teafourbirds

[teafourbirds]

Mia & Roy are the best ever

[teafourbirds]

More hugs to Dick, please.

[teafourbirds]

[teafourbirds]

Hal telling Mia old stories of Ollie

[teafourbirds]

My absolute favorite genre of comics meta is the type that looks at inconsistencies between runs and instead of treating them as mistakes, leans deep into what they tell us about how the characters view their own stories.

This is what makes comics fandom so fascinating to me, because the medium stretches single stories across so many different generations of readers and writers and artists. You can double down on one particular interpretation of a character (One True Character TM), or you can take the messy histories full of visions and revisions and let them reflect the way memories and understandings change over time. How the truth of our pasts becomes increasingly inaccessible to us, replaced by our own interpretations and retellings. How none of us really can ever access the objective.

There's just so much opportunity for storytelling in those gaps and inconsistencies, and I love seeing it laid out like this.

@disco-troy and i were talking about it... but one of the things that really breaks my heart is how it's both dick and bruce who are such unreliable narrators. consider donna's wedding...

in tales of the teen titans (1984) #50, we have dick asking bruce why he adopted jason and not dick:

what's really interesting about it is the way dick is depicted here... the refusal to make eye contact till he eventually does. there's an element of dick being terrified of bruce's answer and his posture in the beginning of this interaction is almost... defensive? he's hunched, leaning on the balustrade, shadowed... till he receives assurance from bruce. and then, bruce immediately reverts to toasting the success of dick's team... which dick reciprocates but i feel like there's possibly still a degree of doubt from him... about dick grayson's role in bruce wayne's life (because yes, bruce has affirmed that he loves dick as much as any son but it doesn't take away from the fact that jason was adopted instantly and dick is only adopted after tim appears... we've seen how dick reacted to both the times bruce was considering adopting someone else— tim and cass— and it isn't pleasant!!! which means there's still lingering unease about it for him)

and then you have justice league of america (2006) #0, which is a series of flashbacks and future occurrences woven to focus on the trinity. but here's bruce's recollection of this talk at donna's wedding:

there's such a difference between the two!!!

here, it's almost a role reversal... dick is the one reassuring bruce and reiterating the importance of their familial bond... even the physicality of reassurance is from dick to bruce through the hand on the shoulder. despite the similarity in postures between this and the panel from tales, dick is not afraid to meet bruce's eyes— in fact, he's the one who takes it a step further and offers physical reassurance along with the verbal. moreover, the conversation is cut short by dick being pulled away for other obligations... which is an interesting consideration of how bruce has often viewed dick's priorities being split between him and the titans.

of course, we can chalk it up to different things— maybe this part of dick and bruce's conversation actually happened and we simply didn't get to see it in TotTT + it's not always possible for writers of different comics to have the exact same considerations for characters + dick is arguably the focus in tales whereas bruce is the focus in JLA so it makes sense for the narration to pander to them in their respective comics.... but there's also the fact that this is very much a flashback whereas the conversation in tales is happening in the present...

we already know dick & bruce are prone to miscommunication when the communication even happens + bruce is often painfully nostalgic about dick's robin years... so i don't think it's a stretch to say that bruce's recollection of this conversation is warped by his own emotionality.

especially when you consider the handling of robin being passed on to jason. in the very same JLA issue, this is how bruce talks of it:

which is, once again, very different in terms of how that conversation actually went in batman (1940) #416:

(although, i would be remiss if i didn't consider that bruce probably thinks he is being truthful here... because we do see how dick accepts jason as robin. moreover, bruce himself sees it and is grateful to dick for it)

but i think it's interesting how in both cases, bruce is a first-hand spectator to dick's unease/hurt/fear of rejection... and how differently he remembers it... perhaps, even chooses to remember it.

like, just look at this... right after dick & bruce's conversation in JLA, this is what follows:

it's so interesting that he remembers his own sadness and nostalgia at the kind of man dick has grown to be... how that is, in his mind, at a distance from him... how he remembers being the one receiving reassurance and affirmation of his importance to dick from dick... and all of this, maybe, comes at the cost of dick's feelings being diminished & considered with less gravity.

tldr: bruce wayne... you are so deeply unwell!!! you sure are... a Father.

[teafourbirds]

Wally and Roy referring to Hal as their uncle.

Feel free to add more

[teafourbirds]

it does academically interest me how. in tim joins the batfam early aus there is almost always a terrible Event that tim is unable to handle on his own because he is a Child (such as illness, catastrophic house emergency) that leads to the responsible family (ie/ the waynes) finding out he is truly in need of caretaking and love without fail. in my head, i analyze this in the context of the book 'the boxcar children', which has a surprisingly similar formula. however, in the books the children are very self sufficient and capable & reconcile with the biological grandfather they were afraid of. with fanon tim, the focus is on his incapabilities. anyways. i don't really know where i'm going with this outside of now i do think a batkids boxcar children au sounds fun so-

our story begins with jack & janet drake managing to adopt dick after the circus before bruce has a chance to causing some slighy enmity. bruce is slightly salty & jack and janet think he's kind of a dumbass, so dick & tim (and others picked up along the way here. let's assume cass as well) have only heard not great things about him. when jack & janet are killed in haiti, though, it comes to light that they have left custody of their assorted children to bruce wayne because he did want to adopt dick at some point. the children do not want to go, because bruce is a weird recluse jack & janet always make snarky comments about and decide to run away. they end up in an abandoned boxcar on the outskirts of wayne manor (or the carriage house, that'd be fun). dick does odd jobs to make money to take care of his kid siblings & they make a home.

meanwhile, bruce wayne/batman is on the lookout for these kids who have been left to them but cannot find them (even tho they're right there. in stories like this the adults need to be a lil incompentent okay). he is very worried they're in danger. but whatever this isn't actually about him.

anyways along the way our boxcar batkids make friends along the way--helena the orphaned mob princess and dr leslie thompkins, who is highly suspicious that these are the kids bruce is looking for but also is keeping her suspicions to herself because the kids seem scared of bruce and she thinks they just need time to be convinced. anyways things come to a head when tim gets the clench & ends up at leslie's clinic, batman saves the day with the cure & also finds the kids he's been looking for. he wants to reveal himself to the kids, but leslie says he needs to wait until they trust him and so he can show them he's not the scary man they think he is. he decides to get close to them as a friendly figure they can trust, batman, and offers dick a job as robin-

[teafourbirds]

Jurnee Smollett’s Black Canary + Green Arrow

By Romy Jones

[teafourbirds]

Dinah and Oliver by Ryan Sook

[teafourbirds]

The Lovers

I totally forgot to post this, anyways… I love them. Go read birds of prey.

[teafourbirds]

Marry me, Dinah.

-- The Longbow Hunters (1987) #1

This scene is absolutely foundational to how I think about their relationship. That second panel, with Ollie looking at her so quietly. Dinah knowing she's about to hurt him, the moment of seriousness before she plays it off lightly, because she's already made her decision. How much they love each other, even when they're not on the same page about where they're going. Just look at them.

[teafourbirds]

[teafourbirds]

I've gotten a few comments recently asking if I'm planning on continuing Imperfect Consonance, since it's been over month since the last chapter went up. So just posting to say that yes, the ending is definitely still coming! I am sorry I've left Dinah and Ollie and Hal on that note for so long (especially Ollie. Sorry Ollie), but I promise not to leave them like that much longer.

Delay is two things: one is real life, and the second is that with chapter 3 I caught up to the point I'd written ahead to (the thematic end of the part one arc). I'm a keep-circling-back kind of writer, which means I constantly edit what I've already written as I go along and the themes and characters and plot start emerging. It also means that I don't usually post things until they're finished, which in turn means that I almost never post anything. I started posting to spur myself on into finishing, and so far it's working.

(There's also the comics factor, which is that every time a new character gets mentioned, even as a one-liner, I end up in a comics-reading spiral as I'm checking their characterization/relationships. This comment is brought to you by the ridiculous number of golden age Green Arrow comics I read trying to find the right anecdote for Roy and Ollie in the early years, and also the fact that I'm now knee deep into a second bronze age Barry Allen arc. For the record? This story is set in the early nineties. Barry is very much dead. And yet.)

I'm getting close, but I probably won't post the next chapter until I have the whole thing at least partially drafted. Hopefully in the next few weeks!

Thanks again to everyone who has left such lovely comments; I have read each of them so many times, and it really does help get me over the hard bits of writing, knowing that other people are enjoying this story too.

[teafourbirds]

ga2001 dynamics

[teafourbirds]

Dinah Laurel Lance/Black Canary | Green Arrow v7 (2016-) #26

[teafourbirds]

"This may look a little funny..."

--World's Finest Comics #87