#since it's one of the things for Tim any way that sticks out compared to everyone else

[dragonofthestone]

[ngl I did very much consider making Kumo's tag twinkletoes]

[blackbirdsblackberries]

I saw your Anti Hero reader and man, it was really good. Since you asked in the post if family should be Yandere, I think you should. Just think about it, maybe Bruce (Maybe he's already a Yandere, maybe not) is forcing the kids to make you an "ally" (family member), so they start investigating and discover that you have a lot in common with them

Maybe your parents died and that makes Dick think you called Bruce dad, due to the absence of your own parents (he sees you as a version of him without Bruce).

Maybe Jason will find information about how you were abandoned and betrayed by your uncles, throwing you onto the deadly streets of Gotham (he wants to protect you so you don't end up like him).

Maybe Tim figured out that you wanted to be like Batman in the past, helping people, but you lost hope in his no-kill rule, and now he wants to bring you back to the right path (He thinks you're like him, deciding to use your life to help people, even if it's the "wrong" way).

And maybe Damian will find out that all the money you earned when you got paid and what you earned in your mercenary job, was donated to animal refugees AND children's hospitals, starting to see the good things his father sees in you (the little rascal is just jealous AND wants the same affection that you give to those children in the hospital).

Anyway This is just an idea I had, your post really inspired me so I wanted to share it with you and see what you think.

I hope you have a good day AND take care of yourself.

🍁Anon

Are you psychic? You have to be. I was thinking that while writing the mini story!!

Dick, once he digs deeper and figures out you're an orphan/your parents are shit, will immediately compare him as a child to you! So pure, untainted, energetic. You haven't seen the true ways of the world... (You have, he just wants to delude himself into thinking you haven't) He has to protect you from that. Plus, if you see Bruce as a father figure that makes Dick your big brother! Big brother's protect their little siblings, right? Have you not watched any shows with an older sibling? (No, all the ones with good sibling dynamics don't count. They're wrong.)

Jason's pity for you returns but in a different way. You were discarded onto the streets with no one to care for you due to some situation, you didn't deserve that. Jason would spiral from there; what would have happened if Joker saw you while you were on the streets and defenseless back then? Joker could have killed you like he did Jason! Whenever Jason fights someone and it has civilian casualties he'll start imagining it's you and will go absolutely feral. You won't protect yourself as well as you think you can, you're just a child! (You're in your late teens - early twenties but there's no need to mention that, he won't listen either way).

Tim's already done tons of research but the key bit of information sticks with him. He doesn't know why but it strikes a match that won't burn out. He can fix you, he can help you, he can be your support. You don't have to go down the path of killing, you can be good and save lives! Sure, you need his help and love but he's more than willing to give it to you (Delusional). If you're so much like him then that means you need him to help you! Just let him help you. Don't fight it.

Damian doesn't come around easily due to preconceived ideas. It's when he's made to follow you one night that he realizes how great you are, how you'd make a great big sibling. You would've entered an animal shelter to care for the animals in the morning then go to the children's hospital to volunteer during midday. He feels envious each day he watches you treat random kids as if they actually meant something to you. (Maybe they do, it's just best that Damian believes they don't).

[thezoe611]

Are Drake, Gosalyn, Launchpad, Max, Goofy, Scrooge, and Negaduck plotting revenge against Mortimer for everything he did to Tim?

Oh, sensitive topic. The thing is, for EVERYTHING Mortimer did to Tim - the mistreatment of the little boy, and keeping for himself the money that SHUSH gave him to take care of the child, for being in their "Protection System" - the mouse must have pay behind bars. BUT Scrooge wouldn't allow it, since he wanted Mortimer to pay back EVERY PENNY he used of Tim's money, and so he's forced to work at McDuck Tower, with almost all of the money from his salary going to the little boy. Only for that.

Mortimer is constantly watched by Felicia and other SHUSH agents, to ensure that he carries out his punishment. A single day of not going to work, that is not justified for some medical reason, and he would go straight to jail. Of course, that would enrage Mortimer, but with all the evidence that Darkwing and Launchpad collected against him, he would have no way of changing his situation, although he would always continue to blame little Tim, who already lived safe from him in St. Canard.

Because of his work, Darkwing and Launchpad could not be monitoring Mortimer, but they would constantly receive reports that that mouse is serving his sentence. This way, the hero would be calmer that justice was done.

Goofy… Oh, it's VERY hard to make Goofy angry, not without good reason. He is a very kind and understanding person… …But he would NOT like Mortimer. He already knew the mouse before because of his problems with Mickey, but he never expected him to hurt his own nephew. So… No, Goofy Goof would dislike Mortimer, and that's saying a lot about what a bad person that mouse is.

Negaduck considers Mortimer a coward, and that he is the type who gives villainy a bad name, but he wouldn't go after him or anything. He's not interested in him as long as he doesn't try something against Gosalyn and Max. If he did… well, angering the villain is never a good idea.

Obviously Gosalyn and Max HATE Mortimer. They hate that he hurt Tim to the point that the boy goes silent with fear if he is near him. They hate that he didn't take care of Tim. They hate that because of him, Tim freezes when he sees a can in the refrigerator, fearing that it was a beer, so the young couple would decide not to have any cans of drink there, for the child's sake. They hate that he was still free on the streets, even though he was constantly watched and had the bare minimum to survive, while he was forced to work to pay back all the money he stole from Timothy.

The mere idea of remembering everything that Mortimer did to little Tim caused both young parents a lot of fury, although Max could keep a cool head, unlike Gosalyn, who would always want to go take care of the adult mouse, indignant.

They hate him even more every time Tim makes a comment about his uncle. About some situation comparing it to his new life. The kid doesn't say those comments on purpose, so that they feel sorry for him or something. Simply because he trusts Gosalyn and Max, and that's why he confesses things like that without taking it into account.

For example, if Max asked Tim "why" he doesn't like cheese, the boy would answer honestly, without taking the weight of his words: "I like it in burgers from Hamburguer Hippo, but not alone, because one time I asked my uncle what was for dinner, and he got angry and put a cheese with white and green spots in my mouth, EUGH!" the boy would remember, stopping playing with his toys when remembering that incident. "It tasted sour and horrible, eugh! That's why I can't handle cheese alone anymore," he would admit, sticking out his tongue, disgusted.

…Obviously such a confession would leave Gosalyn and Max extremely still, stopping what they were doing. That would confuse little Tim, and even more so when he is wrapped in a strong hug from his parents. And although he was confused, the little one would smile, sad and happy, wagging his little tail.

Gosalyn and Max would discover things like that little by little. Little Tim's confessions of little things that happened because of Mortimer, which would make the young Goof-Mallard couple hate that guy FOREVER.

And even though they hate him, and even though they wish he would pay behind bars for what he did to Tim, and even though Gosalyn herself always felt like beating his face in, they would both endure the hatred and any desire for revenge, for the sake of Timothy. Despite everything, Mortimer was the boy's only living relative, and they didn't want to teach him about revenge.

Of course, they would do everything possible so that Tim NEVER met Mortimer again.

…Although I admit that there is something that I fear would happen, more than once: That Mortimer call Max from time to time, asking for a little money in exchange for a baby photo he found of his nephew. That he would bribe Max for extra money for things like that, since the Goof liked the little mouse, right?

Some people just don't learn.

[the-stove-is-divorced]

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

People see things differently, especially creators of stuff, so I'm wondering how you see your own writing? And if it was a metaphor what would it be? Or an object or something or anything that describe it?

Oh my goodness these are such interesting questions! You got me getting introspective! (o^ ^o)

I think my style generally exists as 2-3 general forms, two of them being incredibly similar, if not overlapping? I think in general it stays within these forms, because I actively seek to curate my style in these specific ways (tho if stop using one, it will get rusty). But for the whole curate thing, I look at other writing I like a lot to get into the mood of a certain style for specific fics! So in my eyes, I've got Comedic Style, Descriptive Anguish, and Voice Strong.

Comedic Style is exactly what it sounds like, it's when I want to try comedic fics with much sillier tones like with Metamorphosis which starts as a more horror-ish but quickly dissolves into silliness. I re-read authors whom comedic styles I adore, which is mostly cereal_whore on ao3! I adore their style! But I've diving so much into angst, I'm rusty with this style again. Ugh (ノ_<、). Still working on the next chapter tho.

Descriptive Style also what it sounds like, it's when I really try to dig deep into figuring out the best way to make physical sensations, more commonly pain 'cause I love angst, and really intense emotions feel almost palpable through descriptions alone. Like, comparing frustrations as a simmering pot that grew into a furious boil, something annoyingly unignorable like an unscratched, terrible itch!References I get for this style are a wide range of novels and fic alike. I even keep samples of styles I like to quickly skim through if that helps something flow better. Novels like "A Certain Hunger" by Chelsa G. Summers (a recent read of mine, I adore horror), or quotes from fics like "The sentence sits between them; decaying and astringent, Fushiguro unapologetically leaves it as such. Yuuji’s sure he’s been decomposing since he ate a corpse's finger."

Similar to this, and hopefully overlapping with the previous to make a fic feel good to me is Voice Strong, also sounds like what it is, haha! The character's mindset determines what their feelings get compared to, kinda like context, if that's the right word? I'm sure I'm over-explaining here, but I don't think I've described this before, since it's always been in my head? To me, it should always be a bit unreliable, a POV's always limited unless omniscient. I'm best at writing high intensity, like panic/stress because than character's actions are so much easier to understand and thus predict. If I can't guess their actions, I kinda can't continuing writing. And if I know their mindsets, I know what general arcs to keep in mind, so the plot can take any form while staying in general directions.

Like with it feels like we only go backwards , Steven 2.0 (human!steven) is pretty much on the verge of a very bad mental breakdown. Consequently, he is incredibly easy to predict and thus write for! It's easy to jump into his voice. It's kinda hard to describe, but he often repeats phrases like "you see?" and "he is kind" when he's really close to losing it because he's trying to cling to his denial as a (bad) coping mechanism. Chunks of him glorifying/romanticizing, for lack of better word, his own discomfort, distaste, or plain hostility, are split by the snippets of truth he can't ignore, like the fact he misses Pinko, or he's angry or he's tired. He repeats stuff alot, often trying to stick to the pedestal he's falling from, like "But perhaps, he hit a bit too hard, a bit too rough, because Steven Universe should be gentle, gentle, gentle, he knows, because he is nothing but gentle and kind, gentle and kind." He wants to be gentle, but in reality he's becoming more and more violent in this scene. Mf is just contradicting at all times. I love him so much. (´꒳`)♡

WOAH, this got really long. (」°ロ°)」 I hope I didn't chat your ear off, haha! But if I had to describe my writing, I'd say water? It can fit into any style if I really try, like water can take the shape of any container, but I try to keep it specific containers. Or, three specific directions to flow through, kinda like three diff rivers? If that makes sense! (・_・ )ゝI get incredibly frustrated when it doesn't move how I want it to (often), so it needs constant upkeep. Me writing is a million re-writes and edits plus scrapping entire chunks, like, constantly. It also has to feel right to be published. Like I have an entire draft of my body's in backwards sitting unpublished but that mf is not getting posted until it feels right. I may or may scrap it entirely. Again. (」＞＜)」

I guess another comparable object is like some kind of hedge/bush/etc I keep trimming for the perfect shape, but never quite looks right until it totally does. Which could take so damn long.

Hope that answered ya question!!! TYSM FOR ASKING (´,,•ω•,,)♡

[isfjmel-phleg]

Following up on my earlier concept of adapting Impulse as a sitcom, and expanding this to include parallel adaptations for the other YJ boys and a YJ crossover, here's how I would do it. Buckle up, this is going to get ridiculously long, although not fully comprehensive.

It starts with introductory feature-length films introducing each boy and serving as a sort of pilot of each of their series.

For Bart, an adaptation of the issues of The Flash in which he first appears and which end with his being sent to live with Max--but told from his perspective, which we don't really get in the comics. It would introduce him (with Dox the AI) in the VR he's hooked up to while his grandfather's lab studies experiments on? him. He doesn't know it's VR, so the audience doesn't either, but enough things are off for us to question--until finally the headset abruptly comes off and Bart meets Iris and has to deal with the real world for the first time that he can remember. They time-travel back to the twentieth century (it's the 90s! it's very important that this be set in the 90s), where Wally straightens out Bart's hyperaccelerated aging--and it's rather terrifying. There's friction between Bart and Wally, which builds as they have to work together and culminates in Bart's disgust with Wally for setting him up to be trained as a replacement and then leading him to believe that that honor has been taken away. Max and the other speedsters are introduced, and Bart's relationship with Max is set up (he's the only one with enough patience to put up with this kid) in a way that assures the audience that their partnership has potential, despite Bart's not wanting to leave Iris and move to Alabama.

For Tim, an adaptation of A Lonely Place of Dying and Rite of Passage, told from his perspective. The comics present Lonely Place from Bruce's and Dick's POVs, building up to introducing Tim as a reveal, but since this is Tim's story, we are with him from the beginning, and the details of his backstory are what gets revealed. We get to see his home situation, his loneliness (a parallel in some ways to what's going on with Bruce), and his longing for familial stability. The aftermath of Jason's death will set the scene, and Tim has to take the initiative to step out of his role as observer and get involved as the grief is affecting Batman's work. This leads to his becoming Robin and starting training, and the narrative returns to the issue of his family when his parents are kidnapped and his mother is killed. I think I would change the circumstances of these events, since the original story hasn't aged well, but the point should remain of the tragedy of Tim's losing his mother and almost losing his father, and the film would subtly compare his grief with Bruce's and leave Tim with a hard lesson: to take on this role, to enter this world is a noble calling but also a risk of opening oneself to tragedy.

For Kon, an adaptation of the Reign of the Supermen arc, told specifically from his perspective, starting at Cadmus and following him through the various misadventures of attempting to take on Superman's role as adults vie to exploit him. I wouldn't try to sanitize any of it; nothing about the interactions with Tana and Roxy would change, but the narrative would be more conscious that none of this should be happening, that our protagonist is mere weeks old in real-world experience. He's essentially a child celebrity, with all the problems that come with that status. We should see him as both the public "young egomaniac with raging hormones" persona and the alone and parentless clone who has no concept of looking after himself and no means of knowing who not to trust. The film ends with the aftermath of Superman's return, in which Cadmus explains Kon's origin (and I'm going to stick with the original, non-retconned version, just to be different) and arrangements are made for his future. The audience should be feeling more concerned than hopeful for him.

All three of the boys would then star in their own individual shows, each in a different style, but there would also be some crossover episodes, leading to adaptations of Young Justice in between seasons as a series of specials!

Impulse would be a sitcom.

Season 1 : #1-24, covers moving to Alabama through Bart's returning to the future with his mother. Arc: Bart's relationship with Max, and parental relationships in general.

Season 2: #25-49, covers Bart's misadventures in the future and return to Alabama through the reform school incident. Arc: Bart, Max, and Helen adjusting to being a family, with everything surrounding Morlo and Evil Eye as a major subplot.

Season 3: #50-67, covers the first encounter with Inertia through Mercury Falling. Arc: Thad's story.

Season 4: #68-78, covers losing Carol through the Apokolips incident. Arc: growing up.

Season 5: #79-89, covers Bart's resuming the mantle through a rewritten ending that better wraps up Max's and Thad's arcs and ties up all the loose ends. Arc: reunion!

Robin would be a soap opera/teen drama. The emphasis would be on Tim's struggles to maintain both sides of his life and how this impacts his relationships and personal well-being. We'd see a lot of the friction between him and his dad, the drama with his girlfriends (Ariana and, later, Stephanie), and his bonding with Alfred, Dick, and (less often) Bruce. Since this comic was so long-running, it would need to be condensed a bit, concentrating on the storylines that affect Tim most personally and streamlining some of the more involved tie-ins with Batman plots.

Season 1: assorted issues across Batman titles and the three Robin miniseries, covers Tim's training and earliest adventures as Robin, initial conflict with maintaining his secret when his dad wants to get more involved in his life, and an intro to Stephanie. Arc: relationship with his dad.

Season 2: #1-23, covers more early adventures as Tim becomes more confident as Robin and more integrated into the batfam through Tim's attending ninja camp as Alvin Draper and an averted separation of him and Ariana. Arc: relationship with Dick.

Season 3: #24-52, covers the death of Karl Ranck, the trouble ensuing from Ariana's trying to take the relationship to the next level, and ending with Tim going abroad on a mission and returning to Gotham in chaos after an earthquake. Arc: relationship with Ariana.

Season 4: #53-73, covers the Gotham earthquake aftermath, Stephanie's pregnancy, and Tim's getting stuck in No Man's Land and making headlines as a missing child. Arc: relationship with Stephanie.

Season 5: #74-100, covers boarding school, Tim's civilian identity outed to Stephanie, and the Drakes' reverse of fortunes, but ends on a hopeful note. Arc: relationship with Alfred.

Superboy would be like a Disney Channel show but off. The tone is light-hearted, but the content is deliberately at odds with how it's presented. For instance, during moments when Kon is reflecting on the trauma of the week, there might be the kind of musical cue that normally indicates a heart-to-heart talk that resolves the problem--except whoever he's talking to is dismissive or unhelpful--and he responds as if he's just had the heart-to-heart talk instead and everything is fine. None of the material is changed--Tana, Knockout, all the problematic stuff is still there, and the audience should feel disturbed.

Season 1: #1-30, covers arrival in Hawaii through the confrontation with Knockout. Arc: loss of innocence (such as it was).

Season 2: #31-49, covers Kon's begging Tana to take him back through his disappearance after the disastrous "event." Arc: meeting expectations.

Season 3: #50-74, covers his new life at Cadmus through Tana's death. Arc: growing up.

Season 4: #75-92, covers his coping with the loss of his powers through the breakdown after the Apokolips incident. Arc: loss.

Season 5: #93-100, covers the loss of Cadmus and Kon's brief homelessness through moving in with the Kents. Arc: family.

[1800nosleep]

Bird Song Headcanons

headcanons for lydie, vinnie and the rest of the main characters !!

warnings;; vinnie is vinnie, swearing, cig smoking and alcohol drinking, parent deaths, drug overdose (parents), child abuse, vinnie being the best older brother, normal outsiders warnings,

VINNIE

vinnie is so AHHHHHHH

best way to describe vinnie is malewife

he cooks, he cleans and he takes care of lydie

if im being honest, i based him off of darry if darry wasnt constantly on ponys case

but anyways

vinnie was born vincent frank rockwell on june 18th, 1945 in tulsa, making him twenty years old at the beginning of the story

he is older than lydie by four years

he works at a cafe on the west/northside and is a barista

he is a neutral greaser, he doesn't fight in rumbles but he hangs around Tim and Buck and Veranno (his hcs are further down)

vinnie has some pretty terrible childhood trauma, from witnessing his mother overdose from a prescription pill to his father beating him and lydie

he started smoking cigarettes at the age of twelve, he calls them cancer sticks and exclusively smokes menthols

he thinks they make him better than everyone else

70's! vinnie would absolutely love the doors, jimi hendrix and all of those artists/bands

70's! vinnie moves to california and tries to live out his hippie, stoner, runaway fantasies

anyways

vinnie is dating a neutral chick from the west/north side

maude monroe, a twenty-year bartender at buck's

vinnie and maude are always hip to hip when they're together

vinnie is absolutely obsessed with her

he helps her dye her hair platinum blonde and he will bend over backward to make her happy

that being said lets talk about maude

MAUDE

MAUDE IS A GIRLBOSS ICON

she was born lara monroe on february 7th, 1945 in New Jersey, to her single mother, who worked in a bar when maude was younger

maude had changed her name to maude in memory of her mother, maudie

she moved to tulsa after her mother passed and the idea of still living in Jersey made her stressed out

BUTTTT once she moved to tulsa she met vinnie and lydie at one of buck's parties

she dresses in a minimalistic greaser style

she adores marilyn monroe, audrey hepburn, bette davis, and all of the og girl bosses

she and vinnie have dressed up like holly and paul from breakfast at tiffanys for halloween at least twice since she has seen the film

maude and angela shepard are bffs

absolute besties

if maude isn't with vinnie, she is with angela

70s! maude and vin get married after they move to cali

70s! maude gets into very cringy and shitty horror/ thriller films and she dresses very similar to stevie nicks

maude and lydie defo smoke weed together

they hotbox in maudes and vins stolen chevy impala

anyways let's get to lydie

LYDIE

our main bae

alr first things first

bae is an angry, angsty sixteen yr old who was born on august 29th, 1949

she and vinnie have always been super close especially once their mother died

lydie is in tenth grade with ponyboy, she and pony have study sessions

anyways enough of that boring shit

lydie listens to nina simone, julie london, ella fitzgerald, billie holiday and most of the music greasers listen to (not saying that the greasers listen to nina, billie, or any of the people I listed )

lydie will say that she loves one song and then go back on that and claim she loves another song, she cannot decide what her favorite song is

her fav song is april come she will by simon and garfunkle

she is a very smart person, like she and pony are some of the smartest greasers regarding book smarts

she is definitely one of the more responsible greasers

she isn't respectful to authority but she is more kind to others compared to dallas for an example

anyways

she mostly hangs around pony and johnny with the occasional dallas and soda

SPEAKING OF DALLAS

she and dallas have full-on brawls

dallas will say something completely buck wild and she will fucking go off on him

throwing punches and slapping and just a full-on beatdown between the two at least until they're broken up

vinnie or darry pull them apart and make them apologize

lydie and dallas have a very complicated and complex relationship

lydie will say she absolutely fucking hates him

and dallas will be like "shes so wonderful"

its his mommy issues

its fine tho cuz ultimately they fall in love after a near death experience and lydie is like "nah im just in love with what he did" but in reality...

she is in love with him, period.

also read dallas' hcs right here

alright last but not least, lets talk about veranno

VERANNO

my sweet baby

veranno is literally the dirtiest and most raunchy greaser out there

he is always in and out of jail, constantly getting into arguments and fights, and he's never quiet

never a relaxing time with him

veranno was born veranno gerard bianco in new york on april 27th, 1945 making him twenty years old

he is an orphan who was never adopted or cared for

he hangs around anywhere, in alleys, in ditches, in vans

he is everywhere

he mostly hangs around vinnie and his friends when he isnt in jail

like dallas, he has been in jail for squatting and breaking in several times

lydie writes to him all the time, especially when his stay is longer

he travels a lot, he visits nevada and arizona a lot, just to get away from tulsa

regarding what music he's into, he exclusively listens to chuck berry, elvis, and all of those fifties artists

he makes fun of people when he overhears them listening to bob dylan, the beatles or simon and garfunkle

he thinks they are "pussy musicians"

lydie will defend them so hard

dallas is very jealous of veranno and literally no one knows why

most people think it's because of lydie and how close veranno is to her

but dallas will deny it every time its brought up

anyways

last but not least

veranno has a big soft spot for children

when he was a teenager (13-15)

he babysat this rich families children and these children changed him

he treated them like they were his own

i luv veranno sm

thank you for reading !!

likes and reblogs are appreciated

pls do not steal my work or repost it anywhere as for that is plagiarism and that my friends is a crime !!

[brokenrobot2004]

DeerHead EMC-V2

My 3D printer is probably done for good (or for a very long time) after I've looked into it's situation further and tried a few more things to get it functional again, but I wanted to keep working on this robot so bad that I'd gotten corrugated plastic, and paperboard to try and do a cleaner recreation of it's original form, in something that won't collapse beneath itself; I think it's working awesome so far, currently any problems I'm experiencing are now due to my own design flaws, one pesky servo (One for the in-and-out movement of the back right leg that seems over-greased, even after I'd tried to clean alot of it off which was maybe a dumb idea but it was worth a shot; it can move, but moves very slow and often if I try to make it move too far from it's last position, too fast instead of easing into it slowly, the power surges), and my servo controller being quite noisy, leading to it having jitters that sometimes get so bad they make the Arduino reset; if there's no way to get to the bottom of that without replacing the controller, I feel like I probably will eventually just because it seems like this one (PCA9685) isn't really supported at all anyways compared to other controllers out there and I've already thought of replacing it earlier on in the project but wanted to power through! I think it's good enough to work on for the time being though :] though at the same time, the animations I'm doing are being based in Tim's Servo Program, which is written in binary specifically for this controller; meaning if I got a new one, it better be early on and not after I've done most of, if not all of the core animations! (Sitting, standing, walking and turning, walking at different speeds, anger, sadness, excitement, fear, kicking ball and other ball-related interactions, things along those lines; just baseline animations!)

I only have one picture for now, taken with my ultra-HD 4K 10 million billion trillion megapixel laptop camera XD I took another one, but the stupid camera app seemed to eat it, since it wasn't in the gallery. He's way more chihuahua-like in head shape now too, featuring big floppy ravioli ears like little puppy chihuahuas have in particular ^_^ which wasn't entirely intentional, but because they turned out that way I think it's super cute so I'm happy with it anyways! I tried to make a walking animation for him, which I filmed, but the video has my face in it; I may censor my face and upload it to YouTube sometime, alongside the video there is of EMC-V1 walking; which surprisingly, turned out better than when I made this iteration walk which I'm a little worried about ,':1c I actually think that's soley because I didn't remember to make the dog enter a slightly-crouching stance to take it's steps, like an Aibo does, which was written right on my sketchbook but I was too tired to have skimmed past it because by the time I was finished actually building the new body, it was very late O_o'

Epic laptop camera moment!!! Surely you can comprehend the writing through those like, five pixels? Looks like it was taken on a 3DS, the bloody thing! ToT Anywho, that's the scoop on DeerHead for tonight!! I'm hoping I'll get him to successfully move around without help soon, but if not, I feel like I should get a servo controller that's more specifically meant for projects like this and have software to work with, or compatible Blender add-ons (Robotics and Blender working as one?! I'd nearly want to jump for joy if I got to use that kind of workflow!!) anyways; then I wouldn't have to deal with those rather nasty jitters too, and only having the servos rapidly jerk through the basic frames of animation because I don't currently know if there's a way I can make smoothing happen on Arduino, and I'd otherwise have to boot up the raspberry Pi and stick the animation into there, and be at the mercy of it working.. Actually, the more I think about this process, the more I want to get a new servo controller XD I'm going to look into that a little bit!

[nightwolf14292]

I understand this view point!

Personally I've always thought of Tim in that way because with Dick, Bruce tried to shield him from his work but he asked to be Robin (and up until he Two-Face incident he truly enjoyed it) when he found out that Bruce was Batman, same with Jason (who also enjoyed it despite being more violent, what with the whole 'Robin gives me magic' thing) , and Damian fought for the role (though I do agree he's the most similar to Tim in the lack of choice aspect, he does seem to enjoy being Robin though from what I've read).

Tim definitely was excited about the prospect of being Robin, since Batman was one of his heroes, but I did always get the feeling that that childish wonder had worn off pretty quickly when he was faced with a Bruce that was double traumatized from Jason's death. Yeah Tim first went into it thinking "Wow, this is one of my heroes! I can help him out and save Gotham just like him!" But I think over time it became more of a codependent relationship, with Bruce projecting Jason's (and Dick's since they weren't on good terms at the time) image onto Tim to cope, and Tim loving Bruce because he was neglected by his parents and got Bruce's attention by being Robin.

I always visualized him becoming Robin as like a half-choice thing. Because on one hand yes, he did technically have the choice to become Robin, but he felt like he had to because he was stalking Bruce, and therefore he was the only one seeing that Bruce was starting to go off the deep end. He had it fully in his mind that Bruce needed a Robin, and since Dick wouldn't become Robin again, he was the only one who fill the Robin role without threatening Batman's identity. So he felt like he had some sort of responsibility.

And that's also why I don't think he had as much of a choice to get out either, because even after that initial excitement had worn off he could completely see how much Bruce needed a Robin to balance him out, and it probably would've affected him even more negatively had he left. But I do think the fact that after his parent's death he made up a fake uncle purely to keep from getting adopted by Bruce sort of showed how he didn't necessarily want to stick around at the time (Though I suppose you could also chalk that up to him just not wanting another father figure at that moment)

Really I do compare it to the situation with Dick, mainly because they were similar.

Bruce fired Dick as Robin after he kept getting hurt, and Dick went out soul searching and, with Superman as a guide, decided that he loved helping people and chose to take up a new title.

Dick fired Tim as Robin after he decided Damian would make a better sidekick (because he thought of Tim as more of an equal), and Tim basically had a mental breakdown, started going on more secretive, dangerous missions out to random places, and dedicated nearly all of his time to trying to prove Bruce wasn't dead while everyone around him thought he was nuts for it.

I always got the impression that out of all of them, Tim was kinda the one that being a vigilante had the biggest consistently negative effect on. Consistently being the key word, since being a vigilante wasn't good for any of them lol

I think he enjoys what he does now, but I think it's really bad for him. And I think he goes through highs and lows, highs where he enjoys saving people and working as a vigilante, and lows where he doesn't enjoy it as much and does it out of obligation that he feels.

But hey, I haven't actually read many comics myself and most of my knowledge is what I read on the wiki + fandom stuff, so maybe that's not very canon 🤷

Your take is totally valid too :D

As much as I love TimKon, I prefer TimBern and it's mainly because of this:

“Bernard says I sacrifice myself like it's a bad thing.”

“But it's all I've ever known.”

“All that my family has ever been taught.”

Tim, out of all of the BatFamily members is the one that never really had a choice.

Bruce had a choice to become Batman. He almost retired, until things went badly again and he realized how much more awful Gotham would be if he did.

Dick had a choice to become Robin. When Bruce fired him he could've finished college and lived a normal life, but he chose to continue on as Nightwing.

Jason had a choice to become Robin. And while his mind had been messed with after being dunked in the Lazarus Pit, he had a choice to become Red Hood, too.

Damian had a choice to become Robin. He fought hard for the role, and seems to genuinely enjoy doing it.

Tim didn't have a choice to become Robin. Yes, no one actually forced him into the role, but he saw what had happened to Bruce after Jason's death (such as how he became more violent), and knew that Bruce needed a Robin to keep himself sane. He tried going to Dick, but Dick said the best he could do was help as Nightwing as he wasn't willing to be Robin again. So Tim felt like he had to take up the role, because Batman, his greatest hero, would lose it if he didn't.

Tim also didn't have a choice to give up being a vigilante, unlike the others. When he got replaced as Robin, Bruce was trapped in time and everyone but him thought he was dead. He didn't have Dick's experience of going out soul searching and deciding that being a hero was what he wanted in life, he had to almost immediately take up a new secret identity and start going on missions so he could find out what happened to Bruce.

I love TimBern so much, because Bernard is Tim's connection to civilian life. If you're a hero dating a hero, even when you're being civilians and doing civilian things, there's always going to be the knowledge of who you both are really, and the missions you've been on together (Such as Tim looking at Kon and remembering things like when he tried to clone him because he was ‘dead’). I feel like with Bernard, Tim can be a full on civilian and forget about the hero life for a while, and that makes it special.

Also I just think Bernard is neat :3

[astrologista]

i hate to say it but all bruce does these days is whineeeee. which i feel like is antithetical to how i understand him as a character. like yes, he broods and he does obsess, but he doesn’t really whine unless some of the time if only alfred is there to witness it lol.

like, fr. i haven’t really been keeping up with comics, so maybe i’m off base with some of this, but here’s what it looks like from the outside

bruce’s relationship with dick is under-served or just basically ignored, when they do bring it out, it’s only for very quick angst fuel then right back to business like they don’t know each other at all

bruce accepting jason back into the family was rushed and handled by sub-par writing which didn’t support the emotional gravitas that said reunification should have involved. i’ve seen a lot of fics that did it way better than what they did. it feels shoe-horned. also, why is bruce tacitly rubber-stamping jason as batman-affiliated when he’s still using GUNS? like WHAT. how does that make any sense. do bruce’s emotional boundaries matter at all? does everything have to be jason’s way or the highway? bruce is notoriously stubborn. much as he loves jason, i can’t see him letting that slide IF this were to work. DON’T SKIP OVER THE IMPORTANT CHARACTER WORK. like, set up the foundations and then build on top of that. don’t just jump to the payoff and try to walk things back as you go! it’s lazy and shows where editorial mandate stymied good storytelling. and there are way more issues with it that i have than just that. of course i love to see bruce and jason caring about each other and getting along as much as the next fan but the way they chose to go about it raises SO many questions

tim who?

no tim has been flanderized so fucking bad. actually he’s been transformed more into the fandom-lite version of himself, which i do kind of hate. oh yeah, he’s with bernard now. WHOOP TEE DOO! the fans have been clamoring for that pairing for years i’m sure.

there have been an assortment of good-to-middling damian comics since the 2010s as at least some writers seem vaguely interested in that dynamic with bruce but for every 2 mildly tolerable issues they drop one that’s got fucking jack shit bonkers writing in it and relies on only the most tired of “U LIED TO ME” tropes. nothing will compare to the tomasi 2011 batman and robin run and that was like the single decent output of the new 52 and the best thing dc has released in years. i’m right

among the newer characters they’ve released, it’s sad that they never really seem to... stick? PLEASE INVEST IN SOMEONE. more duke! more harper! more LITERALLY ANYONE!

bring the fun back to comics. where’s the storytelling. decide whether you want to create a new shitty joker and/or riddler iteration, or a new army of jokers and/or riddlers and/or scarecrows. or just create a new poo poo shitty villain of the week who will age like milk. why not have one based on social media. that’s a new one that i’m sure no one will ever see coming.

STOP SOFT REBOOTING EVERY ISSUE. we know, you’re going to start the next new groundbreaking run, take everything back to basics so nobody is confused, bring on the new readers with this cool new jumping on point, simple just batman alfred and the joker with juuuust enough of a new “modern” twist to it to differentiate it from the thousands of other times you did this. great job dc. doing great. when you’re done with that let’s do another mass cataclysm event across 20 books. im sure people will want to collect all those variant covers.

and i love how there are SO many fics that do it so, so, so much better. jesus fuck. and fic writers aren’t even being PAID! we’re not even being PAID!!

so, yeah, i’m kind of done with comics for time being. i’ve been dabbling in anime and games again, getting back to roots, but so far, it’s mainly been independent web content free of advertisers, executives, editorial and other bullshit that’s caught my fancy lately. the artistic freedom is really needed to tell a good story now. the multiverse / soft reboot / re-configure the universe every year bullshit that marvel popularized has infiltrated, like, everything, as well as the netflix model of “let’s cancel immediately after season 1”. there is no buildup. there is no excitement. there is no story. mba’s and boardrooms do not understand “story”. they don’t know what creativity is. they know what numbers, profits, engagement look like, and they are optimizing for that curve. i do not know why they are shocked when that curve sinks lower and lower every year. i just simply do not understand.

im so mad. kevin conroy’s dead and we’ll never get something like b:tas ever again. media has been my life since i was a baby. so i have to find some kind of stories to try to enjoy even if i have to eke it out in the margins of society lol

[rainydaysandhappydays]

Basic creepypasta headcannons

(A/N: I am still new to the cp sphere. So feel free to drop by and tell me some things I don't know. I'll be happy to see what the community thinks!)

(2nd A/N: I know I'm spelling Maskey's name "wrong" but I've spelt it that way for years when I first heard about CPs when I was a kid. I'm not changing it now. So from now on Maskey has an e in his name.)

Basic Appearance

SlenderMan is 14'9" (~454 cm) and looks to be what can equate a real life stick figure. Just pull a normal stick figure out like taffy and you'll get Slender. He does actually have a mouth but he always has it hidden. For the simple fact that it's 1 terrifying as FUCK. And 2 because it actually kinda hurts a little having it open. As he has to tear open his face skin to open his mouth at all. And even worse is that his mouth is the size of, like, half his head. He could easily chomp a small child in half with how large his mouth is.

Laughing Jack is 9'6" (~292 cm) and is lanky af, but not nearly as much so as Slender. His arms are ridiculously long. And his nails are several inches long as well. (Think Edward Scissor Finger type hands) So if he stood completely upright with his arms by his sides, he would be nearly touching the floor with his nails. That's how long he is. (Don't worry tho. He can easily cut them to be a far more manageable length. They just grow ridiculously quickly so he will have to keep an eye on that if he ever gets into any sort of relationship where he's not harming the other.)

Eyeless Jack is 7'5" (228 cm) and is Large. Like buff, wide, and thiccc. Boi looks like he could body a car and win. Though he hides most of it under his baggy af clothes and his surprisingly bad posture.

Brian/Hoodie is 6'3". (192 cm) Compared to Tim he is on the thinner side, but still has plenty of muscles. He may seem a bit lanky at first but don't let his baggy hoodie fool you. He can still deck the halls better than any Christmas song. If you ever manage to see him without his iconic hoodie on, be prepared to see his fantastically sculpted arms. They aren't super thick or beefy, but they are dense and hard. With a few veins along them.

Tim/Maskey is 6'0", (182 cm) DILF. Straight out. Has a small belly, but it looks tasteful on his bodytype. He looks like he could pick up damn near anyone for one of the best hugs ever. Too bad he's too much of an ass to use that blessing often.

Puppeteer is also 6'0". (182 cm) He honestly looks similar to those nerds in movies. Not the ones with brick thick glasses, but the ones that look frail and thin with an odd hunch in thier backs. Yeah, he's like that. Though in what can be considered a compromise for his weak looking built, he is ridiculously flexible. He doesn't use the ability all that often, be he could rival some contortions out there.

Toby is 5'11" (181 cm) and almost looks smaller than he is. If you saw him at a distance you would probably think he was just a regular kid running about. But as soon as you see him up close he looks like a full grown German Shepard. Big, tough, and ready to snap someone in half if deemed necessary. He acts like one too, with his constant need for attention, affection, and touch. He really is a hell of a puppy.

Helen/Bloody Painter is 5'10". (180 cm) The only reason why he's so tall is because his body just wouldn't stop growing when he was a teen. The rest of him is thin and gangly. He looks to be slightly malnourished and has intense bags under his eyes. Looks damn near ready to die at any moment in time. Especially since he is naturally very stoic. (Don't let that fool you into thinking he doesn't have the emotions he just shows them in extremely subtle ways that you have to learn to understand at all.)

Jeff is 5'9" (179 cm) with the body of a swimmer. Which is odd because he doesn't swim all that often. But he does run a hell of a lot and swing his knife around even more. So he has long and hard muscles coating his entire body. He is constantly bragging that he looks better and more durable than some of the other creeps.

Basic world

The proxies can only read the minds of people that also have the mark of SlenderMan on them. Maskey's mark is on the back of the neck near the base of his skull. Hoodie's mark is on his sternum near his diaphragm. The solar plexus area. Toby's is on his spine on his lower back. Kate's is in the space between her collar bones. The mark is mostly small enough that it's not immediately noticeable, but it is still very much there and can never be hidden or removed. Like with makeup or tattoo removal surgery or anything like that. The marks are permanent. Even after death.

When Hoodie fell out of the window, he didn't actually die. He got so close that he could feel his heart beat it's last few beats before he came back. Not fully as an undead but more of someone that didn't die when they were supposed to. Sort of like those stories of people being recursitated after an extremely traumatic experience. However that gave him extreme trauma over death and the feeling of dying. He will do whatever it takes to never feel that experience again. He has night terrors about it sometimes and the only one that is ever able to calm him down after one is Maskey/Tim.

The story I'm using for EJ is that he was pulled into the cult when he was in collage and unfortunately was thought to be "the chosen one" bc he was really good at p much everything he tried. So all of his friends he made betrayed him and tied him down to an alter. Proceeded to scoop out his eyes with a burning rod, and then tear his torso open to eat his organs. And that's why his eyes now after his transformation are always leaking a hot viscous black fluid. It's the forever remains of his original eyes. Also why he can only eat human organs and nothing else. Another harsh reminder of what he went through. He was only 23 at the time.

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Reverse batfam headcanons please centred on dickiee

i think about this entirely too often but yes yes of course.

languages were simultaneously the most simple and most complex thing dick had ever encountered in his long nine years of living. everyone in circ d’caleé spoke multiple different languages, and they'd lived in each other's shoes for so long that the travelling troupe developed their own little language, a mixture of everything and anything that could be understood. in addition to that, everywhere they went, dick picked up local dialects and accents with a tip of a hat and flip of his feet. of course, that made it a bit difficult to properly communicate when he had to live with the waynes. while bruce, tim, and jason could speak a smattering of other languages, english was what they defaulted to first and foremost. damian was fluent in both arabic and nepali first and formost, those just happened to be two languages that dick didn't speak very fluently. cassandra was just now getting the hang of spoken language with a bit of sign language thrown in. so the first few months of dick's shiny new home in wayne manor, everyone fumbled around words and phrases and vague gestures until they settled into hesitantly speaking french and attempting to convince dick to learn fluent english.

jason didn't like having a younger brother, he didn't. especially since that little brother was dick grayson. after all of the heartbreak and loss and weight of malediction bruce had lived with his entire life, jason could almost proudly say that he was one of the few people in the world to drive bruce out of his head, to get him to smile while taking jason out for ice cream, to sit him down and watch football with him, to make him laugh. and then here comes this upstart little brat who couldn't keep both feet on the ground for the life of him and thought football was actually soccer and who could make bruce laugh like it was fuckin' easy. who could so easily clamber up bruce's shoulders for a hug and beam as bruce ruffled his hair and sob into bruce's chest in the middle of the night when everyone was supposed to be asleep. jason had spent years coaxing bruce out of his shell, step by painful step, and dick made it happen with two backflips and a cheeky pun. it made jason's blood boil, the way dick never appreciated what he had, what he could do. the brat had taken to following him around, both in the cave, staring with awe as jason went through training routines, and in the manor, hopping into an armchair and asking jason to read a book aloud for him. it was irritating, just like it was irritating when dick popped jason's latest baking experiment into his mouth and loudly exclaimed how utterly delicious it was, just like it was irritating when dick dragged him to the aerial set bruce had installed in the batcave and asked him to watch his new routine. no matter what the rest of jason's stupid family said, dick was definitely not growing on jason. they could take their smiles and coos over the two "babies of the family" and shove them up their asses.

dick didn't understand why exactly bruce was so overprotective over the smallest things. he never let dick travel anywhere alone, regardless if it was as far away as france or as close as the one gelato place left in gotham. it was so unfair, because dick heard that bruce let jason run off to ethiopia of all places, and only went after him because cass had told bruce about it the minute jason left. he never let dick hang out with his friends, no matter how much dick asked to have a sleepover at wally's or go hang out with donna. on the rare occasions he said yes, they were only allowed to come to the manor. it was unreasonable, because bruce let tim run wild with young justice, despite the stories of tim going crazy after everyone in his team had died. tim wasn't crazy, as far as dick could tell, just a little paranoid and high-strung. also everyone on his team was alive, so dick didn't know what roy was talking about. cass didn't really want to go out anywhere, preferring to stick in gotham with her and tim's friend stephanie, but she had free reign over the city! and dick wasn't allowed to fight any major threats by himself at all. damian had battled deathstroke at his age, and dick was pretty sure damian was still in contact with the league of assassins, but dick couldn't even fight penguin with bruce insisting he be there for backup. he was so overprotective it made dick's blood boil.

being around dick physically hurt tim sometimes. not the crass (yet still somehow funny?) jokes jason made about dick jumping into body-slamming hugs and crash landing into laps so fiercely that even tim could feel it. but it hurt,,,,emotionally, so to speak. dick was just,,,,,dick was so much like stephanie, it ached. to be more specific, stephanie before. steph before she'd desperately bid for bruce's attention and landed herself at black mask's feet for her troubles. steph before the power tools dug her life away bit by bit until she was just gone. steph before she'd come back with green eyes and rage splitting at the seams of her scarred skin. steph before she realized that black mask had killed her and put tim in a wheelchair for the rest of his life for trying to avenge his best friend, and bruce had done next to nothing. tim would sit in his clocktower and force a smile onto his face as dick rambled on and on about the most meaningful of meaningless things, as dick shoved new foods he'd never tried before into his face, as dick laughed loud and bright and clear, trying to forget a time when steph would do the same. she smiles now, grabs lunch with him and cass, wakes up on days when there isn't any green in her vision, but she'll never be who she used to. and tim prays that there never comes a day when dick ends up like her.

dick feels,,,,,isolated sometimes, compared to the rest of his new family. or no, maybe isolated isn't the right word. set apart, maybe, or differentiated. both damian and cass had spent their lives being beat and broken and put back together supposedly stronger than before until they were almost wiped away entirely. steph and jason had both grown up poor and hungry and flinching back from their fathers, bending under gotham's merciless weight. (then steph had died, and come back worse than ever imagined.) tim had grown up lonely, had learned to fend for himself, had turned his name into a half-revered, half-feared whisper even when his legs were taken from him. maybe dick could have related a bit to bruce, but bruce had put himself through so much hardship and so much suffering in an attempt to keep himself from ever being hurt again. in contrast, dick hadn't gone through nearly as much. he'd been happy before the circus came to gotham, happy and cared for and loved. but that didn't mean he couldn't still help. he could sit and listen as they raged, because their anger couldn't touch him; he had no part in it. he could coax out smiles from their stone walls and laugh enough for all of them put together. he could take a name that had previously only been associated with death and heartache and turn it into the light and joy of gotham. he could dust the stillness from the curtains and breathe life back into wayne manor. and that, for him, was enough.

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @bikoncon @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @comics-observer

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Into The Unknown, Part 9

First

Previous

It was kind of weird how quickly they got acclimated to civilian life.

Sure, Marinette often came out of the day with way too much energy, but they could burn off most of it by sparring. A ten to twenty minute session a day (excluding warm ups and cool downs, which added another thirty minutes or so) was enough to maintain their physiques and get rid of the uncomfortable energy that came with the sudden loss of constant danger in their lives.

(Not that this Gotham wasn’t dangerous, but it was… markedly less so. The Rogues Gallery didn’t exist in this world, what with Batman not existing, so the only thing that they really had to fear was mob activities and the occasional mugging. As long as they kept their noses clean and never stopped to tell a person the time, there was no reason for them to be scared.)

Other than that… it was almost too easy to get used to the new life that they lived.

Marinette woke up first in the mornings for work and would take care of Damian while she got ready. Tim had baby duty for the nine hours a day she was at work and commuting, so it was the least she could do.

And, really, he wasn’t all that difficult now that she was starting to get the hang of the whole baby thing.

Damian was trying to mimic her -- anticipatory socialization, she was pretty sure it was called (Or was it imprinting? Observational learning? Damn it, her psych major was not coming through for her right then). She found it cute and it was completely normal so she was perfectly fine encouraging it: she had gotten him mini versions of all of her makeup brushes.

One time, though, this backfired on her: he had dipped one of the cheap makeup brushes she’d gotten him into her makeup when she wasn’t looking and applied it to his face.

Marinette glanced down -- he had been quiet for too long, never a good thing -- and gasped. “Dami, you can’t whitewash yourself!”

Damian looked up at her, eyes wide with confusion.

She tried not to pout because he might take it wrong. Why must her best jokes always come to her when no one was around to hear?

“Don’t touch the powder stuff, please. It's not for babies, it's for grown ups.”

Damian frowned and looked down at his brush. She gently took it from him and worked at getting the makeup out.

When she gave it back to him he still seemed a little sad.

She sighed and gave him a short hug. “I’m not mad. I promise. It’s just… not your color!”

(The real reason was that makeup is very expensive, but kids don’t really understand money so she needed an excuse.)

Damian was still a little pouty. She didn’t know what to do. Damn. She supposed that served her right. She shouldn't have dared to think that she was getting the hang of having the whole ‘having a baby’ thing.

She sighed and looked down at him for a few moments, thinking. He was sitting in the high chair they kept him in when both of them were too busy to hold him. Usually he would be swinging his legs back and forth like a toddler -- probably because he was a toddler -- but now he was remarkably still, green eyes wide as he looked up at her.

She glanced at the time. Damian had woken her up early that morning, so she had extra time to get ready…

Marinette pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the internet.

… hm. Makeup could be toxic to babies. Good to know.

She grabbed one of her makeup wipes and scrubbed it from his face. She’d make sure to tell Tim so he could look out for any rashes the kid might get.

Then, she pulled out a comb and started brushing the tiny curls on Damian’s head. There wasn’t much, so it was mostly just dragging against his scalp, but the kid seemed pleased so she kept doing that for a few minutes.

At one point, he tried to take the comb from her. She allowed it, figuring he wanted to try and brush his own hair, but then he reached for her.

She leaned down to take him out of the chair, she was mostly done getting ready anyways, but instead he started trying to brush her hair.

… oh.

She felt, strangely, like crying. Her kid -- sorry, this kid -- was just so cute.

… but she didn’t want to mess up her hair...

He made a vague whining sound and she was weak.

She could always fix her hair on the train or something, she supposed.

She hesitantly leaned down so he could brush her hair. “Fuck it? I guess?”

“Fuck it,” Damian said, giving a short nod.

She groaned internally. “I’m actually going to have to stop swearing, aren’t I?”

“Fuck it!” Damian said again, louder this time.

Her lips twitched. “You’re so right, Dami. Who cares about a few little swears?”

“I do,” said Tim, who was apparently standing in the doorway.

She yelped. She probably would have flinched away if Damian hadn’t managed to make a giant knot in her hair in the few seconds that she had let him touch it.

She turned and sent Tim a weak smile. “You’re up early.”

He rolled his eyes. “Please stop teaching him swears.”

“I mean… it’s kind of funny, though.”

“It’s not.”

Marinette groaned overdramatically and turned to look at Damian. “He’s such a stick in the mud, amiright?”

“Sti-in-mu,” Damian said, nodding.

Tim huffed. “I’m starting to think he likes you better.”

“As he should,” Marinette said. She picked up the baby and nuzzled her nose against his. “Who’s a smart baby? You are!”

Damian giggled and tried to nuzzle her back.

~

Tim hummed as he went around the apartment, sweeping the floors. He and Marinette had come to a kind of unspoken agreement: he would do the cleaning, and she would do the cooking. It was only fair, since Tim’s standards for cleanliness were higher than hers and she was the only one out of the three people there that was physically capable of cooking an edible meal.

(Yes, he was aware that he was comparing his cooking skills to that of a baby. It was accurate, okay?)

Damian crawled along after him. He was trying to help, Tim was pretty sure, swatting the floor behind where Tim was cleaning...

Tim smiled. Maybe he should get the kid some fake cleaning supplies like Marinette had done with all of her makeup brushes. Would he like that? Only one way to find out, he supposed. He found the grocery list and wrote it down.

When he turned back to where he had left Damian -- which, he reminded himself, he shouldn’t be doing, because the kid was surprisingly fast when it came to trying to get himself killed -- and found the kid…

Holy shit.

He was walking.

Tim watched with a bright smile as Damian struggled to his feet and took a few steps towards him.

It didn’t last long. Damian had only really managed about three steps before he fell back to his knees and crawled the rest of the way. But…

Tim made a slightly embarrassing squealing noise in the back of his throat and leaned down, scooping the baby up in his arms and hugging him close. He couldn’t seem to wipe the smile off of his face.

“Look at you! Walking! Oh my god! Oh my god oh my god oh my god!”

Damian was blinked up at him in wide-eyed confusion.

Tim leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the top of the kid’s head and refused to pull back until he had calmed down a little.

He smiled down at his younger brother, who looked delighted at the attention but also very confused as to what was going on.

He looked around until he found Kaalki, who had been on his phone doing… horse things? God things? Who cares?

“Please tell me you took a video of that.”

“Nope. I did get a picture of you kissing his forehead, though.”

Tim huffed a little. “Delete that.”

“Too late. Already sent it to Marinette.”

Even this wasn’t enough to dampen his mood.

And Tim knew that the fact that Damian was walking had almost nothing to do with him, but he was proud, damn it. Or maybe the better way of saying it was that he was happy for the kid? He didn’t know, he had always been terrible with emotions. It was a good emotion, though, that much he was sure of.

He kissed Damian’s forehead again and smiled when the baby giggled at him and reached out, smushing his cheeks in his hands.

“Hello,” Tim struggled to say with the baby hands pressing in on his face.

“Nano,” Damian said.

“Close enough,” he said. “Want to watch some TV to celebrate?”

Damian nodded vigorously. Tim wondered, vaguely, if the kid understood what he was saying or if he just kind of gave answers when he knew that Marinette and Tim were asking him things.

Didn't matter. Tim would put on that one weird show with the talking cat that Damian liked and they could watch that until Marinette got home.

And, when she did, she practically ran over. She didn’t even take off her shoes, a sure sign that she was excited.

Damian looked away from the TV and smiled. “Mar-ree.”

Marinette’s mouth dropped open for a second… and then curled into a bright smile.

“You’re so… cute!” She cooed. “Yes! Hi! Good to see you, Dami!”

Tim pouted, slightly jealous.

She seemed to notice because she stuck her tongue out at him. “You got to see his first steps and I didn’t. I deserve this.”

He disagreed. The pout on his face remained until Damian saw and twisted around in his lap, leaning up and wrapping his arms around his neck in a kind of hug. Because it was kind of hard to stay sad when he was doing that.

He hugged the kid back for a few moments and then drew back, planting a kiss on his nose.

Marinette hesitated.

“Can I… have him for a few minutes? I want to see him walk.”

Tim considered this.

Then he smiled. “Only if I can take a video.”

“I would have made you do it, anyways,” she said.

Tim chuckled softly and handed the baby over so they could take the video.

~

She slipped into the apartment after a long day of work.

Tim was fluffing the pillows, apparently out of apartment to clean.

Damian looked up from the pillow he was hitting at the sound of the door clicking closed, and he seemed to light up. He grabbed Tim’s hand with one hand for his attention and pointed at her excitedly with the other.

“Nano! Yanzur! Mar-ree!”

“Yeah, that’s Mari,” Tim agreed.

Marinette flexed her feet now that they were out of the god-forsaken heels that she had been wearing.

“Hi, Dami. How was your day?” She asked.

Damian didn’t understand the question and certainly didn’t know enough words to respond, but he seemed sated by the acknowledgement of his existence. He slowly slid off of the couch and started his way over to her.

Marinette smiled faintly, amused. She looked over at Tim while she waited for him to get to her.

“So… he told you to look at me, that I get… but what is a ‘Nano’?”

“That’s what he’s calling me now, I think,” Tim said, slightly flushed.

She blinked. “That… isn’t even close to your name.”

“I know,” he said, shrugging helplessly.

Her lips twitched. “Maybe he’s calling you short.”

Tim threw the pillow he had been fluffing at her.

She let it hit her -- it was a pillow, it wasn’t like it would hurt -- and then stuck her tongue out at him. “Don’t blame me! I’m but an innocent bystander in this! He’s the one that did it!”

Damian tugged on the fabric of her shirt. She looked down, a grin still on her face. He made grabby hands and she obliged with ease, picking him up and nuzzling her nose against his.

Then, her eyes sparkled with mirth.

“Tell me, Dami, is Tim short?”

Damian looked between the two of them. Marinette was nodding and Tim was shaking his head vigorously.

“... shor!”

Marinette burst into a fit of giggles while Tim groaned.

“I hate you.”

Her amusement didn’t die down in the slightest. “Oh, if you hate me, then I guess I’m only making food for Dami and I. Hope you didn’t eat all the leftovers for lunch today...”

“Wait, Mari, let’s talk about this --.”

~~~~~

Next

@unoriginalmess @hammalammadamdam @astrynyx @laurcad123 @927roses-and-stuff

[outrunningthedark]

To each there own I guess but it honestly baffles me that people like Shannon. I'm sure the character has some redeeming qualities but none of them were ever portrayed in the show. Besides being ableist, which is obviously enough not to like her, she's also extremely self centered and never takes responsibility for her actions. Every time I watch Eddie Begins I hate her more. She's just so rude and dismissive. I know Eddie wasn't making the best decisions at the time but she basically rolled her eyes at everything he said which does not encourage open communication. So I just really wonder what people like about her? Because I don't see it.

I'm sure the person who sent me that message would say they like the Shannon they've created in their minds the same way TayKay stans on here prefer the version of her they write/read about in fics. But the problem is that by pretending Shannon is someone she was never portrayed to be they (and every other Shannon "fan") is ignoring her ableism and selfishness.

The conversation surrounding Christopher's mother always comes back to whether she was justified in abandoning him because "it's also canon that Eddie left". (Hey, anon! 👋🏻) Okay. Take that element out of the equation. What about the way she spoke of her son? What about how him being born with CP made her feel like she'd done something "wrong"? What about how she made his condition about herself at almost every opportunity? What about how we never actually witnessed a change in her perception because that wasn't the point of the story? Shannon died because Tim didn't want to redeem her. (A curious choice, tbh, since fixing their relationship would have been the quickest way to divert attention away from the otp that was gaining popularity.) Unlike Eddie, she never admitted that her thinking was faulty. Unlike Eddie, she wasn't committed to sticking around. Keep bringing up her death all you want. It won't change the fact that Shannon knew there was a chance she would abandon Christopher a second time because she wasn't built to put her child's needs before her own. I can't stop anybody from liking her, and I continuously see things in the app that make me cringe (calling E x S an "otp"? really?), but if you're gonna like this character, you need to acknowledge ALL her shitty personality traits, not just the ones you can compare to Eddie as "proof" that he wasn't any better.

[doomedship]

Alexi is probably still really salty that everyone hated Nucy 😂😂

**Okay I saved this to drafts by mistake so it's old, sorry**

Lol right? I feel like he's mad he didn't come up with Chenford and now he's like look mom I can do better with this Bailey arc. And maybe Ashley too.

He strikes me as one of those screenwriters who is stubborn and attached to his own ideas and also, who doesn't especially like or know how to show romantic love. I suspect he looks down on shipping (many male showrunners do, and choose to bring ships down in very violent ways, but I digress) and thinks it's beneath him to get bogged down in romantic storylines.

If you look back, almost every couple on this show has sprung out of nowhere with no believable lead in.

Consider:

Nucy - this is just a straight up straight male fantasy. Divorced older guy gets super hot young woman. In reality, would Lucy go there, considering the work context, age difference and who Nolan is? Doubt it.

Wopez - a lust at first sight, opposites attract fantasy. While cute and not something I feel particularly strongly about, I'm not sure I ever really bought into what they were basing this relationship on. We also sprinted through the stages of the relationship very artificially.

Noley - dear god, essays have been written about how this is an atrocious, insulting straight male fantasy about a manic pixie dream girl. It is the worst of the lot.

Jackson's love interests - there were a few of these but none of them really registered as significant. Sterling was some kind of celebrity fantasy that ended up just plain weird. Isaac was basically irrelevant and never showed up again. Jackson's story would have been largely the same with or without these peripheral characters, so the romance side of things was effectively pointless. Can't help but think they didn't really know what to do with a non straight male character in this regard.

Emmett/Lucy - again, it was a pointless manufactured side relationship and ended up being a stick with which to beat Lucy. She didn't get any follow up on this and Tim was an ass about it. Then that Tanner guy. No follow up. No point.

Tashley - remains to be seen whether it will be subverted but so far strongly looks like another dream woman scenario for Tim. Unrealistic, annoying and, assuming she is not his endgame, pointless.

Henry/Abigail - the young love hot girl fantasy. I don't really know what the point is here either, but whatever on this one.

Harper - the ex fantasy. I'd have bought Harper's relationship with either James or her ex quite comfortably, had they not decided to turn it into a hot mess of concurrent romances. It's like they can't make their minds up on which way to take her so they keep lurching from one to the other. This makes it pointless because they don't seem to know where they want it to end up and they've also basically removed all her integrity in the process.

So are any of the relationships on this show believable and /or enjoyable?

I found Nolan/Grace to be the most authentic, personally. I didn't ship it or love it, but it didn't bother me. Grey/Luna is also nice, but we've seen them for all of five seconds. Nolan and his ex wife may also have been a more organic relationship but I can't say I paid much attention to it. This is the problem with having so many guests coming and going on the show.

Obviously for me the most believable, organic, subtle and interesting (pre) romantic dynamic is Chenford in season 1 and season 2. Unfortunately I think it is the case that this happened purely by accident, and the show's attempts to deliberately write Chenford since then just haven't compared.

I suppose they're limited by Alexi holding up the block on any actual romantic interactions between Chenford, but even the work talk and banter we're seeing has not been remotely close to what we used to get from these two, so I don't know whether they've simply lost their feel for the characters or something else is going on in that writers' room.

[bigskydreaming]

Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again. 

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit. 

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family. 

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more. 

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh. 

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason. 

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write. 

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives. 

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.

[janekfan]

for the bingo board, would you mind doing health scare with jon and the crew? i love your writing btw

Thank you so much!!! 

Uh, I filled this probably unconventionally? But I hope it’s okay!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28514178

Jon first noticed something was off when he woke up shivering in the dead of night. But temperatures had been dropping steadily, there was no reason to think that it was anything other than the thin, poorly insulated walls of his flat causing the problem. Exhausted, Jon knuckled enough sleep from his eyes to retrieve another blanket, deciding before he slipped away again to wear a warmer cardigan tomorrow because the archives had a tendency to be chilly.

When Jon limped his way into the office the next day his joints were already burning and loose, feeling all too much like they’d been crushed into powder. He knew better than to walk that extra stop from the train but he was so embittered about his new, illustrious position as Head Archivist that being crammed like a sardine with hundreds of other people all but reading his mind, knowing instinctively that he wasn’t cut out for the work, was unbearable and he’d needed an escape. It wasn’t that bad; he was just tired from trying to fix Gertrude’s mess, that’s all. He just needed to redirect his attention away from the needles stabbing into him every time he took a step and focus on the mountain of files he had yet to sort through.

There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how they were organized, but he had been able to use the dates scrawled across the tops of the stiff yellowing papers to get some semblance of a timeline going. That was where Jon found himself when Martin dropped off a cuppa, thanking him absentmindedly as he compared what was either a nine or a seven to another, clearer script.

“Um. Jon?”

“Hm?” It couldn’t matter that much and Jon filed them away in deference to the tea. Jon hadn’t realized how thirsty he was...what time was it?

“I. It’s half three.” Oh. “And I. I just haven’t seen you eat? Anything?”

“Oh.”

“You’re so busy, of course! It’s natural to get, uh, caught up! I could fix you something, if you’d like?”

“I’m.” Not hungry, that was for certain. Either the pain or the exhaustion was upsetting his stomach and the idea of eating right now was--

“Jon?” Maybe he’d eaten something gone off? Past the expiry?

“Oh. Um. Actually.”

“It’s no trouble!”

“Some. Some toast would be lovely, Martin, thank you.” A bite or two would help and as strange as it felt to take Martin up on his offer, the slightest bit of tension bled out of his shoulders.

Things had been.

Tense.

Since he’d accepted the position.

It was clear, no, true, that Sasha was better deserving of the job. She had more experience, more knowledge, more everything and yet Elias had passed her right over, giving Jon the ridiculous choice to resign or take it.

He should have resigned.

Finding a new workplace would be easier than watching his friends pull away from him. He didn’t blame Tim for siding with Sasha. She needed support right now. And anything he could think of to say to her would make him sound ungrateful that he’d been selected over her. Couldn’t very well go up to her and admit that he hated this and wanted everything to go back to the way it was in Research, because she really did want it.

And he.

“Toast’s up.” Martin sidestepped into the room to place the small plate on the corner of the desk. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like with it so I got a few things!” Cheerful and bright, he placed the jams down with a small spoon. He couldn’t have known it was exactly the right thing to do, that dry toast was about all Jon was going to be able to manage. “Anything I can help with?” Tentative, it was no secret that Jon was prickly at the best of times.

“Ah, um.” Jon gestured to a box, repressed a flinch when it seemed like his shoulder would jump from its socket. “I’ve been organizing by the dates on the top? Just, just for something.”

“Got it.”

Jon made his way slowly through one slice, later agreeing with Martin that he’d gotten too caught up with work to think about the second.

Things didn’t improve.

Maybe it was this.

Maybe it was that.

Excuse after excuse, because anything would be better than what he knew in his heart this really was and finally late one evening Jon clutched the bed spread despite the fire flaring in his fingers and buried his face into the soft fabric. It was foolish; it wouldn’t change anything to be so upset and he should be better equipped to handle it considering these spells would continue happening. He breathed in, out, slow, measured, but instead of calming him, he burst into sobs, muffling himself in the sheets and crying despite the pain and as he lay there, coming down from his tears of frustration, Jon realized, accepted, what was happening. The reason for his fever, headaches, the increase in pain, the trouble eating, sleeping--

“You are fine.” He whispered repeatedly into the cold isolated dark of his bedroom. “It won’t last forever. It never does.” But it always felt like forever and he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be this time. What mistake did he make to cause it, even though Jon knew deep down it didn’t matter. That these things came and went with the wind and no matter what habits he changed to try and mitigate it, it never mattered. It was as if he was only able to talk himself down in time for it to flare up again and the constant fight to convince himself he would be alright, that he would make it through again and again and again was exhausting because it meant he was done in before the day even began.

Jon’s body ached like one giant bruise, crushed, pulled apart, at once boneless and so heavy that moving out of bed was out of the question. Brain stuffed with cotton wool and foggy thoughts meant that to speak meant to hurt so he didn’t, knowing he came across as spiteful but he didn’t have the energy to explain, not when he was so focused on making it from train to Institute to door to stairs to office; each leg of such a routine journey worse than the last. Sitting up was an ordeal and Jon had to drag his stick and string self out of bed after each restless night with caution, lest he pull something loose out of place. Braces, tape, hidden, hiding, normal, normal, normal. How he could be so tired and still not be able to sleep at night was a torture he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

Greetings, pleasantries, small talk all standing in the way of Jon reaching his desk and taking a break from what was essentially waking up. But it hurt. It all hurt. And it made it all worse because they were already angry with him and they wouldn’t stop being angry at him unless he put work into mending their relationships and he couldn’t put work into it when he wanted nothing more than to lay down and be unconscious for however long it took until this all passed.

The worst part of it all was that he needed help and didn’t know how to ask for it. Not with the cold shoulders, the whispers, the looks. And he only had himself to blame. The desk phone caught his attention and Jon was surprised it wasn’t shrouded in a layer of dust, still weighing his choices. Call someone, probably Martin. Or drag himself out of his office. One would only wound his pride. Gingerly, Jon cradled the phone to his ear, licking chapped lips before dialing Martin’s extension.

“Oh, J’Jon?” He’d never called any of them before. “Uh, what can I do for you?” Thank god. Trust Martin’s helpful nature to override any other questions.

“Ah, Martin. Yes, thank you. If you could--” There was a scuffle, a yelp, muffled through his door, followed by the dramatic clearing of a throat and:

“You can’t hide in there all week, Jon!” Came Tim’s sing-song reply and the hang up was two fold; through the receiver and the clang of the thing on Martin’s desk. Jon took a deep breath, pushing back the emotions threatening to flood him, tipping his head back and begging the tears to stop.

Having to ask for help was almost impossible and the longer he waited to show his face, the worse it would be.

The only thing he’d accomplished by picking up the phone was to put himself on a time limit.

This was too overwhelming.

Their desks are meters away but it may as well have been kilometers with how much he was hurting. But Jon pushed himself to his unsteady feet anyway, wishing both that someone would just notice and that he was masking his symptoms enough that they wouldn’t. He wasn’t foolish enough to leave his cane behind. It took concentration to keep his expression neutral, to force himself to walk smoothly. To pretend it was a regular day.

“That’s a level ten scowl, boss.” Jon rolled his eyes. “Honestly, you’ve been so moody lately.” Tim looked up from where he was twiddling away on his phone. Taking a break, that’s all, nothing to be upset with even though he couldn’t help but compare the number of files stacked on their individual desks. Jon swallowed hard around the tangle of hot disappointment.

“I’ve b’been, uh. It’s well, it’s a lot.” He hadn’t heard Sasha come up behind him, tone droll and capricious and all too familiar these days.

“I thought you’d be happier considering your position.” When Jon laughed nervously, it was damp with suppressed emotion. “It’s like you didn’t even want it.” And good lord at this moment he’d never wanted it less. But how could he talk to her about how difficult this transition had been when he was the thief? So he didn’t defend himself, instead going along with their jokes at his expense, trying to explain what he’d tried to call for. It was difficult to breathe in their presence, it was difficult to stand. It was difficult to accept that his friends were actively making things harder.

How would they know?

Tell them.

They’ll think you’re lying.

You were fine the other day.

“I was hoping you’d help me collect some files.” Jon wrapped his pompous academic exterior around him like a shield and for a horrifying moment he thought Tim was going to tell him off.

“Why didn’t you say so, boss?” Sarcasm dripped like crude oil from each syllable. “You just tell me what you want and I’ll fetch it for you.”

“Ah, j’just uh.” Jon pointed to what he needed in the stacks and Tim grunted with the weight of it, chuckling without mirth.

“Letting being the Big Boss go to your head are you?” He wiped a hand dramatically over his forehead. “Too shiftless to collect your own work?”

Why was he being so cruel?

“Too busy, I think you mean.” Jon shot back, letting anger and frustration seep through the continuously forming cracks. It was that or sob.

“Yeah, well. If you need anything else, you know where to find us.”

Jon absolutely refused to cry in his office.

It was stupid of him to not ask for help.

But he’d needed help with so many things this week past. Small things. Moving things. Carrying things. Things a normal person could do without constantly relying on others and the idea of parading himself into their midst again made his eyes sting with tears and his knees and hips burn. They hurt so much even with the bulky braces and sticky tape hidden beneath his trousers literally holding his joints together he didn’t think he’d be able to make another trip back and forth.

Which is how Jon found himself staring dumbly at his dangling arm for full seconds after trying to lift a box.

He’d dislocated his shoulder if the audible and sharp pop! was any indication and when the hot flush of agony hit he yelped mostly in surprise before controlling his fall to the floor. Someone was digging around in his shoulder socket with a superheated spoon as he writhed on the ground and he took just a moment to feel sorry for himself. He’d just wanted to do this one thing by himself and not have to surrender the tiny scrap of independence he’d been clinging to with his fingernails. Cursing himself for being so stupid and cursing himself again when his mewling brought all three of his assistants to his door, Jon looked up, feeling not unlike a beetle trapped on its back and waiting to be pinned. Now he was surrounded, in pain, under the glass of their frightened stares and he couldn’t spare the breath to tell them that he was fine. Just needed a moment to, to fit the puzzle pieces back together while he was being torn apart at his fragile seams.

“Boss--” A cacophony of panicked voices rising higher and higher and--

“Don’t!” They were reaching towards him, stopping at his tight command. “Don’t. I need. I--a minute. It’s fine.” Sweat streaked into the greying hair at his temples.

“This isn’t fine.” Tim sounded angry, scared, and Jon didn’t have enough in him to explain. Not right now. “Jon, you need--”

“Don’t tell me what I need!!” Surprising even himself with the vehement strength behind his declaration Jon put real effort into slowing his rapid breath. If he couldn’t control that, he couldn’t control himself, he couldn’t control the situation. At some point he closed his eyes, willing himself to relax, listening to the sound of Tim’s angry footsteps, Sasha’s following, their muffled voices upset and far away. He sensed Martin kneel beside him.

“Got you a cold cloth. Would you…?”

“P’please…” carried on the gust of his next exhale, the hum of relief stuck in his throat when Martin smoothed it over his eyes and it dulled the constant headache.

“You feel warm.”

“S’normal.” Martin was a surprising well of calm, not pressing or pushing or probing.

“Can I help?”

“In a, need another minute.” Experimentally Jon wiggled his fingers to check for numbness before trying to extend his arm and ultimately asking Martin for help.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to, to make it worse.”

“Can’t. Not really. Just there.” Martin’s hands were soft and warm as he maneuvered his arm over his head, helping bend it at the elbow and Jon grunted at the sensation of it falling back into place with a cool wash of relief.

“Oh! Uh, better?”

“Much.”

“I’ll make you some tea.” As though it were the man’s answer to all ills.

Jon took his time sitting up and getting to his feet, grabbing his cane and making his way to the breakroom where he knew he’d find Tim and Sasha. They at least gave him time to get settled before Tim launched into his interrogation.

“What happened?” Jon squirmed uncomfortably under their scrutiny, eyes downcast and focused on the glare of the fluorescent lighting reflecting off the surface of the tea Martin made him and glinting off the untouched foil backing of the paracetamol blister pack. His arm was in a sling. A sling he happened to have in his desk. A sling he happened to have in his desk “because this just happened sometimes.” The pain had decreased significantly but it didn’t feel right and probably wouldn’t for a while.

“I tried to lift a box.”

“A box.” Jon could really, really do without the incredulity.

“You don’t understand.”

“Yeah, because you never talk about it!”

“Because it’s always the same!” Jon didn’t mean to shout, but they wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t. And no amount of explaining or talking about his symptoms or complaining when he was hurting because he was always hurting would make a difference. “People don’t want to hear about it, Tim. It’s. It’s depressing.” They don’t believe me. “It makes people feel bad and then they get awkward. It’s easier for all of us if we just. Pretend.”

“Jon--”

“You’ve known since Research.” Jon wrapped sore arms around a sore stomach. “You know what these episodes look like, if not what it is.” And you didn’t care enough to even ask. It goes unsaid. Blaming Tim for something so far beyond his control wasn’t fair and Jon refused to do it.

Noticing would have been nice.

Not being forced to haul himself out to their desks to ask for help would have been nice. He understood they were acting out a bit of revenge and he didn’t blame them considering he’d stolen the job out from under Sasha. But it had been a blow to his pride all the same. Every time. Like being kicked when he was down.

Tears sprang to his eyes.

“And I. I don’t need. I don’t need to be coddled. But.” It felt stupid to say he wasn’t always able to walk between their desks and his office. He should be able to do that. It should be easy and he hated that it wasn’t. “I n’need to be allowed to, to.”

Leave. Leave here and never come back because he’d never felt worse than he did right now trying to beg his assistants for permission to use the phone.

“Call us.” Martin provided. “On the bad days.” Jon nodded, hiding his trembling lips behind the mug of cooling tea.

“Jon.” Tim sounded stricken. “I, I never meant--I.” Jon knew that. Tim was kind, had helped him when they worked upstairs together. But being punished like a child for saying yes-- “Jon.” He looked up to see that Tim was sitting across from him, hand outstretched on the table between them. Reaching. “Jon. I’m so, so sorry. That was. I shouldn’t have taken it that far.”

“I never. I didn’t say anything. You didn’t know.” It was Jon’s fault for being stubborn. It was Jon’s fault for not explaining.

“That’s no excuse for acting like a prat.” Jon ducked his head, embarrassment heating his face.

“I just. I chose y’you because.”

I trust you.

When Sasha sat beside him and bundled him into a gentle hug, that’s when the tears came in a biblical flood.

“Oh, Jon. I’m so sorry.” She rested her chin atop his head and the relief outweighed the unprofessionalism as he let himself be held. “We’re going to be better, alright?”

“Al’alright.” Salt damp and trembling, Jon was too exhausted to worry about what they thought of his greatest secret.

Hours later Jon blinked awake, bleary and warm, on the couch, head in Sasha’s lap as she read through a case and wrapped up in one of Martin’s jumpers.

“Almost quittin’ time, boss.” Oh. “You okay to make it home?”

“Uh, y’yeah, yes.”

It was nice to be asked.

It was a bit like walking on eggshells, the first few days of them navigating Jon without smothering him but the support was a far cry from the isolation and loneliness he’d dealt with since this whole thing started.

And then finally it began to break; the pain that’d been ratcheted up to eleven finally started dying down to a more manageable five or six.

“Need anything while I’m up, Jon?” Sasha poked her head into his office on her way by, a familiar, easy smile on her face and one he’d missed dearly.

“Ah, no, I--oh. If it’s not too much trouble, Martin was working on a translation?”

“Sure thing.”

Simple as that.