#here starts the robin whitewashing....

[hauntingblue]

Now the mugiwaras getting the news....

[bitterrobin]

Things I hate/dislike about Fanon-Damian Wayne

AKA me just bitching about the various icks of Damian portrayals in fanon that range from weirdly racist things to a blatant misunderstanding of the core character.

Whitewashing - not only in art, but in descriptions; making Damian pale or white, an "exact copy of Bruce" and having blue eyes. He'll share features with Bruce of course, but it's rare I see anyone describe him with traits from Talia or Ras or Melisande. Y'know he's still half Arab/Chinese despite Bruce being white. He should have, at the very least, a shade of brown skin and non-blue eyes.

Describing Damian like an animal (hissing, biting, clawing), calling him feral or rabid - I already have a post about how its pretty racist to constantly describe a poc character like this, so I won't go any further here. Also, rabid, really? Anyone who calls Damian that will die by my hand because it's so genuinely ignorant that I just can't excuse it.

Overuse of terms like "Blood Son", gremlin, "Demon Spawn", "Satan" - these spawned completely in fandom and its gotten to the point that I will immediately click off something if its included. Just stop using these as shorthand to describe him or joke about him. Come up with something else, or maybe just don't include Damian in a fic if he's only there to get made fun of.

Connected to the "Blood Son" term, making Damian obsessed with his biological status as Bruce's child and making him demean his adopted siblings/other adopted characters - he's only had a couple instances of this in canon comics. Once, in his introduction in the fight with Tim written by Grant Morrison when his character was still being fleshed out. Again, in a fight with Tim in Red Robin when Damian is mostly being written as an antagonist and not a character of his own. It frustrates me to no end when this is brought up because Damian's status with being Bruce's son has nothing to do with biological connection or genetics. It has everything to do with just being a son of a father that doesn't put any effort to knowing you and seeing him have deep connections to other kids that you have been raised to see as competition, not family.

Constantly having him carry around a sword/katana - this does happen in some comics, but its really not the main weapon he uses as Robin. A good majority of his time as Robin he just used the standard stuff (batarangs, grapple etc). The really aggravating part is when fics insinuate that he'd carry one around in public or in school.

Making Bruce's half of the family his good white saviors, while also making the al Ghuls evil abusers - if you demonize Talia and then prop up Bruce as a good dad who's done nothing wrong to Damian then I'm going to assume that you don't read comics and you don't have a good understanding of Damian's relationship with his parents. If you make Dick or Jason the good protective big brothers while putting down Talia or Ras or Mara, again, I'm going to assume the worst. Dick did not like Damian when they first met. Tim spent most of their time together as Red Robin/Robin hating him. Jason shot Damian point blank in the chest the first meeting they had, and then continued to threaten his life. Damian has never had a great relationship with anyone in the batfamily when he first appeared. Yes, not even Stephanie or Cassandra or Duke. With everyone, it took time for him to be tolerated much less liked or understood. Making them the ones who understood him and babied him from the start ruins his character development and his relationships with them. Only if you're writing an au where Damian is raised by Bruce, then it's excusable but still not the least bit right when handling the al Ghuls.

Making Damian ignorant or plain stupid, especially when comes to white American concepts - Damian is insanely smart. He knows what riddles are. He knows what metaphors are. He knows that Gotham is a city in New Jersey in America, and that American concepts like school clubs and sports teams and cliques and dances exist. Sometimes it sounds you're making Damian intentionally an idiot when you imply he doesn't know what a video game or a tv show is. Just because he grew up sheltered does not mean he's fucking blind. He's a kid who grew up Middle Eastern, not in another planet.

nitpick but Damian calling Bruce "baba" at every turn or throwing in "habibi" when you write ship content - I am not Arabic, but i'd feel the same kind of annoyance if someone wrote Damian calling Bruce "papa" or "padre" all the time, or randomly listing off Spanish endearments in ship fics. In moderation, it can be cute and appreciative. But sometimes it reads like you just discovered a new funny word and you're throwing it around for no reason.

Insisting that Damian should have learned morality or been punished severely by any of the bats when he first showed up - I must stress that none of them did jack shit to teach Damian any kind of morality when he appeared. Bruce met him, yelled at him, fucked off for a mission, came back and then promptly left him behind with Talia before they were presumed dead by explosion. Then Bruce straight up died. Bruce had very little to do with Damian in the early era. Dick, also, didn't really do anything in terms of actually sitting Damian down and explaining the Bat code or just general "killing=bad". He taught Damian to be Robin, and by that process, gradually got through to him about being a hero and a good person. You cannot expect good behavior from a child from the get-go if you've done nothing to teach that child. On that matter then, implying that Damian should have been kicked out of the house or beaten up on behalf of Tim as a form of punishment or a "teaching moment" is genuinely insane. You're going to abuse the already abused ten year old because he hurt your favorite character? Really? You're truly the pinnacle of an adult figure that he should respect /s.

Being annoying about Damian's attitude towards other characters - he's sarcastic and rude on purpose. It's pretty clear from the start to Damian that no one likes him, so he chooses to not like them back. If you cry about him calling Tim names, then I honestly think you don't have a high opinion of Tim at all if you think a seventeen/eighteen year old teenager would be hurt or psychologically scarred by a ten year old calling him a mean name.

Exaggerating Damian's violence and making people terrified of him - calling his fights with Tim "attempted murder" both undermines what murder actually is and undermines Tim's skill levels. The cutting the line incident for example. Obviously the action of cutting it was dangerous, but if you genuinely believe that Tim would have died from it or that he would regard it with any PTSD-level importance is (imo) kind of stupid. We always hear about the actions Damian takes around other characters, but never the canon reaction. In the 2009-2011 era, Tim was angry and annoyed about Damian. Whenever Damian did anything to him, he fought back. He would shoot back remarks, land a blow. Tim wasn't scared of Damian. They didn't even live together long enough for Tim to feel "unsafe in his own home." The second Damian became Robin, Tim left. They never lived in the same house since then, until the reboot, and even then Tim has been pretty independent and Damian has been away from Gotham more often than in it. Same deal applies to Dick and Steph and Jason and Cass, they never took Damian's actions lying down. He's just a mild annoyance to them. In fact, Damian doesn't attack them in their sleep. He doesn't try to kill them every chance he gets. He doesn't plot their demise. Every instance of Damian fighting someone in the family has either been; protective impulse, a reaction to a fight they instigated, or a sparring-type situation where neither of them are taking things seriously.

[opbackgrounds]

I recent saw this post

https://www.tumblr.com/majinsawdust64/738516603334000640/i-always-see-people-talking-about-robin-being

And I have to agree I feel like majority of the cast is being whitewash everytime we enter a new arc. Just recently when the 1st ep of Egghead arc came out I notice how Usopp looked really pale as seen here

https://fandomwire.com/ussop-is-officially-white-one-piece-fans-are-against-egghead-arcs-new-animation-upon-usopps-stark-difference/#google_vignette

I have seen some people say it Toei who is purposely making them white but at the same time when I seen a pieces that is color by Oda himself (chapter 1091 and chapter 1086).

Do you think it this is a company problem or is Oda starting to lose his original ethnicity and nationality for the characters

Oda has always drawn Usopp and Robin with the same skin tone as the rest of the crew

The only characters that I can recall him drawing with darker skin are Miss Monday, King, and the mini Warlord pacificas. It was Toei who decided to make them different, and then after the time skip changed it to more closely match the manga.

It’s definitely a short coming in Oda’s art and I would have liked if Toei remained internally consistent with what they’d previously done, but I can understand why they changed it.

[nonplatonicsubtext]

Estate of the Bay Part 1: Johnny Law

(If you haven't read about @shakertwelve's Estate AU, go check out their victor lavere tag, or this won't make much sense)

Thought we'd put together a quick breakdown of the state of Brockton as of story start, beginning with the heroes. Names in italics are changed from canon

Protectorate Heroes:

Armsmaster (Colin Wallis)

Miss Militia (Hana)

Velocity (Robin Swoyer)

Dauntless (Shawn)

Battery (“Jamie”)

Assault (Ethan)

Redeye (Crystal Pelham)

Wards:

Clockblocker (Dennis)

Aegis (Isabela)

Scribble (Rune)

Vista (Missy Biron)

Kid Win (Chris)

Browbeat (Browbeat)

The Brockton Bay Protectorate core members are mostly unchanged, due to the point of divergence only being about ten years prior. The main differences are the absence of Triumph, who died in a horrible nepotism accident due to a lack of Panacea around for healing, and the addition of Redeye, who graduated from the Wards closer to a year before story start and rebranded from her Laserdream identity, severing the last tie between her and the Brigade, at least in the eyes of the public.

The Wards are a different story. Gallant was put permanently out of action in a horrible fucking rich boy accident, which was what precipitated Crystal being transferred in. Beyond that, Aegis is transgender but that doesn’t really come up except in the Wards interlude pre-Leviathan.

The biggest change to the Wards is the absence of Shadow Stalker - in her place is Scribble, aka Tammi. This is very much the same Rune as in canon, to be clear - no whitewashing here. She just got snapped up by the PRT while doing Plausible Deniability “Vigilantism” kind of like what Purity does and got press-ganged into the Wards. She’s not mask-off all the way about the white supremacy… at least not yet.

More importantly, she takes over Sophia’s Other role in the plot too - the Trio now consists of Emma Barnes, Madison Clements, and Tammi Surname. Always Sunny font Emma Barnes Goes Alt-Right.

Outlaw Inlaws

The Arrows

Spitfire (Emily)

Morrigan (Sophia Hess)

Apsis (Whirligig)

Replacing New Wave as the independent heroes (or ‘heroes’ depending on who you ask) are the Arrows, a recently formed vigilante antifascist group. Spitfire, the leader, has a bit more steel up her spine than in canon (though she still struggles), Sophia’s still an angry loose cannon but just not. you know. in a racist way. She's got a lot of very good reasons to be angry. Whirligig in canon is just a power and a faction so she’s basically an OC - she’s slightly older than the other two, an even mix of the level head and the slacker. Doesn’t seem to quite fit with the vibes of the group.

For the most part, they’re concerned with not bringing the wrath of the Protectorate down on themselves - like in real life, killing Nazis tends to get more of a response than Nazis killing people does. A lot of what they do is lurk nearby during civilian antifascist action, ready to head off the Nazi capes if they try and intercept for their own side. A few months before story start, they killed Alabaster - more specifically, Sophia did, and while it hasnt been conclusively linked to them at story start, they’re keeping their heads down, to Sophia’s chagrin. 

They're still semi-associated with Palanquin, despite Spitfire not being a part of that group - they did approach her, and now they communicate sometimes, as the club with Case 53s is a pretty frequent target for neonazis and other shitheads.

Charlotte knows them by chance encounter, after Sophia saved her from a few skinheads.

Rogue One

Parian is still Parian. She’s aware of the Arrows, but disapproves of their use of violence, cause she’s a bit of a lib. 

[surpriserose]

i cant get over how fucking fascist the dark knight rises is which like...i knew going in it would be if only because its based on frank millers the dark knight comics (and also no mans land???) And frank miller is the biggest piece of shit in comics whos not alan moore or garth ennis but christ i think nolan managed to go even more mask off

Okay grain of salt im not the biggest comics guy i just read the good stuff sylvie sends me so im not as knowledgeable about comic stuff but i stay silly anyways im gonna go character by character thats easiest for me

So batmans barely here except to become disabled and then practically heal overnight so very cool point number one 😐 but half of the movie hes stuck in the scary pit prison (because the Lazarus pit is too silly for nolan) with all the arab guys who didnt get whitewashed and its so boring and it sucks and only white people made it out of the pit ever basically who gives a shit it sucks honestly the only reason im mentioning this is because i honestly forgot bane wasnt the main character about an hour in because like? He should be? and ill get to that

Joseph gordon levitt is there and his character has a name and i do just want to call him joseph gordon levitt instead but thats long as fuck and hes robin so im just gonna call him robin even though he sucks ass. the whole point of his character is to be the good cop to gordons bad cop but it doesnt really work because thats a shitty fucking thing you see in media all the time because they always just go for the its just some bad apples approach look at this good apple dont you love apples approach but honestly nolans deepthroating the boot so much its even worse here. and yeah dudes robin but hes like.... nolans oc as robin because thank god i dont want dick in this movie (which would bring the whitewashing count up to 4 characters) or god forbid jason todd but i think its really telling how even robin in this universe has to be a fucking cop instead of like any of the disadvantaged kids bruce actually takes in like yeah this robin is still an orphan but thats way less important to the narrative and to nolan than being a cop.

gordons also barely here and i dont give a shit about him i wish he died i mean i always wish he died because hes a cop he is THE cop in every batman piece of media (except when he was jack the ripper one time or something?) and why even the most benign batman media is copaganda because theyre fucking besties. really i just want to talk about one scene before I get to the bulk of this post bane. late in the fucking almost THREE HOUR LONG MOVIE theres a scene where gordon is rallying the cops and goes to some cops door and hes like "why did you let your wife answer the door dont you know whats going on out there?" as if women are being raped on the streets of gotham which we never even see a fucking hint of??? the actual main issues affecting gotham at the moment are food issues and even thats not a problem because aid is getting in slowly and thats actually how gordon gets MORE FUCKING COPS into the city its insane and im gonna come back to this again with bane but while we're talking about the misogny -

-lets talk about catwoman who just kind of exists doing the catwoman thing of oh im on batmans side but not really and im on banes side but not really and it sucks but lets start with the misogyny before i talk about catwomans spineless centrism. when catwoman is caught by joseph gordon levitt shes taken to prison and the cops specifically point out shes taken to a mens prison (?????) because of the new laws because shes such a risk that a maximum security womens prison cant hold her but a mens prison can because womens prisons are all knitting circles i guess. This is really just an excuse so she can be in the prison that bane stages a prison break on (based) and come back for the climax and also have a hashtag girlboss moment where she does a sexy flip attack against a man threatening to sexually assault her which is just so classy nolan. and i want to fucking point out that this is blackgate prison which in most batman media is ALREADY FUCKING COED this shit was so unnecessary and gross and i just...its still pissing me off obviously so lets get to catwomans shitty fucking robin hood shit and why robin hood narratives are rarely ever radical. yes stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is cool but here and in most narratives its really only cool because its..one person or a small group. A society wide redistribution of wealth? out of the question thats too scary just go back to helping one kid steal an apple lady and hating that bane is literally crashing wall street (based) and breaking into rich peoples homes and bringing them to sentencing trials for crimes against humanity (based). Catwoman will have no part of that thank you and will instead just kind of...hang out until batman gets back.

side note what the fuck is up with the timeline in this movie batman gets his back broken and taken to the pit which is located in....an "ancient part of the world" the batman wiki tells me which holy shit okay the racism continues forever. but batman is not in gotham and again his back is literally BROKEN until it gets healed because he....was hoisted into a standing position with a rope? and idk how long that takes whether its months or a day because the movie seems to suggest both???

okay lets talk about talia al ghul and ras al ghul really quick before i get to based bane. Ill start by saying they're really fucking whitewashed like probably the worst example ive ever seen? Talia (or miranda tate as she's called for most of the movie) is played by a white french actress and Ra's al ghul is played by white irish actor and racist liam neeson. Because the comics are also racist ras al ghul never is really given a clear country of origin besides vaguely arabic slash east asian partially because hes so old but also again the racism but hes certainly not white again...because of the racism. and neither is talia who is only slightly less vaguely chinese and arabic. nolan gives even less of a shit than most batman writers though which is a high bar. talia was so boring and poorly written i barely remember her but they gave her half hearted attempts at environmentalism (incremental and done by begging the rich for everything though of course) before saying oh its actually because she and bane want to blow gotham up with a bomb which...god its all so stupid i honestly forget the bomb shit exists because it makes no sense and seems to have a detonation timer of 24 hours which again is why i literally have no idea what the timeline is. this shit is so stupid and unnecessary except to be the secret reason banes populist revolution of gotham (based) is actually bad but its so fucking tacked on even beyond most reasons why communist characters in media eat a baby to show theyre actually bad and so is communism because communists love neutron bombs.

BANE TIME! I'll also start out by pointing out that bane is whitewashed since hes supposed to be from a fictional south american slash caribbean island prison which......man. He's just tom hardy here though. Lets keep talking about communists eating a baby so theyre bad now. I think this is a trope people associate more with the mcu which is fair the falcon and the winter soldier pulled some shit because of course it did but i think we should consider the dark knight rises as a prime example instead. Not the originator since anti communism didn't start with nolan although i wish i could blame him for that too. Banes list of crimes batman has to stop him for are killing cia agents (based), crashing the stock market which he didn't even kill anyone at (not as based as he could have been), stage a prison break as previously mentioned (based), revealing police corruption (based), forming a militia to govern gotham while theres a transition of power from the rich and the police to the people (based), killing a bunch of cops (based), exploding some of gotham including all but one of the bridges out of the city (really just a strategic decision since hes about to have the american military on his ass and needs to counter that), and blowing up the pittsburgh steelers (extremely based). hey why is this guy the villain again? hey why does gotham have a wall street now why is this such a big deal is it possibly because the occupy wall street protests happened before during and after production of the movie? no that certainly couldnt be the case theres no way nolan would hate peaceful protests and create a movie where god forbid they werent peaceful and cops were instead treated like they treat protestors so we feel bad for them instead of people who are literally sick and tired of their labor being exploited by capitalism for the benefit of the rich. like jesus christ this movie is so blatantly fascist explaining the plot should have anyone going hey wait a minute. and you may say im biased in favor of bane as a communist but jesus christ are you seeing the shit nolan is pulling im being even handed in comparison i mean the fucking climax is batman showing up to rally the cops against bane and the mostly citizens militia of gotham like jesus fucking christ. banes not even a fucking dictator hes literally just some guy in most of the scenes after gotham is taken back by the people hes not even the guy sentencing and killing the rich and the police thats scarecrow! hes just on the sides like everyone else. and while im on scarecrow (jonathan crane hes not called scarecrow in the movie but he is that judge guy) nolan treats it as unreasonable that these are not hearings to determine the guilt of the police and the rich they protect because the people have already determined that theyre guilty but they just fucking are by definition. you dont get rich under capitalism by working hard you get rich by exploiting hundreds of thousands or millions of people out of their labor and livelihoods these people are fucking guilty even if they havent killed anyone with their own hands. but because bane does kill people on screen we're supposed to think hes worse but he only kills rich people and cops and the pittsburgh steelers!!!! like holy shit i hate this fucking movie i hate christopher nolan

[dvaderstark]

Thoughts on Steve in Stranger Things Season 1

Now similar to practically everyone who watches Stranger Things post Season 1, I think Steve Harrington is a great character that has gone through a fantastic arc and in particular his relationships with Robin and Dustin are two of the best friendships in the show. In fact he and Dustin are the second best sibling type relationship on the show after Jonathan and Will. I do have some issues with basically any of his romance as the popularity of him with Billy and Eddie confuse me beyond he’s Steve and he’s popular. But what I wanted to post about was his portrayal in the show’s first season because I feel that a lot of Steve’s fans from the later seasons have gone back to the first season and have whitewashed some of his actions. Now not to say that Steve is that bad in Season 1 but I think the idea that he was always a good guy is wrong. Now most of Steve’s early stuff is regular stereotypical douchebag stuff that I don’t have too much of an issue with even if I don’t think he’s much aside from a douche at first. Like for example, him being a little too pushy with Nancy when he helps her study and we see he has other things on his mind. Like I will call some of this douchey behavior but not too bad behavior since he does back off. Similarly when he shows more concern about being caught underage drinking than Barb missing. I don’t have too much of an issue here either since Steve doesn’t know what we the audience know but if I was in Nancy’s shoes I would still be annoyed by this too, and he still has skewed priorities. Next, we have breaking the camera. Even for someone who loves Jonathan and has Jancy as their ST OTP, I don’t have any real issue with breaking the camera and the confrontation over the pictures. What Jonathan did was wrong and he deserved some punishment for it. While I wouldn’t call it stalking since Jonathan didn’t intentionally seek Nancy or anyone else at the party out to do what he did it was still wrong and Steve did buy a new camera. The real issues I have with Steve both come in the alley scene. The first thing is the public slut shaming that Nancy undergoes since Steve got the wrong idea. The kind that would have probably stuck on Nancy’s reputation a lot more if this wasn’t a show. What annoys me so much about the way that Steve’s fans response to this is the argument “His friends were the ones who sprayed it and Steve helped take it down afterward”. I hate this argument for the main reason that even if Steve didn’t spray paint the words themselves, he is there when they are doing the second message about Jonathan. He was definitely there when it happened and condoned it. Not saying this is unforgivable after all he’s young and angry and people do dumb stuff when they have that combination but also it is no excuse either and him offering to clean it up while the start of his redemption doesn’t really excuse it either. Letting a friend do something bad and feeling bad afterwards is still a sign that you did something bad. Also what he says to Jonathan that sparks their fight, I will give Steve a point here in that he makes Tommy back off so that the fight will be fair and that is where it ends. What he says to Jonathan is really cruel, cruel insults about his family, cruel insults comparing Jonathan to his awful father, cruel comparisons about Jonathan’s loving mom and of course cruelly insulting Jonathan’s little brother, who while still alive to Steve died only a week ago. I don’t think it’s okay to say stuff like that even if you think the guy you’re saying it to is sleeping with your girlfriend. Once again obviously not unforgivable but still wrong no matter the reason for it and Steve recognized it but a lot of his fans seem to forget that Steve realized it was wrong. Well that got away from me, to summarize, Steve Harrington is a great character but it sometimes annoys me how some of his fans basically try to say he wasn’t a jerk in Season 1 since he was a jerk and him being a jerk is what helps with his arc.

[amalaysian]

Raw Words, Real Truth

Man, who decided language should be all polite and clean? Who said we can't throw in a good "puki" or "nia-mah" when we're talking real, living life? Because, listen, the streets, the people—they talk in raw colors, not some sterilized whitewash. Like "fuck," it's got power, it's got pulse, it means something in the cracks between words. And yet, in some places, they hold up some glorified criminal, slap a halo on his head, call him a damn hero like we're still living in some Robin Hood fantasy. It's not about rich or poor, man, it’s about honest or crooked.

And don't even get me started on this first-world, third-world crap. A first-world country with a third-world mentality? What a joke. Give me the reverse any day—give me a third-world soul with a first-world brain. That’s where the real revolution's at. You with me? Screw their labels, their systems—I'm just here to call it like I see it, no filters, no censorship, just truth cutting through the bullshit.

[arabian-batboy]

is it me or have you been doing nothing but complain all the time lately? like is there anything you like?

Well I like DC vs Vampires, the first issue of the current TEC arc seemed interesting and if the rest of the arc continued being like this then I will probably like it too, I recently started World Finest because its a sequel to Batman vs Robin and I really like it, Batman: The Knight has started getting enjoyable in the past couple issues and depending on the story of the month, B:UL can be really good imo.

I'm sure there are better comics out there, but I'm only interest in Batman-related stories at the moment, so can you really blame me for complaining? I personally don’t want to be negative all the time, but lets be real here, it's not like DC is giving me anything that I can be positive about when it comes to the treatment of all the members of the Batfamily, I tried to bear it but almost all of them have it bad at the moment.

Alfred is dead because of a dumb storyline that no one liked and DC is dragging the shit of his death, Bruce is back to being an emotionally constipated manbaby, Dick is being written by Tom Taylor in one of the most bland and cringey runs of all time, Barbara is still an empty-shell of her past self and is nothing but Dick’s girlfriend/the Batgirls' mom, speaking of the Batgirls, Cassandra and Stephanie are infantized as fuck in their run and are treated like a package-deal at all time with no sense of individuality, Jason had everything that made him interesting/formidable stripped away in favor of being an over-sized moody teenager whose role is basically “spare Batkid #3” whenever his daddy wants him too, Tim is deaged and back to being Robin again at the expense of Damian and I already complained as much as I could as to how in the past 2 years following his character assassination in TT:R, Damian has been turned into a generic bland teenage character (even though it makes no sense for him to already be a teen when everyone around him is being deaged) without any of his past personality or skills that made him himself in sight, just an angry dumb whitewashed teenager that literally only appears in one book only and separated from the rest of the Batfam except for his manbaby father (The only one who kinda has it semi-okay is Duke.........who only had lines in like 3 or 4 comics a year, I'm sure if he had his own book they will fuck his character too)

I'm not gonna say its the worst era of the Batfamily, because much worse things have happened to them in the past, but usually it was only some of them that had it bad while others had it good, but this is the first era where almost all of them had unenjoyable comics out at the same time.

So with that being said, can you really blame me for complaining all the time?

[flashfuture]

Okay so I have a question. Is Oliver Queen a particularly shitty dad or something? Because I've seen him in a few comics, one of them with Connor, and honestly he seemed fine. Like I know him and Roy don't have a particularly great relationship, and Ollie kinda fucked up with him, but like is this just the case with Roy?

I'm asking this because people generally ignore this thing about Bruce, who has a been a mostly shitty dad for a while now, and generally make excuses for him, citing the fact that he wasn't always like this. Most fics featuring him show him as a good parent. But fanfic authors go out of their way to show Ollie as a terrible father, and an asshole in general, especially when pitted against Bruce? Why is it this way?

PS. I haven't read many Green Arrow comics.

Okay so this is gonna get long lol

Snowbirds Don’t Fly is where Roy is on heroin and there are many many misconceptions about this particular issue

#1 this was a PSA which means certain characters have to play a role even if it seems out of character 

#2 That is the only time ever that Ollie has hit Roy. And Roy hit him back later not that this excuses it but yeah nowhere near anything like Bruce

#3 The whole kicked out of the house thing. Roy was an adult. A full-grown adult who lived on his own. Roy only got into heroin because Ollie left on a road trip thinking his kid would be fine

#4 Ollie himself is an alcoholic so say what you will but personally, I know addicts in families can get pissed when other people also get addicted to things just based on personal experience 

#5 After fucking up Ollie went out of his way to learn everything he could about addiction and recovery. He went out of his way to earn Roy’s forgiveness and then a few years later Roy agreed to reconciliation. All this happened in the 70s and by the end of it Roy and Ollie were fine and firmly in the father-son category without much lingering animosity

But then the 90s and Chuck Dixon happened. Dixon hated Ollie. He wanted to kill Ollie. So he made Ollie as unbearable as possible. For example, Ollie who loves kids, always wanted kids pushed away Connor Hawke as soon as he learned it was his real son, ran off with eco-terrorists, and blew up in a plane crash. Really dumb story

Anyways after this Roy was heartbroken he’d lost his dad. Like they were really close and people really hang on to an argument/ fuck up that happened going on 50 years ago. While conversely as you said waving away arguments that have happened consistently and recently. And Bruce started being abusive in the 80s like full-on horrible dad after Jason died. 

Then in 2001 ish Ollie is brought back to life. And he’s handed off to Judd Winick. Winick is a racist, sexist, and all-around bad writer. He’s noted for creating a black love interest for Ollie just to kill her brutally because of an argument with a Black Lightning writer. 

The other thing is Winick played Ollie like a womanizer and a cheater. Birds of. Prey also ran with this because that series had a nasty habit of bashing men. 

So basically Ollie was called a cheater for that time he was drugged and assaulted, kissed against his will by a teenager who he pushed off, and slept with a woman while he and Dinah weren’t dating. Cheating.... I can’t even explain the level of devotion to Dinah that Ollie displays. She is it for him really he isn’t even a flirt. Hal is the flirt. 

Winick also whitewashed and sidelined Connor a bunch cause screw him right. 

So that series did not shed a good light on Ollie and it’s sort of done damage to his rep when we should be ignoring it like we do with King’s work because it was that bad and ooc. 

What was valid from that series was Ollie adopting Mia Dearden after seeing she could use a hand up from where was in life. What was valid was Ollie spending all the time he could with Connor because he missed out on his son's whole life. And spending time with Roy and his granddaughter Lian. Like Ollie loves kids he loves Dinah and he loves his family. 

That’s who he is. 

New52 is another reason. So Ollie got shafted and shafted hard. 

He and Dinah weren’t dating at the start? I don’t think they were

Roy was no longer Ollie’s son but his co-worker

Connor and Mia just didn’t exist. Mia showed up for 6 issues and hasn’t since. Connor has only recently re-appeared in the Robin comic. 

Ollie and Roy didn’t get along because Ollie fired Roy for drinking on the job and that was sort of it. They weren’t father and son here so it’s a weird idea to compare them to Jason and Bruce and if you look at canon Bruce is still the worse one

But Rebirth has reset Roy to being Ollie’s son and Ollie was crushed when Roy died. Is still crushed cause i don't think he knows Roy is alive. 

Also Ollie is just like a generally good dude. He’s a genuine socialist and environmentalist. He uses his money when he’s got it to promote these things and sometimes blackmails corrupt rich people into supporting social services. 

Like you know Dick saying he wants to be Blüdhaven’s safety net? That is a page right out of the Oliver Queen playbook. 

Ollie funds most of the justice league really always has since like Zero Hour. Bruce and him probably are the two who do but it’s remarked upon multiple times that Ollie was the first (in some timelines) and main benefactor. 

I’ve noticed what you have in fanfics too and it drives me crazy. With the addition or I should say lack of Dinah and Hal. Dinah was absolutely like a mother to Roy. She’s his mama. She got him through his detox. Hal was the one who brought Roy to her. 

(Most people gloss over that Hal was like an Uncle to both Roy and Wally)

So yeah whenever I see Ollie bashing plus no mention of Dinah I know that the writer knows next to nothing about Ollie. 

Also Bruce likes to say Ollie is just as bad as him when Ollie is categorically a better person in like every way lol. 

This isn’t to say there is anything wrong with fanon-ing Bruce. But I just don’t understand why Ollie is essentially fanon-ed in the opposite direction. 

Roy will always get along with Ollie better and be safer with him than Jason would be with Bruce. But fanon wants to play off like Roy hates Ollie and is terrified of him or whatever which even in the darkest New52 pits of hell that wasn’t even true. 

I’m not sure why it’s gotten to be this way tbh. Bruce, Dick, Ollie, and Roy are the golden ages boys who got to stay young and they’ve all been slandered by writers but fans seem really only capable of ignoring when Bruce is written badly which is so odd. Like Dick gets called out for things that are so wildly ooc it astounds me that Bruce out of all people is the one people want to ignore is just sort of the worst. 

Lol yeah I got ranty. As you can tell I am very passionate about this and I just wish more people would even try to find out about Ollie before assuming things that are not true. 

Hope this helped somewhat 

[musicalmash]

Doing the Work – June

Man. I had to remember all my tumblr login details for this thing.

This post is about accountability. Here’s what I’ve been up to since my last video. It’s mostly devoid of musical theatre stuff.

First off, as promised I’m donating all of my June internet revenue. That’s $250 to The Martha P. Johnson Institute.

Most of this comes from my Patreons. My deep thanks to them.

Next, I thought it’d be nice to let folks know what I’ve been reading in hopes it’ll help you pick up a book. Here’s what I’ve finished so far.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Required reading. Highly recommended. If you don’t know where to start, start here. Oluo walks you through a straightforward unpacking of systemic racism in contemporary USA with solid action points about what YOU can do.

————

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

This book is “required reading” assigned by the school I teach at. Don’t read it. I got about a chapter in and something felt off. Kelefa Sanneh explains it in his review in the New Yorker. For more discourse, check out Episode 17 of Blocked & Reported (and the associated Bonus Episode).

————

The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical by Warren Hoffman

This was my second time through this book. A thorough analysis of the “whiteness” of the world of musical theatre and the mostly unseen racism it’s been enforcing. If you’ve heard the rumblings from the We See You, White American Theatre open letter and the associated petition, then you need to read this book to understand why Whoopi Goldberg is suggesting we rebrand broadway as “The Great Bright Way.”

————

I Won't Learn from You: And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment by Herbert R. Kohl

Another re-read for me – this one comes from my time learning to be a teacher in college. I had forgotten how much I LOVE this book (really a collection of short essays.)

If you are an educator who feels “stuck” in the system, this is the book for you. Kohl borrows the concept of “creative maladjustment” from a speech by Dr. King:

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted” … Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities.

But I say to you, my friends...there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize.

I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence.

In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment–men and women who will be as maladjusted.

Kohl talks of how he brings his own particular form of this “creative maladjustment” to the schools and systems he works within to try and affect change from the inside.

I had forgotten how much this concept is core to my educational philosophy.

————

So that’s been June. I’ve got a long book list for July – still figuring out what I want next. Really, the literature I’m looking for is some straight-up history. If you’ve got any suggestions for good books that go beyond the whitewashed “American History” textbooks, please tweet them at me. (@MusicalMash)

Also, yes (YES!) I do have plans for upcoming content. If you’ve followed me long enough you’ll know how I fall into fits and starts of creativity. I’m working on it. Along with plenty of other things.

Be well. Love each other.

-Tommy

[leo-interactive-fiction]

Beach Scene

I found it haha. Because I don’t really like just copy and pasting, I did add a little extra dialogue and stuff just in case I already shared it haha

Waves crash against the whitewashed sand as the sun glistens like starlight on the surface of the water, creating a sparkling display of prismatic lights.

"What the hell are we doing—" Pierce's words get cut off by Robin's shushing, accentuated by the arm he throws around the firebrand's shoulders.

"Hey now, no complaining! Just treasure this moment. Even a hardass like you can enjoy this, right?"

"Stop touching me! And enjoy what?"

Robin points in the direction of the extensive ocean, and Pierce watches as Emma and Snipper race towards the water's edge and leap enthusiastically, causing a large splash on the once calm surface. Robin shifts his finger towards the beach itself, pointing out Fray, who lounges underneath an umbrella in a silken blouse with a fan in hand.

Pierce shakes his head, huffing and throwing Robin's arm off of him. He wipes an invisible stain off of the hoodie he wears,  "Whatever, I'm gunna get the food. Don't…be you." Pierce squints at Robin in disgust before turning around and walking towards the large van that brought them here. It's this van that Leah is just now getting out of, a large straw hat shading her face as she steps hesitantly into the sunlight.

"It is…quite hot out here…" Leah's fingers lightly caress the cover of a book she ended up bringing with her.

"Fray set up an umbrella." Pierce juts a thumb backwards as he walks past the blue haired scholar. She takes his suggestion and begins tentatively stepping towards the royal.

"Come to bask in the shade I have so graciously provided. It would not be the first time people have contented themselves amid my shadow." Fray's mouth is hidden behind the fan she carries, but her eyes belie a smug countenance.

"Um…is it alright if I sit here…?"

"If you must ask, then the answer is no."

"O-Oh…"

"Just sit the fuck down." Pierce commands as he throws down two baskets of food. He calls back behind him, "C'mon, hurry it up Matthew."

"It's…heavy…" Matthew sets down two more large umbrellas with a sigh, "I think…I need a…small nap…"

"Naturally." Flay drones as she rolls her eyes.

"Ya got everythin' set up?" Snipper calls as she jogs closer, the two piece swimsuit clinging slightly to her sun-drying body. Emma is close behind, having stayed behind to enjoy the cool water a little more.

"No thanks to you two." Pierce huffs.

"Hot." Vin sighs from the position he took underneath the umbrella, causing Snipper to jump.

"Yikes, where'd ya come from? It's almost like—"

"They appeared from nowhere?" Raven speaks from behind the sandy-haired motorcycle driver, causing her to jump higher in surprise.

"How…adorable…" Matthew hums, while Emma hides a slight laugh.

"Bunch’a jokers, huh…" Snipper grumbles as she strains the water out of her hair idly.

"Hello, everyone~" Robin calls out, a happy grin plastered across his face as he drops a stack of brightly colored toy guns in front of everyone.

"Where the hell did you get—"

"It's a natural tradition when you go to the beach! You always have a water gun fight!"

Vin rises slightly, his body tensing as his eyes affix to a nearby water pistol, "…Gun fight…?"

A silence washes over the group as they all turn to the silver haired soldier. Raven is the first to move, dashing quickly to grab a small pistol and shooting a stream of water towards Vin. The soldier blankly pulls Flay towards him, using her as a shield as the water collides with the royal's face.

"How dare—!"

Vin quickly pushes her aside and dives towards the gun pile, scooping up two pistols and firing them simultaneously mid-roll, taking out the stationary Matthew while Leah reflexively dodges the stream. The soldier sprints away from the group, vanishing behind a rocky outcrop.

The group is silent for a moment until Pierce turns towards the golden haired student with a look of stressed fury, "Now look what you've done!"

The group disperses, each taking with them a toy gun. Flay and Matthew stay behind, one of them resting while the other fumes over getting the water out of their hair.

"Do we really gotta do this?" Snipper groans as she tinkers with the toy rifle she's carrying.

"C'mon, it'll be fun!" Emma laughs, mimicking aiming down the sights of her own rifle.

Both of them laugh until a high pitch scream could be heard, causing both of their faces to flush. They run towards the origin of the sound and peak over a rocky outcrop that separates them from the event of Raven shooting Leah repeatedly in the face, maniacal laughter emanating from the black haired girl as she stands over the pleading scholar.

"P-Please, I-I give, I give! Y-You'll ruin the book…!"

Raven pauses, letting out a sigh as she turns towards the rocky outcropping the two girls are peeking over, showing an ecstatic smile "…This is quite fun."

Snipper lets out a silent shriek as she turns around and begins running away, only to be suddenly shot in the back of the head. Emma watches as Snipper tumbles and falls, taken out by a source which now hovers over her, a sharp thin smile casting down at her from a top the rocky outcrop she ducked behind.

Emma gives a hesitant smile and lets out a small, "H…Hello…" before being shot in the forehead. She collapses, defeated, and Raven moves on, humming a slight tune. --------------------------------------- "Am not."

"Are too."

"Shut up."

"That'll cost you."

Pierce ruffles his hair in annoyance, "Why the hell are you following me?"

Robin shoots a confident smile, "I figured I could use you as a shield. You're a bigger and more dangerous target, so they'll shoot you first while I run away."

"How very fucking magnanimous of you."

"You flatter me."

"Wait," Pierce pauses, his eyes narrowing slightly, "Did you hear that…?"

Robin pauses slightly, looking around before shrugging. "Probably the wind—" He lets out, before a stream of water impacts his skull, causing his head to snap to the side as he falls down. Pierce steps slightly away from him.

"What kind of guns did you get…?"

"I won't…make it…" Robin coughs out, raising his head slightly to look up at the redhead, "Save…yourself…"

Pierce shoots Robin in the head himself, "Shut up and stop that."

"Jeez, you're ruining the moment." Robin sits up and wrings the water out of his hair, "That's why people don't hang out with—" Another stream of water blasts against Robin's head, cutting his words off.

"Stay down." The quiet monotone voice carries across the sand as Vin steps slowly towards the two students, each hand carrying a pistol while a rifle can be seen strung to his back. His eyes are steeled and focused as he regulates his breath, "Surrender."

"Shit…" Pierce quickly leans over and pulls Robin up, placing him in front.

"What are you doing?!"

"I'm using you as a shield!"

"That was my plan!"

"Shut up, damn it!" Pierce places the barrel of his gun to Robin's head, causing him to raise his hands slightly while speaking in a level tone.

"Let's not do anything drastic, now."

Vin fires another stream of water at Robin, "You're dead. Be quiet."

"Yeah, stay a corpse!" Pierce echoes.

Robin grumbles, playing his part. Pierce turns the barrel of his gun towards the slight soldier, "You'll have to win over my dead body, Vin.”

"Okay." Vin shifts his foot forward, leaning forward before pushing off the sand and propelling himself forward. Streams of water whiz past his head as he closes the distance. Three meters. Two meters. One…

A shot hits Pierce in the back of the head, causing the redhead and white-haired student to pause.

"Got you!" Raven calls out gleefully. Pierce sighs in frustration as he drops Robin and moves to the side. The rest of the dead group have come to spectate as well.

“You weren’t planning to throw me at Vin when he got close to us, were you?” Robin remarks to the recently defeated redhead as they join the sideline.

“No, I was hoping your fucking hair was going to reflect the sun into his eyes.” Pierce laces his voice with sarcasm as he rolls his eyes.

“Not a bad strategy, ya know.” Snipper snickers.

“As if you hold a fraction of strategic thought in your fickle-celled brain, grease monkey. This event has been a farce to begin with.”

Snipper gives a mocking tut, “Someone seems a tad miffed she got kicked before the game even started. I didn’t realize ya were such a sore loser!”

Fray’s expression darkens, “Rest assured such a targeted humiliation will be addressed in due time.”

“That’s enough, you two!” Emma pushes between them with her hands on her hips in a dutiful stance, “Friends shouldn’t fight so much!”

Either by shock or assurance, the two fall into silence.

--------------------------------------------------

The wind seems to slow as Raven and Vin face each other. A stranded umbrella rolls between them, setting the atmosphere as Vin drops his two pistols and unslings his rifle. Raven checks her pistol, a thin smile spreading across her face to express her anticipation. The second the umbrella hits the ocean, Raven drops down low and sprints forward. Vin drops to a knee to stabilize his aim and fires a volley. Raven strides between the water, crossing the gap in rigid zig-zag patterns until she comes upon the soldier.

Raven raises her gun to fire, only to find Vin duck under it and push her arm up. He kicks his legs out, throwing her over his shoulder while simultaneously disarming the black haired student. Vin spins around, lining up the barrel of his gun with his target. Raven extends a hand towards the ground as she falls, scooping up one of Vin's discarded pistols and aiming it towards the soldier. Water flies. ------------------------------------------------------- Raven laughs gleefully as she drains the water out of her hair, while Vin silently sits, the water dripping down the blank expression on his face.

"Well, that was…interesting…" Emma offers.

"That mighta been a bit traumatizing, I gotta admit." Snipper groans, and Robin nods silently in agreement.

"We should do it again sometime!" Raven states.

"No." Flay and Pierce state at the same time, both with equal venom.

"What…happened…?" Matthew looks to everyone curiously.

"Perhaps it's best if you don't ask," Leah forces a smile as she attempts to dry the drooping wet brim on her hat.

Vin's eyes stare off towards the ocean, his lips parting slightly as the seabreeze passes his body, "It's cold."

I wrote this a while back for the Discord. I tend to spoil them a bit with certain things that get my attention haha. I believe the discord is also who decided the genders of the ROs. I hope you enjoy!

[starship-squidlet]

The Green Fields of France: Chapter Two

Summary: We meet our speaker. He begins his quest.

Word count: 2,218

Disclaimer: The Green Fields of France Preface

Tag list: @the-cowbi @aggressive-bucky-barnes-stan (ask to be added/removed!)

A/N: Whoo, actual scenes in this one, not just Charlie monologuing 😅

Previous chapter: Chapter One

Next chapter: Chapter Three

I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Charlie O’Dell. I was one of only two children who lived in that tiny house in Harlem who could say they were related to Grandma Ellie—since that’s what almost everyone called her—by actual blood.

My mother, Robin Nickola, was born in late 1917. She and Grandma Ellie did not have a good relationship. She felt closer to the person she always referred to as her surrogate father.

Charlie Morris moved into the tiny house, which was often just called Starling Mission, in 1917, after Mush and Finch left. He was exempt from the draft due to lingering effects of a bout with polio when he was a child. Grandma Ellie, along with literally everyone else who ever knew him (whether they called him Charlie or Crutchie, the latter being more common due to the crutch he needed to move around for most of his life, not that he ever let it slow him down) described him as one of the kindest, gentlest people they’d ever known, and also as an impossibly strong person who would fight tooth and nail for the people he loved or who couldn’t fight for themselves. My mother was often one of them.

She spent most of her life—beginning when she was a teenager—fighting with her mother, rejecting any aid offered to her by Grandma Ellie, full of anger and impetuousness. While I know my grandmother loved my mother with all her heart, there were also times when she found Robin difficult to handle. When my mother left Starling Mission, entire years would pass where they never spoke. With Charlie, it was different. The only father that my mother ever knew, she loved Charlie dearly. There are few people in the world who I would rather have met than him, but he died before I was born, much to my mother’s sorrow. His death sent her into the spiral that would eventually take her life, when I was a little over two years old.

I know my mother loved me, but I wish that I could remember her. Her face is little more than a hazy image in my mind, preserved and occasionally refreshed by the handful of photographs Grandma Ellie has of her. I hardly remember JoJo either; he died when I was small—around six, I think—and was buried in the graveyard behind the cathedral he was raised and worked in, along with many of his friends who had passed at that point, including Charlie.

I was eighteen before I finally got the full story about what happened in 1917 particularly. Once again, it didn’t come so much from my grandmother but from her friends, Uncle Tony and Uncle Al, who had come to help her with Starling Mission after Charlie’s death, until it closed. For the next three years, until I graduated high school and left for college, it was just the four of us, even after Uncle Tony and Uncle Al moved out. They had raised me on stories of the newsies that they had known and grown up with themselves, including Finch, Mush, Charlie, and JoJo, as well as themselves. I idolized them all, and would have given anything to meet any one of them. The story of 1917 waited until I was eighteen because, during my first semester of college, I had a class assignment that drove me to ask questions I had never pressed for answers to before…

.*.*.*.*.*.

“Hello? Grandma, Tony, Al!” Charlie called, smiling as he pushed open the worn wooden door of the tiny Harlem house he had always called home. He heard a loud bark and a giant ball of fur came barrelling through the hall to slam into him, effectively knocking him onto his back. The dog weighed easily as much as the teenager, half of that in hair alone, and, despite being over a decade old, still had the same boundless energy he’d had when he was a puppy. Charlie laughed and tried to wiggle out from under the dog as it licked his face vigorously. “Bear, that’s enough—stop it!” he squealed.

“Bear, down!” Elaine scolded, hot on the dog’s heels. Her grey hair was swept back into a long French braid, and she shuffled along the battered wooden floor in a pair of handmade house slippers. When the dog finally climbed off of Charlie and he stood up and brushed the loose fur off of himself, Elaine stepped forward and wrapped the boy in a tight hug. He smiled into the top of her head. Charlie had outgrown his grandmother when he was eleven years old, and was nearly ten inches taller than her now. He had never looked much like her anyways; where Elaine had been all dark hair and pale skin and dark eyes, while Charlie was red-tinted blond curls and soft brown eyes, although he had the same smear of freckles across his pale cheeks. Elaine reached up and cupped his cheeks in her hands, giving them a pinch as she smiled up at him. “Welcome home, Charlie. We missed you.”

“I missed you too, Grandma. Are Uncle Tony and Uncle Al here?”

“They’ll be here a little later,” Elaine said over her shoulder. “Come have something to eat; you must be hungry after that train ride.”

The kitchen was warm and familiar, whitewashed cabinets and counters, worn appliances, a table full of dents and scratches and other marks, every one of which had a story behind it that Elaine would happily tell. Charlie sat down and ran his thumb over one of the deeper scratches, remembering what had caused it. “How have you been, Grandma?” he asked as Elaine joined him, carrying two plates of food.

“I’ve been fine, sweetheart,” she smiled. “How is school? Have you been getting enough to eat?”

“Yes, don’t worry,” Charlie laughed. “Although it’s not as good as Al’s cooking.”

“Not much is as good as Al’s cooking, my own food included,” Elaine laughed.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been calling much; we have final papers and projects due starting right when we get back from Thanksgiving break,” said Charlie. “I’ve been spending most of my time working on them.”

“I figured as much,” Elaine nodded.

“There’s one I haven’t started yet, though,” said Charlie. “I wanted to ask you for some help on it while I was home.”

“Of course,” Elaine perked up. “What can I do to help?”

“I was wondering… Would you mind telling me more about what happened to Mush and Finch? We’re doing a family history project, so I have to make a family tree and write a paper about a major event in my family’s history. I think I have the family tree pretty much sorted out; we only have to do immediate family, not go into extended, so I just did what I could with that, but I wanted to write the paper on what happened to them in World War One. I know you don’t like to talk about it, and I understand that, but I also think it’s time I know what happened. I’m eighteen now. It’s a part of my history, too. I just want to know.”

Elaine was uncharacteristically still and silent for a long moment. Finally, she forced a smile and looked at him, although her eyes were distant and full of sorrow. “Maybe… maybe another time, Charlie. Ask me again tomorrow.” She stood up, scraped the rest of her food into the trash can, set her dish in the sink, and wandered off, leaving Charlie alone in the kitchen.

.*.*.*.*.*.

A few hours later, Charlie answered the door—struggling to hold Bear back from leaping out of it—and let his adoptive uncles into the house. “Hi,” he laughed, dragging the dog away from the door as Albert closed it.

“Hey, kid!” Race beamed. As soon as Charlie released Bear and stood up, Race scooped him up in a massive hug. Despite the fact that he was nearing eighty, Race was still as strong as he had ever been, and easily lifted Charlie several inches off the floor in a back-cracking, bone-grinding, lung-crushing hug. Once-blond curls had faded to white streaked with sand, and had thinned over his temples, but blue eyes still sparkled with mischief above wrinkled cheeks. Albert, on the other hand, still had a full head of deep red hair, cut shorter than it had been when he was young, and hardly had any wrinkles—a few worry lines on his forehead, and deep laugh lines around his mouth and crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes—nor had he paled with age like Race had, cheeks still flushed red to match his hair. He waited until Race had set Charlie down and stepped away to lean in and wrap an arm around the boy’s shoulders in an informal hug, turning him towards the kitchen and starting down the hall.

“You’re going to tell us everything about school, right?” Albert teased.

“All the juicy details!” Race piped up from behind him.

“Met any cute girls?” Albert teased.

“Or boys!” Race added.

“No, nothing like that,” Charlie laughed. “I’ve been too busy with work and homework.”

“Good,” Albert nodded. “Focus on your studies.” He winked and leaned in to whisper: “But there’s no harm in having some fun every now and then.”

Charlie laughed. “Thanks for the advice, Uncle Al. Hey, I have a question for you two.”

“What’s that?” Race asked.

“Well… I asked my grandma for help with a school project; I have to write a paper about a major event in the history of my family, and I wanted to write about what happened to Mush and Finch, but when I asked her about it, she just sort of… left. She’s never talked about it. Do you two know why that is?”

Albert and Race traded glances. Race leaned against the kitchen counter and shrugged. “Probably has something to do with the fact that she doesn’t know what happened.”

“Anthony!”

“What? It’s the truth,” Race shrugged again and turned towards Charlie. “Elaine got a pair of notices informing her that they’d been killed in action, but was never able to find out any details. Not even where they were buried.”

Albert had taken a seat at the table and folded his hands, staring down at them with a grim look on his face. “We didn’t find out until we came back. Didn’t find out about them, or about any of the others who didn’t make it. And a lot of us didn’t make it… We tried to help where we could, looking for more information through contacts we had, but we could never find anything about Mush or Finch. All we were able to find out is that they deployed to France—we know that for sure—but not even where in France they went, except that it wasn’t where we were, or where Tommy and Spot were.”

“Eventually, we had to just give up,” Race’s voice was low. “There was nothing more to be done. It was like after they left New York they just disappeared. It broke our hearts to stop looking, but it was even harder on Elaine. Not that she ever said anything like that to us—she would never. But you could see it in her eyes after that. Something was gone. Some sort of light. It never really came back. It started to, a little, when you came to live here, but… Never fully.”

Charlie sat quietly. Bear came over and rested his head on Charlie’s leg, drooling a little onto his knee. Charlie petted his head absently, mind whirling. It had never really occurred to him that the reason Elaine had never told him anything was because she didn’t know herself. He swallowed hard, his throat tight, and bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say.

“Thank you,” he croaked out finally. “For explaining. I’m sorry… I’m sorry to bring up those memories.”

Race walked over and rested a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “It’s alright, kiddo. You’re right; you deserve to know. They’re your family.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Grandma Elaine and I never spoke about Mush and Finch again—at least, not in that way; she still told me her stories of when they were young, but they always tapered off as they got closer to 1917. I didn’t press. It was clear how much the topic hurt her, and I didn’t want to cause her more pain. What I did, however, and without saying a word to her, was begin my own investigation into what had happened to Patrick Cortez and Nickolas Meyers.

For three years, my search bore no fruit. I wrote letters, sent requests for records, and did everything else I could think of. I even put ads in papers asking for information from anyone who was in France at that time, and reached out to anyone in France who would listen to me—in my broken French—to beg for their help in my search.

It wasn’t until 1968 that I began to have hope. I returned home from the day’s classes to a letter, stamped with several postmarks, from a young woman in France who thought that her grandfather’s journals and stories from the war may have the information I was searching for…

[mercurygray]

Mansion House Murder Party

@jomiddlemarch asked me to kick off our Mercy Street round-robin writing project today! You all may remember we kicked around a couple of ideas and we all seemed to like the idea of making horrible people suffer for doing horrible things;  Clue was mentioned, as was Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None,  in which 13 strangers meet at an isolated hotel at the invitation of an invisible host and are all accused of murder - at which point they all start dying, leaving the remaining guests to wonder who killed who.

I don't really fancy killing the entire cast this week, so - one Southern Gothic, post-war Clue-style murder party it is. 

  In the interest of providing some room for development and explore some new ground, I think it'd be kind of cool to explore post-war Mansion House - a building that has returned to being a hotel, to which all of our Mercy Street friends have been invited back for the weekend when Silas Bullen, the Quartermaster we all love to hate who has also been invited to this odd reunion weekend, dies suddenly and unexpectedly. The characters are trying to catch up on what's happened since they last saw each other ten years previously, and figure out who killed the odious former officer. Any character we met during the two seasons is fair game for inclusion! 

@jomiddlemarch, @sagiow,  @fericita-s, @broadwaybaggins, @jamesknoxpolka have all expressed an interest in participating - and if anyone else wants in, speak up in the comments below. I'll start this week's writing, and tag someone else to write the next bit. Any style, perspective, or voice is encouraged - and it’s southern Gothic, so...an unhappy ten years is probably for the best. (I’m going to start with a less-than-satisfactory ending myself in the interest of getting another character back in the mix, and we’ll see where it goes.)

So - 1875. Grant is president. Country’s in the middle of a recession. Reconstruction’s still going on, and we’re back in Alexandria. 

 It frightened her, a little, coming back to Mansion House. For the whole stagecoach ride she’d worried over her gloves, her wedding ring, the trim on her dress, the ribbons of her bonnet. After ten years away, what would it look like? Certainly not the way she’d left it in 1865 - stained walls, scraped floors...memories.

Emma could still remember standing in the front hall the day they’d closed the hospital - the patients gone, the beds removed, walls dingy where men had rested heads or medicines had been spilled, stairs worn with use. For five years this had been her home, her family, even - and she was leaving it. She’d looked around, wondering if it was wise to try and commit it to memory, and then she’d taken her trunk out into the street, unable to look back. 

And she’d not been back, at all, since the war had ended. Her father had taken possession again and tried to wring five years of ill use out of the building’s walls and floors, and it had been hard work, but he’d done it - though the effort had likely been what had led James Green to an early grave. Her brother, of course, had wanted nothing to do with the place, too busy with the furniture factory to worry over the running of a hotel as well, and now, if Jimmy had his way, it would be sold.

“You look worried,” her husband said, from the seat opposite. It wasn’t a full coach - travelers from their neck of the woods being few and far between these days. “I’d have thought you’d enjoy coming back - being in civilization again.” She said nothing, and he went on. “If it’s about your sister, I wouldn’t pay her any mind. We’ve still got our pride, even if she hasn’t, and that’s worth more than a dozen fine dresses and a house in the city. No,” he went on, “We’ll be just fine - as soon as we sign those papers and sell up. And then there’ll be plenty of money for that new dress you’ve been wanting. Can’t have my wife looking like a pauper for her family.”

And whose fault is it we’re poor? Emma wanted to say. Whose choice was it to refuse a federal pardon so that no decent folk would employ you, and to take a parish in the poorest county in Virginia because they were the only ones who’d have you? Pride doesn’t put food on the table, or a roof over our heads. But she’d learned much in ten years about men’s moods, about staying silent, and “being ‘haved”, as her Sunday School students would say. 

The coach pulled up, and he opened the door for her, helping her out into the street and then ordering their bags down from the roof, leaving her to contemplate the outside of the hotel, the words MANSION HOUSE HOTEL vivid once more over the doors, glass beautifully etched.

The first thing she noticed was the color - the richness of it, the vibrancy, crimson drapes and deep walnut woodwork, the navies and burgundies of thick carpet underfoot, well-lit from above by a magnificent, many-lamped gasolier. In her memories it was plain and whitewashed, and now? This hardly felt like the same place, especially with so many well-heeled travelers coming up and down the stairs, the ladies with their bustles and hats, the gentleman in waistcoats and jackets, not a shirtsleeve or apron to be seen. The air smelled of cigars, adding to the general air of well-fed opulence. 

Her husband breezed into the lobby behind her like he owned the place, leaning on the counter and giving the clerk one of his best, . All Emma could see was the back of his collar, fraying at the seam, one more testament to their present poverty.  “Good Morning. I’ve a room booked - and a meeting today with Mr. Green. We’re expected.”

“And who should I say is here, sir?” The clerk asked, looking as though he very much doubted both of those things, posing his glasses on his nose so he could inspect his register.

“Mr. and Mrs. Frank Stringfellow,” he announced, smiling back at his wife with the pleased look of a man who knows he has made a good bargain.

Emma tried to smile back, thinking, wanely, as she stood in the lobby to wait for her brother and took in the carpets, the chandelier, the wallpaper, of a different time and different faces, feeling the ring under her glove and wondering where she had gone wrong, why she had chosen to leave the hospital, had chosen to stay in Virginia, had chosen Frank.

- @jomiddlemarch - your turn! 

[underceruleanwater]

This is the last one for today, but I love how some tries to undermine Slade’s role in what happened to Jericho by putting the blame on Titans. Slade is the killer. Slade is the reason. Slade is solely the person, who is at fault. The end of story here. He went around killing people for money. He harmed his family with his actions. His actions had a consequences. The blame is on a person who started it all by being a f*cking criminal and peace of shit. Jericho saw a fight between Robin and his dad and despite his love for later choice to save Robin. Why? Because Jericho clearly saw in that moment what a monster his dad is. And that monster killed him. He killed his son the moment he started killing people around for money without thinking how it would affect his family and most importantly his son. Don’t even try to “whitewash” his actions. While Titans flawed bunch of idiots (and I love and hate him for this at the same time), Jericho’s blood not on their hand. It’s only on Slade. Don’t even make excuses to this peace of shit. Stop making excuses to villains and blame others for their actions. Otherwise you are not better than Titans that put blame on Jason and Dick. And you for sure not better than Slade Wilson, that too much a coward to face his own mistakes and accept the consequences of his own choices in life.

[iamthegaysmurf]

“The power when out. It’s not the end of the world.”

Okay, so. First of all, I want to apologize for how long you’ve been waiting, @darienplays6688.  I hope the payoff is worth it.

And second…  this thing severely got away from me.  It is by no means a “quick, short prompt fill.”  I’ve put it under a cut, because it ended up so long.  Sorry, guys.

———-

Set a week after the events of 3x06, a day (and a half) before the beginning of 3x07.

———-

It’s hard to be festive in a town like Purgatory.  Even the name suggests that happiness willalways be just out of reach.

Ringing in the new year doesn’t really feel like somethingworth celebrating.  Not with Dolls goneand Alice hidden away and Nedley going off the rails.  And they haven’t heard from Doc in a fullweek, ever since he walked out on their Christmas dinner.

Jeremy has been spending more time than usual in the BlackBadge office now that Bulshar and his beekeeper oompa loompas have been forcedto relocate his Murder Tree Factory after Robin was rescued and brought safelyback home.  Nicole can tell that he’sholding Robin at arm’s length now, despite how obvious it is he’d rather be in those arms, because he’s afraid toget another innocent person dragged into their perpetual shitstorm.

Mama spends her time flitting around the homestead with abig smile on her face, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and makes her look moresuspicious than Marshal Dolls had when he first moved to town.  The Earp sisters are too blind to see it, toocaught up in the belief that they might finally be putting their family backtogether one piece at a time, but Nicole has always been exceptional at readingpeople, and Michelle is throwing up red flags quicker than a matador in thePlaza de Toros.  

She’s hiding something. Something big.  Nicole just hasn’t been able to figure out what yet.  She’s also not doing a very good job ofhiding the restlessness that’s rippling just beneath the surface, either.  Nicole has seen it far too many times not torecognize the symptoms.  She’s getting readyto run, and Nicole can only hope that the inevitable fallout doesn’t break hergirls beyond Nicole’s ability to repair them.

Nicole will be starting on the campaign trail as soon as theholiday is over, and she really should be working on posters and buttons andspeeches full of promises that this cursed town will probably never let her actuallykeep.  Her appointment to Sheriff isn’tofficial yet, and she doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.

And Wynonna…  Well,Wynonna’s idea of a New Year’s Resolution is to never let her blood alcohollevel drop below the legal limit.  She’drather be holed up in the barn with her whiskey and self-loathing, ruminatingon all the ways she continues to fail the people she loves.

But Waverly had insisted on a party.

And no one in this god-forsaken town knows how to tellWaverly Earp no.

So here they all are, awkwardly gathered at the homestead,with a bowl of well-spiked punch and platters full of snacks and ridiculousparty hats and poppers and steamers hanging from every conceivablesurface.  Waverly’s newest pop obsessionrings out through the speakers, making Nicole cringe a bit, but at leastfeeling the bass line thumping in her chest helps to ward off the chill thathangs in the air from the blizzard that’s raging outside, whitewashing thedarkness and drowning out the moonlight.

Things are going fine.

Mostly.

As fine as anything can really be in a powderkeg of asituation.  

Wynonna’s drinking and above-average irritability,presumably owing to Doc… and something elseshe seems to be keeping under her hat – or more likely, in her pants – thesedays.  Mama’s thinly-veiled sarcasm aboutevery positive thing this group is desperately trying to hang on to, especiallywhen it comes to Nicole’s place among them, and now also her sideways glancesat the two newest additions.

Robin’s strange fascination with the Christmas tree and allof its trimmings that are still up from a week ago, particularly the pine conegarland, which Nicole is nearly certain she saw him pluck several seed scalesfrom, followed by a loud crunching sound that didn’t fit with any of the snacksWaverly had set out on the food table. Jeremy’s nervous energy, more obvious than usual, mostly directed athaving Robin present, but also with a wary eye constantly on the enormous,sticky snowflakes painting wet streaks against the outside of the frostedwindows.

Things are fine.

Until they aren’t.

The faint click that always signals the sudden halt ofelectricity through the lines might as well be a gunshot with the way it echoesaround the enclosed space of the homestead. An eerie silence immediately follows, a stark contrast to Waverly’smusic pouring through the speakers, and even the constant hum of the house –like a heartbeat proving that it’s alive– leaves behind a warped void that temporarily swallows all of the sound aroundthem.

It’s disconcerting, in a liminal space sort of way.  

The few short seconds of silence stretch for an inordinateamount of time – like a rubber band pushing the limits of its threshold – beforesnapping violently back into place.

Waverly and Robin groan with disappointment in the suddendarkness.  Mama makes a disgusted noisedeep in her throat, and Nicole can picture the way she’s rolling her eyes,despite there being no light.

Wynonna puts together a string of obscenities that’s farmore impressive than any of the strings of festive banners Waverly had hung around the room.

But the worst of it comes from Jeremy.

His voice is sheer panic as he begins to rambleincoherently, and Nicole tracks his movement in the darkness, following theloud shuffling of his frantic pacing.  

“Jesus fuck, Dr. Voldemort. The power went out.  It’s not theend of the world.”

“Wynonna,” Waverlyscolds.  It’s immediately followed by asoft thump and a loud hiss, which was almost certainly an elbow to theribs.  “And also,” Waverly addsmatter-of-factly, unable to help herself. “Voldemort wasn’t a doctor.  Hewas a dark wi—”

“Waverly…” Nicole cuts in gently.  She waits a beat in the darkness.  “Time and place…”

“Right, right.”  Shefeels soft fingers trail down the skin of her forearm beneath the cuff of her sleeve, resting snugly at her elbow.  “Sorry,”Waverly says sheepishly.

Nicole feels Robin shifting beside her, making a move towardthe rapidly-spiraling Jeremy, but she reaches out and stops him with a hand tothe shoulder.

“Why don’t you help Waverly find some candles and get a firestarted in the fireplace.”  She squeezeshis shoulder gently.  “I’ve got this.”

“Uhh…  yeah.  Yeah, okay.” She can tell he’s concerned, but she feels him relax slightly under hergrip.  “Thanks, Officer Haught.  Umm…  Imean Sheriff Haught.”

“Nicole will be fine,” she says, smiling into thedarkness.  With one final squeeze of hisshoulder, she nudges him toward the kitchen, where she can already hear Waverlyrummaging through drawers to find the matches.

Turning toward Jeremy, Nicole approaches him slowly,muttering a curse under her breath when she bangs her shin against the coffeetable she’d misjudged.  He’s fidgeting withhis phone, his face lit up like a child telling ghost stories around acampfire, but his hands are shaking too much for him to successfully find theflashlight app.  He’s still mumbling, tooquick and too low for Nicole to actually make any of it out, but she has apretty good idea what this is about.

“Jeremy…” she calls softly, not wanting to startle him.  He doesn’t respond, continuing to pace infront of her.  She reaches out to catchhis elbow as he passes, carefully leading him away from the rest of thegroup, over to the stairs, where they can sit without worrying about knockingthings over.

Nicole can feel his entire body vibrating, and she leans alittle closer, so that her shoulder and arm and leg press reassuringly againsthis side.  He lets his face fall into hishands, his phone forgotten, still ignoring all attempts Nicole makes at tryingto break through to him.

“Do you still get the nightmares?” she finally asks, and hegoes rigid next to her.

“How…”  His head snapsup and whips around to face her.  Waverlyhas a few candles lit on the food table now, and Robin has managed the beginningsof a fire, glowing softly in the hearth. Nicole watches the faint glint of Jeremy’s eyes dart around the roomnervously.  “How do you know about that?”

“I get them, too,” she says so low that only Jeremy can hearas she reaches out to take his hand in hers. It’s cold and clammy, and she feels the warmth of her own hand slowlystart to seep into his skin.  

“You…  You do?”  She can see the shadow of his Adam’s applebob in the flickering light as he swallows thickly.

“Of course,” she admits plainly.  “It’s always worst when the darkness comes.”

“Is it…”  He shiftsuncomfortably, but doesn’t make a move to withdraw his hand from hers.  “Is it that night… in the forest?” he finallyasks.

“Yeah,” Nicole breathes, her own head hanging slightly asher shoulders slump forward a little to mirror his position.  “I had them for years when I wasyounger.  They finally went away when Iwas in high school.”  She looks away fromhim for a moment, fighting the burn behind her eyes.  “But ever since the…  the…” She looks back at him, shrugging one of her shoulders.  “Well,” she says gruffly.  “They’re back now.”

Jeremy nods, uncharacteristically quiet in the moment.  The house around them is still silent, savefor the soft hissing and popping of the fire Robin continues to stoke, and themuttered grumbling coming from Wynonna’s corner.  Nicole can tell Waverly is runninginterference for the two of them over here on the steps, and her gratefulnessfor that causes a faint warmth to bloom in her chest, welcome against the coldmemories of the massacre in the woods just over twenty years ago.

“It started with a blizzard like this,” Jeremy finally says,breaking the silence unexpectedly.  Nicolepulls herself away from the images of the man dressed in black leathers, hismanic smile glinting in the moonlight while she shivered, alone, beneath anearby canoe.  Her vision swims for amoment, but then comes into focus on the hard lines set deeply into Jeremy’sforehead.

“Your accident?” she prompts gently when he fails tocontinue.  

“Yeah,” he nods.  “Mymom…”  His voice trembles every bit as muchas his hand does where it still rests in Nicole’s.

She gives him a minute to collect himself, letting him drawstrength from her presence and her patience.

“I was eleven,” he eventually says after clearing his throatroughly.  “It was snowing out – it hadbeen for most of the week – but we were supposed to go to this stupid awardsbanquet…”  His voice cracks, and he dropshis head into his free hand, his entire body shuddering.

“Hey,” Nicole soothes, bringing her other hand up and usingboth of them to squeeze Jeremy’s hand tightly. “It wasn’t your fault, Jeremy.”

“It was,” he snapssharply.  He moves to pull away, but shedoesn’t let him.

“It wasn’t,” she says again, firmly.  “You were just a kid.  It wasn’t your fault.”

He collapses against her and begins to sob.  Nicole finally lets his hand go, only to wrapher arms around his shoulders.  They staylike that for several minutes, until his breathing evens back out and he pullsaway enough to sit upright again.  Heleaves his head resting on her shoulder, though.

“We went off the road,” he finally manages through a sniffle.  “We went off the road, and the snow was sobad, it took them three days to find us.”

“Three days?”  Nicole’seyes go wide, and she’s unable to keep the shock out of her voice.

“Yeah,” he says, still not looking at her.  “I was trapped in there with her for threedays.  The snow drifts covered the windowsand everything.  It was…”  He clears his throat again, but his nextwords still come out as a whisper anyway. “Everything was so dark.”

“I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” Nicole murmurs, wrapping her arm alittle tighter around his shoulders and pulling him closer into his side.

“Storms like this… They make me kinda…”  He flaps hishands around dramatically.  “Antsy.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then he snorts loudly.

“Well.  More antsythan usual, anyway.”

Nicole can’t help but chuckle at that, too, but he sobers upagain quickly and she follows his lead.

“How do you, uh…”  Hefinally glances up at her.  “Y-youknow.  Deal with the nightmares?”

“To be completely honest,” she sighs, “it’s more like thenightmares deal with me.”

“Oh.”  Jeremy frowns,and Nicole’s eyes flick toward Waverly for a moment before looking back at himagain.

“But the main thing is…” Her eyes soften a little, just like they always do when she talks aboutWaverly.  “The main thing is knowing thatI don’t have to face them alone anymore.”

“Oh.”  Jeremy’s browfurrows for a moment.  He glances over atRobin and then back toward Nicole, and his cheeks flush red in thefirelight.  “Oh.”

Nicole chuckles again.

“I didn’t just mean it like that,” she says, rolling her eyes playfully.

“Oh,” Jeremy says again, like it’s the only word he knowsright now.  “Good.  Because we haven’t… uh… you know…”  His hands are flailing around again.

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Nicole says, shaking herhead before he can make things any more awkward.

“S-sorry,” he stutters, and she thinks he might be wishingfor Wynonna to put a bullet between his eyes with Peacemaker so that the floorwould swallow him whole.

“No, it’s fine,” she says quickly.  “Just. Um…  What I meant was…  Now that I have you guys,” she gesturesaround the room, “a family… I knowthat I’m not alone like I was when I was a kid.”

Jeremy raises a skeptical eyebrow at Wynonna, who seems tobe having and honest to god argument with the weather through the window rightnow.

“And you aren’t, either,” Nicole says, getting his attentionas she squeezes his shoulder again.  “Alone,I mean.  You have us now.  All of us.” She eyes Wynonna for a moment.  “Eventhe crazy drunk ones,” she mutters.

“You really think so?” Jeremy asks, sounding somewherebetween hopeful and skeptical.

“I know so,” Nicole answers without hesitation.  “You remember that fire we talked about?” sheasks, tapping her finger to her chest, over her heart.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, the hint of a grin tugging at thecorners of his mouth.  He flattens hispalm against his own chest.

“Don’t forget about it,” Nicole says seriously.  “Remember that you’re as much a part of our fireas we are a part of yours.”

He nods his head vigorously, unable to fight the grin anylonger.  

Nicole glances over to where Robin is still hovering nearthe fireplace.  He’s pacing slowly,keeping an eye on the stairs, but maintaining a respectable distance, notwanting to intrude.  She catches his eyeand he stops moving, tilting his head slightly. She smiles and nods at him subtly, and she can see his entire body relaxat the gesture.

“Well,” she says, turning back to Jeremy.  “It’s probably pretty close to midnight.  You should go and get your guy.  I think he’s waiting for you.”

Jeremy turns to look at Robin and gives him a little wavebefore looking back at Nicole.

“My guy…” he whispers, his eyes glazing over dreamily.  “He’s myguy.”

“Yes,” Nicole laughs. “He is.”

Jeremy pushes himself up off the stairs, still a littleshaky, and nearly trips over his own feet during his first steps towardRobin.  He stops and leans against therailing, gathering himself for a moment. Before taking another step, he looks back over at Nicole, opening andclosing his mouth a few times, though nothing actually comes out.

Nicole reaches up and pats his hand.  She nods at him once, and watches the airrush out of his lungs.  He pauses for afew more seconds before he finally finds his breath again.

“Nicole…  Thanks,” isall he manages to say, but it’s enough.

“Any time,” she smiles back. “Just remember,” she adds, tapping her chest again, “you’re not alone.”

He mirrors her movement, like he’s making a pledge, and thenhe turns in a hurry and shuffles over to Robin, who greats him by holding outone of his arms for Jeremy to slip under so that he can tuck himself into Robin’sside.  Nicole watches them quietly for afew minutes until she feels Waverly approaching from her other side.

“Hey, baby,” she says, letting Waverly’s proximity chase thelast of the darkness from her own head.

“You’re amazing,” Waverly says, plopping down on the stepnext to Nicole.

Nicole quirks a surprised eyebrow at her.

“You are,” Waverly says, grabbing Nicole’s hand and playingwith her fingers.  “What you just did forhim?  You’re amazing.”

She feels the heat rising in her cheeks and ducks her head.

“We just…”  Sheglances up at Waverly.  “I get it.  What he’s going through.  Sort of…”

“I know you do, baby.” Waverly leans in and kisses Nicole lightly on the cheek.  “I’m glad he has someone like you that he can talkto about it.”

Nicole takes a minute to survey the room.  Robin and Jeremy have settled on the floor bythe fireplace, leaning back against the couch. Mama and Wynonna are huddled in the opposite corner, and though it givesNicole a slightly uneasy feeling, she decides not to dwell on it tonight.  She and Waverly have a rare moment ofprivacy, and she takes advantage of it, reaching out to tip Waverly’s chin upuntil she can kiss her properly for the first time in several hours.

“Alright, mothers and fuckers,” Wynonna yells suddenly, andNicole groans at her uncanny ability to interrupt.  “We’re on the final countdown to midnight,and then I get to make out with this whiskey bottle like it’s 1999.”

Wynonna watches the seconds tick down on her phone, and theyall join in on the countdown.  EvenMama.  

True to her word, Wynonna shoves her tongue as far into thebottle as she can get it, but Nicole ignores her, finding Waverly’s lips andallowing herself to get lost in the moment, despite the amount of hecklingcoming from the peanut gallery.

“Well,” Mama finally says, clearing her throat loudly.  “There’s no way anyone is leaving in thisstorm, so it looks like we’re having a sleepover.”  Her voice is tight, and Nicole takes a small amount of pleasure from her discomfort.  “I’m sure y’all know where the blankets are inthis house better than I do.”

“Yeah.  And the wallsare stupid thin,” Wynonna grumbles, glaring directly at Waverly andNicole.  “So if me and Mr. Jack Danielshear anything that will scar us for life, coming from any of you…”  She swings thebottle around, pointing it at both couples. “Then I will make sure it’s yourshoes I vomit in.  Capiche?”

“Goodnight,Wynonna,” Waverly says, rolling her eyes and dragging Nicole up the stairs.

Maybe things will be fine after all.

[aldiwali]

8. your favourite graphic and or gif created by yourself

aaa probably this one?? it’s one of the first ones i did but .. the base panel was so good & it just. i think it turned out nice!! also this one was really cute.. i haven’t done gifs past then because i don’t wanna deal with downloading eps & shit like that (i don’t have the patience.. adhd mood) & i feel guilty using others’ gifs as bases even when they say it’s ok but! i think it’s. she’s babey

10. what graphics / gif trends do you dislike most?

i don’t… i don’t really dislike any? um i’m not really “in the graphic community” in that i’ve never like. studied it & i’ve only recently made them & made friends like u who make them too (& ofc bc of that i pay more attention to fully appreciate everyone’s works but!!! aa)

um if there’s a trend... whitewashing SDKFFJ like it’s not so much a Trend as a byproduct of heavy psds? yeah. also i really like soft colors & lining so when it’s just. Harsh (this is mostly from my experience in the rpc) it’s ... yeah.

oh and flashing things?? especially on people’s themes / whatever where there’s not a warning?? i rly don’t have patience for that ;; and those edits where it’s like. it’s clear it’s not meant to be readable / consumed well & it just looks like a blur & u can’t tell what’s going on????

OH AND THE LIP THING. MY PET PEEVE. this hasn’t appeared in the op fandom (yet.. thank goodness) but in the bnha fandom adding a giant lip to characters they hc as black or even to be of color ..... like.. it looks ugly?? first of all bc it’s not done how it would Actually look & kinda just arbitrarily placed like “oh they have big lips look im inclusive :)” & it’s clear they’re just using stereotypes & not putting thought into it? (ex: giving east asians big lips too even though east asians tend to have thin lips????) and it’s just. Not Handled well. and the noses too they’re so often made to be. caricatures really. like when doing indian characters they’ll make it like a giant triangle or something and it’s .... it’s like they tried so hard to be inclusive that they looped around and just made it racist.

11. what graphics / gif trends do you like most?

coloring things sdkfdkfjdskfj it’s so pretty.... i esp love seeing people’s colors for characters that haven’t been given official colors yet, esp when i like them better than the original!! um & just.. everything saint does w their graphics are. SO good i’ve talked abt this before for like an hour in my gc but.. Holy shit

21. how much time do you spend on a single graphic / gif?

i don’t usually do gifs??? like i’ve done it one (1) time. um but with graphics.... it really depends. how complicated is it? is there background? how many charas? do i already have headcanons for what the chara looks like or am i figuring it out as i go along? mmm i’ve been trying to spend more time on my graphics recently so i can try to be more proud of them but? for a single character no background panel... 20 min? it really depends tho because most of mine i make during lectures in class,, meaning that i’m not 100% engaged with it or anything,, it’s more like i’m doodling but instead i’m. editing graphics.

32. the least notes a graphic / gif of yours has ever gotten that you feel deserves way more. (link it!)

agjdskfjdsf i don’t really like my graphics very much? i think i’ve said this before. like to find things for this ask (part of why it took so long) i went through my shit and found like.. 5 i liked. and so it’s not so much “i think i deserve more notes” as i “wish it would have been better before i posted it but also like. i’m done with it at this point..” the ones i do like tend to get noticed, even if it’s like a week after it’s posted? so i think the least is like .. 71 notes? & 72 notes. those 2 respectively fsdkfj. now if it was about my art… there’s a recent alyanette i posted on @/atvie but it’s not rly noticed but that’s ok!! fskdfj

there are some graphics that are low-effort but i wish had more notes just because i want to interact with the fandom but the fandom’s like. Really Small like with lookism & act-age & oresama teacher (like my most recent posts basically) so i don’t really expect much sdfjdkj

38. are you working on anything right now? if yes, show us a work in progress!

i’m not really? like i’ll start one & then i’ll be like. Fuck it. & just never look at it again because it gets buried in all of my other pages but. here’s one from last night?? that im probably never gonna finish also click maybe bc tumblr quality is .. Not Great... this one was wild cause i had my colors in mind & then once i was done with the clothing i just. switched them to the canon colors (mostly) by looking up the anime cap & while it may be more fitting to them i Don’t Like the Colors. also i gave robin a pantsuit. yes i know she was on the fire side of the island but she’s goth smh... u gotta have dedication

ask meme  /  @toooticki​