#she is my idol

[haveihitanerve]

Her name is Stephanie Brown and she has been Robin since Tim Drake retired the name, choosing Red Robin instead as he fled the nest, the bat cave, and Batman. Stephanie Brown is Robin, Batman’s loyal sidekick, and the one who reminds him that they are better, that good people should not fear them, and that there is room, in their line of work, for hope. Stephanie Brown is seventeen and she is Robin when Batman is called to arms against Darksied, and she refuses to be left behind, just like Damian, and the two of them band together, both wearing the red and green and yellow, and he relents.

Stephanie Brown is Robin and she is watching him, as always, following his lead, his guide, so she sees it all happen. Sees as he gets hit, and sees as he collapses. The fall is not controlled, or cushioned, or careful, Bruce does not move his hands, does not lift his arms, or flex his legs. He does not do any of the things he has taught Steph to do when she falls, to save herself, to make the fall hurt less. No, he crumples, hard and heavy and final. “BATMAN!” The scream is torn from her throat and then Stephanie is running, dodging heroes and enemies alike, hurtling for the fallen body, her legs burning, lungs screaming. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, Dick crumple, sees Tim get knocked from the sky as his attention diverts, sees Jason roar as he starts firing anewed, rage in every fiber of his being. “BATMAN!” Damian gets there first, tugging at his fathers hand, pushing against his chest, but he’s too heavy, and Damian is too small, too young to see his father die, to be charged with the duty of trying to revive him. So Steph pushes him away, screams for Supergirl to get him out out out. And she beats at his chest instead, screaming for him to get up and fight dammit. Steph crouches over the body of her mentor, of her father, pounding on his chest with everything she has, forcing her own heartbeat into his body, pressing her lips against his over and over, 30, two breaths, 30, again and again and again. It isn’t until hands grab her, pull her back, kicking and screaming, that she realizes the battle is over, is won. But how can it be won, how can any of them say they’ve won when Bruce is dead? Bruce Bruce Bruce. Bruce is dead. The hands holding her relax as Stephanie collapses, sobbing, crawling to his side to hold him, to cry into his chest, begging, pleading for him to stand. To say something. To reprimand her, anything.

She is Stephanie Brown and she is Robin and the battlefield is quiet as they watch this girl, this child, Robin, beg Batman to yell at her, watch as she cries over the body of her fallen mentor. She pulls away, finally, and falls instead into the arms of Nightwing, who is crying too, tears streaking out from behind his mask, lips trembling. Red Robin joins them, his face an ugly red mess of tears, and Red Hood is quick to follow, wrapping his arms around them all. The four of them cling to each other, sobbing in their shared grief. Supergirl returns, holding a small Damian in her arms, the new robin, the one who had refused to stay home. He stares at them, and at the body of his father. Steph detaches from the group, slowly, approaching the boy with careful steps. He looks up at her, Lower lip trembling, head shaking quickly, repeatedly. “No.” He says, voice hollow. “No.” He repeats, louder, as though she hasn’t heard him. Steph crouches, brushing a lock of brown hair behind his ear. “Yes.” She whispers. The word breaks her, and him, because he falls, Steph catching him just in time, and he clings to her, sobbing, renewed screams of “no!!!” Leaving his mouth until his voice is hoarse with it and he can only sob dry tears. The Justice league watches the two robins hold each other and mourn, and they ask, vaguely, in the back of their minds, if they will ever see something more bone chilling ever again. The answer is no, no they will not.

She is Stephanie Brown and she does not have a mentor anymore, and she, they, bury him in an unmarked grave, a grave they tell no one but themselves about, and make a new, public grave for the others. They never go there. She visits him, almost every day, and Alfred hands her his videos, his last words, his contingencies he had crafted for them all. She hands them out dutifully, staying only long enough to see the tears form in their eyes as they hear their fathers voice for the first time again, then slips away, out, to patrol her city. The cowl is heavy on her, the cape too long, but she fits it, she thinks, and he would say so too, she thinks. She listens to her own video, alone, on their roof. “I am proud of you Robin. Give ‘em hell.” Steph wipes the tears away, smiling at his face, that face, pressing her fingers against the screen. “I always do Bats. I always do.” There’s a rustling and Steph shoves the screen away, stows it in one of the insanely deep utility belt, turning to the ruffle of red and green. “Hey Robin.” She smiles. Damian smiles back, happier than she’s seen him in a while. “Hey Bats.” He greets, moving so he can lean against her side. Steph likes the nickname, treasures it, even. The first time someone had called her Batman she had, come to their aid of course, but then she had gone home and thrown up, crying herself to sleep. Damian had appeared a few hours later, and she had snuggled him until dawn, telling him all her memories of Bruce, good and bad, telling him of his father.

She is Stephanie Brown, The Batman and she breathes deeply, hiking the familiar path to the unmarked grave. It has been a while since she’s been here, since she’s visited him, and she doesn’t regret it, not as she brushes away the old petals and places the new flowers in the hole. “I love you.” She whispers, fingers brushing the only word Dick had carved into the pure white stone. Dad. It means more to them then anyone would ever know. Her own father, biological, is buried somewhere across town, in a marked grave, a grave that is bare of flowers. She never visits him. “You were more a father than he ever was.” She whispers to the gravestone, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, wishing desperately that she had actually told him that. When he was alive. Steph stands, pressing a kiss to the stone as she always does, and turns, leaving him, as she always does. Robin moves on. He had whispered to her once. She knew it was true, had been true for all three before her, but she wasn’t quite ready to. Not yet.

She is Stephanie Brown and he is back. Stephanie doesn’t know how, and she doesn’t much care. He appears on the doorstep, looking a little confused and a lot guilty but they can deal with that later as Steph throws herself at him, burying her face in the familiar smell of his neck, soaking him in, treasuring the strong, steady arms that wrap around her, protective. “Hey Robin.” He whispers, gently wiping a tear from her eyes. “Hey Batman.” She returns, a smile threatening to split her face in two. Damian comes at the sounds of commotion and freezes, on the stairs, eyes blown wide. Steph takes a step to the side, but she keeps her hand on his arm, just because she can just because he’s there, just in case he disappears. Bruce takes a step forward, careful of her hand, and opens his arms to his son. “Hey Princeling.” He whispers and Damian hurtles for him, clutching his father like a lifeline, tiny body fitting perfectly against Bruce’s chest and Bruce cradles him gently, so gently, as he strokes a hand up and down his back and murmurs words of comfort. He looks at Steph over his son's head and she smiles, light and free and happy in a way she hasn’t the last few months and she pulls out her phone, pinging a quick message in the group chat and it isnt long before everyone has arrived, screaming and crying and yelling and Bruce takes it all in stride, hugging and apologizing and squeezing and kissing, and Steph watches from her spot against the wall, smiling so wide and for so long that she’s sure her face muscles will be sore tomorrow but for the first time in a while she just doesn’t care because he’s here he’s alive and she has her Batman back.

She is Stephanie Brown and she hands the mantle off to Damian, declining his offer to be two Robins at the same time like they’d been before, choosing her own purple cape again instead, still running at Batman’s side but a step further away now, running with Black Bat and Red Hood and Red Robin, still under Batman’s cape but no longer his shadow. No, now she is his claws, his teeth, his messenger, spreading across Gotham like mist, branching away and furthering the myth, becoming one of the birds in her own right. She adopts the name later, Sparrow, the one who was not broken, still with the purple colors but with flashes of red and green, highlighted with gold and blue, and a bright, proud, black bat on her chest, emblazoning her as his. She is not Robin anymore, she has moved on, but Robin helped her to grow her feathers and now she flies, flies free and happy and safe, but not alone, never alone, returning each night to her nest, her cave, her home. “Birds of a feather, bats of a cave.” Jason whispers to her once, on one of their missions together, and Stephanie takes the words to heart, repeating them to herself as she flies across rooftops, dancing with the stars and shadows of Gotham, happy and free and safe.

She is Stephanie Brown, the fourth Robin, Spoiler, and the Sparrow, she was the Batman when no one else was able to be, and she is Batman’s plague, his greatest weapon and his biggest curse, because she is his. Stephanie Brown never belonged in the sunlight, she did not belong cowering behind her mother, locked in the closet by her father. She belongs to the darkness, belongs to the creatures of the night because she is one, a phantom, a myth, and she showed them all, and she showed the Bat that there is room for hope in their line of work.

[heartshapedhackjob]

My older sister dissed my tumblr blog and now I'm so self conscious about it

[lpa6zn]

idol<3

[msviolacea]

@memendoemori

Nora Roberts constantly has my ass in a chokehold because 1) she writes VERY well, like high-class stuff, that I think is primarily overlooked due to her writing genre/romance; 2) has developed a really neat three-book formula for her romance stuff specifically that is a formula that works VERY well and is comfortable enough that you can jump in whenever; and 3) she writes like a billion books a year so I can always pick one up. Her In Death stuff is some of my favorite.

YES. ALL OF THIS.

If you asked me what professional writer I want to be, my answer will always be Nora Roberts, and has been since the early 90s. She is everything I aspire to be, in both her plain-romance form and her near-future-police-procedural J.D. Robb form. She writes the kinds of relationships I want to write/fantasize about, she builds the kinds of worlds I love most - the kind that have just enough detail and feeling behind them that I want to live in them, but not so much that it distracts from the central relationships - and she's never been afraid to keep doing the thing that works for her and her readers, even as she tweaks it from time to time to keep herself and everyone else engaged.

Someday I'm going to do the blog/podcast/YT channel/whatever the fuck analyzing her books and what I learn from them as a writer and enjoyer of romance, if I can ever get my own neurodivergent ass to Do The Things.

[seven-oh-four]

i didnt see the name of this game but it seems cool. lena raine too..........

[beeqisch]

hi *stabs u* oops *stabs u again* my bad *stabs u again*

[christadeguchi]

j… jesus oppa ;____;

[dapper-lil-arts]

I'm not the kind of person that's like "Here let me fix the canon" usually but like holy crap gen 5 implied a lot of messed up shit about our hero Twilight Sparkle lmao

[haunted-xander]

Who's the "real" me?

+ some references for the Rise-related things I included <3

[drawing-kitty-ckristal]

Austria-Hungary Empress Miku

[thingsmysplattershotjrtoldme]

*ahem*

WE FUCKIN DID IT FRYE NATION!

It's all worth it for that smile

I fuckin love you, Frye!

GIRL DON'T JINX IT!

[fuumiku]

It was Maid Day today yesterday a week ago so I got struck by inspiration to draw the worsties, and it ran away from me into a whole AU where they’re coworkers at a maid cafe. She’s a med student & this is just a part time job, and this is his depression job while he gets his life back together. He needs something he can be workaholic about to forget what it’s like having a personal life and personal issues. He’s actually the accountant, but the new hire janitor (Izutsumi) doesn’t show up for half her shifts and is a sloppy worker, so he gets the extra work of doing her job on top of his because he’s undervalued and overworked. Of course, janitors also have an uniform to keep the aesthetic cohesion as they go about cleaning the place, of course.

Senshi’s the part time cook you only see slivers off, he’s kind and warm when you do see him and have a chat but most shifts he’s in and out the kitchen without a trace. Laios and Falin are regulars because Falin and Marcille are besties & in the same med school, Laios accompanies Falin as she visits her friend at work and gets hooked on the food. Chilchuck has to remind Marcille to work instead of chatting with Falin for an hour, and next thing he knows she’s distracting him from work too. That’s it that’s the AU. Inspired by this idol AU fanart a bit <3

This was not meant to be birthday gift but well…… Happy bday Chil!!!

Read from left to right

[brandonlees]

SIGOURNEY WEAVER as ELLEN RIPLEY ALIEN 1979, dir. Ridley Scott

[demaparbat-hp]

She truly is

[nappingmoon]

nanami finds your perfect engagement ring -of course- but he is torn on the decision of the accompanying bands. he revisits the jeweler over weeks, standing before the glass and comparing the rings in the display to pieces of your favorite jewelry from past photos. they would all look so gorgeous and each unique ring aspect reminds him of a different part of you and, rather than leave any option behind, he gets a bunch. some have little emeralds, because the pop of green just compliments your skin tone so well. another is simple, just a band for your quieter days, when things get overwhelming. one stack of rings joins together like a little sun, and even with all the diamonds set in it, it cannot even hope to match half of your sparkle.

he gives each one to you on a different date. one night, he takes you for a beach stroll. you've just finished dinner at the most beautiful restaurant on the coast and as you walk hand in hand, your sandals in his free hand, you're focused on the sensation of the sand between your toes, and how the water feels lapping up before receding. when you turn around, he's got his eyes fixed on you. his gaze is soft and full of nothing but adoration and you watch him sneak his hand into the pocket of his pants before pulling out a stunning little band, decorated with small pearls. "kento, you did not!" you squeal, giddily making your way back to him, leaving small divots in the wet sand. you throw your arms around his neck without thought, and he grips on to the ring hard while his arms come around your back, intent on not dropping it. he replaced the sapphire embellished ring with the new one, perfectly fitting around your sparkling engagement ring. the blues were cute by the water but the pearls brought in such an elegant aspect. after taking a moment to admire it, you rise back to your tippy toes and bring your husband in for a kiss.

he smiles against your lips, pleased. "i take it, you like the ring?" he asks, as if he had even a smidge of doubt.

"it's perfect, my love." your response is echoed by the waves, the soft rumble of the ocean glittering under the moonlight only strengthening the resolve in your voice.