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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Tom is already rehashing some things, like too many homages to the nineties run, Zucco's daughter plot point, Beatrice had ideas for societal reform he's taking that and giving it to Dick. It'll probably be half hearted, but it stings that Beatrice left just a few issues ago and she's already completely forgotten for the sake of DickBabs or a love triangle.

Like the thing about the nineties runs is I mean, as much flack as we give various elements of them, there’s so much from that time period that was good? Great, even! Just....myself and the writers seem to have very different opinions on what the most interesting elements of the nineties comics were, oh well.

And omgggggg I’m still so mad about Bea, and its literally Shawn Tsang all over again. The writers keep introducing new, interesting characters, investing just enough time and focus into them to have us interested in them and wanting to see more.....and then they toss them aside to go back to drawing from the same well as always.

And the thing is, this isn’t even about me not really being a Dick/Babs shipper, because honestly, I’m not enjoying the Dick/Kory stuff in what I’ve seen of Titans Academy either, and for the exact same reason:

When they create new characters like Shawn and Bea, they KNOW they’re starting from scratch and need to build interest in those characters from the ground up. So they’re forced to put their best foot forward. There’s no short cut there, if you want people to care about a brand new character you have to give them REASONS to care. You have to make those characters likable, you have to make people WANT to root for them, you have to hook them with intriguing backstories that don’t feel formulaic and new angles that don’t feel just derivative of older characters, and that’s how we got stuff like Shawn’s history as a former sidekick to a villain and now running a support group for rogues trying to turn their lives around, and Bea’s work in societal reform.

But then the second they stop having the patience to build the new characters up enough that the interest in them can actually start to reach the levels that lets older characters last and grants longevity....they just toss them aside and move on....except they never really move on, just backwards. Because the problem with so MANY superhero couples, far from just Dick and Babs or Dick and Kory, is just....how lazy it seems to make so many canon writers. They just fall back on rehashing the same old tropes and just updating popular moments that resonated with fans in the past, now just recreated with a slightly more modern twist but without ever really being anything new.

Even with ships that I’ve never really been sold on in the past like Dick/Babs, I’ve always said, there’s usually nothing stopping me from GAINING interest in them.....its just....the writers have to GIVE ME A REASON TO. And so many of DC’s writers just aren’t even trying. They’re just moving parts around and pushing characters together in various arrangements like everyone’s just a puzzle piece that you can mix and match however you want......and then just basically expecting readers to be interested purely because of who the characters are, or because it hinges on a nice moment that they then milk the hell out of without ever expanding that into building actual STORY around these moments but rather just squeezing each one til they get everything they possibly can out of it and moving on to the next as though its all just about chasing the next soundbite...because it is! LOL.

And honestly, this problem extends far beyond just the Nightwing title or the Batfam or Taylor’s run or writing in particular.....its a company wide issue right now. In fact I would bet just about anything that its a matter of editorial edict, that even before Taylor started his run DC said okay here’s the approach we want everyone taking with their stories right now:

And that’s like.....its all about banking on nostalgia and the comfort of the familiar right now. I think Taylor is drawing all these elements straight from the 90s Nightwing comics, like Blockbuster and Dick having been a cop, etc, because these are the elements of past Nightwing stories that are so well known. Its the same reasoning behind why they put Tim back as Robin and so many of their new characters are just new spins on old faves like Punchline and Harley Quinn, and why they’re pushing all these older ships that haven’t been together in ages and why specific team lineups are reappearing....its because nostalgia is the name of the game for DC right now, and all their writers are just pulling together threads of classic stories that have stood the test of time, figuring anything that landed particularly well with fans in the past will sell with people here and now, and weaving these threads together and brushing over them with a modern social issues veneer.

As an approach, its basically all just about repackaging previously successful story moments and elements with just enough changes or in just new enough a configuration that readers aren’t likely to complain en masse that like “hey we literally already read all this. We’ve already BOUGHT these issues. When we were kids.” Its minimizing creative risk while maximizing monetary profit. Spend as little creative capital as possible outside of anything that’s already been successful in the past and as such is a relatively proven quantity, instead of testing new material that’s an unknown and runs the risk of falling flat and thus not being profitable.

And see, I’d almost guarantee that all THAT, that whole line-wide approach to DC’s storytelling, is because the powers that be looked at the last several years of stories and how many of THEM fell flat with readers, and decided that the problem was they’d BEEN trying too much new stuff and readers just didn’t like it. Because they WERE concentrating on presenting totally new stories and building up new ideas throughout their books.....but readers have been pretty vocal for years now about being disenchanted with most of DC’s major stories. And so DC I think looked at that and came to the conclusion that okay, people just don’t want new right now, they want the familiar.

But like.....DC’s problem IMO was never that they were trying new stuff? The reason so much of their new and original storylines weren’t gaining traction or bringing in readers and kept shedding old readers had absolutely NOTHING to do with them being new and previously unseen storylines, which makes falling back on nostalgia very much a non-solution to entirely the wrong problem.

No, DC’s problem for years has been that they’ve been all about spectacle instead of story. There’s ZERO emotional pay-off to any of their biggest plot twists or character beats, and emotion is LITERALLY what people read stories for. Its all about racing to the climactic action packed finish of every storyline and then immediately resetting everyone back to square one and jumping straight into the next big story, without ever giving the events of any of their stories time or reason to MATTER to the characters.....and if they don’t matter to the characters, our proxies that we’re viewing these stories through, then why should any of it matter to us? Why should any of it linger, dig in roots, resonate with us as moments that left an impact and that we accordingly want more of?

And again, like because I’m a Dick Grayson focused blog I’ve obviously largely been focused on how much I dislike the SPECIFIC reactions or non-reactions to so many of the major beats in his stories.....but it was spread throughout their entire line.

Bruce and Selina almost got married....but why should anyone care outside of Tom King’s title when nobody else seems to, no other characters feel anything about this, and Bruce in none of his other appearances seems the same as ever without any reminder that he just almost got married but then didn’t.....and if the characters don’t ever seem to be affected by or feeling a need to revisit or reflect on recent stories, why should we bother remembering them either?

Jason was dramatically and fucked-upily (yes its a word, I totally looked it up and everything) exiled from Gotham....and then all of that is undone in a single issue with one low-stakes awkward conversation between him and Bruce. Damian quits as Robin and goes off the map and everyone in his family is like “hey don’t we have a littler brother, I feel like we did maybe” for one panel per story arc, and that’s it. Roy’s back from the dead and everybody’s like oh hey cool instead of the kind of return we used to get like when Donna came back and everyone was like oh shit, this MATTERS, because we MISSED you....just like Dick’s death never mattered to anyone but fans of his character because much like I was just saying earlier with them not really giving me a reason TO emotionally invest in Dick and Babs’ relationship if I wasn’t already, same thing with the aftermath of Forever Evil. They didn’t give anyone else reason to emotionally invest in that as something that HAPPENED to Dick and that he was AFFECTED by....because the writers didn’t bother writing him as all that affected by it and it was just like oh he’s a spy now, all that was last year’s content, we’ve moved on, keep up.

And on and on it goes. Ric Grayson was the same problem all over again. Rinse and repeat down the line with everyone from Wally to Donna and etc etc etc.

THAT’S why DC’s stories have been falling flat. It has nothing to do with people not being interested in new ideas, characters or directions, its that’s ALL they were giving us, but it was like just reading wiki summaries of events just alongside pretty art, but no real emotional weight or substance to anything we were reading....and thus, literally nothing that we couldn’t get much the same outcome from if we just...stuck to reading wiki summaries after the stories were over, with no real need to follow along with them. For years most fans have basically just been about keeping up to date with changes in the characters’ lives, but without feeling any real need to watch those changes unfold and play out.

And so honestly I worry we’re just gonna be subjected to a company wide rehashing of old and familiar storylines, directions and character beats, but repackaged and delivered in the exact same way DC was delivering us their new stories and ideas these past years....and its basically going to have the same results, because its the same problem. They didn’t actually fix anything by switching gears, they just shuffled around the actual issue.

And DC’s just gonna be like well now wtf are we doing wrong, we were so sure this would work, everyone LOVES nostalgia right? Did we pick the wrong stories and character beats to bring back?

When really its like......it honestly doesn’t matter WHICH stories and beats they rehash, because its not about them picking the ‘right ones,’ the real keepers, the stories that everyone really WAS eager to see brought back or made new again.....

Its about like, the only reason any of those stories or beats or dynamics stood the test of time and are still familiar and well-known....is because the stories AROUND those moments and ideas gave us reason to emotionally invest in them and retain them as crucial to our view of the characters and things that would resonate and stay with us for a long time.

It was never that any of those ideas or stories were just so innately brilliant that they couldn’t help BUT linger in the overall reader consciousness...it was the fact that we CARED about what happened in those moments and stories.

*Shrugs* But I mean hey, what do I know? I’m just a dude on the internet lolol.

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shhhhsh · 3 years

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About Tim’s New Story….

I just really hope they address Tim’s mental health. Like, DC just been ditching really good plot lines in favor of being “woke” or pandering. Just look at all the live action shows.

Now I’m not saying they can’t make Tim queer/bi/gay, but (as someone pointed out to me) Tim’s previous story writer was bi and he still chose to write Tim as straight & in a healthy romantic relationship with Stephanie Brown. I’ve seen several people who identify as queer/bi say that to have Tim go “ ooooh I’ve fooled myself into thinking I was straight, but now I’m freeeee” sends the message that Tim’s previous relationship failed b/c he was with a woman and not because of Tim’s poor mental and emotional health.

To go back to my previous statement; by him not writing Tim as bi tells me that he didn’t want or care for Tim to be bi, but instead saw Tim as, or preferred him to be, straight. The writer had free control to write Tim how ever he wanted and yet he chose to keep Tim straight. And he actually liked & wanted Tim/Steph. Again, I’m not saying Tim can’t be queer/bi, I’m just saying I find the motivations for this possible change very fishy. Almost as if the new writer is trying to get brownie points for pandering to a portion of the fans.

I think this way b/c in every other media where a character is revealed to be LGBTQ they just did it. They didn’t beat around the bush or do any queer coding/baiting. They either announced it, just made the character that way right out the gate, or just dropped the bomb w/out warning (as seen in Netflix’s Voltron, Amazon Prime’s Invincible, and Nickelodeon’s Legend of Korra respectfully).

DC currently has a bad habit changing things to be “woke” and bragging about it or shoving it in our faces. DC is becoming the “pick me girl” of superhero media. If you want to do it, just do it. Again I just get the “look at me, look at me” & “carrot on the stick” vibes from them now. If you truly feel in your heart to do something you would just do it without the need for recognition or to be so dramatic about it.

Now what I much rather see & think it’s a natural progression for Tim:

I personally believe that if Jason, Dick, & Damian can get a story that attempts to give them character development beyond romantic relationships (romance was more of a B-plot to the character driven A-plot anyway) I think they can give it to Tim as well.

I know that the Bat-Family all struggle with some form of mental health problems (most commonly paranoia and PTSD). However, I would like to point out that trauma is was what brought the others into the vigilante lifestyle, while Tim & Barbara became traumatized because of the vigilante lifestyle. Yet, Barbara was shown overcoming her trauma and using it as motivation to get better. Tim is yet to have this moment.

We all know that Tim struggles with depression, self-esteem, and suicidal tendencies. I mean heck, him becoming Red Robin only happens because of Tim’s degrading mental health. I hate to say it, but Tim is very psychologically broken and has been show to get so depressed that he can’t even get out of bed some times. To my knowledge, Tim is the only one in the Bat-Fam that struggles in his head with the idea of not being needed, useful, or forgotten when in reality that is furthest from the truth (Steph, Jason, & Damian also feel like the black sheep periodically, but that is because they have been presented with real evidence that would lead them to logically believe this. I.e being actually forgotten or dismissed for past mistakes despite great efforts to better themselves).

While yes, Dick did Tim dirty by replacing him without having a proper conversation first, the motivation was because he saw Tim as his equal and not Damian. He thought highly of Tim, but Tim couldn’t see that over his offense. Tim is so beat down by life that he see’s everything with negative lenses. Everyone came to check on Tim’s mental health but Tim took it as an insult instead.

And even though now Tim has reached some form of “peace” in his life, that only happens because the people he lost came back (Bruce, Conner, Bart, Cassie, etc). Tim never fully learned to handle grief, to handle his emotions, instead he represses them. Again in the Red Robin run, the main reason he doesn’t believe in any form of God is because he can’t logically justify the pain he has gone through. He is hurting and doesn’t know how to deal with that. In his original Robin run, when he tried talking someone out of committing suicide……the words and comfort he gave….that wasn’t something that was just inside Tim, this is something that was told to Tim. This is followed by him calling Dick to get the same pep-talk he just regurgitated to someone else.

In short: Tim is hurting. Deeply. And having been someone who’s emotional & mental sanity was pushed to the brink and attempted to jump off several times, I think it’s really sad that DC just ignores it. Now as someone who’s gotten the help they needed & now helps other people who struggle with the same issues as myself & Tim, I think that they’re going to say a lot of Tim’s problems come from him not being “aware” of his own sexuality, which is just sad.

In the story in question, Barbara talks about Tim not having a solid identity. People are more than their sexuality. People are capable of making future decisions for themselves without it hindering on their sexuality. If Tim was real, I would brake down his struggle as so:

Tim refuses to go to college and do something more with his life because he cannot see anything beyond his current circumstance. And the only reason why Tim cannot see anything beyond his circumstance is because he has no internal sense of purpose, identity, and acceptance beyond the cape & cowl. And when Tim finally found that in being Robin, Tim held onto it as a lifeline. There’s a reason why everyone says Tim is basically Bruce 2.0: it’s because he is Robin/Red Robin/Drake & Tim is the mask. At a young age, he did not grow up having these things instilled into him due to his parents neglecting him at a very important age in his development. Tim raised himself, and for a lack of better terms; an idiot cannot teach themselves to be smarter, an idiot becomes smarter by learning from the intelligent. A child can’t teach themselves to be an adult, they have to learn from others to grow & better themselves.

Now a parent doesn’t necessarily have to sit down and give a lesson about how to be an individual, but children learn how to live life by watching their parents. A good example of this is the rest of the Bat-Fam; they all grew up with some form of parental figures that taught them how to behave (for better or worse). Of course children have their own personalities, which is why two kids can go through the same type of trauma but come out differently, but it is a battle of nature vs nurture. Steph, Jason, Cass, & Damian grew up in abusive/unstable homes, while Dick, Barbara, & Bruce grew up in loving homes, but their personalities & character dictated how they responded to trauma. They took what life gave them and decided what to leave or take.

Tim had nothing to work with & is basically playing catch-up with the rest of his peers.

In a weird sense, Tim is like Zuko from The Last Airbender: only living to serve their father’s purpose. Anything outside of that they don’t know what to do. They’ve been trained to be something externally without been given a chance to figure out who they are internally.

Again you are not your sexuality, your sexuality does not determine who you are as a person. When a person struggles through life, it is due to the conditions of thier soul. Everything starts internally and shows it’s self externally.

I want to make that very clear because I am truly scared that in DC’s attempt to claim “clout” they are missing the bigger picture. Tim doesn’t have identity problems simply because he “doesn’t know” he likes boys, but because DC never gave him is own identity to begin with. Robin was never his own identity, Red Robin was never his, & Drake was his first attempt to make his own but he quickly gave it up so that he can be Robin once again. What is Tim going to do once Damian gets back? Is Damian going to get his own identity before Tim? Or is Tim just going to go back to one of his old identities?

I would like for Tim to personally move on from being a vigilante and rejoin civilian society for a while. Go to college, do something for himself and only for himself. Give Tim the self-discovery story, let him heal, and grown to be his own person. Besides you can never have a functional romantic relationship if you are not a functional individual. Self love > romantic love.

#red robin #batman #dc comics #tim drake #batman and robin #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #damian al ghul #damian wayne #stephanie brown #batgirl #cassandra cain #batfam #robin #I just want a good and meaningful story that doesn’t have some secret agenda #just do right by Tim #beware the pandering #not everything has to be about romance

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lifeexperience · 4 years

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Maribat March 2021 - Half time

In my AO3 account I am also updating the 'A playboy billionaire, an ambassador and the secret love-child' title, and sometimes I add(ed) commentary why I write something the way I do.

Masterlist

From the last fifty days here is all the plus note:

First day

In Red Robin (2009-2011) comics Vicki Vale was a little bit too noisy for her own good, that's why I used her personal annoyance against Bruce Wayne in this story.

Third day

Vanessa Rios was an assistant district attorney in Gotham in the Robin (1993-2009) run. Here I am using her as the Wayne's legal team head. Tamara Fox, Lucius Fox's daughter, is friends with Tim Drake in Red Robin (2009-2011) comics and here too. Also she is an intern with the HR department who knows about the BatFam alteregos.

Fifth day

In the comics, Alfred always followed Bruce to his 'trips' (in 'Batman and Son' to London, 'Batman & Robin Annual' to an scavenger hunt, in 'Batman Inc.' to every country where they found representatives...) However because of Damian's unpredictable behaviour he stayed at the manor with the children in this story.

Sixth day

So Young Justice thing is a little complicated to me if I dare to say something about it. There was the 'Young Justice: The Secret' and its sequels. Then there were 'The New52' and 'DC Rebirth' era, plus the animation show. And they all are kind of okay..ish, furthermore I wanted to keep the principles like the main members (Tim Drake, Connor Kent, Bart Allen and Cassie Sandsmark), however I never liked their too childish behavior in some of the works (and the mixing with 'The Titans). So in this story, here, they are more adult..ish, but more relaxed and cheerful than 'The Titans' ever was (like in comics, not in the shows).

Eighth day

In the 'Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir' show they showed Lila as a manipulator without any remorse, which got me to think she has antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). I am not a doctor but I had some basic lesson in psychology, and I have a natural curiosity about things so I always research everything. With diagnosed ASPD the person has to be older then 18, however I read its symptoms can show up in childhood, and it can lead to an earlier diagnosis like 14-15 years old early.

In the case of Lila she deceives people and uses them (✓). Don't makes long term plans or thinking through about her behavior (✓), however has a set on some goal she wants to achieve (✓). She has a sense of superiority above of her classmates and adults in her environment (✓), nevertheless does't have any remorse or guilt to mistreat them (✓). Uses charisma and her fake charming persona to get something or someone (✓), however didn't value them more than tools or prizes (✓).

I didn't see any real aggressive behavior from Lila beside akumatizations (✓), but on its own I think it's enough evidence, that she has this disorder (and not the many that she claimed). In normal aggressive way Lila didn't show herself (like physical violence, loud angry outbursts, big fits in front of everyone) yet, rather she uses Akumatization to hide that kind of behavior (when Adrien tried to stand up she became willingly Chameleon, or the Heroe's Day, or Oni-Chan). So her Akumatised forms and helping to Hawkmoth are the evidences that she has aggressive behavior, however they are not the classic forms (but we also can remember the threatening in the bathroom, but I think that was more intimidation and showing her superiority then pure aggressiveness).

And I wanted that recreate and strengthen this 'fact' a little bit so it would be more obvious than in the show.

Ninth day

In the comics there are so many take on Bruce Wayne it's kind of hard to count it. We could list the Batman persona, when he kind of let his children do what they want within his no-kill-rule (like living alone at fourteen with bunch of other teenager - 'Teen Titans' or 'Young Justice' or as it looks like to go rough - Robin, Red Hood). And there is the obvious martyr-parent take, when he has to know everything about his children, but he is always silent about the important things ('Death of the family' - 'Batman and Robin: Born to kill' - 'The Hunt for Robin'). And one of my favorites the worried-tired father take, when he is kind of showing his emotions and trying to love his kids ('Super Sons' - 'Robin Rises' - 'Prelude to the Wedding: Nightwing vs. Hush' ...).

And I decided to use the last with a more active take from the first (like he lets everyone do their thing but he is monitoring them within reasons). In the comics there are many accusations about being someones father (with Julie Madison or Mariah Shelley), and here in my take he is trying to be responsible (for the sake of his children, mainly for Damian and Jason) and checks every claim out personally (so they also can do DNS test).

Tenth day

Alya Césaire is a complicated someone in the show. At first she is portrayed as a fierce helper for the protagonist, Marinette. She is stubborn and reckless, but royal to her best friends.

Then came Lila and the makers sharpened her stubborn tunnel vision. This I saw it first at the 'Lady Wifi' episode, when she clearly didn't remember about the first day, when Ladybug saved Chloé (or ignored it). After that she always fixated on 'Adrienette' (or everything else if it's interesting - Dark Cupid) when the girl, herself had other things to do (Princess Fragrance, Puppeteer 2, Reflektdoll 2, Timebreaker). So it was not that big surprise when her tunnel vision turned to Lila, and she (and everybody in her class) forgot about that they all met Jagged Stone and with his crocodile already.

Yeah, it's all true, however unlike Lila, Alya didn't show any other big social flaw. And she is 14 years old and middle child, which is kind of important in someone personality. She has to be a mature figure and a little child at the same time in her sibling's eyes. She has to compete attention in their parents eyes and be smart about it.

Moreover if we look at the Collège Françoise Dupont's students, they are all spoiled, not just Chloé or Lila or Adrien. Yes, they are not that bad like the three, but they are all sheltered to a certain degree. Their family don't have financial problems (famous chef, designers, mayor, famous bakery, curator in the most famous museum, police officer, famous pantomime, ...), plus they are all in a prestigious school where they can't meet people with everyday problems (and rich spoiled kid is not an everyday occurrence in my country). And beside some vision problems (Max, Sabrina) they are all healthy and the first time to meet a disability is when Lila arrived. So it's natural if they don't really know how to interact right with her (putting aside that whole lie thing).

And I think they, especial Alya, need first a little life experience, before they could be called responsible about their acts. And here I am trying to write it this kind of way, where they are all flawed, but they can learn from it.

Human being can be shallow and not perfect. These children only heard one perspective from Lila, and another from Marinette. In the show the makers not exactly specified about how well the classmates know Marinette and how depth Marinette and Alya friendship is, so there is already some trust issue.

Like yeah all of they are going to concerts, cinema, each others, however they didn't show so far any serious conservation between them (maybe the only exception is Adrien-Marinette combo). Until this year when Adrien and Alya got transferred in the class, the classmates don't even help Marinette with Chloé bullying. And one year friendship - how beautiful is it tho - is not that depth and stable, especially with that many secrets they have. And Lila 'charming' personality came into this still fragile relationship at the right time to prove this.

I am not saying that the makers is doing good to simplifies the relationships. Because rather they missed so many ziccers for the sake of promote new hero designs and the overwritten romantic scene, it's physical hurting me. But they are right that we are talking sheltered-traumatized-too naive kids, who sometimes had unearned magic powers (looking at Chloé, Alya, Kim).

And I didn't ever going the length of mentioning the adult characters. It's an other kind of wormhole.

Marinette was the only one who openly disobeyed Lila's wants. She stands up against her lies in the public so she is a real obstacle for Lila. While Adrien is only trying in the background without any witness (I don't say it's bad, because with some case it's better, but not here), and the boy is too valuable to Lila.

Lila already showed in the series she didn't stop with the lies and she is brave enough to ruin someone carrier with them (Marinette - 'Ladybug', Nathalie and Gorilla - 'Oni-Chan', Alya - 'Volpina'). And Adrien watched all of it in the front seat, and he kind of knows that Lila's main target here to discredit and broke Marinette/Ladybug (and Adrien, himself also, but it's his perspective and he is very sheltered and naive about it).

And this story she got another one to ruin. Bruce Wayne, himself. And as her fake charming side melts away in her anger as she is focusing more and more on her targets.

Eleventh day

Speed Force is one of the Seven Forces of the Universe. It grants the power of the speedsters. And some of them merged with it (for example Barry Allen). Speed Force has a direct connection to the time flow and with the Multiverse (or now Omniverse). The biggest event of it is the Flashpoint (2011) which started the New52 era. And Batman doesn't want to mix this kind of force with a really mysterious ancient magic.

Nightrunner's first appearance was in 2011 in Detective Comics Annual #12. Within the Batman Incorporated line Bruce recruited Bilal Asselah, French-Algerian citizen to represent Batman in Paris. Here he is a mentor/background assistant to the Team Miraculous and a representative of Batman Inc.

Fourteenth day

Wang Fu is not the most mature character in the show and I think it says it all. Being an 186 years old is the Great Guardian after he accidentally destroyed the temple, he is kind of shameful and amateur. And if we contrasted him with Batman... yeah. Batman is NOT happy and takes the control from the old master.

Fifteenth day

I know Cyborg, alias Victor Stone is currently shown as a founding member of the Justice League (since 2011), however I am prefer him more in the Titans. And it's not just because of the animation show form 2003, but also in the comics he is more himself with the first Titans then with the -all mighty- Justice League. And I also wanted him to have a little cameo in this story because in the Super Sons (2017-) he was kind of like a babysitter for the boys. And to me it's kind of funny how many times the bats short circuited him (Robin Rises, Super Sons: Parent Trap, ...).

Sixteenth day

Damian Wayne is a complicated character. For ten years he was teached to kill. He only learnt about his mother at eight. He only learnt about his father at ten. Thalia used him for anything from power play to plotting someone death. Bruce loves him, but he is so moronic about his own emotions it's kind of painful to read sometimes. And there is the thing where Damian is never enough, his mother cloned him (Heretic), his father has other wards (mainly Red Robin). Dick Grayson went incognito spying when the boy had finally a healthier relationship (Grayson: The Superspy). His best friend, Jon Kent was suddenly older then him (2018 Superman #16). Alfred was killed in front of him (2016 Batman #77). Yeah, Damian is a jerk, but he has every right to be a jerk in my opinion. And I wanted that recreate here as Lila is a liar and threatening his 'only' position as a blood son. His only weapon to prevent it to have a fit and doing what was teached to him.

Fulltime

#maribat march #half time closure #maribat #ml fanfic #analysis #character analysis #it's long #2021

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himbo-buckley · 4 years

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Sex, Intimacy and Buddie (better known as I have a lot of feelings about this show, some of which are related to the before mentioned topics) - Part 4

Ciao, ragazzi,

i bims, die Kriz and I will be your tourguide today. (Yes, we’re on first name basis now, congratulations, kid, ya’ll earned it!)

Okay, so I rewrote this intro like 5 times by now. 3B has been so hard on me in a way that the rest hasn’t been. While I was writing 3A I had so many thoughts and ideas and conclusions from the get go, my main worry was to fit it all in and to make it coherent. And it took me a while to get there with 3B - but don’t worry, my friends, I did not disappoint and it is just as long as part 3, despite Tim Minear personally coming to my home and vibe checking me for saying he had daddy issues. Which is fair, tbh. Sorry bro, I’ll stop calling you out like that. (No, I won’t.)

Also if you need a „quick“ refresher of what happened so far or you just forgot, here are:

part one - part two - part three

And also, the usual spiel:

This meta was supposed to be a lot shorter and only talk about how both Buck and Eddie use sex to distract their respective partners from whatever topic they actually wanted to talk about but since I decided to rewatch the show to make sure I don’t miss any such scenes, it has exploded a bit and taken on more topics

I should also mention that I am a Buddie shipper and while I tried, you will find several references and arguments for the ship in this Meta, not all of which necessarily call for a romantic pairing but just: These two are deeply connected and you cannot look at one without discussing the other and they are each other’s strongest emotional connection.

I should also preface this by saying that the whole of the 118 has some obvious intimacy / commitment issues except Bobby (which is sort of surprising) but *John Mulaney voice* we don’t have time to unpack all of that!

On another note I cuss a little in this Meta because my parents let me listen to TicTacToe as a small child and after that it never stuck that cussing is wrong so, uhm, parental supervision is advised or something

This Meta will so far have FIVE parts now. The original plan was to do three, one for each Season, and have it organised by episode so you could technically follow along (which is still true), but due to personal reasons, also known as *feelings*, Season 3 had exploded disproportionately and for readability reasons I have split it in three parts - there is part 3 which ends with the Christmas Episode, part 4 which spans what aired of 3B so far and the final part 5 which will include the final and my conclusion, if by then I am able to form thoughts again / still

Alright you guys, drumrolls please: part 4 (also called „*butterfly meme* Is this growth?“)

Episode 3.11:

I wanna be honest with ya’ll, Season 3B is sort of a mixed bag for me, because while yes, all the episodes have been great viewed separately, they just feel so … separate from each other, and with 3A having so many episode-spanning arks, it’s a bit of a letdown to return to the standalone episode format. Especially because it makes the whole two steps forward one step back thing so much more apparent as it feels like what happens in one episode has no consequence for the next. It felt a little like they burned through too much in 3A already and didn’t know where to go from there. Which is also true for me, so maybe I should stop judging.

Anyways, I’ll stop bringing the house down now.

Let’s continue with: Don’t you just love stan-ing two adorable, complicated badass firefighters? Yeah, me too.

Also, I wanna see the Doc again. Tim, can we? He could be friends with Frank? We could see them have tea and talk about those dumbasses at the firehouse? (And also legs, since, you know, Frank only has one?)

And also the bank guy, Harrison was fun. (This whole episode was.)

And I know it has nothing to do with Eddie or Buck or Intimacy or Sex (okay a little with those) but I do wanna point you to that damn meatball scene, because it’s so chaotic? First, why are all the ingredients laid out on the table but Maddie is making balls already only to then cover them in water? Look, I’m basically vegan (haha, how long do you think I’ve waited to shoehorn this in here) and haven’t cooked meat since I was … fourteen, probably? And even to me that just seemed wrong! Not to mention AFTER touching raw meat, Maddie only cleans her hands with a towel before opening the door? You used to be a nurse, Madeleine / Maddison! (Do we know her full name? I feel like we don’t.)

One thing I really love about 3B (so far) is how happy and settled my main man Edmundo Diaz is. It’s in the eyes, you guys! I don’t know if it’s a Ryan thing or a deliberate acting choice but whatever it is it translates well (haha, well, yeah, we’ll talk about that one later) into his character and it really makes you feel like Eddie is so much better. Like for all the analysis of Eddie I’ve been doing, I didn’t notice how much colder he grew since the beginning of Season 2 until this episode came and suckerpunched me with the warmth in his eyes. Good god, proceed with caution! Oliver could call me right now and say „Look, Buddie isn’t real, I just keep getting lost in Ryan’s eyes.“ and I wouldn’t even be mad, I’d just be like „How’d you get this number?“. (It was Tim, wasn’t it? Damn it, we talked about this, mate! I wanna meet his cat, not him!)

The episode doesn’t hold a lot of relevance in terms of this meta (aside from some parallels I’ll talk about in a moment) but I still want to discuss it a little bit because it means a lot to me. I just love Howard „Chimney“ Han with all my heart.

I wanna say something controversial now because we’re 500 words in and I feel like I haven’t made you regret reading my rambling yet, so here is controversial thought of the day #1: All these fucking characters are grey as fuck except Howie. Howie is good to the bone. He is the goodest boy. He is so gentle and sweet and non malicious and yes, I am including Evan in my list of grey characters because he pulled some SHIT! Okay, a little bit of shit. Things have been *implied*! (I don’t even know anymore. Maybe he’s just off-white or something.)

And what’s the worst my best friend Howard „Chimney“ Han has done on this show? Lied to his girlfriend a buncha times so she likes him better? I lie all the time. I just lied to my mother 5 minutes ago (Yes, Mom, I’m working on my thesis.)! And Howie just lied to make someone like him better. That’s not bad, that’s horrible self esteem!

Which brings me to another thing I wanna say because thank you, Jennifer Love Hewitt. If anyone from the cast gets to call me, it’s you, because you clearly had your thinking pants on when you took one look at Chimney and said: I want that one! You a real one and I will name check you on my way to heaven - not, that they’ll let me in, but the thought counts?

Now, lets talk about those parallels I mentioned before:

The Hans vs. the Buckleys.

Now, we still don’t know a lot about Mr. and Mrs. Buckley and what exactly made them bad parents (though I’m firmly team a little neglectful but not abusive) but we know a lot about Mr. Han.

One thing of the bat I wanna mention is that this episode confirms that Maddie at least had a hand in raising Buck - which doesn’t actually have to mean too much, because based on JLHs age, her relationship with Dough and the way their sibling relationship is played it’s safe to assume that Maddie is supposed to be between 5-10 years older than Buck (assuming she started nursing school after High School at around 18 / 19, which I think takes 4 years in the US? And she was an ER nurse for 8 years, making her AT LEAST 30 in Season 2, but considering how she emphasised that Buck noticed something was wrong with Dough even as a teenager and she met Dough at 19, I’m gonna assume Buck was younger then 16 because Dough won’t have shown his abusive tendencies right of the bat, so probably about 12 / 13, making Maddie like 6 years older than him? And since we DO have a definite age for Evan, Maddie is probably around 33 in Season 2 (which also works because they wanted to put her and Eddie in a relationship and Ryan Guzman is in his early 30 as well). And look, as the youngest child of two people I would call more than adequate parents I can tell you: older siblings always have a hand in raising you, especially when the age difference exceeds 4 years. One of my sisters is 5 years older than me and I was more scared of telling her about having a bad grade than I was of my parents, so…

Anyways, back to what is actually happening in the episode and how it both parallels and contrasts the Buckleys and Hans.

Like Maddie and Howie are the older siblings and Buck and Albert are the younger siblings, yet Buck and Howie are paralleled as are Maddie and Albert. Also, Howie resents his brother for the relationship he assumes Albert has with their father, but Maddie recognises that Buck probably had similar experiences growing up as she did. Of course one could argue that Howie and Albert never had a relationship before while Buck and Maddie grew up together, but look, Maddie was in an abusive relationship for quite a while and hadn’t been in contact with her brother for 3 years prior to Season 2 but it’s safe to assume they didn’t have too close of a relationship before that either, or the Buck we know would have gone to Maddie to investigate and find out why she dipped. So…

(Despite all of this, Maddie knew she could come to her brother for help in Season 2 meaning one, our boy is such a good boy always and the Buckleys can’t be all bad if Maddie knows she can count on her brother, meaning she didn’t think her parents screwed him up too much in the time since she moved out and gradually left his life. Just another thought.)

I also love how her firm believe in the strength and meaning of familial relationships triggers a shift in Howie. Please keep this in mind for when we discuss 3.16 in a few minutes, friends.

Also that kitchen scene has all my heart. They really said kitchens are a Buddie thing now, didn’t they? (Also from a non shipper perspective, Maddie and Buck are just the sweetest and for a TV show actually fairly realistic siblings. At least if I compare them to my siblings and I.)

Also in terms of the actually topic of my meta’s: this is our first indicator that Eddie considers the 118 his family. And we have another moment of Chimney seeking reassurance / being open with Eddie. I love that they have a friendship like that. (He was so excited about meeting Chimneys brother as well. A little bit puppy and like another reason why Evan and him are friends. (As if we need more)) Also love that Eddie is secure enough to voice these feelings!

(Eddie really does seem so healed in this episode? So open? And happy? Damn, Frank, you know your shit! My man had some growth.)

Now, for some sidenotes to round off this episode, because I have some and I wanna share them:

On the Buckley parents, I think the episode wants to imply that they had plans for Buck? Maybe career wise? Because in the pool scene he says something along the lines of: „Sometimes you have to put / get a little distance“ and since it’s been implied that Buck is also from Pennsylvania or somewhere close by, we can assume that he was talking about himself here. Like he moved all the way across the continent.

I’m also just gonna throw out a prediction for Season 4: since Nia is only a foster child and like 2 years old, it’s safe to assume that she has been only recently taken in. While I do not know the US-Foster system, I do have some knowledge about the German system, so I’ll just predict that either one or both of the birth parents try to get their child back.

Or they just sort of forget about all of this by Season 4.

And I really really really dislike the cancer storyline and how the show is handling it, at least in this episode, specifically in regards to May, who in my opinion, has been both written and treated by the show as someone younger than 18 here, only for the show to then turn around and go all: wow, such an adult, look how wise she is. So awesome. Like nah, son! 3A has shown that she is much maturer than she was treated in this episode.

And Eddie finally got to say „seen this before“ again. I feel like he says that a lot. Should I start a counter for that too or do ya’ll just wanna think about him naked for a bit? (I know, you guys, I know! Should I befriend someone who can make me a bunch of gifs of shirtless Eddie I can pepper in every time we get to heavy around here?)

Episode 3.12:

Ah, yes, „Fools“! The one episode I have to say I can not look at without wearing my shipper goggles. So be warned.

Which is why I’m gonna start with the elephant in the room: Ana Flores.

Now, I’ve seen (and maybe liked / reblogged / queued / drafted (Idk anymore, I’m up to 600 posts in my drafts, 300 in my queue and like 300 liked / reblogged already)) an interview with Ryan Guzman where he talks about Ana and how he isn’t sure yet wether they are heading for romance and how it needs someone incredibly badass to get through Eddie’s defences, because Eddie is barely over his wife’s death and yeah, that! Look, if you’re here, I’m gonna assume you have read the other three parts of this „meta“ and therefore know that I am a proud member of the Shannon Diaz - defense squad and will fight anyone who says a bad word about her. And you will also know that I attribute most of the stupid things Eddie did in 3A to the fact that Shannon died. So there. All caught up.

Now, as for Ana Flores herself (and I’m writing this after 3.16, so who knows what happens next): She might be in Season 4 (I think the interview said something about it or she tweeted something) but I don’t think it has been confirmed yet? So considering what Ryan said they probably won’t end up in a relationship by the end of Season 3 (again, please remember when I am writing this).

I’m not gonna comment on the actress aside from saying, damn, I wish that were me! Other than that? I don’t really care about actors unless I think they are hot and then it’s more of a: uiiii, me like-y. (Madeleine Patch, call me!)

As for the actual scenes, well, I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand side, as I’ve said before, I work with children and the idea of dating the father of one of my babies is just plain wrong to me. So there is that. Morally speaking that storyline would be trash. (And very OOC for Mr. „My son needs to be protected above all“)

Then of course there is what’s actually happening between them which, one, from the get go she seems to not reciprocate Eddie’s advances (he keeps telling her to call him Eddie, she keeps calling him Mr. Diaz). Also that whole speech about horses? Yeah, I know you’re an english teacher but ähm, what? (Put it on the list, Tim, I need answers!)

To sum it up (and explain why I brought up Shannon aside from how much I like her), I don’t think it’s headed for a romance quite yet? They may be playing the slowburn game, but I think it was more like Ali in Season 2. Because as @greyhello pointed out to me in Part 2, Ali might have been there to show us that Buck was ready for a commited relationship and it had never been Abby that made him like that, just as Ana is here to tell us: hey, Eddie is finally accepting his wife’s death and maybe, possibly, some time in the near future, ready to date again. Probably. We’ll see.

Aside from that, I actually think a little crush could be something healthy and healing for Mr. control issues. But, again, we’ll see.

So, elephant addressed. Now let’s move on.

Sidenote: I feel like the parent-teacher conference made Eddie really regret so many of his life decisions. Someone needs to tell Buck so he can make a million puns from here on out and drive Eddie crazy.

(Sidenote: Carla said „big blue eyes“! You know who has big blue eyes? Ah, now I’m just clowning.)

Now this episode returns to the Season 2 formula of giving Eddie and Buck similar storylines:

Because while Eddie meets someone he could potentially be interested it, Buck is also made aware of his single status and the fact that he hasn’t dated in a while.

I do think Buck’s stance in this episode was both curious and familiar. Familiar because it reminded me a lot of Eddie in 2.04 and I think, just like Eddie did before Shannon came back, right then Buck is closing himself off from making connections, be they physical or emotional, because he got hurt too much.

Which is why I call it curious. Because I can not decide wether I consider his behaviour growth or a step back. In Eddie it would definitely be a step back, but in Buck who had been so willing to take any chance for physical intimacy just for the sake of a connection in Season 1 to now at least seem somewhat settled in himself and comfortable with what he has does feel a little like growth? (Then again 3.16 shows us he is just scared of getting hurt again, so probably just covering up is depression.)

Also, again with the kitchen! That puts us at five (?) scenes of Buddie talking about each other or with each other in a kitchen setting (six, if you count 3.03). Now I’m probably clowning myself real hard right now, but whatever!

But I do wanna point out how comfortable Eddie and Buck are discussing Eddie’s parenting struggles, which just shows how much he trusts him.

Now I know, I myself have made a textpost about Eddie discussing his parenting struggles with literally anyone, but ya’ll know I was kidding, right? It isn’t actually true. In canon he talks with exactly 5 people about Christopher:

They are Christopher’s therapist in „Triggers“, Carla, Hen, Lena … and Buck.

Now, here comes something interesting: For Carla and therapist, it is literally their job to help Eddie with his parenting struggles, but all the other scenes? Connected to Buck. Yeah. That.

Look, the Hen scene in the Christmas episode literally involves Buck and as I’ve said both Eddie’s and Buck’s reaction here heavily implied that Eddie has had a conversation with Buck about his fight with Chris before telling Hen all about it.

As for Lena, again, she is *literally* there as a substitute for Buck. She uses his locker. Her name is taped over his - and that is actually such a nice visual, that I wanna talk about it real quick, because I’ve seen it called disrespectful a few times and I don’t agree.

One, the fact that they left the „B“: funny af, someone from set dressing is probably laughing themselves silly about this and is allowed to call me now; also a constant reminder who’s locker and place she is actually occupying. Also how she can never really fully replace him, she can’t cover the hole he left fully, he is always there, lurking.

Two, the fact that it is tape: tape is slightly see through. It is temporary and easily removed. Tape is just a quick, momentary fix. Tape can be taken off / away without effort.

So to sum it up: There’s no one he trusts more with his son.

Which is also why Buck is there at the end: because Buck is who Eddie trusts. Buck is who Eddie goes to when he’s struggling as a father. Buck is who Eddie wants by his side cheering Chris on. I mean, they are literally pushing him together while Carla films (stands on the sidelines, ready to help as needed, but not fully a part of their family unit).

So, to go back to the elephant in the room? Right now I’m not at all worried about Ana Flores.

On another note it’s also one of the last real Buddie scenes we got in 3B so far and while I do understand that there just wasn’t any storyline for them to do such a scene organically, I am very worried about what it could mean. Because I still remember when Teen Wolf stopped putting Tyler H and Dylan in scenes together because people kept screaming queerbaiting.

I don’t want that to happen here. I love Buddie and what it could represent but I’ve also written too much about their respective characters AND their connection by now to disregard how meaningful they ALREADY are and how important even as a platonic pairing they are. Because they make each other so much better and proof that straight man can have deep connection with each other and how two flawed people can help each other heal in a way that I don’t think any other relationship in this show shows.

Back to the episode, though. The ark between Christopher and Eddie here is truly beautiful and I love the way we see Eddie growing as a parent. And I think the show wrote those scenes so well and they felt truly natural and were incredibly important, both for Eddie and Christopher.

I do think, as much as I love Christopher always being Eddie’s number one priority, no matter who Eddie ends up dating (yes, even if he dates Buck) we need to see a bit of a shift here. (Also, just in general, because Christopher will grow up, even if he’ll never be as independent as a fully abled bodied child might someday be.)

Eddie needs to learn to let go of control and of Christopher a bit. Look, a partner will never come before Christopher for Eddie (unless Chris is like in his 40s and has moved out and is living his own life. And even then it’ll be close.) but in order for anyone to ever fit into his life he needs to make a little space at the top and that includes taking away a bit from Christopher.

(Also just selfcare reasons, you guys, parents need to learn that it’s okay to sometimes think about themselves! And we already saw Eddie break once cause it became too much, how easy do you think that can happen again?)

Sidenote: We all know Buck built that, right? He’s been shown again and again to have some mechanical / maschinary (?) understanding plus fairly interesting problem solving skills.

Episode 3.13:

I love the locker room scene. Firstly, it’s a definite reminder that these three have bonded a lot and it’s such a sweet familial scene.

Also Eddie’s advice: yet another hint that he’s healing from Shannon’s death.

Compare it 3.08 and the conversation Bobby had with Eddie. There are no definite callbacks or anything like it, but it is very very very obvious that Eddie is talking about his dead wife here. Who he told he loves her in her last moments. So there.

Now, as for the healing part, could you imagine 3A!Eddie saying something like that to anyone?

Even in 3.03 or 3.06 with Buck, the person he lets himself be the most vulnerable with, there are still always terms and conditions with his words.

He trust no one more with his son, which, okay, is what the scene was about and what has the highest priority in his life but still, his trust isn’t bound to himself, it’s bound to his son, not to himself, not something he has in general for Buck, but something he has for Buck in regards to his son - that Eddie trusts Buck with himself is only ever implied.

He forgives him - „also what it means to be a part of a team“. Eddie sort of impersonalises his forgiveness here, he doesn’t forgive him because he’s Buck and he’s Eddie, he forgives him because they are part of the same team.

With Eddie there is always a wall.

But here in the locker room there isn’t. It’s just: if you love her, tell her, cause you might not get another chance - Eddie certainly doesn’t have another chance to tell Shannon.

And okay, you might say, isn’t that kind of a condition as well? Saying ‚I love you‘ because tomorrow isn’t promised? And sure, it kind of is. But Eddie’s also basically saying: once upon a time I told my wife, who art now in heaven, that I loved her as she was dying and then I got real mad at her and the world after because she left me and she was planning to leave me anyways and now I’m here and I’m over that and I’m just glad I got to tell her ‚I love her‘ one last time. I’m no longer angry.

Growth, you guys.

Episode 3.14:

I feel like the writers read some of ya’ll’s Buddie fanfiction, realised how it mischaracterised the relationship between Buck and Chimney gets and said: not on my watch!

In other words: If Eddie and Buck are different sides of the same coin, Buck and Chimney are the same sides of different coins. They share so many traits and experiences!

Now, this episode. Man, you guys, it really has me stumped. Part of me thinks it doesn’t have relevance and part of me keeps going back because it thinks it does?

Oh man, you guys, I’m lost. I don’t know.

All right, executive decision: no relevance, just another drop on the breakdown-stone that is 3.16.

Someone please tell my man’s boy they need him!

Episode 3.15:

Fun fact to start ya’ll off: this was only the second episode I watched somewhat live being a little new to town and the first I saw without spoiling myself on tumblr. So it has a special place in my heart any way you look at it.

(But then again this episode also involves several of my nightmares: drowning! being below earth! Being in small enclosed spaces! Being buried alive! Huge amounts of mud that will not leave your clothes and fingernails for the next six hundred years!)

Also, uhm, did I say „Fools“ was the *one* episode I could not look at without shipper goggles? So I’m contradicting myself. It happens. Move on. (Yeah, or repress it and join a fight club! Also name check me with your therapist, please! We may have breakdowns but we do them healthy around here!)

Because these fuckers went off! Whew! I’m serious, after watching the episode I sent a clip of that scene to my roommate and asked to rate how platonic this was. Which she did not. Because she doesn’t know math, apparently. - My point is, she sees it and she doesn’t know the show.

In other news this episode convinced me Oliver is pulling an Andrew Robinson (and yes, I know he said it was in the script but then Andy also followed the script, so…).

Sidenote: Eddie is the oldest, right? Damn, for some reason I thought he was the middle child. He has big middle child energy.

(Also why they namedrop Galveston like that? I googled it an it’s just a town? Why, Tim, why?) (At this point he is just torturing me, I know it. This feels personal.)

Anyways, this episode, you guys! I have thoughts! (And they are very hard to put in order so please excuse any jumping around at this point.)

The birthscene is great and can we just for a moment think about 25 year old Eddie hugging his mother in law so very lovingly? He’s so happy here. So soft. (Also I’m about to turn 25? I would not be able to deal with being married right now either?)

And yes, this episode confirms that Eddie has killed people, and while I know it was selfdefense, I just, it’s very weird to me because these characters have become so real to me, so to see one of them kill without a care is kinda off-putting. (This is why I will always consider Eddie grey and why I can never consider Buck white - because he had been planning on joining the Seals meaning he had to consider the possibility of killing and has probably learned to kill (Do you think that’s why he’s so non aggressive? because he knows he could take everyone down?))

I’m just gonna come out and say it: anyone who says Eddie isn’t impulsive has not watched this show. In fact I’d even say he is more impulsive than Buck.

Yes, Buck will do weird and dumb shit on a whim because the thought just crossed his mind and it sounds good and he doesn’t think about the consequences, but just does it. (I could make a case that our boy has ADHD but this is not what this meta is about)

But Eddie? Eddie is impulsive in his reactions. Everytime he is in distress (emotional not physical) he stops thinking about consequences and just starts reacting. Especially if it’s about a child!

Shannon is pregnant - lets sign up for the army.

Our child has a developmental disorder - lets stay in the army.

My parents want to take away my child - lets move halfway across the country.

(Not allowed to talk to your best friend? - lets go streetfighting.)

Eddie probably thinks these things through to a point and he mostly has a plan, but he is so reactionary. He is like a raw nerve and that’s what makes him impulsive.

It’s why, instead of letting them pull him out enough until he can radio, Eddie cuts the fucking line. Because this is a child, this could be Christopher and Eddie needs to be enough to save him.

(Are you crying yet?)

I’m not gonna talk about Afghanistan except to say: ah, Eddie. My man, you are enough! Always!

(But maybe that was his guilt over killing talking? Maybe he does feel bad?)

Also why did the woman emphasis ‚Staff Sergeant‘ like that? Was that an indicator that Eddie got promoted?

Also Eddie the fucking boy scout / alter boy / goody goody two shoes trying to get up because of a superior office despite lying in a hospital bed (and not even having been cleaned from his blood yet, urgh that’s gotta itch!)

Sidenote: in light of 3.16: do you think Eddie still talks to Mills, Binder, Norwahl and what all their names are or do you think that would be too hard for him? I’m leaning toward not talking but I really liked Mills (she reminded me of Buck and Lena, tbh.)

And now, for our regular scheduled program: Shannon and Eddie.

First of all I loved all of it. I loved that we could really understand why Shannon left. I love how much they clashed but still had those little moments of recognition.

And look: The juice box scene was very rough. Eddie is likely currently suffering from PTSD, definitely having a culture shock and here is his wife who is barely holding on as well and she just wants to leave, she can’t deal anymore and both of them are so desperate and wow, just wow. Kudos Ryan and kudos Devin Kelley, I’m sad we won’t see you again, but I do hope I’ll see you somewhere else one of these days!

I’ve talked about their relationship a lot already, so I’m not sure if I have any fresh takes but I will remind you of a few you already know:

Eddie is not in love with Shannon after Afghanistan (haven’t decided yet if he was in love with her in the birth scene)

Shannon *needed* Eddie to open up to her just as much as she needed to be open with her

Eddie was not able to be emotionally intimate with his wife

they cared about each other very very much and I do think they tried

they are family (remember what I said in part 2 about Eddie talking to the 118 about Shannon? This here proof that he definitely defended her actions at some point to them as well)

Shannon was in an impossible situation with her mother and a special needs child and likely burned out and just … she needed someone to have her back, which Eddie couldn’t because he himself was suffering from PTSD at that point

I’m still mad as fuck, they killed her off! If they give Eddie any other endgame romance that isn’t Buddie without like two seasons buildup after killing off HIS WIFE I will riot!

Which brings me to Eddie and his parents which was rough, you guys!

Look, as someone who worked with children I can see where his parents are coming from in that scene but also wow, just wow.

How cold and insensitive and fuck, no wonder someone is repressed as shit, that was horrifying and I really can’t talk about this more than to say this hurts and also explains too much about Eddie. (Can we have the locker room three bonding about having horrible parents in Season 4, please, Tim? And can Buck come too? We could do it at the loft?)

As for his conversation with Christopher, obviously it was cute as fuck and also I love how he began the conversation talking to his child like every adult male I have ever met talking to a kid about something he knows will go over it’s head („It’s like we’re talking about completely different people.“). (Okay, maybe not just adult males. Maybe we all talk like that around children sometimes. I know I do.)

I really liked how they reinforced once again that Eddie wasn’t a natural at being a dad (compare how he holds his son to season 1 Buck who most definitely knows how to handle a child (And now I’m wondering if him being good at it was always planned or a „Oliver did a great job the first time we had him interact with a child so we decided to make it a trait“-thing. Damn you, Tim, for making me think so much!)) but became good at it because he was willing to learn and he cared! Dads of the world (also Moms, we aren’t all super duper either) take note!

That being said the conversation also left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth because, one, it felt a little petulant of Eddie to turn around and leave for LA, the way it was presented here and two, Christopher at that point didn’t understand yet what Eddie was actually asking him about and it felt a bit like manipulation. Please everyone, do not consider a conversation like that consent from a child. Any adult can get a child that age to say anything they want because children just want to be liked (It’s why when children are involved in criminal proceedings it’s so hard to interview them because children follow every suggestion because they think this is what the adults want them to say.).

Now, let’s talk about puppy!boy for a second!

In 1.05 Buck tells Abby: „no one is good when it’s personal“ - well guess what buddy boys, this one is very personal for one Evan ‚Buck’ Buckley, thank you very much, that boy is losing it.

Okay, let’s compare it to the episode before and then two episodes later:

Now, obviously the situation with Maddie was a little different. Mainly because this was a hostage situation and he realised (because Seal training, remember?) that there wasn’t a lot he could do to help her right then but then again … neither was there in Season 2 when Maddie was in danger and he still acted far more frantic in the car with Athena than he did here? Like the only stupid thing he did was drive a little dangerously this time?

And of course, two episodes later we see Bobby react when Athena is in danger and while we don’t see him be frantic we do see him get ready to kill someone, so, yeah!  It could of course be inconsistent writing or deliberate to keep the attention and worry more on the people in the call centre but since they haven’t pulled anything like that before I’m leaning more into my clowning.

I mean, we also have to consider that Buck was Eddie’s lifeline here, he was supposed to be the one to get him out, so he feels extra responsible but then again we have Hen make this comment about having two cut lines, which of course says that Hen thinks that one: whatever reason Eddie had to cut his line will definitely be considered a just as valid reason by Buck to cut his line but also: BUCK WOULD DECIDE TO DIE DOWN THERE WITH EDDIE. Sorry for the yelling, but no, I do not think Buck acted out of character in 3.14.

(Which is very irresponsible, you guys. You are fathers! What happens to Christopher when ya’ll die in a well somewhere in fictional California? I can not live in fictional California! I will not be taking care of your child, Buddie! Figure it out yourself! No. We are done here! This conversation is over!)

(Okay, not quite, because I actually don’t think that would be realistic! More realistic: Buck giving Eddie his harness so he can get pulled out first and then dying down there alone.)

Like I’ve said in the at the beginning: Oliver might be pulling an Andrew Robinson. It might have just been the way they thought Buck would act if he lost Eddie while being responsible. It might have been fever making him delirious (which, btw, kudos! Because you can hear how sore his throat was and omg, that shirt hurt!)

Never mind I found the heavy focus on Buck in an episode about Eddie fairly curious - which is why now it’s video-talk time!

First: I will not bear Shannon slander around here! Yes, she was in way less scenes than Buck, but the actress also was never a main character, so ya’ll need to remember there are like 2 scenes of them as a family. And they probably didn’t have the time, money and energy to film some just for a montage - especially considering that the three of them have hardly been a family together, because first Eddie was gone and then Shannon, so…

But yes, we do have to admit that Buck was in most scenes, and yes, we do have to consider the implications of this which are: Buck is definitely a vital member of the Diaz family and when Eddie says: I’m always gonna come home to my family, this now includes Buck and I hope we see him tell him that at one point in the final cause I need him to!

And then of course there is also the radio scene in the beginning (which lead to one of my proudest tumblr-moments to date in form of this post!) which did ease us into the concept of Bucky-boy being a member of the Diaz family! So it is canon now?!

One thing I wanna point out about the school scene in the end in regards to this is that little boy’s question. Sure they used it as transition to calling Christopher his good luck charm but, uhm, why did they have Buck ask about it in the beginning then? Why have this sort of unnecessary callback to the beginning of the episode unless they want us to remember Buck?

Something to ponder for the next week, I think.

Also the episode sort of reinforced my believe that we don’t really have to worry about Ana Flores. Sure, this scene was also a chance for Eddie to redeem himself in front of a teacher he screamed at just a few weeks prior but the only interaction they had was her asking that question at the end and Eddie hardly looked at her.

(Also, if they really wanted to reinforce Eddie being interested in her, they could have had Carla make a dig about it in the beginning, even with Christopher there, but they didn’t, which to me confirms that they don’t really know what to do with her yet.)

At least Ryan was finally taking his shirt off again, I know that’s like catnip for ya’ll.

Episode 3.16:

One thing that really confuses me is how many people seem to think this episode points out only how important romantic relationship are and I don’t see that?

I mean, I see that it’s one of the points that is being made but I don’t think it’s the only possible reading of this episode.

To me it was about connection and family more than anything.

It begins actually with Eddie (the person most connected to Buck) being the first person to decline Buck’s invite, not in favour of spending time with a romantic partner, but because he has a prior commitment with his son! (And several other people, including, but not limited to, at least 2 other nine year olds. For Eddies sake I hope less than 5 or that Carla is around because he is a single father and children unionise by nature.)

And it continues with Buck by forming a connection to Red and then bonding with Maddie.

And can I just say, before we delve more into all of this, how proud I am of Evan „Buck“ Buckley after this episode? Just look at him!

This is Buck at his lowest, lower even than during the lawsuit, because back then he had something to fight against, which he doesn’t have here. Because he can’t stop other people from leaving him (that is the whole point of the episode after all) and what does he do? Instead of going full on Buck 1.0 and just finding the nearest interested person to form a meaningless physical connection with to substitute for the lacking emotional intimacy he craves so much, he goes to a bar alone and befriends an old man. And spends the rest of the episode bonding with him. And bonding with his sister. And addressing his issues, both with his sister and his family. That is huge!

(Which is why I’ve decided him not wanting to date? Symptom of his deeper issues, yes, but also a sign of growth.)

And I’ve seen some people on my dash talk about how, compared to most other 911 episodes, this episode has a fairly bleak ending, which one I agree with, two think is actually a theme with Buck centric episodes, but three don’t actually mind / think is a bad thing? It’s fairly realistic after all.

To get personal one second: I remember being a very idealistic 20-year old intern working in the foster system five years ago and my mentor, who was less than 10 years older than me but fairly badass teaching me something that technically is a well known proverb but that I, a idealistic 20-year old, had not actually understood until I worked there and saw it myself: manchmal muss man den Karren an die Wand fahren - translation: sometimes you have to let the trolley drive into the wall, which means sometimes you have to let things play out till it’s natural end before you can help. Or to use an english proverb: Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom.

And this is what I’m thinking - no, hoping - is happening here. Because, look, you don’t just solve like 20 or more years of abandonment issues in one episode and considering what a big part of Buck’s character from the moment we met him they have been, that would have been unsatisfying to watch anyways! What we need right now, in terms of Buck’s storyline is catharsis. A cleansing. Buck needs to get to his worst (which I think he did or he will, once he talks to Abby) before he can begin to get better, can begin to heal, can begin to learn that he is not alone. And that is not a bad thing!

And yes, I know our boy is suffering and we along with him because we all love Evan Buckley to death but sometimes you gotta let things break so you can fix them instead of just putting tapes over the holes you see (haha, see what I did there?).

As for the episode, here we go:

I wanna start with something else real quick which is Hen’s subplot which I found important. Because they addressed that hey, she went through a trauma not to long ago as well and maybe she is not as okay with it as we thought?

Also it shows Bobby’s double standard again, but then I think he would have reacted differently if the guy had died and it was evident Hen realised she should never pull a stunt like that again. And maybe I’m giving Bobby a bit to much credit right now. Urgh.

I do wanna say, while Chimney seemed fine at the end with what went down we did see his reaction in the next episode and honestly he is mad, it’s just that Hen is his best friend and Chimney lives on the principle of forgive and forget so there.

Now I do really like the rope rescue scene because it was badass and also because Eddie seems so done in the beginning and Bobby just looks at him like: well, he’s not doing it alone and he’s probably not gonna cut his rope!

(Also notice how Eddie cut his rope willingly but Buck’s was cut for him? What does that mean? - For reals, I may see the connection but I can’t yet make out the meaning.)

But I did appreciate Hen’s comments about them being their best guys a lot! I kind of want an episode like they used to do on Star Trek were they focus on background characters and give us the way everyone probably sees Buddie as some kind of superhuman supermen who pull the craziest stunts and somehow make it! And now, let’s get into Evan!

First of, I now Cindy was meant as a parallel to Abby but I also think to Ali because Abby didn’t leave because she couldn’t handle the fear but Ali did. So there, a sort of Ali Martin mention! Thanks for listening, Tim.

But of course with everything else Cindy is quite the parallel to Abby from the way she just left and Red never really got closure, just like Buck.

What is interesting though is that Red, different to Buck, doesn’t want closure. He wants to remember the good times and imagine what could have been. (This could of course be due to the fact that his life is about to end.)

Buck on the other hand side really craves closure, and look, I know when we first learned she is definitely coming back I was really unhappy about that, but since then we learned they run into each other which makes it fine to me. Because I thought we’d have another instance of Buck running after Abby for validation and I did not want that. But he’s not actually running after her, it’s just a coincidence so I’m happy for him getting a chance to have closure, finally.

And this is were I think the episode proofs that it’s not about romantic love as the only way to be fulfilled, first because after talking about Abby Buck asks „Do you think I’m lonely?“ which is not about romance at all (had they wanted to make it about love it would have been: „Do you think I’ll find love again?“ or something). Also the conclusion of this episode is Maddie telling Buck he is different to Red because he has her (and in general those scenes between them, yes, they were also about Abby because she was another person Buck has been left by but just like they mention a best friend in terms of people Maddie left behind it is not about the romantic aspect, it is about people he loves in general), because he has a sister and she won’t leave him again - so there, familial love! The pinky swear! The importance of family. (see 3.11)

Also had it really been about love you know what would have happened since then? We’d have seen Buck calling Abby! Maddie would have said something about Buck still being young and having time to meet someone! Instead Abby and Buck run into each other by accident and Maddie makes a pinky swear to never leave again, so yeah, I just think sometimes we need to wait for how stuff plays out before we judge.

Now of course I wanna mention the pool scene as well.

Firstly, I know we already traced a lot of what Buck says at the end back to Eddie and the grocery store but did ya’ll here Chimney say: „Seems like your making this about yourself“ and Bobby implying the same thing, so yeah, I wonder if it was them quoting Eddie or if this is what everyone is supposed to be thinking or if it was just a setup for the breakdown at the end.

Also let’s talk about Eddie real quick here, because I found it really weird that they didn’t reference his platoon from Afghanistan here? Like they could have easily have him say „I’m not in the army anymore but I still talk to my old platoon.“, especially since we MET them one episode before. So either they didn’t think of that, they wanted to reinforce the fear Buck has or Eddie may just be as lonely as Buck?

(Guess which way I’m leaning?)

(Look, children are great but they are no substitute for friends and adult conversation, just saying!)

But I love how hard Mr. Stoic and emotionally unavailable tries to reassure Buck, tries to be there for him. And also did ya’ll notice how, once Eddie speaks for the first time Buck’s focus never strays from him. Hen and Chimney and Bobby talk as well but it seems as if Buck never looked away from Eddie. (Which, definitely get that, he looked good here.) Also how Buck stresses the “That better not happen to us“ - man, what conversation could he be referencing? Man, I wish I had memorised this show by now so I could tell you about two scenes that happened in 3A between Buddie where the topic of us was emphasised a lot but alas I don’t and I can’t.

What the pool scene also proofs once more is that the 118 just like an actual family has a lot of communication issues because Hen and Chimney not being in contact with Tommy or so is a completely different situation but because of their bad communication they don’t realise that this is something they need to explain to Buck because they think this is about Red.

Bobby doesn’t get it either tbh.

But we all know who does, look, I said it about 3.03 and I’ll say it now: Eddie knows Buck. Eddie understands Buck. And Eddie is on the path of realising that Buck needs him to say the actual words and not just let his actions speak! And my my if all of this pays off I will be one happy camper! (Hums Rihanna “We found love in a hopeless place”)

On a sidenote I hate that Red pegged Buck as a hothead because he really really isn’t! He’s just excitable and sometimes struggles with expressing himself and that frustrates him!

Also I never noticed the apartment had an outside area? did we know this? There is a grill?

Also really would love to see Gigi / Dana Strattford again, I liked her, she’s pretty! (But not like to date one of my guys, Tim, kay?)

(Also whats Officer Williams up to these days? Asking for … a friend?)

And to round this episode up: Oliver still looked so sick at times and they put a lot more makeup on him than they normally do? Usually you can see the slight scaring on his face but this episode you couldn’t but you could see the tears / snot mixing with all the makeup when he was crying and honestly, not his best look! (He still makes it work, though! Just saying, I miss 1.02 / 3.02 / 3.03 Buck, I know these episodes hurt but visually they are peak!)

Episode 3.17:

Was that episode amazing? Yes.

Am I still cackling about Oliver Stark having too much leg? Yes.

Did I love the Frank mention with all my heart? Yes.

Was Michael’s meet cute in an elevator less gay than any Buddie scene we got so far specifically any in 2.01 also known as their meet-ugly? That was a rhetorical question, you guys.

As for that comment I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. I mean, if you’re a single guy and you get invited out to fifth wheel at a double date with your sister and her boyfriend and his best friend and her wife, no matter how close you are, you will feel awkward so of course you invite the other single guy who happens to be your best friend who happens to be part of the friendgroup AND the team you’re working with making this a definite team/family/work - outing.

That being said: it took me 23h to come up with a reasonable explanation for this comment and I did scream at my laptop and pause the episode after it was made and I have been thinking “Buddie” confirmed about 100 times since then!

Also, they just spent a shit ton of time together, right? Like, if Buck’s there than so is Eddie and if Eddie is there than so is Buck and I’m clowning and not calm anymore!

Maybe “Buck invites Eddie” can be our always?

In other news this episode has absolutely no relevance for anything, but I love it deeply.

And we made it you guys! It was slower going but it worked!

Thank you to everyone who read so far and thank you to everyone who has been liking and reblogging and commenting! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much this means to me!

(Also please keep doing that! I too am an excitable puppy looking for validation!)

Now, to tag:

@angelcamael, @greyhello, @ipleiade, @the-family-we-choose-118 @chimbuckleys @sevensoulmates

#buddie meta #buck meta #eddie meta #911 meta #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buddie #911 #911 fox #season 3 #textpost #mine #meta #buck #my meta

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our-happygirl500-fan · 5 years

Photo

The Batman Reborn era is my favourite time in comics because it was when I first started really getting into them so it has a large nostalgia factor for me and I love that period even more after over ten years because it was a time when not only did Stephanie Brown (my favourite character in comics) become Batgirl and get her own book as well as the recognition she deserves but I also really liked Dick Bats and his dynamic with Damian and I really loved how Gotham had a new Batman, Robin and Batgirl and they were all learning and trying to grow into those roles and I honestly would have loved to see more of the Dick, Damian, Steph dynamic.

My only real problem with the Batman Reborn era was the distinct lack of Cass and if I could redo it I would have made the Red Robin book a ‘Red Robin and Black Bat’ book. Basically Cass would come in around issue 2 or 3 maybe we’d need an extra issue but anyway there would be flashbacks to Cass trying to keep the peace around Gotham while it goes slightly crazy at the loss of Batman but as she fights each criminal you can tell she’s slightly distracted and there’s a voice over of Bruce’s messages and instructions to her.

And as the instruction to give Steph Batgirl comes up Spoiler suddenly appears and helps Cass take out the last few criminals. Then in the rain Steph rips off her mask and we see that she’s in tears, she’s just come from her confrontation with Tim and Cass learns what’s been happening with Tim who’s been distant and avoiding her to this point since Bruce ‘died’ and Cass asks Steph whether or not she thinks Tim’s crazy and if she believes if Bruce is alive. Steph says she doesn’t know if Bruce is really dead and she doesn’t think Tim is crazy but says that she is scared of Tim going off on his own and she’s worried that Tim’s going to end up in a dark place.

Cass pauses and then nods finally sure about what she has to do and starts taking off the Batgirl suit and Steph asks what she’s doing and Cass says ‘Tim isn’t crazy and Bruce isn’t dead I’m going after him. I’ll take care of Tim and you’ll take care of Gotham’.

Then it jumps back to present day with Cass confronting Tim in Paris and she’s wearing the outfit we see her in in Red Robin #17

Tim starts off defensive and confrontational and demands to know what Cass is doing in Paris and Cass says that Steph was worried about him which stops Tim in his tracks for a second before he gets defensive again and says that he’s not crazy and Cass says that Steph doesn’t think he’s crazy she thinks he’s right which stops Tim in his tracks again and Cass continues saying that Steph’s just worried about Tim going off on his own and Tim is quiet for a second and asks Cass what she thinks and if she thinks he’s crazy and Cass says that she agrees with Steph and says that Tim isn’t crazy and she also says that she doesn’t believe that Bruce would die so easily and Tim snorts saying that only Cass would say getting killed by Darkseid would be dying ‘easily’. Cass then tells Tim that there are people who believe in him and questions whether or not he really wants to do this alone and leaves him alone with his thoughts.

We then flashback to Steph confronting Cass at the airport begging Cass not to leave and Cass says she has to and tells Steph not to come after her and Steph tells Cass that Gotham needs Batgirl and Cass tells Steph ‘it already has one’.

We then see Cass confronting Tim in Berlin and Tim quietly thinks that he’s not surprised she tracked him so easily. Tim tells Cass that he’s gotten a good lead and that he’s heading to Baghdad next to follow it up. Tim then hands Cass her Batgirl suit (don’t ask him where he got it) and tells her he doesn’t know why she isn’t dressed as Batgirl but that even if Bruce had died, Bruce dying doesn’t change that and Cass tells Tim that she doesn’t know if she can be Batgirl anymore and Tim reassures her saying that he doesn’t really feel like he could go back to Robin right now either honestly but that no matter what Cass calls herself whether it’s Bat-Chick, Knight Bat or Black Robin she’s always his sister and the Bats are always her family Cass tells them those are all terrible names but takes the suit anyway and leaves.

Cass then appears again in issue 5 wearing the Black Bat costume, storming the League of Assassins compound to save Tim and Tam but Tim calms her down. Tim then convinces Cass to go along with his plan to work with the League and Cass doesn’t like it but agrees to the plan. Tim then asks what he’s supposed to call her and Cass answers Black Bat.

Cass then works with Tim and they blow up a bunch of League compounds and then race to Gotham to protect it. There they finally see Steph as Batgirl, Tim is surprised while Cass is happy and proud. Also in this rewrite there are twelve targets not eleven like in canon and the 12th target is Jason who Ra’s calls ‘the lost soldier’ and Tim sends Cass to protect him. Jason tells Cass that he didn’t need protecting and Cass gives a look and tells him that she could arrest him right now but she has more important things to do and also admits that she doesn’t want to and gives Jason a ‘you can change speech’ before going back to the others.

Even though Tim’s proven Bruce is alive Cass can tell that Tim wants to kill Captain Boomerang and decides to stay with him to stop him from making that mistake. So she ends up going on all his adventures with him acting as a sort of moral compass at times.

Mingjue Helen Chen did a Burnsides Batgirl design for Cass and Steph here

And I kind of want that to be Cass’s Undernet outfit it’s either that or a Batman Beyond outfit anyway Cass wakes up in the opposite end of Undernet Gotham than Tim and when she wakes up there’s a little Robin Steph (who I imagine having her World Without Young Justice design) there giving Cass advice and helping Cass manoeuvre through Undernet Gotham like how Tim had Riddler representing his subconscious mind trying to figure the situation out Cass’s subconscious creates a little Robin Steph that voices all of Cass’s worries like where she’s going from now on, her thoughts on giving up Batgirl and how she’s worried that Tim’s going down a path that she can’t stop but the Little Subconscious Robin Steph also gives Cass advice and support and tells Cass that she can do anything.

It’s sort of like an internal pick-me-up.

Cass and Subconscious Robin Steph find Tim and Tam and Anarchy and Tim is shocked to see Subconscious Robin Steph and he keeps staring at her while Cass notes that Tim has one too looking at Subconscious Riddler and Tim realises that Robin Steph was created out of Cass’s subconscious and looks sad for a second while Lonnie notes that ‘there was a girl Robin for a little bit wasn’t there?’

When Tim summons the ‘Future Heroes’

Cass has a small moment of just looking at her Batman self in awe because that’s her dream that’s everything she wants to be and that’s how Tim sees her which makes her a little emotional.

Then Robin Steph goes to join the battle and Cass asks what she’s doing and Subconscious Robin Steph goes ‘that’s Batman and I’m Robin what do you think I’m doing?’

When Anarchy offers to stay behind to keep the heroes present Cass points at Robin Steph who’s standing proudly next to Batman Cass and tells him to take care of her and Anarchy joke ‘oh well I have to now’

Any way that’s my Red Robin rewrite I hope you like it the art is by @multiple-non-alcoholic-dogs who drew it for me and let me post with permission

#DC comics #cassandra cain #stephanie brown #tim drake #dc #tamara fox

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cryptocism · 5 years

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ive been scrolling through ur blog for a while (cuz ur dc opinions are Top Fucking Notch) and i saw what you said abt bart in tt 03 and f:fma and while i totally agree (it killed tt 03 for me lol) im super curious abt how youd do his development if given the opportunity?

I’ve been thinking about this one like A Lot so buckle up this is long:

it would kind of depend? On whether or not he’d be in an ensemble team like Teen Titans or with his own solo series.

I understand metatextually why he became Kid Flash in TT, since they needed him to be more mature and a more recognizable character and having him upgrade costumes/codenames is a good shortcut for both. But I’ve already talked about why it didn’t sit right with me.

So, lets flip the script a little bit - the start of TT would be largely the same. Our boy Bart is on the new Titans team, and things are kind of awkward after YJ disbanded, also Max is gone and Bart’s relationship with Wally is still not doing great. Things are rough, Bart has newfound doubts to deal with, especially now that the world seems to have gotten harsher and everyone seems to have a lot less patience to deal with him. The pressure to be more mature and a recognizable character is coming from other characters now rather than an authorial need: he’s reminded to take things seriously, or that he should know better by now, that he needs to slow down and think more. So Bart decides a change is necessary, and we get the library scene. He reads all the books, he reappears as Kid Flash, saves Tim via bullet catch, disassembles a gun, takes down Slade, etc. etc. Here’s my departure from canon though: it doesn’t work.

Kid Flash is not a solution, or a magical cure for immaturity. Reading a whole library so he’s miraculously smarter and more mature and capable is, at its core, a pretty naive conclusion. And it makes sense he would think that. But it doesn’t work. He’s still impulsive, distractible, hasty. He can’t put a lid on his own sense of humor. People still think he’s annoying or lazy or careless. And he keeps trying - he knows all this stuff now, he read a whole library! - but he’s still apparently too much the same person as he's always been. And even though he’s trying very hard to live up to the Kid Flash name, it still doesn’t feel like him. Wally doesn’t like it, since Bart is literally just imitating him now, which makes things between the two even worse. And Bart keeps worrying about what’s supposed to come afterwards, since “Kid Flash” is inherently temporary, and while Impulse was only peripherally related to the flash legacy, Kid Flash comes with expectations.

Bart is trying very very hard to be ‘grown up’ and ‘mature’, but he hasn’t actually learned anything other than a bunch of facts (which are still useful, but) he’s just trying to be who everyone expects him to be.

And this is what i mean about the ensemble thing, because this arc would be in conversation with the rest of the core four, who are also trying very hard to be people they’re not, but all in different ways. Bart obviously with the codename change, but Cassie, Tim, and Kon all have similar issues, they’re all trying to imitate people.

Tim is doing his Batman jr. routine, reverting back to the persona he had at the start of YJ. He’s cagey and mysterious and does questionable things without telling anybody, because he’s de-facto leader of the team again, and he has to be better than he is. No more kid stuff, the Titans are serious, he has to treat it like a job, not like a sleepover. And this whole act is putting distance between him and his friends.

Cassie is trying her hardest to put herself in a support role. Donna’s gone and she has some big shoes to fill (she and Tim could probably bond about that if he weren’t stubbornly trying to brood at all hours of the day) and she’s doing her best to just Be Donna. Cassie and Tim would work better with their team roles swapped, and they both sort of know this - Cassie is naturally charismatic, thinks on her feet, can maintain good PR, and when she’s confident in herself is great at leading. Tim is partial to planning ahead, secrets, and keeping in the shadows, and is better at being a confidant and emotional problem solver among the team (when he allows himself to be open among friends, that is).

But they’re both trying to fit themselves into what they see as pre-ordained roles: Robin is leader, Wondergirl is a supportive mediator. But Cassie’s got a temper and little patience for people being idiots, and Tim’s not predisposed to spotlights.

Kon on the other hand has a story that’s less about who he should be and more who he shouldn’t be. The Lex Luthor dad storyline is here (minus the mind control shit, although the threat of it is still brought up) and Kon is doing his level best to do nothing that could be interpreted as something Lex might do. While everyone is doing their best to Not be their own person, Kon has no idea if he ever was his own person. He’s questioning everything he does, wondering if it’s some kind of evil gene showing through when he’s angry or petty or selfish. He’s going through lots of clone angst.

So they’re all dealing with expectations and who they are or aren’t supposed to be, trying to fit themselves into boxes that don’t suit them and then convincing themselves that this is how it ought to be. Kon ought to avoid feeling or acting in any negative light because any sign of Luthor is a sign of evil, Cassie ought to tone herself down and act like Donna, Tim ought to step up and lead the team and act like Dick, and Bart ought to listen better and be smarter and slow down and grow up and do his level best to just Be Wally.

Throughout the issues they’d all get a spotlight on their various crises, taking them through complimenting character arcs. Kon would realize through a couple close encounters and chats with ma and pa and talks with his friends and citizens of metropolis that nobody is all good or all bad. Clark can be a real asshole sometimes and Luthor’s actually done a fair bit of good (usually in his own interests, but still we’re gunning for nuance). Turns out he doesn’t have a dark side to be tempted by, he was made from 50% complex person and 50% complex person, just like everyone else. Which means he isn’t destined to be the next Superman, or Superman’s next supervillain. He’s just like, a person. With his own thoughts and feelings that have nothing to do with genetics.

Tim would wear himself out and hide it from everybody until he killed himself, but it’s only when he sees Cassie also wearing herself out too that his ‘somebody needs somebody’ instincts kick in and they’re actually able to talk about how miserable they both are. Through some trial and error they’re able to figure out a good co-leader system for leading the team, having each other’s backs along the way, which allows for them both being able to help out the other members of their team with their own shit i.e. Kon and Bart’s identity issues.

Bart is, like Cassie and Tim, wearing himself out trying to be this perfect version of Wally that never actually existed. He actually hates the recognition the new name gives him, because people have expectations for him now, ones he can never seem to live up to. He’s bad at following orders still, which makes him a pretty shit sidekick for Wally, in fact he’s just pretty shit at being a sidekick in general. But, he reasons, he’s supposed to be grown up and responsible now, and responsibility is all about doing shit you hate until you die, so he’s probably on the right track.

It’s only later, once he gets some support from his friends, who help him deal with things like Max and YJ disbanding and stuff that he’s able to actually sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Wally. Wally confesses that he understands the pressure to live up to a legacy, and how he did his best to just Be Barry when he became the flash. In fact while Bart was trying to live up to Wally and be a good sidekick, Wally was trying to live up to Barry and be a good mentor. Wally’s the one to tell him that Bart’s always done his own thing, and is at his best when he does. They both agree they suck as partners, but maybe they should’ve tried to be family first. And there’s probably a racing metaphor in there somewhere because speedsters love their racing metaphors.

ANyway Bart returns to Impulse, forging a new path, getting along better with Wally now and hanging out with him just as civilians with no pretense. He learns some valuable lessons about how maturity can’t be learned in a book, and that he’ll get it himself the more he lives and learns from experience. The Titans all get along better now that they’re all sure of their places in the group, and they can all go on just being themselves without worrying about expectations or roles to fill or whatever.

...If Bart still had his solo series instead though, id actually want it to go in a sort of different direction? The thing about living up to predecessors and trying to be some ideal version of another person works well for the Titans because they can all deal with a similar issue in different ways, but I think it would also be interesting to do the complete opposite.

Lots of shitty things happened in very quick succession in Bart’s life that he had no control over: Max’s disappearance, having to move in with Jay and Joan (who are nice, but whom he barely knows,) leaving his friends in Alabama, Young Justice breaking up… Basically, things kind of suck for Bart, and all he wants is for them to go back to the way they were. Instead of trying to be grown up or mature or whatever, Bart is resisting every single encroaching thing about coming adulthood. Because all growing up ever seems to mean is that everything changes and either you have to leave the people you love or they have to leave you.

So this series would focus mostly on that, both in his civilian life; going into high school, not knowing anybody, the few friends he does make are less interested in ‘kid stuff’ and more focused on dating and interpersonal drama, high school itself seems to be geared entirely toward the “what are you going to do with your life” question, when he visits his old friends back in manchester, they’ve all kind of grown up without him. And in hero life; everyone from Young Justice is trying to move on and not talking to each other, his father figure and mentor is gone and he's not really jiving well with the rest of the flash family, and people just seem to have less patience for Impulse now that he’s older.

Growing up is hard. It’s hard and no one understands. Especially not when you’re also a superhero and have dealt with some quality trauma like losing loved ones and feeling yourself die. So it makes sense that Bart would resist that in every way possible, do his best to pretend like everything is still how it used to be, for once in his life just trying to make everything stay put. He refuses to get rid of his old stuff, he doesn’t want to treat any villainous threats seriously, people in school keep talking about college and jobs and tuition fees and Bart wants none of that, he acts out, refuses responsibility, gets reckless under the pretense that he never used to have to be cautious.

And this is the part where I’d bring in Inertia, cause Thad was robbed and I want him to have an actual arc that doesn’t end with infant-splosion. Also he can have a good ol companion arc to Bart. Welcome to foils everybody, where two identical boys with opposing life experiences get to thematically compare and contrast with each other as they deal with the trials and tribulations of growing up.

So, I’m ignoring every appearance Thad ever made after Impulse 1995, picking up instead where his story left off where he swore vengeance on his creators and disappeared into the speed force. And he’s off to do exactly what he said; Thad Thawne II is going to kill his namesake/grandfather/creator - the president of Earthgov.

But, turns out assassinating the president of a whole fucking planet is a lot harder than he thought - Thad has planned extensively for every moment of his life, so once he starts going off script things predictably go a little off the fuckin rails. Thad fails, obviously. For one because despite how much President Thawne might deserve to die, Thad at this point hasn’t done anything worse than attempted murder, and making him a killer would put a wrench in any kind of redemption arc he could have. Also he’s acting on rage, in a highly emotional state, basically going up against the entire government. Of course he’s going to get caught by the science police and brought into custody.

Bart, meanwhile is jumping with both feet into any kind of escapism he can find, which involves various time travel shenanigans and lands him in the 30th century. He gets to reunite however briefly with his mom, but the mission he had gets derailed by the appearance of Inertia.

Every time Bart and President Thawne interact, the president always seems to make a bid to sway Bart to the Thawne side. This never works, which is part of the reason Inertia exists in the first place; a version of Bart that the president could control. When Inertia landed in the 30th century, hell bent on assassinating his creator, the President subdued him and eventually coerced him back over to the Thawne side of the family feud. No longer a rogue agent, Inertia is back to his old self, all about destroying Bart and the rest of the Allens.

They have a battle, taking place all over the 30th century city, and Bart does his best but Inertia has the entire Earthgov police force on his side, and Bart eventually gets captured. He gets taken to some kind of holding facility, meets with the President who monologues as him while Inertia stands beside him like a good lackey. Then suddenly the speed-inhibiting cuffs or whatever Inertia had put on Bart to stop his speed malfunctions, and Inertia drops the act, now Impulse and Inertia working together to take down the Earthgov people holding them there.

Turns out as soon as Inertia knew he couldn’t take out the president, what with all the military force President Thawne had on his side, he bided his time until he could. He uses Bart’s help to finally get President Thawne cornered, and the assassination plan is back on track. Except now Bart is the thing stopping him. He makes the argument about how murder bad. Heroes don’t kill, etc. Inertia insists he isn’t a hero. But Bart reminds him that that’s not how Max saw him.

Inertia hesitates just enough that President Thawne is able to get away, and now the two of them have to make an escape attempt back to the past. Bart insists on trying to take Meloni with them, and they try but ultimately fail somehow (maybe someone has to stay behind to make sure they can make the trip safely, idk. At first Thad is willing to stay behind, since there’s nothing really for him in the past. But Meloni knows that President Thawne would destroy him if he did, and she can’t let harm come to either of her sons - and she does consider Thad her son, just like Bart. She’s had far too little time with either of them, but she loves them all the same. She tells them to take care of each other, and is the first to encourage them to be like, actual brothers.)

After yet another tearful goodbye, Bart swearing he’ll find a way for them to all be together again, Bart and Thad go back. And they do end up having to lean on each other, because shit’s tough for the both of them. Thad initially wants to apologize and possibly reunite with Max and Helen, and then finds out Max is gone. And Bart has someone who understands exactly what he’s going through.

Things get a little more lighthearted from here. Bart and Thad don’t get along well at first, since they’re both going through rough times and lots of changes and their first instincts are to lash out at each other. But eventually they form a sort of camaraderie through shared grief, then shared fish-out-of-water experiences. Which evolves into shared inside jokes and video games and comic books and they become slow but steady friends.

They upgrade into brothers when Bart defends Thad against the repeated (and not entirely undeserved) suspicion he receives from the rest of the Flash family. Jay and Joan take him in, but it��s clear they don’t trust him, and neither does Wally. Bart stands up for Thad, arguing that he’s as much of a Thawne as Thad is, and treating Thad like he’s the next Cobalt Blue is just going to ensure that history never changes and stupid family feuds are forever. After this, Thad starts trusting Bart a little more, and kind of solves Bart’s problems regarding encroaching adulthood with his friendship. Neither of them really had a childhood, and Thad hasn’t experienced 21st century life at all, much less the societal expectations to grow up. So Bart gets to have fun again, and Thad won't judge any of his games or his books or his attitude or interests for being childish or lame because he’s fascinated by the experience of anything regardless of the target audience.

And from there it's a series about these two becoming brothers and growing up and the different lessons they learn and wacky characters they meet along the way. Thad ironically also puts Bart in a position where he has to take on more responsibility, since even though Thad can imitate heroic actions and is actually pretty good at it, he doesn’t understand what makes them heroic. Bart has to draw on a lot of the things Max taught him and now has to teach them to Thad.

There’s crossover comics with Superboy, where Bart laments about having to deal with grown up stuff, and Kon gives him a new perspective on the whole “being young forever” thing, since that was a reality Kon actually had to deal with and it sucked.

Through various misadventures they meet new and familiar characters to give them different perspectives on the whole passage of time thing. Villains who despise children or childish things, villains who embrace it but probably too much. People who talk about growing up as the worst time of their lives, others talking about it like it was the best. Kids and adults alike trying to force Bart and Thad to act a certain way while treating them another.

The two of them come to opposing conclusions about this; Thad wants to embrace change completely, partly because he wants to experience firsthand all that life has to offer, but also his worldview depends on believing that anyone can change, and anyone can be better, because he has to believe he can be redeemed for all the shitty stuff he did. Bart, on the other hand, knows his life isn’t perfect but thinks, based on recent events, that it’s all just going to get worse from here, and so resists change as much as possible.

Thad, in his haste to experience everything, sometimes ends up going too far, either burning both of them out, or pushing them into situations that they’re not ready for or are ill-equipped to handle. Bart, on the other hand is so resistant to change or responsibility that he stops them from doing actual necessary things like planning their futures or doing chores or making new friends. This acts as the crux for their main conflict that slowly builds throughout the series, and then in a finale to the arc, they both figure out a way to get Meloni back to the past, and to raise some stakes they have a falling out in the middle of the mission about it.

Bart accuses Thad of trying to leave him behind, or trying to be the better version of him again, and that old insecurity about Thad replacing him crops up. Thad thinks Bart just can’t handle anything outside his personal bubble and wants to force him to live in the real world. Plus he also feels kind of abandoned by Bart, who often would leave Thad to do the scary adult things on his own.

Tensions still high, there's suddenly an external threat to deal with - probably president thawne and the science police - and they attempt to continue arguing even while fighting the president. I’m making this up as I go so lets say yada yada big climactic moment it's looking like the two might fail to get Meloni back and they’re both still angry with each other and Bart just… can’t take it anymore.

He keeps losing people, and the ones he keeps he always seems to screw up with. And at the end of the day he’s just a kid who wants his mom. Is that really so much to ask? So there’s a reversal, a parallel, if you will, of the assassination attempt from the beginning of the series, this time with Bart. Or, because I don’t think many people would buy that Bart would actually ever for real kill someone, maybe he’s finally about to get his mom back, but she doesn’t want to go (since she made that deal with the president that he wouldn’t harm anyone of the Allen family so long as she stayed with him) so he’s trying to force her, risking the lives/well-being of the entire Allen bloodline across all of time.

This time it’s Thad who has to talk him down, who has to remind him about being a hero, who has to remind him that trying to go back to some magical time in the past where things were better is just going to stop him from learning and growing as a person, and that doing anything and everything possible to get there is just going to lead to Bart doing something he Actually Can’t walk back from.

Alright but here’s the thing because having Bart be forced to leave his mom again for like the billionth time is tired and overdone, and personally the whole message about heroics involving extreme and damaging amounts of sacrifice can only go so far. So here; Thad and Bart are both right.

Like on the one hand, yeah, it’s childish and selfish for Bart to want to be with his mom at the expense of literally everyone else in his family. On the other hand, the fact that they can’t be together because some asshole is upholding a stupid grudge is bad and unfair and wrong. The issue needing to be fixed is not the kid who wants his mom, it’s the jackass keeping them apart (and who also wants to kill/imprison people). So Bart convinces Thad that they have to save Meloni, and Thad convinces Bart that there has to be another way - one where they get their mom back and the Allens don’t have to be hunted.

The whole story would be leading up to the two of them coming to this conclusion; the healthy middle between the two extremes. Where they have the maturity to plan ahead and sort through their differences and figure out the best course of action with the least amount of collateral, but they don’t let go of that adolescent need for justice and fairness - that thing that makes you dig in your heels and say “no. That’s not fair, that’s not right.”

SO here’s where I’d put the title card: “Bartholomew and Thaddeus Take Down The Government”. How do they do it? No idea! I’m flyin by the seat of my pants here! Do they run for office? Do they publicize the president’s crimes in such a way he gotta go to jail? Do they somehow turn public opinion against him enough to get him out of office? idk!!! And I don’t remember enough about Earthgov’s political situation to put an accurate read on what exactly they might do to disrupt it.

Either way they don’t kill him, manage to free their mom, and they all go back to the past together. And a new arc would involve the three of them getting settled in the past; Meloni would be a main character now, and hers is a two-pronged fish out of water story where she’s trying to figure out how shit works in the past, with overtones of the struggles of being a single parent.

And... I’m not going to say any more about that because this is long enough already oof.

TL;DR I think a coming of age story would be cool for Bart, and having to deal with growing up when he never really had a childhood. Also the comic itself would be aimed at younger audiences, who can probably relate to having a Bad Time in the Teens and wacky hijinks with friends and siblings.

#soapbox #anonymous #asks

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elyreywrites · 4 years

Text

do you know who you are?

a fic written for Pride Month 2020!! (yes, i know pride month is over, but i posted this on AO3 on June 30th so.) this is a projection fic. it’s not an exact projection of my experience, nor is it meant to be a generalized representation. this isn’t everyone’s experience.

warnings: slight mention of Jack and Janet Drake potentially being homophobic, and discussion of compulsory heterosexuality

thank you to my betas in the Capes & Coffee Discord - Bumpkin, ZulieTheProgrammer, and Oceans!!

title is from Moana’s “I am Moana”!

please REBLOG - DO NOT REPOST

AO3 Link

Teen 1,678 words Bart Allen & Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent slight one-sided Tim Drake/Jason Todd - as in, tiny-Tim has a crush on Robin-Jason

Summary:

He’s twelve and watching Robin fight. He’s seventeen and staring up at the ceiling. He’s nineteen and text-spamming his best friends.

Tim’s growing up and finding himself, and he would really appreciate if the Realizations didn’t happen when he’s trying to sleep. Kon and Bart would probably appreciate that as well.

- - - - -

It starts as he’s watching the second Robin knock out some muggers. It’s not the first time Tim has seen Jason’s Robin take down a group of criminals, but it’s the first time that he nearly gives himself away as he squeaks.

Jason’s so strong, and cool, and pretty, and – oh. Ah. Okay.

He calls it a night at that, bright red from the questions that are swimming around in his head. He spends most of the trip home lost in thought. When he’s sitting on his bed, one of his best pictures of Jason’s Robin sitting in front of him, he gives them a voice. Talking usually helps him get his thoughts in order. “Okay,” he whispers, “do I like boys?” He doesn’t dislike them – not at all. But does he like them? Maybe, but… how is he supposed to know? “Is that too big of a topic?” he wonders aloud to the picture. “Let’s start with this: Do I like Robin? Jason-Robin.”

That doesn’t turn his brain into a jumbled mess like the previous question did. Of course he likes Jason-Robin. He’s absolutely amazing, protecting people and checking on the working girls and kicking criminal ass! He’s only a couple years older than Tim is, but he does so much more! And he’s real in a way Dick isn’t.

Jason’s just a kid like Tim, though they have such different backgrounds. Dick was a trained acrobat, with skills Tim never really believed he could learn. Jason seemed closer. He was still more amazing than Tim could ever hope to be, but it wasn’t an entirely impossible stretch like it was with Dick.

“And he’s so passionate, especially when it’s a kid that’s in danger. And every time he smiles, it just makes me so happy that I kind of want to giggle and—” Tim stops babbling. He doesn’t need to anymore, after basically answering his own question. Yes, he does like Jason Todd, the current Robin. As in, he has a crush on him. Tim falls back on his bed to stare up at the ceiling.

“Well,” he says, “that explains the weird, squirmy feeling I get in my stomach every time I imagine talking to him.” That feeling is always accompanied by a fierce blush and Tim hiding his face for a good two minutes. He thinks he probably should have caught on sooner. Deciding that was enough Realizing Things for the night, Tim quickly locks the picture of Robin up with the rest and collapses on his bed to sleep.

The next day – a Saturday, which is Mrs. Mac’s day off – Tim hops on the computer and starts researching. He has a crush on one boy, but Tim still thinks girls can be cool. Batgirl is pretty awesome, after all! After a few hours and a lot of new information, he settles back on his bed again. He’s bisexual, and sexuality can apparently be really fluid. In all honesty, it didn’t take him hours to find the term, he just fell into a rabbit hole of researching sexual orientation and gender identities. Tim’s fairly secure in his gender, but he’s glad to have learned. It’s something to keep in mind about other people – to not assume anything based on appearances.

He’s bisexual, with a crush on a boy, and his parents will still expect him to only date girls. At least the boy was Robin and completely unattainable.

- - -

Years later, Tim is laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling once again. It’s a different bed by now, in his own apartment at seventeen. The thing is, he’s pretty sure he has no interest in romance. And now his brain was mixing everything up in a tangle of thoughts and feelings again.

“Holding hands is nice,” he admits. “I like cuddling. That was fine.” He hasn’t gone further than making out with anyone, so that’s about the limit of his physical experience. It’s the implication of emotions that makes him want to skitter away. Specifically, emotions of the romantic variety. Now Tim’s reassessing every romantic relationship he’s had, though he’s only ever dated women.

At the time, he had thought he was happy while in each relationship, but… it’s becoming much more likely that it’s because he was previously starved for affection. He suddenly got that affection while dating someone. That thought makes him want to hide from everyone he’s ever dated. Stephanie is the only one he really still has to see, and that has him burrowing under his blankets.

It sounds awful, honestly. Like he was using the relationship to get the affection he so desperately wanted. Logically, he might be overthinking this. He just wishes his dumb brain would tell that to his anxiety and the ingrained societal expectations. “I didn’t mean to,” he mumbled into the blankets.

Romance, dating, being happy in a relationship? He has no other experiences to reference! He didn’t know that something wasn’t right.

Hell, he’s only having this Realization because a woman was flirting with him at a gala and asked if he would like to get dinner together sometime. A romantic dinner date with a woman he wasn’t close to. The entire scenario would be romance with no physical affection, and that didn’t sound pleasant in the slightest. It did, however, make him realize that he might need to think things through again.

So, here he is. Thinking things through. No romance – if he’s remembering his research correctly, the term is ‘aromantic’, similar to ‘asexual’. Asexuality was something he’d heard more about over the years, but he rarely heard of aromanticism. It had just stuck out because while the terms were similar, their meanings were pretty different.

Now he’s glad it stuck in his mind. It gives him less reason to panic about being confused. So, he was bisexual and aromantic. That’s fine! He’s a vigilante, romantic relationships would be difficult anyway.

- - -

A year and a half later, Tim’s fingers fly across the screen of his phone, sending text after text without waiting for a response. Either his friends would wake up or they wouldn’t. Hopefully they would.

Tim: Oh my god. Guys, wake up, I’m an idiot. Bart, Kon, please. I’m so dumb. How the hell am I this oblivious? I’m not bi-aro at all. I’m just fucking gay. It’s 5 am and I can’t sleep, and I just want a boyfriend. I want to do couple things, like cuddle up while watching movies.

Clone Trooper: dude, it’s the middle of the night. why do you do this to us?

Tim feels no sympathy for his friends – he’s been running on less than six hours of sleep for years. Sometimes less than four hours. High school and vigilantism don’t mix well. Anyway, they can deal with waking up to deal with his Realization.

Sonic: bro we cuddle up when we watch movies are we not good enough for you anymore

Tim: Yeah, but that’s platonic, Bart. And yes, I’m aware of the time. I’d like to be asleep too, but I’m lonely and sad and having Realizations! Suffer with me.

Clone Trooper: … suffer how? are you expecting us to have an existential crisis too, or is this just suffering by being awake?

Tim: Being awake. It’s not an existential crisis, it’s just a Realization.

Sonic: its the middle of the night i think it can be deemed an existential crisis

Tim: But seriously, someone please tell me how I jumped passed the logical conclusion I should have come to of “I’m just not attracted to women” and directly to “I have no interest in romance at all”? How did that make sense to me?

Sonic: society conditioned u to like women

Tim blinks at his screen. Bart isn’t wrong, but Tim has absolutely no idea where he’s going with that. He already had the Realization about societal conditioning, thanks.

Tim: Okay? I’m aware, but I’m not sure how that translates to how I didn’t think of the logical conclusion.

Sonic: dude. for years it was a fact – since you were a kid u were so conditioned that u should like women it was just a fact

Clone Trooper: think of it like this, tim: as far as you knew, you liked women. later, you figured out you like guys, but you still think you like women too.

Tim: We’ve established, yeah.

Clone Trooper: so, suddenly something is weird. the only really new thing is that there is romance involved. so that’s clearly gotta be the issue.

Oh. He stares so long the screen goes dark. He drops his phone on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, turning that over in his head. So. He jumped to not wanting romance because it was so deeply ingrained that he was supposed to like women? His exhausted brain seems to accept this explanation enough to calm the edge of self-recriminations.

Tim: That. Makes sense, I guess. But still, it really seems like I should’ve realized a while ago. Also, I’m kind of surprised that you aren’t teasing me for being oblivious.

Sonic: oh thats coming but teasing is saved for when u arent having a crisis

Clone Trooper: later, we’ll absolutely laugh about that jump in logic. but right now it’s too early and you’re already having A Time.

He’s not sure if he has wonderful friends or terrible friends. Tim suspects that he’s still going to hear about this in a few years. It’s the kind of thing they won’t let die for a while.

Tim: Fair enough.

Clone Trooper: great, glad we got that cleared up! now tim...

Tim: What?

Clone Trooper: please. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP.

Snickering, Tim plugs his phone in and smothers his face in the pillow. He’s still lonely and he still wants to analyze every missed evidence over the years, but he’s also exhausted. The chat with his friends did get his brain to shut up enough that he might actually be able to sleep. He can rethink his entire life again after he wakes up.

#fanfiction #elyrey writes things #tim drake #kon-el #conner kent #bart allen #friendship #lgbtq themes #lgbtq character #self-discovery #coming out #pride month 2020 #dcu

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archiveofidentityconstellations · 5 years

Note

(Preferably all batfam related else I'd be clueless :P) 4, 8, 15, 29, 30, 37, 40 alternative ending to 'On Fashions & Small Fry' 💜💜

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

I literally just had an idea this morning about little snapshots in which Damian crawls into Dick’s bed to kind of show the break of outer and inner lives and what we project to the world (day) and how we feel inside (night). That sounds like a lot of hogwash bc mostly I just wanted to do a cute thing with Dick and Damian being brothers

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

from birds all sing:

Several minutes passed, Tim looking at the man he had known as a father for several years, brow furrowed in consideration.

"What else?" Bruce finally said. He let his voice soften. "What else do you need?" Tim met his eyes. Bruce's fists clenched.

So young.

"...The roti."

What?

"What?"

"The roti bread?" Tim repeated. "I was thinking maybe the zucchini but no, I definitely want the roti."

Bruce stood there, adrenaline seeping out of his bones.

"That's it?" he asked brusquely, not a little annoyed to be put through the emotional ringer in under five minutes.

"Yeah," Tim nodded. He almost beamed at the thought of the upcoming food. "That's it. Thanks, Bruce!"

"Don't mention it," he growled, marching out the office.

It’s not perfect, but I like it because it makes me laugh. My humor has a lot to do with timing, so when I manage to get the timing right I find it very funny

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Good question! I wouldn’t really choose any of my fics to be filmed, but I would love my “version” of batcat to have a film presence. Other than that, I would probably want either bratkid or star wars domestic AU to be filmed, but I would make them original work. I like the idea of family coming together and getting to love one another. It’s an after school special!

29. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Oh man I’m kind of shit at imagining things beyond what the author intends. My friend Hobbs has a world she lets me play in sometimes, so I write little snippets of fanfic of her stuff.

30. Do you accept prompts?

When I say they’re open, yeah, kind of. I don’t get paid for writing, it’s not like a commission, so if I like the idea I’ll do it or incorporate it into whatever I’m writing. It’s free real estate babey

37. Talk about your current wips.

There’s too manyyyyyy

I’ll talk about what I need to do

birds all sing: start the first fight. make it organic, not off the cuff. don’t be overt but not too subtle.

crack fic: research you dumb bint. you are literally not writing this because you don’t want to research. why. normally you love research. you just don’t want to look up what writing up reports looks like. it’s probably online. just do it.

40. Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

OHO, okay! Long answer

This was actually supposed to be a full fic, I had a lot planned for it but it got so large that I was like “hmmm” and didn’t do it. It had like 4 “acts” as to how the story went

Anyhow, the fic starts out how Damian wants to go to Sacramento with Bruce, because Bruce said he would take him last week, but then Bruce says no. He won’t explain why, but he’s obviously not mad at Damian, so Damian can’t figure it out. Damian ends up facecalling him and he can see Talia in the background. He promptly flips out, throws his phone at the wall, breaks it, destroys the room, then kind of has a breakdown wherein he just sits in the tub fully clothed with his shoes on 😅

Tim sits with him, then Damian basically falls asleep so Tim goes to get Dick and Dick puts his boy to bed

Second act: Several days go by, and Damian is better, but as he’s sitting on the counter while Stephanie is cooking, she accidentally says something they were all keeping from him: Bruce went to Sacramento so that Talia could sign off on custody rights, lawyers are involved and everything.

Cue to Damian being like “what” and marching off. Damian then concocts this scheme in which he tells Dick that he really wanted to see Dallas, that father was going to take him, please he wants to see the rodeo, etc. Dick gives in and decides they’ll take a brotherly bonding road trip! Yay!

But things start to go sour when neither one of them can mind their business in a seedy motel, and their relationship issues come to light. After this:

"No, damn it!" Dick slammed his hand against the doorframe. It rattled at its hinges. "You got your time, that's it, done, over. I take care of you, got it?"

"We're partners," Damian said, weakly.

Dick's eyes softened. He struggled inside himself, Damian could see. But just as a bubble of hope rose forth, it burst the next millisecond. Dick lowered his hands, head tucked low and shaking softly. "Not anymore we're not," he sighed.

then Damian uhhhh how does one say, drugs Dick so he can sneak out and take a plane to Sacramento.

He bursts into whatever meeting place Bruce and Talia are at and lambasts them for lying to him and such. Talia is like “hi sweetie” and Bruce is like “b o i” and Damian ends by saying he gets to leave first because they always leave whenever they wanted, so now he gets to leave THEM

So he angry-walks to a park and sits down on a bench and stews

Then Dick BURSTS in and is like “is he here?????” and Bruce is like “you let your eleven year old brother get on a plane himself?!” and Dick is like “that little SHIT drugged me, I didn’t let him do anything” and they all sort of talk about the best thing for Damian

Damian comes back after a day on the town in which he really doesn’t have all that much fun, and comes back and everyone is like “okay let’s all be mature about this and talk, no secrets”

And it turns out

Talia is dying

So Damian is bewildered and mad that he can’t be mad, she’s dying, she’s dying and she doesn’t even get to see him without Bruce’s approval, etc

So they work out what would be best for Damian WITH Damian’s input, thank you very much

(also Bruce is like “We acknowledge that we weren’t the best but if you EVER do that again—”)

Third act is in which the new normal is strange, because Damian is visiting Talia but it’s like when he was a very young child again, because she’s not trying to impart survival wisdom, she’s just his mom. And Damian is sort of dealing with the remnants of trauma, and is upset because why couldn’t it have been like this all the time, but he CAN’T be upset because she’s dying and despite his unwillingness to go back over his trauma it crops up and Talia has a lot to make up for. Ra’s appears in his crazy old way, because she’s his favorite child and she’s dying and Damian and Ra’s basically get to sit in a hospital waiting room together and have a stilted conversation on who they are and what family even means

Anyhow Damian is really starting to get along with Talia, which concerns Bruce because. she’s dying. Damian is going to be gutted. So he slowly kind of tries to make it so Damian isn’t as attached (dumb but it’s Bruce) and Damian gets angry and runs away to visit his mother in the French Riviera. They have a wonderful time but then Bruce goes to get him and Damian is mad at him. But Talia says “you need to listen to your father” and Damian realizes that Bruce is the only parent he’s going to have, he’s not going to have his mom anymore.

So yeah, there’s still another act that I didn’t finalize but that’s a rough summary of everything!!

And Talia was going to have an illness exacerbated by the Lazarus pits, like caused by it. It was basically going be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease equivalent in the DC universe. So yeah, she can’t come back lol

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inside-aut-blog · 5 years

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On functioning labels

We’ve all heard them. Most everyone uses them—doctors, therapists, people on TV, people on the street, maybe even your auntie whose son is autistic....

We’ve all heard them, and most everyone uses them—everyone, that is, except a very large number of actually autistic people, myself included.

Why?

Well—a number of reasons, but it’s easiest explained like this: let me tell you a story.

We’ve got two autistics—and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, I’m not the first to tell it—but we’ve got two autistics. One’s called Allie, and the other’s Fred.

Let’s start with Allie.

Allie can carry a conversation. She went to a good university and got good grades. She transitioned from student housing to her own apartment, and held down a part-time job all through school. She now has an internship in a special-interest-related field, works freelance on the side, and is independently paying off her student loans. She can control her stimming in public settings and she can navigate public transportation. She has fairly few sensory issues, and is rarely overwhelmed by them; when she is, she is able to calm herself. She accepts and gives hugs regularly. She’s a bit quiet, but she can carry on a conversation, and while she occasionally struggles to pick up on jokes, she’s got the hang of sarcasm. Her speech is a bit stilted sometimes, sure, but her vocabulary’s expansive, and she can write very eloquently. She tends to be pretty literal, but she’s also extremely intelligent and analytical, and those traits—along with her autistic eye for detail— help her understand subtlety very well. She sets flexible routines for herself to counteract the difficulty she faces doing things spontaneously. She is often trusted to look after and manage others. She’s highly empathetic. She can pass for neurotypical.

So that’s Allie.

Now let’s talk about Fred.

Fred often struggles to speak. He also went to university and had his own apartment, but had a lot of trouble keeping on top of academics, and even more trouble with basic life skills. He often forgot to do laundry, wash himself, brush his teeth, comb his hair, buy groceries, cook meals, and eat. He has since moved back home. He stims almost constantly, even in public settings, and grows very anxious on public transportation. He can’t drive, either, because it overwhelms him. His sensory issues cause daily trouble—he jumps violently at sudden sounds, cannot eat several common foods, and hates to be touched. When he gets overwhelmed, he screams and hurts himself. He struggles to understand sarcasm. He often gets stuck on particular lines of conversation, communicates largely through echolalia and pre-scripted speech, and very frequently forgets words mid-sentence. Sometimes—especially with new people—he cannot speak at all. He instinctively sees everything in black-and-white and struggles to internalize nuance. He thrives on routine and grows very anxious and very angry when his routines are broken unexpectedly. When he absolutely must do something new, he often needs someone to go with him. He has low empathy. He is frequently very visibly autistic.

So there’s Fred.

So you’ve got both of them now, two neat little life stories, Allie and Fred, Fred and Allie.

So.

Which of them is high-functioning? Which of them is low-functioning?

Allie and Fred respectively, right?

Wrong.

They’re the same person.

And they’re not hypothetical. They’re both me.

I’m Allie, and I’m Fred.

And here’s the kicker—something that sometimes gets missed out but is pretty important, a little bit crucial, kind-of-sort-of absolutely vital—I’m always both of them.

Sure, sometimes it depends on the day, whether I look more like Allie or more like Tim, and sure, circumstances and support levels and energy levels can all make a world of difference—but most often I am both of them at the exact same time, under the exact same circumstances.

I can hold down a completely average back-and-forth conversation, but still be unable to initiate that conversation, and still struggle to remember basic words in the middle of it, and still struggle to bring it to a natural close.

I can succeed in school and still struggle to complete my assignments, get them turned in at the very last minute or even late.

I can make myself three meals a day according to the strict series of alarms I’ve set myself, using my autistic love of routine to counterract my autistic insensitivity to hunger, but still forget to eat them afterward.

I can remember to shower, but forget to brush my teeth, and vice versa. I can remember to wash my hair, but forget to comb it. I can wash my clothes without issue, but forget to move them into the dryer afterward. I can dry my clothes but forget to put them away.

I can navigate public transportation without error and also be extremely anxious the whole time.

I can control my stimming in public and still stim furiously when I get home. (I can also be perfectly able to control my stimming in public, but choose not to do so—as is often the case, because stimming is a very helpful coping mechanism, and also just fun, and I don’t care if strangers think it’s weird because I know it doesn’t hurt them.)

I can have few sensory issues and still struggle noticeably with those few.

I can hate to be touched and still grin and bear it. (I can also hate receiving hugs and not mind giving them.)

I can calm myself when I get overwhelmed using coping skills and also struggle to do so. (I can calm myself when overwhelmed without much effort using coping skills that alarm other people—like body stimming, screaming, or self-harm.)

I can use sarcasm but still have trouble understanding when others use it. I can speak very eloquently while still relying heavily on echolalia and scripts. I can write beautifully when I am not able to speak a single word.

I can struggle heavily with the black-and-white thinking that comes so much more naturally to me and still force myself to use my critical thinking skills to spot nuance. (I can still struggle to internalize this nuance once I have spotted it.)

I can cope with spontaneity and still have immediate, instinctive emotional reactions to breaks in routine. (I can have a meltdown and force myself to cope afterwards.) I can cope with new situations and still need someone shadowing me. (Having someone shadow you is a way to cope in itself.)

I can have high empathy for objects or fictional characters and little to none for real, actual people. I can care very much about people’s feelings and still not understand what those feelings are. I can analyze the reasons behind someone’s feelings and still not recognize them on their face or in their voice. I can recognize feelings on someone’s face or in their voice and still not know what to do about them. I can want to comfort people and not know how.

I can have the ability to pass as neurotypical at one given moment but not another. I can have the ability to pass as neurotypical in a given moment and simply choose not to. I can choose to pass as neurotypical, and succeed in passing as neurotypical to some of the people I interact with, and not succeed with others.

I can do all of this at the same time, within the same day, the same hour. Even the same moment, if I’m feeling extra spicy autistic.

I routinely do.

Because all of these experiences—these strengths, weaknesses, traits—are part of my life. None of them cancel each other out, because they can’t—they’re all equally inherent to who I am as a person. So they coexist, even if they seem contradictory.

Because I’m contradictory. Because I’m a person, and I’m multifaceted, and nuanced—people are like that, or so I hear.

Autistics are no exception.

You can’t split us so easily into high- or low-functioning, because to do so is to ignore other vital aspects of our experiences.

To do so, put simply, is both dehumanizing and inaccurate.

And, as well—to do so is to box us into one rigid experience or another: one in which people focus only on the things we can do and ignore those we can’t, or one in which people focus only on the things we cannot do and ignore all of the things we can.

Because the labels come with stereotypes—as the common thinking goes, “high-functioning” autistics never really struggle and can do anything they want without any help, while “low-functioning” autistics do nothing but struggle, have very little, if any, potential, and are to be pitied.

That is, of course, nonsense.

So in both experiences the true scope of our abilities is overlooked. (People hearing the labels have no clue what we’re capable of, but they think they do, and they generally act accordingly.)

And, as well, in both experiences we are spoken over by others—by those who think they should be allowed to decide what we are like, and what our futures will be like, and categorize us and compare us to each other and pit us against each other, elevating some autistics above others, as a means of determining our ability to “function” in society. (Which is to say, of course, our worth to society, how much we inconvenience society—because functioning labels don’t express how we experience our autism; rather, they express how others experience our autism.)

So, all told, why don’t autistics like functioning labels?

Because they are not only dehumanizing, inaccurate, and unnecessarily rigid—they’re also not even helpful (to anyone—us or others).

There’s no good reason to use them. We’d like it to stop.

And, personally, if any neurotypical tries to ascribe either label to me—or to any autistics around me, for that matter—I’m going to make a hell of a fuss.

Because we’re autistic, and we’re here, and we can can hear you.

#actuallyautistic

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centaurianthropology · 6 years

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The Magnus Archives Season 3 Q&A – What We Learned!

So this isn’t my usual analysis, but I did decide to collate a little bullet-point list of all the things we’ve learned from the Season 3 Q&A for those of you who can’t/don’t want to listen for whatever reason, but still want the delicious information that we got. I’ll also be including my own thoughts about some of the points, so there will be some tasty meta. This will just be a bit more of an informational post than most are.

· The metaplot is known through season 5 (which will be the final season), and is hashed out in more detail at the beginning of each season. The individual spooky stories are not necessarily known prior to the week before writing. There is usually a general idea, but no specific details until far closer to the deadline.

· Martin’s crush on Jon was known from the beginning of the series. No specifics were given about when and how it came about on Martin’s end. I imagine we’ll probably get more into this as we go forward (I lean toward it developing while he was living in the Archives, as his attitude toward Jon definitely shifted from “I have to prove myself to my boss who doesn’t believe in me” to getting very emotional when he thought he left Jon and Tim to die in the tunnels). But it was known that the crush would or already had happened from the inception of Martin’s character.

· Tim’s background was known 2 seasons prior to now (so end of season 1). It only came about at that point because, prior to that, Tim was going to be the one to be replaced by the Not-Them at the end of season 1 rather than Sasha. There had to be a last-minute change because Lottie (the woman who played Sasha) had a scheduling conflict that meant she couldn’t commit to the continued large-scale time commitment. So Sasha got replaced, Tim got a backstory, and the rest is history. Very interesting to think that the descent into bitterness and potentially even the ties to the circus were originally meant to be Sasha’s. Is that why she was so interested in the calliope in season 1 perhaps? Having the only main female character also be the first to die was also one of the big reasons why they added a lot of major recurring female characters from then on.

· Basira and Daisy becoming as significant as they were was a combination of the characters being interesting and the actors being fun to working with. They also very much fulfilled certain necessary narrative roles.

· They knew Melanie was going to become an assistant from shortly after Lydia’s recording of her initial episode. I’m guessing this is partly to do with Lydia being already available, but I also have to imagine it was due to the instant, nasty rapport she had with Jon. She was certainly the character from season 1 who I most wanted back when I initially heard her.

· Jonny’s original pitch for the show was the 13 fears, though the Slaughter and the Hunt were initially the same, but as he worked through them he realized that the root fear was very different. It became especially apparent due to the fact that extremely different (and likely very poorly cooperating) sorts of people were driven to each of those powers. This is interesting, because it implies that Melanie and Daisy, though we have not seen them interact, would not get on at all. They’re driven by instincts that are too close but too different.

· Poor, poor Jonny is haunted by Elias’ surge in popularity during season 3, particularly the large contingent of fans who found him suddenly and definitely attractive. He blames Ben Meredith for all his woes: “It was only after [episode] 92 when he started to be properly, overtly villainous, and everyone just decided how sexy he was! When we were planning things out, there was no way for us to foresee how sexy Elias was going to be. Something I blame entirely on Ben.” And Alex cackled in the background.

· Melanie’s clap-marker as her statement beginning was actually improvisation on Lydia’s part (and works wonderfully with her background in video production). By and large, though, there was little improvisation from the actors. There was a lot of lean-in to certain qualities that actors brought out if they were particularly good at it.

· Jonny’s favorite power to write is the Flesh because it’s super weird and lets him dig into really odd writing. His least favorite is the Dark because it’s so easy to fall into tropes and clichés, and he doesn’t actually share that particular fear. He also finds writing the Desolation particularly challenging, as it treads the closest to his biggest distaste in horror: linking spooky fictional stuff with real-life trauma. The very nature of the Desolation lends itself to trauma-porn, so when writing it he has to be especially careful not to do that. Alex’s least favorite from a production standpoint is the Spiral because it’s always a nightmare editing it, but the Vast is his favorite, because he adds high amplitude low frequency noise to induce an on-edge feeling in the listener.

· Alex really enjoys killing all the characters you love. Sasha’s replacement might have been his favorite moment in the show, because it was subtle enough a lot of people didn’t catch it. He also seemed positively gleeful when joking about how very dead Tim is. Of all the changes in personality from character to actor, Alex is always the one who gives me the most whiplash. Which, I suppose, is a testament to his acting abilities.

· Perhaps Jonny’s greatest regret is naming the main character after himself and not thinking that would become … complicated. Apparently, in the earliest drafts he was just the host of the anthology series, and not a character in his own right, which is why he originally just went with his own name. Then he didn’t think to change it as they made Jonanthan Sims his own character with only vague similarities to Jonny (he was basically all the bits of Jonny that would make a good horror protagonist, exaggerated for effect, right up until about episode 20, at which point the character began to develop along his own lines and moved farther and farther from Jonny), who would like to believe that his own personal decisions were less “overtly horrific” than his fictional counterpart. Alex described Jonny vs Jon as “I’d like to think that you’re less of a hot garbage-fire of a person”. They both agreed that Jon (the character) was the absolute king of terrible decisions, and that it was hysterical to listen to Jonny’s parents eviscerate Jon’s incredibly awful decisions. I love Jonathan Sims, Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute, but I will agree with their assessment of his character.

· A similar regret was naming the assistants after Jonny’s then-roommates. Not only did it cause confusion (as all 3 have now also been in the show at some point), but he brutally killed off his fiancé’s namesake first. Oops?

· It sounds at least probable we’ll get the last bit of the Daedalus space station story in season 4. On that note, I found it interesting that all recurring story themes, etc, are mentioned to recur in season 4. There was absolutely no mention of season 5 at all. Which makes me leery.

· US distribution and ratings for podcasts are … interesting. Jonny could add in all the violence, explicit gore, and even sex he wanted. The only thing (literally the only thing) that gets a podcast marked *explicit* is swearing. Which meant that the podcast, in order to not be marked as explicit, had to scale back the language and nothing else. Every time a character swears, it has to be well-thought-out, and Jonny has to sell Alex on why it’s important. On the up-side, the lack of swearing was apparently what convinced Sue Sims to be a part of the cast, so I think getting Gertrude is well worth adherence to a laughably odd rule for US ratings. Also, on that same note, Alex’s imitation of Jonny’s mother nearly made me snort tea up my nose. So thanks for that, Alex.

· Jonny believes that what he writes is ‘escapist horror’. It’s a way of indulging in fear and spookiness in a controlled, safe way, when it won’t suddenly turn deeply unpleasant and traumatic. He believes that his audience needs to trust that they can enjoy the horror without worrying that it will unexpectedly cross lines. He separates that from literary horror, which often does dig into very traumatic issues through the mechanisms of horror in very thoughtful ways. All horror, in his opinion, needs to be respectful when it tackles very traumatic subjects. The reason that Jonny personally doesn’t write literary horror is that he has no personal experience with those sorts of traumas, and would not feel qualified to dig into them in a genuine and thoughtful way. He therefore sticks to escapist horror that his audience knows they can enjoy without worrying about it suddenly veering from spooks to trauma.

· The sound of the Anglerfish is a baby crying, slowed down 100x. Nikola had record scratches layered under her voice very subtly.

· Jonny’s favorite thing to record in season 3 was his [MUFFLED FEELINGS], and he revealed that he managed to sound like he had a gag in his mouth by trying to stuff as much of his fist into his mouth as possible before trying to deliver lines. Which produced a really amazing amount of saliva, apparently. They also had a lot of fun trying to record one of the larger group scenes in which most of the participants shouted at one another, because they used up most of the oxygen in the studio and all got very dizzy. Alex really enjoyed recording his scenes in episode 100, because it was one of the few times he got to improvise, and he and the actress spent the entire episode trying to make one another laugh.

· Also, all statements in episode 100 are confirmed to have been supernatural events, simply told badly. The actors got a paragraph telling them what really happened, as well as some bullet points detailing how they might get side-tracked or otherwise be terrible statement givers. The rest was slowly improvised, with frequent checks for canon-compliance. And, yes, episode 100 was absolutely a funny way of answering the question: “Does the magic power also make them really eloquent storytellers?” “YES. YES, IT DOES.”

· Alex misses his old analogue mixer. There was about 2 minutes of eulogizing.

· Tim is 100% dead. They also specify that they will never resurrect characters or bring them back from the dead (which makes Jon’s current situation particularly worrisome, as he’s not quite dead, but he’s inches from it). Dead characters may still make appearances via tape (Gertrude’s been dead the whole time, and it hasn’t stopped her from showing up plenty) or speak from beyond the grave (thanks Gerry), but if a character dies, they will not come back to life. This also means that Michael will not be coming back as the Distortion. The distortion is now Helen, and the story of the Distortion is about what and who she is. Michael may return as audio, of course, but not in the form of the Distortion. Likewise, Gertrude and Leitner in the season finale were not ghosts; they were mostly Nikola, with a little bit of Unknowing reality-bending-weird thrown in.

· Georgie will be returning, but she will be an occasionally recurring character rather than a regular.

· The Usher Foundation is the American sister foundation to the Magnus Institute, which is similar to it but different. It’s a way to broaden the world and give a nice hook for fanfiction/RPG settings/etc. The same can be said of the other institutions like the Chinese research institution. It’s a way to expand the world and to give a sense of scope without a locked-down story. There’s just too much story to fit into two more seasons as is.

· There is a nexus of timeline discrepancies that is 100% part of the plot, but the rest of timeline issues are probably just mistakes. Mary Kaey’s dates are almost definitely oversights in writing, but Jonny doesn’t discount that he might do something with the discrepancy to make it an interesting plot point in the future.

· Gerry’s father is not confirmed to be Eric, the research assistant of Gertrude’s who took the statement in ‘Upon a Stair’, as Jonny refused to answer the question. He did, however, state that whoever asked had been listening very closely.

· Any character who believes they understand how the powers work is absolutely wrong. This does include Gerry’s interpretation of Robert Smirke’s cosmology, though Jonny did state that what Gerry said is about as close as we’re likely to get to the truth of the cosmology (no exposition dump is a lie, but it’s only a decent approximation). However, the powers are going to defy any attempt to nail them down or perfectly sum them up. Plenty of things will not line up with the way Gerry described them, because the powers work on nightmare logic, not normal logic.

· The tapes are NOT neutral. They are not simply objects to record. There is more to them than that, but we don’t know what.

· Jonny is a massive history nerd. He got very into Wolfgang von Kempelin, and his imitation of von Kempelen’s speaking machine was hysterical. His favorite episode to write was ‘Tale of a Field Hospital’ for similar history nerd reasons.

· The first trailer for the series (with the chanting) was meant as a mood piece, but has absolutely nothing to do with the meta plot. It was recorded before half of the meta plot was even established.

· The Magnus Institute, beyond the Archival staff and Elias, is just a legitimate supernatural academic research institution. The library does exactly what it says it does (house and catalogue valuable texts on the supernatural). Artifact Storage really does just store and experiment on supernatural artifacts. Research is mostly students working on dissertations and theses. They are even confirmed to run on an academic fiscal year (thanks to whatever fiscal nerd asked that particular question!)

· All the supernatural things encountered in the show are tied to the powers, but Jonny does not categorically deny that other supernatural stuff exists in the TMA universe. It very simply won’t be addressed in the show, as introducing other supernatural stuff beyond the powers wouldn’t work this late in the story. The powers play with folklore, but they do not necessarily generate folklore themselves.

· For purposes of the story, every power only has one ritual we need to be concerned about.

· BIG ANSWER: no power has completed a ritual to date. The rituals are now confirmed to so radically change the fabric of reality that there is no one on the planet who wouldn’t notice a successful ritual or be effected by it in a massive way. We are not living in a world in which the Beholding has already succeeded, or any other power. Jonny would not answer whether or not it was possible to reverse or somehow mitigate a successful ritual. And that makes me very suspicious that the season finale of season 4 will be the successful completion of the Watcher’s Crown, and season 5 may be trying to reverse or mitigate it in some way.

· Leitner is likely to return (one would imagine in one of Gertrude’s tapes).

· Jonny and Alex have made the deliberate decision not to overly describe any of the major characters beyond their plot-relevant descriptors (Tim is described as attractive, but we will not get any details of that attractiveness). Jonny doesn’t even have confirmed ages for most of the characters. He thinks Jon is his age (almost 30). Martin is either a bit older or a bit younger than Jon. Tim, Sasha, and Melanie are ‘young adults’, which Jonny defines as somewhere between 25 and early thirties. Elias is middle-aged. Gertrude and Leitner are old. Trevor is “old as balls”.

· Jon is 100% on the asexual spectrum, but may not use that term to describe himself. He would instead avoid the question, and avoid thinking about it too deeply in general. He would be very uncomfortable describing his own sexuality. Also, Jonny made it very clear that the way Jon grapples with his inhumanity is neither a parallel to nor a comment on his asexuality. He approaches them very differently. He didn’t specify this, but so far as I can tell, he avoids even thinking about his sexuality, but he actively agonizes over his increasing inhumanity. I wonder if we might end up getting a bit more of how Jon thinks about his own asexuality if he and Martin ever get their shit together enough to discuss things.

· The statements are 90% Intangible Horror colonizing Jon’s brain, and 10% Jon is a massive drama queen secretly. They also agreed that, if he did amateur theatre as a younger man, he would have been insufferable.

· Tim, prior to his revenge kick, was into lots of socialization, adventure vacations (rock climbing, kayaking, scuba, etc), and may have also been a bit of a console gamer. “Lots of socializing; adventure holidays; dead.”

· There are no specifics at this point on the characters’ families that haven’t been addressed that Jonny was comfortable discussing, as he wanted to hold those details in reserve for later relevance. He doesn’t want to be beholden to random answers he might throw out right now. He would say (potentially joking) that Martin has a spider (or a series of spiders) that live in his closet over the past year, and he calls it/them George.

· The Admiral is a composite of all the cats in Jonny’s life, which all seem to have odd rank-names (Sir Pouncealot, Ambassador Cat, the Colonel). The Admiral is a reflection of all Jonny’s favorite things about cats.

· We are not going to be meeting any other plot-integral characters we haven’t already heard of. There will be new voices, but they will be names we recognize. There will be no new archival assistants. They’ve played that card.

· The characters with horror-writer last names (Martin, Tim, Sasha, Georgie, and Melanie) all have paranormal research backgrounds. This is why that convention was used for them specifically. Given that they were not certain of the direction they were going to take Basira and Daisy when they were first written, their last names did not follow this.

· Jon cannot compel dogs. Probably.

· Why an owl is the crest of the Magnus Institute (officially): “Owls are weird. They are considered very wise, but actually one of the stupidest animals in the world. They have a very strong field of vision. And, some species of owl, if you look in their ear you can see the side of their eyeball.”

· To serve ANY of the entity is to bring fear and suffering to others. That is what your existence is twisted into.

· Alex is most frightened by the Vast. Jonny is most frightened by the Corruption, but worries his lack of tidiness might tempt its attention.

· My favorite question and answer: if they could fight any writer in hand-to-hand combat, who would it be? They both agreed on HP Lovecraft, because “I could almost definitely take him, and it would be so satisfying.” They both agreed that neither of them would feel bad for punching Lovecraft, which, even as someone who does a yearly reading of a lot of his works … yeah. I’d agree. He had amazing creativity and really laid out my favorite horror sub-genre (debatably Robert Chambers invented it, but Lovecraft properly expanded it into a genre), but there are few authors as in need of a proper walloping as HP Lovecraft. They agreed that others—for Jonny, DH Lawrence, for Alex, James Joyce—were also in need of some fighting, but had serious doubts whether or not they could beat them in hand-to-hand combat (“We’re not exactly prime physical specimens”). Maybe just kicking them in the shins. Jonny admitted to an embarrassing love of a lot of literary ‘classics’ people like to shit on, like “Ulysses” and “Moby Dick”.

And that was that! This is the entirety of the MASSIVE Patreon Q&A. Apparently the one that went up tonight on the website is a very pared-down version of this Q&A (website version is 43 minutes; Patreon version is 1 hour 48 minutes). Not sure which of these answers didn’t make the cut, but here you go! All the delicious meta and answers you could want, fresh from the Patreon!

#The Magnus Archives #analysis #ish #more like infodump for non-Patrons #plus my own speculation #now edited for some glaring grammatical errors I noticed

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whetstonefires · 6 years

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fictober prompt #7: “No worries, we still have time.” This one got so long. For a sprint prompt.

“Great. Just great!”

“No worries, we still have time.”

“That’s what you think!” Tim slammed the car trunk. “We have time assuming I-95 isn’t backed up around Baltimore and assuming we can get this tire changed in under fifteen minutes and assuming the spare isn’t flat and assuming that blow-out didn’t damage anything else in the car and assuming we can find the restaurant without any issues and are you filming me?”

Steph grinned over her phone at him. “You’re gonna have to stop being so funny if you want me to stop sharing you with the internet.”

“Grrrrahahaaaa!” Tim threw the lugwrench at the ground, then followed it onto his knees, picked it up, and started levering at the hub cap with the pointy end. “Fine. Whatever. Be like that. Hi internet, here’s how you change a tire. Observe how I wedged the rear wheels for safety’s sake before getting started.”

“Tch.” Steph saved the vid, locked her phone, and stuck it in her pocket before squatting down next to him. “It’s not actually a life-or-death issue whether we make our reservation on time. You could stand to relax a little. We’re on vacation.”

The hubcap popped off. Tim got up, rummaged in the equipment box for a few seconds, and came up with the jack. “Not like you take things any more seriously when it is a life or death issue.”

“I do so!”

“Fine. You do. But you still give me a hard time about—fretting. Like I’m making problems more real by trying to solve them before they have consequences!” He wrenched at a lug nut, probably over-loosening it.

Steph rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, still crouching. She kept her knees close together because this skirt wasn’t all that long. “Are we really doing this right now?”

“Why not?” He’d finished with the nuts, and tossed the lug wrench underhand back into the equipment box.

“Because you’re in a snit and we won’t get anywhere useful, we’ll just get in a shouting match and wind up extra-late and in shitty moods for our dinner date with your geriatric crush.”

Tim shot a poisonous look over his shoulder before going back to wriggling the block that went under the jack for stability into place in the roadside gravel. “He’s just cool, alright. He did a lot of hero work in Gotham before Bruce was even born.”

“I know. I think it’s really cute how you’re still such a fanboy.”

Tim slid the hydraulic jack into place where it needed to be under the belly of the car, and stood up, clutching the handle of the thing. “Would you not do that.”

Steph grinned up at him. “What?”

“Talk like that. It…when you say nice things so they’re insults. It really gets to me.”

“Wow. Okay.” Tim started pumping the hydraulic jack, careful long smooth strokes like he had for some reason taken the time in his busy busy schedule to practice changing a tire. Steph’s eyebrows climbed as she watched. “…this is why they call it ‘jacking off,’ isn’t it?”

“Oh my god.”

“I thought you weren’t religious.”

Tim turned his face away, but he couldn’t hide the warmth in his voice. “Shut up. I don’t want to laugh right now.”

“Why not? Laugh!” Steph stood up, waving her hands in encouragement. “Relax! There is literally nothing that matters on the line! Mr. Scott isn’t going to think less of us for having a bad tire any more than he would if we missed dinner completely to save a bus full of schoolchildren being taken hostage.”

Tim didn’t argue, but his smooth rhythm on the jack didn’t stutter either, and the set of his chin looked mulish. Steph folded her arms. “Why can’t you enjoy not being under pressure for once? Why do you have to waste every second of your life worrying about some other second you can’t control? It’s exhausting! It pisses me off! Hey, look at me!”

“I thought you didn’t want to do this now.” Tim lowered the jack handle to the ground carefully.

“Shit. I didn’t. But for real! It’s bullshit, Tim! You already decided calling triple-A wasn’t efficient enough so you were doing things yourself, I don’t see how dwelling on all the things that might slow us down later is supposed to help anything now.”

“How is deciding everything’s going to be fine, so you don’t have to make any effort to consider the steps necessary to counter all the reasons it might not be, ‘helping?’”

“Because you can’t plan for everything! When you try all you do is make yourself and everyone around you miserable, and when a thing happens you’re just going to have to improvise anyway!”

Tim flung his hands out, time a-wasting now with no progress on the blown tire. “You think you can just do whatever works for you right now, and leave other people to deal with the fallout.” Steph’s fist clenched, because they never talked about her ‘death’ but that couldn’t not be referencing it. “You never take any responsibility,” Tim rushed on. “No matter how many times it goes wrong, you think you can just take action in the world without having to deal with what that means.”

Steph refused to get drawn into the same old argument. “I’ve been getting better about that. I’ve been working at it. But you? You’re just getting worse! You used to know how to have fun!”

They’d actually had a lot of fun so far, since leaving Gotham, but of course at the first hint of things going wrong he had to fly off the handle and lock down, and go into a snit fit when she tried to be optimistic. “Wasn’t this trip supposed to be about finding yourself and all that crap? What’s that worth if all you do is keep turning into Bruce?”

“For crying out loud, Steph, don’t make this about him.”

“How can I not?”

“Because it’s me! These are my personal hangups about my personal screw-ups! I can’t just offload it all on Bruce! Do I go around blaming anything about you on Cluemaster? Or your mom? Or even Barbara?”

Well, no. Bruce did, sometimes, because of his bullshit ideas about heredity that were honestly one step short of the outright eugenics Damian had been raised on, but that wasn’t really Tim’s bag. He was a critical jerk, but his criticisms tended to be about her, personally. If they were tangled up with where she came from, it was only at the subtext level. “I’m not doing it to score points or something,” she told him, “I’m saying you’re like this because he’s a bad influence, and you need to chill the fuck out. Before you alienate everybody you know and give yourself the cardiovascular issues of a dude three times your age!”

“Rrgh!” Tim turned his back on Steph and went back to loosening lugnuts, with his fingers now. It was a few seconds before he spoke, low and through his teeth. “Do you know how many people died in that war you started? Really died, not just fake died and ran away to Africa?”

The tight line of tension up his back was no match for the sick swoop in Steph’s gut that he would even bring this up. “That was not my idea.”

“Do you know?”

“It’s not like all your scheming and plotting means no one ever gets killed!”

“No. No, of course it doesn’t. But—fewer. That’s the whole point! That’s why I do it, why we do any of it! If I do everything right, fewer people get killed. That’s the point. And if I mess up, more people die. That’s what happens. When we mess up. So we have to do everything we can to not.”

His right hand twitched as he talked, not quite trembling but not able to maintain a consistent grip on the nut, either. Maybe he hadn’t loosened this one enough. His hand slipped off, twice, before he managed to get it turning.

Steph fought to even out her breathing. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for him to turn every little thing into a giant drama and then talk like it was his moral obligation to do so, like she was flawed as a person for not being as screwed up as him.

She didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything close to it that covered up her own vulnerabilities better, either. She breathed. She’d been practicing this, ever since the months after her so-brief-it-counted-as-fake death when everything had made her too mad and scared to see straight. She’d done a lot of reading about ways to be okay. She’d even talked to a couple of people. Besides Leslie, who hadn’t been in a great place to advise her even if Steph had been able to listen.

“But…” she said finally, getting back to the core of the issue instead of reacting. “Nobody’s going to die, if we’re late to dinner.”

Tim’s hands still weren’t steady, as he smoothed his hair back, almost definitely getting some sort of grime or grease in it. “That…I know. I do know that.”

“So why are you being a dick about it?”

“Hah.” It was a ragged sound, not entirely unlike a laugh, but mostly just a word. “Don’t know how to stop, I guess.”

“So you’re gonna stop now?”

“I’ll try.” He twiddled the last lugnut free, then gripped the blown-out tire by the rim and heaved it loose, sliding it free of the fixed bolts. The jack held. This was good, as either the car didn’t come equipped with jackstands or Tim had decided to dispense with them for this operation, since he wasn’t going under the car himself.

Steph frowned, watching him bend with his arms full of wheel, to set it down in the gravel by the road. Something about how that had been resolved didn’t feel right. His emotions that had been making him lash out had been acknowledged, categorized as misdirected, he’d conceded the point. She’d won. With logic. So what was wrong.

She was trying to be better about this stuff. She still thought the amount of responsibility these batboys took for everyone else ever was condescending and bullshit and also basically a form of self-harm, but she could acknowledge that even if her normal approach was good for her mental health it led to her dropping the ball, sometimes, when she really couldn’t afford that. Or other people couldn’t. So. Middle ground. What was missing, in this conversation. What had they skipped.

While she thought, Tim had retrieved and now carefully hefted the replacement tire—not the normal mini-spare deal, this ride was kitted out with the assumption you might need to change a tire yourself and then immediately engage in a high-speed carchase across several hundred miles of terrain. It wasn’t flat, either. As he fed it onto the waiting lug bolts, Steph got the problem to click. “No one’s going to die,” she said. “But…you’ll be sad if we miss dinner with Mr. Scott. Or if turning up late just makes us look bad, and he doesn’t take to you. You want to impress him, and you’re worried about it.”

Tim finished getting the wheel into place before grumbling in his throat, shoulders hunched up toward his ears. “Yeah, okay, I’m an inveterate suck-up. You’ve got me. I give in. Let it go. Where the hell did I put the lugnuts?”

“Windshield wipers.” He’d laid them out there in a row, apparently having auto-selected a flat surface without consulting his conscious mind. Steph felt her mouth draw in like she’d bitten a lemon. “Also, no, shit, I’m not actually trying to give you a hard time.”

The look he shot her was dubious, before he went back to screwing on lugnuts.

“When you’re worried about something, and I tell you you shouldn’t be, you feel like I’m saying your emotions are dumb,” said Steph.

“Aren’t you?” He didn’t sound sulky so much as guarded, and trying not to sound even that. Why was this dork so bad at pretending not to care except when he was too damn good at it?

“Well…sometimes, yeah.” Because his feelings were dumb a lot. Except that was actually an asshole attitude, wasn’t it; just because his opinions were stupid didn’t mean his feelings were. She guessed. People were always acting like her feelings were stupid, though, did she owe them any better. Ugh. Was she really trying to have a psychological breaththrough while yelling at her ex who was changing a tire on the side of the interstate.

Tim snort-laughed again. His shoulders were coming down. He spun the second lugnut into place. “Okay.”

“But, uh…mostly I just want you to stop being such a downer. Just because you want to feel like crap doesn’t mean I’m obligated to join you.” Wow, so understanding. “Uh. Your feelings aren’t actually dumb. It’s fine if you want people to like you. Even if you should maybe get used to the fact that sometimes they don’t.” He was actually kind of spoiled, to be so used to approval that not getting it scared him, to expect people to help him just because he made a good impression. He was such a child sometimes. Such a man.

“I am used to that,” Tim said. “People don’t like me all the time. I’m not all that likable.”

At least he didn’t sound self-pitying about it, but Steph rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

“I know I have unfair advantages when it comes to making a…strong impression,” he continued, rather irritably, “but I’m sure you hear the same about being a gorgeous blonde. Advantages just means it must be more your fault when you fail.”

“Owch.”

“Generic you.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

The last lugnut as snugged as he could get it by hand, Tim turned a handle and the hydraulic jack depressurized, letting the car sink onto its new wheel. They both watched it in silence.

Tim glanced sidelong at Steph. Gauging something. “I’m sorry I yelled at you?”

“I’m…sorry for making fun of your anxiety because it made me feel bad.”

“I’m…sorry for making you feel bad?”

“Okay, let’s stop there,” said Steph, because this felt like something that could get out of hand. Infinite apology recursion.

Tim nodded. “Could you pass me the lugwrench?”

She went and fished it out of the box he’d thrown it into, while he got down on one knee next to the car again.

“You messed up your nice pants pretty bad,” she pointed out, passing the wrench over. “That’s actually probably worse than being late, in terms of making a good impression.”

“I was sort of thinking you’d drive the rest of the way,” Tim said, bending to his task. “So I can change as we go.”

“…well played.” She’d avoided getting involved in the wheel-changing because she was mad, and because it wasn’t so much a two-person job, and because he was the one who wanted to do it in such a rush and she wasn’t destroying this dress in the attempt. But she couldn’t really argue it wasn’t fair to expect her to drive, now. She even liked driving.

The prospect of facing possible traffic jams and trying to find the right street address and park near an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar city during rush hour was a lot more intimidating now she had to do it herself, though.

Tim smirked. Ooh, he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Fuck you,” she told him, but nicely.

It caught him by surprise, and he snort-laughed. Didn’t make a dirty joke, because it was Tim and he could be prim like that—Steph was like 95% sure he was still a virgin—but clearly thought about it. The atmosphere lightened as he continued making sure the new wheel wouldn’t fall off. The sound of passing vehicles going 70 miles per hour was much louder when they weren’t making any noise of their own. Good thing the interstate shoulders were so wide.

Tim tightened the last nut, and sat back on his heels. Steph smoothly traded him the shiny hubcap for the lugwrench, and walked over to shove the tool back in the kit. She was pretty sure this box had been well-organized when Tim took it out. Oh well, he could reorganize it at the next motel, next time he got a burst of OCD energy. Better than going through the cold-case files on his laptop. Tim finished forcing the hubcap into place and came after her, stooped under the awkwardly balanced weight of the jack.

It went into the box, too, with its little foundation block, and they wrestled the lid down and the emergency kit back into the trunk, on top of the spare tire compartment, now containing the ruined tire and also refusing to completely close.

Tim handed over the car keys, wiped his hands on a wet-wipe and then a paper towel because of course this car had both, and dug into his luggage for a spare pair of slacks. He was of course the sort of nerd who packed more than one pair of nice black slacks for a roadtrip vacation.

“If there’s one thing I can say for my superhero career,” Tim said brightly, as Steph pulled out onto I-95 heading south again and prepared to merge left, while he began to contort in the passenger’s seat, “it’s that it taught me to get my clothes off fast in adverse conditions.”

“I’d say ooh-lah but that’s basically the opposite of the ingredients for a hot striptease.”

“There is absolutely nothing I can say to that that does not make me look worse, good job.”

#fictober 2018 #stephanie brown #tim drake #batfam #fic #my fic #relationships #these two were so bad at respecting one another's points of view #okay?#also yeah i went and made their road trip literal #and i think alan scott is supposed to be dead shortly before flashpoint #but the moon blew up in the same storyline so #eff off brightest day #he lives in baltimore #hoc est meum #minimal revisions we die like pigeons

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?

Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?

Victims like....Duke’s parents.

Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has

1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster

2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO

3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that

4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth

5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah

6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.

Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.

I mean in my professional opinion, of course.

Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....

This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....

BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.

Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.

But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....

Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...

AND ONLY ONCE.

Years and years and years ago....and never done it since.

And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....

To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.

Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.

Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.

And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.

Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.

Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.

Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.

And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.

Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.

And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.

And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.

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