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deesea-ao3 · 24 days ago

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Thoughts regarding Fawcett City

While outlining the plan for my upcoming fic release, I eventually got to the stage where I had to start choosing which parts of canon I wanted/needed to develop. I had loads of cool ideas and headcanons I wanted to explore, but none of it could be implemented if I didn't have a solid grasp on the bigger picture, namely the setting.

Now, for DC comics, we are expected to suspend our disbelief regarding certain cities. It is established that IRL American cities are there, while also being right next to the fictional ones, and we just have to pretend like that makes sense geographically/ economically. Over the years, DC has made countless fictional cities, ranging from highly complex environments like Gotham, to placeholder set pieces like Happy Harbour.

Fawcett City tends to be in between those two extremes. Depending on the era and writers, Fawcett City is either its own wild, wacky city or some boring street in Philidelphia. I am, of course, partial to the former, but even then, a lot of the interesting aspects of the city's lore are found in reading between the lines; seeing the implications for what they are and running with it.

Fawcett City is home to the physical entrance to the Rock of Eternity, the intra-dimensional heart of ALL of planet Earth's magic. It is a prison of great evil, an archive of powerful mystic knowledge, and hosts a network of doors leading to countless other worlds. It is maintained by an undying spectre of one of Earth's greatest sorcerers and fiercly guarded by his greatest champions. Despite all this heavy lore, Fawcett has been egregiously neglected in a lot of post New 52 series and has become shockingly boring, leaving people to find interest in Golden/Silver age works.

In the early days of Shazam! Captain Marvel publication, a lot of the conflicts that occurred in the city were magical in nature, and civilian reactions were always rather nonplussed about it. A talking crocodile invasion was treated with the same amount of weight as rampaging robots, with very little upset about how the existence of magic might challenge their established worldviews. I don't think Captain Marvels first writers did this purposefully. It was more a consequence of the fact that they only had so many pages to write their story on, and comics, in general, weren't meant to be anything more than passing entertainment than deep, introspective storylines, and that's not even addressing how limiting the medium had become due to the Hay's Code.

Because of this, fans of this era are left with the impression of Fawcett City being DC's resident urban fantasy setting. A place where bipedal cartoon tigers walk around in twee green suits. A place where unicorns eat trash alongside racoons. A place where the old lady you see at bingo night is casually also the Baba Yaga. It's a delightful contrast to other DC cities like Gotham, for example. The idea of a random Midwestern American city just being extremely magic and all its citizens just being normal about it is hilarious. For writers like me, it's the perfect sandbox to explore our own interpretations of how magic works in the DCU, and I wish more people saw its appeal/potential.

I'll probably make a separate post about my own headcanons/lore regarding Fawcett later, but for now, I just wanted to ramble about it a little.

#billy batson #dc comics #captain marvel #dc #shazam #fawcett #fawcett city #fawcett comics #golden age comics #hays code my beloathed #rambles

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1000plants · 19 days ago

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Under the Lonesome Moon 1/5

"New Moon"

Cowboy!Bucky Barnes x reader (male) Golden Era of cowboys - 1865s

Summary: Tired with the simple life of your little town, you can only hope the cowboys who’ve arrived will change it all.

Warnings- Mentions of death, violence, traumatized lil kid

Authors Note- Im so excited for this series!! School started back up and I have a lot of hours, but this will hopefully come out in a timely manner lol

Chapter 1/5

===============================================

“Kid! Hey, kid!” Tony called up into the barn. His voice echoed around because of the shitty acoustics of the ranshackled place. You could hear him huffing when you didn't answer right away.

Though the acoustics must be somewhat decent, his yelling reached your ears didn't it? You groaned at the unpleasant awakening. Laying up in the loft, the timber beams made your back ache with stiffness. Tony and Natasha had each offered you housing, a warm bed, and all other forms of stability, but you didn't take it.

Taking it meant you were stayin’. And you weren't stayin’.

“What?” You called back, voice rough with sleep. You sucked in a big breath, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and sitting up. The sun peaked through the slits of the roof. Golden strands that didn't fully reach the loft floor, Tony did a damn good job at building it all those years ago.

“Ms. Natasha wants to see you, Kid.” Tony said. You could hear the exasperated grin in his voice as he opened the barn doors fully. The low thud of the doors sliding open and hitting the end of the rails was the final wakeup call you needed. Most days you were better at getting yourself up and presentable, today wasn't one of those days.

You grabbed your raggedy jacket and dust off the hay on your pants as you stood. Glancing down at the barn floor, morning sun spilling in, it was about a 10 ft drop. You wiped your hands dry on your worn out jeans and grabbed the main pillar. It was a rough wood, but never seemed to give you splinters as you clambered down.

A bit of dirt billowed up as your feet firmly planted on the ground. Tony just nodded towards the bar down the road as he made his way to the wooden plow. It hadn't been running as smoothly as he wanted, apparently.

“You really should take her up on that offer,” Tony tells you, making his way over and dusting some of the remaining hay from your jacket. He looked sympathetic, smiling lightly and avoiding looking at the obvious hole in your elbow.

At your half confused expression, Tony continues, “The job, kid. You already work for pay, why not take her up on the free bed?” He grins and lays a solid slap on your back.

You grunt out and stumble a step forward, lopsidedly smiling back, “What? And leave this luxury?” You gesture up to the loft, old hay you had piled up to sleep on was just visible from the ground. Your hat was hung on a rusty nail on the pillar, your nicer shoes sat underneath.

“Barns not that comfortable!” Tony hollers at you with a chuckle as you make your way down the road. You don't reply, just turn back towards him and wave him off with an eyeroll.

It wasn't about comfort, not to you. There was a long while you did sleep in a real bed. One with nice sheets and a full pillow. When you had made your way to town 13 years ago, you had thought you'd stay forever. Plus, who was gonna make an orphaned 10 year old sleep outside?

Well… Mayor Nicolas “Fury” nearly made you.

In all fairness, he had good reason to worry you were bringing bandits with you.

This town was never your home, and it was odd to think that you had lived here longer than not. When you were little, maybe 9 or 10, your Pa’s farm was struggling. He and your Ma made the choice to sell it and try to move to the cities. There was some whispering about the railroads. A good chance for your Pa to put his strength to use and make some money. It would also have been a more stable future for you when you became old enough.

Walking down the beaten path to the bar, you glanced out at the landscape. The little town of Stanlow was easy to miss if you didn't know you were going to it. Surrounded by waves of hills, lush grasslands, and a river just around the bend, it was seen as a little oasis. That was probably why just about 500 people called it home. Tony had it best, you came to quickly learn, a family cattle farm that was closer to town than anyone else. All the other farmers and ranchers lived a quarter of a day's ride away- at best.

It was actually Tony who had brought you to town. According to others, he had been riding back from a friend's farm and saw a group of horses and men surrounding a covered wagon. When he had gotten much closer, the men were quick to grab their knapsacks and ride off.

He had worried it was a planned attack, and knowing Stanlow wasn't too far, he kept his guard up as he neared the wagon. The horse that was pullin’ the wagon had been spooked and ran a good hundred feet away and the wagon was on its side.

What he hadn't been expecting to see as the dust settled was a young boy hunched over a body. No, two bodies.

Depending on who you asked, the rest of the story is a bit fuzzy. Tony told you the story rarely, so you pieced it together from the drunkards and gossips who didn't care about if you knew or not. Tony had to basically drag you away from your Pa, who had gotten fatally shot by the bandits almost immediately. The only thing that coaxed you away from the only comfort you knew was your Ma, who wasn't gonna make it. Even 10-year-old you could see it in the way her face paled and the blood pooled in a dark red spot on her stomach. She knew about Stanlow, it was a town your family had skipped in order to shear some more time off their trip, and it was close enough that she trusted Tony to bring you there safely.

That was all you really remembered, too. Being pulled away from your Ma, crying so hard her face was a blur, hoisted up onto a horse and riding away. You cried yourself to sleep. Not waking up until the next day, in a large bed with an old quilt draped over you. The lights were low and a single candle was lit by the door.

It wasn't your house, it wasn't your bed, it wasn't even your Ma and Pa’s bed… so, you lashed out.

Initially you did, at least. The first day was spent with Fury, Ms. Natasha, and Tony trying to calm you down. It took Doctor Banner a few tries to sedate you enough so that they could get you food. Then after all that you clammed up. Hardly spoke a whisper, Ms. Natasha theorized you were mute from the shock.

Maybe you were, the first few months were really blurry for you. You never told them your name, so they just settled on calling you “The Kid” which got shortened to an affectionate “Kid”. You didn't remain the silent and scared little kid for long, though. You were like every other young boy in town, just less restrained. All the others had their parents to scold them, to give them a curfew, work to do. You didn't have that, and Ms. Natasha and Tony didn't feel it was their place to enforce it.

They didn't see you as their son and you didn't see them as your parents, but that didn't stop them from protecting you.

You got into a little too much trouble. Hitting balls around and breaking windowpanes, roughhousing a little too hard and getting into full on fights. Hell, even playing marbles and hide-and-seek made you into a little hellion.

A few nights in the sheriff's cell helped. A little. You weren't angry, as much as Doctor Banner and Mayor Fury thought. You had just too much energy. Tony helped mediate it by getting you working in his barn most days, then at night you'd clean Ms. Natasha's bar in return for a bed. Once you were 16, you started looking for a way out of town. Odd jobs, travelers with offers, even considered braving your way East to go to the factories and railroads your Pa had sought.

But no one would take you. Sure, a few people gave you some farmland work. You'd take care of horses, help during the harvests, but word got around fast that you couldn't stay out of trouble. Jobs washed up quickly. Ms. Natasha always had a soft spot for you. She offered you everything you could've wanted. You were great at the bar, personable and charming enough to sell the more expensive drinks, but it wasn't what you wanted. It was slow, a few fights here and there kept your interest, unfortunately those had to be trampled down quickly. If Fury had to get involved in a bar fight, you were screwed.

Speaking of… As you neared the bar, you waved hello to Ms. Natasha. She was a woman you were glad was always on your side. A no-nonsense attitude, firm tone, and the strongest liqueur around. All of it added up to a dangerous woman no man would doublecross. Looking back, the nights spent in the sheriff's cells might have not been to keep you in, but to keep her out.

She flashed you a bright smile, pushing open the double swinging doors to usher you inside. You did a small jog and murmured a soft thanks before stepping in. You lightly jumped around the squeaky floorboard that needed fixed, dragged a finger through the grime on a table yet to be clean, and made a mental checklist of the bottles that needed stocked- all while Ms. Natasha said:

“What took you so long? I haven't needed to send Tony to fetch ya in - god,” She puffed her cheeks and shook her head as she looked at the dirty table, “a damn long while.”

“Busy dreamin’ I guess,” You halfheartedly reply. Really you had no good reason, your internal body must've forgotten. Maybe the hay was comfier than you realized.

“Well, you can keep dreaming all you'd like,” She nods, giving you a slightly more stern look, “But there's a lot of cleaning up you've yet to do.”

You sheepishly smile at her as you dig behind the bar for some soap and a less-than-disgusting rag. Yeah… you kinda dropped the ball last night when it came to cleaning up. Rushing to get out ‘cause the moon had disappeared from the sky.

There was something cathartic about looking at a clear sky- no moon with infinite stars- while sitting on the barn roof. It was one of the very few times you truly felt like nothing was happening. The one time your brain stopped thinking and your body didn't ache to move. You wished you could bottle up that feeling and sell it- maybe that’d be your ticket out of here.

“Sorry Ms. Natasha,”

“Nat, Kid, you make me feel old when you say that.”

“Nat,” You correct yourself, standing to wet the rag. You both knew you would go back to the title soon, it was the only manners you seemed to have, “The sky looked pretty, couldn't miss it!”

She chuckled and shook her head, joining you in cleaning up and restocking the bar for later tonight.

“You kids and your daydreaming,” She mused with a smirk, nudging your arm and eliciting a half-hearted eyeroll from you.

But you weren't a kid. You were 20 god damn years old.

The rest of the afternoon went smoothly. You got the major problems all sorted: fixing a wobbly chair, refilling the water jugs in back, heading to Mayor Fury's office down the road for some paperwork- all things Ms. Natasha needed an extra hand for.

It was just an hour or so until the bar was fully in swing for the night. There was Old Jim in the back, nursing a cheap bottle of beer. That familiar ache came back to your chest when you saw Nat talking to him, consoling him over something, maybe encouraging a stronger drink.

Was that your future? Working everyday at the same thing? Befriending drunkards for some extra money before the richer drinkers came by?

Or were you an Old Jim.

Doing so little with yourself that you needed to wash away the ache with some cheap shit.

These thoughts only hurt harder the more you thought about them. So you shoved the feeling down to your toes and recentered your focus onto the bottles you were cleaning. Oh! And you needed to get some fruit from the shop, it would be good to add to some drinks. Or for the few who wanted to snack on those as well as the nuts and dried meat.

You hummed softly to yourself, turning to the window as the sun faded gently into the ground. A sharp orange that drowned out the little blades of grass. This was the type of view you would kill to have imprinted into your brain. The arc of one of the hills as it sliced through the sun, a cloud or two daring to break up the orange with the impending deep blue that quickly faded to black.

“Nat, where do you want the…” You started to ask, drying the last glass bottle, but the sight of four men on horses making their way straight for town stopped all trains of thought. You squinted at the sight, they looked like bandits. They rode horses like no one you'd ever seen before. But that's not what truly caught your attention, it was what seemed to be a gleaming metal arm, and a dark leather hat that made you starstruck.

“Kid!” Natasha scolded, hearing the shattering of glass from the broom closet. She huffed, turning with broom in hand to make you sweep it up. Her brows pinched together when she noticed you were pressed flush against the window. The broken bottle fully forgotten, the rag you had been holding slipped precariously out of your hands.

No, not bandits…

“Cowboys.” you breathed out, breath fogging the glass as a giddiness erupted in your veins.

This was it. Your way out.

#marvel #avengers #avengers x male reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x male reader #cowboy au #Golden Age of Cowboys #avengers x reader #UtLM

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