 14, the language would be different.  

Detective Comics #668 (1993)

Next, in Batgirl #24 (2002), Barbara says she’s “sending a 15 year old” as she reaches for Tim’s com line.

Batgirl #24 (2002)

We could stop here for Cassandra’s appearance, since that happened in 1999, between the 1993 issue and the 2002 reference. For completion’s sake, however, let’s note that Robin #116 (2003) is about Tim’s 16th birthday. He forgets about it, so his step-mother throws a surprise party. 

Robin #116 (2003)

Okay, so Tim was 15 when Cass appeared at age 17. That puts Bruce at 39, Dick at 24, and Jason at 17 if you’re counting by years elapsed since his birth. 

Bruce met his daughter when he was 39 and she was 17, in reference to my original question. Cass is 22 years younger than Bruce, seven years younger than Dick, the same age as Jason, and two years older than Tim. 

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Dick is adopted

This one, having already established Tim’s timeline, is very simple. Dick was adopted in Gotham Knights #17 (2001).

Gotham Knights #17 (2001)

Again, Tim was 15 from 1993 to 2003, and 2001 falls within that range. Tim was 15, which makes Dick 24 and Bruce 39. 

At this point in the timeline, Bruce, a 39 year old, has two adopted children, one of whom is deceased as far as Bruce is concerned. His adopted children are (17) and 24. He has already met two of his future children, Cass and Tim. 

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This is PART ONE. I’ll reblog Part Two onto this post when I wake up, which should be around the same time this posts. 

[firstofficerwiggles]

Interview with the Mandalorian

Pairing: Mandalorian x Female Reader

Rating: T (future parts will be Mature/Explicit)

Warnings: Mild swearing, mentions of prior violence against the reader (not described in detail)

Summary: The Mandalorian has placed a want ad for childcare and you decide to answer it. Despite having a questionable past, he decides to hire you.

Word Count: ~5400

Author’s Note: This is the first chapter in a multi-part story of Mando and childcare reader. I love romance so expect lots of fluff, but there will also be some humor, action, and angst, and eventually smut. I’m going for more of a slow burn here -- or at least trying to if I don’t get too impatient.

Link to Chpt. 2

Gif by @bestintheparsec (Thank you! You're awesome 😁)

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Wanted: Childcare Professional

Caregiver needed for toddler for all basic baby needs. Single father with demanding job, odd hours. Position requires living on starship. Looking for someone not squeamish and good in a crisis. Preferred skills: cooking, pre-school teaching, and first aid. Bonus skills: combat training or ability to repair pre-Imperial tech. Interviews at Cantina Manolita, ask for the Mandalorian.

You re-read the want ad as you headed out to the cantina. It started out normal enough, not squeamish was a little odd, yet understandable, but then, good in a crisis and combat training as a bonus skill? Exactly what type of toddler does this Mandalorian have? Still, it’s not like you can afford to be picky, what with your past. You’d been bouncing around from odd job to odd job, each one more terrible than the last. Your most recent job had been cleaning rooms at a very seedy no-tell hotel and after that, you’d rather change 1000 poopy diapers than go back there. Despite your education and years of experience, no one wants to hire someone with the stain of the Empire on their resume. Your only hope is that the Mandalorian who placed this ad will be willing to hear you out and with a bit of luck you won’t have too much competition for the job. Many people are wary of Mandalorians, so perhaps that will keep the candidate pool small. You’re secretly intrigued by the idea of working for one, as all you really know is that they are respected warriors who either stick together in tight groups with other Mandalorians or they work alone. You wonder why this Mandalorian is seeking outside help, must be a special circumstance.

Din watches as a woman in a short red cocktail dress, platform heels, and quite a lot of makeup saunters through the cantina. It’s a lot of look for mid-morning and he’s surprised when she heads straight to his table, leans down to give him a generous view of her cleavage, and coos at him, “You must be the Mando who placed the ad.”

“The ad for childcare? Yes.” Din emphasizes the word to be certain she’s answering the correct posting.

“Yep! That’s why I’m here, baby.” She winks at him and plops herself down in his booth, ignoring the chair placed directly across from him. Baby? He’s a bit taken aback, but he figures he should at least ask her some questions about the job.

“Do you have any experience caring for children?” He begins.

“Well, not exactly for children, but I am very, very caring. I’m sure I can take really good care of you… both.” She flutters her eyelashes at Din.

“So, if you don’t have any experience, why are interested in this job?” He feels like this is a fair question, especially since he was hoping to find someone more knowledgeable than he is when it comes to younglings.

“I just have so much love and I want to share it. Especially for someone who needs me, hot stuff.” The woman has been sliding closer to Din as she speaks. He tries to move away from her to keep some space between them, but with the child napping on the end of the booth next to him, he really has nowhere to go.

“Uh, ok, do you have any experience with teaching?” This interview is not off to a good start, but what if she’s the only one who shows up?

“Oh, I’m a real good teacher,” the woman replies, and then drops her hand onto his thigh just above the beskar plate and gives it a squeeze, “I’m sure I could teach you a few things,” she says suggestively.

“We’re done here. I need childcare, not, whatever it is you’re offering.” Din lifts her hand off his leg abruptly, scoops up the child, and quickly moves himself across the cantina to another table. Who shows up to a childcare interview to hit on the father? He’s annoyed at her for wasting his time. He sees the woman pouting and then watches as she gets up with a little stumble, calls out, “Your loss” in his direction and heads to the bar. Under the helmet he rolls his eyes; the next person has to be better than her.

Din has become increasing fatigued and desperate for some help as he takes care of his foundling and searches for information on the Jedi. That alone would be plenty to keep him occupied, but he’s still hunting down bounties too in order to keep them in credits for all the fuel they’re burning up as they traverse the galaxy. Although he’s been able to keep the kid with him all the time so far, it’s not easy to hunt with a baby along for the ride, and he wishes he had someone he could trust to stay with the little one on the ship, keeping him safe and hidden away. After all, they’re still on the run from the ex-Imps and other hunters. Oh, and not to mention, Din is still dodging New Republic officers for that mess on the prison ship. No wonder he’s exhausted.

Sighing lightly, he reminds himself that he’s going to find the help he needs today when he sees a young woman, much more conservatively dressed, giving him furtive glances across the cantina. Din gives her a little nod, and she makes her way over to the table, but she barely takes her eyes off the ground as she does so.

“Are you interested in the childcare job?” Din asks, hopefully.

“Y-yes, I’m h-here to interview.” She seems extremely nervous and can’t seem to bring herself to look at his visor for more than a moment. “I l-like children, um, I have done, um, a lot of b-babysitting.”

“That’s good,” Din says softly, trying to put her at ease, “Can you tell me more about what you did as a babysitter?”

Looking down at the table, she replies shakily, “W-watching them, um oh, I don’t know, uh playing games, making snacks, um just, um, helping, I guess?”

Maker, she’s so uncomfortable, Din wonders what he can say to help her calm down or if it’s worth it to continue the interview. How is she going to handle their situation, if she’s this nervous at the interview? Before he can think of anything to say, the baby pops his head up suddenly to investigate what’s going on, startling the poor woman so badly she jumps up from her chair.

“Aah!” She lets out a little cry and then stammers, “I-I- I think this was a bad idea. I c- can’t do this.” and runs off.

Din sighs; maybe the third time will be the charm, isn’t that what they say?

“Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll find someone.” He says to the child’s inquisitive expression.

Din has the feeling of being watched and turns to see a well-dressed man hovering near the cantina’s entrance. He seems to be in his mid-fifties, with sort-of a schoolteacher aura about him, but he doesn’t look particularly pleased to see Din. The man stares at him for a moment over a pair of owlish spectacles as if assessing the situation and then finally approaches Din’s table.

“I am here to interview for the childcare position, but I want to be very clear that I am an experienced and sought-after professional.” The man declares to Din in a stern voice.

“I’m looking for a childcare professional, please sit down.” At least this one is experienced and looks like he understands the position.

“I must tell you I am a strict believer in order and discipline when it comes to children, and I do not abide any shenanigans.” The way this man speaks makes Din feel like he’s back in school and he’s been caught doing something naughty.

Din clears his throat, “Perhaps you can tell me about your experience.” The man rattles off a list of schools and families where he has worked; stressing certain names as if Din should be impressed, which perhaps he would if he recognized any of them. Din doesn’t care for the fact that this man keeps emphasizing words like prominent or respected as he speaks of his past, it sounds haughty and snobbish. This guy may have a lot of experience, but his frosty demeanor is off-putting. Still, Din can’t deny that he’s the best candidate so far.

“How do you feel about living on a starship?” Din asks him.

“If the ship is in good working order and the facilities are well maintained, I am sure it will be adequate.” He says the last word as if adequate means appalling, indicating that Din’s home is not an ideal living situation. Din feels his optimism dwindle yet again, as this fussy man will likely turn his nose up at the Razor Crest before he even has a look inside.

“What is that?” The man asks brusquely. Din follows his line of sight and realizes the child has climbed up on his chair again wanting to be a part of the conversation. The man’s tone of voice is irritating, but Din restrains himself as he says, “That is the child.”

“That thing is your child?” He has a look of mild disgust on his face. Suddenly this man’s illustrious qualifications don’t matter to Din at all.

“Thank you for coming, but I don’t believe you’re suited for this position.” Din tells the man, trying to match his haughty tone from before. The man lets out a little ‘hmpf’ but then gets up and leaves the table.

“I’m sorry, kid, I know he was bad.” Din sighs again, “We’ll keep trying.” He despairs that he’s in for a full day of bad meetings, when he glances across the cantina to see a beautiful woman looking in his direction. He gives her a nod in greeting, but he’s afraid to hope that she might actually be here for him. However, she smiles warmly at him and starts towards their table. He feels his heart skip a beat; damn, she’s pretty. He watches her as she moves confidently through the crowd noting that she appears courteous to the others around her and Din thinks maybe his luck is turning.

“Good morning! Are you the Mandalorian who placed the want ad for childcare?” You ask with what you hope is a winning smile on your face.

“Ah, yes, I am. Are you here to interview?” Din feels a surge of optimism; you seem composed and he already likes you much better than the other people he’s spoken to today.

“Yes, I hope you haven’t filled the position yet?” you ask him.

“No, not yet. Please sit down.” He gestures to the open chair across from him. “Can you tell me a little about yourself and why you’re interested in the job?”

You start to introduce yourself expressing a keen interest in children and briefly mention your training and experience as a teacher, when you notice two little green hands gripping the edge of the table next to the Mandalorian. Slowly a small green head covered in soft white peach fuzz lifts up to reveal two shining dark eyes and a pair of giant pointy ears.

“Oh my goodness,” you breathe out in delight, “aren’t you the most adorable child in all the galaxy?” You cannot control yourself from fussing over this little one. You really are a pushover for cute kids, but this one is beyond precious. The child smiles at your words and lets out a happy cooing sound. Totally entranced, you make goofy smiley faces back at him causing him to giggle while you completely forget that you are supposed to be doing an interview right now.

Din watches your face as it transforms itself from an expression of polite professional interest to a look of absolute adoration. Your eyes are sparkling as you look at the child, your smile is positively beaming, and you’ve clasped your hands together at your chest in utter delight. It’s like watching someone fall in love all in one instance. He feels that he could ask you to do anything for the child and you would. He reaches over and picks up the little one drawing your attention back to himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just, he’s so cute, um, what was I saying?” You quickly turn your head back to look at the Mandalorian, trying to remind yourself that you’re supposed to be impressing him with your childcare skills not going ga-ga over his son.

“It’s ok, he is cute.” Din responds amiably, this interview is already off to a better start than the others. You seem like a genuine person to him, someone who makes friends easily, who would be pleasant to have around. “You were telling me about your teaching experience.”

“Yes, yes, so my most applicable experience is my time as a pre-school assistant teacher. I worked there when I was earning my degree in Linguistics and Language Teaching at the main university on Riosa. I always loved that job so much and have really wanted to work with children again.” Oops, first mistake, mentioning Riosa is risky, he has to know of the Empire’s former presence there.

“So did you work with many toddlers at the pre-school?”

“Oh yes, so many toddlers. I’m very good at keeping them entertained with games and stories. I know how to set limits and help them learn about rules. Oh, and I also know how to make many snacks and meals that little children love.”

“He does seem to always want to eat, so that would be helpful.” The Mandalorian chuckles a little at that and gives the child a pat on his head.

“I also understand that children can be messy and I’m really good at cleaning and doing laundry too.” You try to think of what else you can say to show that you’re a good option for him. But before you can, he changes the topic.

“So Linguistics? That’s an impressive choice of studies.” He nods his head as if he approves.

“Thank you, I specialized in language structure and syntax. I speak Rodian, Naboo, Sy Bisti, and some Ubese too.” You hope you don’t sound like you’re bragging but none of your recent employers have been interested in your language skills in the slightest. It’s nice to hear that he thinks it’s notable and you do want to impress him if you can.

“Also impressive. All languages of commerce or politics. That’s very practical.” Again, he sounds like he values these skills. “But you don’t have a career in linguistics now? I would think someone with that background wouldn’t be interested in taking care of a toddler.”

“I truly do love children, and well, things don’t always go as you plan, do they?” You were really hoping to answer more questions about childcare or first aid or really anything else, but it looks like you’re going to have to get to the touchy part of the interview. The Mandalorian doesn’t say anything, and you can tell he’s waiting for you to explain.

“When I finished my degree, I was invited to join a prestigious research group. I thought it was an incredible opportunity, a chance to work with professors and other academics. I had to take several difficult qualifying exams before they even offered me the position, and when I did so well on them, everyone I knew was very impressed. I really thought I was going to do something fantastic. I found out too late that the research group was just a front and really it was part of Imperial Intelligence. I had been living in my happy academic bubble, I knew the Empire was on Riosa but they never paid any attention to the university, and I was too naïve to realize I had been recruited to be a code-breaker.”

You pause there, internally cringing again at your stupidity, and wondering if you should continue or if he is going to end the interview right now. While he’s sitting more rigidly than before, he gives no indication that he wants you to stop, so you decide to plow ahead with your story.

“For a while, I tried to be terrible at the job, pretending that I couldn’t break the codes, that they were too complex for me. I hoped they would think they made a mistake and let me leave, but they saw through the ruse. They punished me, and I knew I had to start doing better or they would likely kill me. So I did what I was told, but only about a third of the time. The rest of the time, I would purposely leave out crucial information from the messages I broke. Or sometimes I would just change it completely. I tried to be strategic and do it without a pattern so they wouldn’t catch on to what I was doing. Eventually though one of the other code-breakers figured out my secret and he turned me in.”

You pause again at the memory of that betrayal. You had thought that Kerrick cared for you. You quickly look up to avoid any tears springing to your eyes and take a calming breath.

“What happened next?” The Mandalorian asks you.

“I was punished again, more severely than the first time. I suppose I was fortunate though, because they deemed I was too valuable an asset to terminate. They didn’t send me back to code-breaking. Instead, they forced me to teach Sy Bisti to a class of officers. It’s one of the languages their droids couldn’t translate. I didn’t try to make trouble again. I didn’t think they would give me a third chance.”

Din watches you carefully as you tell him of your experience with the Imperials. The expression on your face and the way your shoulders have slumped tell him that you’re ashamed of what happened to you. That you feel responsible and likely blame yourself for having been tricked by them. Din doesn’t see it that way though. From his perspective, you were simply a young woman who was manipulated and then abused by a corrupt system.

“Can you start today?” You snap your head up in surprise.

“What? I- I mean yes, I can, but-” you stumble over your words, “You- you want to hire me?”

“Yes. The child likes you and you’re the best person for the job.” He’s very straightforward about it.

“You’re sure? Even with the Empire stuff?” Your words sound lame to your own ears, but you need to be certain he won’t hold it against you.

He gives you a brisk nod. “You were brave to try to sabotage their intelligence, but also not too much of a fool to get yourself killed.” He’s blunt but his words are a comfort to you in a way.

That seems to be all he is going to say on the matter, as next he tells you about the living conditions on his ship. He explains carefully about his creed and the fact that you can never see him without his helmet. That isn’t a surprise though as it’s one of the only other facts you already knew about the Mandalorians. Besides, after spending time with so many helmeted Imps, it honestly doesn’t seem that odd to you. At least you’ll know this helmet doesn’t plan to kill you. You arrange to meet him in a couple hours at his ship after you’ve had a chance to pack your things. You’re so elated to find someone who wants to hire you for a decent job and who doesn’t loathe you for your past that you completely forget to ask him about the need for combat training.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you’re packing up your meagre belongings it occurs to you that you didn’t ask him anything about himself or really much about the child at all. You realize you don’t even know their names. Maybe you should slow down and find out more about this Mandalorian and his son, but honestly you’re willing to take the risk. You’re sick of this awful city and the terrible jobs you’ve been forced to take here. At least you know that the Mandalorians were enemies of the Empire, so that’s a bonus in your eyes. Besides from the job description in the ad, it seems like this Mandalorian has to be at work a lot so you’ll probably be alone with the child most of the time. You’ve never seen a species like the child before, but you’re willing to learn all about him so you can be successful at this job. You gather up your bags, leave a few credits for the landlord, and head to the hanger, enthusiastic about a new life.

Din is watching as crates of supplies are loaded onto the Razor Crest, and he thinks about his new hire. From the moment he saw your reaction to the kid, he knew he was going to offer you the job. His only concern is his own attraction to you, and, he has a little nagging guilt that he didn’t explain anything to you about the dangerous aspects of the job. If you knew the Imps were after the child, would you still be willing to take the job? Din knows he’ll have to tell you about that, but maybe he’ll wait until the Crest is in hyperspace before he does. Yeah, it’s underhanded, but he doesn’t have the time or the patience, quite frankly, to try to find other childcare. Plus, there’s a good chance your knowledge of the Empire will be helpful to him. Din hopes you won’t hate him too much for withholding information. He sees you enter the hanger, and once again you smile when you see him. Din’s pleased that you don’t seem intimidated or fearful. So many people look at him with trepidation or dislike, and although he’s learned to ignore it, when someone actually smiles at him, it’s such a pleasant change. Besides, you have a pretty smile.

“Hello again!” You call out to the Mandalorian, as you make your way towards him. Seeing him standing next to his ship, you’re suddenly struck by what an imposing figure he is in all that armor. He’s quite tall and obviously very strong. A whisper of an emotion runs through you, almost like desire, but it’s been so long since you’ve felt anything like that you can’t really place it. You forget all about it though when the little green toddler spies you and immediately runs right for you with a happy face. You drop your bags and crouch down, holding your arms out to him and scoop him up when he reaches you.

“Hello, buddy! Are you excited to have a new nanny? I’m excited to be here.” You tell him cheerfully as you give him a hug. You stand up again to address the Mandalorian, who’s come over to help with your bags. “I’m sorry, I was so happy to get the job earlier, I completely forgot to ask the child’s name.”

“That’s ok.” He tells you. “I don’t, um, I don’t actually know his name.”

“Beg your pardon?” He doesn’t know his son’s name. You try to keep your expression neutral, but you can’t help but give him an odd look.

“He’s a foundling. I rescued him.” The Mandalorian doesn’t elaborate. You remind yourself that you don’t know much about Mandalorian culture, so maybe that is typical for them. He hasn’t told you his name either.

“Well, what do you call him?” You look down at the little one in your arms.

He shrugs as if it isn’t important, “Kid, pal, womp rat,” he supplies, and in anticipation of your next question he says, “You can call me Mando.”

“Alright.” So, no names then, that’s different, but whatever works for him.

“C’mon, I’ll show you around.” Mando offers picking up your bags.

“Oh, you don’t have to carry those, I can get them.” He just gestures with his helmet for you to go ahead, so you head up the ramp into your new home.

The child babbles to you as if explaining things as you look around the hull of the spacecraft. It’s very utilitarian, but you figured it would be, Mandalorians don’t strike you as the types to think of creature comforts as a priority. The little one babbles at you again and extends an arm towards a section of the hull where you can see what looks like a mattress covered with a blanket and pillows that look new and unused. The Mandalorian comes up behind you and says, “Like I said before there’s only one bunk in the ship, but I thought this would work for you?” He sets your bags down next to the bed.

“This will be fine.” You’ve slept in much worse places, your cell in the Imperial Intelligence compound springs to mind. In any case, it’s nice to know that he’s thought to provide this for you. Other employers you’ve had would probably just make you sleep on the floor.

Din takes you on a brief tour of the ship, mostly making sure you know where the essentials are. He keeps waiting for you to make a comment about the ship’s age or make a joke about it being a clunker like everyone else does. But you surprise him, as you simply take it all in with a pleasant expression on your face. Although when he gets to the weapons locker, he sees your eyes widen in surprise. He realizes that he hasn’t told you what he does for a living, “I’m a bounty hunter, and weapons are part of my religion.”

“Ah, I see. Well, it makes sense you’d have a cache like this then.” You give him a nod, as if to say this seems completely normal, even though you’ve never seen so many weapons outside of a military facility. However, if it’s part of his religion the last you thing you want to do is insult him about it.

“Do you know how to shoot?” Mando inquires.

“Yes, I do. I had to take a course on marksmanship at the university.” You wince again at your innocence back then. A college that requires a course on shooting? No wonder it had been a recruitment ground for the Empire.

“Did you pass?” Mando wants to know.

“With high marks,” you reply, ever the top-notch student.

“Good. Do you have a blaster?”

“Uh no.”

Mando turns back to the locker and considers it before choosing one of the smaller guns in there. He hands it to you saying, “Here, this one should be good for you. But let me know if you think something else would be better suited for you.”

“You think I’m going to need a blaster to care for the child?” You try to keep from sounding incredulous as you stare down at the gun that he’s placed in your hand and then back at the sweet toddler who’s currently propped up against your hip.

“No, of course not, but you’ll need to be prepared when we’re off the ship.” He seems very matter-of-fact about it.

“Prepared for what?” Where does this man plan on taking you?

“Just, prepared.” Is all he says in response.

The baby makes grabby hands towards the blaster and you carefully hold it away from him. “Can I keep it in the locker for now?” you ask feeling a little uneasy. You might know how to shoot, but you’ve only ever aimed at targets in a shooting range and the idea of having to use a blaster for protection is frankly terrifying. What have I gotten myself into? Will I never learn?

“Yes, just remember to take it with you whenever you leave the ship.” Din stows the blaster away again and then says, “We should get going now,” and motions for you to head up the ladder to the cockpit. He probably should have waited to give you the blaster until later. He can see the questions and the anxiety in your eyes and he knows he’s going to have to come clean about the danger he’s putting you in. But sticking to his plan, Din says nothing and focuses on taking off and setting coordinates to Dantooine, the last known position of his next quarry.

You try to stay focused on the child in your arms, but you can’t keep yourself from staring back at Mando. The need for a blaster has brought your original question back to the forefront of your mind, and although it’s pretty much too late to ask now, you figure you should.

“So in your ad, you said, combat training was a plus. Why exactly did you put that in there?”  

You watch as he puts the ship into hyperspace, before he turns to you. You’re just starting at the black visor in his helmet, waiting for him to speak, when he finally says, “There are Imps after the kid.”

“Excuse me, what?” You hope you heard him wrong.

“I rescued the child from some ex-Imperials. They have a bounty out on him.” Din decides to leave out the part where he originally collected on that bounty, delivering the child right to them. He’s doesn’t want you to despise him so he figures he’ll keep that part of the story to himself.

“What do they want with him?” You’re still holding the little one tight, and you look down into his big, dark eyes and wonder what those terrible people could possible want from this adorable child.

“He has some kind of powers, like uh, like a sorcerer, or something.” He tells you sheepishly.

“Like a sorcerer?” You repeat, o-kay.

“I know it sounds strange. But, have you ever heard of the Jedi?”

“Oh, yes, I know a little about the Jedi. Wait, can the child use the force?”

“You know about the Jedi?” He seems excited to hear that. “What do you know? Do you know any of them?”

“I know the Jedi were once an order of knights and they had the ability to wield the force. Have you ever heard New Republic people say ‘May the force be with you’?” That phrase has been everywhere, so you feel like he must have heard it.

“Yeah, but I really have no idea what they mean by it.” Din feels a little embarrassed to finally admit that to someone. He hopes you don’t think him dumb for not knowing.

“From what I understand the force is like this invisible energy that lets the Jedi manipulate things with their minds. The phrase is meant to give you hope, sort of ‘May the positive energy be with you and bring you good things’. It’s a bit ironic though because for such an optimistic phrase it’s actually how Imperial Intelligence successfully broke several Rebel codes since they put it at the end of so many messages.” As much as your viewpoints aligned with the Rebellion, you had wished someone in their command had been intelligent enough to realize that you shouldn’t put a known saying into your coded messages. You look over to Mando and he gives you a nod in response, so you continue.

“I also know there were some Imperial commanders, very high up, who were pretty obsessed with the Jedi. They were always looking for any information about them. They thought there was a Jedi working with the Rebellion and any messages we decoded about him were supposed to be flagged as extreme priority. But, I never saw anything about him. So, that’s all I know.”

“That’s the most anyone has been able to tell me so far, so it’s very helpful.” Mando replies. He’s silent again for a bit and he seems to be looking down at the child. “It is my task to bring the child to the Jedi, he’s one of their kind. I’ve seen him do things I can’t explain. He- He’s special.”

Looking down at the little toddler in your arms, you remember how the Imperials treated you, and the years of damage, fear, and violence that they rained throughout the galaxy. You can’t possibly let them get their hands on this innocent one. “I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe,” you tell the child. And then you look at Mando, “I promise.”

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Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be tagged for Chapter 2, please let me know. Link to Chpt. 2

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[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

@la-criatura here's a followup that I think is interesting. It gives a handful of speculative reasons why people are miserable, not all of which I find compelling, but I think the two suggestions offered that best align with my anecdotal experience--and that I'm going to integrate into my personal belief system until I get a good reason otherwise--are that Americans gauge the health of the economy mainly by inflation and housing. The full article is below:

Earlier this month, a Financial Times poll of about 1,000 registered voters found that most Americans believe their financial situation has gotten worse since Joe Biden became president. The economist Claudia Sahm tweeted that the results were “impossible,” adding, “The vast majority of Americans are better off financially. Full stop”—before receiving so much pushback for her statement that she deleted the post. This online drama was part of a larger debate among economists, policy makers, and commentators who have different explanations for why Americans report negative assessments of the economy despite some objective positive measures.

Economists who agree with Sahm are heavily influenced by low unemployment, often considered the standard metric for how the economy is performing. Last month the unemployment rate was down to 3.9 percent. But it’s not just unemployment that’s headed in the right direction. The Consumer Price Index was unchanged. A new paper shows that wage inequality has fallen over the past three years, driven by workers leaving their old jobs for better-paying ones. The U.S. has been adding jobs at a record clip. And wages—adjusted for inflation—may have finally surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

Despite these positive signs, the Financial Times poll was hardly the only survey to find widespread economic gloom. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index indicated in October that people remain “pessimistic” about the future. And an August CNN poll found that 75 percent of respondents rated economic conditions as very or somewhat poor.

Here are seven possible explanations for what’s going on.

1. People need a second to adjust.

COVID-19 caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis, including job loss for lots of people. In May 2020, roughly 60 million people reported that they had been unable to work in the preceding month because their employer had closed or lost business due to the pandemic. Then inflation kicked in, raising food, energy, rent, and housing prices.

Although price jumps are leveling off, it’s important to appreciate that economic conditions changed really fast in both directions, and people may need time to register what’s going on. One researcher found that although public opinion has “historically followed the business cycle” (it declines during recessions and improves during expansions), the difference now is that pay hasn’t been keeping up with inflation. That’s only just beginning to change. If job growth, wage growth, and low inflation all continue apace, people may well start to feel better about the economy.

Many of these polls, moreover, are not simply asking whether the economy is good; they’re asking whether Joe Biden’s economy is good. Even if respondents think conditions are improving, they’re rating the Joe Biden Economy based on the past two years, not just last month, and their perceptions may be baked in.

2. Inflation is just really that bad.

People seem to be more sensitive to inflation than to unemployment. The Financial Times poll found that 60 percent think avoiding inflation is more important than keeping good-paying jobs; just 30 percent favor the latter. Economists tend to think a good economy is one with a low unemployment rate, but for the public, that’s not enough.

One explanation for inflation sensitivity is that it hits everyone. Whether you’re a billionaire or a minimum-wage worker, you can see that prices have changed over the past few years. Conversely, even in periods of high unemployment, just a fraction of people lose their jobs. And although of course high unemployment has ripple effects beyond those laid off or fired, those effects are, by definition, indirect. Further, people may view raises or new jobs as fruits of their own labor, whereas inflation is out of their control, as the economist J. W. Mason argued last year. If someone has a good-paying job in an inflationary environment, they may tell a pollster that they’re doing well—but the economy is doing poorly.

3. Expectations are high.

During the pandemic, the federal government provided Americans unprecedented support. It stopped evictions; it dropped thousands of dollars into personal bank accounts; it paused student-loan repayments; it gave aid to unemployed workers; it provided tax breaks to parents of young children, and billions in aid to state and local governments. In doing so, the government may have raised expectations for what a “good economy” is supposed to feel like.

Given all of those supports, many people actually are doing worse on some measures than they were a few years ago: Real disposable personal income reached a high in March 2021 and has declined since then. In May, the economics writer Joey Politano noted that Americans had spent nearly all of the money they’d set aside during the pandemic. Put another way: In 2020 and 2021, Americans acquired new sources of income, which have since disappeared. If I found $10,000 on the ground one year, and was not so fortunate the next, I would be correct in telling a pollster that I’m worse off, even if I got a $5,000 raise.

Real wages are above where they were in January 2020, but they are below where they were in mid-2020. An added wrinkle is that most of the wage growth is accruing to low-income workers, which could explain why middle- and high-income workers don’t believe that the economy is doing better.

4. The rent is too damn high.

Housing affordability hit a historic low in August as high interest rates have meant that the typical family cannot afford to buy. Although inflation overall is slowing, shelter inflation is still rising.

If renters who want to own are frustrated, so are some of the so-called winners—those who have already bought their homes—because they feel locked in place by their low mortgage rate. Moving now comes with the high penalty of giving up that rate.

When asked about current conditions for buying a home, survey respondents are utterly despondent, and that could be coloring their overall perception of the economy. And of course, the main federal response to inflation has been to raise interest rates, which actually increases housing prices as mortgages and the cost of construction rise.

5. The biggest winners are at the bottom.

A new study showing declining inequality found that Americans whose incomes rank in the bottom 10 percent have seen their inflation-adjusted wages rise to new heights since the pandemic. Neither the 50th nor 90th percentile has seen similar real-wage growth. Perhaps that’s why a long-running index out of the University of Michigan found that those in the top third of the income distribution have seen the largest decline in consumer confidence, down 24 points in 2023 versus the 2000-to-2020 average. Consumer confidence among the bottom third has declined only 15 points.

Although in absolute terms, high-income people are doing better than low-income people, they may be more sensitive to the “costs” of a tight labor market.

Low unemployment—which is obviously good—does come with side effects. In a tight labor market, employers have a hard time finding workers for low pay, and a hard time retaining trained employees; customers experience worse service because of understaffed restaurants and retail establishments. These downsides may be felt more broadly than the benefits: Almost everyone with disposable income goes to restaurants or orders items online and interacts with customer-service representatives; not everyone has a new, better-paying job.

6. The media loves bad news.

When asked last month why “most people still don’t feel positive or feel good news about the economy,” Biden responded in part:

You all are not the happiest people in the world—what you report …You get more legs when you’re reporting something that’s negative. I don’t mean, I don’t mean you’re picking on me or I’m—just the nature of things. You turn on the television, and there’s not a whole lot about “boy saves dog as he swims in the lake.” You know?

Those who blame the media tend to emphasize the apparent gap between how people discuss their own financial situation and how they describe their feelings about the broader economy. According to the progressive economist Dean Baker, this gap “must be attributable to things that [people] are hearing about the economy from places like Fox News and the New York Times.” The media does have a negativity bias, which has some effect on how Americans perceive the state of the world. But when people are asked about the amount of negative or positive news they’ve heard about the economy, survey responses look relatively stable since 2020.

7. Democrats are bad cheerleaders.

A recent paper on partisanship and the economy finds that, going back to the Reagan administration, “individuals who affiliate with the party that controls the White House have systematically more optimistic economic expectations” than those who affiliate with the other party. That is, Democrats think the economy is good under Democratic presidents, Republicans under Republican presidents.

But Democrats may benefit less and suffer more from partisan cheerleading than Republicans, suggest two former Biden-administration economists. “When a Republican is in the White House, Republican survey respondents feel about 15 index points better than predicted about the economy, whereas Democrats feel around 6 index points worse,” they wrote recently. But when a Democrat is in the White House? Republicans feel 15 points worse and Democrats feel only six points better.

Beyond the question of why Americans’ feelings about the economy may have diverged from the actual economy is another, perhaps equally important question: Why are policy makers and commentators so eager to explain it—or explain it away?

I attribute all of this energy to a mad dash to set the narrative following the pandemic recession. Some believe that the government’s robust response to the crisis proves that we could stabilize working- and middle-class family finances in perpetuity. Others believe that ensuing inflation was too high a price to pay for those social supports. Yet others wish that policy makers would focus more on how their ideas and victories are translated through a fragmented media ecosystem.

Narrowly, this debate is about whether voters think the economy is good or bad, and why; the bigger issue is what lesson future politicians will draw about how to respond to recessions. Will they cower at the potential inflationary effects of fiscal stimulus? Will they require that any new social supports remain permanent rather than risk voters’ wrath when they are removed? Policy makers tend to overlearn the lessons from the last war, and every side is fighting to say what, exactly, those lessons are.

I will be curious to read the vituperative denials of the validity of this article's analysis, which is pasted below the cutoff:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” That question, first posed by Ronald Reagan in a 1980 presidential-campaign debate with Jimmy Carter, has become the quintessential political question about the economy. And most Americans today, it seems, would say their answer is no. In a new survey by Bankrate published on Wednesday, only 21 percent of those surveyed said their financial situation had improved since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, against 50 percent who said it had gotten worse. That echoed the results of an ABC News/Washington Post poll from September, in which 44 percent of those surveyed said they were worse off financially since Biden’s election. And in a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, 53 percent of registered voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them personally.

As has been much commented on (including by me), this gloom is striking when contrasted with the actual performance of the U.S. economy, which grew at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the most recent quarter, and which has seen unemployment holding below 4 percent for more than 18 months. But the downbeat mood is perhaps even more striking when contrasted with the picture offered by the Federal Reserve’s recently released Survey of Consumer

The survey provides an in-depth analysis of the financial condition of American households, conducted for the Fed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Published every three years, it’s the proverbial gold standard of household research. The latest survey looked at Americans’ net worth as of mid-to-late 2022 and Americans’ income in 2021, comparing them with equivalent data from three years earlier. It found that despite the severe disruption to the economy caused by the pandemic and the recovery from it, Americans across the spectrum saw their incomes and wealth rise over the survey period.

The rise in median household net worth was the most notable improvement: It jumped by 37 percent from 2019 to 2022, rising to $192,000. (All numbers are adjusted for inflation.) Americans in every income bracket saw substantial gains, with the biggest gains registered by people in the middle and upper-middle brackets, which suggests that a slight narrowing of wealth inequality occurred during this time. In particular, Black and Latino households saw their median net worth rise faster than white households did—though the racial wealth gap is so wide that it narrowed only slightly as a result of this change.

A big driver of this increase was the rising value of people’s homes—and a higher percentage of Americans owned homes in 2022 than did in 2019. But households’ financial position improved in other ways too. The amount of money that the median household had in bank accounts and retirement accounts rose substantially. The percentage of Americans owning stocks directly (that is, not in retirement accounts) jumped by more than a third, from about 15 to 21 percent. The percentage of Americans with retirement accounts went from 50.5 to 54.3 percent, a notable improvement. And a fifth of Americans reported owning a business, the highest proportion since the survey began in its current form (in 1989).

Americans also reduced their debt loads during the pandemic. The median credit-card balance dropped by 14 percent, and the share of people with car loans fell. More significantly still, Americans’ median debt-to-asset, debt-to-income, and debt-payment-to-income ratios all fell, meaning that U.S. households had lower debt burdens, on average, in 2022 than they’d had three years earlier.

The gains in real income (in this case, measured from 2018 to 2021) were small—median household income rose 3 percent, with every income bracket seeing gains. But that was better than one might have expected, given that this period included a pandemic-induced recession and only a single year of recovery.

The picture the survey paints, then, is one of American households not only weathering the pandemic in surprisingly good shape, but ultimately also emerging from it in better financial shape than they were going in. And that, in turn, points to the effect of the U.S. policy response to the crisis: Stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, and the moratorium on student-loan payments boosted household income and balance sheets, helping people pay down debt and increase their savings. In the process, these policies mildly narrowed inequality.

The U.S. government’s aggressive response to the pandemic, including Biden’s stimulus spending, also helped the job market recover all its pandemic-related losses—and add millions of jobs on top. The resulting tight labor market has been a huge boon to lower-wage workers. In fact, because the Fed survey’s income data end in 2021, it understates the income gains for the bottom half of the workforce, and the shrinking income inequality they’ve produced.

Hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers (who make up about 80 percent of the American workforce) rose 4.4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2023, for instance, ahead of the pace of inflation. And this was not anomalous: Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, crunched the numbers and found that real wages for that same sector of workers are not just higher than they were in 2019, but are now roughly where they would have been if we’d continued on the upward pre-pandemic trend.

The reason for this is simple: Low unemployment has translated into higher wages. As a recent working paper by Dube, David Autor, and Annie McGrew shows, the tight labor markets of the past few years have given lower-wage workers more bargaining power than in the past, leading to a compression in the wage gap between higher-paid and lower-paid workers. Of course, that gap is still immense, but the three scholars found that the wage gains for lower-paid workers have rolled back about a quarter of the rise in inequality that has occurred since the 1980s.

So what should we take away from the Survey of Consumer Finances data, and from Dube, Autor, and McGrew’s work? Not that everything is fine, but that public policy and macroeconomic management matter a lot. Enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, the stimulus payments—these things materially improved the lives of Americans and helped set the economy up for a strong recovery. If the policy response had been less aggressive, the U.S. economy would be in worse shape now. This is something you can see by looking at Europe, where economies are growing far more slowly and unemployment is higher, while inflation is no lower.

Key to this story is the fact that lower-wage workers in particular would be worse off, because they have been among the chief beneficiaries of the low unemployment created by the robust recovery. It’s a useful reminder that stagnant wages are not an inevitable result of American capitalism: When labor markets are tight, and employers have to compete with one another for employees, workers get paid more.

So, even allowing for the high inflation we saw in 2022, no one could really look at the U.S. economy today and say that the policy choices of the past three years made us poorer. Yet that, of course, is precisely how many Americans feel.

Although that pessimism does not bode well for Biden’s reelection prospects, the real problem with it is even more far-reaching: If voters think that policies that helped them actually hurt them, that makes it much less likely that politicians will embrace similar policies in the future. The U.S. got a lot right in its macroeconomic approach over the past three years. Too bad that voters think it got so much wrong.