#in the exact form bruce will later use to teach them

[superbat-lmao]

In college, Harvey and Harley would poke fun at being Bruce’s first friends. He’d been so closed off with all those rich kids that it took him until college to really find his people.

But that’s not entirely true.

Bruce would say he had a lot of friends actually, just that none of them stuck around for very long. Meeting each of them was completely accidental. And strange. It has taken him a while to figure out what was happening, but once he got one of them to admit to it, the rest caved pretty quick.

You see, Bruce’s friends were time travelers.

They had crazy suits, some skin tight, others padded like a SWAT team, and all of them made of stuff Bruce had never seen before. They could also do insane tricks they were willing to teach Bruce, like backflips and knife throwing when he was old enough. They promised to teach him more each time they came back through time.

They wouldn’t give him their names, but they all had nicknames for each other and that worked well enough. Didn’t want to blow up the time-space continuum.

He met “Wing” first. He’d felt moronic calling someone that looked like an adult something that wasn’t a real name, but by the time Jay, Red, and Robin turned up, he caught on to the bird theme. The girls didn’t stick with the bird thing and neither did Tom, although the knew that was a fake name, especially because Robin would often try and call him Thomas, so he assumed it was close.

So yes actually, Bruce had friends before he met Harley and Harvey. He was just waiting for the day he would meet them in his time.

[ynscrazylife]

i’m a simple gal...... i like seeing natasha being overprotective and a little homicidal SO could i please request some cute mentor!almost itherlynat x reader? maybe reader gets badly hurt during training or someone on the team hurts her feelings? mamabear stabs? 🥺

More Than A Mentor | n.r fluff fic

Summary: After an accident, Y/N realizes her and Natasha’s relationship goes beyond mentor and mentee.

Authors Note: Thank you for requesting! I’ve missed writing Marvel/Natasha.

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PSA: Do NOT copy, steal, translate, plagiarize, republish, etc any of my works on Tumblr or any other platform. Also, do NOT claim any of my works as your own. All of works are either requests I’ve gotten that people have wanted me to write or original ideas I’ve had for works. If you happen to take inspiration from anything I’ve written and want to write something inspired by that, please a) ask me first and b) IF I say yes, credit me as inspo in your post by tagging me and link whatever work of mine that inspired you. Thanks.

header c @/marvelocks

Natasha was not an easy mentor, and Y/N learned that quickly. She was understanding and patient, yes, but she also knew when to push Y/N and went to be a little stricter. 

The thing was, Y/N was never completely sure what side she’d get of her mentor at what time - though she found herself not having to worry about it after . . . The Accident. 

That disastrous day would go down in the team’s history, yet no one liked to talk about it. It was a day Y/N would never forget: it changed . . . everything.

It was one of the rare days that Y/N wasn’t training with Natasha. She had a meeting with Fury so Steve filled in for her. Y/N was not accustomed to training with a super soldier, and had to quickly adjust (it didn’t make it any easier that he had his shield, too). 

She was doing well - at least, she wanted to think that she was - and so far had deflected almost every punch from Steve, managing to get one or two punches against him herself. 

Nonetheless, the air was knocked out of her when Steve slammed her against the mat. She grunted, angry only fueling the pain when she saw that stupid smirk on his face, and used that to her advantage; he wouldn’t expect her to recover so quickly (and in truth, neither did she) but she did it anyway, throwing all her weight against the Captain. She secured he legs around his waist like Natasha taught her and, using the strength in her legs and pushing his broad shoulders, just about managed to get herself out from being pinned on the mat. Now, though, they were both sorta sitting on the mat, so Y/N kneed him in the chest, pushing him down. 

“You’re good,” he whispered, just slightly out of breath, before he - seemingly without using any strength at all - threw her to the side where she rolled. 

Y/N cursed under her breath, getting her feet. It was impossible to win against a super-soldier! Think, Y/N, think, what did Natasha teach you? Cmon! 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve grabbing his shield, and got in a stance to either catch it or evade it - she hadn't decided yet - when yells distracted her. In her hyped up, adrenaline-pumped state, the first thing that came to Y/N’s mind was that someone was hurt. She was about to call of the training when a large, solid force smacked into her stomach, sending her flying into the air where she hit the wall, losing consciousness. 

Steve's eyes widened, not thinking it’d actually hit her, and jumped into action. “Who the hell screamed?” The blonde yelled as he ran to his fallen teammate. He carefully turned her on her back and looked her over for injuries, seeing bruises and bleeding starting to form on her stomach and ankle and her head bleeding. 

Bucky and Sam practically crashed inside the room, trying to beat each other. 

“He threatened me!” Sam exclaimed. 

“He tried to steal my metal arm!” Bucky defended. 

Both men came to a screeching halt when they digested the scene, though. Steve rolled his eyes at his idiotic friends and tried to put pressure on Y/N’s head wound. “Sam, get Bruce, please. Tell him to prepare med - and Bucky, get Natasha. She’ll want to be here,” he ordered, and the men nodded, guilty. 

Steve carefully picked Y/N up in his arms and hoisted her into the air, carrying her to med where Bruce and Helen were, Sam explaining the situation to them. Instantly, Helen jumped into action. She instructed Steve to lay Y/N down on one of the med’s beds and then ushered the men out of the room, where she then began grabbing various medical things and assessing Y/N’s injuries, instructing Bruce to hook her up to an IV.

Steve and Sam stood outside, not saying a word to each other, both pacing back and forth. They did not have to be silent for long, though, because pounding footsteps soon approached and the men looked up to see a very furious Natasha with Bucky trailing behind her. 

The redhead’s eyes fell onto the closed med doors and huffed, turning back to Steve. “I leave her with you for training one day and she gets hurt?!” She demanded, crossing her arms and glaring at him. 

Steve swallowed. “Nat, I-” He began to say, but was cut off. 

“What happened?” Natasha asked. 

Steve glanced up at her, first irritated when she asked him a question and then interrupted him whilst he was answering, but backed off when he saw the urgency, the nervousness in her eyes; she was scared. Scared that Y/N was really hurt and guilty. 

“We were training. I threw my shield at her, expecting her to catch it or duck . . . But Sam and Buck distracted her and it hit her,” he said, not wanting to throw his friends under the bus but also knowing he had to be truthful.

Natasha stood in place, processing the information. She took a breath, and had almost completely calmed down when Bucky decided to open his mouth.

“Y’know, if anything we tested her. What if someone yelled during a mission? Is she gonna get distracted then?” He mumbled, not really meaning it but wanting to spare him and Sam Natasha’s wrath.

Karma’s a bitch, though, because it did the exact opposite.

If you blinked you’d miss it: Natasha swiftly turned and pushed Bucky against the wall, pinning him there with his hands above his hand.

“Don’t you dare start blaming this on Y/N, you hear me?” She said in a low tone, glaring.

Bucky quickly nodded and Natasha released him. When she did, the door opened and Helen appeared.

“She’ll be okay—” Helen began, and Natasha let out a breath of relief, “—but she does need to be off training for at least a month. She has a concussion, broken ankle, and . . . the shield sort of stabbed her in her stomach.”

It took a couple moments for all four to digest this. Steve paled and Natasha’s crossed arms for tighter as she bit her lip. “Can I see her?” She asked.

“She’s still unconscious, but yes,” Helen answered, nodding.

Natasha almost failed to contain the gasp lurching to leave her throat when she saw Y/N, all bandaged up. The spy gulped and sat down beside her, not knowing what else to do other than sit there, and had no clue what she’d say when Y/N woke up because she sure as hell wasn’t leaving her. Thankfully, Natasha had some time to think it out.

Almost a day later and Natasha hadn’t left — Clint had convinced her to go sleep and eat for a couple hours, but that was it — and now, Y/N woke up.

“Ms. Romanoff?” Y/N murmured in a haze of confusion, squinting her eyes to see her mentor curled up in a chair, reading a big book.

Natasha snapped her head up and immediately sat forward, a smile covering her face. “Y/N! You’re awake? How are you feeling? And how many times have I told you to call me ‘Natasha’?”

Y/N blushed but nodded. “I’m fine, probably the painkillers’ doing though . . . How long was I out?” She said.

“Around a day,” Natasha answered.

“Did you . . . Did you stay here?” Y/N asked again, a little smaller this time, playing with her blanket.

“Most of it, yeah,” Natasha murmured, relaxing into the chair.

“Really? You’re-you’re not mad?” Y/N said, eyes wide and jaw dropped in surprised.

Natasha scrunched her face up. “What? No — of course I’m not mad! You’re like my daughter! How could I be—?”

Natasha was cut off by Y/N’s loud, yet thankful gasp. The teenager sat up and wrapped her arms around Natasha and, after a moment, Natasha smiled and wrapped her arms around her too.

Y/N truly was like her daughter, and mothers were always protective over their children.

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[nincompoopydoo]

PAIRING, BAGELS, REPEAT

— I’VE SEEN FIRE, I’VE SEEN RAIN ; PART 2 / ?

PAIRING: Bruce Wayne x reader

WORD COUNT: 1909

SUMMARY: Being laid off isn’t very fun but Bruce tends to find himself even more entangled in your life, including his alter ego—Batman.

A/N: I’m loving this series and if you are, feedback is appreciated. Thank you for reading my crappy stuff aka my daydreams <3

WARNINGS: Guns! Death threats! Crying! A mental breakdown!

MASTERLIST ; MASTERPOST

James Taylor’s Fire and Rain plays like a funeral hymn on the record player, echoing through your studio apartment. You’re sitting on the ground, back against the ratty couch with a pizza box on your lap. You take a bite of a BBQ Chicken pizza slice, furiously wiping your tears away as you replayed the events from six hours ago. From being called to the principal's office to only be told that you’re one of the non-tenured teachers to be laid off due to cutbacks. Gotham High was...a tough school. The students were mean to you because well, you're young and always gave them the benefit of the doubt. Plus, you taught English Literature and frankly, your students didn’t exactly enjoy the subject as much as you wanted them to. Nevertheless, you’re devastated. Teaching was a dream of yours, and it’s being taken away from you. You cried all the way back home, tried to call your mother but it kept going to voicemail. You must have called someone else, but you don’t remember and couldn’t care less to check your phone—the whole day went by like a blur.

Then, there’s a sound. An insistent buzz, it’s the doorbell. You furrow your brows, not recalling ordering anything else other than the large pizza from Domino’s. Yet, it doesn’t cease, and you’re forced to bring yourself to stand on your feet, instinctively flattening your tousled hair to make yourself seem somewhat presentable. Like, you’re doing fine and you have everything completely under control. Maybe, you did call your mother, and she’s at the door. You’re hoping she is although she’s going to kill you for the mess.

Another buzz and you’re toddling across the wooden flooring and towards the doorway. It’s starting to become infuriating by the second, like a house fly don’t won’t stop bugging you. Considering the mood you’re in, it doesn’t take much to tick you off. Swinging the door open, you expected to see the radiant face of your mother but to your surprise, it’s not.

It’s Bruce.

Shit.

You haven’t seen him in two weeks.

You nearly choke at the sight of him in a slightly crumpled oxford blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair as much of a mess as yours and tired eyes staring down at you with concern. You note how Bruce is very charming, no matter how disarrayed he is. Meanwhile, you’re realizing the current state must be a little startling. Your eyes are probably bloodshot, hair still in a tangled mess and glaring tomato stains everywhere on your GCU t-shirt. This is such a low point for you.

“Bruce,” you say, voice raising an octave with wide eyes as you stare at him like he’s grown another head, “What are you doing here?” His frown is immediate, seemingly confused by your question. “You called me.” He gestures to his phone within his grasp. “It sounded bad even though I couldn’t make out what you were saying half of the time,” He chuckles and holds up a familiar looking paper bag “So, I got you bagels. Three of them. Thought you could use some of these.”

It takes a second or two for you to finally process what he just told you before your emotionally wrecked brain decides to do the most irrational thing ever—You just start sobbing. You’re crying so hard that it terrifies Bruce. He blinks, thoughts racing. The sight of you in complete misery strikes him like a punch to his gut and for the first time, he doesn’t know what to do. Not immediately. Yet, through glassy eyes, you manage to notice the way his face dropped and morphed into pure horror. Justification is key, you don’t want to weird him out and think you’re crazy. You wave your hand in the air dismissively, rubbing your eyes as you spoke between strangled sobs. “I’m sorry, it’s been a tough day and that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me all week.”

Oh.

Your words are a tug to the heartstrings, and it sends his head reeling but relief was all that overwhelmed him. Bruce would never wish to see you hurt, especially when it’s caused by him. Actions of affection were primarily reserved for those closest to him, but he never experienced the urge to be intimate and care so much for a person ever since his parents died. Yet, out of everyone, you’re the one that brings out the most in him. Moving closer to you, he reaches and pulls you in a hesitant embrace. You stiffened at the mere touch of his arms around you, unsure of what to do with yourself.

Sure, you had a fair share of intimate moments with the man but this, this was different. You couldn’t shake the thought of how something so warm felt so right, smelt right. Despite the fact you had been trying to suppress your feelings for Bruce, and this was doing the exact opposite of that, you can’t help but feel this was what you needed at the moment. So, you let your body sag, muscles becoming loose and you let yourself truly cry for the first time.

You end up inviting him in later, when your tears are dry. You eat two of the bagels, sharing the last one with him. You called a peace offering, a gift of appreciation, for the whole emotional massacre you unexpectedly shoved at him. He simply laughs, eyes crinkling with fondness. He thinks you’re beautiful, especially when your hair is wild, laughing like you don’t have a care in the world. It’s what keeps him grounded, to know you’re raw and very real. The next thing you know, you end up shuffling cards of UNO until the wee hours of the morning—exchanging knowing smiles and Bruce trying to pick a Wild Draw card from the deck to get you to lose. But, he lets you win anyway.

He slept on your couch that night, still in his dress shirt. You must've peeked a glance at his sleeping form, squeezed onto the couch that’s clearly too small for him. Cute. You snap a picture before heading to bed. For blackmail purposes, of course.

-

You end up working a night shift at a burger joint called Big Belly Burger somewhere in midtown. Your first week comes and goes, and you’re starting to hate how your uniform itches and how the restaurant can get really filthy by the end of the day. Yet, it’s the kids from Cameron Kane High that come after school that keeps you going because it makes you miss being a teacher even though they tend to leave a mess after a meal.

Thursday comes and you’re exhausted. Even so, you’re thankful it’s a slow night. You’ve done all your cleaning duties earlier on and Lucie, the manager went out to buy a pack of cigarettes from the convenience store around the corner. Hence, it’s just you, slumped against the counter, devouring a Triple Belly Burger.

You’re half way through the burger when you hear the door swing open. Expecting to see Lucie, you turned around to see two men brandishing handguns your way. “Everything from the register, now!” The taller masked man shouted, gun gesturing to the cash register. Your eyes are wide, and you can feel your chest heaving. There was no way you’ll be able to fight them. Not two of them with guns pointed at you.

The burger drops from your hand and so does your heart. With trembling hands, you slide the drawer of the cash register open and begin pulling out dollar notes. From the corner of your eye, you spot your phone on the counter, close enough for you to make an emergency call. Your eyes scan the two men wearily and with every ounce of courage you had left, you managed to unlock your phone, pulled up the messaging app and texted the first name on the list: Bruce Wayne.

help, was all you managed to say.

To say your luck ran out was an understatement; you were never lucky anyway. One of the robbers must have caught on to what you were doing and just as the call goes through, he snatches your phone away, throws it onto the ground and shoots it.

So close, yet so far.

You don't know if the message got through.

The muzzle is now inches away from your forehead, and you hear the cock of the gun. “Don’t you dare pull somethin’ funny like or I’ll blow your brains out. Give us the money, now.” It was in that moment, your tears give way and your life flashes before your eyes. You pray for a miracle, a savior.

Then, you see him.

A looming figure appears by the doorway and your breath hitches. It’s Batman, looking like a Goddamn angel. The robbers seem to realize this too, guns quickly directed towards the vigilante. He launches batarangs to the pair of men and immediately disarms them. In a flash, he knocks them out, unconscious bodies dropping to the ground like dead flies.

You stare at him in awe although he’s very frightening and intimidating but Batman...just saved you. Now, this is a story you’re going to be telling everybody until the day you die. He approaches you with caution, and you instinctively take a step back. Then, he calls you by your name like it’s second nature. You stare at him with blank amazement, brows raised.

“You know my name?” Your voice dwindled; It’s so soft and timid you hardly hear yourself. Despite the mask, the vigilante looks like his brain just short-circuited for a moment. He clears his throat.

“...Bruce has mentioned you.”

You ignore how his synthetic voice makes every hair on the back of your neck stand and the familiarity that struck for a split second when he said your name because you’re too wrapped up with the fact that Bruce has discussed about you to his other ‘best friend’ as one might call it. Brooding over this lump of a thought, the corner of your mouth twitches. “He did?” you say with a hint of affection. It’s hard to read the man under the mask, whoever he was but you’re certain he looked taken aback by your response. Maybe, it was the way you delivered it—the longing in the very core of the expression. You may have outed your feelings for Bruce to...Batman.

This doesn’t get any stranger than that.

“Yes,” he replies curtly, and you hear the police sirens afar. “Are you hurt?” Like the true caretaker of Gotham, he wants to be sure you haven’t been injured. You shake your head, lips pressed together. The whaling of the police sirens grow louder, lights of red and blue flashing before your eyes. He appears like a shadow against the glaring lights from the police cruisers and before you can blink, he flees with a muttered ‘Goodnight’ and disappears before the police come flooding in and does Lucie. The poor woman looked at with frantic eyes as soon as she glimpsed the two men on the ground, groaning in pain.

The glint of the batarang on the floor captures your attention, you smile at this.

You may or may not have taken it back to your apartment that currently sits proudly on the bookshelf in your living room.

You’re so telling Bruce.

TAGLIST:

@raineeace

[meanids]

Missing you

My secret Santa recipient was @moonlightstar64 !!! I saw you liked Mari being the bio!sibling of one of the Batfam, so I got a bit carried away with this big brother Jason fic, I hope you enjoy it!!! (Part 2 of the gift is here)

@maribat-secret-santa-2020

Jason tapped his foot impatiently on the floor, and gave another over dramatic sigh, which gained multiple glares from his siblings. They were meant to be visiting the Marché de Noël at Notre Dame to do a bit of christmas shopping and get food, and he was starving.

But for some god forsaken reason his brothers were taking ages to get ready, and he was sick of waiting for them. He opened his mouth to give another complaint when Alfred cut him off, sending him a stern glare.

“If you cannot wait any longer Master Jason, I suggest you go on ahead and get something to eat and stop fussing. We will be along shortly.” It didn’t take much else for Jason to get the message, Alfred had had enough of his impatience and wanted him out.

With one short glare at the rest of his (incredibly slow) family, Jason turned and left the hotel, determined to make the walk to the market as quick as possible. It had just begun snowing again, and the sunlight was quickly disappearing, giving the streets of Paris a magical feel.

He would never admit it straight up, but he was actually enjoying the forced family vacation, even if his family infuriated him sometimes. It was the first year he’d ever actually accepted the invitation to join them, and despite all his worries, it’d been going surprisingly well.

The tradition to have a Christmas vacation had started a few years ago, when Alfred had decided that he’d had enough of missed Christmas dinners and that the whole family deserved to enjoy a holiday. Alfred had determined that the best way to fully remove the temptations of working over Christmas, would simply be to forcibly take Bruce out of Gotham altogether. Of course Bruce put up a fuss, and so did the rest of their workaholic family, but there was no fighting Alfred sometimes.

It didn’t stop most of them from bringing cases to work on, but it still gave them all a much needed break, as well as a whole lot of unspoilt ‘family bonding time’. Every year the location of the holiday changed, and this year Paris was decided on. As he walked along the streets, admiring how the strings of christmas lights glistened off the snow, he was glad he’d agreed to come this year.

He really was hungry though, and despite being so close to the market, he couldn’t wait to eat any longer. He spotted a small sign up ahead for a boulangerie patisserie, and the delicious smells and warm glow coming from inside, were enough to tempt Jason in.

As soon as he stepped in, his eyes darted straight to the display case, so distracted by his hunger that he almost didn’t notice how the shop assistance’s greeting abruptly cut off with a gasp.

Jason looked up to see what had caused their reaction, only to stop short himself, as his eyes landed on a girl with two familiar pigtails, who’s watering blue eyes were currently locked on him in shock.

“Jason?”

Marinette had never thought she would see Jason again. Not since she was 11 and saw the headline that had torn her heart in two, the one that had crushed all her hopes of one day being reunited with her brother.

When she was younger, freshly adopted and living in her new home in Paris, he was all she would ever talk about. Her parents would listen with a fond grin as she babbled on in broken french about how cool Jason was, and how much he would love it here, especially the food.

They had been separated after their mother had died, sent to different care homes despite all their protests. When her new parents had discovered that she had a brother, they had tried looking for him, only to find out Jason had run away a few weeks prior. Marinette had been heartbroken, but she knew deep down that Jason was looking for her, and one day they would see each other again.

Marinette had been a logical kid though, so she understood that the chance of Jason finding her in France, was extremely low. At best, Jason would be found and adopted by loving parents who would help him find her (which, knowing Gotham, was very unlikely), and at worst, he would have to wait until he was eighteen to look for her himself. She never even considered the possibility that he wouldn’t make it to eighteen.

Jason was a survivor. He was brave, kind, and always always looked out for her. Her mother had tried her best to take care of them both, Marinette knew that, but most of the time it was Jason looking after both of them. Jason had told her that she’d been the best Mom, before she got ill, and before their dad had made it worse, but Marinette was too young to remember the before.

All Marinette could remember was Jason. Jason was the one who cooked most nights, the one who made sure she was in bed on time, the one who got her ready for school each morning. He’d always try and protect her when their dad was in one of his moods, and always patched her up afterwards, no matter how much worse off he was.

No matter how bad some of her memories of Gotham were, Marinette didn’t want to forget Jason. So she did whatever she could to remember him. She told all her new friends about him, and insisted that her parents learnt how to make all his favourite foods.

She even kept her hair in the exact same style that Jason had always put it in. She’d used to complain that all the other girls had their hair in pretty styles, whilst hers was always boring and let down, so Jason had learnt how to do her hair. Granted, the only style he could do neatly were pigtails, but it was still better than nothing.

Every morning they would sit down, and Jason would brush her hair, making up grand tales for her whilst she sat quietly in awe. Those mornings were some of Marinette’s most cherished memories, so to make sure she never forgot, she got her Maman to teach her how to do them herself.

She wore them everyday, without fail, and would proudly tell anyone who commented on them, that it was for her brother. Marinette secretly hoped that it would also help Jason to recognise her when they were finally reunited.

It was also a habit for Marinette to watch the Gotham news every day. She still missed her old home despite how dangerous and corrupt it was, and watching it was a comfort, a way to keep in touch with her roots.

It was also how she found out that the adopted son of Bruce Wayne was killed in an explosion. She’d only been half paying attention, working on her homework whilst she waited for her parents to cook dinner, when she suddenly heard her brother’s name mentioned.

Her world had stopped as a picture of her brother, looking healthy and older in the arms of Bruce Wayne, was displayed on screen, with the newsreader calmly announcing his tragic death alongside it.

Marinette had been inconsolable for weeks, no amount of reassurance from her parents able to stop her tears. She spent days going through news articles, reading anything that mentioned her brother, saving every photo she could.

It hurt knowing that if she’d just paid more attention to Gotham, searched for her brother properly rather than just sit by and wait, she could’ve found him. Could’ve talked to him, let him meet her new family, meet his new family.

But now none of that was possible. Because he was dead and nothing could change that.

Marinette stopped watching Gothams news after that. She stopped talking about him because it hurt too much. She didn’t even tell Tikki at first, only telling her after she noticed the picture of him pinned to the wall next to her bed.

But despite how much the memories hurt now, Marinette still clung to them. The memories were the only things she had left of him, and even though it hurt too much to talk about, she didn’t want to pretend he didn’t ever exist.

So, even though she got teased for it being too childish, and even though it still stung to remember, she kept her hair in pigtails. A small reminder to herself to never forget, and to hold the good memories close.

Life had moved on, and even though Marinette still missed her brother, the pain wasn’t so raw anymore, feeling more like a dull ache rather than a bleeding wound. Still, Marinette always felt worse around the holidays, and liked to keep busy rather than dwell on the thought that Jason should be here, enjoying life, too.

The bakery was always hectic around the holidays, and gave Marinette the perfect excuse to busy herself and help out, often manning the till to give her parents a break.

It had been a miraculously quiet afternoon, which Marinette attributed to the local market, and she’d been doodling on a napkin when the bell chimed, indicating a customer. She’d straightened quickly, automatically greeting the customer, before she looked up and immediately froze.

Because standing in front of her, was what should’ve been a dead man. He looked older, as if he’d actually aged the last five years. She could see scars that weren’t there before, and his hair looked different, a streak of white in the front, but no matter all the changes, she was certain that was him.

That was Jason.

“Jay?”

She barely registered that she’d spoken, and her suspicions were confirmed when the man looked up in wide eyed shock. The tears that were forming in her eyes began to overflow as he replied, the Gotham accent as strong as ever.

“Nette?”

That was all it took for Marinette’s restraint to break, and she practically jumped the counter in her rush to get to him, to prove to herself that he was really there, and not just some akuma trick. But an akuma wouldn’t show her Jason all grown up, and he wouldn’t just be standing there looking like he was the one who’d just seen a ghost.

As soon as she was close enough, she threw herself at him, and clung on to him for dear life. Only a moment later she felt strong arms return the embrace, just as hard. She felt a million different emotions all buzzing through her head at once, but the clearest feeling of all was the pure relief.

She didn’t know how or why he was back and apparently alive, but at this moment, she did not care. Her brother was back, and he was here, and she was never gonna let him go.

“Never do that again,” she managed to choke out, her words muffled by how her face was pressed into Jason’s chest. “I don’t want to lose you ever again.”

Jason’s own words were almost just as tearful when he replied, pulling her closer as he did.

“I promise. I’ll never leave again.”

[bigskydreaming]

Dick Grayson Juvie Headcanons (Leading Into Any Form of Not-A-Cop AUs, they don’t make a ton of sense for a version of Dick who ever grows up to be a cop, but y’know, that origin story is why that career for Dick never made any sense to me anyway, so its all one and the same to me, lol. Just clarifying).

1) Bruce Wayne’s greatest regret with Dick is that he realized too late, years later, that in his eagerness to bond with Dick over their shared experiences and the experiences they shared as Batman and Robin, he’d underestimated the potency of their divergent experiences, and he’d fallen for the Dick Grayson performer mask as much as anyone whenever Dick assured him that month in juvie was only thirty days and he was well past it and had no real issues or lingering trauma stemming from it. How could he not though, Bruce ultimately admitted to himself years later. Dick was just a kid who had just lost his parents and done literally nothing wrong, and it wasn’t just thirty days. It was thirty whole days.

2) Dick spent his entire first year at Wayne Manor secretly convinced that if he did anything wrong, he was going back to juvie. It didn’t make sense to him, but being there in the first place didn’t really make a lot of sense either, so better to err on the side of caution, and just be perfect instead. He got a little more relaxed as time went on, but it was a slow curve. By the time he ran away at the end of Robin: Year One, which was actually more like the end of his second year at Wayne Manor since he’d trained a lot before officially debuting as Robin....by that time, Dick didn’t THINK Bruce would send him back to juvie just because he’d fired him as Robin and was clearly done with him now. 

He wanted to believe after everything they’d been through this past year alone, Bruce would at least make sure he ended up in a good foster home, which Dick by now knew at least existed, and that juvie wasn’t actually the only inevitable destination for orphaned kids who weren’t perfect.....but again...he didn’t THINK Bruce would do that. But Dick didn’t KNOW, not for sure, and he couldn’t afford to lose both Robin and his belief in who Bruce really was and what their time together had meant to Bruce as well as Dick, so Dick decided to err on the side of caution and run away instead. That way, at least, he’d never have to find out if he was wrong.

3) Dick’s first real friend at school was actually a boy who started a fight with him, a few months before Dick debuted as Robin. When they were both sent to the principal’s office together, Dick pulled his antagonist of ten minutes ago down a side hallway with him and hastily engineered an escape plan off the grounds where Dick called Bruce and assured the bewildered other boy he could help him. When Bruce arrived and asked Dick what he was doing, Dick told him the other boy had started their fight, but Dick didn’t think what he’d done had been that bad really, and it was definitely nothing he should go to jail for and he wanted Bruce to intercede on his behalf and make sure he didn’t end up there by doing whatever he’d done to get Dick pulled out of there in the first place. 

As Dick didn’t like talking about that time much, and Bruce didn’t like making Dick talk about things he didn’t like to talk about, this was the first real inkling Bruce had of how much that experience had skewed Dick’s perception of ‘how things work’ and he assured him that wasn’t going to happen here. It also contributed to the reasons Bruce was stockpiling for actually letting Dick go out as Robin instead of just training him to appease him and hope he grew out of wanting to: among other things, Bruce felt that letting Dick be a part of what he did as Batman and get another viewpoint from which to view the system and what it really did and didn’t do, would help Dick get past his lingering issues with the system and his time in it and thus eventually grow into a more healthy, broader view of it rather than one defined solely by his terrible experiences with it as a child.

4) Bruce’s miscalculation in this regard was that he was so focused on getting Dick to view the system from Bruce’s perspective, and thus come to similar conclusions and views of it on his own....he failed to ever properly attempt the reverse, putting himself in Dick’s shoes and trying to view all of that from his perspective and thus perhaps come to similar conclusions and views of it on HIS end. This divide ended up diverging their viewpoints on all things criminal and justice more and more as the years went by, with Bruce lost for what he was doing wrong, because he was too centered in his own view of himself as the adult, the one who had to teach and guide and HELP Dick, his child......it simply didn’t occur to him there was any possibility he was trying to teach Dick to view things from a vantage point that was just as skewed in its own way as Bruce felt Dick’s was skewed. That he wasn’t actually anymore impartial on the subject than Dick was, its just while Dick’s ‘bias’ was born of an actively negative experience with the system-as-antagonist, Bruce’s was born of a complete and total lack of negative experiences with the system-as-antagonist.

Because ultimately, the divide that put them more and more often at odds, was that at the end of the day, Bruce believed that the system worked. He believed that his place, his role as Batman, was to supplement the times when the system failed to work as it was supposed to. To fortress it and weed out corruption and clean out the muck gumming up the gears, and let it do what it was supposed to do.....which was give more kids lives and opportunities like Bruce had before his parents were murdered.

And that simply wasn’t Dick’s experience, not just initially, but given more and more evidence as he grew. He just didn’t know how to get Bruce to see it from his POV, get him to consider that the things Bruce was basing his own view of it all from were not as universal as he’d convinced himself they were. Because Dick became increasingly aware, between his own experiences, his time at juvie, that time he ran away, things he saw at school and things he saw as Robin....they were not the same, not even while living in the same house and being chauffered around in the same car. He saw evidence of it every time he tried to confide in Bruce about the things people said about him, and Bruce tried to relate by sharing his own experiences with people saying nasty things about his parents’ death and the way he acted after that. 

Dick knew how hard it was for Bruce to share personal details like that and was appreciative of the effort, so he passed up opportunities to try and impress upon Bruce that those stories, while tragic in their own way, were not the same thing as what he was talking about......those kids had been making fun of Bruce because of something terrible that had happened to him, and yeah that sucked.....but these kids were making fun of Dick because of something that he was. They weren’t interchangeable. ‘Taking the high road’ and letting what people said bounce off of him might have been one thing when you knew the thing they were mocking was just a tragic situation that could have befallen anyone. But when the thing they were mocking was who and what you were, and how you weren’t just anyone, and never would be, how they were always going to point out first and foremost the ways you were different and always would be.....’taking the high road’ sounded a lot more like ‘just accept that people are always going to say these things and you’re not allowed to fight back.’

And as time went on, their differences in experiences seemed more and more prevalent than their shared ones.....but because Dick didn’t know how to explain this, was still just a kid who lived with a genius who was always right and needed just the right words if he was going to be convinced otherwise, and Dick just didn’t have those words, didn’t know what they were, not just yet.....Dick stayed silent through too many of these times when Bruce saw things one way and Dick the exact opposite. Until the time when he couldn’t stay silent anymore, and so he just erupted with his voice full of all the frustration of not just that one occasion, but all the other ones before it that he’d held back on countering Bruce’s view with his own. Making Bruce instantly defensive and unsure where all of this was coming from, not understanding or being aware of just how long all of this had simmered under Dick’s surface, unvoiced but not unpresent.

And so they began to fight more and more about the criminals they turned in and the ones that they didn’t.....Dick of the opinion that if they were already breaking the law by being vigilantes, it shouldn’t matter if it was breaking the law to let a criminal go free if they were as much convinced they deserved a second chance as they were that the city needed Batman and Robin. And because Dick still didn’t quite know how to put what he felt and thought into words, and because Bruce had considered that just thirty days in juvie long behind them and something Dick was past and thus certainly nothing that might be present in this argument, in Dick’s thoughts here and now.....Bruce tended to think this was just youthful optimism overriding common sense. That Dick was just too eager to see the best in people, to hope anyone could turn things around if given the opportunity, that he wasn’t willing to let the system do its job. 

Except, see, the thing is that Bruce, for whom the system worked when it was allowed to, who always viewed it through the lens of his own optimism that it was the right path, the best option, so long as it was just used properly.....in Bruce’s eyes, the system was meant to be used for rehabilitation.

In Dick’s eyes - and experience - the system was only ever useful for punishment.

For things done wrong, and even worse sometimes, all too often....for when the only thing a person did wrong was not being born a boy TRULY like Bruce once was before his parents died. A boy who had the life and all the opportunities that only other boys just like him were ever guaranteed.

Because those just thirty days had been thirty whole days, Dick’s first introduction to Gotham was a lot more thorough than Bruce ever realized, and a lot more of an honest view of Gotham than Bruce could ever really admit. 

Juvie, in Dick’s experience, wasn’t just a place of rehabilitation - could never be a place of rehabilitation - not for a kid like him, who had no need to be rehabilitated. And Dick couldn’t just pretend it was one mistake, one person’s bigotry, one office’s corruption, that led to him being there, to him being the only person who was there when he shouldn’t have been there......when Dick’s just thirty days were really thirty whole days where he didn’t see a single moment of rehabilitation for anyone there.

When it was all just pain and suffering and violence. Kids being awful to each other to distract themselves from how awful they felt, and the guards doing nothing to stop it because they were too busy laughing like it was entertainment. There was nobody being made better by being there, just everyone being made worse before they left. To this day, Dick honestly couldn’t say if he’d have been as eager to go after Zucco with the initial intention of KILLING him to avenge his parents, if he’d gotten the chance without ever going to juvie first....if the Dick he’d been before those thirty days would have been as eager to repay violence with violence, as hungry to share his pain. Those thirty whole days had left their mark, had been so full of the promise of spreading around the hurt to lessen the hurt inside of you, been so full of the evidence that justice was meaningless in a place that also said justice was punishing the victims of a crime as often as the perpetrators.....Dick’s honestly not sure if before all of that, without all of that, if it would have been enough for him to just seek out Zucco with the intention of turning him in and trusting the police to take him to where he belonged to get what he deserved.

All he knows is those thirty days did happen, and by the time he did get out, did get his shot at hunting down Zucco, he knew all he needed to know that trusting the police wasn’t the be all and end all Batman kept trying to convince him it was.....not when trusting the police had led them to taking Dick to where he never belonged to get what no one ever deserved.

All he knows is he’ll never confess to Bruce that he’s not sure if the real reason he spared Zucco’s life was because Bruce got through to him, convinced him it was the right thing to do and what his parents would want....or if it was just because he was too afraid that if he did kill Zucco, Bruce would believe the right thing to do was take him back to juvie, and this time, he would belong there.

The ironic thing about Bruce and Dick, Dick often thinks, is that everyone looks at the pair of them and sees Bruce as the eternal cynic, the one who sees the world through pain-colored glasses , the one always quicker to assume the worst. In Dick’s personal experience, its Bruce who’s the one who thinks the world is a little brighter, a little more honest, a little BETTER than Dick knows it to be. 

Dick doesn’t offer up the optimistic views as often as he does because they’re what spring most naturally to his mind.

They’re not.

They’re just the ones he’s fighting for, to see them made real, to turn them from just hopes he voices to outcomes he’s championed.

So they end up fighting and clashing more and more because Dick doesn’t know how to say all of that, doesn’t know how to rewrite Bruce’s view of Dick’s own childhood and early years in Gotham with the reality of how things looked and still look from his end.

How to tell him with the surety of only someone who’s actually BEEN in those shoes, LIVED those thirty whole days, someone who KNOWS.....there is no rehabilitation to be found in a jail for children. Just punishment for crimes both warranted and unwarranted alike. There was no hope anywhere in there, for second chances, for turning lives around. Just the pain they brought with them, the pain they found there, and the pain promised if they ever returned.

There’s not much incentive to make a change when the end result is always going to remain the same.

If rehabilitation is the point, Dick wants to say but never quite figures out how, if the goal is for the punishment to fit the crime.....then how can a year in juvie be a just punishment for some crime, when nobody ever mentions the additional punishments that year will inevitably contain? The near daily beatings from other inmates and sometimes the guards? The loneliness of being separated not just from family and friends, but any kind soul who might give that kid reason to think not everyone is like everyone you see around you, there are people who are better, people who give you REASON to be better? The feelings of worthlessness brought about by being fed gruel and given ratty clothes and forced to sleep on bunks not much better than the floor and told “this is what you deserve, this is ALL you deserve, whether you’re violent or deceitful or just misguisded or just hurting - you’re no different to us than the kid who pushed his burning cigarette into his foster brother’s arm, and thus there’s no reason you should see yourself as any different from him either. No reason you should be. No reason to try.’

What about the punishment of going that whole year without hearing a single kind word, seeing a single smile that wasn’t tinged with cruelty, taught a single lesson that was meant to give you tools for the future rather than tools to pass the time or make someone else’s time more miserable than yours? Or the punishment of being guarded by adults more sadistic than your fellow inmates, at least until they inspired kids to up their own sadism and try harder? Of being spit on, laughed at, looked at as those you’re an animal in a cage, the dirt beneath someone’s feet, the inevitable disappointment that was apparently all a kid like you was ever going to turn out to be.....

And all the while told by the police, by the guards, by the other kids, ultimately even by yourself.....

All of this is what you deserve, what you earned, where you belong. This is who and what you are and all you’ll ever be. Don’t waste your time trying harder to be something you’re not....just use it to make the most of your time here for as long as you’re here, until you end up here again.

How can the punishment EVER fit the crime, Dick wants to ask Bruce, Commissioner Gordon, everyone who tells him he’s too young to know what he’s talking about even though he apparently wasn’t too young to deserve to go to jail for the crime of being orphaned in the wrong city....how can the punishment fit the crime when whether the crime is property damage or vandalism or possession of an illegal substance or assault and battery and grand theft auto and soliciation....whether the crime was what you did or who you were or what someone else said you did or just you doing what you had to just to stay alive.....when the crime is always different but the punishment is almost always the same, when the punishment doesn’t CARE, when the punishment is anything and EVERYTHING everyone in the places ‘where bad people go’ is to make each day as miserable for everyone else as they can manage, all in the hopes of making their day just a little bit less so.....

How can you possibly say ‘let the punishment fit the crime’ and honestly believe that its TRUE? How can you say its where you take bad people go to try and make them better, when time and time again you just see them come back out even worse? How can your conclusion always be a certainty that its just them, its just ALL those people, with ALL those different crimes, ALL those reasons why, and just ONE place, ONE punishment-fits-all, ONE penalty meted out in words but with a hundred unspoken add-ons tacked on in the fine print.....its never that ONE place that might be the reason, might be the problem....might be why a thousand misguided souls go into a rehabilitation center and a thousand hardened hearts are all it spits out on the other side, no change, no real difference, no variation between people all now united by one singular truth: 

“No matter what we did to end up here, its all the same in the end, and when in the end this is all anybody will ever see when they look at us now, all anybody will ever believe is where we’re destined to end up, no matter how hard we try....what’s the point in going against the grain? Standing out in a place where nothing’s more dangerous than that? Why BE BETTER, when the only rewards are for being worse?”

All of this and more is what Dick wants to ask Bruce, demand an answer for in the form of something other than “you’ll understand better when you’re older” - because Dick understood all he needed to understand from his very first week there, and age hasn’t lessened that any. Just cemented it. Made it firm.

How can you be so sure you’re right, be so sure that I’m wrong, when I’m the one that’s been there and you think the fact that I was so young when I was is proof I can’t be right when I say “THE SYSTEM YOU BELIEVE IN DOESN’T WORK THE WAY YOU THINK IT DOES” when the fact I was ever there at all is literally just proof I’m not wrong?

“How can you tell yourself I’m wrong to want to give the kid we caught in the criminal act of defacing public property a second chance, that it might have more of a positive effect on them than any number of nights in jail ever will.....when probably the only reason I’m here at your side right now instead of the one being put in handcuffs, is you saw an escaped criminal and thought ‘they deserve a chance’ instead of ‘they belong in jail?’“

“You weren’t an escaped criminal - “ Dick always imagines would likely be the first protest out of Bruce’s mouth, a missing of the mark that’s sadly all too predictable and all too much of the reason why Dick’s never pressed the button on this particular conversation.

“But I was!” He’d try to point out next. “At least according to any and all information that matters! I was sent to juvie, I was wearing the clothing of an inmate, I was on the roof of a building across the street from the detention center I’d just literally escaped from....when you came across me that night, that’s EXACTLY what I was! At least to anyone that mattered! If you’d escorted me back to the center yourself, that’s all anyone would have told you, the guards, the warden, the other kids, that’s all I was ever told myself: that’s where I belonged. That was where I was supposed to be. If it had been someone OTHER than you that I ran into that night, if it’d been any cop whatsoever, even one of the ‘good cops,’ even one of the honest cops who plays by the book and believes in the law and doing what’s right.....even they would have taken one look at me and seen a kid escaping from juvie and said to themselves IM DOING THE RIGHT THING TAKING HIM BACK TO THE FACILITY HE ESCAPED FROM, THAT’S WHAT THE LAW SAYS I SHOULD DO HERE AND NOW......and would they have been wrong? Technically? By the book? Would they have been upholding the law, escorting a kid who never did a damn thing wrong in his life at that point, back to the jail where he was being PUNISHED for watching his parents get murdered in front of him?”

He likes to think Bruce wouldn’t have an answer to that, at least. Its better than the alternatives.

But you didn’t send me back and just abandon me there because you KNEW better, Dick argues in his head. Wants to believe. Whether it was because you recognized me from that night at the circus or because you just couldn’t believe that in thirty days I could possibly have done something that warranted a kid like me being in a place like that, couldn’t have done something that justified the bruise you saw beneath my eye or the fact that I was so desperate to get away I was barefoot on a freezing rooftop at 2 in the morning.....you KNEW the law wasn’t right, the system was WRONG, and that there was no justice to be served in serving me back up on a platter to people who SIMPLY DIDN’T CARE.

And as the years go by, he adds to it in conviction and evidence, but still no closer to the words and still just as far from Bruce as ever......”And what about Jason? Jason literally WAS a criminal, by any technical letter of the law, the night you met him. He was stealing your tires. He was committing a theft. Not because he was bad, not because he didn’t know any better, but because HE WAS TRYING TO EAT. His only crime was he was a kid who WANTED TO NOT DIE, but that was still a crime, wasn’t it? As the system tells us? If he really wanted to eat that bad, he should have done it the right way, like by going to a shelter - that would have turned him into foster care - where he would have been safe - unless he’d already had bad experiences in foster care that were the literal reason he felt he’d be safer starving on the streets instead - come on, what punishment would have fit the crime if you’d taken Jason to be locked up in juvie that night instead of taking him home? 

What’s the appropriate sentence for being a kid stealing so he could get food he didn’t trust to get safely anywhere else? A week in juvie, maybe, two weeks? Does that include all the unwritten extras that go with that? All the beatings bigger kids would dish out just because they could? All the nights he couldn’t sleep because he was afraid of the way the guards looked at him and didn’t think he’d be safe if he did? All the times he ended up going hungry anyway because nobody cares if you can’t stomach the slop they dump in front of you, it’ll just go to someone else? Is all of that what Jason deserved for wanting to eat while having the nerve not to be born a Bruce Wayne or one of his peers? 

Because if any cop had come along and arrested Jason that night, before you got to him first, even the ‘good cops,’ even the ‘by the book I’m just doing this because the law says I have to and I trust the law, that’s my excuse’ cops....if you never got EITHER of your first two sons, because GOOD HONEST COPS JUST DOING THEIR JOBS THE RIGHT WAY sent them both to jail like the law says they belonged for the crimes of stealing (even just to eat) and escaping a reform facility (even if they were never supposed to be there in the first place)......if that had been our fates.....does it matter to you that you wouldn’t even know any better, that you’d have NO CLUE if five years later, you arrested one of us for something as simple as defacing public property, because we just had so much fucking RAGE and PAIN in us that ironically we didn’t have before we ended up in juvie but damn sure had before they finally let us out....

Would you have batted an eye, or felt even a second of doubt or guilty for handcuffing us and dropping us off in front of the police precinct to be processed, would you spend even a single day wondering what would happen to us now, or happened to us since, would you be able to justify doing anything the thoughts you have right now about me or Jason suffering because of those good, honest cops starting that chain of events, could you actually make a case for going after those hypothetical cops, ‘avenging’ those versions of us on cops who aren’t corrupt, didn’t hurt kids or put them in harm’s way because they WANTED to but just because being supposed to mattered more than looking at us and seeing a reason not to? Would none of that suffering we might have endured in the system matter, would none of it be objectionable, would none of it be a fucking CRIME because the system works, and if that’s what the system says we deserved for our crime and if nobody ever says anything about the ‘extras’ packaged in with each sentence then obviously they’re not worth mentioning, let alone worrying about?

“Why am I here, instead of there?” Dick wants to ask Bruce one night, two nights, a thousand nights. “Why am I a superhero instead of just another nameless thug? What was different? Was it just because you recognized me that night? If I’d been just a little more bruised, a little more unrecognizable, would you have sent me back anyway? Was it just because you saw a kindred spirit in me, you saw too much of yourself in the kid who’d lost his parents the same way you did, that you couldn’t bear to see hurt more when you were sure you could help him instead? Help him BE more?”

“Cuz if its the latter.....why doesn’t it matter more than ‘your years of experience, your book learning, your faith in a system that’s never hurt you except by letting you down’....why doesn’t it have more credibility with you that I see so much of myself in so many of THEM, more even than I see of myself in YOU? Why do you dismiss it as naive optimism in total strangers when I tell you night after night there’s no WAY that every single one of these kids, these specific criminals, all deserve the violence and fear they’re inevitably going to face in jail? That there’s no WAY they’re all going to be rehabilitated, because most of them I bet already KNOW what they did was ‘wrong’ and the fact that they did it anyway isn’t because they need to be taught otherwise or needed behavioral correction....its because they didn’t have a choice! And yes before you say it, I KNOW there’s always another choice, but that doesn’t mean all the other choices don’t suck just as much if not MORE, and that’s what you never get! There’s not a mansion at the end of the road every time someone turns away from the ‘wrong path’ and gets on the right one. Its not a matter of just making better choices when your only choice is steal and eat or don’t steal and don’t eat. What rehabilitation is there for kids who were like me and never belonged there in the first place? What lesson were we supposed to learn there? “Don’t exist?” Jason knew stealing was wrong, he didn’t need to go to PRISON to teach him that.....what was he ever going to learn from going to juvie if a cop sent him there instead? “Don’t steal just because you don’t have money, starve instead?”

That’s what you never seem to get, Dick wants to say, to scream, to ignite the fucking atmosphere with his words so the people who matter, who need to hear him, are at least forced to SEE. You look at them and just see criminals, but I look at them and see ME. I see Jason. I see who we were. I see who we might have become. And then I see us standing in our costumes like the pair of actual superheroes we are, fighting the Joker with you, the likes of the Penguin, and Black Mask and all kinds of people who ACTUALLY hurt people, who RUIN lives just because they can, not because they have to, I see us SAVING lives each night thanks to you, thanks to you taking a chance on us when others might not have, even people who are supposed to be good and just, I see what we became just because someone with the right skills and the right resources was in the right place to offer us an alternative, one more to our liking, one we ended up devoting our whole LIVES to.....

And I think.....

How many of those kids sent to prison instead of an ACTUAL safe and loving home, how many of those kids who will go to sleep tonight hearing adults backed by the law tell them they’re worthless and that’s all they’ll ever be, instead of being told they’re loved and believed in....how many kids who could have done more for the world if only they’d been given a second chance than has cost the world because they were given no chances instead....

How many of them are actually superheroes the world will never get to be saved by, because the world gave up on them when they were still just kids and never imagined they could be anything more? How many of them are the sons that foster and adoptive parents will never have, SHOULD have had, if the people responsible for shaping those kids’ futures had invested as much time and energy and resources in FINDING better homes, loving homes, SAFER homes, as they did in locking those kids up every time they lashed out because the better environment they were promised happened to be with a pedophile who looks good on paper?

“If I didn’t have to end up like them, if my fate didn’t have to be a life of crime - why does theirs? Why aren’t they just as likely to end up like me instead....the only variable that’s missing is they need a BRUCE standing in their corner more than society needs a BATMAN standing there in judgment?”

“Bruce, you took in two separate kids who both came from nothing and were headed nowhere, as far as everyone involved with ‘the system’ said and believed,” Dick says to himself, practicing in the mirror for when he finally says what he needs to say, with the right words, the ones that might be HEARD instead of dismissed. The ones that might actually make a difference and change things. “And you raised both of those kids to become superheroes instead. Both of whom have saved more lives than we can count. Done more good than can probably ever be listed.

“What more proof do you need that the system you value so much doesn’t know shit? How can you say you value it, you value its role in society, when its only role in my life has been to constantly invalidate my value? How can you turn around and in the same breath assure me that you DO actually value my life anyway, and always would have? Because my life actually has more in common with most common criminals than it does with yours, and if the only thing that gives my life real value is the fact that at the right place and the right time, it coincided with yours in just the right way for you to see you had something in common with me.....”

“That doesn’t speak highly for how much you value any parts of me that you don’t see yourself in. Maybe that’s why I’m driven so hard to make myself as different from you as I can, as distinct as a hero. Make an identity that’s all my own, that you’re only a part of instead of the other way around. Maybe its so I can finally ask you, would you still love me if you couldn’t recognize me anymore? If there was nothing that looked like me when you look in the mirror? Was my life still worth saving, still giving a second chance....if my life isn’t actually what you say it is?”

And then Dick closes his mouth, turns away from the mirror, and boxes his questions up for another day.

One where maybe, finally, he’s ready to hear the answer.

[hopesbarnes]

Black Swan (1)

Summary: Y/N used to be a Russian spy under the code name Black Swan. But that was a lifetime ago, now she’s a part-time avenger, dance teacher, surrogate sister to Natasha Romanoff, and trainer to new Shield Agents. She’s come a long way from the days of killing targets and being tortured. But when someone from her past comes around will she be able to ignore her history anymore? Or will she end up falling in love with the only man her sister ever loved? 

Warnings: None for this chapter  

A/N: Here we go againn! This is a edited form of the story I had posted last year. Taglist is open, send an ask 

“Bucky is going to be staying here,” Steve says at breakfast that morning. In the same nonchalant tone, he used to say “I’m going on a run’. Not the type of tone to use when announcing a dangerous assassin would be your roommate. You knew what he did wasn’t his fault, out of anyone, you understood this. But he killed without blinking, and his brain is scrambled like an egg. This didn’t make the most stable man, and it definitely didn’t make him safe to be around. 

“Steve, is that really a good idea?” Natasha says before you could form the exact same question. 

Natalia was your sister, you’ve known her your whole life. You’re not blood-related but related through things much stronger. The two of you were widows. A KGB experiment that stole girls and trained them to be merciless spies. They took your life away and killed anyone too weak to handle the stress. Natalia and you were the only known survivors. She took on the mantle of Black Widow upon graduation, and you took the mantle, Black Swan. 

“They took out the programming, he’s not the Winter Soldier anymore,” Steve combats with. “He needs help, and I need to be the one to give it.” He turns and leaves the room after this statement, leaving you and Natasha with no room to debate this fact. 

“This is not going to end well” you mumble under your breath, and Nat nods in agreement. Nothing about this screamed ‘good idea’. But then again, they did take in your sister and you. 

After breakfast, you head to the gym with Nat for morning workouts. It was never a crazy exercise, just enough to start the day. You head towards the treadmill, and she speaks first.

 “I remember him.” She admits softly. You knew the conversation was coming, but like hell did you want to avoid it. “Do you?” The ‘training’ you went through involved wiping, so there were spots in your memory that may never be filled. But James wasn’t one of those.

“Yeah, and I remember how you would talk nonstop about him,” you say teasingly. She throws her towel at you and the two of you break into giggles. A sound most people never dream of hearing from the two of you. 

“I was naive then! We were kids,” she says. Kids that never should have gone through what they did. 

“I never liked him,” you declare bluntly taking the goofy tone from the room. She exhales loudly. 

“I know сестренка (sis). What time is it, don’t you have class today?” She says effectively changing the topic. A trademark of hers.

 “It’s at 11, I have two hours and the building is 10 minutes away,” you tell her, even though she knows this information. 

“I still don’t get why you teach all those испорченные дети (spoiled children)” she says. 

“It’s my way of paying back to the society I guess. I might as well use my dancing skills for good for once.” She nods and you both continue running for a little while longer.

You arrive at the studio 15 minutes before class, which is more than enough to set up the barres and find the right CD for the lesson. The girls slowly start trickling in. It was your senior class so the girls are all teenagers. It’s Saturday which means the girls are here all day long. They stretched, ran through barre work, ate lunch, and then learned their choreography the rest of the time. They were part of a competition team, and put their all into dance. It was always refreshing to see such passion and reinvigorated your love for the sport. It may have lead you down a path that took everything, but it still held your heart.

“Alright girls, take off your street clothes. Barres mean leotards and tights only!” You say in an authoritative teacher voice and they all hurriedly shuffle to their assigned spots. You hit the music count “5,6,7,8-” and they begin their pliés. 

Two hours later the class ends and the girls go to their lunch break in a flurry of laughs and gossip. You put the barres back against the wall and join the other teachers for lunch. You’ve been with the studio for close to 5 years now. At first, they were wary of hiring an ex KGB spy, part-time avenger. But there were few people as trained as you, and when word got out that you were teaching, tons of girls signed up for a class with ‘The Black Swan’. Luckily the novelty of your celebrity status wore off with the girls and they stopped asking a hundred questions about the avengers and your past. (They were still obsessed with Natalia though.)

Lunch passes and you’re joined in the room by the girls of your large group. It was the beginning of the season and you had just announced they would be dancing to “Cosmic Love” by Florence and the Machine. They were still giddy with excitement and constantly heard “Miss Y/N Look!” by excited girls showing new ways they could turn or fold in half. The dance would start with three of the girls extending their leg above their head and holding it. You told them the previous week that this week whoever could hold it longest would get to do it in the dance. The girls all got ready before you count down and let them bring their legs up. You hear them all egging each other on and it reminds you of when you were younger before the program.

All but three girls eventually drop their legs and you have to practically shout over their excited squeals. The rest of the time goes by quickly and you have the first part choreographed and the girls seem to have it memorized. You give them all homework to work on their turns and bid them goodbye for the day. Before you can leave two of the girls come up and ask you to choreograph their solos and you agree before shooing them to their parents.

You head back to your apartment in the compound upstate and shower. Your floor consisted of bedrooms for the Nat and you and a shared area in between. There were few people you could tolerate early in the morning and Nat was about the extent of it. You head to the common area upstairs, where everyone gathered.

“The old man give any more information on when he’s bringing him here?” You ask Nat in your native tongue. She’s stretching and watching television. 

“Steve left today. Said they’ll be back Monday,” she replies from the straddle she’s sitting in on the floor. “How was the class?” 

“Good, started choreographing the large group today. They’re all super excited and want better spots in the dance so they’re trying their best right now.” You smile thinking about the girls all trying to see how long they can hold their tilts. “Two of them asked me to do their solos for them, so I’m a little excited too,” You answer.

“Sometimes a part of me misses the tutus and tights. Then I remember what came with them.” She says in a wistful voice.  

“You should come to class with me sometime if you want. I promise they’re not that vile,” you say. “Plus, they’ve been dying to meet you. It’s nothing like our lessons.” 

She smiles and says “Maybe.” You join in her stretching and watch the show with her.  

Later on, Bruce finds the pair of you chatting while sitting in splits.

 “You do know that the body was not designed to bend that way?” he asks. 

“It also wasn’t meant to turn big and green. But here we are.” Tasha quipped back. Bruce pointed as if he was going to refute that, but lowered his hand in defeat instead.

“You hear about the new addition? You ask.

 “Bucky? Yeah, I never met him,” he says, “But at this point what’s another messed up person who could kill everyone!” He laughs.

“How much do you think he’ll remember?” Nat asks. 

“Hard to say. Guess we’ll find out in time.” You and Natasha share a look but go back to talking with Bruce and hope for the best going forward.

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[eat0crow]

Maribat prompt - Bruce adopts Marinette please? (Sorry if I misunderstood and this is what you did Not want. If that's the case just ignore this, sorry)

Nope, you didn’t misunderstand at all Anon! I hope you don’t mind a bit of humor, I had a really shitty night-so many customers decided to yell at me it’s not even funny. I needed something lighthearted.

Beta read by some lovely people on the Maribat Discord server.

Who Needs Paperwork?

Bruce is done. So painfully done, that the only one who can’t see just how thin a line he’s walking is the source of his annoyance. Hal Jordan, the very man who makes homicide look more appealing every day. Did Bruce really need a moral code?

It just seemed to get in the way.

From behind him doors slam, people scatter, and yet Hal won’t catch the hint. “All I’m saying is that, isn’t it time you guys settled down, and had a whole flock of little birdies?”

Bruce has never, not once in his life, desired friends. He hadn’t wanted a relationship either, yet here he is, six months into a decades in the making relationship with Clark Kent. If Bruce had known that the League would take his relationship as a sign of him getting soft, he would have sworn Clark to secrecy.

“I’m going to the training room.” Which should have roughly translated to 'follow me, and I’ll use you for target practice'. Several people within hearing distance shudder at the implication. Bruce is darkly satisfied; he hasn’t seen this much fear directed at him in months. Hal Jordan, well Bruce has theories on how green lantern cores affect intelligence.

None of them are particularly positive.

“It’s never too early to start working on your ninja kid army,” Hal says lightly, as if he’s talking about the weather, and not something as morally bankrupt as child soldiers. Sure he trained Robin young, but it’s not like Bruce had a choice. Dick would have been fighting mob bosses with or without his consent. Training had been the only thing keeping him out of even more danger. “Who’s going to carry on your terrifying legacy?”

“I already have Robin.” And because Bruce can see Hal’s next sentence before he even says it— “And Clark has Conner. Aside from procreation being wholly unnecessary, it’s also physically impossible. You are aware that it requires a woman to produce off-spring, right?”

“Yeah, tell that to LexCorp,” Hal mumbles under his breath. Bruce would be lying if he said he hadn’t ever wondered about that. Sure Conner’s a clone, but he’s also the most stable clone Bruce had ever seen. He wouldn’t put it past Luthor to have spliced in a secondary set of DNA. “Just think about it Spooky. Combine your brains with Clark’s powers and bam! You’ve got the one person on earth who could defeat Doomsday without breaking a sweat. Isn’t that a better tomorrow?”

Bruce stops, because things make a lot more sense now. Doomsday had been terrifying, he opened up a whole world of possibilities. Of threats too strong for the League to deal with, just waiting. There’s no escaping this conversation. Even if he tunes it out now, Hal will just bring it up again and again, until Clark finally catches on. That will make the man pout.

Bruce really doesn’t like it when Clark pouts.

He might not have the patience to deal with Hal’s solution to apocalypse inducing threats now, but he’ll have even less later when Barry no doubt joins Hal’s crusade. One idiot is bad enough. Bruce is not willing to explain to Dick why he killed his best friend's uncle.

“That’s why the Young Justice League was formed,” Bruce points out slowly, his voice careful, like he’s explaining the concept to a toddler. Hal probably has an I.Q that stalled around the fifth grade, so same difference. “Their role is to carry on our legacies in protecting earth after we’re unable.”

“That’s not what I mean! Sure, by the time they graduate out of the little leagues they’ll be ready to take over, but that’s just it. They’re a miniature Justice League. They’ll have the exact same blind spots as us. I’m talking about combining skill sets here.”

Bruce actually hadn’t thought of that, and as much as the words choke him to admit, Hal is right. They would be subject to the exact same failings as the current League. They’re a group trained to take over specific positions. They’ve been trained for years and no one, not even Robin, would be able to break close to half a decades worth of habits.

They make it to the training room, and a flash of vivid, bright red catches his eye. The newest member, Ladybug is talking to Clark. Bruce hadn’t been aware that he would be joining him for this training session, but it all works out nicely.

Ladybug looks worn, and Bruce doesn’t doubt she is. The girl is Diana’s apprentice, not sidekick. They've both been adamant about that. No one, not even Diana, knows her identity. Bruce could respect a healthy dose of secrecy, but she’s only around Dick’s age. The information on her is scarce, and Diana is tight-lipped. Partially out of ignorance and partially out of some vague magical pact her mother made.

A combined skillset.

Ladybug doesn't have years of habits to break. If her own admissions are anything to go by, she doesn’t have any formal training outside of noncombatant magic. She’s dangerously smart too. Bruce has seen her improvise enough times. Sure, she might not have as much super-strength as Clark, but Bruce has seen her lift far more than her frame should allow. Maybe strength proportional to a ladybug’s? Her skin is certainly reinforced by what has to be the tensile strength of an exoskeleton.

Which is glossing over her ability to create solid matter through pure will—maybe he'll have Hal train her a bit, her powers are similar enough to a Green Lanterns’.

“You have a point, Lantern.”

There’s a suspicious pause. “I do?”

Bruce offers him his most deadpan expression. So even Hal knows that ninety percent of what leaves his mouth is garbage, good to know. “The League will be comprised of individuals with the same failings as current Leaguers. In the event of world-ending threats, we can not afford these failings. So I will be taking your advice.”

“Oh, that’s...good.” Hal looks perplexed, like he hadn’t expected his argument to land him anywhere but in a body cast.

“However,” Bruce continues, walking over toward Clark and Ladybug. “I have no interest in experimental science that’s no doubt illegal in numerous countries. So, we’ll be adopting.”

“We will!” Clark shrieks from his left.

Everyone else in the room gasps. Bruce ignores them, reaching out instead to grab Ladybug. “She’ll be the perfect candidate.”

"Bruce," Clark whines. "That's not how adoption works. You've skipped so many steps."

Bruce sends him a pointed look, the one that says play along or you're sleeping on the couch. Clearly, Clark gets the message because he shuts up. The look on his face also implies that Bruce is going to be out in the dog house for this stunt, but he chooses to ignore it anyway.

So what if Alfred likes Clark more. Bruce still owns the house.

Ladybug, to her credit, only blinks.

Wide blue eyes stare at him, she looks eerily similar to Dick and Conner. They all share the same coloring: black hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. She has Dick’s delicate bone structure, Bruce could probably pass the two of them off as twins.

Dick is going to be roped into teaching her some actual acrobatics as soon as possible. Would a grappling hook be an appropriate ‘welcome to the family’ gift? Bruce doesn't trust her yo-yo.

A beat passes. “I already have parents.”

“Not superhero parents.”

[chonkychornes]

Open Arms Part 5

Synopsis: You come back broken from a mission, and the one person who could barely put himself back together is one trying to help you.

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Language. Angst. And here’s the smut I’ve been promising. 5 of ? My first reader insert fic, so please be kind, and if you like it, please reblog it? 

Also, this is really for @quant-um-fizzx​ I couldn’t/wouldn’t have done any of this without her help or guidance.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Movie night has very few rules; anyone and everyone in the compound was invited. Admission was a contribution towards food, either chip in for takeout or bring something to share. 

That had been eye-opening.

Natasha is especially adept at dips; and not just salsa or ripping open a packet of onion soup powder and dumping it into a tub of sour cream. This girl will customize guacamole to your spice and chunk preference.

She’ll make vats of spinach and artichoke dip without breaking a sweat. And her BLT dip? You don’t want to know what is in it, because you’re certain that it would require an extra two hours in the gym and turning down the personal batch she’ll make just for you to horde in your fridge. 

Then there’s Steve and Barnes: The witless wonders in the kitchen. Although Steve can make a mean soup and he knows just how essential a crockpot is. And Barnes is getting better since he’s instituted dinners with you, where you’ve been teaching him how to cook. 

Sam insists that the only thing he can properly make is breakfast and a Thanksgiving turkey, so basically you’re just counting down the days for him to show up or shut up. 

Banner is the complete dark horse. You like baking; it’s relaxing and you get to make pretty and delicious things. You just don’t have the patience for the fancy stuff. 

Bruce does. 

He makes macarons, pavlovas, and pies with the most intricate and decorative crusts you’ve ever seen outside of a bakery. Two weeks ago he made chocolate souffle and you got so excited that you jumped into his arms and squeezed him tightly. 

The final rule of movie night is that if someone picks the first movie in a franchise, you have to watch all the movies before moving on to something else. Apparently, according to Tony Stark, if you pick The Hobbit … you’re not only watching those three movies, but also The Lord of the Rings trilogy ‘because they’re all set in the same universe and this is my place’.

Tonight marks the halfway point through a franchise and you thank your lucky stars that this one only has five movies in it. You like this franchise, but frankly, Johnny Depp is getting a little old to play a rummed up pirate with a questionable moral compass.

After leaving Natasha in the gym and taking a quick shower you spend the rest of your afternoon making cupcakes. Five dozen to be exact. The clean up took longer than you’d planned, but you still managed to do all the things to yourself. After loading them all up in the massive cupcakes carriers and then into a large box, you exit your quarters only to be met with Barnes. 

You can feel the heat rise in your cheeks when his eyes go wide when he sees the load you’re trying to maneuver and he reaches out to take it from you. “I could’ve managed, but thanks.” 

He gives you a wry smile and glances into the box, “You made cupcakes? What kind are they?” 

Before you can answer him though, he’s put the box down, ripped the lid off the top carrier, grabbed a treat and somehow managed to take the baking paper off and shove the whole thing in his mouth in less than 10 seconds. 

You smirk because he’s going to get a toothache or maybe he’ll choke, but it’s also sort of cute. 

He could still choke though. 

“They’re salted caramel with vanilla buttercream swirled with a caramel drizzle and then topped with sea salt.” You look at him as he groans and you can feel it straight into your bones and various other places. He finally swallows and reaches for another when you reach out to stop him. 

“I made 60, so there’s plenty,” you say, and he has the good grace to look slightly ashamed.” You also have a little buttercream right-” You reach out with your thumb and wipe at the corner of his mouth. Instinctively, his tongue darts to the spot and for whatever reason - only you and your vagina understand - you put your thumb into your mouth. 

His eyes darken and you both stand there for a solid minute staring at the other, daring each other to make a move. When he steps over the box at your feet, your heart jumps. His hands find your hips and he grips you gently and pushes you against your door. You can feel the cool metal of his left hand versus the heat radiating from his right. 

“Tell me to stop,” James whispers, begging you, but you can’t form the words that are caught in your throat. He skims his nose along the column of your neck and up to your ear. He nibbles softly and you melt against him. He thrusts one of his knees between your thighs to help support you and runs his hands up and down your ribcage. 

As you whine softly and grind on his leg he mutters into your ear, “Dracu-ma (fuck me).”

You’ve heard him speak Romanian before. He mutters in the gym while lifting weights. When a glass slipped from his hands just last week when he was doing your dishes. You’re almost certain you heard him mumble disjointed sentences when you both dozed under that maple.

This is different.

And that’s when the world comes crashing down around you. 

If you were going to go down this path with him, it won’t start out in the hallway. 

It won’t be when you can’t even figure out what name you want to call him and just realized you had real-time feelings for him. 

It won’t be when you aren’t sure how to tell him you want him you lo- 

It won’t.

It’ won’t. 

You won’t.

Your body stiffens and he immediately drops his hands, “Did I read this wrong?” His striking blue eyes search yours and you see the concern, tinged with a little fear clouded over into resignation. “I get it,” he says and takes a deliberate step back, remembering to step over the box of cupcakes. 

“James, no.” You dig the heels of your hands into your eyes and contemplate screaming for an hour to release the frustration you’re feeling. “You didn’t read this wrong.” His eyes sharpen on you. “I just … I’m not sure how to tell you what I’m feeling.”

You find yourself in the same situation you were in mere moments before; you’re both staring at each other until he finally speaks. 

“Well, I hope you’re feeling up to movie night,” he says, and bends over to pick up the box and sends you a wink and smile when he straightens. “Steve says the TV is out in the media room and it’s just the three of us tonight, so we’ll see you at our place in a bit.”

He walks away and you slide down the door into a heap on the floor and just sit there for a solid ten minutes before you pull out your phone and send off a text to Steve to make sure he’s still in for his part of the plan (and to talk you down off the ledge you’ve built for yourself.) 

When you let yourself into Steve and James’ quarters thirty minutes later, the scene you find would be comical if you hadn’t had a part in orchestrating it.

Steve is sitting in his favorite cushy armchair with a look of despair and tiredness etched across his features. 

“Boys,” you acknowledge as you enter and notice that at least one of the cupcake carriers has been relieved of at least a dozen treats. 

“Hey, sweets.” James isn’t looking at you and you raise an eyebrow at his slightly dismissive tone and a new spin on a nickname. “Have you seen my copy of ‘At World’s End’?” 

You now realize why he’s on the floor and every movie that belongs to the two men is strewn about.

“I have no idea. How could you have lost it?” You lean against the arm of the couch and watch the show as James scoots around on his hands and knees searching. When you glance over at Steve he rolls his eyes and then stares pointedly at you. 

You clear your throat, “So, who ate all those cupcakes?” James freezes in his tracks, sits up on his haunches, and turns to look at you over his shoulder. 

“I only had that one.” He smirks just enough and then points a finger at Steve who is prepared and has a sheepish look on his face. 

“I can’t resist salted caramel!” He’s protesting and James is laughing at him. You eye him to tell him to take it down a notch or two. “If it makes you feel any better, my stomach is killing me now.” He groans lightly and sinks further into the chair. 

Perfect. 

“Poor baby, can’t handle his sweets.” You wink at him and he flips you off when James goes back to searching. “Hey, Bucky,” you say, and his head swivels slowly around to look at you. “I’ve got the box set. Come over and we’ll order food and leave this child to suffer the consequences of his choices.”

You grab some cupcakes and saunter out, knowing full well that he’ll follow you. 

You offered him movie night and food. 

You called him Bucky. 

And you have some unfinished business. 

Precisely six minutes later, after you somehow manage to put the DVD in and cue it up and light a fat jar candle you have on your coffee table, you’re still waiting for the Tin Man to appear. You assume it’s taking him so long because Steve made him clean up the mess he made, but you suspect that there are just piles of DVDs stacked haphazardly around the living room down the hall. 

When he finally knocks, you call out to tell him the door is open and your voice catches a little in your throat. You walk out of your kitchen as he walks in, holding up two take-out menus. 

“Your choice, I’m fine with whatever.” You don’t mean for the phrase to come out sounding like some double entendre, but it does a little bit. 

He plucks them both out of your hands and considers them seriously for a few moments. “This one,” he hands a menu back to you and walks you back into the kitchen until you hit the island with your ass and he cages you with his arms. “I’ll take two orders of the assorted dim sum, the house special lo mein, and do you like wonton soup, doll?”

You swallow hard. 

There is no way this should feel like foreplay, but it does. 

“I love it. Do you like salt and pepper wings?” he says, nodding, and you reach into your back pocket for your phone. “Then I’ll call it in.” 

When you bring the device to your ear, he backs away and wanders around your quarters.

After quietly finishing the order and telling the restaurant the instructions for when they arrive, you hang up and stare at him. The broad expanse of his back is hunched over as he’s crouched down and looking at some photographs on one of the lower bookshelves. 

He’s been in here, but you usually push him right out the door as quickly as possible after he’s washed the dishes after one of your dinners. 

He never lingers over coffee and conversation.  So, this is the first time he’s investigating your space. You’re not sure you like. 

“My family,” you say softly and he looks over his shoulder at you. “My parents and my older brother died when I was seventeen and my younger sister was only nine.” 

He fingers the edge of the frame before standing but doesn’t say anything. He’s looking at your diploma from Columbia and the few other photos you have when you see him still and his gaze land on a photo of you and Steve. 

You suddenly think that all of this, whatever it is, is a terrible idea. Granted, whatever was between you and Steve is in the past, but that doesn’t mean everyone sees it that way. 

“You look really happy here.” His voice is soft and gentle. You know what picture it is, but have the wherewithal to walk over and look at it with him. 

You were at one of Stark’s galas. It was black tie and the two of you had gone together because it seemed easiest. Both you and Steve were bored quickly, so you made up a drinking game where you took a shot every time a woman (or man) hit on Steve in front of you.

Steve did the same for all the men that hit on you but seeing as he couldn’t get drunk, you turned yourself into a shit show rather quickly. The resulting picture is somewhere between shot numbers seven and ten. 

“I was happy. I was also incredibly drunk, but we had fun that night.” You laugh lightly to yourself, “I tried to convince him to let me throw his shield.” 

“Did he?” He looks into your eyes and smiles, “Because I don’t think you could throw it stone-cold sober.” 

“He didn’t and I can’t.” You shrug and walk towards the couch. “C’mon, let’s start this before the food gets here.”

You press play on the DVD menu and the familiar refrain begins as you side-eye James to see what he’s doing. 

The couch isn’t a loveseat but it isn’t a sprawling sectional either. It’s three-seater and you’ve both made some unspoken agreement that the middle cushion is no man’s land. In fact, you’re pretty sure you haven’t sat this far away from someone while watching a movie on a couch since high school. 

Forty minutes into the movie, the food arrives and you pause to eat and you take the opportunity to steal a few dim sum and settle in a little closer and a little more open towards him. When you start up the movie again, you’ve got one knee up on the middle cushion, body angled towards him slightly, and one elbow propped up on the back of the couch and supporting your head.

He’s not making any moves and you wonder if when you told him to stop earlier, he took it to heart. So, you start doing little things that end getting you closer, inch by inch. You kick off your little house slippers. “You can take off your shoes if you want.” 

Then you reach almost across him to get a fortune cookie that’s sitting on the table in front of him, which gains you a few millimeters. You pretend to crack your back, and at this point, you’re basically straddling the space between your cushion and the middle one. 

At some point, your arm falls to the back of the couch as you react to the scene and when you realize that your hand is on James’ forearm, he’s moving a little bit closer to you. Where you feel shy, he seems sure. His eyes are dark and determined. 

“You could come closer,” you say softly and he shrugs. His eyes flicker back to the screen and then back to you. He’s watching you and only you. 

“I could, but I need you to tell me how to move along with this.” He flips your hand over and his fingertips dance over your palm. So you scoot closer. You know he’s warm and suddenly, your skin has broken out in goosebumps. 

“I feel like there’s been a shift in the last couple of months, between us,” he says low, his voice like a hot coffee with a generous shot of whiskey, and the sound of it sends a bolt of electricity straight to your center. “It feels like there’s been a lot of starts and stops too.”

“I’d have to agree.” You look up at him and find his blue eyes dark with intensity. You rotate your wrist and mirror his actions and run your fingers along his palm and wrist. “There’s something more here, between us, I mean.”

“Of course there is. It’s why I spend all my free time with you.” He slides a little closer and his warm, rough fingers tickle that sensitive skin inside your elbow. “I just need to know what you want. I need you to spell it out for me.”

That’s when you realize that all of this has been foreplay, but where you thought he would take the lead again, he handed it directly to you. 

He wants you to spell it out for him. But he isn’t stupid, he’s playing you like a fiddle. You might have all the power tonight, which you enjoy, but he’s been orchestrating the entire thing. 

What you want is the singular focus in your mind right now, but there’s more buried underneath.

“I … want you.” He moves a little closer and smiles warmly, lips over teeth, but remains silent. 

“I need you… James.” His eyes darken slightly and he reaches for you with that metal appendage and pulls you to him this time and drapes your legs over his thighs. His hand is resting on your knee and you are acutely aware of his proximity.

“I just truly realized it today, but I’ve been feeling something for weeks now.” He shifts you both closer and his hand moves to your thigh. You can feel the muscles jumping, trembling, quivering, waiting for more. 

“I was annoyed because you were everywhere, always.” You huff as he laughs and cocks his head to the side and wets his lips with a quick dart of his tongue. “But I breathe easier when you’re around.” 

He pulls you closer and wraps an arm around your shoulders and you can feel yourself melt into his embrace. 

“It’s like,” you pause as his hand moves to curl around your neck to lightly massage the muscles there. “It’s like I hadn’t realized that I’ve been lost in the desert … that I need water.” 

That’s when he leans in a breadth away, you can see how clear and dark blue his eyes are. The short stubble that you pray will rub you raw in places people can see and places they can’t. 

“Dehydration is a bitch,” he points out and nudges his nose against yours only to pull back and look at you again. 

“I need the water to save me … I need it to be real. ” This time you move closer to him, but there’s barely any room left between you two. 

“This is real. I’m real,” he grips your hand and places it over his heart. “You can take what you need and give what you can. But I’m here now. This isn’t some mirage.”

 It’s now or never because if you can’t make this happen now, you’ll give up or spontaneously combust. 

Or leave and just never come back. 

“I’d give everything to have all of you, Bucky.” There’s a split second hesitation and then his mouth descends upon yours and it’s like he’s giving you the kiss of life because surely you weren’t truly living before this. 

His tongue sweeps across your lips begging for entrance and when you open for him he devours you and you groan in delight and surprise. You can admit now that you had dreamed of this and naturally it’s better than you imagined. 

He’s warm and firm, spicy from dinner and something that you suspect is strictly just him. The hand on your thigh has moved up your ribcage and is dancing up and down when you squeak into his mouth. 

When he pulls away, you give him an impish grin. “I’m a little ticklish.” He smiles and proceeds to dig his fingers into your side until you’re laughing and screaming in delight. 

“Is that your real laugh? I’ve never heard it before,” he says, grinning, and dips in for nips at your lips, cheeks, chin. “I like it.” 

When you smile it makes your cheeks hurt. You realize that ever since you came back, you’ve been holding back those smiles, not giving them your all -  except for this one. It’s full tilt and explosive and maybe a little manic, so your lips find his earlobe and when he shudders under your ministrations you feel it in your core.

He shifts you so you’re straddling his thighs and he’s so thick you can feel the fabric of your jeans straining against the stretch. There are no pretenses anymore. His hands are under your shirt, his thumbs flick over your hardened nipples. You’re trying desperately to garner any friction between the two of you, but the denim you both wear makes it difficult. 

You focus on his lips, his tongue, his hands, on the way he makes you feel; his touch is soft but fevered enough that you know he wants you. He’s tempering his movements for some reason. Maybe he’s worried you’ll be scared or intimidated.

In one swift motion, you pull off your shirt and unclasp your bra. You need his hands on your skin to feel the contrast between cool and warm, the polished and the rough. 

You want his lips on you and just as you look down at him he growls lowly in his throat and attacks. He grasps you by the back of the head crashes your mouth to his, teeth clanking and noses bumping. Chapped lips meeting, caressing. His stubble marking your chin and cheeks.  Tongues sliding wet and hot over each other, trying to claim every bit of real estate possible.  

Your hands are tangled in his hair and as you tug lightly he moans into your mouth and immediately kisses a trail down to your breasts. He licks and nips and sucks until you’re moaning and keening and grinding into him. 

“I need you.” You speak at the same time and the look shared between you two is soft and reverent. 

When he stands up from the couch with you wrapped around his hips, it’s not just sexy; it makes you feel safe and secure in a way you’ve never felt. When he kicks open the bedroom door, it’s with great satisfaction that the room is clean and orderly. 

He drops you softly on the bed and all but rips his long sleeve shirt from his torso while you lay there, propped up on your elbows just watching. It isn’t until he reaches for his belt that you spring into action.  

When you reach out with slightly trembling hands, he stills and looks at you questioningly. You offer him a smile because while you are nervous, it’s the good kind. 

You slide the leather through the buckle and undo the button fly and slide the jeans down to reveal nothing between the rough cotton and the already ready and willing member inside. You look up at him with a cocked eyebrow. 

“What? I don’t even own underwear.” 

You smirk and let him step out before running your hands up and down his bare thighs. His legs are spread shoulders width apart and he looks down at you. He’s breathing heavily and you understand the feeling. When your hands find him, he sucks in a breath and the muscles in his stomach clench. 

You aren’t shy; this is one of your favorite things to do. You delicately lick the head to spread his own moisture and mix it on your tongue. He gasps and his hands grip your shoulders as your mouth sinks down onto him. 

You find and set a pace that works using tongue and a little bit of teeth. Your mouth sucking, slurping, and rolling his balls in one hand. When you bottom out and he hits the back of your throat with little resistance from you, he groans from low in his gut and you can feel it reverberate in his body. 

The hands that had been gripping your shoulders reach under and hoist you up and off of him and he flings you back into the middle of the bed. 

On all fours, he stalks towards you, like a hunter after his prey. 

He reaches for your jeans and rips them off. You’re shocked. You figured something like that might hurt, but even though every nerve ending is firing, you felt nothing. 

“Those are pretty,” he murmurs and you glance down at the lace panties you’re wearing. You shrug. 

“I have plenty more.”

He grins and rips those from your body too. 

You’re both exposed to each other, naked and wanting. The air already lingers with the smell of arousal.

He doesn’t waste any time and crawls between your thighs and spreads your legs before him and sighs contentedly. 

“I’ve heard plenty of guys say a pussy is a beautiful thing, but I never got it ‘til now, sweets.” You’re laughing at the absurdity of his remark as he takes a long swipe, top to bottom and the laughter dies on your lips. 

Immediately your hands are fisted in the sheets, in his hair, clawing at his shoulders and back. His languid movements might be the death of you. 

Not a bad way to go, all in all. 

He’s humming against your nub when he inserts two cold fingers and the contrast between your hot center and his cold metal fingers makes you cum instantly.

You cry out and buck up and see him grin as his eyes meet yours but he won’t remove his mouth or his fingers from you. As you come back down, he adds a third finger and the second climax builds instantly again. 

You can’t catch your breath. 

He has you anchored to the bed with one arm wrapped around a leg and the other arm bringing you to a third, albeit slower orgasm. 

When you come down from that, you can only see stars and the curtain of his hair as he leans over you. 

“You hangin’ in there, sweets?” He leans in to kiss you and you can feel the stickiness in his stubble and on his tongue. 

You nod and feel the immense relief of knowing that he wants to make sure you’re still with him. 

And you are.

 It’s all been leading up to this, you finally realize it. Circling around each other, setting it all up. He’s ingrained himself in your life and now you’ve let him into your personal space. 

You’re both caressing each other waiting for your heart to slow, waiting for just the right moment. 

Because while it isn’t a game at all, sex and all that goes along with it never should be, this has been. It’s not cat and mouse though, it’s more like chess. Strategically testing the waters with each other over the last couple of months, delving in and learning new things. 

He’s like Bobby fucking Fischer as he settles his body between your legs and leans over you.

He’s set his queen right where he wants her. 

As he lines up his head with your entrance, gathering the wetness that lingers there and teasing you all the while. He’s taking too long, far too long. So, you wrap your legs around his hips and pull him to you and when he slides in, you never felt more perfect and full. 

You give a small laugh at the surprised expression on his face and he leans down to kiss you. 

“I want to be with you all night,” he breathes, as his lips drag across your collarbone and you clench around him. “We have all night, sweets.”

He pulls back and pumps back into you slowly, tortuously. You whine already, knowing full well that he can and will prolong this as much as possible. As he keeps up the arduous pace, your hands make trails up and down his biceps and back. Your fingers delicately trace the white and pink scars at his shoulder. 

His elbows cage your head, your legs still locked around his hips, but when you reach up and pepper gentle kisses to that left side. He slows even further. 

“You … you don’t have to …” His voice cracks but he hasn’t stilled his movements. 

“We have all night,” you parrot back to him. “I want my lips on every inch of you.” 

There’s a gleam in his eyes and by a trick of the light you think it might be tears, but it’s gone before you can question him.  He slides an arm under your back and begins to pick up his pace, pulling your hips to his to meet every thrust. 

The mingled sounds of skin on skin and your ragged breaths fill the quiet room until you shove gently at him and he pulls out of you and you move him to his back and you climb on. He twines his fingers with yours and supports your weight as you situate yourself and slide down. 

There’s a slight pain there as you adjust but he gives you a moment, softly kneading your breasts and smiling like a cat that caught the canary. 

As you begin to move he holds your hips softly, gently as you work him up and down, over and over. You have all night, there’s no need to rush. No need to move at a frantic pace. He reaches up and wraps his hands in your hair and pulls you down to catch your lips in a kiss. You’re still moving and the grinding sensation of your clit on his pelvic bone is speeding up this next orgasm. 

He bucks his hips up to meet yours and when the dam breaks you moan into his mouth while he latches onto a hardened nipple. 

You lay on top of him for a moment before he pulls you away and brushes the hair out of your face. You smile weakly at him. 

“I might need a little break,” you mutter as you try to stifle a yawn. “If we really do have all night.” 

He laughs and smacks you lightly on the ass and pulls you off of him and tucks you into his side. 

“We have all the time in the world, sweets.”

[amarits]

why did you leave cass out of common people when she's bruce's kid too?

As @chaseha-wing would say, Cass is in every scene, she’s just so quiet you don’t notice her. 

Seriously though, Cass has been a debate since before I even started writing Common People. There have been versions of it that I discussed with @kyrianne that she was in (especially the one where they’re all metas). I still might find a way to include her. I’ve thought about having her in the sequel (if I ever get around to writing it). To answer your question though, here are the reasons why Cass hasn’t been in Common People: 

Her father seems like an essential part of her story to me. Her abuse, the way she was raised to be ‘the perfect warrior’, the reasons she can’t speak. I’ve tried really hard to keep all of the kids’ basic stories intact while also making them Bruce’s bio kids, and I just don’t think I could do that for Cass without David Cain. Now that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find a way around it. Maybe Lady Shiva gave her to David Cain without him being her father. Maybe he kidnapped her. Maybe it’s a stepfather situation. I just find her a little harder to smoothly fit into the premise of the story than the others.

I felt a little like I was starting to stretch suspension of disbelief. Four kids with different mothers is already a lot. It’s enough that when they find out about Damian, Jason asks Bruce if they need to teach him how to use condoms. It’s enough that there’s an ongoing joke that Bruce is actually the father of all the kids in Gotham. I've thought a lot about the timeline here and Bruce’s relationships with the various mothers. I figure Bruce and Mary probably had an on and off relationship because of her traveling with the circus. Maybe Jason’s mom was a rebound when Bruce and Mary finally broke up for good. Definitely not anything serious. Bruce and Janet made sense societally but their personalities clashed and they were together less than a year. Talia and Bruce can have pretty much the same exact relationship they have in canon. It’s a lot, but it kind of works timeline-wise. Add Cass in though, especially her nebulous age and who her mom is, and what the heck has Bruce been up to? She’s very close to Jason’s age. Was she before Jason? Between Jason and Tim? There’s already only a two-year age difference between them. That’s just... awkward. Also with her showing up later in life, that makes three out of five of Bruce’s kids that were surprises that he didn’t know about for most of their lives. It’s just a bit much.

One of the main things I wanted to do with Common People is explore the culture clash of poverty and exorbitant wealth, and Cass muddles that a bit. Dick may have lived his first 9 years with the circus, but he always knew he had money, and he’s had no problem with spending Bruce’s money since moving into the manor. Maybe he doesn’t feel the need to have a ton of stuff, but cool gadgets? Fancy car? He’s all about it. Tim grew up always having money and has never experienced any form of poverty. He’s never even met a poor person. And then of course there’s Bruce. Even Roy I’ve made more of the fucked-up rich kid (he’s also Ollie’s bio kid for those who didn’t realize). The way Jason interacts with all of these people is meant to further his understanding of wealth, his recognition of the humanity of rich people, the way he thinks about money in general. Jason has stepped into a world he doesn’t understand at all, and everyone I’ve included I’ve done so to help him move forward and better understand who he is and who he’s going to become. And I just... don’t see how Cass fits in that? It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with fun interactions for Jason and Cass. I enjoy their relationship a lot in other fics. I just feel like, for this fic, building a relationship with her would take away from the major themes. That’s why, if I were to include her, I’d do so in the sequel. 

Those are the main reasons, I think. I do feel bad for not including her. People ask about her a lot. I just think, at least for Common People, it makes for a better story to leave her out. Maybe she’ll find a place in future stories though. 

[stagekiller]

“Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.”  ―  Ayn Rand  

  To cut a long story short, we could conclude that clownman grew up in a toxic environment. And as much as I hate to make him sound like a victim, he...was a victim of circumstance. So, today, we delve into Jerome’s feelings in regards to his past.

  Before I begin, I would like to declare that I am very much opposed to any fandom interpretations of his character that present him as a ‘poor wittle baby whose mommy didn’t love him yadayadayada’. This is watering down the character. It’s Bonnie & Clyde syndrome. And my goal in this post is NOT to make you sympathize with him, hence the quote.

  Second, small disclaimer; these are fictional characters in a fictional settings. Though it may bare resemblance to things that happen in real life, I, as the mun, by no means condone any actions described.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: child abuse, corporal punishment, incest, gaslighting, spoilers

  Throughout this post I will be making references to Arthur Phleck, so consider it a spoiler zone for JOKER(2019). These references are mostly used as comparisons in regards to ‘The Joker’s essence and how the victim mentality comes into play in all different iterations of this DC villain, establishing victim-play as a character trait.

PART ONE : ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY

 To begin with, I want to delve into how Jerome himself sees his childhood, how he feels about these past events and how he chooses to present them to others.

  Jerome is someone who hates vulnerability. He is not one to open up or be vulnerable around others where it counts. That is a symptom, or rather, a consequence, of the abuse he has suffered. Child abuse survivors often have severe trust issues, because the people they were supposed to trust (their family) have betrayed them in some shape or form. For example, if a parent baits their child to confess a naughty thing (”If you tell me, I won’t ground you.”) they did and then punishes them after confessing, it is very likely that this child will be more hesitant to confess the next time. After enough repetition, the child may start suspecting other adults of similar behavior. The foundation for a cognitive structure has been laid; “If I trust people with information, they may use it against me.”

  According to Mary Ainsworth, the bond between mother and infant is the most important because the child will then base their future attachments on that prototype. In an oversimplification, parents teach us how to bond with other people, among other things. They are responsible for teaching us how to behave socially and how to interact with others. Furthermore, research has shown that children with depressed mothers are more likely to develop conduct disorders, due to the lack of proper interaction and stimuli at an early age.

 PART TWO: THESE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

   Now, to put all these things into perspective, in my headcanon, Lila Valeska was very much a depressed mother. A depressed alcoholic, to be exact. A broken woman, looking for self esteem in any embrace that would be offered to her. And, because of that,s he was completely incapable to equip Jerome and Jeremiah with the social skills they needed. She never intended to abuse them. And she wasn’t evil. She just wasn’t enough.

   But the problem only begins with Lila. Zachary Trundle very much played the part of her controlling older brother. We can actually see that he was rather controlling in canon, telling her what to do with her kids ( note how Zach told her to throw Jerome in the river but Lila still kept him around ) and being in charge of moving Jeremiah when the time came. We can conclude that Zachary played the part of a father, a brother and potentially a husband substitute as well.

  And it was Zachary who molded Jerome into what he became later on. But... more on their relationship on a later post. ;3c

 Last, but not least, let’s not forget about Paul Cicero, who not only wasn’t there to console Jerome but also gaslighted him. ( “The world doesn’t care about you” ) He tried to instill the core belief in him that he was unworthy and he should just suck it up. And what that does to kids is usually make them think that they deserve the abuse and not try to escape from it. In Jerome’s case, it also resulted in him abusing himself later on. Because when this kind of situation has been NORMALIZED for you, anything other than pain feels abnormal and weird. Jerome would not know how to react to healthy relationships.

PART THREE: ONE IN EVERY DECK

  “Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.”    ―  George K. Simon Jr.,  In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People    

  All iterations of the Joker have a tragic backstory. Most DC Villains do, as a matter of fact. But how they deal with it differs from one iteration to another. For example, Ledger Joker uses different versions of a tragic backstory to either disturb or gain sympathy from his victims, or to make a point ( ‘you wanna know how I got these scars?’ ). Nicholson Joker uses his tragic backstory as feud fuel and victim cards to pin his misery on Batman. BTAs Joker is shown using some tragic backstory to sway Dr. Quinzel, but later on in the Mad Love episode we see that he’s used the same victim card on Batman too.

  But Phoenix Joker is by far the most compelled to play victim cards. The difference with previous iterations is that Phleck Joker sees himself as the victim too. I’m not saying that the others didn’t, to some extent. But Arthur is immersed in the part. He thinks of himself as a mentally ill loner. He doesn’t just use the victimhood card in a manipulative fashion. He actually experiences emotion over it. That is a much more realistic interpretation of what has come to be known as the serial killer victim complex.

  I’ve dropped a link to a video of a real life criminal talking about himself and his past actions in a very similar way to Arthur Phleck, here. Please view at your own discretion, it does contain disturbing material.

    So how does Jerome view the things that happened in his childhood?

  On the show, Jerome uses victim cards in a similar fashion to previous Joker iterations. “ With Uncle Zach, the beatings never stopped...they went on and on, and yet...nobody ever helped me... ” He tells Bruce. For a moment, we see him performing an emotion. But it is shallow. And that is because, as I mentioned above, Jerome hates vulnerability. So, to me, he is somewhat of a combination between Phleck and the previous Jokers.

  He will use his tragic backstory for pity points when it is convenient. But does he actually see himself as a victim? No. Because that would contradict his prideful nature! A victim is weak, puny, abused and broken. Jerome can’t be those things, because seeing himself as such would be an ego collapse. Jerome sees his life as a movie. Another soap opera. He removes himself from the reality of the situation. There is a ‘that’s life’ mentality in that too. There’s a ‘my life is a comedy’ mentality in that too. But, unlike Phleck, Jerome doesn’t feel bitter about it anymore.

   Even when referencing how he killed Lila to Jim Gordon, or complaining to Jeremiah for abandoning him, the emotional aspect lasts for a minute. Then he starts laughing and making jokes about it. It’s like he wants to distance himself from the reality of the situation. And that’s why he doesn’t use the victim cards in most situations too. Because they would make him look weak and small. And he’s not pathetic like that.

  For example, he wouldn’t start talking about his tragic backstory just to sleep with some cult girl. These tactics are RESERVED for very special individuals, like Bruce Wayne and his brother. He would use this kind of thing against people he knows are emotional or bonded with him to some extend. That’s why he doesn’t do it to Jimbo, for example, because he knows Jimbo isn’t as openly compassionate as Bruce, who would feel sorry for him and want to help him.

   TO CONCLUDE: Once again my post got huge and if you made it this far, thank you for reading :D I hope I conveyed the general picture adequately to you!

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.”   — Flora Jessop, Church of Lies

[judgeanon]

The Way of Masters

(art by Phil Noto)

So with her likely upcoming appearances in Young Justice and maybe Gotham and maybe Birds of Prey, I’ve had Lady Shiva on my mind again. Well... more than usual. And I managed to keep it bottled up so far but now I feel those urges again so let’s at least try to channel them into some hopefully decent comic book analysis. Today’s subject: why I can never get really behind any story that involves Lady Shiva teaching anyone martial arts. 

Expect the usual copious amounts of NOT MUH under the jump:

The concept of Lady Shiva as a teacher comes from two main sources: Jim Starlin’s Death in the Family, which established her as a teacher for hire, and Chuck Dixon’s first Robin miniseries, where Tim Drake ran into her and asked her to train him. It was further solidified in Gulacy and Dixon’s Knightsend, where she helped Bruce get his kung fu mojo back after healing from his spine injury. And then there was Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey, where Shiva trained Dinah Lance to try and turn her into her successor. On top of all that, there’s New52 Shiva having trained Jason Todd, and while I have no idea if it’s been confirmed in canon, I’m like 90% sure she must’ve trained Damian at some point too. So it’s pretty much a solidly established fact that Shiva trains people.

And I personally find it to be a fundamental misunderstanding of her character.

(art by Brian Bolland)

Now, first of all, logistics-wise I have a problem with people repeatedly going to train with a known killer when guys like Richard Dragon are just, y’know, there. And while there’s a dozen of possible in-universe explanations that you could possibly wield (It’s faster! It’s harder! It allows you to learn her techniques should you ever have to fight her!), ultimately I think the best explanation is just that it’s more dramatic. To be trained by someone diametrically opposed to your ideology in stuff you want to know but have vowed not to use is an absolute no-brainer in terms of dramatic tension. And that’s exactly why I don’t like it from the start: because every. Single. Story. That involves Shiva training anyone always ends in the exact same place: with Shiva ordering her student to kill and her student refusing to. Or in Bruce’s case, just pretending he killed someone. 

This is nothing but a pointless exercise in character reaffirmation that does nobody any favors. Of course Batman/Robin/Black Canary is not going to kill anybody. Tempting them with it is just going through the motions. It was old hat in the 90s, let alone now. And yet, in one form or another, it just keeps happening. And it keeps happening because none of these stories are really concerned with Shiva herself. They are stories about Batman/Robin/Black Canary getting stronger, with Shiva used as a tool whose characterization is based on the most surface-level reading possible of her. The problem is that these stories also feed into each other, just like how Hush establishing Shiva as a member of the League of Shadows snowballed into this hellscape where she’s literally nothing but a member of the League of Shadows. Lack of interest in her actual character creates and perpetuates these misunderstandings until nothing else exists. But now the question becomes, well, what is her actual character? Good question.

So in Denny O’Neil’s Question run, which I am never going to shut up about until everyone who even thinks about writing Lady Shiva reads through at least twice, Shiva physically and metaphorically kills Vic Sage, then saves his life. I’ve talked about this before but the short of it is that not only does she kill his body, but by presenting him with something he can’t understand, she also kills his stoic, narrow-minded idea of a black and white world. But once she’s saved him, she doesn’t stick around to train him. Instead, she gives him the address of the aforementioned Richard Dragon, who takes him in as a pupil. And this is where things start getting a bit floaty.

(art by Denys Cowan)

Because there’s a difference between teaching someone and helping them learn it on their own. Zen Buddhists know this. The idea is not to build a path for someone, or to guide them through it. The path is unique to every person and they have to walk it by themselves. But that doesn’t mean you can’t at least point them towards it. Which is what Richard does. Sure, he teaches Vic how to fight, but way later in the run, Richard explains how unimportant that is:

And make no mistake: Shiva is very similar to Richard in this aspect. Her interest in Vic is not about whether he can become a mighty warrior, but in what motivates him. She’s interested in seeing how Vic develops, and her reasons are, in her own veiled way, pretty much the same as Richard’s:

Right before this page, Richard explained that Shiva thinks Vic is fueled by a lust for combat, while he argues that it’s curiosity that motivates him. And the book never gives a clear-cut answer, showing Vic as an intensely curious creature (in fact, it was his curiosity about Shiva’s motivation that helped tear down his old black-and-white worldview) but also as someone prone to seeking the simplicity of punching dudes in the fucking face when the world gets too complex. Which is part of the genius of this Question run: nobody is ever that simple.

Now, it’s possible to transfer this to the exampled provided below and say that Shiva is similarly interested in Robin/Batman/Black Canary’s development. But only if you don’t really go any deeper than the pure surface. Because the difference here is that at no point through the entire Question run does Shiva demand that Vic take a life. She doesn’t want to prove to him that her way is superior, or that killing people makes you better. She doesn’t want Vic to become like her. She’s just interested in seeing how, once violently stripped of all his preconceived notions and brought back as an almost clean slate, he evolves. And it’s an evolution Shiva has respect for.

And that’s why I can’t get behind any story about Shiva as a teacher. Because just like Richard, she’s not there to try and tempt people to walk her same path of slaughter, sneering smugly at their heroic ideals of the sacredness of life. That’s a dangerously bi-dimensional reading of her that leads to endless rehashes of tired plotlines that go to the same wretchedly familiar places we’ve been to a thousand times before. There’s no deeper insight into the character of Tim Drake or Bruce Wayne to be gained by putting them in a situation where they’re forced to kill but they don’t. There’s no evolution, no characterization, there’s nothing to be gained except for a physical upgrade. And while they may not lose much from just going through the motions over and over again, Shiva gets it so much worse because her character is eroded by these nothing plots.

(art by Ed Benes)

In BoP, Simone tried to give Shiva a new reason to actively seek an apprentice, which at least demonstrates more agency on her part than the usual row of Bat-people knocking at her door. Simone’s Shiva is preoccupied with the future and creating a legacy, but again, that’s an idea I just can’t get behind at all. To have a character as steeped into Zen Buddhism and Taoism as Lady Shiva worry about life after death feels like a betrayal, and wanting to turn Dinah into a new version of herself clashes with everything explained above. And Starlin, Dixon, Gulacy, Loeb, Gabrych and Tynion IV don’t even try. It’s enough to make one wonder, is there any writer who actually paid attention when reading Question?

(art by Damion Scott)

Look, call this a reach, but I think there’s a pretty good reason why Lady Shiva’s first appearance in Kelley Puckett’s Batgirl has her wearing a purple coat that’s basically an update of her design in the very first issue of Question. And considering Puckett actually collaborated with O’Neil on the tail end of that run, it’s not even that far of a reach. More importantly, however, Shiva treats Cassandra pretty much the exact same way as she treats Vic: she tears her apart and then leaves her alone for a year so she can rebuild herself. That’s not to say it’s a 100% perfect callback. She does help Cass get her body-reading skills back, and sadly, some of Shiva’s kill-crazy personality has seeped in, making her give speeches about how Cassandra is a waste because she doesn’t kill and how if they are to fight they must fight to the death and whatnot. Which makes sense for Cassandra’s development since rejecting such notions is a big part of her character, although that doesn’t make it any less tired.

But ultimately, the reason why I bring up Puckett’s Shiva is because he’s pretty much the only one to actually take those aspects of O’Neil’s Shiva and bring them back into the light. In a perfect world, the whole “you must kill” thing wouldn’t exist and Shiva would just be satisfied with seeing Cassandra develop on her own. And as we move further into pure headcanon territory, I think O’Neil’s Shiva would be downright fascinated by the idea of someone becoming stronger than her in their own terms rather than just by trying to be like her in every way. Sadly, Puckett’s Shiva doesn’t stick the landing, since the respect she shows for Vic’s personal growth is nowhere to be seen here. And once Gabrych takes over, we’re right back into caricature mode, where we’ve stayed for over a decade save for that one Blackest Night Question special. Which was co-written by, big surprise here, Denny O’Neil.

I understand why writers go for it. It’s simple, it’s dramatic, it’s familiar, and it gives their characters something to brag about. “Trained by the greatest martial artists in the DCU, including Lady Shiva” is used to describe even people like Cassandra who never actually trained under her. But I think it’s an error. And I find the alternative not just more gripping and compelling but also ripe with possibilities for both characters in the equation. It forces the person writing it to sit down and think what could Shiva find interesting in each character, and how they could be changed by her presence, framing it all as a two-sided journey of self discovery rather than a melodramatic ideological struggle of which we all know the ending. All you have to do is stop treating one of the most interesting characters in modern DC as a tool to make others get better at punching.

[gatecoeur]

Arelette’s Martial Arts Background

PREFACE: I am by no means an expert in martial arts. 

I did have limited training in various styles (Karate, Shaolin Wushu, the TINIEST amount of Wing Chun and Tae Kwon Do, to be exact), and I’ve had an interest in the subject my entire life, so yes, I’ve done some research, but also please consider that I am susceptible to making mistakes (especially in the boxing section cuz lord knows how much I don’t know about the sport). If I have, please let me know!

Also, you may have already noticed, I am not going to use the word kung fu in this VERY long headcanon blurb, but the word wushu instead. Even though we colloquially have come to understand any form of Chinese Boxing as kung fu, the word itself actually means “to master an art” (idk in which Chinese dialect tho, sorry); it’s technically applicable to other artistic skills like cooking and painting. Wushu on the other hand means “the art of war”, and is used as an umbrella term in *insert proper Chinese dialect here* when referring to any Chinese martial arts style. 

I want to give the language a chance to be properly understood, as the improper use of the word kung fu (I’m guessing) was probably a result of Britain’s colonial occupation in China, so that’s why I’m doing it.

Anyways, the full headcannon’s under the cut, so if you’re interested, read away!

Here’s a comprehensive list and explanation behind every martial arts style Arelette is canonically proficient in:

Tai Chi (also written as Taijiquan)

As you may or may not know, Arelette was hospitalized at the age of 7 due to episodes of extreme pain. After five months of no improvement to her chronic pain, she was admitted under HumGen’s care. HumGen was rather adamant about keeping Arrie physically active, as it was a well-known combatant of chronic pain, and determined that Tai Chi was the perfect starting point for her.

However, as you can imagine, a 7 year old is going to be VERY angry about being forced to do something that is generally perceived to be an activity for old people. However, Arelette’s Shifu, who also happened to be one of the doctors at HumGen, was having absolutely NONE of her shit, and dared her to punch him. Arrie of course listened, and her Shifu blocked it, before demonstrating to her a slowed-down version of his block.

From that point on, Arelette was absolutely hooked, and trained almost daily. Later masters of hers would often commend her on her focus and control over her breathing, despite being so young.  

Kyokushin Karate

In 2002, Montréal’s martial arts community was buzzing about an up-and-coming professional who had won in his debut match by a knockout in the first round; a Québecois man by the name of Georges St. Pierre. Arelette, being an impressionable 8 year old kid when it happened, was absolutely obsessed, and learned that Georges had studied a specific school of karate that had a particular focus on full-contact sparring. 

It took her a while to convince HumGen doctors to let her study Kyokushin, being worried about her pain and all. In the end though, the organization did hire a Sensei that Arelette trained with twice a week. 

She still continued her Tai Chi training, much to everyone’s surprise, but the art was basically on the back burner for her by the time she was 12. Arelette got her Karate black belt when she was just shy of 15 years old.

Wing Chun

Oh come on, you knew this was coming. It’s 2008. Ip Man comes out. If you think for ONE HOT SECOND that Arelette managed to get her grubby little hands on it, but was later so obsessed with it that she started imitating Donnie Yen’s moves to the point of memorizing them, then you’re SO wrong. Arelette really appreciated Wing Chun’s style and philosophy, and upon later research, was absolutely amazed to find out that Wing Chun had been originally developed by a woman to teach women to defend themselves.

What’s even better was that there was (and still is) a well-respected school in Montréal that teaches Wing Chun. As soon as Arelette found out, she BEGGED her parents to enroll her; her parents of course obliged, while also enrolling the rest of her siblings. Until Arelette moved out of Montréal, she trained under Grandmaster Nam Anh’s school. 

Xiang Xing Quan 

Xiang Xing Quan is an umbrella term for the styles of Wushu (usually Shaolin) that focuses on the imitation of animal movements. Arrie is proficient in the Eagle Claw and Fu Jow Pai/Tiger Claw styles, as they’re fairly compatible with her habit of turning her nails into claws. She has also been trained in Shaolin Snake-Style Wushu, as the style focuses on aiming for weak points of the human body.

She studied each style per year that she was living in Québec City, as she did not want to stagnate her martial arts training. She’s not as strong in these styles as her other martial arts studies, due to a lot of tragedies that happened to her in that time, but she’s still proficient enough in them, and tends to use at least some of the techniques rather often.

Also, as a note, this style is the style that Arrie got the mass majority of her weapon-wielding training.

Boxing

Arelette had noted but never understood why so many of the people she had fought tended to either be full-out boxers or had fighting styles that were boxer-esque. She was brought to believe that boxing was an inferior fighting style, but had no choice but to take up the sport as a way of keeping herself fit during her first year living in New York City, since boxing gyms tended to be a bit more on the affordable side for her. 

She really underestimated how strategic boxing could be (which she later found strange, since all fighting in the end has to be somewhat strategic), along with how hard it was to limit herself to only her hands. She really appreciated how boxing has given her an insight as to how a lot of her enemies fight. Though she doesn’t hit the boxing gym as much as she did in 2014-2016, she still swings by at least once every week (typically on a Wednesday) to blow off some steam. 

Pencak Silat

Once Arrie started accumulating more disposable income, she started looking into a fighting style she had come across during her time in Madripoor, which she had come to learn through research was called Pencak Silat. She was particularly interested in the speed of its movements, plus its focus on striking with elbows and striking against pressure points, having learned from first-hand experience how much it all hurt to take hits from.

She found an underground school in New York City that taught Madripoor’s variant of the fighting style, which is one of the more aggressive and deadlier variants of silat. Due to her other life demands though, this was the style that took her the longest to master, as she had sporadic lessons in between 2017 and the 2023 Blip. 

Jeet Kune Do

Another martial arts style that should obviously be on any martial artists’ radar; it was developed by Bruce Lee, after all. Arelette’s been taking sporadic classes since the Blip. 

This is due to Jeet Kune Do’s mathematical philosophy of the economy of motion, which more or less promotes the idea that a fighter’s ultimate goal is to conserve both energy and time during a fight. Fair to say, it’s very relevant to Arrie’s career, hence why she took up the style. 

[kqduane]

U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, 64 – Massachusetts Democrat

Ms. Warren is another influencial radical, second-wave feminist who thrives on irrational lies and is incapable of connecting-the-dots in order to determine the falsehoods that underpin her bizarre assumptions. And the reason? She has adopted the Marxist infused ideology of radical, second-wave feminism, as her bible.

Radical, second-wave feminism is notoriously successful at diffusing the truth, especially for women who are susceptible to their socialist way of thinking. And in 1970, Ms. Warren was that perfect young, female patsy – white, middle-class and one of the oldest female baby boomers, having been born in 1949.

Ms. Warren followed radical feminism’s handbook almost from Day 1. She married her high school sweetheart Jim Warren in 1968, just as feminism was coming of age. But soon after having her two de rigueur children, Warren began to veer away from home.

Soon after graduating from Rutgers University Law School, she began teaching law at Rutgers in 1977, divorced her inconvenient engineer husband in 1978, married another lawyer, Bruce Mann (but kept her surname) and never looked back.

Concerning her first marriage (to the now deceased Jim Warren) she would say that he was “not a bad guy.” But, it was the 1970s and she was the mom, which, thanks to radical, second-wave feminism, was no longer enough.

Later, Warren would again write about her first husband, “He had married a nineteen-year-old girl, and she hadn’t grown into the woman we had both expected. I was very, very sorry, but I couldn’t change what I had become (a radical, second-wave feminist). I was supposed to be the Betty Crocker award winner, but I set things on fire.” Typical snarky feminist remark.

Concerning her second marriage —- as soon as her Aunt Bee agreed to come and care for her two little children (so that Warren could keep teaching law), she filed for divorce. Not surprisingly, Warren was already involved with Bruce Mann. They had met earlier at a reception for a conference on law and economics in Florida.

Elizabeth Warren and Bruce Mann’s wedding day

The very timid Mann, who had never been married, was immediately smittened by the outgoing Warren and would soon begin to fly to Warren’s home on the weekends. Elizabeth Warren and Bruce Mann would be married within six months of her ­divorce. And, Aunt Bee? She would stay for the next 15 years.

So, in less than 10 years, Warren was transformed, by radical feminism, from a stay-at-home mom to a full-blown radical, second-wave feminist. She was the product of the feminist-imbued 1970s, jettisoning the traditional values of her Christian faith along the way and adopting radical feminism’s ideology in its place, becoming a liberated, self-centered, free-love, divorced, “career” woman instead.

According the radical feminism, Warren “had it all” – a “career” at a university that was looking for female law professors, a wimpy man (wife) waiting in the wings, and a babysitter for her inconvenient children. So now, it was truly, all-about-her.

In 1995, after having taught law at universities in Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the final transition to official radical, second-wave feminist would come when she began to vote Democrat. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that this was a coincidence, as she was made the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University at the exact same time. So now, she was now a full-fledged, radical, feminist “believer.”

Scott Brown

By 2011, Warren was no longer content to spread feminist ideology, just to the young. She decided to expand her sphere of influence and enter politics. She chose to run, as a Democrat, for one of the two U.S. Senate seats in Massachusetts. This race would be against Republican Senator Scott Brown, who won a special election in 2010 to complete the remainder of the term of deceased Ted Kennedy.

Unfortunately, the highly touted Scott Brown, who was the first Republican elected to the U. S. Senate from Massachusetts since 1972, blew his credibility when he crossed party lines on many major issues. He voted for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the START Treaty and a $13 billion payroll-tax exemption for employers willing to hire unemployed workers.

Brown also voted against Republican Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare. And then voted to support taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood and the two month extension of unemployment benefits.  All of which a majority of Republicans, especially the leadership, opposed. As a result, Brown’s strong support from the Tea Party, in his 2010 bid for Kennedy’s seat, all but disappeared and Warren won the 2012 election by a margin of 53% to 47%.

Former Republican Senator from Massachusetts – Scott Brown

Elizabeth Warren and her husband Bruce Mann

Warren’s campaign would begin to expose her devious nature and her inability to stick with the truth.

1.  It began with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi’s, efforts to manipulate the race. Her company, Demos.org sued the state of Massachusetts to enforce the National Voter Registration Act. The state settled and mailed voter registration forms to welfare recipients. Sen. Brown claimed this was done to boost Democrat voter numbers and to increase the turnout for Warren.

Amelia Warren Tyagi

Amelia Warren Tyagi and Associates

Demos.org

Pauline Reed Herring and her daughter Elizabeth

2.  Then it was revealed that she had lied on employment forms and law teaching directories when she claimed to have Native American (Cherokee and Delaware) ancestry on her mother’s (Pauline Reed Herring) side of the family. It would soon be shown that her claims were based only on family lore and that there was no documentation, or evidence, to prove her assertions. In fact, no one who attended her mother’s funeral in 1995, or her three older brothers, or her two children have come forward to corroborate Ms. Warren’s, “I’m a minority. Give me special treatment”, story.

3.  Warren also took liberties with the truth when she claimed to be the “first nursing mother to take a bar exam in the state of New Jersey.” Oh please. How pathetic that she resorts to fabrications on this low level. She reminds me of Texas gubernatorial candidate Sen. Wendy Davis’s pathetic pattern of inconsequential lies.

4.  Once elected, Warren’s one-sided, radical, second-wave feminist views on capitalism, and the Christian businessmen whose monumental efforts sustain it, would continue to color her politics when she was quoted as saying – “You Didn’t Built It.”

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Obviously, every American is provided with those same “advantages” and yet very few men are capable of creating a thriving, successful business. And their success has nothing to do with the roads and everything to do with the talent, tenacity, trustworthiness, character, ambition, honesty and the drive each man brings to his business every day! Only a radical, second-wave feminist, who has been trained to abhor strong men in general, and strong, successful, Christian men in particular, could come to such an outlandish, irrational, and socialist conclusion.

Bill Gates – Microsoft

Donald Trump

Steve Jobs – Apple

5.  Now lets talk about Warren’s minimum wage IQ. I can’t even decipher her twisted views on this topic. But basically she thinks that the minimum wage should be around $22.00 per hour, based on “economic developments” since the 1960s. And since it’s only $7.25, she claims the missing $14.75 was “stolen” by those baaaadd male employers. If you want to torture yourself with her reasoning, click here Realclearpolitics.com

Larry Summers

6.  Now let’s move on to why the Catholic Church will never allow women to become priests. Simply put, women can’t keep a confidence. And Ms. Warren’s stunning, and naive revelation, about her conversation with Larry Summers, shows that she doesn’t even know enough to keep a confidence (given to her as a newbie) by very big “insider”. The very same Larry Summers, who at the time was the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. She wrote the following in her book:

“After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”

Granted, I’m not the least bit impressed with Mr. Summers legacy, but, as a Progressive, Ms. Warren should be. So, why did she do it?

Well, being a feminist first, this deliberate betrayal has to have its roots in radical feminism once again. Hummm? But, of course! This Larry Summers is the very same Larry Summers who was ousted as President of Harvard (while Ms. Warren was employed there) because he had the unmitigated gall to speak the truth about the statistical disparity between men and women and their mathematical abilities. This is what he said while speaking at the National Bureau of Economic Research conference in 2005:

“It does appear that on many, many different human attributes—height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability—there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means—which can be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.”

Remember, radical feminists are feminists first and foremost and they reserve their greatest ire for those who refuse to maintain the smoke screen of lies surrounding their ideology, especially when it comes to the radical feminist high jinx, concerning the “equality of the sexes.” Mr. Summers overlooked this little detail and now we know why Warren threw him under the bus.

7.  Now for her claim that interest rates on government issued student loans are “morally wrong.” Despite Ms. Warren’s claim that she is a consumer finance expert, she fails to connect the dots on the simple fact that if the kids, who take out the loans, don’t pay something for the privilege, the taxpayers will have to pick up the slack! AGAIN! Considering the fact that, even with the kids interest payments included, the government’s student loan “program” is already one billion dollars in debt, Warren’s comment is upside-down, off-the-charts, socialist, STUPID!

8. In her misguided efforts to get the minimum wage raised again, Warren tweeted that it “no longer keeps a mom and her baby out of poverty.” What? It never kept single mothers (aka. radical feminists) out of poverty because it was never intended to support a mother and her children. Moms and their children are not a viable economic unit under any circumstances. That’s why God invented fathers! The minimum wage was originally intended for entry-level jobs for unskilled teenagers, period. And for Warren to claim otherwise is just plain dishonest (something at which she excels).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

It is rumored that Warren is considering a run for the Presidency in 2016. She better reconsider because there’s just too many of her own quotes to use against her. Shall we continue?

The following is a list of more preposterous quotes from Warren which were put together by thedailybanter.com in 2013.

1. “People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they’re right. The system is rigged.” (It is rigged against average people – by politicians like radical feminist, and socialist, Elizabeth Warren. kqd)

2. “If there had been a Financial Product Safety Commission in place 10 years ago, the current financial crisis would have been averted.” (OMG. What a simpleton. The financial crisis was deliberately caused by financial ditz’ s Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank (Heads of Federal Banking Committee) who relaxed the banking regs which caused a feeding frenzy in the industry.kqd)

Sen. Chuck Schumer, 64 NY

Sen. Chris Dodd – Conn, (D)

Rep. Barney Frank – Mass. (D)

3. “You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads that the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” (Duh, again. kqd)

4. “Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones the direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that?” (WHAT? Radical feminist ideology again. Capitalists don’t destroy jobs, they create them!!! Plus, they are the primary supply line for the taxes on which the government functions! What an arrogant dope! kqd)

75,000 employees

255,000 employees

4,700 gas stations

5. “I do not understand how it is that financial institutions could think that they could take taxpayer money and then turn around and act like it’s business as usual. I don’t understand how they can’t see that the world has changed in a fundamental way, that it is not business as usual when you take taxpayer dollars.” (Well, maybe this would be true, if it weren’t for the fact that the incompetent, meddling GOVERNMENT REGULATORS initiated the meltdown that the banking industry endured. kqd)

Sen. Chuck Schumer, 64 NY

Sen. Chris Dodd – Conn, (D)

Rep. Barney Frank – Mass. (D)

Mitt Romney – Former Massachusetts Governor, Christian and co-founder of Bain Capitol Investment Firm

6. “Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.” (OK. I’m not even going to respond to this totally absurd comment. kqd)

7. “You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything in your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.” (A repeat. For radical, second-wave feminists, the “battle” never ends – radical feminist vs. Christian men, over and over again. kqd)

8. “In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the presidency, and can’t win their fights in the courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage taking is all they have left, a last gasp for those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy.” (Hostage tactics? Cannot cope with the realities of our democracy? Come on. I don’t think so. Warren and her ilk are the ones who are trashing democracy. It’s very difficult to win when the system is rigged against the productive Christian businessmen, by influential lesbian-led, radical, second-wave feminists, like political hack Ms. Warren, and her socialist cohorts, who are in cahoots with atheists like the vindictive, litigious Atty. Mikey Weinstein. It’s time for Christian men to FIGHT BACK. kqd)

9. “If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to jail….Evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night.” (Only if he’s, i.e. a friend of Democrat Eric Holder/Bill Clinton. kqd)

Eric Holder

Bill Clinton

Marc Rich

10. “Nobody’s safe. Health insurance? That didn’t protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.” (OMG! Alert! Alert! Nobody’s safe! – The truth is that nobody’s safe because radical, second-wave feminist Elizabeth Warren is roaming the halls of Congress and, the truth is, she knows EXACTLY what she’s up to! Beware. If the Christian men don’t stop her soon, she’ll throw us all under the bus! kqd) Current EVEntS – Radical, Second-Wave Feminist Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass (D) – Just Doesn’t Get It, or Does She? U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, 64 - Massachusetts Democrat Ms. Warren is another influencial radical, second-wave feminist who thrives on irrational lies and is incapable of connecting-the-dots in order to determine the falsehoods that underpin her bizarre assumptions.

[lookingforodysseus]

The Usual

A/N: SO, I usually don’t post stuff like this, but the wonderful @startrekkingaroundasgard​ had a 2K writing challenge about tropes and no one had taken the coffee shop AU yet, which I thought was a shame and a disaster, so here we go. Hope you enjoy :D

Tony had always thought he would despise working in the service industry. Given the amount everyone around him complained about it, he had expected he would be trying to commit harakiri with a milk frother within the week, since whatever Hades had in store for him would be less bad than dealing with one more person who pronounced cappuccino wrong.

And yet, now that he's here, he's enjoying himself. The coffee shop, called Impresso Espresso (insert forced laughter here), is across from a college campus, so most of his customers are caffeine-addicted students, hands shaking and eyes wide open from either too much Redbull or too much cocaine (it's a toss up at this age, really) and their professors, with under-eye bags so large they can put all the assignments they still have to mark in them, leaving their hands free for a carton cup with seven shots of espresso. Tony enjoys winking at all of them and trying to make them laugh, every smile a reward better than the free coffee that comes with the job.

During the classic afternoon lull, when the students are in bed and the professors in class, Tony puts the mechanics degree that put him deep in debt but didn't provide him with a job due to his well-meaning but obnoxious demeanour to good use by upgrading the ancient coffee machines, that were apparently purchased in the late seventies, max- or maybe modern technology just isn't as great as people often make it out to be.

Tony's manager, Matt, captain of the American football team who likes his coffee like he likes his math problems, simple, watches this thirty-something man become increasingly comfortable in a coffee shop populated mostly by those ten years younger or older than him with a mix between amazement and amusement. Besides, the coffee machines, that previously took ten minutes of gentle conversation with an increasingly impatient customer to create something as simple as a cup of tea, can now whip up a doppio in a record-holding 17.8 seconds, according to Tony. To Matt, it just feels like approximately 20 seconds, but, apparently, the exact time is of great importance to Tony, who, one night during midterms season when the coffee shop is open 24/7 to accommodate all the students pulling all-nighters, calls Matt at 3 am to announce he has shortened this time to 17.7 seconds. Apart from that hiccup, though, Tony is a good employee and Matt is satisfied.

On a dreary Thursday in February, one of the other baristas asks Matt: "Have you seen the professor around, lately? I feel like it's been awhile since we've had a queue of 20+ people- do you think he's ill?"

Matt smiles. "Don't worry about him, he's at a conference. He told me about it last time he was here, right before he told me off about not stirring his coffee correctly, or putting too much syrup in it. I'm not sure what it was that time, but it was clear he wasn't happy."

The barista laughs. "Is he ever?"

Tony, who is leaning on the counter, watching the students run by, text books over their head, more concerned with protecting their haircut than the $200 the book cost them, hears the comment. "Who are you talking about?" he asks, intrigued.

"Just this crazy customer who comes here a lot," Matt says. "He teaches something very scientific and complicated, and his order is absolutely ridiculous. You should be glad you're first month here has coincided with a four-week conference in Silicon Valley he had to go to. He's a nightmare."

Tony laughs. "Oh come one, he can't be that bad."

Matt rolls his eyes at the other barista, pulling off her apron now that her shift has ended. She waves at the two men behind the bar before exiting the coffee shop, the door being held open for her by a customer just about the enter the shop.

The customer enters the cafe, his eyes gliding over the neon Impresso Espresso sign behind the counter like he is disappointed still no one has realised what a horrible idea it was to put it there. Behind Tony, Matt sighs. "That'll teach me to speak of the devil. That's him, the professor. You take him, you've never had to suffer through his demands."

Tony steps up to the register just as the man reaches the counter. He is wearing thick, black glasses that almost completely hide his grey eyes. The top button of his checkered shirt is undone, but it doesn't look on purpose, more like he just forgot there was another button before he finished dressing himself. His large, black cardigan is wrapped around his body like a blanket. He is younger than Tony expected, for a professor being invited to month-long conferences. He also doesn't look like someone who has an order complicated enough to make his colleagues this bitter (pun intended).

When the man opens his mouth to place his order, Tony expects the other employees to have pulled a prank on him, expects the man to just order a black coffee, and maybe, maybe, make a joke about the colour of his soul. Instead, he hits Tony with this beauty of a coffee order: "I would like a latte, but instead of only milk, I would like half milk half hot water. The milk should be equal parts almond and coconut, with an extra dash of soy. Stir that exactly two and a half times clockwise. Then, add in a full glass of skimmed milk, that has been frothed for exactly 12.5 seconds, shake it up with ice, pour half of the drink out, and heat the other half up again, which needs to be stirred twelve times anti-clockwise at a temperature of 63 Celsius or 145.4 Fahrenheit. Take it off the heat at 98.7 Celsius or 209.67 Fahrenheit. I would like three and a quarter pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup, seven packets of sugar, two pumps of caramel syrup, make sure to add that in after the sugar, otherwise you ruin the taste, and .4 pump of hazelnut. Then, I would like some cocoa powder, pour the coffee in with ice and shake it up again. I would also like whipped cream on top, but then please shave it off again, so there's only a little bit of whipped cream left. Pay with card, please."

Tony's mouth falls open. "You're kidding!" he exclaims. Behind him, he hears Matt snicker. The man begins to explain the importance of each individual step to the flavour of the beverage, but Tony interrupts him: "That's my order!"

A smile forms on the man's face, grey eyes sparkling. "Finally, someone with good taste around here," he says, giving Matt, whose jaw has slammed through the floor of the coffee shop and is currently making its way to the centre of the earth, a side eye. "You'll know the crucial timing of the stirring, then."

Tony nods. "Of course, of course," he says, with a stern face, fully aware of how important these things are. One of the reasons he had decided to start working in a coffee shop was that he would finally be able to make this order perfectly for himself. He can't believe another person with a brain as small as a human's has been smart enough to realise this order is the only way coffee is anything near drinkable. "Name?"

"Bruce," the man answers, and Tony hits the buttons on the register to allow the man to pay for his drink, even though he believes that thinking like that should be rewarded with a free coffee, before writing Bruce on the cup in his squiggly handwriting.

A solid twenty minutes and 27 grumbling people in line behind Bruce later, Tony presents the coffee with a flourish Shakespearean actors would be jealous of, putting a lid on the take-away cup before sliding it across the counter towards Bruce. "Oh, I don't need a lid," Bruce says, and pulls on the lid. However, in his enthusiasm, Tony has pressed down a bit harder than was fully necessary, and, no matter how much Bruce pulls, the lid is not giving way.

Tony snickers. "Well, someone's got muscles that would give the Hulk a run for his money."

Bruce laughs, too, and pushes the cup back towards Tony. "Can you do it?" Tony easily takes of the lid and slides the now lidless cup to Bruce. With a smile and a nod of his head, Bruce exits the coffee shop.

Over the next week, Bruce comes back twice a day, once in the early morning, and once for a pick-me-up in the middle of the afternoon. Tony learns his schedule quickly enough, and ensures he arrives a bit too early and leaves a bit too late for his shifts, so he can be there to make Bruce's coffee. He doesn't ask for the man's name anymore, instead scribbling Hulk, No Lid on his cup, something that amuses Bruce, which is only indicated by the sparkle in his eyes when he reads it. Most of Bruce's emotions seems to be conveyed through his eyes, and Tony starts making subtle alterations to his order depending on the look in them- an extra shot of coffee if they're especially tired, some more syrup when he's looking down, and some extra milk when Bruce's eyes are dull, in replacement for Tony's wish to put his hand on his stubbled cheek and his lips against his forehead to soften the pain he sees hiding behind the grey clouds in Bruce's irises. He knows Bruce notices, when his eyes regain some of the sparkle Tony had seen that first time they had met after he takes his first sip, thanking Tony with a simple nod of the head and a half-smile, which Tony cherishes more than the few coins Bruce drops in the tip jar whenever he visits the shop.

They talk every time, sharing jabs and ideas, words and looks, until Matt has had enough of it. One particularly rainy afternoon in March, he punches Tony's arm in a way that's soft for a quarterback such as Matt, but hard for a skinny 5'9 guy like Tony, and he has to take a side step to prevent himself from falling against one of the coffee machines.

"When are you finally gonna do something about that, man?" Matt asks. Tony raises an eyebrow, innocence painted on his face. It's as much of a forgery as most of Da Vinci's paintings, though, and Matt knows it. "You kids have been flirting under my nose for over a month now," he continues, ignoring the fact that both of the men he's talking about are at least ten years older than he is. "You need to make a move, dude. Now!"

Tony gestures at the window, where Bruce can be seen crossing the street to the college campus, coffee in his hand. "He's gone, Matt," he says. "What do you want me to do? Go after him?"

Matt nods enthusiastically. "That's exactly what you should do! Run after him, ask him out! Don't be such a wimp!" He pulls Tony's apron over his head and pushes him towards the door.

Tony struggles against Matt's indisputably superior physical strength. "I never took you to be such a romantic," he says. "Might harm that cool image you've got going on."

Matt snickers. "You're not talking your way out of this one, Tony," he says, opening the door with one hand and pushing Tony through it with the other. "Now, go!"

With not much other choice, Tony runs across the road, waving at the sleek black car that almost hit him, driven by an extremely annoyed-looking red haired woman who seems to have half a mind to simply step on the gas and run him over. He makes it across the street in one piece though, and yells: "Bruce!"

The other man is so shocked by someone yelling his name that he promptly drops his coffee cup. He spins around, hands risen next to his head as if showing he has no weapons. His wet hair is plastered to his forehead, and his navy blazer darkens where the rain hits him, since he isn't wearing a coat. Neither is Tony himself, he realizes, now that the rain is making his white T-shirt quickly turn see-through. "It's just me," Tony says.

"Oh, yes. Did I forget something?" Bruce pets the pockets of his blazer.

Tony shakes his head. "No, I eh… I…" He has always been a man of words, but now, faced with a nervous, drenched professor whose coffee is spilling all over the pavement between their feet, he doesn't know what to say. "Can I buy you a new coffee?" he asks, hating the clenched way his voice comes out of his mouth. "Maybe we could, you know, talk. Somewhere else than in there." He gestures at Impresso Espresso, where Matt is grinning broadly behind the windows. "Somewhere he can't see us."

Bruce smiles, with both his eyes and his mouth, and Tony has to resist the urge to run back and high-five Matt. "That would be nice. There's a decent place just up the road." He gestures in a vague direction, and Tony isn't sure which road he's indicating, but he doesn't care. He would follow this man to a coffee shop three cities over, if he really had to.

When they walk into the shop, water forms small pools by their feet, and a single, bored barista is leaning over the counter. The neon sign behind her reads Cool Beans Coffee Bar. Bruce sighs. "Do all coffee shops have those?"

Tony laughs. "Federal law requires it. That's top secret, though, don't tell anyone."

Bruce mimes locking his lips and throwing the key away, and, grinning, the two men step up to the counter. Tony eyes the other man. "The usual?"

Bruce nods. "The usual."

[aion-rsa]

Mortal Kombat and Bloodsport: The Strange Connection That Changed Gaming

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As we eagerly anticipate the release of the latest Mortal Kombat movie, many find themselves looking back on Mortal Kombat’s 1995 big-screen debut. While that film has its charms and its fans (myself included), the movie has rightfully been criticized over the years for lacking many of the best qualities of the game as well as many of the best elements of the martial arts movies that clearly inspired it.

Of course, the relationship between Mortal Kombat and martial arts films has always been close. Not only did the game utilize a then-revolutionary form of motion capturing that gave it a standout cinematic look, but many aspects of the title were practically taken directly from some of the best and biggest martial arts movies of that era.

As the years go on, though, it becomes more and more clear that no martial arts movie impacted the development of Mortal Kombat more than Bloodsport. Maybe you’ve heard that MK was inspired by that beloved movie, but a deeper look at the relationship between Bloodsport and Mortal Kombat reveals the many ways both big and small that the two would go on to change gaming forever.

Bloodsport: The Crown Jewel of Absurd ‘80s Martial Arts Movies

While the 1970s is rightfully remembered as the decade when America became obsessed with martial arts (due in no small part to the influence of Bruce Lee’s legendary films), it really wasn’t until the 1980s that you saw major and minor studios compete to see who could produce the biggest martial arts blockbuster.

Of course, many of the martial arts movies of that decade were different from what came before. They had bigger budgets, were usually more violent, and, maybe most importantly, they generally catered more to Western audiences. Yes, the ‘80s is the decade that Jackie Chan and other Asian martial artists did some of their best work, but as more and more Western studios got in on the action, we saw the rise of a new kind of martial arts movie that more closely resembled the over-the-top violent action films popularized by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That also meant the rise of a new kind of martial arts star who was typically either from America or played American characters in what we can now see was an effort to capitalize on the idea of American exceptionalism that was especially popular during the Reagan era. If you’re looking for some notable examples of that trend, I’d suggest checking out Best of the Best, Above the Law, and, naturally, American Ninja.

In many ways, though, 1988’s Bloodsport is the pinnacle of that time in martial arts movies.

Bloodsport co-writer Sheldon Lettich says he came up with the idea for the film while talking to a martial artist named Frank Dux. Among other things, Dux claimed to be a former undercover CIA operative who once participated in an underground martial arts tournament known as “Kumite” in order to take down the criminal organization that ran it. Dux also claimed he was the first American to ever win the tournament.

To be frank, Dux was full of shit and, despite the fact that Bloodsport bills itself as a story inspired by true events, Lettich knew it. Still, the idea of an American martial artist winning a global underground tournament featuring the world’s greatest fighters was too good to pass up.

Indeed, the absurdity of that premise is a big part of what makes the whole thing work. While Dux’s story was almost certainly “inspired” by the plot of Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport wisely veers away from that classic in ways that take advantage of the best (or at least most loveable) elements of that era.

The smoke-filled back room that hosts many of Bloodsport‘s key fights is far removed from the tropical paradise of Enter the Dragon, but it captures that vibe of an ‘80s pro wrestling arena where the stale air is punctured by the screams of a bloodthirsty crowd. Whereas many early martial arts movies were designed to showcase the speed of their leads, the deliberate, slower strikes in Bloodsport perfectly compliment the absurd sound effects they resulted in which suggested that every punch was breaking bones. It’s a ridiculous idea tempered by a surprising amount of raw violence. In a nutshell, it’s a snapshot of what made so many great ‘80s action movies work.

What really made Bloodsport special, though, was the work of Jean-Claude Van Damme. It’s hard to call the young Van Damme’s performance “good” in any traditional sense of the word, but considering that he was cast in the role to be a good looking young martial artist with charisma to burn, it’s also hard to say he didn’t do exactly what he was asked to and then some.

More important than JCVD’s movie-star looks were his martial arts abilities. I don’t know how Van Damme’s real-life martial arts experience stacked up against the best competitors of that era, but what I can tell you is that Van Damme came across as the real deal at a time when many studios were still casting the biggest bodies and teaching them to be action stars later. By comparison, Van Damme was lean, flexible, and not only capable of selling us on the idea that he could kick ass but genuinely also capable of kicking many asses.

Bloodsport was a box office success that would certainly go on to become a genre cult classic, but its most lasting impact has to be the way it introduced so many of us to Jean-Claude Van Damme. Indeed, the attention the movie brought to Van Damme was about to also make waves in the video game industry.

Midway to Hollywood: “Bring Me Jean-Claude Van Damme!”

Much like the tales of Frank Dux, the stories of the early days of Mortal Kombat’s development are sometimes twisted by legend. However, nearly all versions of the story come back to Jean-Claude Van Damme in one way or another.

Mortal Kombat‘s origins can be traced back to co-creators John Tobias and Ed Boon’s desire to make a fighting game featuring ninjas that would also allow them to utilize the kind of large character designs they emphasized in previous works.

Unfortunately, the initial pitch for that project was rejected by Midway for the simple reason that there seemed to be some doubt regarding the commercial viability of an arcade fighting game. Remember that this was all done before Street Fighter 2 really took over arcades, cemented itself as a game-changer, and inspired studios everywhere to start go all-in on the genre.

Instead, Midway decided to pursue an action game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. The details of this part of the story sometimes get fuzzy, but it seems they specifically hoped to develop a game based on Van Damme’s Universal Soldier film. At the very least, the idea of adapting the mega star’s latest movie into a game must have seemed like a much more surefire hit than an unlicensed fighting title.

Recognizing an opportunity, Tobias and the rest of the four-person team that would go on to make Mortal Kombat decided to see if they could get Van Damme interested in the idea of starring in their martial arts game. Boon recalls that they even went so far as to send Van Damme a concept demo for that project by capturing a still of the actor from Bloodsport, cropping out the background, and replacing it with their own assets. There have even been reports that they were prepared to name their game Van Damme as the ultimate showcase of the star.

The idea fell through, and there seem to be some contradictory reports regarding exactly what happened. Boon once said that he’d heard Van Damme already had a deal in place with Sega that would conflict with their offer, but, as Boon notes, Sega clearly never released that game. If such a deal ever was in place, it seems nothing ever came from it. It’s also been said that Van Damme was too busy to model for the game’s digitized animations or was otherwise simply uninterested.

The entire Van Damme/Midway deal ending up falling apart, but there was a silver lining. Now given the time to properly recognize that the fighting genre was blowing up in arcades, Midway told Tobias, Boon, and the rest of the team to go ahead and work on their martial arts game, Van Damme be damned.

While Van Damme was technically out of the picture, the team at Midway were hardly ready to give up entirely on their idea of a fighting game inspired by Bloodsport

Read more

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Mortal Kombat: An Ode to Johnny Cage and His $500 Sunglasses

By David Crow

Games

Mortal Kombat Timeline: Story Explained

By Gavin Jasper

Mortal Kombat: A Bloodsport by Any Other Name

Mortal Kombat went by a lot of names in its earliest days (the most popular candidate in the early days was reportedly “Kumite“), but one thing that remained the same throughout much of the project’s development was the commitment to making it the anti-Street Fighter. Or, as Ed Boon once put it, to make it the “MTV version of Street Fighter.”

The logic was hard to argue against. If Street Fighter 2 was the best at what it did, then this game should be the exact opposite of it in every single way possible

What’s impressive are the ways the small MK team distinguished their project. They used digitized captures of actors, which is particularly impressive when you consider that they weren’t even working with green screens. They just filmed some actors (mostly people they knew with martial arts experience) performing moves against a concrete wall and then manually removed the real-life backgrounds. It wasn’t too far removed from the techniques they used to construct a demo of their idea for Jean-Claude Van Damme

Of course, you can’t talk about MK without eventually talking about the blood. The game’s use of gore was certainly intended to catch people’s attention, which it absolutely did. While the MK team didn’t quite anticipate how the combination of digitized actors and extreme gore would put MK at the center of an emerging debate about video game violence, they rightfully predicted that the game’s violence was one of those things that people would force people to stop and look when they walked by and saw the game in action.

What’s really funny, though, is how those two qualities helped MK capture the feel of Bloodsport in ways that seemed both intentional and perhaps happily accidental. Yes, MK’s origins prove that it was clearly inspired by Bloodsport, but the ways in which MK most meaningfully mimics Bloodsport often aren’t talked about enough.

In Bloodsport and MK, you have this martial arts adventure that feels both wonderfully dingy and strangely fantastical. Just as Bloodsport told the unbelievable story of a global tournament featuring larger than life participants but tempered it with visceral combat the likes of which no human could survive, MK combined sorcery and mythological creatures with decapitations and punishing uppercuts in a way that shouldn’t have worked but proved to be too enjoyable to at least not be fascinated with.

Even the “awkward” animations you sometimes have to suffer through as a result of MK‘s motion capture process captured the spirit of Bloodsport and the ways that it replaced the smooth moves of someone like Bruce Lee with a more impactful MMA-esque style complimented by moments of absurd athleticism. It’s almost certainly also no coincidence that the average MK combatant’s most athletic move was a sweep kick. After all, a famous Hollywood legend says JCVD was offered the Bloodsport role after showing off his kicks to a producer.

Of course, when it comes to any discussion about MK and Bloodsport’s relationship, we certainly don’t have to rely on possible coincidences and speculation. Not only was an early version of MK literally ripped from Bloodsport, but as it turns out, JCVD did end up appearing in the game…

Johnny Cage: Jean-Claude Van Darn

If you step back and look at it, Mortal Kombat is basically the Super Smash Bros. for action stars of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Kano was a callback to The Terminator, Sonya Blade was seemingly based on the eternally underrated Cynthia Rothrock, Raiden was clearly inspired by Big Trouble in Little China (as was Shang Tsung), and Liu Kang was almost certainly a Bruce Lee substitute.

Then you have Johnny Cage. As a cocky movie star whose martial arts skills are largely based on his flexibility, it’s always been easy enough to suggest that Johnny Cage is a non-licensed nod to Jean-Claude Van Damme. Actually, many think that Johnny Cage is a bit of a mean-spirited parody of JCVD meant to mock him for turning the game down.

The truth is a little more complicated than that. Johnny Cage actually started as a character named Michael Grimm who was described as the “current box office champion and star of such movies as Dragon’s Fist, Dragon’s Fist II, and the award-winning Sudden Violence.” While his character model was reportedly also influenced by Iron Fist’s Daniel Rand, it seems that he was initially meant as a kind of broad substitute for the Western martial arts stars that took over the scene in the 1980s.

But yes, Johnny Cage is absolutely meant to be a parody of JCVD. I suppose where people lose the thread a bit is in the insinuation that he’s a jab at the star rather than an homage. While MK’s developers have said that Johnny Cage’s iconic “splits into a low blow” was absolutely a way to poke fun at JCVD and a scene from Bloodsport, it feels a little disingenuous to suggest the team was feeling bitter about not being able to put JCVD in their game and wanted to suggest that he was this star that was somehow too good for them.

What’s kind of funny, though, is that the rise, fall, and rise of Johnny Cage isn’t too dissimilar from what happened to JCVD. Van Damme was riding high in the early ‘90s on the back of films like Bloodsport, but a series of flops and some personal problems put his career in jeopardy later on. Similarly, Johnny Cage debuted as the prototypical Hollywood star but would fall from grace in the years that followed. He wasn’t even featured in Mortal Kombat 3 for the simple reason that he was the least selected character in MK 2.

Yet, over time, many people came to appreciate characters like Johnny Cage and actors like JCVD largely because they represented this golden age of absurd martial arts movies that weren’t always great (and were certainly usually a little problematic) but were ridiculous in a way that became much easier to love when weighed against increasingly self-serious genre works.

In his own way, Johnny Cage not only represents JCVD but the magic of a movie like Bloodsport and how such a silly little film could change everything because of (and not in spite of) its ridiculousness.

There’s another world in which JCVD became the digitized star of what would become Mortal Kombat, but due to a series of incredible circumstances, we don’t just need to project that reality on Johnny Cage to envision what that game might have looked like.

Bloodsport: The First Great Video Game Movie?

While it’s certainly funny enough that Jean-Claude Van Damme would go on to star in the Street Fighter movie after turning down what would become the first Mortal Kombat game, the cherry on the top of that story has to be the release of 1995’s Street Fighter: The Movie (the game).

That adaptation of the Street Fighter film bizarrely abandoned the design style of the Street Fighter games the movie was based on and was instead modeled after Mortal Kombat in an attempt to give Capcom a fighting game that could more directly compete with Midway’s runaway hit series. It failed spectacularly, but it did feature a digitized version of Guile as portrayed by JCVD in the Street Fighter movie. Van Damme even lent his moves for the game’s motion capture process.

Roughly four years after passing up the opportunity to star in Mortal Kombat (or Van Damme, as it would have likely been known), Van Damme ends up starring in a Mortal Kombat rip-off carrying the Street Fighter name. Call it a missed opportunity if you want, but to me, the bigger takeaway is that Van Damme may have missed the chance to recognize that he, Bloodsport, and Mortal Kombat were destined to be together long before the development of MK ever started.

See, there’s a scene in Bloodsport where Frank Dux and his new friend Ray play the 1984 arcade game Karate Champ. As one of the first successful arcade fighting games featuring multiplayer, Karate Champ would later be recognized as one of the fundamental pieces of the genre. John Tobias even said that Karate Champ was more of an influence on Mortal Kombat than Street Fighter was.

What gets me most about that scene, though, is the trash talk. Ray asks Frank “Aren’t you a little young for full contact?” Frank counters by asking, “Aren’t you a little old for video games?” They settle by playing another round.

It’s a simple sequence that’s hard not to look back on as an early indication that the popularity of films like Bloodsport would directly influence of new era of fighting games defined by competitiveness, arcade trash talk, and advancing technology that would inspire fans and developers to replicate the feel of being at the Kumite or, in our world, in a movie like Bloodsport.

In the same way that Mortal Kombat is basically an unofficial Bloodsport game, maybe it’s time to look back at Bloodsport as a kind of unofficial video game movie. After all, it may have debuted at the end of a strange kind of golden era for Hollywood martial arts films, but it was just the beginning of the golden age of fighting games.

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[helshades]

Question! Darcy stated that older civilisations could have worshipped Asgardians as gods, which other characters support throughout, but - if this is the case - Thor and Loki weren't born at the time of most myths, so how did humans incorporate them into the myths? Or did Odin like the myths so much that he named them after the stories?

 A long, long time ago, we were discussing this with people like @fostertheory​, @diana-godkiller​ (back when she was Romanovasledger) and, someone who was of immense help when it came to pondering Asgardian lifespans, amongst many other things, @survivingrealitywithoutnormality​; I recall one of the results was this:

The Young Gods: a zany theory on the possible origin for the Asgardian reputation of godliness on Earth, with the unwilling help of Norse poets.

Thinking about it again now, after three films (plus two) and a couple episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., I’d say we could reprise the idea without risking complete dishonor, in fact.

Obviously, MCU!Earth is meant to imitate our own as closely as possible, and we usually are better off assuming that most events have occurred there just the way they have here. On the other hand, we know that certain things are entirely different: there is no such place as Sokovia or Wakanda, Tony Stark didn’t save the President of the U.S.A., and the rules of physics of our universe don’t actually all apply to MCU!Earth or Bruce Banner would have died a very painful death in that explosion and there wouldn’t be a Hulk in the first place to break Lavoisier’s law repeatedly with brutish application.

So I wouldn’t be cocksure about MCU mythologies matching our own in every respect, either, and I wouldn’t be so sure about their chronology. But even if we choose to be lazily reasonable and assume that the Norse myths followed roughly the same course in European history within the MCU they did in our world… well:

maybe Odin’s Asgard was, like in some comics, a repetition of past events, with Ragnarök having already happened several times and the Asgardians getting revived for a new cycle by Those Who Sit Above In Shadows (there was an Easter Egg for this theory in Thor, actually, in the form of a tablet that read exactly this in runes, next to the Eternal Flame) and there has already been a Thor and a Loki before, or several;

there is always the possibility that Odin gave his sons the names of legendary characters in Asgardian folklore; 

… or the Thor and Loki of Midgardian mythology are a mixture of reality and more or less irreverent stories woven from both older Scandinavian myths and whatever iconoclastic bullshit Asgardian deserters have been feeding their new human friends.

I tend to find the latter option more… harmonious, not to mention exceptionally tantalising: I love the idea that people like Berserker defector soon to be known as Elliot Randolph took every opportunity to secretly troll the royal family of Asgard by telling grand tales of dashing exploits to his human friends and adding a lot of frankly insulting tidbits to mock the aristocrats back home.

It’ll never happen but I’d love to see Randolph get to meet Thor, like Coulson once promised him, and suddenly realise that all the lewd jokes mayn’t have been the greatest idea, now that the brother of the King happens to be the former(?) butt of said jokes.

Chronologically speaking… as of 2017, Thor and Loki—who, it is now official, are basically twins—are 1052 or 1053 years old. The former stone mason who would become known on Midgard as Elliot Randolph enlisted in the Berserker army for a mission on Earth sometime during the late 12th century: the late 1100s, then, so back when Thor and Loki were already over a hundred years old—to be exact, they turned 135 at the beginning of the century, and would have been breaching 200 at the very least when ‘Randolph’ departed for Earth with the berserkers. If we consider the fact that Loki was already able to cast convincing illusions at only eight years of age… I say the brothers had already had ample time to make a name for themselves as an insufferable pair of royal nuisances by then, and Randolph enough material onto which, er, embroider.

Sure, the Asgardians have a lifespan or life expectancy of 5,000 odd years, and they certainly undergo decades of studies, especially the aristocrats, especially the two princes of the Crown; but, in spite of Loki’s disparaging comment in The Dark World about a human lifespan of a mere century being, to an Asgardian, ‘a heartbeat’, they probably experience the passing of time everyday roughly like humans do—and they probably age like we do before they reach adulthood. So, aged a hundred years and more, they will have had time enough to go on many a dangerous quest, and generally behave like pricks around the palace for long enough that an imaginative stone mason turned dejected soldier who decided to desert his home planet and the army to live amongst the quick-lived, ever-changing human race indefinitely, such a man certainly had ample material to work with, and a few grudges to exorcise. After all, we know a little by now the way the aristocrats themselves perceive their own actions, exploits and respective persons… but who shall give us the point of view of the ordinary folk on the subject?

                   SKYE

So… Asgardians are aliens from another planet who visited ours a thousand years ago…

                COULSON

Or more.

                   SKYE

And, because we couldn’t understand aliens, we thought they were… gods?

                COULSON

That’s what our Norse mythology comes from.

A few moments later in the episode, Skye makes this remark to Coulson:

‘You should give your buddy the God of Thunder a shot. He gets his powers from his hammer, right?’

Please notice that only a few moments before, Skye—known today as Daisy Johnson—acknowledged the fact that Asgardians are not divinities but aliens; yet she reprises the term rather matter-of-factly and speak of Thor as ‘the God of Thunder’. Once again, I don’t think, even now that Thor himself chooses to refer to himself as such, that Marvel filmmakers have ever changed their minds about the nature of the Asgardians: what truly changed is Thor’s perception of himself and his place in the grand scheme of things and his powers—if anything, I would argue that Asgardians gain the right to refer to themselves as ‘gods’ when they have accomplished enough exploits that they have become the stuff of legends, especially known for one special power. Loki is the master of illusions and Thor is basically an Asgardian mutant with an uncanny ability to manipulate electricity—for centuries, Mjöllnir served as a catalyst, but with Odin dead, Thor probably inherited certain abilities derived from the same source of Hela’s own: Asgard itself.

The stuff of legends, then. Naturally, Asgardians live for so long and are so resistant to body damage (and, arguably, psychical—the thing is, when you live that long, you must be able to withstand millennia of existence in the margins of worlds where people wither and die before you’ve had the time to love them, and you have to be vaccinated against boredom and repetition…) that the most notable of warriors end up having songs sung and theatre plays played about their Dashing Exploits whilst they’re still alive, and still going on adventures… then, as we know, they come back to Asgard and have more stories told. They don’t always have to be perfectly accurate, but they ought to be entertaining, and full of symbols, propaganda teachings and virility. I have a suspicion few Asgardian parents will prevent most of these stories to reach children’s ears, by the way.

So… as for the ancientness of Midgardian stories about gods who were born in an era corresponding to the early Middle Ages, when the stories themselves, in our reality, have their roots in Antiquity, and in fact certain figures, like this of Loki, might well have hailed from prehistoric times, surviving in one form or another. The thing is, the old peoples of Northern Europe transmitted these ancient tales orally, and some of them got written down only after this part of the continent was Christianised and clerks copied down a few—unfortunately, not without superimposing their own interpretations, integrating the Gods know how many exegetic elements… Which, mind you, is actually an excellent thing for the worldbuilder, who will then be able to cheat safely enough in stating that we simply have no proof that mediaeval clerks didn’t fuse together pieces of the stories people like Elliot Randolph would tell and (much) older myths. Indeed, in our world we may put a couple of archaeological proofs forward; but let’s agree for a moment on the idea that, in the M.C.U., it doesn’t have to be exactly like this. Let’s weave our own tales of dashing (literary) exploits.

To conclude, as a matter of fact, I’d like to attract your attention on the most grotesque (the grotesquest.) of these stories: I say there is some argument to be made about the idea of Asgardian defectors, fed up with the monotony of their old life, falling in love with the utter diversityof  Midgardian landscapes and cultures, and charming maidens of yore with self-aggrandising stories as well as narratives interlacing the enchanting, symbolist Asgardian lore with anti-elite pamphlet mocking the types and habits of Asgardian aristocracy. Beauty and burlesque together. And the story about the one time the younger prince of the Crown turned into a mare and got fucked by a horse and gave birth to another horse, with eight legs, no, not the first horse, the second horse, anyway he became two-legged again after that, no, not the horse, neither of the horses, well, not the actual horses that is, the one who was a prince in the first place, because, yes, of course my love, that’s totally a thing that could happen to them magic wielders, you see, I’m telling you the events exactly the way they happened, and then there was this one time—