#robin and the making of american adolescence

[androxys]

I'm back reading Robin and the Making of American Adolescence, and we're officially on the chapter about Carrie Kelley and Stephanie Brown. These quotes are from the chapter introduction, with some notes by me.

"Unlike Dick Grayson, female Robins were never meant to be understood as 'heroes in training' or as the heir apparent to Batman's crusade. Rather, their stories depict fantasies of patriarchal control in which idealized maturity and masculinity are linked through the requisition or punishment of teenage girls' bodies."

O'Connor argues that Carrie Kelley is not as empowering as writers might want you to think in her position as the first woman to be Robin--Kelley largely serves just as the "perfect" foil to Miller's Batman. O'Connor argues that this foil position objectifies Kelley, because this is where her character begins and ends.

"Through the character of Stephanie Brown, creators enact a vicious morality play of what happens to adolescent girls who do not function as perfect foils, who challenge patriarchal order and move 'out of their lane.' Stephanie's characterization as independent and headstrong coupled with her violent, sexualized torture sends the message that adolescent girls who buck the traditional expectations of deference to male authority ought to be punished."

Overall, O'Connor's opening argument is that writers don't use girl Robins to show that girls can be heroes too, but to prop up ideas of masculinity by having Batman be able to tell someone what to do. This is arguably a universal Robin trait--a lot of early Dick was propping up Batman-as-patriarch by having him be young and naive. But while Dick was able to grow and become Nightwing (and eventually Batman) women who are Robin are stuck. And in some cases, such as Stephanie, explicitly punished for not doing whatever Batman-the-patriarch tells her.

Quotes from Robin and the Making of American Adolescence by Lauren O'Connor

[5-7-9]

Robin and the Making of American Adolescence

Book by Lauren R. O'Connor released in 2021

Yooooooooo!! 😮

[talxns]

via Robin and the Making of American Adolescence by Lauren R. O’Connor. really good study of culture surrounding the portrayal of maturation into adulthood using different robins as examples of how adolescences are depicted.

[sasheneskywalker]

books and articles about about comics, superheroes, dc and batman

books Ahrens, J., & Meteling, A. (Eds.). (2010). Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence. A&C Black.

Bongco, M. (2014). Reading comics: Language, culture, and the concept of the superhero in comic books. Routledge.

Brode, D. (Ed.). (2022). The DC Comics Universe: Critical Essays. McFarland.

Brooker, W. (2013). Batman unmasked: Analyzing a cultural icon. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Burke, L., Gordon, I., & Ndalianis, A. (Eds.). (2020). The superhero symbol: media, culture, and politics. Rutgers University Press.

Dittmer, J., & Bos, D. (2019). Popular culture, geopolitics, and identity. Rowman & Littlefield.

DiPaolo, M. (2014). War, politics and superheroes: Ethics and propaganda in comics and film. McFarland.

Dyer, B. (Ed.). (2009). Supervillains and Philosophy: sometimes, evil is its own reward (Vol. 42). Open Court Publishing.

Geaman, K. L. (Ed.). (2015). Dick Grayson, boy wonder: Scholars and creators on 75 years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman. McFarland.

Giddens, T. (Ed.). (2015). Graphic justice: Intersections of comics and law. Routledge.

Heer, J., & Worcester, K. (Eds.). (2009). A comics studies reader. Univ. Press of Mississippi.

Irwin, W. (2009). Batman and philosophy: The dark knight of the soul. John Wiley & Sons.

Langley, T. (2022). Batman and psychology: A dark and stormy knight. Turner Publishing Company.

McKittrick, C. (2015). Fan phenomena: Batman, edited by Liam Burke.

Ndalianis, A. (Ed.). (2009). The contemporary comic book superhero (Vol. 19). Routledge.

O'Connor, L. R. (2021). Robin and the Making of American Adolescence. Rutgers University Press.

O'Neil, D., & Wilson, L. (Eds.). (2008). Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City. BenBella Books.

Packer, S., & Fredrick, D. R. (Eds.). (2020). Welcome to Arkham Asylum: Essays on Psychiatry and the Gotham City Institution. McFarland.

Pearson, R., & Uricchio, W. (Eds.). (2023). The many lives of the Batman: Critical approaches to a superhero and his media. Taylor & Francis.

Pearson, R., Uricchio, W., & Brooker, W. (Eds.). (2017). Many more lives of The Batman. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Picariello, D. K. (Ed.). (2019). Politics in Gotham: the Batman universe and political thought. Springer.

Pustz, M. (Ed.). (2012). Comic books and American cultural history: An anthology. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Romagnoli, A. S., & Pagnucci, G. S. (2013). Enter the superheroes: American values, culture, and the canon of superhero literature. Scarecrow Press.

Smith, M. J., & Duncan, R. (Eds.). (2012). Critical approaches to comics: Theories and methods. Routledge.

Smith, M. J., Brown, M., & Duncan, R. (Eds.). (2019). More critical approaches to comics: theories and methods. Routledge.

Weiner, R. G. (Ed.). (2009). Captain America and the struggle of the superhero: Critical essays. McFarland.

Weldon, G. (2017). The caped crusade: Batman and the rise of nerd culture. Simon and Schuster.

White, M. D. (2019). Batman and ethics. John Wiley & Sons.

Worcester, K., Heer, J., & Hatfield, C. (Eds.). (2013). The Superhero Reader. University Press of Mississippi.

articles Authers, B. (2012). What Had Been Many Became One: Continuity, the Common Law, and Crisis on Infinite Earths. Law Text Culture, 16, i.

Austin, S. (2015). Batman's female foes: the gender war in Gotham City. Journal of Popular Culture (Boston), 48(2), 285-295.

Avery, C. (2023). Paternalism, performative masculinity and the post-9/11 cowboy in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 12(1), 65-81.

Bainbridge, J. (2007). “This is the Authority. This Planet is Under Our Protection”—An Exegesis of Superheroes' Interrogations of Law. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 3(3), 455-476.

Best, M. (2005). Domesticity, homosociality, and male power in superhero comics of the 1950s. Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(1).

Brienza, C. (2010). Producing comics culture: a sociological approach to the study of comics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1(2), 105-119.

Camp, L. D. (2017). ‘Time to ride the monster train’: multiplicity, the Midnighter and the threat to hegemonic superhero masculinity. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8(5), 464-479.

Camp, L. D. (2018). "Be of Knightly Countenance": Masculine Violence and Managing Affect in Late Medieval Alliterative Poetry and Batman: Under The Red Hood (Doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina).

Cocca, C. (2014). Negotiating the third wave of feminism in Wonder Woman. PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(1), 98-103.

Coogan, P. (2018). Wonder Woman: superheroine, not superhero. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 9(6), 566-580.

Cohn, N., Hacımusaoğlu, I., & Klomberg, B. (2023). The framing of subjectivity: Point-of-view in a cross-cultural analysis of comics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 14(3), 336-350.

Costello, M. J., & Worcester, K. (2014). The politics of the superhero: Introduction. PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(1), 85-89.

Crutcher, P. A. (2011). Complexity in the comic and graphic novel medium: Inquiry through bestselling Batman stories. The Journal of Popular Culture, 44(1), 53-72.

Curtis, N. (2013). Superheroes and the contradiction of sovereignty. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 4(2), 209-222.

Fennell, J. (2012). The aesthetics of supervillainy. Law Text Culture, 16, i.

Giddens, T. (2015). Natural law and vengeance: Jurisprudence on the streets of Gotham. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 28(4), 765-785.

Guynes, S. (2019). Worlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die: Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Anxieties and Calamities of the Comic-Book Event. Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, 3(2), 171-190.

Hall, K. J., & Lucal, B. (1999). Tapping into parallel universes: Using superhero comic books in sociology courses. Teaching sociology, 27(1), 60-66.

Hatchell, R. (2023). ‘We prefer protégé’: The temporal function of sidekicks in Young Justice and Titans. The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 12(1), 83-97.

Jeong, S. H. (2020). Sovereign Agents of Mythical and (Pseudo-) Divine Violence. Walter Benjamin and Global Biopolitical Cinema. The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, 4(2), 81-98.

Jimenez, P. (2021). Wonder Woman, Feminist Icon? Queer Icon? No, Love Icon. In Wonder Woman (pp. 23-36). Routledge.

Lang, R. (1990). Batman and Robin: A family romance. American imago, 47(3/4), 293-319.

Petrovic, P. (2016). Queer resistance, gender performance, and ‘coming out’of the panel borders in Greg Rucka and JH Williams III’s Batwoman: Elegy. In Superheroes and Identities (pp. 221-230). Routledge.

Philips, M. (2022). Violence in the American imaginary: Gender, race, and the politics of superheroes. American Political Science Review, 116(2), 470-483.

Pitkethly, C. (2016). The pursuit of identity in the face of paradox: indeterminacy, structure and repetition in Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In Superheroes and Identities (pp. 87-94). Routledge.

Powell, T. (2023). ‘You’re a refugee, are you not?’‘Extraordinary bodies’, monstrous outsiders and US refugee policies in superhero comics. The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 12(1), 9-20.

Romero, L. G., & Dahlman, I. (2012). Justice framed: Law in comics and graphic novels. Law Text Culture, 16, vii.

Schott, G. (2010). From fan appropriation to industry re-appropriation: the sexual identity of comic superheroes. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1(1), 17-29.

Sereni, E. (2020). "When I'm Bad, I'm Better": from early Villainesses to contemporary antiheroines in superhero comics.

Sharp, C. (2012). 'Riddle me this…? 'would the world need superheroes if the law could actually deliver justice'?. Law Text Culture, 16, 353-378.

Shyminsky, N. (2011). ‘‘Gay’’ Sidekicks: Queer Anxiety and the Narrative Straightening of the Superhero. Men and Masculinities, 14(3), 288-308.

Valentine, G. (2021). Empire of a wicked woman: Catwoman, royalty, and the making of a comics icon. In Wonder Woman (pp. 93-112). Routledge.

Weston, G. (2013). Superheroes and comic-book vigilantes versus real-life vigilantes: an anthropological answer to the Kick-Ass paradox. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 4(2), 223-234.

Whaley, D. E. (2011). Black cat got your tongue?: Catwoman, blackness, and the alchemy of postracialism. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2(1), 3-23.

Wolf-Meyer, M. J. (2006). Batman and Robin in the nude, or class and its exceptions. Extrapolation (pre-2012), 47(2), 187.

York, C. (2000). All in the Family: Homophobia and Batman Comics in the 1950s. International Journal of Comic Art, 2(2), 100-110.

[decepti-thots]

Ok I can only remember the bee pissing scene from bayverse, tell us about the subtext of his muteness 🎙

Those are… not unrelated, astonishingly! lmao.

It's long been noted by people watching the films that Bee, especially in the first few Bayverse films, is often treated differently to both the human characters and the other Autobot characters, in ways that become quite strange when you think about them for any real length of time. The first two Bayverse movies especially present a very particular masculine adolescent coming-of-age fantasy, and a part of that is the way they kind of blend both 'a boy and his car' and 'a boy and his dog' narratives seen in American fiction of that type. With Bumblebee being both 'the car' and 'the dog' in this situation, the way he is presented veers around a lot across the course of these films- and it tends not to be the same as the way, for example, Sam is presented. But also not how Optimus, also a robot, is. So what gives?

To take a step back, think about how a horse in the stereotypical 'horse girl' movie is framed, narratively speaking. They're usually presented in ways that are very unrealistic as compared to real life horses, of course, to the tune of making them 'more intelligent' (that is, more humanlike in their intelligence) than any real horse actually is. (Horse girl movies of a certain type often present horses as near psychically intuitive regarding human emotions, lmao.) But unlike in a film that anthropmorphizes animals in the sense of, say, Disney's Robin Hood, this doesn't render them functionally equivalent to human. It brings them more within the human characters' spheres, reduces the conceptual distance somewhat for the sake of storytelling and theme and wish fulfillment, but like. The horse in a horse girl movie is still a horse. Just a very idealized version of a horse that can better serve as an extension of something about the main human character.

People joke, but Bumblebee really kind of is the macho version of the horse in a horse girl movie, at least in the 2007 film. And that would be more a statement on how the movie sees its Autobot characters than anything- as action setpiece enablers first, a fantasy of owning a cool robot that is also (sort of) your friend second, and full characters a distant third- except then basically none of the other Autobots we meet later are framed like that. They other Autobot characters are like… very clearly framed as people. Shallow characters, sure, and people the narrative is only invested in as far as their ability to create inciting incidents for action scenes go. But Optimus Prime in the 2007 movie is not a character one can imagine in the role of Bumblebee in that same movie, serving as a car that fulfils the teenage fantasy of both 'owning a cool robot' and 'having something that acts like a friend but can't leave or disagree'.

This would be primarily interesting as a weird internal inconsistency and not inherently a negative if not for one thing: the muteness. There is a degree to which this process is facilitated in the audience's mind without immediate, overt cognitive dissonance the moment OP shows up and starts making speeches by the fact that Bee is rendered distinct from the other Autobots by that muteness. It's the most striking difference between Bee and the others, and it stands as the most obvious point of divergence in how the audience is expected to engage with these characters. Muteness, alongside other expressions of non-verbality, is often used in film in ways that present it as somehow implicitly dehumanizing. Mute characters are often depicted as less human than other characters on that basis, even if only on a subtextual level: from the degree to which it is sometimes used in horror film to suggest some creepy 'something's wrong, people should be talking' angle to examples where any character who cannot talk in a way deemed sufficiently coherent is assumed to be in some capacity 'childlike', and more besides. [Sidenote: that's not an inherent contradiction; media often uses child-ness as shorthand in dehumanizing ways.] Sometimes these are literal, such as in the way horror fiction will often present non-verbal autistic characters as 'uncanny' or 'creepy' and supernaturally endowed in ways intrinsically linked to how their autism (and non-verbality) renders them as Other, and sometimes they are more figurative. But the end result here is that rendering Bee mute is enough for the film to assume its audience will not chafe too hard mentally when he is treated a little less like a person that characters like Optimus Prime, and that, needless to say, is a troubling assumption!

Which brings us back to the uh. Pissing scene. Why is that scene there when it's so, so weird? Because it's not Bumblebee framed as a person inexplicably robot pissing all over a guy. It's Bumblebee the very-smart-but-not-quite-a-person car-dog pissing on a guy. And if you understand the movie is swinging towards that latter understanding of who Bee is to the audience in that scene, it makes way more sense.

(Sidenote: I have said Autobot and not Cybertronian here because the distinctions in how Autobots and Decepticons are presented, and how that plays into this whole thing of 'shifting degrees of personhood for the nonhuman characters', is a WHOLE thing, and a very interesting one to boot!)

[mogami13]

Another Fic idea

Okay. So another fic idea that I Have:

Werewolf AU: In which the air in the upside down reacts with dna and VOILA werewolves. I will admit that in this case, I see their wolf-selves as being the size of direwolves (adults) and the kids as adolescents (looks like regular sized wolves, but still with those puppy traits) and looking like normal wolves and not stereotypical mutated werewolves . I think in most cases, unless in immediate danger (like Steve and Dustin in Season2) the change is gradual. I also imagine that partial transformations are possible (cute scene for trick-or-treating where all of them are partially transformed and everyone thinks they are just really good costumes). Also, the government (Russian and American) have no idea. Cause they don't go into the upside-down without protective gear and even if Russia sends in prisoners, they usually don't survive long enough to transform anyway.

So Season 1 would give us Joyce, Will, Hopper, Nancy, and Eleven. (I had to re-watch to make sure Jonathan doesn't actually like stick his head or hand or whatever in after Nancy. Also side note: you could go either way with that, like the goo or whatever on Nancy after the tree births her back in reality got in his mouth and he also turns or it could be a lead in to why they don't work and Ronance is born.)

Season 2 gives us Steve and the rest of the kids. I think Steve should cement his den mother status by transforming super quick in the tunnels to protect the kids, but that's just me. The pack is really starting to form. Alphas Joyce and Hopper, Beta Nancy (and Jonathan, depending on how it goes), Den Mother Steve, pack pups.

Season 3 adds no one, but pack gets closer and more humans get added to the know. Depending on how you end this season, either with Hopper "dying" and the Byers moving away, I think there is a lot of room to play. You could also maybe introduce Eddie sometime in this season, like where he's seen the pack as wolves playing and just being wolves in the woods (maybe he's enamored with a certain honey brown wolf with unusually shiny and well groomed fur that seems to take care of the puppies...)

Season 4 would add Robin and Eddie maybe Chrissy if you have Jonathan as a wolf. Eddie is saved from bats by his own transformation!!

So yeah, like I said. Werewolves.

[ethernetmeep]

bluey plays in the dentists waiting room; i read house of leaves, on the pages where you have to tilt the book and read it from many different angles. an oddity to the other patrons in the lobby. when inside, i get xrays and hear a plethora of chatter. i speak very little.

the ride to the place was mostly the same; constant babbling, half of it i pay attention to. we pass the behavioral health center on the way there, along with the RMV… i make a small mental note, remember a nice memory. i pass by a tux store and find myself grinning, teeth visible; i put my hand to my mouth and quickly grow bashful at my facial expression. my mother doesn’t notice, and if she does she says nothing. still, i avoid her gaze

afterwards, i am allowed the joy that is library time. get dropped off, stay an hour. sky is nice. a american robin is abnormally close to me; i wish i could’ve fed it bird seed… had none on me. sit on a bench, go inside. find the science & mathematics section. i pull out several books to skim through; one had a little wasps face on its side.. i took an image, but it ended up blurry & bad! aw man… maybe next time ill get a clearer photo. read about sea creatures near the atlantic region, birds & the like. at one point, i move to read a book about meteorology; i find the study of the elements fascinating. as i go to flip pages, i see the pages themselves are worn. fragile.

i am far too afraid to accidentally injure this book, so i only skim through for a minute or so before gently putting it back in the spot it was in. i don’t wish to harm this organism… are books organisms? not really, but i like viewing them as living. huh.

regardless, the ride home is okay. forsythias blooming, a radiant yellow color. very pretty. i wish to visit the other library nearby… the uhm, uh, one near the winding road. i haven’t been to it in a long time, if at all. probably once in pre-adolescence. i like libraries, they’re comforting

i might go tomorrow to see it, actually… i don’t really do anything, if it isn’t abundantly clear. depends on my mothers appointment she has. i don’t mind sitting and reading for a few hours; i like that, actually.

as a closing sentence, minutes prior i… hmm.. how would i say it…. touched my wall? i guess? not really remarkable. i pat it, though. like how you’d pat a cat or a dog.. i always see walls broken, never cherished or treated carefully. i wonder why

oh yeah, heres some photos too. for funsies.

manually colorpicking because i would hate just putting a big black bar.. also could just cut that part out.. i enjoy the sign, though. i like signs. and power lines. and, uh.. a lot of things

[maciek-jozefowicz]

Forbidden Thought #151

I was thinking — we may be having more sex crimes committed against women than ever before without being aware of it because many of those crimes are committed against women who are in this country illegally. These crimes are not reported because the women are terrified of going to the police, believing that if they do so, they will be locked-up and then deported. This state of things is paradise for sex predators, as well as for serial killers.

I imagine that prostitution, too, is more prevalent now than it has ever been before because the women who are here illegally cannot legally get a job. They cannot be hired by a legitimate business. Thus, they have very, very, few options as to how they can earn money to survive. Prostitution is one of only a handful of those options. (Illegal porn, a more depraved and more grotesque version of pornography, is another option for some.)

Prostitutes have traditionally been the victims of choice for serial killers because there is nothing personal that links the victim to the killer and because they are the easiest for a killer to attract, to come to them. It’s part of the prostitute’s work. That’s what makes these murders so difficult to solve and so much easier to get away with than other homicides. Illegal immigrant prostitutes are even more vulnerable, so I expect there to be an increase of these kind of murders.

(I’ve been using the word women, but many of the victims of the predators are adolescent and pre-adolescent girls.)

But what of the men who are here illegally and cannot legally get a job? While male prostitution, serving the needs of women and homosexual men, exists, it’s not as prevalent. Sex work is not a viable option for most men. (Besides, my guess is that adolescent and pre-adolescent boys are the sought after sex objects of homosexual predators.) Some men are fortunate to be hired illegally and paid “under-the-table”. Some do handyman-type work. But finding regular source of income is difficult for most. To survive, the men, like the women, need to do things that are illegal. But for people who have already broken the law by simply being in this country, doing more illegal things isn’t a concern, survival is the concern. After all, they didn’t come to America to die.

Thus, I expect that we will see an increase in shoplifting (To counteract the financial loses from shoplifting, retailers raise the prices of their products. That is one of the hidden reasons why prices of many things have been going up. Paying customers are the ones paying for the stolen goods. (Not to be misunderstood — most of the shoplifting in America is done by Americans, many of them believing that America “owes” them.)) and theft and robbery, including home robbery. One can only hope that for the sake of social justice, the homes that these people turn to robbing are the homes of the rich — the gated communities, the wealthy enclaves, the walled-off properties (border walls don’t deter them, neither should property walls (Is that why Mark Zuckerberg built his wall-protected compound in Hawaii? The ocean protects him from the illegals, the concrete walls from the “savage natives”.)) of lawyers, doctors, techies, politicians, professional athletes, CEOs, university professors, Hollywood stars and starlets and producers, and such like. Stealing from the poor makes one a bad guy; stealing from the rich makes one a socialist, an idealistic hero fighting social injustice.

If they’re smart, these men and women (especially the women — while I may be a misogynist toward certain types of women, I root for the success and happiness of certain other types of women) will band together to form a kind of Robin Hood gangs spread out across the country. I suspect some will eventually do that, and this will be a new dawn for organized crime in America. (The poor stealing from the rich is the kind of crime that many should be willing to support, or, at least, tolerate. But there is a difference between stealing directly from the rich and stealing from stores. In stealing from stores, one is, in effect, stealing from everyone who shops at those stores, not from the rich who own the stores. They are unaffected.)

The people in power, despite what they may say publicly, don’t actually want to fix this problem. They want it to continue indefinitely, either because it benefits them directly or indirectly (i.e. it benefits their rich donors). They want to keep illegal immigrants illegal because that makes the immigrants powerless, desperate, dependent and subservient. And that is advantageous to the rapists and predators and killers and all sort of men who want to use these people in all sort of ways.

[crystiesong]

City Chronicles : Year 1 (Stories and Snippets)

A collection of tales and adventures of myths, magic, superheroes and everything in-between. There are many stories to this series and there are many more to come but the ones below are the current ones out : (Snippet is what I call Oneshots cause i think they sound cool) Enchanted Retribution

'For six long years, Robin has been on a non stop search. He's exhausted, hungry and running out of patience, but he will not yield until he can get his revenge.'

A Tale of Sorrow and Stone

'All Sam's life, all he's wanted to do was live peacefully with his brother. But fate has always had other plans; plans that always end with blood on his claws.'

Feeline Alive

'Aster would say she has quite good life; Excelling at school, hanging out with her best friend and enjoying her life to the fullest. But after a chance encounter with something out of the ordinary, Aster's life takes an unexpected turn into the unknown.'

Kin Through the Chaos

'Living on the streets is always rough but Alex and Andy have always had each other to help make it through. When objects from the past drastically change their lives, the two siblings must navigate this new normal and figure out how everything connects to a life they no longer have.'

Light of a New Beginning

'With justice served, Robin is now free to do whatever he pleases but he has no idea where to go. After being unexpectedly taken in by a kind old lady, Robin expected his life to be slow and uninteresting; but everything changed when a crack echoed through the night...'

Ancient Adolescence (Snippet)

'It's time to celebrate Sam's birthday but he's having some doubts'

Calculated Mayhem

'Aster, Alex and Andy's friendship is a new one but a blossoming one. When secrets threaten to rear their heads, that friendship and their trust will determine if they make or break in a trial that will determine their future.'

United as One

'Two stories, two worlds. Robin and Sam explore the depths of the city for an elusive plant while Aster, Alex and Andy search for a lost kitten. But unexpected things happen when the two cross paths and their lives are never the same.'

Fierce Fireworks (Snippet)

'Fourth of July Time (I know nothing I'm not american)'

Birthday Bash (Snippet)

'Birthday time : Aster edition'

Gone too Soon (Snippet)

'Alex reflects on a time long gone'

Videns stellas tecum (Snippet)

'Stargazing is better with a friend'

Back to the Big Apple

'It was a normal day when it all began. The sky turned gold and the earth rumbled. Robin, Sam, Aster, Alex and Andy (or the CC crew) learn of a prophecy they are given to complete. Their first stop? The grand City of New York.

Robin isn't the most thrilled about having to go on this quest, especially to this place. But maybe there will be more to this quest than meets the eye?'

Rainforest Retreat

'The first shard has been obtained. The search for the shards takes the crew to the wild lands of the jungle. Aster is fascinated by the environment but will it be as welcoming?'

Through the Sands of Time

'The blazing sands of the Sahara is the next destination in the CC crew's quest. The heat isn't something Alex is a fan of but she pushes through. The barren land holds many secrets, secrets that the young hero will soon unearth...'

Hiking the Heights

'Andy wasn't expecting to land in the snowy mountains of the Himalayas but the search for the shards had taken them all over the world. What did the wintery land have in store for Andy and his friends?'

Heart of the Wild

'After a bit of a rough landing, the CC crew arrive in the land of the Philippines. Sam has been a bit nervous about this quest but he's managed to swallow his fear for this long. But maybe this time, he can take a stand to go the final stretch'

In the Heart of the Deep

'The shards have been found but the quest is not over. The final destination is the triangle of mysteries and disappearances. The crew land but are unsure how to proceed. Maybe an unexpected ally can come to the rescue?'

Timeless Teachings (Snippet)

'Sam finally gets an education... somewhat'

Garden of Possibilities (Snippet)

'Sam and Alex have a chat about love'

Festivities for Two (Snippet)

'Alex and Andy celebrate their birthday for the first time in years'

Magic Madness (Snippet)

'Training time with Robin and Willa' A Different Flavour of Fang 'Halloween has arrived. Aster and Andy are ecstatic for their Halloween party with their friends when they meet a mysterious but intriguing stranger. Andy is immediately smitten but Aster isn't so taken, feeling that a danger is lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike.' Curse of the Blood Moon 'Halloween has arrived. Robin, Sam and Alex prepare for a simple party to celebrate the night, but things change for the worst with a spell gone wrong and a ticking time limit to reverse the damage or loose a friend forever.' Daze of the Dead 'Día de los Muertos is a day of celebration to honour the souls of the dead. In the whispers of the land of magic, it is said that souls with a special power can move beyond and visit the land of the deceased. But what if a group of mortals passed through when they were not supposed to? What will they find there and how will they return to the land of the living?' Night Comforts (Snippet) 'Sam and Robin discuss the events of Halloween night and come to terms with a few things.' Lending a Hand (Snippet)

'Robin is having a hard time dealing with his new hair. Luckily he gets some help from a professional.' Faults and Friendships

'Keeping secrets is never easy especially from the people you trust the most. Aster wants to tell Javari everything but it's not easy, especially with criminals running around the city causing mischief, keeping her away from her best friend. Her secrets hold her back from being fully honest but maybe, just maybe; fate will allow some to spill through…' Drenched (Snippet)

'Andy takes care of a stubborn Alex'

[dwellordream]

“But what of horror’s traditional themes of struggle and survival, of rescuing the possibilities of life and community from an encounter with monstrosity and death? The Living Dead trilogy plays with these themes in a manner that defies conventional expectations. Indeed, it is this aspect of the films that has been most thoroughly discussed by sympathetic commentators, like Robin Wood and Kim Newman. All three films have white women or black men as their chief protagonists, the only characters with whom the audience positively identifies as they struggle to remain alive and to resist and escape the zombies. 

The black man in Night is the sole character in the film who is both sympathetic and capable of reasoned action. The woman protagonist in Dawn rejects the subordinate role in which the three men, wrapped up in their male bonding fantasies, initially place her; she becomes more and more active and involved as the film progresses. The woman scientist in Day is established right from the start as the strongest, most dedicated, and most perspicacious of the besieged humans. In both Dawn and Day, the women end up establishing tactical alliances with black men who are not blindly self-centered in the manner of their white counterparts. 

All these characters are thoughtful, resourceful, and tenacious; they are not always right, but they continually debate possible courses of action and learn from their mistakes. They seem to be groping toward a shared, democratic kind of decision making. In contrast, white American males come off badly in all three films. The father in Night considers it his inherent right to be in control, although he clearly lacks any sense of how to proceed; his behavior is an irritating combination of hysteria and spite. 

The two white men among the group in Dawn both die as a result of their adolescent need to indulge in macho games or to play the hero. The military commanding officer in Day is the most obnoxious of all: he is so sexist, authoritarian, cold-blooded, vicious, and contemptuous of others that the audience celebrates when the zombies finally disembowel and devour him. These white males’ fear of the zombies seems indistinguishable from the dread and hatred they display toward women. The self-congratulatory attitudes that they continually project are shown to be ineffective at best, and radically counterproductive at worst, in dealing with the actual perils that the zombies represent. 

The macho, paternalistic traits of typical Hollywood action heroes are repeatedly exposed as stupid and dysfunctional. Romero dismantles dominant behavior patterns; he gives a subversive, left-wing twist to the usually reactionary ideology and genre of survivalism. To the extent that the films maintain traditional forms of narrative identification, they divert these forms by providing them with a new, politically more progressive content. Carol J. Clover argues that slasher and rape–revenge films of the 1970s and 1980s enact a shift in the gender identification of traditional attributes of heroism and struggle, whereby women take on these attributes instead of men.

Dawn and Day present us with a more self-conscious, radical, and thoroughgoing version of the same shift in cultural sensibilities. But the scope of Clover’s argument is limited by the fact that it too easily valorizes heroic triumph. In Romero’s trilogy, to the contrary, the success of the sympathetic characters’ survival strategy is limited; it does not, and cannot be expected to, resolve all the tensions raised in the course of the three films. Unlike in the slasher and revenge films described by Clover, here the protagonists’ survival is not the same as their triumph. 

The zombies are never defeated; the best that the sympathetic living characters of Dawn and Day can hope for is the reprieve of a precarious, provisional escape. And this tenuousness leads us back to the zombies. The Living Dead trilogy does not simply or unequivocally valorize survival; perhaps for that reason, it ultimately does not rely for its effectiveness on mechanisms or spectatorial identification. The zombies exercise too strong a pull, too strange a fascination. The three films progress in the direction of ever-greater contiguities and similarities between the living and the nonliving, between seduction and horror, and between desire and dread. 

In consequence, identities and identifications are increasingly dissolved, even within the framework of conventional, ostensibly sutured narrative. The first film in the series, Night of the Living Dead, is the one most susceptible to conventional psychoanalytic interpretation, for it is focused on the nuclear family. It begins with a neurotic brother and sister quarreling as they pay a visit to their father’s grave and moves on to the triangle of blustering father, cringing mother, and (implicitly) abused child hiding from the zombies in a farmhouse basement. 

Familial relations are shown throughout to be suffused with an anxious negativity, a menacing aura of tension and repressed violence. In this context, the zombies seem a logical outgrowth of, or response to, patriarchal norms. They are the disavowed residues of the ego-producing mechanisms of internalization and identification. They figure the infinite emptiness of desire, insofar as it is shaped by, and made conterminous with, Oedipal repression. The film’s high point of shock comes, appropriately, when the little girl, turned into a zombie, cannibalistically consumes her parents. 

But at the same time, the film’s casual ironies undercut this allegory of the return of the repressed. The protagonists not only experience the zombie menace firsthand, they also watch it on TV. Disaster is consumed as a cheesy spectacle, complete with incompetent reporting, useless information bulletins, and inane attempts at commentary. The grotesque, carnivalesque slapstick of these sequences mocks survivalist oppositions. Even as dread pulses to a climax, as plans of action and escape fail, and as characters we expect to survive are eliminated, we are denied the opportunity of imposing redemptive or compensatory meanings. 

There is no mythology of doomed, heroic resistance, no exalted sense of pure, apocalyptic negativity. The zombies’ lack of charisma seems to drain all the surrounding circumstances of their nobility. And for its part, the family is subsumed within a larger network of social control, one as noteworthy for its stupidity as for its exploitativeness. Romero turns the constraints of his low budget—crudeness of presentation, minimal acting, and tacky special effects—into a powerful means of expression: he foregrounds and hyperbolizes these aspects of his production in order to depsychologize the drama and emphasize the artificiality and gruesome arbitrariness of spectacle. 

Such a strategy doesn’t “alienate” us from the film so much as it insidiously displaces our attention. Our anxieties are focused upon events rather than characters, upon the violent fragmentation of cinematic process (with a deliberate clumsiness that mimes the shuffling movement of the zombies themselves) rather than the supposed integrity of any single protagonist’s subjectivity. The zombies come to exemplify, not a hidden structure of individual anxiety and guilt, but an unabashedly overt social process in which the disintegration of all communal bonds goes hand in hand with the callous manipulation of individual response. 

It is entirely to the point that Night ends on a note of utter cynicism: the zombies are apparently defeated, but the one human survivor with whom we have identified throughout the film—a black man—is mistaken for a zombie and shot by an (implicitly racist) sheriff’s posse. The other films in the cycle are made with higher budgets and have a much slicker look to them, but they are even more powerfully disruptive. The second film, Dawn of the Dead, deals with consumerism rather than familial tensions. The zombies are irresistibly attracted to a suburban shopping mall, because they dimly remember that “this was an important place in their lives.” 

Indeed, they seem most fully human when they are wandering the aisles and escalators of the mall like dazed but ecstatic shoppers. But the same can be said for the film’s living characters. The four protagonists hole up in the mall and try to re-create a sense of “home” there. Much of the film is taken up by what is in effect their delirious shopping spree: after turning on the background music and letting the fountains run, they race through the corridors, ransacking goods that remain sitting in perfect order on store shelves. 

Once they have eliminated the zombies from the mall, they play games of makeup, acting out the roles of elegance and wealth (and the attendant stereotypes of gender, class, and race) that they dreamed of, but weren’t able actually to afford, in their previous middle-class lives. This consumers’ utopia comes to an end only when the mall is invaded by a vicious motorcycle gang: a bunch of toughs motivated by a kind of class resentment, a desire to “share the wealth” by grabbing as much of it as possible. 

They enter by force and then pillage and destroy, enacting yet another mode of commodity consumption run wild. One befuddled gang member can’t quite decide whether to run off with an expensive TV set or smash it to bits in frustration over the fact that no programs are being broadcast anymore. The still alive and the already dead are alike animated by a mimetic urge that causes them to resemble Dawn’s third category of humanoid figures: department store mannequins. 

The zombies are overtly presented as simulacral doubles (equivalents rather than opposites) of living humans; their destructive consumption of flesh—gleefully displayed to the audience by means of lurid special effects—immediately parallels the consumption of useless commodities by the American middle class. Commodity fetishism is a mode of desire that is not grounded in repression; rather, it is directly incited, multiplied, and affirmed by artificial means. 

As Meaghan Morris remarks, “a Deleuzian account of productive desire . . . is more apt for analyzing the forms of modern greed . . . than the lack-based model assumed by psychoanalytic theories.” Want is a function of excess and extravagance, and not of deficiency: the more I consume, the more I demand to consume. In the words of the artist Barbara Kruger, “I shop, therefore I am.” The appearance of the living dead in the shopping mall thus can no longer be interpreted as a return of the repressed. The zombies are not an exception to, but a positive expression of, consumerist desire. 

They emerge not from the dark, disavowed underside of suburban life but from its tacky, glittering surfaces. They embody and mimetically reproduce those very aspects of contemporary American life that are openly celebrated by the media. The one crucial difference is that the living dead—in contrast to the actually alive—are ultimately not susceptible to advertising suggestions. Their random wandering might seem to belie, but actually serves, a frightening singleness of purpose: their unquenchable craving to consume living flesh. 

They cannot be controlled, for they are already animated far too directly and unconditionally by the very forces that modern advertising seeks to appropriate, channel, and exploit for its own ends. The infinite, insatiable hunger of the living dead is the complement of their openness to sympathetic participation, their compulsive, unregulated mimetic drive, and their limitless capacity for reiterated shock. The zombies mark the dead end or zero degree of capitalism’s logic of endless consumption and ever-expanding accumulation, precisely because they embody this logic so literally and to such excess. 

In the third and most complex film of the series, Day of the Dead, Romero goes still further. A shot near the beginning shows dollar bills being blown about randomly in the wind: a sign that even commodity fetishism has collapsed as an animating structure of desire. The locale shifts to an isolated underground bunker, where research scientists endeavor to study the zombies under the protection of a platoon of soldiers. 

All human activity is now as vacant and meaningless as is the zombies’ endless shuffling about; the soldiers’ abusive, macho posturings and empty assertions of authority clash with the scientists’ futile, misguided efforts to discover the cause of the zombie plague and to devise remedies for it. All that remains of postmodern society is the military–scientific complex, its chief mechanism for producing power and knowledge. But the technological infrastructure is now reduced to its most basic expression, locked into a subterranean compound of sterile cubicles, winding corridors, and featureless caverns. 

Everything in this hellish, underground realm of the living is embattled, restricted, claustrophobically closed off. This microcosm of our culture’s dominant rationality tears itself apart as we watch: it teeters on the brink of implosion, destroying itself from within even as it is literally under siege from without. The bunker is like an emotional pressure cooker: fear, fatigue, and anxiety all mount relentlessly, for they cannot find any means of relief or discharge. As the film progresses, tensions grow between the soldiers and the scientists, between the men and the one woman, and ultimately among the irreconcilable imperatives of power, comprehension, survival, and escape. 

The entire film is a maze of false exits and dead ends, with the zombies themselves providing the only prospect of an outlet. Day of the Dead is primarily concerned with the politics of insides and outsides: the social production of boundaries, limits, and compartmentalizations, and their subsequent affirmative disruption. The zombies, on the outside, paradoxically manifest a “vitality” that is lacking within the bunker. Their inarticulate moans and cries, heard in the background throughout the film, give voice to a force of desire that is at once nourished and denied, solicited and repulsed, by the military–scientific machine. 

Inside the bunker, in a sequence that works as a hilarious send-up of both behaviorist disciplinary procedures and 1950s “mad scientist” movies, a researcher tries to “tame” one of the zombies. The dead, he explains, can be “tricked” into obedience, just as we were tricked as children. He eventually turns his pet zombie, Bub, into a pretty good parody of a soldier, miming actions such as reading, shaving, and answering the telephone, and actually capable of saluting and of firing a gun. 

This success suggests that discipline and training, whether in child rearing or in the military, is itself only a restrictive appropriation of the zombies’ mimetic energy. Meanwhile, the zombies mill about outside in increasing numbers, waiting with menacing passivity to break in. From both inside and outside, mimetic resemblances proliferate and threaten to overturn the hierarchy of living and dead. The more rigidly boundaries are drawn between reason and desire, order and anarchy, purpose and randomness, the more irrelevant these distinctions seem, and the more they are prone to violent explosion. 

The climax occurs when one of the soldiers—badly wounded (literally dismembered, metaphorically castrated), and motivated by an ambiguous combination of heroic desperation and vicious masculine resentment—opens the gates and lets the zombies into the bunker, offering his own body as the first sacrifice to their voracity. The controlling boundary is ruptured, and the outside ecstatically consumes the inside. Allegory entirely gives way before a wave of contagious expenditure and destruction. 

The zombies take their revenge; but, as Kim Newman notes, “American society is cast in the role usually given to an individually hatable character.” If the zombies are a repressed byproduct of dominant American culture in Night, and that culture’s simulacral double in Dawn, then in Day, they finally emerge—ironically enough—as its animating source, its revolutionary avenger, and its sole hope of renewal. They are the long-accumulated stock of energy and desire upon which our militarized and technocratic culture vampiristically feeds, which it compulsively manipulates and exploits but cannot forever hope to control.”

- Steven Shaviro, “Contagious Allegories: George Romero.” in Zombie Theory: A Reader

[androxys]

Dick Grayson plays at being the patriarch in Batman: Prodigal, but writers withheld full realization of the identity via an inability to read as mature enough to parent Tim and in Tim’s positioning of Dick as his equal instead of his superior. (from Robin and the Making of American Adolescence by Lauren R. O'Connor)

Did you know that I'm so normal about Prodigal?

[5-7-9]

Robin and The Making of American Adolescence by Lauren R. O’Conner

Chapter 4 (page 204): Mixed Signals

[parkvcrs]

Stakeout ;

SUMMARY: steve harrington and dustin henderson go on a stakeout, searching for soviet spies.

PAIRING: steve harrington x fem!reader.

WARNING(S): mild cursing since dustin swears like a sailor sometimes.

NOTES: i hope you have a good day. ^—^

The Starcourt Mall was a shopping centre located in Hawkins, Indiana and a subsidiary of Starcourt Industries. The mall's opening in 1985 was inaugurated by Mayor Larry Kline. Both Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley worked at the Scoops Ahoy, an ice cream store, in the mall's food court. The place quickly became a popular hangout for teenagers and adolescents.

Although Starcourt appears to be a normal mall at first glance, it was actually built as a front for a secret Russian base, which houses the first Key built on American soil. This base was hidden far underground. Starcourt Industries is also controlled by the Soviet Union.

At the Starcourt Mall, Robin is translating the Russian message, rejecting Erica Sinclair’s request for more "samples". Her coworker Steve Harrington is not on duty, instead sneaking around the mall with Dustin Henderson using a pair of binoculars.

“You see anything?” Dustin questioned his partner in crime who is currently looking at shoppers through the pair of binoculars as the pair hid behind a planet display. “Uh, I guess I don't totally know what I'm looking for.” Steve sighed, longing for their search to end so he could return to the job that pays him minimum-wage.

“Evil Russians.”

“Yeah, exactly. I don't know what an evil Russian looks like.” Steve pointed out, mumbling.

“Tall, blond, not smiling,” Dustin presumed what the Soviets looked like, frowning as he looked around the perimeter of the mall as well. Steve, hummed since he was humoured by the teenager’s persistent demeanour. “Also, look for earpieces, camo, duffel bags, that sort of thing.”

“Right, okay, duffel bags,” Steve repeated the boy’s sentence in a groggy tone. After a few moments, something catches his attention. “Oh, you've gotta be kidding me.”

The tone in Steve Harrington’s voice intrigued Dustin Henderson beyond all recognition because he believed they found a lead in their investigation. “What?” The teenager asked in a hurried manner.

“Y/n L/n is talking with that meathead Mark Lewinsky.” Steve groans, squinting his eyes to ensure his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

Dustin peels behind the plant they hid behind, searching for Y/n before catching a glance at her. “She works at JCPenney. She’s talking to customers since it’s her job, you Airhead. You aren’t focused, just give me the binoculars.” Dustin briefly explained the situation before ultimately wanting to reprimand his superior of his binocular privileges.

“Aw, whatever happened to standards?” Steve ignored the young boy beside him. He continued to eavesdrop on the people who used to attend Hawkins High School. “I mean, Lewinsky never even came off the bench.” He added.

“Dude, you are the worst spy in history, you know that?” Dustin insulted the high school graduate before taking it upon himself to snatching the binoculars. “Stop, hey. Stop.” Steve swatted the teenager’s hand away as he continued to look at Y/n whilst Dustin was able to take the binoculars and use them to his advance to scout out the Soviets.

“I don't get why you're looking at girls. You literally have the perfect one in front of you — just go talk to her.” Dustin gestured towards the h/c haired girl who separated from Mark Lewinsky and started talking to other customers scattered around the mall.

“You know what? I don’t want to hear any more about N/n. Just…” He then transitioned to a hushed voice, regretting what he was going to say next. “Look for evil Russians?”

“Y/n,” Dustin said quickly to get on Steve’s nerves which seemed to work wonders.

“Seriously, if you say her name again...” Steve trailed off, looking over at Dustin before turning his attention back to the h/c haired girl.

“Y/n,” Dustin repeated himself as Steve Harrington fumed beside the teenager. “No, don't. No.” He waved his arms as a gesture to Dustin that he needed to stop whatever he was trying to achieve.

“N/n, N/n, N/n.”

“No, man, she's not my type,” Steve lied through his teeth and he came to the conclusion that he will go on with his fabrication. “She's not even... in the ballpark of what my type is, all right?”

“What's your type again? Not awesome?” Dustin poked fun at the adult’s taste in women. “Thank you,” Steve replies in a sarcastic tone as the young teenager hums.

“And, for your information, she's still in school. And she's... weird?” Steve’s tone was inquisitive, his eyebrows knitting together as he tried to come up with more excuses. Yeah… she's a weirdo. And she's hyper — always happy when she came to school. I don't like that she's hyper. And I think she did drama. And you know that’s a bad look.”

“Now that you're out of high school, which means you're technically an adult, don't you think it's time you move on from primitive constructs such as popularity?” Dustin practically insulted Steve, lowering the binoculars from his eyes.

“Oh, primitive constructs?” He repeated his sentence. “That some stupid shit you learned at Camp...” he gestured towards Dustin’s hat. “Know... Nothing?”

“Camp Know Where, actually,” Dustin corrected Steve, giving him a strained smile because he took pride in going to the camp for the summer. “And no, it's shit I learned from life. Instead of dating somebody you think is gonna make you look cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around — although I don’t know N/n all that well. Just look at me and Suzie for an example.”

“Oh, Suzie. Yeah, you mean, ‘hotter than Phoebe Cates,’” He didn’t believe that Dustin actually managed to get a girlfriend over the course of the season. “And, uh, let's think about how exactly did you score that beautiful girlfriend?”

Before Dustin could respond to Steve’s questions, a voice interrupted their discussion, “Harrington!” It was a feminine voice that the graduate recognized almost immediately.

The boys looked in the general direction of the spokesperson to see none other than Y/n L/n approaching them. Steve was like a deer in headlights, stunned that he was spotted.

As she got closer, Steve nudged Dustin in the ribs and signalled towards the binoculars he had in hand and silently demanded him to hid them. Not wanting Y/n to get the wrong idea.

Knowing that Y/n was bound to embrace him, Steve wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, gently rubbing her arm before pulling away for a few seconds.

“Have have you been?” She laughed, resting her hands on her hip. “Good.” Steve did not want to admit that he concluded not to go to college and was now working at a store that paid minimum wage.

“What are you doing here?” Y/n looks between the two, knowing that it would be rude not to include Dustin into their chat.

“Looking for evil Russians.” Dustin Henderson admitted, earning him a sigh from Steve who pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay?” Y/n giggles at the teenager’s peculiar response. “Well, my colleague, Vanessa, told me that you work at Scoops Ahoy. I didn’t know you worked there.” She looked at Steve’s brightly coloured sailor uniform that he donned.

“You didn’t?” Steve asks, checking the liability of her declaration.

“Yeah. I might have to come down there sometime when I’m on break to see what it’s like,” Y/n nods her head, looking around at the crowd just as a distance voice calls for her. She awkwardly laughs, facing the boys sheepishly, “That must be my manager. I should get going. See you around, Harrington.” She bids farewell as she left their side.

“Y-Yeah...” Steve Harrington stammered, watching as she disappeared among the shoppers. “Told you so.” Dustin Henderson laughed, pulling out the binoculars that he hid behind his back.

[animeman08]

Spider-Man

Spider-Man is a fictional superhero created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in the anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962) in the Silver Age of Comic Books. He appears in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, as well as in a number of movies, television shows, and video game adaptations set in the Marvel Universe. In the stories, Spider-Man is the alias of Peter Parker, an orphan raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City after his parents Richard and Mary Parker died in a plane crash. Lee and Ditko had the character deal with the struggles of adolescence and financial issues, and accompanied him with many supporting characters, such as J. Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn, Max Modell, romantic interests Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson, and foes such as Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin and Venom. His origin story has him acquiring spider-related abilities after a bite from a radioactive spider; these include clinging to surfaces, superhuman strength and agility, and detecting danger with his "spider-sense." He then builds wrist-mounted "web-shooter" devices that shoot artificial spider-webbing of his own design.

When Spider-Man first appeared in the early 1960s, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring Peter Parker, a high school student from Queens behind Spider-Man's secret identity and with whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate. While Spider-Man had all the makings of a sidekick, unlike previous teen heroes such as Bucky and Robin, Spider-Man had no superhero mentor like Captain America and Batman; he thus had to learn for himself that "with great power there must also come great responsibility"—a line included in a text box in the final panel of the first Spider-Man story but later retroactively attributed to his guardian, the late Uncle Ben Parker.

Marvel has featured Spider-Man in several comic book series, the first and longest-lasting of which is The Amazing Spider-Man. Over the years, the Peter Parker character developed from a shy, nerdy New York City high school student to troubled but outgoing college student, to married high school teacher to, in the late 2000s, a single freelance photographer. In the 2010s, he joins the Avengers. Spider-Man's nemesis Doctor Octopus also took on the identity for a story arc spanning 2012–2014, following a body swap plot in which Peter appears to die. Marvel has also published books featuring alternate versions of Spider-Man, including Spider-Man 2099, which features the adventures of Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the future; Ultimate Spider-Man, which features the adventures of a teenaged Peter Parker in an alternate universe; and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, which depicts the teenager Miles Morales, who takes up the mantle of Spider-Man after Ultimate Peter Parker's supposed death. Miles is later brought into mainstream continuity, where he sometimes works alongside Peter.

Spider-Man is one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes. He has appeared in countless forms of media, including several animated and live action television series, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and in a series of films. The character was first portrayed in live action by Danny Seagren in Spidey Super Stories, a The Electric Company skit which ran from 1974 to 1977. In films, Spider-Man has been portrayed by actors Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Tom Holland. He was voiced by Chris Pine and Jake Johnson in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Reeve Carney starred originally as Spider-Man in the 2010 Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Spider-Man has been well received as a superhero and comic book character, and he is often ranked as one of the most popular and iconic comic book characters of all time and one of the most popular characters in all fiction.

> Powers, skills, and equipment

A bite from a radioactive spider triggers mutations in Peter Parker's body, granting him superpowers. Since the original Lee-Ditko stories, Spider-Man has had the ability to cling to walls. This has been speculated to be based on a distance-dependent interaction between his body and surfaces, known as the van der Waals force, but other sources, such as the 2002 Spider-Man film, suggest instead that his hands and feet are lined with tiny clinging cilia in the manner of a real spider's feet. Spider-Man's other powers include significantly superhuman strength, a precognitive sixth sense famously referred to as his "spider-sense" or "spidey-sense" that alerts him to danger, perfect balance and equilibrium, as well as superhuman speed and agility. The character was originally conceived by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as intellectually gifted, but later writers have depicted his intellect at genius level. Academically brilliant, Parker has expertise in the fields of applied science, chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, and mechanics. With his talents, he sews his own costume to conceal his identity, and he constructs many devices that complement his powers, most notably mechanical web-shooters, to help navigate and trap his enemies along with a spider-signal as a flashlight and a warning beacon to criminals.

[incomingalbatross]

Tonight’s the night for more Catholic Batfam headcanons because I say so.

As outlined in this post, in this world Bruce was raised Catholic, drifted away somewhat in adolescence, and regained his faith and active practice during his Training World Tour. Further thoughts (some of which I’ve already stated, but put together a little better, I think):

Bruce doesn’t have a regular spiritual director in Gotham. Instead he just goes to Confession to a few different parish priests he likes—taking precautions so that people don’t see Bruce Wayne in the Confession lines just to be safe—and starts every Confession with “I’m Batman” because he feels it’s necessary context. This feels logical to me but also highly entertaining.

When he moved back into Wayne Manor and started fixing it up, his first big project outside of the Cave was converting one of the ballrooms into a family chapel. (Yes, the Manor had two ballrooms. Yes, Bruce also thinks that was excessive.) It’s dedicated to St. Michael, with side niches for statues of Our Lady and St. Joseph, and other saints along the walls/in the new stained-glass windows. He can’t keep the Eucharist there, of course, but there’s a Tabernacle built into the altar just to be thorough. Mass could be said there.

He also sets up outdoor Stations of the Cross in the Manor grounds, though that comes later. There’s landscaping and a path to take you through them. He prays the Stations every Friday.

Alfred is a practicing Anglican, BTW. He and Bruce have agreed to disagree, but they don’t hesitate to share their common ground. Alfred does make use of the chapel. (I believe St. Michael is his Confirmation saint here, actually. Which Bruce knew when he designed the chapel.)

When Dick comes along, he’s very much a non-denominational Christian. He was baptized and his parents read the Bible with him and taught him to pray, but living on the road didn’t give them a lot of formal religion. They did have informal services at Haly’s on Sundays, though.

Bruce didn’t want to push him (partly because he’s oversensitive to the idea of “making a kid go against his dead parents”), so he didn’t really actively try to convert him. Dick went to church with him or Alfred, growing up, and remained a believer, but I don’t think he had a deep or a formally religious spiritual life. He does have a great deal of respect for Bruce’s, though.

Then Jason came along.

Jason is a FIERCELY Catholic little Irish-American with a battered rosary he was given for his First Communion and a strong devotion to the Holy Family (because Catherine Todd was a deeply pro-life Catholic woman and raised her boy accordingly, and I will die on this hill). I’m not sure if he’s ever had an opportunity to be an altar server but I know he WANTS it. One of the first and biggest ways he and Bruce click is through their shared Faith.

Bruce has his own chapel! Bruce talks to him about religious things, and helps him get to Mass and the Sacraments, and signed up for regular serving duty at their parish! Bruce buys him saint books and listens to his half-articulate spiritual troubles and understands.

Bruce, meanwhile, is equally blown away by this tiny street child’s vehement love for Our Lady and the Blessed Sacrament and the beauties and stories of the Catholic Church, the way he clings to Holy Mother Church all the more for the absence of an earthly family, and how hungry he is for a stronger spiritual life. Bruce wants to give him everything.

Of course, Jason is far from a perfect child—he struggles with anger, anger which is founded in his hatred of suffering and injustice but which he doesn’t always know what to do with, or how to handle. He loves God deeply, but sometimes—especially as he starts maturing, becoming more and more aware of the world beyond his own life—he finds himself angry at Him, raging against the cruelty and injustice in the world and asking how? why? Why would You allow this?

On the whole, though, Jason is doing okay. He has Bruce, and he has his Faith. He’s confirmed at thirteen, a year after meeting Bruce, and he picks St. John Bosco as his patron saint. He prays to him for help in directing his passions to help the poor and vulnerable, rather than falling into anger and ill-will.

He doesn’t mention it to Bruce, yet, but as he keeps growing up he starts to feel like... maybe... he wants to be a priest? Maybe THAT’S what he’s supposed to do with his life? He keeps thinking about it...slowly, because it’s a Big Deal and he keeps doubting himself and he IS just fifteen, still, and having struggles with his temperament and the effects of of his past. But he keeps feeling more strongly like this is the right path for him.

And then he finds out his mother, who loved him and raised him and gave him everything he has, isn’t his mother. And he goes investigating this, because he has to, he has to know who his other mother is and if he can get to know her.

And then he is murdered, betrayed and and beaten, and still trying desperately to save the woman who sold him to the Joker.

(Jason Todd died a hero’s death and this is ALSO a hill I will die on.)

I haven’t figured out what quirk of the multiverse made Jason NOT 100% dead (the Lazarus Pit can’t bring back really-quite-sincerely-dead people or it would be way too OP and also HORRIFYING), but there’s something. Bat-Mite meddling? Superboy Prime punching the universe is dumb, but it’s DEFINITELY better than Talia stealing Jason’s corpse.

Anyway.

Quite frankly, at this point, Bruce’s faith is the only thing that keeps him sane.

He has his boy buried in the family cemetery, with the funeral Mass in the chapel.

He was really hoping one of his boys would be married there, first. Or even that Jason would say a Mass there, someday.

(He didn’t know Jason had thought about that too, but a parent hopes this kind of hope anyway.)

But no. Jason is buried. Bruce struggles with his own rage, and grief, and despair. He spends a lot of time in the chapel. ...Sometimes it helps.

And then little Tim Drake shows up, INSISTING that “Batman needs a Robin!” And things change again.

Tim (since this is focusing on the religious aspects of characters) is not Catholic. I BELIEVE he’s Protestant (don’t know which type), and likes starting debates with Bruce when things are too quiet. Bruce only engages sometimes, because when it gets too earnest he can be painfully reminded of his discussions with Jason—keep in mind, Jason is the first kid he really DID discuss religion with—and his childishly wholehearted Catholicism and Tim’s cheerfully stubborn Protestant opposition can make for a jarring contrast.

It’s good, though. Bruce doesn’t have anyone to share the fullness of his faith with, again... but that’s just one of the many smaller losses involved in his loss of Jason. He adjusts.

And Tim is earnest about his own faith, even if he doesn’t talk about it much to anyone other than Bruce and Alfred (who he knows also take Christianity seriously and will treat his views with respect). He doesn’t use the chapel as much as either of them—or even Dick, who grew up with it and goes there to pray or even just think things out whenever he’s in residence—but he does use the space sometimes, when he wants guaranteed quiet and a prayerful atmosphere.

He also somehow becomes church friends with Clark Kent, who as an archetypal Midwesterner is PROBABLY Protestant here.

Do he and Clark convert Kon between them? Again, PROBABLY.

...This is very long and it’s getting late, so I will stop here for now. I’d like to do another post on Red Hood and Damian and Bruce’s “death” at some point... we will see how that goes.

EDIT: Also, I forgot! Credit to @why-bless-your-heart for Protestant Tim—all I knew about Tim was that I didn’t know what to do with him, but her take was Good and so I have adopted it. But I should give credit where credit is due.