#stuck in between

[enii]

Stuck in between

[rocklouii]

should I read or write????? read or write read or write read or write read or write read or write write read read write read write read write read write read write read write

[otiksimr]

Favorite genre of picture, snakes wrapped around bird beaks.

[maliciouscigarette]

Art by giganticbuddha (here's their ko-fi)

[prlssprfctn]

The first time, Tim notices someone observing them from afar, it is when they are all settled for a brief dinner together. It is the middle of the week, and Bruce gathered all of them together to... relax. Which is strange but not unwelcome. Everyone is so involved in chattering and bantering that they don't notice a lingering gaze through the window; they don't, but Tim does.

It takes him a few seconds to figure out that it is Jason.

He is not sure if Bruce reached for him to invite, and Jason just declined, or there was no offer to begin with, but Tim knows for sure Jason lurkes behind windows for a few minutes before disappearing in the night.

And the funniest thing? Tim understands him.

He thinks he is not Jason's replacement — never truly was, despite what the other thought — but in a way, they did swap their places. Because in the past, it was Tim, who hid on the rooftops, staring at Bruce and his family, listening to the snippets of their conversations. And now it is Jason.

It is still different, of course. Tim had a choice, and it was his... enthusiastic project, if anything — Jason doesn't really. But if anyone understands the feeling of standing far away from everyone, it is still Tim.

That's why the next time in happens, Tim reaches out.

It is after the particularly easy mission, when Tim spots the red motion on the rooftop. He slips away from Nightwing and Robin, who debate about something with Batman through the comms, and finds himself standing behind Red Hood.

The way Red Hood taps his fingertips on the balustrade makes Tim remember that he is not included in their comms anymore. He wonders how lonely it is, to hear the voices of his brothers, but never being able to grasp the whole conversation they have.

'Hood,' he calls for him.

To Jason's credit, he doesn't scramble in panic, even if it seems that he is surprised by his appearance.

'Red,' he mutters back, instantly defensive. 'What, came to mock me?'

Tim rolls his eyes; he wishes things would be easier with Jason, but they are not, and he can't really blame him for that.

'Had I ever mocked you?' He copies his stance, arms folding in the chest. When Jason tilts his head, almost asking, "Really now?" Tim rolls his eyes again. 'Okay, I did a few times. But it mostly were jokes about your death.'

Jason chuckles.

'Good one, punk. It changes everything.'

'You like jokes about your death,' Tim protests. 'And I know you allow Arsenal to joke about it, so it is not entirely closed topic.'

'I don't remember allowing you to joke about it, though.'

...

This conversation is so fucking stupid. Tim didn't even came here for this, but-

But fine. He still can win.

'So, you only allow it to your friends. Fine. Let's be friends,' Jason chokes on his own exhausted sigh. 'Do you need some friendship questionnaires to fill to be my friend? I can arrange that.'

Jason kindly flips him off under his breath before disappearing in the night, leaving him alone with whining Nightwing and irritated Bruce in his ear.

The next time he stalks down Jason, who in turn is stalking Damian and Bruce, he shoves in his hand twenty three papers filled with bunch of friendship questions — half stripped from internet, half made by Tim that involve the specifics of their jobs.

He doesn't expect anything to come after it, but in two weeks after Jason returns to the city after his mission with Outlaws, Tim finds these papers filled with surprisingly neat, calligraphic answers.

And he gets the printed copy of the same questions, with one page of an additional one, written in the same handwriting, and with a little sticky note atop of it.

Your turn, Timbo.

Tim smirks.

Oh, he will so drag Jason back in the family, somehow.

[stil-lindigo]

birds on a wire.

[oil slick halogen. the angels gave up on us. we’ll make do with feathers and tar.]

prints (all proceeds go towards purchasing e-sims for Gazans and helping re-locate Palestinian refugees)

[evil-scientist]

Also if you’d like to elaborate on your gimmick you are welcome to add in the tags/replies!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[hinamie]

whatever it takes

[dumbassv32]

:3

[gaddaboutgriffon]

The Year of the Dragon.

(Name edited, credit to @jedipirateking for the suggestion.)

A joke the fandom has been making for a while is that Tim is forever stuck at 17. What if we make that something the rest of the Batclan notice too? (I am not following cannon.)

It was just after the annual Family picture day and the new group portrait was taking the place of last year’s and looking at it they noticed 15 year old Damian is now almost the same height as Tim. And Tim is pretty much the same as last year.

Jason and Damian take the opportunity to tease Tim calling him a shrimp and other short jokes. Which Tim rolls his eyes and goes to work on a case or something with Wayne industries. But Bruce, Dick, and Alfred are more concerned, may feel guilty thinking letting him be a vigilante stunted his growth. And looking back at the photos they have of him notice that he wasn’t growing as much as a normal teen boy should have.

Bruce decides he is going to be more active in running Wayne Enterprises while Alfred plots to cut back Tim’s coffee limit. And Dick is going to help out coordinate the patrols. (He had to move back to Gotham when the Bludhaven city spirit forced all the people out before the city got blown up. It’s a long story but dick has been really down and unmotivated after that.)

Tim is not taking any of this well, and feels like his family being stifling. So he decided to start going through the basement and vault of Drake manor. Which he has been putting off since he didn’t really have time for it between patrols and WE. And in the family heirlooms vault, shoved way in the back with covered in dust and many other things sitting on top, he finds an oak box with an ornately caved dragon on it. Opening it up he finds it is velvet lined and has a large pendant that looks a silver dragon curled deep violet amethyst egg. And next to the pendant is a scroll made of thin leather.

He pulled out the scroll first and tried to read it but it was too faint of lettering to make out in the somewhat dim vault light. But what little he could make out it it was really old 14th century English and mentioned something about a coming of age. He rolls it back up and puts it aside to instead pick up the pendant. When he touches it there is a faint static shock that surprises him other then that the silver and purple necklace doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.

His phone lets off a chime to remind him that diner is in an hour, so he pack the pendant and scroll back in the box and places it in his bag with a few other items he finds interesting and wanted to look into more later. Then returns to Wayne manor to eat before patrol. It isn’t until he wakes up the next morning he realizes that he should have probably read the scroll before touching the pendant.

He wakes up to knocking on his bedroom door and someone yelling at him to get up. He had gotten into the habit of locking his door back when Damian first moved in. He yelps in surprise, falling over because his center of balance is all out of whack when he tried to stand. Now he is fully awake and takes stock of himself.

Scales?

Scales! Why are his arms covered in scales?! His hands look like a mix of paws and talons. He struggles out of the sheets to look at the rest of himself. His pjs are stretched and torn in places to accommodate the new digigrade shape of his legs. Not to mention he now has a long tail and wings and a longer neck. He rushes to his personal bathroom and awkwardly stands up on his two legs so he can get a good look in the mirror. And yep that is a distressed dragon face looking back at him. He catches himself making a weird keening sound as he plops down to sit on the bathroom floor.

Moments later he hears the sound of his bedroom door’s lock being picked. Bruce calling his name and Duke explaining he had heard animal noises from the room. Tim scrabbles to try and get the balcony door unlocked so he can escape and find a way to change back before anyone can see him, but moving on all fours and the new talon hands he is not used too take up too much time and the bedroom door is open.

Living in a family of vigilantes, their reaction time and fight or flight instincts are quick, and Tim is tackled to the floor by Duke while the others start looking at every inch of the room for clues as to what happened to their seemingly missing brother.

Bruce is looking at the dragon in Tim’s pajamas for a second before saying, “Tim? Is that you chum?”

Tim tries to answer but all that comes out is a warbling chuff. Which takes Tim by surprise and has him nearly start to cry in panic. He can’t Talk!

“Hey, you’re ok Tim. Deep breaths. Duke get off him. Breath with me Tim. In 1, 2, 3, 4. Out 1, 2, 3, 4.” Bruce spoke in his soothing a scared child voice. Tim was half annoyed at himself for how much it helped.

“B, Look at this!” Dick said holding the box with the scroll and dragon pendent instead open. Now the gem is a very pale see through purple with only a sliver on the bottom the original color.

They take it down to the bat cave and get to work deciphering the scroll. Turns out the Drake family line are descendants of some ancient medieval prince named Aragorn and that there was a family tradition that on the sixteenth birthday the child would have to live a year in dragon form to let it catch up in maturity. But after the dragon form catches up they will be able to freely shift between forms. But if they don’t follow the tradition they don’t age properly, and the longer they put off the tradition the longer they have to spend as a dragon.

And that is all I had time for before bed. So who does this affect the family dynamic? What about the relationship between Tim and Damian? How do we bring Danny Phantom into this? Does he think Tim is a ghost dragon at first?

[lesbomaticlove]

he's not even disappointed, just tired

[wishchip106]

you know sometimes i do actually forget cherik isn’t canon….

like they’re supposed to be friends here?? 😭😭 what

just two great friends!!! 😁🤩 they’re as close as brothers even!! nothing more!! 😊

[vanishingtrainwreck]

Stop acting like Talia hates Ra’s or that Ra’s doesn’t care about Talia. Their relationship is EXTREMELY complex and they both love each other.

Ra’s is the definition of a loving but cold father because he thinks it’s what benefits his child. He’s equivalent to the parent who throws their child into too many extra curricular activities and pushes them for good grades and perfection because he wants them to have a good future. It’s not right, yes, but it’s human. It’s just exaggerated because of the nature of comics.

Talia has worked against her father multiple times, and ideally would stay doing so, but she still understands her father’s perspective and why he does what he does. She agrees with his cause, she doesn’t agree with his methods. And despite that, she still comes back when he’s in danger because she loves him. Talia was able to resist her sister’s brainwashing when she was ordered to kill him because of her love and loyalty to him.

Talia knows her father’s not a good man, but she can’t help but love him because it really wasn’t all bad (early Ra’s was very much a single girl dad trying to make his princess happy by setting up dates with the weird bat freak she’s into) and she understands why he is how he is and she knows he loves her. Their relationship isn’t healthy, but it is loving and that’s an extremely important aspect, because without that love, Talia would be a completely different person and Ra’s would have little interest in Bruce in the first place.

[sodapopper]

See, here’s the thing: Darrel Curtis isn’t safe.

He’s not gentle or kind or emotionally sensitive, he’s not someone who puts you at ease. Darrel Curtis carries himself like a man condemned, with blood on his hands and no conscience left to care about. He could kill you with no effort. He could send you running with only a glance.

Darry is a 20 year old guy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He drinks. He swears. He fights. He’s bigger than anyone he knows and he takes pride in it, in his power, raw strength simmering in his hands, his shoulders. He’s known and respected by gangs—not just a bunch of school yard buddies messing around with each other but real gangs, the kind with reps and rap sheets. Those same gangs form a line behind him at rumbles. They know him, and they rally at his back, pushing him forward to start their fights.

Darry is not a soc wannabe. He’s not upperclass, not even middle class, and he’s certainly not refined. He had potential to go far in life, but it was rough, uncut, the unmined earth of his intellect and the raw power of his hands. Uncivilized. Dangerous.

He’s a landmine waiting to be stepped on and a blade without a sheath. Control is his weapon. Stubbornness, his shield. He could mess you up at the drop of a hat but chooses not to, and that’s what’s really frightening, that terrifying self-control. A leashed dog. Rage simmering in his eyes, ice cold.

Darrel Curtis isn’t safe.

But he chooses to be.

He puts the collar on himself, and every day, in the shadow of that caged power, his brothers know his gentleness a little more. Violence is innate, animalistic; so is love. Darry fights dirty, and loves like a man facing execution. Teeth clenched. Fists tight. Eyes ahead, nothing left to see, no other goal than the thing he’s set his mind to. Darry loves like it’s a fight he’s not willing to lose. Darry loves as if he’s going to die tomorrow.

Darrel Curtis isn’t safe.

[cenvast]

"Toshiro Is Sexist," "Toshiro Owns Slaves": What's Really Going on With This Guy?

I've seen a lot of debate on whether or not Toshiro is problematic because he's a slave owner or because he's sexist in the context of his crush on Falin. While I do want to examine his relationship to Falin, I'd like to take a few steps back and unpack his upbringing first. We'll dive into the gender and class dynamics he was raised with and how it impacts his behavior in the main storyline.

Like all people, Toshiro is shaped by the environment he grew up in. Toshitsugu, Toshiro's father and the head of the Nakamoto clan, is the most impactful model of authority and manhood in his life. Toshiro does recognize some of his father's flaws and tries to avoid replicating them. But whether or not he emulates or subverts his father's behavior, Toshitsugu is often the starting point for Toshiro's treatment of others, particularly marginalized people.

The Nakamoto clan exists under a patriarchal hierarchy with Toshitsugu at the top. As noted by @fumifooms in their Nakamoto household post, his wife has more authority than Maizuru. She's able to ban Maizuru from parts of their residence, but despite disliking his infidelity, she can't divorce him or stop him from cheating on her. Their marriage is not an equal partnership.

On an interpersonal level, Toshitsugu and Maizuru also have a fraught relationship. While she does seem to care for him, she's often frustrated by his thoughtless behavior.

For example, he drunkenly buys Izutsumi for her — without considering how she'll have to raise this child — and invades her room in the middle of the night. When he cryptically says, "It's all my fault," she replies, "I can think of a lot of things that are your fault." She calls him an "idiot" and "believes that [Toshiro] will grow up to be a better clan leader than his father," implying that she takes issue with Toshitsugu's leadership.

Because Maizuru and Toshitsugu are described as being "in an intimate relationship" and "seem[ing] to be lovers," Maizuru appears to be a consensual participant. Still, this doesn't negate the large power imbalance between them as a male noble clan leader and his female retainer. This imbalance introduces an insidious undertone to Maizuru's frustration with Toshitsugu. Like Toshiro's mother, Maizuru doesn't have the agency to do as she pleases in their relationship; he has the ultimate authority. For instance, she doesn't seem to want to raise Izutsumi, but she has to anyway.

While Maizuru's role as Toshitsugu's mistress is significant, she's also the Nakamoto clan's teacher and Toshiro's primary maternal figure. She cares deeply for Toshiro: tailing him, feeding him, and taking responsibility even for his actions as an adult. While it might seem sweet that she cares for him like a son at first, Maizuru was notably fifteen years old at the time of his birth. In the extra comic below, he's six years old and has already been in her care for some time. Even if we're being generous and assuming that she didn't start raising him until he was six, she was still only twenty-one at the time she was parenting her boss/lover's child with another woman.

Maizuru's roles as mistress and maternal figure, in addition to her role as retainer, demonstrate the intersection between gendered and class oppression in the Nakamoto household. Despite her original role being a retainer trained in espionage, Toshitsugu presses her into performing gendered labor for him and eventually, Toshiro. She's expected to be Toshitsugu's lover, perform emotional labor for him as his confidant, care for his child, and carry out domestic tasks like cooking. She says, "Even during missions, I was often dragged into the kitchen." If she was a male servant, I doubt she would have been expected to perform these additional tasks. She can't avoid these tasks either, stating that her "own feelings don't factor into it."

Toshitsugu disregards his wife's and Maizuru's desires and emotions to serve his own interests. Because he has societal power over them as a nobleman and in Maizuru's case, her master, neither woman can escape their position in the household hierarchy.

As a result, Toshiro grew up within a structure where men and male nobility, in particular, wield the most societal power. The hierarchical nature of his household and society discourages everyone, including him as a clan leader's eldest son, from questioning and disrupting the existing hierarchy.

The other Nakamoto household members also internalize its sexist, classist power dynamics.

For example, Hien expects that she and Toshiro will replicate the uneven dynamics of the previous generation, regardless of her personal feelings. She sees her and Toshiro's relationship as paralleling Maizuru and Toshitsugu's relationship; she is the closest woman to Toshiro and his retainer, so she's shocked when Toshiro doesn't attempt to begin an intimate relationship with her. Notably, she doesn't have actual feelings for him. Her expectations are centered around the household's precedent of placing emotional, sexual, domestic, and child-rearing labor onto the female servants without any regard for their personal desires.

Hien also probably knows that her position in the household will improve if she is Toshiro's lover because she's seen it improve Maizuru's position. However, the fact that being the future clan leader's lover is the closest proximity she, as a female servant, has to power further reveals the gendered, class-based oppression she and the other women live under.

It's important to note that the Nakamoto clan bought Benichidori, Izutsumi, and Inutade as slaves, so they have less power and agency than Maizuru and Hien. The clan further dehumanizes Izutsumi and Inutade as demi-humans; their enslavement contains an additional layer of racialization.

Toshiro isn't oblivious to the gendered, class, and racial power dynamics of his household. He tries to distance himself from participating in its exploitative power structure. He walls himself off from Hien, who he's known since childhood, to avoid replicating his father's behavior and making his servant into his lover. He disapproves of his father's enslavement of Izutsumi and Inutade, and he lets Izutsumi go when she runs away in the Dungeon.

But does any of this absolve him of his complicity in his household's sexist, classist power dynamics and racialized slavery?

The short answer is absolutely not.

Despite his distaste for his father's exploitation of his servants and slaves, Toshiro still uses them. He refers to his party as "his retainers," and he has them fight and perform domestic tasks for him. You could argue that Toshiro doesn't like to and thus, doesn't regularly use his servants and slaves. In the context of him asking his retainers to help him rescue Falin, Maizuru says, "The only time he ever made any sort of personal request was for this task." But it shouldn't matter whether exploitation is a regular occurrence or not for it to be considered harmful. Toshiro asking Maizuru to cook him a meal still constitutes asking his female servant to perform gendered labor for him. He's also very accustomed to her grooming and dressing him.

Maizuru sees feeding, washing, and even advising Toshiro romantically as fulfilling Toshitsugu's orders to care for his son. They aren't fulfilling a "personal request." But just because her labor has been deemed expected and thereby devalued doesn't mean that it isn't labor or that she isn't performing it.

Maizuru's dynamic with Toshiro is also complicated by her role as his maternal figure. She loves him and wants to take care of him, and she doesn't have a choice in the matter. During Toshiro's childhood, the onus was on Toshitsugu to cease exploiting his lover and release her from servitude, but Toshiro is now an adult man. Seeing as how Maizuru defers to his wishes and calls him "Young Master," they still have a power imbalance that he's passively maintaining. Ideally, he would not ask anything of her until he has the authority to release her from servitude.

Throughout the story, Toshiro acts as if he has no agency and quietly disapproving of his father's actions absolves him of his participation in maintaining oppressive dynamics. While his father still ranks higher than him, he's essentially his father's heir. He has much more power than Maizuru, the highest-ranked servant. At the very least, he could leave his slave-owning household.

Unfortunately, his refusal to confront injustice is consistent with his character's major flaw: he does not express his opinions, desires, or needs. While this character trait obviously hurts his friendships, it also furthers his complicity in the injustices his household runs on.

Toshiro's relationship with eating food — the prevailing metaphor of the series — also parallels his relationship with confronting injustice. Maizuru mentions that he was a sickly child, so the act of eating may have been physically uncomfortable for him. As an adult, his refusal to eat crops up during his rescue attempt of Falin. Denying himself food might have been punishment for not accomplishing important tasks like rescuing Falin and/or a way to maintain control over something in his life when he felt like he'd lost control over the rest of it, again in the context of losing Falin. (Note: I suggest reading this post on Toshiro's disordered eating by @malaierba.)

But he cannot and does not avoid consuming food forever.

Similarly, Toshiro keeps his distance from his retainers and tries not to use them until the Falin situation occurs. His efforts to avoid exploiting his retainers amount to inaction — things he doesn't ask of them or do to them. But his inaction does nothing to dismantle the existing hierarchy that places his retainers under his authority, denies them agency, and often marginalizes them as not only servants or slaves but as women, and he ends up using them as servants and slaves anyways.

Returning to the narrative's themes of consumption, Toshiro cannot avoid eating just as he cannot avoid perpetuating the exploitative system of his household. The Nakamoto clan consumes the labor and personhood of those lower in the hierarchy. The retainers' labor as spies and domestic servants is the foundation of the clan's existence. Thus, the clan consumes their labor to sustain itself.

Within this hierarchy, the retainers' personhood is also consumed and erased. As Izutsumi describes, they are given different names and stripped of their agency to reject orders or leave. Maizuru and Hien also say their feelings are irrelevant in the context of Toshitsugu's and Toshiro's wants and needs. Both women are expected to comply with whatever is most beneficial and comfortable for the noblemen. Clearly, despite Toshiro's detachment from his household's functions, these social structures remain in place and harm the women under him.

Although we know the Nakamoto clan has male retainers, the choice to highlight the female retainers seems intentional. We're asked to interrogate how not only being a servant or a slave in a noble household impacts a person's life and agency, but how being a woman intersects with being a member of some of the lowest social classes.

Toshiro only distances himself from his father's behaviors of infidelity and exploitation so long as it doesn't take Toshiro out of his comfort zone. He doesn't free his slaves. He's far too comfortable with his female retainers performing domestic labor for him, and he barely acknowledges their efforts; they're shocked when he thanks them for helping him save Falin. He hasn't unpacked his sexist (or classist or racist) biases because he perpetuates his household's oppressive hierarchy throughout the narrative. Considering all of this, he inevitably brings this baggage to his interactions with Falin.

Falin is presumably one of the first women he's had extended contact with that isn't his relative or his family's servant. Because of his trauma surrounding his father and Maizuru sleeping together, he understandably falls for a woman as disconnected as possible from his father and his clan. He seems to genuinely like Falin, respects her boundaries, and graciously accepts her rejection. His behavior towards her is overall kind and unproblematic.

But if Falin had gone with him, she would've likely been devalued and sidelined like the other women of the Nakamoto household. No matter how much he loves Falin, simply loving her cannot replace the difficult work of unlearning his sexism. Love, of course, can and should be accompanied by that work, but by the close of the narrative, we gain little indication that Toshiro acknowledges or seeks to end his part in exploiting and devaluing women and other marginalized people.

A spark of hope does exist. Toshiro expressing his feelings to Laios and Falin suggests that his time away from home has encouraged him to speak up more. Breaking his habit of avoidance may be the first step towards acknowledging his complicity in systems of injustice and moving towards dismantling them.

Special thanks to my very smart friend @atialeague for bringing up Toshitsugu's relationship with Maizuru and the replication of dynamics of consumption and class! <3