#argh. anyway. going to go watch a silly little video of some sort and maybe sleep early cause i haven’t been sleeping well

[1ovestay]

won’t lie, experiencing some horrors

[popliar]

K-Con Australia, 20170922-23

The first Australian K-Con was held over the last two nights in Sydney, and @proteinscollide​ and I were there. I'm very behind on everything else as a result! I need to watch Knowing Bros! ANYWAY, short version: IT WAS SUPER FUN. Lots of rambling under the cut as usual.

22 September: SF9, Pentagon, Victon, Girl's Day, Exo

23 September: SF9 (again!), Up10tion, Cosmic Girls/WJSN, Wanna One, Monsta X

Overall this was an extremely well produced show and a really fun show - I had such a good time! Okay, the "convention" part not so much (I'll talk about this a bit at the end of the post) but at both evening shows, the concert ran like a slick machine, stage following stage with no pause, good sound and no technical hitches. Visually the show looked great, with massive screens giving good views of every performer as well as fantastically atmospheric backdrops.

It didn't sell out on either night, and again I'll talk about possible reasons for that more later, but as a vehicle for hallyu and for promoting Korean culture this is potentially such a powerful instrument. One of the most striking K-Con images for me is the footage of K-Con Paris from 2016 - the pan from the section of the crowd for the French dignitaries and delegates, all politely seated and clapping, to the massive auditorium of French youth going absolutely wild for these pop groups from the other side of the world. This show didn't have that element of official endorsement, it was much more a straight-up pop show, but hey you never know, that might come…

Soft power has its limits, for sure, but within those boundaries Korea is working so very hard at being the very best it can be. I admire the gumption, and more importantly to Korea I am happily consuming the product! Give me more product! I'm here for this!

As far as line-up goes, this K-Con wasn't the best. Exo are absolute stars of course and there were other notable groups like Monsta X and Girl's Day; on balance however this was a really rookie-heavy sausage-fest. The prevalence of rookies is probably partly bad timing - the show coincided with the DMC Music Festival (which was eventually cancelled anyway due to labour disputes, argh, we could've had it all!).

But the boy-heavy line-up? Frustrating. Apparently WJSN and Girl's Day are the first girl groups to perform here since 4 Minute some three-four years ago. WHY? Perhaps there's a perception that since Western fans are mostly girls then they'll only turn out for boybands - I know in Korea the audience for girlgroups is skewed towards boys. However, here in the West, pop as a whole is coded so heavily female that I'm sure wouldn't be a problem. I've been to many Western female pop star concerts and trust me, the girls SHOWED UP. Hell, at this very same arena, Little Mix are performing later this year. Besides, this argument falls flat if you look at other K-Con line-ups which, although boy-heavy, still manage more than a measly 2 girl groups. Gosh I'd have been so happy with the addition of any ONE of Red Velvet, Mamamoo, Blackpink, Pristin, Gfriend, Twice, etc…

...that was a long intro. Let's talk the show.

Chanyeol (EXO)

Night 1

The first night of K-Con began with a pre-show of kpop dance cover groups (they were all good but some were REALLY GOOD) and Kevin from U-KISS as MC (did u know he looks like Lee Pace around the eyes?), doing his cheesy best to hype up the crowd and also promote the con's primary sponsor.

Then the show got started with a VCR, featuring Monsta X's Minhyuk in a sort of spaceship-themed narrative? I don't know what I saw but apparently K-Con's first Oceanic showing needed heroes or defenders or something, i.e. kpop groups? Whatever cool. I do know it involved Minhyuk looking at a picture of a kangaroo so we're all good.

Also apparently Sydney is the city of "arts and culture" and also "romance"? I'm flattered on behalf of my home, and I can assure you we have plenty of all three, but really?? Those are not, like, the first words I associate with Sydney. But ok, you do you K-Con!

Exo's Suho and Sehun then came on as the night's special MCs to deliver a brief introduction and be cute together and make the crowd scream. Naturally, there were Exo jerseys and banners and lightsticks all over the place; earlier in the day I got handed a cute banner to celebrate Chen's birthday, which I then promptly used to test proteinscollide's knowledge of Exo band names. (She improved greatly through the evening!)

First group up were rookie boyband SF9 - I've enjoyed their songs and MVs without knowing much about them. This rapidfire 3 song performance made me more of a fan! They just hit all their beats really well, both in terms of performance and in their brief introduction ment, advantaged by one member who was a fluent English speaker. Their line distribution is kind of weird - there's maybe three members who dominate the vocals and the dancing, especially Taeyang who I kept thinking of as "that one guy who looks like Shinee's Jonghyun" - but not enough to detract overall. I have no favourite but maybe my favourite is the rapper with currently red hair who reminds me of SVT Jeonghan and Pentagon's E'Dawn.

Something like K-Con is the perfect platform for a rookie group to get this kind of exposure. My own first exposure to kpop (aka the reason for my eternal downfall) was winning free tickets to a Boyfriend & JJCC show - I knew nothing about them, knew next to nothing about kpop, and JJCC were a hot mess sorry - but seeing the groups in person and live was enough to make me want to know so much more. I feel like this SF9 set functioned in much the same way. It was SO much more impactful than just an MV or a youtube clip or a gifset. This is how fans are made! (That said… I'll get to it, but SF9 got two bites at the cherry. Why?)

Next up were Pentagon and their brief set was great. Their songs are such bangers - I SAID BANGERS, DON'T AT ME - and they were really polished and powerful. Kino's opening dance solo was super charismatic, and E'Dawn (aka the only one I can consistently recognise) was working that jawline of his so well, lol. He does the bad boy thing very well! I admire it! For their ment, they played the "Pinata" game as seen at other K-Cons this year, i.e. a random game was selected. (Would the game be 'Propose'? It was not propose, but one member did get down on one knee to E'Dawn anyway, good job good fanservice.) In this case it was a random dance play, and it was very amusing and silly.

Probably my favourite thing about Pengaton is how far and fast proteinscollide has fallen for them. Can you believe at this time last year she didn't even know all the MX member names? Now the student has exceeded the master! Post your Pentagon post bro!

Sehun and Suho came back to introduce a special stage: Exo's Chanyeol in duet with WJSN's Seola, for his OST track Stay with Me. This was a nice, pretty interlude and a bit of a breather after the fast pacing of the first two sets.

Seola (WJSN)

Third rookie group Victon bopped cutely to a very Australian-themed video backdrop and they were very entertaining, without necessarily making me want to seek them out further. I think that's more to do with their concept being more cute than Pentagon and SF9's, so less appealing to me on those grounds. But they have their charms and most importantly one had a mullet! I'm HERE for the mullets, don't even think I'm joking.

Next up were Girl's Day. They're down to 4 members now but their experience and their casual confidence made them so enjoyable to watch. They played their hits including Something, Expectation and Ring My Bell with such a sense of fun and sexiness, dominating the stage and playing to the crowd with the relaxed ease of vets who have nothing to prove. There was a hunger to the rookies that gave them more edge but sometimes you just wanna watch really talented ppl relaxedly doing their very talented thing.

With everyone acutely aware there was only one act left to take the stage, a couple of SF9s came out to MC a special stage. They did the usual "how are you guys enjoying the show" and "we love Australia" and all that jazz, and then made the fatal mistake of asking an open-ended question:

SF9 MCs: so who is Australia's favourite boy group? Crowd: BTS!!! MCs: Yes, Exo!!! #awkward

I lol'd! I am sorry! Bless you Exo but c'mon!

This was followed by a brief VCR of Australian fans naming their favourite boybands, and then a really fun special stage of boyband covers:  Pentagon covered GOT7's Hard Carry;  SF9 covered Exo's Monster; and Victon did BTS's Fire.

At last it was time for EXO��- MUCH CHEERING FROM CROWD!  Exo-Ls were out in force. There were also tons of lightsticks in the crowd and everyone was hyyyyped.

Now some context for my reaction: I can name all the Exo's and I like some of their songs, but I don't quite click with their aesthetic/dynamic in the way that I do with BTS, etc. They were also at something of a disadvantage, with D.O absent from the line-up (I had to count them twice to make sure sob) and Lay MIA from this entire comeback (though I guess that's no longer surprising).

So let that be the background for me saying that I was totally entertained and impressed by their set. Starting with Power and ending with Ko Ko Bop, they came out and gave a great show. They are after all professionally charming and who was I to resist?

For me again it's that idea of a live show being so much more powerful than a video, even for something as preplanned and artificially constructed as pop. A concert is such a powerful reminder that it's more than the performer, and it's more than the audience too - it's about the relationship between the two, that alchemy of atmosphere and act that you only get in that specific environment.

Yes, Kai was deadly with his fucking winks and seductive looks (how dare you sir), but the way the audience reacted to his performance is what made the show go off. Xiumin aka Cat Pirate was also a scene stealer for me, and it was very darling when Chanyeol threw confetti at his head at the end awwww.

(I just wish, like, SM were less SM-y. I got a message from proteinscollide after the show - "Girl walking thru car park: shout out to SM who never give reasons for why members aren't there and if they're ok". Um, yep. I had to check on twitter to find out that D.O was off filming a movie.)

Ending stage was as usual with everyone coming out as tons of confetti rained down. I think a SF9 hugged a Victon? AWWW FRIENDS. A good night.

Night 2

We started again with dance cover groups - colour me EXTREMELY impressed by IME Dance Studio - and Kevin from U-KISS giving away a prize to whoever in the crowd did their best impression of their favourite thing to do in a hotel room. This led to a really hilarious scenario as the cameras zoomed in on 2 girls "dancing" together. "Yes, they're dancing!" Kevin said, "of course they're dancing!" Everyone just cracked the fuck up, Kevin included. They got the prize, bless them, which was - ofc - a free hotel stay!

The show started with the same VCR as the day before and then I was EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED by Monsta X's Jooheon and Shownu taking the stage together to drop an absolutely fire performance. Jooheon's duality is amazing - cuddly scaredy-cat off stage, fucking monster on stage - he was SO GOOD. Shownu's dance break was great as expected and I cried tears in my heart bc I love them.

SF9 returned for the second evening - again, they were slick and impressive, and they namedropped kangaroos and meat pies in their intro ment, good work on ticking off those keywords lol. But I really don't know why they got sets on both days? Did FNC decide they really wanted to build that fanbase and made the necessary commercial arrangement with the promotors? Like I said, stages like this can be real turning points in making a fan. So that's fascinating. If anyone knows, lemme know?

Daehwi (Wanna One)

Three Wanna Ones then took the stage to briefly MC. It was definitely Kang Daniel and uh, two other Wanna Ones! *hastily googles* It was Daehwi, who was the most fluent in English and was super cute & cheesy, and Minhyun, who was also cute but I don't remember much? Sorry team. The only Broduce bro I can 100% identify is Daniel, and sometimes Jaewhan. But! I think I'll remember Daehwi from now on - he was pretty memorable and did the most heavy lifting in the ments. Anyway they delivered some potted intros and then on to the next one.

WJSN then performed a special stage, covering two Kylie Minogue songs as two subunits - Locomotion (which I note came out in 1988, older than every single K-Con performer except for Sojin of Girl's Day) and I Can't Get You Out Of My Head (2001 - there are rookies debuting born in 2001! And younger! God i'm so old). Firstly much love for preparing a special stage with local appeal that didn't feel pandering and really spoke to the long history of amazing women in pop, and secondly THEY WERE SO GOOD. Fun, bright, poppy - I love them.

They were followed by Up10tion who did a high energy set and I remember why I liked them! They're good! I don't quite click with all their songs, especially their more recent ones which I feel are a bit hit and miss, but just like every other group in this K-Con they delivered their set with professionalism and skill and charm.

There was then a brief interlude with MX's Kihyun and I.M, MY TWO LOVES, MCing an audience dance game. We got to see Kihyun doing the Twice TT dance and my world was made. Gosh I love them.

WJSN

WJSN then came back for their set and I just really like them so much. They have that sleekness that I've come to associate with Starship because of them and MX, with both groups always having good choreo and catchy hooks. I like their concept a lot too - they're cute sassy cheerleaders, yes, but I also feel like there's this very cool edge to them, they could easily cut you! I love that! As they acknowledged in their ment, 2 members couldn't make it due to filming schedules (I think it was Cheng Xiao, the dancey/gymnastic one? And Mei Qi, possibly? I'm sorry, I don't remember) but they were still very good and I enjoyed their set a lot. And their main rapper - god, I'm sorry, I don't know if it was Bona or another member - she was SO GOOD? She had so much stage presence. Gosh. I need to find out her name.

Next up were Wanna One. Now, ofc, Produce 101 never officially aired in Australia. We had to watch it on the internet like a bunch of animals. And yet out of all the groups on both days, their fans were definitely the most intense and the most scream-y - yes, more intense than the Exo-Ls and the Monbebes!

I only ever saw snippets of P101 and as I said I can only ID Daniel with certainty, but I was, hmm, not surprised I guess that they turned out to be endearing? CAN U IMAGINE, a group of young men voted for according to their charms turns out to be extremely charming?! The shock!  (From a purely commercial standpoint, what a brilliant exercise this has turned out to be. I think the limited timeframe for Wanna One to make bank lends an edge of urgency to their fandom and means their machine is also geared to maximum efficiency. Make! Bank! Now!) And because they're young and new, there was a certain edge of rawness and spontaneity to them which is naturally part of their appeal too. I still don't quite know what I feel about Kang Daniel - like I know he's very fond of cats and therefore a good person, and he has this easy, cocky stage charisma which makes his appeal seem very straightforward. But I think I found him most endearing when he missed a step at the end of his dance solo and there was just the cutest expression on his face, like "my bad."

For their Pinata game, they did photo time with hyung line posing "cutely" and maknae line posing "sexily" followed by some kind of free for all - A HOT MESS, lol.

Daehwi also went off script - or at least, he said he went off script, but can you ever really know? We need to go deeper! - and wished happy birthday to Kuanlin, getting the whole audience to sing along too, awww. As I said: what a group of charming young men; the self-awareness that they were constructed to charm ultimately means nothing.

FINALLY MONSTA X. They're, like, my second favourite group after BTS so I think I would've been just fine if they'd shown up and waved at us and sang like a song or two. But they didn't! They were really, really good. As headliners they had a signficant chunk of time and I think I was smiling from start to end, non stop.

They've turned into such good performers - with something similar to that same easy confidence that Girl's Day and Exo had - and I felt like they really did the most, on the second night, with connecting to the audience. Their performances were all on point, and everyone of them looked and sounded great but Jooheon especially killed me with swag and Wonho's collar & cleavage can fuck right off, ISTG. It just made me so happy to see them doing these songs and choreo I love so much - Shine Forever and Beautiful and Fighter - and they ended with Hero, my very first MX song, which was amazing. (I am a little sad they skipped All In but ok I can live with it.)

For their ment, they played the proposal game, with three members doing their very best fanservice lol. A very happy woman in the standing area got to be audience surrogate as I.M laid on cheesy lines (something about angels and heaven, IDK, why is he like this and why do I love him so much), Kihyun sang a ballad to her (next to me proteinscollide died a death), and Wonho came down to the barrier to to give her a heart, selfie & cheek kiss. It was so! Cheesy! And Wonderful! #the selfawareness does nothing

Everyone then came out for the goodbye, though MX were the only ones who felt relaxed enough it seems to actually get silly with the confetti and do some more spontaneous bows & waves to the crowd. By comparison to every other group on the 2nd night, they must be the old hands at K-Con by now - they've done SO many. Gosh I hope they come back to Australia for a full show. I love them so much.

Fuck, I'm now at 3300 words so let's wrap this up quick:

Unlike other K-Cons which seem to have a proper programming and convention stream, the "convention" part of this was really a disappointment. Minimal programming, minimal stalls (less than 10 vendors), all in one room. It was free entry which is fine I guess except that people were queuing up forever to get inside due to the limited capacity and it was H O T (over 30 C each day) out there. In the end I queued for an hour, and spent about 15 minutes inside. It was really not worth it. Luckily proteinscollide & I had options and just went away for a few hours to pass the time before the show, but I imagine there were a lot of kids left hanging around Olympic Park all day with nothing to do.

The shows didn't sell out. What does this mean? Possible thoughts:

-It was really expensive and the audience skews young. Like, the premium tickets were REALLY REALLY expensive and good tix were expensive. I could afford decent tix, but if I were in my teens? No way. I'd have had to ask my parents for it.

-Sydney has had a run of shows including an Australian-exclusive BTS show. If you're interstate and you already spent $$$ going to BTS, or for that matter $$$ to go G-Dragon in your own state, how much money do you have left over for concerts in this year? There is a limited capacity for this audience to keep spending. Promoters should be careful not to spread us too thin. Put more shows on in Melbourne! (Though I don't know - are there more Koreans and east Asians in Sydney? I suspect there are. The audience, again, skews heavily to those of us who are Asian-Australian.)

-Exo, MX, and Wanna One are very popular but don't have the same mainstream reach in Australia as BTS. BTS also had the advantage again of being earlier in the year, only the 2nd major kpop tour in the year I believe. Since then there's been other kpop and khip-hop shows for people to spend their money on. I really thought Exo would give BTS a run tho, given how well their latest album performed on Australian iTunes charts.

...that was not a quick wrap-up.

TO CONCLUDE: I HAD A GOOD TIME, THANK U FOR READING.

[dazedclarity]

the world is yours and you can’t refuse it

In which Damian wants to be an adult, accidentally stumbles into friendship with some dumb ten-year-old half-alien kid, and maybe finds appreciation for the kid still in him too. 

Friendship fluff 

Damian Wayne is not a kid.

He lets Grayson call him “kiddo,” sure. And much to his dismay, there have been times when he, Pennyworth, or Father carried him to his bedroom after he dozed off somewhere else in the Wayne Manor. And he lost his last ba–deciduous tooth more recently than he liked. But that doesn’t make him a kid.

Damian’s earliest memories are being pushed to climb mountains, taught how to fling swords into an opponent’s gut, and told, time and time again, of the legacy he will fulfill. Visceral violence and blood. There was never a time for childhood. At least not one in the traditional sense that everyone else seems to describe.

Besides, he’s thirteen. Surely that adolescent age is finally old enough to be considered on his way to adulthood, his lack of growth spurt and still-high-pitched voice be damned.

Jon Kent, the half-alien, on the other hand? Is perhaps the biggest kid he’s ever known.

He didn’t want to be friends with him. He didn’t. With his unrefined, feline-endangering powers and his processed snack bars and his completely absurd notion that his temporary (that growth spurt is coming!) taller stature gives him anything resembling superiority. He was annoying and he was overenthusiastic and he was ten. That’s like, a whole three years younger than Damian.

It was Kent, really, who started calling him at random. And Damian reasoned that it was more fun talking to him than breaking bones alone. It was just a force of habit, really, that lead him to feeling a little lonely when Kent didn’t call for a while.

It was quaint how deeply he wanted that video game. He should have understood by the age of ten that flashy, colorful distractions are detrimental to practical abilities. But as he scrolled through the company website and saw Youtube videos of the gameplay demos, he supposed he could see some tactical training nestled within the silly sounds and bastardization of real-world physics. And he guessed that he could see why someone as childish as Kent would want to play. So he told Father that he wanted it, but made sure to insist that he buy it himself–he didn’t need his father sneaking any hints to the alien. He still considered it rather silly, though.

But that didn’t stop the pride he felt when Kent’s eyes lit up at the sight of the gift that he’d pulled out from right under his father’s nose, as much as he tried to force it down. Or the heat in his cheeks when Kent launched at him into a hug.

Or the slight thrill he did get at maneuvering those candy-colored monkeys across the screen. 

“Ha! Got you!”

“No fair! That’s cheating!”

“It’s not cheating if it’s built into the game!”

“HA! Got you!”

“What? Argh…”

Ok, it was more than a thrill. It was different. It was…fun. And for a moment, surrounded by warm Christmas colors and their last score flashing on the screen, Damian didn’t feel like Robin or the Son of Bruce Wayne or anything. He wasn’t sure what he felt like, but a part of him liked it. Another part of him liked the way Kent was smiling and laughing (because of him!). In a quiet moment, he decided that maybe he could try this friendship thing out after all.

In what seemed like no time at all, Jon dozed off on his shoulder and his father was tapping him on his other to tell them that they had to go. Damian may have pouted—though he preferred the term sulked—just a bit as he pulled his coat on. Just a little.

Yes, after that day Damian started calling him. Mostly just to check on his progress as Superboy; it really should be going along faster. He had powers, after all, he could be dangerous to those around him. Of course, on occasion, he’d call on long nights when father was gone and Pennyworth was cleaning their large, ghostly quiet mansion. There was something about Jon’s rambling, even when it wasn’t about superheroing as much as trivial topics like farms and cleaning his room and homework, that made the hours past faster and his own bedroom seem a little less empty. That’s when he got to thinking, really, he never went to a normal school. He never rode a garishly yellow bus to sit at an uncomfortable desk to drone out simple equations or read short books. He never swung around low plastic bars on a playground.

He was certainly beyond such things. But he was curious all the same.

He didn’t experience them from a kid’s point of view, of course. But he did get to spy on Jon from inside a rubber mask while he did. Before he spied on his cute little family game nights straight out of a sappy sitcom and his wholly undignified 9:00 bedtime.

Damian wasn’t a kid. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a little fascinated by what it was like to be one. At least, until it was time to whip Superboy into shape.

One night, when they were laying out under the stars covered in mud and and twigs violently snagged throughout their costumes, Superboy spoke up like something had long been bugging him.

“You said my name is Superboy instead of Jon.”

“It is. As is Robin for me. If we are to reach our true potential, we must commit to those aliases.”

Jon was quiet for a moment. Damian hoped that it meant that he got it. Until he spoke.

“Dad said that staying connected to your civilian identity is really important. I asked him once. He’s Clark Kent first, he said. It keeps him grounded and reminds him what’s really important.”

This time Damian was quiet. “Maybe it is different for you aliens. But my father puts on the mask when he goes out as Bruce Wayne. Anyone who really knows him can tell you that. Anyway, your father should be pushing you harder instead of coddling you.” He didn’t have to look to see Superboy’s face scrunch up in annoyance.

“He doesn’t coddle me!” he argued, crossing his skinny (but destructively strong all the same) arms, “and you act like I don’t have enough training to be in the field!”

“You don’t.” Damian grinned cooly at him, watching his face redden even in the darkness. “Shameful, really. That’s why I brought you out here. You don’t have time to be a schoolboy.” Damian ignored, for the time being, that he was out here too because his own father wanted him to be a schoolboy rather than work–perhaps that alien had gotten to him, god forbid.

Jon only humphed and turned away. Until,

“Your dad worries that you, like, never take off the Robin suit.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I heard him say it to my dad at Christmas. Maybe my super hearing might have come in a little, I guess, I dunno.”

Damian gritted his teeth in annoyance. “He’s the one to talk.”

Another moment of quiet. “Doesn’t it all get to you too?”

Damian tutted. “Why would it?”

“Isn’t that why you call me all the time? And why you just broke into my bedroom?” Jon chuckled, and it made Damian’s fist clench.

“I’m trying to make you fulfill your legacies as Superb–”

“Dad says I’m doing just fine! Why else would you follow me around!?” Damian’s blood boiled. How dare he insinuate that Damian is following him like a puppy begging for attention? That’s the last time Damian tries to guide a snot-nosed little brat like him.

“Shuddup,” he snapped. Jon’s smile fell before Damian firmly rolled to the side, facing away from him.

Crickets chirped for several moments more.

“Hey Damian?”

“What?” he sighed.

“When we’re all done with this, like when we get back home, do you wanna stay over? I haven’t had someone to play Monk E Monsters with in a while. Kathy doesn’t like it.”

“What, like a sleepover?” Damian said mockingly. He’d never really had one, but he’d become familiar through pop-cultural osmosis. The word brought imagery of silly sleeping bags on floors, confectionery being consumed at a disgusting rate, and pointless games being played into the night.  

“Yeah!” Nothing about Jon’s tone was ironic. It was cheerful, and hopeful. It caught him a little off guard.

“Sure, whatever.” With a moment’s thought, Damian added, “If Father allows it. I do have a very tight schedule as Robin, you know.” Just to appease the kid, he told himself. After all, Jon did smile brightly at his answer.

In the end, however, after they returned to Hamilton county to a mother’s panic, harsh scoldings, promises that Jon would not go out for months, and turns in the shower to wash off days of grime and sweat, much to Damian’s surprise Father did consider it best that he rest a bit at the Kent’s for the weekend. So he found himself sprawled out on the Kent’s couch, biting his lip as his ape punched Jon’s off a platform, mindlessly tossing microwaved popcorn kernels into his mouth. Later on, Lane let Jon watch one sort of scary movie, apparently convinced because he had an older friend with him.

“Psh, she thinks I’m such a baby,” Jon scoffed. “I’ll be fine.”

Thirty minutes in, Jon was gripping Damian’s arm for seemingly dear life. That familiar heat rose to his cheeks once again.

“You’re such a kid,” Damian groaned, but didn’t pull his arm away. Especially not when maybe one of those stupid jump scares might have made him flinch a little. But he’d be damned if he let Jon see that.

Damian found sleeping in a thin sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress about as comfortable as he expected.

“Thanks for staying over, Damian! It was super fun!” Jon piped from the bed above him.

But it wasn’t so bad, he supposed. And their parents must not have been too mad about all this, because they still let them team up to fight crime–for the times they knew about, at least.

“Hey, you said you’ve never been to a carnival, right?” Jon asked over the phone one night, several months later.

“Um…no,” Damian replied, uneasy at the sudden question. He wasn’t going to ask what he thought he was going to…

“Do you wanna come to the one in town this weekend?”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh, my other friends are gonna be busy with their parents’ stands and it’ll be fun! You should come! Have you even ever ridden a ferris wheel?”

“I’ve never wanted to ride a ferris wheel,” Damian said in a huff.

“You always say stuff like that, and then you always have fun.”

Damian denied it, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at the Kent’s door anyway.

Of course, Grayson had heard him discussing the matter over the phone and wasted no time in pressing him into it.

“I grew up in something like a carnival,” he’d said, “you’ll like it. It’s fun! You can run around and eat sugary crap like kids your age should.”

Damian tutted in irritation. But his brother had persisted. Later, when he didn’t know the youngest Robin was lurking in the shadows, Damian had overheard Richard telling Pennyworth that he thinks Jon is a good influence on him–a balancing force, so to speak. Damian tried to ignore that point on the ride to Hamilton County.

Though he had to admit, there was something a little comforting about peeling off the sweaty Robin costume after having had worn it for several days straight. Sometimes he just forgets to.

If he’d known that he’d have to squeeze into the backseat of the Kent’s stale-smelling family truck, he’d have hired a car to take him directly there…but Jon soon distracted him with rapid-fire stories about pie-eating contests, water-gun fights, and viciously spinning light up rides. Damian was hard pressed to admit it, even to himself, but part of it was intriguing. Provincial, but intriguing.

“Last time Alan ate an entire cheesedog before going on the tilt-a-wheel, we told him not to but he did anyway and then when he went on, it all–”

“I think that’s enough, dear,” Ms. Lane said from the front seat.

“Quite enough,” Damian agreed, though something in him wanted to hear the end.

“I’ll tell ya later,” Jon said, almost like he read his mind. It made him less uncomfortable than it should. In any case, he had inspected the alien man’s powers closely enough to know that telepathy was not one of them, and so his son certainly didn’t have it.

Something in his head that sounded an awful lot like Grayson’s voice told him that such things occur with friends.

Perhaps that was why he also let Jon grab his arm again and drag him to the muddy fairground, with Lane’s voice shrinking into the distance as she told them to meet her back at the car by 10:30. And so he was dragged that night, up to game booths with cheap stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling (”You know we could buy these toys with pocket change at the dollar store, right?” “Winning them is the fun of it Damian, gosh…stop being such a killjoy”), over to meet Jon’s friend Kathy to drink some unpasteurized milk (who, to Damian’s amusement, was quite taken with the fact that he was thirteen…until Jon made a comment about Maya’s liking to him in retaliation), and through a “scary” funhouse with twisting mazes and poor trying-too-hard actors in running makeup (both of them agreed, after the Joker, none of those clowns were the least bit intimidating).

It was fun. There, he said it. That unpasteurized milk was pretty tasty (whether it would make him sick was still under consideration). And maybe the toy Monk E Monster that he won at a ball-throwing booth (all too easy for someone of his skills) was kind of cool. Some of those mazes almost posed a slight challenge. He enjoyed himself. He smiled fairly often that night.

Until they reached the looming ferris wheel, and his smile fell.

“I am not going on that.”

Jon handed him a stick perched with a monstrous, artificially pink ball of fleecy sugar–cotton candy.

“Come on!” the kid whined, threads of his own blue one sticking to the sides of his mouth. “It’s so cool! You can see the whole fairground up there!”

Damian squinted at the spinning contraption, studying its shoddy construction. “That thing is only being held together by luck. And I don’t believe in luck.”

“What…,” Jon’s voice fell to a whisper and he leaned in, “is Robin not brave enough to ride a mere ferris wheel?” For a moment, Damian was ready to march up to the damn thing and toss that stupid kid on it. But in another, he simply sighed and rolled his eyes.

“I can’t believe you tried that old trick on me.” He took an indignant bite out of his cotton candy (which tasted better than he cared to admit). “Not going to happen.”

He preferred to believe that his stomach lurched in response to the unpasteurized milk, not the way Jon’s face fell and his tiny voice sighed out “Ok, let’s go back to the car then.” But either way, he ended up paying that damn ticket price and leading the then-joyous boy onto the rickety platform, praying to whatever pantheon might be listening to let him survive this.

The wheel creaked and shook as it began to turn, and Damian knew this was a huge mistake.

But Jon was grabbing his shoulder and pointing out the shrinking people below, as well as all the places they had been that night. And yes, against the country sky, which glittered with far more stars than any city night, in the distance the flashing yellow and red lights of the carnival went from tacky to something kind of like beautiful. Just enough for him to forget his assured doom.

“See, I told you it was cool!” Jon said smugly, again showing an ability to read him that Damian knew now he did not like one bit. Damian smiled slightly in response. Only slightly.

“It’s alright. But you should see Gotham from up high, it’ll beat any carnival you’d attend for the rest of your life.”

“Sure! That would be awesome!”

Damian didn’t intend that as an invitation. But he supposed he could deal with it becoming one.

“Hey…Damian?” Jon said softer this time, both out of caution and seemingly to make sure no one else heard. “I know you thought it was kinda lame, but thanks for coming here.”

“…You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me, I suppose.”

“Of course I did!” Jon said casually, “you’re my best friend.”

The wheel didn’t screech to a halt. But it might as well have.

“I’m–what?” Damian sputtered. Jon’s casual expression became timid, and Damian felt the hole get deeper. “I…I thought Kathy was your best friend.”

“I mean, she is…” Jon rubbed his arms and adjusted his glasses self-consciously. “But you’re different, ya know? She can’t be in with all the superhero stuff. You can be best friends with Superboy too. Like you can come to carnivals with me and help me kick bad-guy butt!”

Damian blinked twice, for once unsure of what to say. He looked at Jon, then back at the fairgrounds, getting a little closer now that they were wheeling towards the ground. Then back at Jon.

Truly, what was the harm? 

“Ok.”

“Really?”

Damian shrugged. But he guessed that by now Jon could tell he didn’t feel that relaxed. “Yeah. We’re best friends.”  Oh, wouldn’t Richard be so proud, he thought sarcastically.

His newly christened best friend grinned wider than he had for the rest of the night, and Damian’s heart thudded a little in his chest. Must have been the milk again.

“For two supers, it’s just nice to get to be normal kids with each other.”

“I am not a–” Damian, much to his own surprise, stopped, sighed, at looked back across the carnival. “Yeah…yeah, it is.”

By the time they had gotten back to the car, they had pushed and shoved each other enough to get cotton candy in each other’s hair, stains on Damian’s shirt, and smears across Jon’s glasses. Ms. Lane sighed and sent them to wash in the bathroom before they went in the car.

Before long, they were laughingly making mud puddles of the dirt floor as they splashed each other from the sink. One thought, soft but warm, crept into Damian’s mind in the chaos. Perhaps being a kid sometimes might not be so bad after all.

Look at you kids, you know you’re the coolest The world is yours and you can’t refuse it Seen so much, you could get the blues, but That don’t mean that you should abuse it [x]