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sohotthateveryonedied · 4 years

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Living is Harder

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Tim drops the knife like it’s white-hot. Oh, god. Oh, god.

Tim did this. He was...he didn’t mean it. He didn’t. He would never. But the man was on top of him and Tim couldn’t breathe, and...he didn’t mean it.

Tim is walking home from Steph’s house, his light-up Sketchers the only things illuminating his path through the Gotham night. He stayed out later than he planned, utterly captivated in the Among Us tournament he and Steph were playing against their Titan friends all the way in San Francisco. (And Tim would have gotten away with the murders too, if it weren’t for that meddling Bart Allen who stared Tim down every time he killed a player, watching it happen but never reporting until Tim finally cracked from the shame and called an emergency meeting on himself.)

Tim rode in Steph’s car on the way to her house, but forgot that it would mean he’d be without a ride home. Steph offered to drive him back to the manor, that she doesn’t mind losing a measly hour of sleep, but Tim insisted he didn’t mind walking. Besides, it’s not like it was a lie. Sure, it’s Gotham, which means Tim can see drug deals going down on street corners and the occasional drunkard puking into a trash can, but Tim feels at peace here.

It brings him back to his early days of climbing fire escapes, tailing Batman and Robin under the cloak of night in the hopes to get just one more photo for his collection. It was a simpler time with fewer psychotic clowns—back then it was just the one, and all he did was tell shitty jokes and occasionally tie Robin up over a swimming pool filled with Jokerized sharks. Nowadays it’s all grotesque murders and creepy masks made of human skin. Where’s the showmanship? Where’s the pizzazz? Disgusting. Deplorable. Lazy beyond all reason. Tim is insulted by the lack of artistic ability in these new Jokers, and you may quote him on that. Regardless, Tim takes comfort in knowing that if something did go wrong, Cass is patrolling somewhere a good five blocks ahead. Maybe he can track her down and pick them up some corn dogs. He’s currently in the Red Hood’s territory, but whether Jason is around at the moment is a gamble at best. His schedule is harder to tamp down than a solid answer on Ted Cruz: Zodiac Killer. Jason might not even be in Gotham right now; he could be in space for all anyone knows. Sometimes Tim feels like Jason is more of a feral cat than a brother, which isn’t too far off, really. Tim happens upon an empty beer can on the sidewalk in front of a boarded-up store that he’s fairly certain used to be an adult film shop. Good ol’ Gotham City. He stoops down to pick up the crinkled can like the good samaritan he is and drops it into a trash can at the mouth of a nearby alley. He wipes his hands on his jeans, designer style be damned. That’s when Tim is grabbed from behind, a hand reaching up to cover his mouth and muffle his shout. He’s pulled into the alley and pushed up against a wall, the bricks digging into his back and knocking the breath from his lungs. Shit, shit, shit. How could he have been taken by surprise so easily? It’s hard to make out his attacker in the shadowed alley, the only discernible features being dark eyes and bared yellow teeth—never a good sign. Tim’s hands are pinned together above him in a strong grip, practically wrenching his shoulders from the sockets. He tries to scream, but the man’s disgusting hand presses harder against his mouth. Tim freezes when he feels the poke of a knife at his throat, digging into the skin just below his Adam’s apple. “Make a sound and I’ll gut you,” his attacker says, his voice a low rumble. The stench of cigarettes and alcohol assaults Tim’s sinuses and makes his stomach roll. He’s going to have to be careful about this. Robin could get out of this hold in five different ways with varying degrees of injury to the opponent, but a civilian couldn’t. Even if the only witness is a low-life scumbag, he shouldn’t run the risk. Better to wait until he’s at the point of no return to bust out the Robin moves. Instead, Tim goes for the oldest trick in the book and knees the man in the crotch, hard. It has the desired effect and the grip on Tim’s wrists slackens, the man dropping him with a grunt. Tim ducks out of range and makes a run for it. If he can just get to the street, he should be home free. Even in Gotham City, there are always witnesses to help out a poor, defenseless teenager under attack. Tim almost makes it to the sidewalk when he’s grabbed by the hair, crying out as he’s thrown violently to the ground. Then there’s weight on top of him, pinning his shoulders to the dirty ground under his back. Tim fights, kicking out and delivering purposeful hits under the guise of a panicked struggle. “You little shit,” the man spits. He’s still got a hold on Tim’s hair, which he uses to slam Tim’s head against the pavement so hard that Tim goes blind for a good ten seconds, his head spinning. The back of his scalp feels wet, and he hates to think about what bacteria must be lurking on the ground beneath him. The knife clatters somewhere to Tim’s side and he’s almost relieved until a hand wraps around his throat, cutting off his next breath. Instinct plunges him into panic, choking on the lack of air and scrambling to get a hold on his attacker. Scratching, kicking, desperately trying to loosen the grip crushing his windpipe. “You didn’t have to make this so difficult,” the man tells him. His body presses down on Tim’s smaller form, keeps him trapped against the unforgiving asphalt, and this is it. This is the point of no return he’s been waiting for, but now Tim is here and he can’t do anything about it. Not even Robin could get out of this without a weapon, and Tim has none. He’s powerless. The creep releases Tim’s hair with a whisper of, “Don’t move.” Before he can do anything more with his newly freed hand, though, Tim’s body is thrown into action faster than he can comprehend moving at all. The world goes hazy, time itself turning to molasses. Absently Tim feels muscles flex, sees shapes move in front of his eyes, but someone else might as well be controlling Tim’s body while he’s locked in the backseat, missing the entire ride. One minute Tim is on his back with the creep on top of him, and after a chunk of time that Tim can’t remember participating in, he’s standing against the alley wall with something clutched in his hand. Tim blinks back the fog, but it lingers. He looks down and studies the way his fingers clasp the handle of the knife. That can’t be right. He wasn’t holding a knife before. Tim comes back to his body in increments, a stop-motion reel. First there’s a stinging ache on the back of his head, blood soaking into the back of his shirt and plastering his hair against his neck. His gaze slips from the glinting knife to the blood that covers his hands, warm and sticky. Then he catches a shape on the ground in front of him and Tim’s breath catches in his throat. The man from before is on the ground now, his eyes closed and blood spreading from a stab wound directly over his sternum. Tim drops the knife like it’s white-hot. Oh, god. Oh, god. Tim did this. He was...he didn’t mean it. He didn’t. He would never. But the man was on top of him and Tim couldn’t breathe, and...he didn’t mean it. Tim staggers back until his back hits the cold brick wall, his pulse pounding in his ears so loud the entire city must hear it. He just stabbed a person. He just killed a person. The one rule he’s supposed to follow, the one thing he promised never to do, and he just did it. Without even a second’s hesitation. He took a life. What is Bruce going to say when he finds out? Tim’s legs are made of jello, wobbling in warning until they give out entirely and he slides to the ground, knees pulled in close to his chest. His hands are still covered in blood. A dead man’s blood. He should...he should do something. He should act. First-aid, stop the bleeding, do whatever it takes to help in case there’s a chance. Tim doesn’t move. He doesn’t even try. His limbs have been replaced with rubber, his brain with slush. He just killed a man. In the back of his mind he knows he can’t go home, not like this. Not covered in another man’s blood. Even if he tried, Tim isn’t sure he’d make it two steps without collapsing into a puddle of whatever emotion is making him feel as though he’s rotting from the inside out. His family lives by a code, would sooner die themselves than take a life. Bats don’t kill. Tim doesn’t kill. Tim killed. His fingers shake as they take out his cell phone on autopilot, and the screen is cracked at the corner from when he was slammed into the ground. That’s going to cost money to fix. Tim gets blood on the screen, smudging over his contact list and warping the names. He finds the one he’s looking for and puts the phone to his ear. A ring. Two rings. A click. “This had better be important,” Jason says. Tim swallows. “Um. I—um.” He can’t take his eyes off of the body, lying there still as a corpse. Because it is a corpse. “My...head isn’t working. It’s—something is wrong. With me.” “Are you high or something? Because if you are, I’ll fucking kill you.” That does it. What little resolve Tim held on to cracks in one clean split and a sob bursts through. He covers his mouth with his elbow, choking on gasps. “Jay, I—it was an accident. I swear to god, I didn’t mean to. He was...it wasn’t...I didn’t mean to.” There’s a creak on the other end, maybe Jason sitting up in his chair. Or maybe he just sat down. Maybe he closed a door. Too many things in the world are creaky. “What the hell are you talking about? What happened?” “He’ll kick me out. He’s gonna take Robin away from me.” Something slams—definitely a door. “Kid, tell me where you are.” “I don’t know. It was—” His brain isn’t working. For the first time in his life, logic and reason escape him and Tim’s mind pushes into overdrive, drags him deeper and deeper into oblivion. Bruce is going to find out. He’s going to find out and he’s going to hate Tim for the rest of his life. Bruce doesn't like murderers. “Goddamn it. Tim, listen to me. Can you do that?” It takes a moment, but Tim manages to get out an affirming noise. “I’m going to track your phone and come get you. Don’t move, got it? Stay right where you are. I’ll be there soon.” Jason hangs up, leaving Tim alone again. He drops his phone back on the concrete, uncaring of potential breaks. It’s already been cracked. “He’s going to kick me out,” Tim repeats to the empty alleyway. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tim is cold by the time Jason arrives. Or maybe he’s been cold this entire time. It’s hard to tell. “Fuck,” Jason swears as he takes in the scene before him. The body on the pavement. Tim, huddled against the alley wall, his eyes glazed over as he stares at the body like a horror movie he can’t turn off. Jason isn’t wearing his helmet, just a domino mask. He takes it off when he kneels in front of Tim, makes Tim meet his eyes. “Hey, kid. You with me?” “I killed him.” The words taste acrid on Tim’s tongue, sour. “Don’t worry about that now. Are you hurt anywhere?” Tim doesn’t answer. The back of his head stung before, but the pain is muffled now. Everything is muffled. “I killed him, Jay. I’m a murderer. Bruce is...I’m not supposed to kill. Robins don’t kill. They don’t.” His chest is tight, getting tighter by the minute until it feels like every breath is being sucked in through a tiny straw. “Tim, breathe,” Jason tells him. He puts his hand on Tim’s shoulder, and that helps a little. Gives him something to latch onto. “You’re in shock. Try putting your head between your knees.” Tim does, stares down at the dirty pavement between his sneakers. His eyes linger on an old fast food receipt. It has droplets of blood on it. “I don’t know what happened, I really don’t. He was—it was an accident. He was on top of me and he had a knife and then he was choking me and...I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe, so I just—I just moved. And now he’s dead. I killed him. What am I going to do?” “It was self-defense,” Jason says, as if the answer could really be so simple. “If you hadn’t acted, he would have hurt you. Maybe even killed you. You did the right thing.” “No, it’s—” Tim picks his head up, digs his nails into his knees to keep himself above the fog. “No. I took a life. I’m guilty. I can’t—there’s no coming back from that. There isn’t.” How can he live with himself after this? Does he even deserve to? “What, so you would rather be dead than have to tell Bruce you took a life? Seriously?” “Yes.” There’s no hesitation, not even a pause to let the words soak in. Jason sighs, and Tim is too far gone to decipher what it means. He squeezes Tim’s shoulder once and stands, goes over to the body still lying on the ground. (As if a dead man would go anywhere.) Jason crouches down and takes off one of his gloves, presses two fingers over the man’s neck. After a moment or two, he lets out a breath. “He’s still alive.” Tim’s breath hitches. “Really? Are you sure?” “Pulse is thready, but he’s not dead.” All of the air leaves Tim’s lungs in one huge whoosh, making him lightheaded. “Oh my god. That’s…” That’s good, right? It’s a good thing. It should be a good thing. “Yup. That’s one hell of a relief.” Jason straightens up from his crouch. He reaches into his jacket, pulls out a gun, and fires it into the man’s head. “Jason!” It happens so fast that Tim doesn’t even have the capacity to think about the blood and brain matter splattered over Jason’s clothes, Tim’s shoes, the cracks in the alley’s pavement. “How could you—” “What? It’s not like he was going to walk it off or anything.” “We just—” Tim’s stomach churns. It feels like he’s going to be sick. “We just killed a man.” “No, I killed a man.” Jason holsters his gun, then kicks the body in the side for good measure. “You, however, are off the hook.” “What are you talking about? I stabbed him.” The knife is around here somewhere. That’s evidence. Proof of what happened tonight, what Tim did. What Jason finished. “And I shot him in the head. One of those is worse than the other.” “But I—” “No,” Jason snaps. He lowers himself to look Tim in the eyes. “You didn’t. Kill. Anyone. Got it? I killed him. Your slate is still clean.” “There’s a body. Evidence. I still did this.” Jason grabs the bloody knife and tucks it into his jacket. “No, the Red Hood did this. He cornered the guy in an alley, stabbed him, then shot him in the face. That’s what happened.” Tim shakes his head. “You can’t. You can’t take the fall for me.” “I’m not. I’m the one who killed him, right? I’m just taking responsibility for my own actions, which nobody is going to look twice at because this is the third one this week.” Jason takes Tim by the arm, pulling him upright and keeping him steady when he wobbles. “What about Bruce?” “We’ll tell him the truth. That you got attacked by some creep, I killed his slimy ass like he deserved, and then I let you crash at my place for the night to make sure you were safe. That’s it. Understand?” Tim isn’t sure if he does or not. He’s too numb to attempt puzzling it out, but he does know one thing he can say. “Thanks, Jason.” “Don’t mention it. Just try not to puke on me until we get to my place and I’ll call us even.”

#whumptober 2020 #batfamily #batfam #tim drake #red robin #batman #robin #idiot duckboy #jason todd #red hood #batbros #batboys #fanfiction #fanfic #dc comics #no.9 #'take me instead'

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage – The Comics History of the Symbiote Rivalry

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Something that impresses me with a superhero movie like Venom is when it doesn’t rush directly into the expected villain. When there are four different Fantastic Four movies, and they’re all about emphasizing Dr. Doom, it’s a breath of fresh air when, say, Man of Steel only makes an Easter egg reference to Lex Luthor instead of going directly for that confrontation. The MCU Spider-Man has yet to meet an Osborn, guys like Thanos and Darkseid started out as ominous benefactors, and the existence of Heath Ledger Joker was merely a cliffhanger tease in Batman Begins.

Much like how the Justice League movie decided to take its time by giving us Steppenwolf of all people, the first Venom movie had Carlton Drake (who hasn’t appeared in the comics since the early 9’0s) and Riot (the most forgettable of all of Venom’s comic children). By letting Venom build himself up on his own, flanked by some rather mundane villains, it gave more meaning to Cletus Kasady showing up in the post-credits. Carnage, Venom’s main villain, gets more fanfare by appearing in the sequel where our hero is fully formed.

Since Carnage’s first appearance in 1992, the idea has always been to make a darker, scarier Venom. Venom was a villain at the time, sure, but he was also on the border of becoming more. Outside of his personal delusions and anger issues, he still claimed that he wanted to help the innocent and punish the guilty. Even when he was able to accept that Spider-Man was good, they couldn’t co-exist due to their different natures as vigilantes. Carnage was simpler because he was full-on evil and had no potential for redemption. He was something so sinister and malevolent that both Spider-Man and Venom knew it was worth it to put aside their differences and take this creep down.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage has hyped Carnage up as being out of Venom’s league and that was the initial push of the character. Over time, the two became roughly equals as Carnage became the go-to bad guy for Venom to punch.

So let’s take a look at the history of Venom vs. Carnage. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to define “Venom” and “Carnage” as characters wearing their respective symbiotes (excluding Peter Parker), or the symbiotes themselves. I’m not going to count Eddie Brock as Toxin, or Flash Thompson as Agent Anti-Venom or whatever.

Carnage’s Debut

Not counting cameos and build-up, Carnage’s first major appearance was in Amazing Spider-Man #361, starting off a three-parter. Spider-Man came to realize that he wasn’t enough to stop Carnage and he was going to need help. Specifically, he was going to need Venom. This was an awkward decision as Venom was at the time living his best life on an empty island, thinking that he had succeeded in killing Spider-Man.

Once Venom fully understood the situation, he accepted the temporary alliance. In the very first Venom vs. Carnage confrontation, Venom and Spider-Man tackled Carnage, got slammed into each other, then thrown into opposite walls. Carnage then caused a distraction by putting a baby in danger so he could escape. While he was dominant in that very brief scuffle, he still needed to run off, so I’m calling this a draw.

The handicap match continued into the last issue of the arc at a rock concert. In one-on-one exchanges, Carnage had Venom’s number, but Spider-Man was always there for the save. Spider-Man was able to use the sonics from the amplifiers to take out both of them. Technically a draw again, but it’s also a situation where Carnage regularly kicked the shit out of Venom and Venom only survived because he had help.

Maxium Carnage

Insert your Green Jelly cassettes and press play because it’s time for Carnage’s big ’90s crossover story. After the previous story’s popularity, Marvel decided to add more heroes, more villains, and make the whole thing a whopping 14 issues!

As Venom was a San Francisco vigilante at the time, he flew to New York to stop Carnage’s reign of terror. The first fight wasn’t even shown, as after the reveal that Carnage had Shriek and Doppelganger on his side, it cut away. A brutalized Venom was later found passing out while knocking on Peter and MJ’s door.

As Maximum Carnage was filled with so much filler and extra characters, there were various fight scenes of a group of heroes brawling with a group of villains. Venom and Carnage talked smack a lot, but nothing much ever really happened in terms of fighting. The story finally kicked into gear when Venom used a stolen sonic gun and blasted Carnage while Firestar assisted with her microwave blasts. This would have done the job, but Spider-Man got in the way and Shriek simply cut Cletus’ face open, causing his symbiote to respawn and bring him back to 100 percent health. Carnage and Shriek overwhelmed Venom and carried him off, along with the sonic gun.

Venom spent several issues being tortured until coming up with the plan to sneak some of the symbiote into the sonic gun so that Carnage would splatter Venom with more Venom. He punched Carnage down and escaped with gusto, hiding the fact that he was in no condition to fight.

It isn’t until the last issue that we FINALLY got a real Venom vs. Carnage fight. Venom was physically busted a bit, but Carnage was mentally busted. The heroes hit him with some MaGuffin device that caused him to be haunted by those who screwed him up in life. Venom pretty much just kicked Carnage’s ass around the city while Carnage tried in vain to escape. Every now and then, Spider-Man would appear and go, “B-b-but Eddie! Killing is wrong!” for the sake of giving Carnage a second wind.

Eventually, Venom punched Carnage so hard that Carnage’s brain ghosts went away. Knowing Carnage was more of a threat this way, Venom tackled him into a transformer. After the explosion, Cletus was knocked out and Venom got to weakly sneak away. Hey, good for him!

Venom: Carnage Unleashed

Venom was so popular that we got Carnage. Carnage’s initial storyline was so popular that we got Maximum Carnage. Maximum Carnage was so popular that we got a Maximum Carnage video game. Then we got Venom: Carnage Unleashed, a comic based on the popularity of the Maximum Carnage video game. It…wasn’t all too popular.

Still, it did give us the rarely used plot device that symbiotes can travel through phone lines and the internet! Symbiotes really are like pre-Crisis Superman where you can give them whatever power and people will just go with it no matter how ridiculous. As Carnage escaped from Ravencroft and commandeered a security tank, Venom eventually caught up with him and they had a fight on a runaway vehicle through traffic. Carnage eventually won when Venom got slammed by an oncoming train.

Their final battle here is a big pile of “That’s not how any of this works!” The two characters send symbiote tendrils into the internet, which were rendered on the Times Square big screen as the two brawled in cyberspace. Venom destroyed a nearby heatsink, which blasted both and knocked them out of the internet.

Carnage was ready for another go, but his kidnapped psychiatrist set him on fire and caused him to fall out a window. Venom reached through the phone lines and out the window to catch the falling Cletus because dying is WHAT HE WANTS. Which… no, that’s not true at all. Hell, even in Maximum Carnage, Cletus was freaked out about the possibility of dying.

Venom: On Trial

So there was a big Spider-Man/Scarlet Spider/Venom team-up called Planet of the Symbiotes that culminated in a 40-foot-tall Carnage, but there was never a specific Venom vs. Carnage moment, so I won’t go into it. Venom’s ’90s antihero run did have a storyline where Eddie was arrested and put on trial for all of his many crimes. Cletus Kasady was brought in as a star witness, which was an invitation for him to freak out and go on a killing rampage. I mean, seriously, guys. Come on. You should know better.

This story went all-in on Venom wrecking Carnage. Again, Spider-Man would interrupt and give Carnage a chance to turn things around. This time though, Venom decided to ride the wave by sneaking away while Spider-Man and Daredevil took on Carnage. Realizing that the two didn’t have a chance, Venom picked up a couple syringes filled with dopamine blocker and sprung into action. He smacked Carnage around, injected the blocker into his neck, and watched as the symbiote retracted into Cletus’ body.

Venom Triumphant

Howard Mackie wrote Spider-Man comics for a long while and he had an annoying tendency when it came to storytelling. He would come up with an interesting, if nonsensical, idea that would shake up the status quo, but instead of following up on that and using it to tell an actual story, he would just forget about it and move to the next idea that popped into his head. He was one of the main reasons why the Spider-Man Clone Saga was such a mess.

In the 10th issue of Peter Parker, Spider-Man, Venom broke into the prison where Carnage was being held. Despite the legion of heavily armed guards with flamethrowers and sonic guns, Venom killed them all so quickly that the artist didn’t even show it. Cletus, for some reason, figured Venom was trying to break him out of prison, but instead Venom was there to absorb the Carnage symbiote. Carnage barely put up a fight. Pieces of the symbiote were on him, but he didn’t fully transform or try to defend himself. Venom simply pulled the symbiote off of him and ate it, becoming stronger.

After this issue, there was barely any follow-up to this.

Venom vs. Carnage

This miniseries came out at a really weird time for those involved. Carnage was just a couple months away from being torn in half by the Sentry and being written out of comics for years. Venom was appearing in Marvel Knights Spider-Man where Eddie Brock got rid of the symbiote and it bounced around to different hosts until landing on Mac Gargan. Meanwhile there was a Venom ongoing that was more about a symbiote clone where Eddie Brock only appeared for a couple late issues.

In other words, in the Venom vs. Carnage miniseries by Peter Milligan and Clayton Crain, even the creative team had no idea who Venom’s host was supposed to be. Luckily, the story wasn’t about Venom or Carnage, but a new character who would quickly fall into obscurity anyway.

Venom and Carnage swung around New York City, giving the exposition. The Carnage symbiote was pregnant and Venom was explaining that there was nothing to do to stop the creature from going into labor. Venom was all about protecting the new spawn while Carnage wanted to destroy it, immediately. Carnage got the better of Venom by flinging him into the distance. Regardless, the explosive birth wore out Carnage so much that he could only plant the baby onto a nearby cop and escape to rest up.

When the two had a rematch, Venom was there to save the baby symbiote (Toxin) and its host (Pat Mulligan). As if getting revenge for that Carnage Unleashed story, Venom brought the fight to the subway and pushed Carnage into an oncoming train.

And… that’s really all the Venom vs. Carnage we get in Venom vs. Carnage! Once Venom sees that Toxin is a good guy and capable of kicking Carnage’s ass, he gets afraid of Toxin befriending Spider-Man and decides to team up with Carnage for once.

Carnage, USA

Carnage returned from his maiming at the hands of the Sentry, albeit without a bottom half. By then, a lot had happened with Venom. The symbiote was removed from Mac Gargan and joined with war hero Flash Thompson. Agent Venom went on to join the Secret Avengers.

Carnage, USA told the story of Cletus expanding his symbiote to overtake an entire town in the middle of nowhere. When various heroes went to oppose him, the Carnage symbiote ended up taking over Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye, and the Thing. When gaining a moment of clarity, Cap called in Agent Venom for help.

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In their first meeting, Agent Venom easily took down Carnage with some explosive projectiles that came with sonic shrapnel. Then when getting ready for the kill – say it with me everyone – Spider-Man got in his face and went, “No! Don’t kill!” Carnage recovered, and overwhelmed Venom with his army of Carnage’d heroes. Then another obscure symbiote hero, Scorn, popped in to run Venom and Carnage over with a bulldozer and bring them into a facility that would blast their symbiotes off the hosts.

While Cletus and Flash had a fight based around the novelty that both were legless, the Venom symbiote latched onto a gorilla and ran for its life against an entire zoo full of animals with the Carnage symbiote. After almost being taken down by a Carnage lion (Spider-Man with the save), the gorilla returned to Flash and gave him the power to bring Cletus into custody.

As for the town-wide Carnage symbiote, most of it was taken out by an airstrike.

Minimum Carnage

Following up on Agent Venom, he had his own team-up arc with Scarlet Spider (Kaine) with the fun dynamic of a Venom who doesn’t want to kill and a Spider-Man who does. The two chased Carnage into the Microverse, where Carnage was able to create an army of symbiote clones. While Agent Venom was able to decapitate Carnage, the villain had attained some level of power where his body is more overall fluid and animated. In this case, Carnage could just reattach his head with no problem.

Although Flash had sedated his own symbiote and lacked the monstrous advantage, he was able to wipe out a bunch of the clones by amplifying his own inner sorrow outward through the Venom symbiote. Strangely, that’s not the first time Venom was able to do that. What’s left of Carnage slinked away, cackling.

Carnage and the clones returned to Earth and Voltron’d themselves into a giant Carnage. As Carnage tried to devour Agent Venom, Venom shoved a sonic grenade down Carnage’s throat and let the blast do the rest, taking out the enlarged Carnage symbiote almost completely. In the aftermath, Scarlet Spider jabbed one of his claws through Cletus’ eye and lobotomized him.

Venomverse

Venomverse is about a series of Venom hosts from different realities coming together to fight beings called Poisons. Under normal circumstances, Poisons are harmless. If one of them makes physical contact with a symbiote and its host, it transforms them into a nigh-unbeatable crystal-like creature with the Poison in control. By this point, Eddie Brock was Venom again and joined with all sorts of random symbiote heroes to the point that he came off as just a regular dude.

With their back against the wall, Eddie came up with an idea. They brought in Carnage from an alternate universe as a ringer. At first, Carnage fought against the Venoms, but they were reluctant to fight back. Once he saw the Poisons and understood that the Venoms wanted him to kill an army of twisted superheroes, he gladly joined their ranks. He just let them know that once he was done with the Poisons, he’d kill them next.

He ended up being a huge help, especially since the Poisons had a hard time bonding to the Carnage symbiote. Carnage died in an explosion fighting Poisons alongside Poison Deadpool (who was able to bypass his Poison’s mental control).

There was a sequel to this called Venomized where the Poisons returned and tried to invade Earth. They kidnapped Cletus, forced him to bond to an alternate universe Venom, and then bonded that to a Poison. While he was referred to as “Carnage” at times, the Carnage symbiote was never involved, so I’m going to skip this one.

But where was the Carnage symbiote during all of this?

The Red Goblin

At one point, Norman Osborn became the host for Carnage to give us a climactic villain to finish off Dan Slott’s lengthy run on Amazing Spider-Man. Knowing that Spider-Man was out of his league, J. Jonah Jameson decided to fight fire with fire by calling up Eddie Brock and blackmailing him into aiding Spider-Man. This led to a brief fight of Spider-Man, Venom, and repulsor-wielding Mary Jane against the Red Goblin.

Venom and Red Goblin brawled for a bit, but Red Goblin appeared to be immune to the usual symbiote weaknesses, so only Venom took damage. While he got some hits in, Eddie was too exhausted to continue. Instead he offered the symbiote to Spider-Man to give him the extra boost. This brief team-up allowed the two vigilante enemies to finally bury their lengthy rivalry.

Absolute Carnage

Now we get to Donny Cates’ bonkers run on Venom. Cletus had been resurrected and turned back into Carnage via a bunch of cultists who worshipped Knull, God of Symbiotes. Carnage then started going around eating the spines of those who were once host to a symbiote, getting stronger by the meal. Dark Carnage first fought Venom in a subway and easily overpowered him. Still, Venom got the win by grabbing onto the third rail while holding onto Dark Carnage. It was enough to knock Carnage loopy while Venom could get away and seek out help.

Venom and Spider-Man sought out Norman Osborn (who believed himself to be Cletus Kasady after the Red Goblin episode) and were ambushed by an army of inmates possessed by Carnage symbiotes. Overwhelmed, the two heroes broke through a wall and swung off into the night.

Venom got involved in another big fight against an army of Carnages and could have killed Osborn, but instead chose to save a wounded Mac Gargan nearby and brought him to safety. The Venom symbiote wasn’t happy with this and later left Eddie for Bruce Banner, giving us a fight between Venom Hulk and Dark Carnage. This turned out to be a dire choice, as Dark Carnage tore into Hulk’s brain, caused him to shrink back to Banner, then ate his spine. Carnage was stronger than ever.

Meanwhile, mad scientist the Maker had a machine that took the “symbiote codex” stuff Carnage was looking for out of former hosts without the nasty “tearing out their spinal column” part. Eddie unleashed the codex collection onto himself, turning him into a more powerful version of Venom. As he took on Cletus one last time, Carnage made note that Venom was screwed no matter what. Either Carnage killed and ate Eddie’s son Dylan or Eddie killed Carnage, which would wake up Knull and drive him to Earth.

Venom summoned the Necrosword to cut through Carnage, destroying him once and for all. For a time, at least.

Prelude to Knull

Wouldn’t you know it, killing Dark Carnage caused Eddie to absorb the Carnage symbiote into himself. Soon he was separated from Venom and stuck on an island while being bonded against his will to the Carnage symbiote. Dylan was able to remotely control the Venom symbiote and transformed it into a giant Venom T-rex. Like it wasn’t even bonding onto a dinosaur or anything. It was just the size and shape of a tyrannosaurus just because.

Eddie and Dylan had a dreamlike meeting in their minds while Carnage Eddie chopped down at the Venom dino. Eventually, the power of familial love was enough to overpower the Carnage symbiote and blow it up. Eddie rejoined with the Venom symbiote, and a little piece of Carnage latched onto a nearby shark to swim off and fight another day.

Okay, then! Phew! Going by every Venom vs. Carnage fight, I’ve judged them so that there have been six draws, eight victories for Carnage, and nine victories for Venom.

Congratulations, black ooze. Here’s hoping your red offspring doesn’t turn the tide at the box office.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage will be released in theaters on Oct. 1.

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short-yandere-stories · 5 years

Note

Not the same anon, but I really liked your yandere Batman story! Can I ask for hcs about Justice League member x reader, where reader is villain that disquised as civilian?

Thank you so much for liking it! I’ll give you headcanons for all the members of the Justice League that have “current” movies in the DCU to make it a bit simpler – hope you enjoy

I’m REALLY proud of the Aquaman one though so it’s extra long heheh. I got caught up in the “what is a hero/is it a villain” thought process so it might not be the most yandere thing but I really like how it turned out.

Content Warnings: yandere behavior, mentions of kidnapping, usage of sedatives,

This is a yandere work. Proceed with caution and please be mindful of your triggers.

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

Wonder Woman

She usually listens to and trust civilian witnesses’ accounts and retellings to be true – no need to use the truth lasso on someone already traumatized by the villains.

But something about you, in particular, feels off in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.

You’re calm and collected – no fear in your eyes, even though you sometimes fabricate a stutter over your words.

Diana just knows that you know more than you tell.

She asks to use the lasso of truth on you first, and when your eyes widen and you start rambling about it not being safe, she takes action and snaps the lasso around you.

You’re a villain? You attacked these people here and pretended to be one of them to move the attention elsewhere?

Despite herself, Diana can’t help but feel impressed; intrigued even.

Her brain screams at her to take you to the authorities, but a selfish part of her heart tells her to keep you.

Giving in to your heart one time wouldn’t be too bad, right?

Considering how much good she’s done…

She convinces herself (or rather tells) that you’re dangerous and need to be personally watched by her.

Who knows what you would do if you escaped prison? No, Diana can’t allow that.

You’ll be her little secret… You’re no match for her strength anyway.

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

Aquaman

Aquaman meets you in a different way.

There has been this one villain who has kept eluding him somehow.

They appear, do their crime, and vanish.

And the worst part is that they have started to openly and outright mock him.

It’s all from messages scribbled on dollar bills like “Seems like you’re a fish out of water ‘Aquaman’” to traumatized hostages reciting your words to him after you let him rescue them.

It’s just a coincidence he figures out who you are, really.

It’s nothing careless from your part like wearing things from a recent robbery. It’s just from the way Aquaman has slowly grown obsessed with catching you.

He was chasing you one night after you’d broken into the aquarium (ironically enough) to raid the souvenir store – which seems like an odd crime.

And his hand barely managed to brush through your hair when you slipped away from him yet again.

A day later, he saw an article in the newspaper about an anonymous sponsor giving stuffed sea animals to an orphanage. He just knew that it was you, and he froze in shock.

You couldn’t be a villain when you do things like that.

He immediately goes to the aquarium and leaves money for the stuffed animals before they file a police report.

He starts paying more attention to what happens after you’ve committed a crime.

And he notices how refugees suddenly have papers, how abused kids find better homes and how pedophiles just happen to have been beaten up and robbed.

He can’t stop his obsession now, but for a completely different reason.

You’re just like him, but you do things the opposite way.

And you know the saying “opposites attract” right?

He starts noticing a pattern for the things you do in an attempt to be able to watch you do good deeds (in your own way).

And one night he comes a little too late to the building working with human trafficking in secret.

The door is long since busted open, and kidnapped people are now storming out, crying out their thank-yous to their savior. It’s for just a split second, but in the throng of people, Aquaman feels someone’s hair brush his neck in passing.

He would remember that feeling anywhere.

Faster than anything, he spins around and latches hold of your arm, pulling the cap off your head.

Sure enough. It’s you. The glare in your eyes when you look at him betrays you.

He’s studied you for long enough to know without a shred of doubt that it’s you.

He can’t hand you over to the authorities because you’re a good person…

So what should he do?

In the end, he keeps you safely locked up and does his hero work during the day – and yours during the night.

It takes a lot of manipulation and time before you accept that he does it.

It’s only after he comes back home to you one night with a letter written by a six-year-old girl thanking you for saving her from her drunk mother.

You, or at least the symbol you’ve become for those in need needs to keep being there for them, and Aquaman makes it more than clear that you’re not going anywhere.

He keeps leaving messages and pretending that you’re still on the loose during interviews.

You’re viewed as a criminal by most people, but he knows that you’re not.

And he is not about to let the world’s views of you force you to change.

He needs you.

And he is going to make sure that you need him as well.

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

Batman

Bruce sees through your disguise immediately.

There is no question about who you are, but the way you pretend not to be makes him interested.

Why go to such lengths to hide your identity?

Curious about what you would do, he organized a party at his manor.

Imagine how pleased he would be when he saw you among the guests.

After interacting with you as Bruce Wayne and not Batman, he’s fallen head over heels.

Despite being a villain, your morals aren’t too wack. He can turn you around! He knows it. He can fix you and turn you to the right path.

A quick slip of a sedative in your glass takes care of most things for him.

Now he just needs to keep you securely locked up and do his best to convert you.

No matter which steps he has to take.

No matter how much he needs to hurt you.

He knows that you’re meant to be good.

And that you’re meant to be his.

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

Superman

There’s a particular civilian that keeps giving him information about one of the villains in the city when he works as Clark Kent.

Some details creep in that you have no place of actually knowing, and it doesn’t take many weeks before he’s cracked the mystery about who you are.

He could deal with you now – take you to the police. You don’t know his secret identity. But he knows yours. And that’s dangerous for you.

He looks up everything he can about you, and the next time you fight, he makes sure to let you know that he knows who you are.

He wants to have you begging not to hurt your family.

Because when he faces you, he’s not really “Superman” anymore…

He’s driven by his own instincts instead of justice.

He tells you that he won’t tell anyone about you if you accept to be his partner and stay with him.

Even if you refuse, you never really had a choice to begin with.

:✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧*:

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teentitanimals · 4 years

Text

Carrie Kelley in the Batfam

I freaking love Carrie Kelley, she’s so awesome. I desperately wish to see more content of her (I say, never even having read the comics she’s in- so sue me, I’ll get to it eventually). So, I’m taking it upon myself to write how I think she’d function with the rest of the Batfam! In ‘my’ version/understanding of the Batfam, she becomes Robin when Damian is AWOL. She quickly assumes the identity of Catgirl after Damian returns (angry, of course), and then eventually becomes Batgirl when no one else takes that mantle.

I personally view Carrie as someone who’s really, really eager to have a true family, and if she gets to kick criminals’ asses to have that family, then that’s just a big bonus. In basic, I see her as someone who’s very outwardly bubbly, energetic, eager to please, full of determination, enthusiastic, and somewhat stubborn, but has layers of doubt and anxiety expertly pushed down (as is the Bats’ way). In more depth, I see her as someone who knows what she has to do, and will do it no matter what. When she’s given an order, she will go through with it. When she needs to lead, she will. When she needs to follow, she will. Still though, she is inexperienced and untrained compared to the others, both on the physical side and emotional side. While she can put on that facade of coldness, strictness, when she no longer needs that mask, she can break down. For example, when she unhesitatingly punished that Batboy (Mutant guy) for killing some one, but later cried about it. She does what she believes needs to be done in the moment, but can often doubt or regret afterwards, when it’s safer to do so.

Anyway, here’s how I view her relationships with the Batfam! I might do this with some of the other Batfam as well, like Duke :)

Bruce - Carrie instantly views Batman as a parental figure. Her parental figures barely even remember she exists, so when Batman finally accepted her temporarily as Robin, she immediately started to view him as a positive adult role model in her life. She’s always very eager to impress him and relishes in every moment she’s near him, but she can get super anxious when he’s silent, often interrupting it as him ignoring her, just like her real parents do.

Alfred - Carrie loves Alfred, no surprise there. Who doesn’t, after all? She’s only seen her grandparents a few times, so it’s much like what she did with Bruce, instantly viewing him as a grandfather figure. She loves getting him little gifts and enjoys helping him with the work he does around the manor. She would spend every moment telling him how much she appreciates him, if she could.

Selina - She’s a bit hesitant with Selina, because she doesn’t really know much about the woman past her sort of being Batman’s “lover” and also a criminal dressed in a catsuit sometimes. She wants to view Selina as a mother figure, but she gets nervous and shy around her. The two do bond over a love of cats and dogs, though. (I actually have an idea/AU where Carrie becomes Catgirl but as Catwoman’s ‘sidekick’.)

Commissioner Gordon - She has a good amount of respect towards the Commissioner, along with a certain amount of pity. Sometimes, when she’s able to, she’ll prompt him to tell stories to her, and just sit down and listen. She wants to know him better, maybe become like uncle and niece, but she doesn’t really know how to do that.

Kate - Carrie takes well to Batwoman, admiring and respecting her a great deed. She adapts easily to viewing Kate as an aunt. She isn’t as eager to impress Kate like she is with Bruce, but she does value her opinion a lot. Carrie really enjoys hanging out with Kate outside of their masks too, and finds her to be really fun and cool, especially compared to Bruce- although, she would never tell Bruce that to his face.

Dick - Carrie was really, really anxious for Dick’s approval. No, not for being Robin, but rather for being accepted into the family. He was the eldest sibling. The first sibling. Needless to say, getting his immediate acceptance was so relieving it was almost addicting. And, not to mention, Dick was the first person to really hug her in a long while. A full on, arms wrapped around, tight squeeze, warm, loving kind of hug. She about cried on the spot. An unfortunate side effect is that having Dick hug her and seeing him hug everyone else made her Dick’s rival as the most touchy-feely of the Batfam. At least the fam has better luck escaping Carrie’s hugs than they do Dick’s.

Barbara - Carrie also was really anxious for Babs’s approval as well, this time more focused on being a Batgirl than with being accepted into the family. The two aren’t super close, or super chatty, but Carrie always appreciates Babs’s easy and quiet acceptance of her. Even when Carrie feels ignored and forgotten by the rest of the family, she can always count on having Babs simply just greeting her, or sending her out on a mission, just a casual acknowledgement of her existence. In return, Carrie also enjoys giving her small gifts from time to time like she does with Alfred.

Jason - She was a bit nervous initially meeting the infamous Red Hood, but she covered it well with guts and confidence. After she overcame her wariness of him, she definitely tried a bit harder to impress him, viewing him as the ‘cool older brother’. Jason isn’t all that touchy-feely with her like Dick, but every pat on the head, shoulder or back feels like ‘He Accepts Me as His Little Sister’ heaven to her. The two don’t always mesh well together, but they don’t have any animosity or history between them, so it’s easy for them to get along well.

Cass - Cass both fills Carrie with anxiety and love. On one hand, Cass is often very silent, and that really activates Carrie’s ‘She’s Ignoring Me, She Doesn’t Care About Me’, but on the other hand, Cass is very warm and comforting, even without words. Carrie would compare her to a ‘blanket’- warm, soft, comforting, always there for you, even without saying anything, but sometimes when it gets too hot (too silent), you need to get rid of the blanket until its colder (too loud) again. It’s an odd simile, but Cass finds it amusing. Cass more than makes up with her silence with many friendly pats and hugs to her new little sister (which Carrie was ecstatic to find out Cass viewed her as such almost as immediately as Carrie viewed her as an older sister).

Luke - Carrie doesn’t see Luke or Batwing all that much, but she kind of enjoys that. It’s like having a distant cousin you see on holidays that you get along well with. It really solidifies the whole ‘family’ thing for her. She likes hanging out with his siblings, too.

Harper - Harper, too, is more like a cousin, but one Carrie is just in awe of. She definitely wants to get to know Harper better, but they haven’t found the time too.

Tim - She often finds it hard to get along with Tim. Not that they clash heads or anything, it’s more like an awkward silence (and you know by now how much she hates silence). Carrie is loud and energetic even without coffee, yet Tim sometimes can barely stay awake even with coffee. She also isn’t as good with tech as the other, having less experience and access to even the more simpler digital devices due to her parents neglect of her and her childhood. She admires his intelligence and skill greatly, and often feels inferior to him because of it. It’s weird, because she also knows and acknowledges that the rest of the Batfam is greater than her in most skills simply due to more experience and training, but for some reason Tim’s skills make her feel worthless and unimportant to the family. Still though, the two find ways to get along, even if it is just something as minor as Carrie offering to get him some coffee and watching him work. Tim has offered to teach her more on tech too, which she’s pretty eager about, even if a lot of it flies over her head.

Steph - Once again, Steph is one of those people Carrie highly admires. Steph was, after all, both a Robin and Batgirl like Carrie too. Plus, Carrie just really loves Steph’s personality, humor, and wit. She’s the older sister Carrie wants to impress the most. The two got along immediately, personalities bouncing well off each other, like an echo chamber but better. Steph greatly enjoys having a little sister to teach ‘girl stuff’ too, and is happy to pull Carrie along on any trips to the mail, or to paint nails with her and Cass. Inviting Carrie to watch reality TV and musicals with her and Damian. Their text messages between each other consist solely of memes and random ramblings done at 2am. Bruce often has to separate them on patrols or missions, because Steph brings out Carrie’s ‘lack of brain cells’ side, making her more eager to just jump head-on into danger without a proper plan or instructions to do so.

Duke - She and Duke are both the ‘new kids’, but Duke knows just a little bit more about the Batfamily than her. He enjoys showing her ‘the ropes’ when getting used to the family’s insanity. She’s more rambunctious and eager to join in on the chaos than he was, but they can still bond over giving each other those little glances of ‘Are you seeing this too? I’m not crazy right?’ and ‘They can’t be serious.’ Carrie enjoys the more calmed down energy she can have with him. Everyone else in the family’s high energy brings out hers, but Duke has that perfect balance that she appreciates. Even someone as eager for familial attention can be overwhelmed at times. Sometimes they just enjoy calmly, casually talking about whatever, relaxing as they eat, or read, or watch TV.

Damian - Damian is by far the one Carrie admires the most. She’s the one she craves the most acceptance from, and Damian being Damian, it’s very hard to get it, especially since she was a ‘copycat’, a ‘temporary replacement’, a ‘little girl scout looking at the big leagues’ to him. Despite Damian’s many, many insults and jabs and overall disrespect to her, she took it as best she could in stride, not wanting to upset him further. Much like Jason was Tim’s Robin, Damian was Carrie’s Robin, the one she looked up to. It’s why she so easily gave up being Robin and became Catgirl when Damian came back. It was his role, and Carrie didn’t mean to ‘steal it’ from him, or to ‘replace him’, just to help Batman when he didn’t have anyone else. It takes awhile, a long while, but Damian begins to warm up to her, slowly, slowly, accepting her as his sister. Eventually, he actually becomes pretty protective of her, after all, Robin and Batgirl are just as iconic a pair as Robin and Batman. Despite Damian being younger than Carrie (in my eyes), Carrie views him as a protective older brother. They enjoy taking care of all their pets and animals together, and complaining about school to one another, and crashing on the couch after a long day, watching random shows until they fall asleep and one of their older siblings has to carry them to their respective beds.

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platypanthewriter · 5 years

Text

Blind as a Bat

Silly 5+1 misunderstanding chat prompt for @susiecarter! Ao3 link in the notes!

Clark Kent widened his stance in front of Bruce Wayne’s desk, steadying himself for a blow. He frowned down, and adjusted his press pass. “So, ah, the thing is. I love you.”

Bruce’s smile flickered, the arms of his calf-leather desk chair creaking under his hands, before he spun it around and stood, straightening his blazer. “...really.” He crouched, and ran his fingers along the bottom of the chair, then frowned under his desk. “I, also, yes, our posteriors are obviously designed to complement each other, Mr. Kent.” Standing, he waggled his eyebrows, grabbing his desk phone and frowning into the undercarriage. “Go on, I’m listening--”

“...Bruce. Your office isn’t bugged. I seriously can't make this any simpler, I love you. I, Clark Kent, love--”

“Are you mind controlled?” Bruce stepped in close, eyes narrowed. “This is a clever signal.”

Clark backed away, waving. “Actually, you know what, no, Mom was wrong. I can't do this, Superman out--”

“I have a scanner for interference by hostile entities--”

Clark groaned. “Nope, no, we’re good, it's fine, I fixed it. Just now.”

The stillness made Bruce Wayne resemble his alter ego. “That's an astoundingly obvious ploy, but given the initial attempt at intimacy, not out of character--”

Clark stalked out. “I am having a picnic. With my blanket, on the moon.”

Months later, Aquaman requested their help, and Clark found himself questioned in front of a device humming in the rhythm of the dancing fish that hovered and stared at it.

“No, I’m not feeling it, Arthur,” he sighed.

Batman’s voice burbled through his scuba gear. “I'd know if Superman was mind controlled. We have a signal.”

Clark repressed a vicious urge to point out Batman looked ridiculous with bright orange diving weights strapped everywhere, and a fish swimming in and out of his cape. “Oh my god.” He turned to smile at Arthur. “Yes, okay, if I get whammied I'll just...I’ll tell Batman he's hot even though he can't move his neck in that getup. His little ears make me wild.”

“...that should do it,” Arthur bit back a grin, crouching to frown at the device.

“‘I would thrill to remove his Batboots, and see whether his Batsocks have little Batpatterns,’ I’ll say.”

“...that is more than sufficient,” Batman burbled, drifting slightly sideways. “If we could stick to the actual plan.”

“I could say absolutely anything, couldn't I?” Clark’s Politeness Smile felt more fake than usual, and he dropped it. “Bruce Wayne, I'd like you to smile and suffer through my weekly meatloaf for the rest of our lives. I'd like to help you into the Batsuit, and every night, help you peel out of it.”

The barnacle-covered rebar Batman was clinging to in his inexorable tidal drift burst as Clark spoke, crunching into a cloud of grey shell fragments and rust in the water. Batman adjusted his grip on the machine in his other hand. “Stick to simple control statements, or I can’t recalibrate the sensor.”

“Bruce.” More barnacles crunched, and they both ignored them. “What would convince you I'm telling the truth. One truthful sentence. What kind of tests--”

“Howzabout you two go back to the boat, if you’re not gonna help--” Arthur glanced back, eyebrow raised.

“If you could take this seriously--”

Clark laughed so hard he had to steady himself against the rocks, and Arthur glanced back with a grimace. “I have never taken anything so seriously, nor been so tempted to fling a human being into the soundless vacuum of space. What tests.”

Batman made a noise. It was hard to tell through the scuba bubbles, but probably he was clearing his throat. “Nothing can rule out every possibility--”

Clark snorted, leaning his head away from an inquisitive fish. “Or we could borrow Diana's lasso. ‘Diana,’ I’ll say, ‘We need your lasso to discuss my mom's recipe for meatloaf, because Bruce Wayne believes in nothing and no one’--”

“...I would never doubt your mom's recipe for meatloaf,” Batman said flatly, and Arthur covered his mouth, shoulders shaking.

Clark, not seeing the humor, hissed back. “In that case, I will tell my mother that at least you believe in something.”

Diana crossed her arms, watching Clark floating on his back in a slow, ranting circuit of her apartment ceiling. “ ...of course you may borrow it. I can do no less, if you think it will help.”

“It has to, right?” Clark turned to frown down.

“I once offered to cover while he was on vacation,” she confided. “He clenched his jaw and said he'd keep me in mind the next time he required transplant of a crushed organ.”

“The...the next time?” Clark froze in midair, staring back, and she gave a wide-eyed, graceful shrug.

“Keep it as long as you like,” she said, eventually. “I’ll use the time I’d spend doing paperwork for interrogations on doing my actual job.” At her soft smile, he dropped to watch her unwrap something extremely...broken. “This just arrived from a dig in Akrotiri. You...understand my fascination, I think,” she glanced over, “--having so little, of Krypton.”

He nodded, and whisked off to get the brushes and glue. Together, they leaned over the shards until close to morning.

“I’d give up on him,” Clark muttered, squinting at what might have been a piece of a pattern, then leaning back to see the sizable chunk of urn they’d reassembled. “I mean, I did quit trying for a while. But it's just bothering at me, now. How can someone so smart--”

Diana grinned. “I wish you both joy.”

When Clark wafted down onto the balcony at Wayne Tower, Bruce was leaning on the railing. “So do you have a few minutes free? Or are you busy staring out over Gotham and adding to the Batman Translate on Google.”

“What?” Bruce snorted, his gaze fixing on the lasso Clark had wrapped around his arm. The ice in his glass settled.

“May I,” Clark breathed through his nose, trying to sound civil, “--have your permission to tie us up securely in this, Diana's lasso, for the purpose of convincing you that you, Bruce Wayne are honest to god my--”

“You have some reason to believe I’ve been compromised.” Bruce's smile faltered, and he held out his hand.

“Uh, I'll, ah.” Clark wavered. “Y’know, actually, I'm--I’m losing momentum. Uh, do you remember what I was saying in your office, when, um. And about meatloaf.”

Bruce frowned deeply, taking the end of it. “I do remember. You suspect someone successfully duplicated a lasso? This is excellent scotch.” The lasso glowed and twined, and he winced. “It seems to be working.”

“...never mind,” Clark sighed, and whipped back to Diana.

Behind him on the wind, he heard Bruce Wayne’s voice. “...what?”

When Bruce showed up at the party Diana and Atlanna were throwing for the finale of Game of Thrones--“To yell at it?” Clark had asked. “They, ah, they sort of address it with great sincerity, and then tell it they’re disappointed,” his mother laughed. “It’s worth watching.”--Clark was in the kitchen, sliding the third pizza in the oven. Arthur and his mom had oddly similar confusion squints at the screen, heads cocked in unison, and Diana was flopped over the arm of the couch on her belly, investigating Clark’s mom’s knitting. Clark found a plate to scrub just as Bruce Wayne crossed from the front room carpet to the linoleum kitchen floor.

“...may I help?”

The gall of him, Clark thought, posing like a fashion ad in my mother’s kitchen. “I dunno, can you understand the words I say?”

“You have been...strange, recently.” Bruce stepped closer, placing a gift bag with two bottles of wine on the counter. Their chests nearly brushed. Their breath mingled, Bruce minty, and Clark, he thought in passing, probably redolent of pepperoni. He met Bruce’s gaze, and watched him swallow, his gaze flicking down. Bruce opened his mouth, closed it, and Clark leaned in without meaning to, letting his head tip just slightly, so their lips would meet. “You’re standing in front of the drawer with the corkscrew,” Bruce whispered.

Clark stalked by him, remembering he was Superman, and as satisfying as it would have been to shoulder-slam by, he could hardly claim Bruce deserved a broken collarbone. He let himself drift to rest on the roof, listening to his city, and only roused himself at the rising smell of burning pizza.

Two weeks later, Clark watched Batman fail to find any crime, and dropped next to him on a roof. He dodged two batarangs, and caught the third. “Okay, as an experiment. If someone were in love with Batman, what signs would you expect them to exhibit.”

Bruce’s voice was especially throaty when startled, unless he was coming down with a cold. “No one knows Batman, he's a construct of--”

“Someone that does.” Clark held up a hand. “Okay. Let’s just say. Someone that does know Batman.”

“...I am not participating in any of the Flash’s ridiculous projects, and I do not need a personals ad.” Batman swooped his cape around him like a smoke bomb, and rapidly scrabbled down the side of the building.

Clark thought about that for a long moment, cocked his head, and then shook it to dismiss the image. Bat seeking partner for aerial maneuvers, his reporter brain supplied. He dropped next to Batman in the alley. “Somebody three blocks away is trying to pee on a wall, but mostly it’s going in his boot,” he reported, saluting. “Unless that needs your attention, can we talk?”

“...you’ll let me know if anything else happens,” Batman growled.

“I’m not trying to get anyone hurt.”

Batman snorted and muttered something, unintelligible in the Batvoice, and stalked away down the alley, and Clark floated along behind him like a balloon on a string.

“I--I know this isn’t anything you want to talk about,” Clark kept his voice low, “--but if--if you are repulsed by--by all the people that know Batman, now’s the time to speak up, and, uh, I’ll. I’ll just--I’ll go buy some ice cream.” Bruce had stopped walking, and the silence stretched out. “...there’s even an apple pie flavor,” Clark forced a laugh. “Perfect for me, midwestern boy, right? And Mom sent me a new comfy sweater, it’s, uh, it’s fine, y’know. Fine.”

“If you already assume I will not be receptive,” Batman’s voice scraped, “--than this is a truly--” He staggered forward as the breeze of Superman’s passage whumped his cape against his back.

When the knock came, Clark was in his Kansas City Royals boxers, and his fluffy sweater with the too-long sleeves and the slightly crooked sigil of the House of El. It still smelled like his mom--her lotion, and instant coffee, and the slight lingering stench of burned pizza. He’d ensconced himself on the couch with a spoon and a gallon of mint chip, just as his phone lit up with a Songs To Cry Through While Heartbroken playlist from Kara.

The knock came again. As it wasn’t likely to be League business, he hunkered down, stuck a huge bite of ice cream in his mouth, and resisted the urge to laser his visitor through the door for interrupting his caterwauled duet with Adele.

“What!” he finally yelled.

The knock came a third time, and then movement made him pay attention to the other end of the couch, where Bruce Wayne stood. He was dressed down, a bit, holding a leather briefcase in both hands. Of course Batman wasn’t slowed by a locked door. “What,” Clark groaned, wishing he could get drunk.

“I did ask if I could come in,” Bruce pitched his voice over Adele, and Clark narrowed his eyes, and clicked her off.

“Pretty sure I didn’t say ‘yes’.”

“...is that...Titanic, The Notebook, and Romeo + Juliet?”

“Yes. I’m watching loving couples die. What do you want.” Clark shoveled in another mouthful of ice cream.

“...of course I’ll leave, if you want me to,” Bruce clicked his briefcase, and shiny cobalt silk billowed out, “--but I did bring pajamas. And--” he waved back towards the door, “I asked for your order at the bodega. Pastrami sandwiches?”

Clark considered for a long moment, eyeing the Batjamas, then the delicious smelling bag of sandwiches. “...I don’t want to make a habit of accepting bribes, but…”

“It is one of the things I admire about you,” Bruce said, straight-faced, and Clark paused half out of his blanket cocoon to stare over.

Bruce’s eyes strayed down the admittedly lumpy sweater to his Kansas boxers, and Clark hugged himself, shuffling over to the bag of sandwiches. “Apology accepted, then. Why’d you bring your...loungewear, or whatever? You can’t think I’d want to see you.” He snorted, unwrapping the deli parchment. “And you obviously didn’t want to see me--”

“What I said about knowing Batman was true,” Bruce came over to lean against the counter, watching the lights of the city outside Clark’s apartment, and Clark rolled his eyes. “No one truly knows Batman, not enough to love him. No one...really knows Bruce Wayne, either.”

Clark wanted to argue, or throw a sandwich at his head, but either of the options involved more pastrami in his mouth, so he listened, and chewed.

“I’m not...perfect--”

Clark coughed. “Well that’s your application in the trash,” he snorted. “I can only date perfect people.”

“I have...hidden some things, even from the League,” Bruce smirked, ducking his head, “--my money makes certain aspects of my...unforgivable lack of foresight just...go away. There have been times I have--not chosen the most effective plan, because it caused me personal discomfort.”

“If this is supposed to make me feel better,” Clark swallowed, and took a sip of the supplied root beer, “--it doesn’t. What do you want, Bruce. I won’t cause problems in the League, I’m not--you have every right to refuse my attentions.”

“I brought the pajamas in case you would like to know...me,” Bruce told the counter, smile practiced and charming, his knuckles white on the handle of his bag. “I will understand, of course, if you--”

Clark dropped the sandwich, speeding so fast around the counter it probably looked to Bruce like he’d teleported. “You’re saying yes?”

“Clark…”

“You brought your pajamas, Bruce,” Clark clenched his teeth, torn between the fizzy feeling of hope urging him to spin them around the ceiling like Mary Poppins characters, and the strong need to tie Bruce Wayne to a lamppost outside a police station--with his own pajamas--and a note taped to his chest that said ‘DANGER TO SELF AND OTHERS’. “When you couldn’t prevent harm as Batman, you did your best to help as Bruce Wayne, that’s what I’m hearing.”

“That is--optimistic.”

“Get in your goddamn pajamas,” Clark pointed with his second sandwich half, and narrowed his eyes at Bruce covering a grin. “I’m not Superman right now, I’m enraged. What do you mean ‘personal discomfort,’ that’s what we’re working on, you not risking yourself in every fight. Flash is talking about making a stamp booklet. You get one every time you don’t dash in front of a bullet--” Clark choked, pounding his chest, as Bruce dropped his pants, revealing black athletic socks, pale, scarred hairy legs, and a rapidly-covered patch of black silk undies.

Bruce shook out the pajama pants, pulled them on, and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Sometimes the strategy requires the strategist endanger himself, for the cumulative good.”

“Don’t give me that--”

“I don't want to watch any of those movies,” Bruce told his own buttons, frowning down. “I’m not sure why anyone does--do you have something less...?”

“Ye-yeah,” Clark swallowed, close enough he could feel the warmth from Bruce’s skin. He grabbed his half-eaten sandwich, slowly chewing as Bruce revealed more scars, and muscles, and he tasted nothing. “Um. Is this a date?”

“Perhaps.” Bruce buttoned himself into his pajama top, and Clark watched his fingers fly, wishing he didn’t have pastrami all over his own. He frowned at the sandwich, wondering if he’d fallen for a trap.

“Depending on what?”

“Whether you like what Martha Wayne’s boy actually turned into.” Bruce smiled his polished magazine cover smile, dropped it to go oddly blank, and then stared into the distance between he and Clark’s bag of sandwiches.

I should enjoy his discomfiture more, Clark thought, but he just changed the subject to Netflix selection, and watched Bruce flick through the selection with a darkening frown. “Does Martha Wayne’s boy want a bowl of ice cream?”

“...maybe?” Bruce squinted back at him, and Clark leaned over the back of the couch to bump shoulders.

“You are your choices, and all, but I promise not to decide who you are based on Netflix special.” He caught Bruce’s eye, and grinned, enjoying the quirked smile he got in return. “Just pick the next thing that looks fun, you’re thinking too hard about this.”

Bruce nodded, watching the preview for what looked like a show about friendship between female wrestlers.

Clark properly served a bowl of the less-melty ice cream near the bottom, instead of passing over the carton, and Bruce’s lips twitched.

“...what.”

“Oh, just remembering Alfred sitting the ice cream out until it wasn’t rock-hard. Your powers are so versatile.”

“I’ll remember to list ice-cream scooping next time anyone asks.” Clark grinned back. “Is that why you're here? You staying the night? There’s a good diner around the corner.”

Bruce accepted the bowl. “I did bring condoms.”

Clark steepled his fingers, frowning at the drippy ice cream scoop. “...so either you’re saying yes to dating, or you’re planning to zipline off my balcony as soon as I fall asleep. I hope it’s the former.”

“Not that kind of boy?”

“I mean,” Clark glared over, “I want to--to at least date you, not just ...have sex with Bruce Wayne, like I’m some--some person you will smirk at in the elevator for the rest of our lives.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows at his spoonful of ice cream. “Batman does not smirk.”

“What a relief,” Clark growled. “And no, look, there is a Bat Smirk--do you want to make up a contract, would that work better for your brain? Should I let you talk to lawyers first?”

Bruce went still again. “...I--I apologize if--”

“No, sorry, I’m--I’m sorry.” Clark took a deep breath, and let it out. “I just--I thought you’d say yes, and--” he scrabbled at his hair, “--this would stop, I feel like--do you even want to be here?!”

“Relax,” Bruce scooted closer, leaning in to press his lips warmly against Clark’s, “--yes. And I can promise I won’t sneak away. If something does come up, I’ll leave a note.” He was smooth-shaven and cologne-scented, his pajamas warm and smooth under Clark’s uncalloused fingers.

Clark pulled him closer, grinning against his mouth, and feeling only slightly guilty about introducing pastrami onto Bruce’s mint-chocolate tongue. “We do usually figure things out,” he whispered, licking in for a deeper kiss, while Bruce waved the bowl of ice cream until it hit the coffee table.

“We do,” Bruce agreed, then relaxed--a bit--into the kiss. “That we do. If anyone could make this work--” He trailed off, letting Clark pull him closer, and smiling against his mouth.

Clark let his eyes close, until he felt Bruce laughing. He pulled back to realize he’d floated up with his arms around Bruce.

“Someone is going to look up and see us...why doesn’t the weight of my body make your points of contact hurt my ribs?”

“You know nobody looks up,” Clark nuzzled into the smooth-shaven skin at Bruce’s throat. Bruce leaned his head back, eyes fluttering shut. “...why isn't my face covered in bugs when I cross the city,” Clark mouthed against Bruce’s thudding jugular, breathing his cologne, “--it’s because I’m magic, Bruce. I’m a magic alien.”

“...hrmph," Bruce grunted, frowning his scientist frown, and Clark grinned, letting himself slowly spin in the air with inertia. He squeezed Bruce carefully tighter. "We should try out those condoms,” Bruce hummed against his mouth, and then staggered as Clark dropped back to the floor.

“There’s not--I didn’t--we don’t have to--”

“I know. But I’m very much that kind of boy.”

#superman #batman #superbat #platypan #platypan fic #platypan FINISHED FIC #crack fic #Clark loves Bruce #Bruce thinks it's mind control #Or a call for help #or a code for surveillance #Bruce is smart yet dumb #5+1 #short and silly

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batboysandgirls · 4 years

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How did you get into fic writing? I've been so bored and I've been lacking some fic content that I've just been wondering if I should start making my own but like... It's really hard??? I'm just wondering what your process is like or whats more likely to get you to actually write How do you get into the mood of writing, basically? I have some snippets of writing, not so confident in them but like worthy enough to not be deleted or scrapped :/

Hey, anon. Fic writing is so hard. I got into writing fic many, many moons ago... I started when I was twelve, and I’m twenty now so uh. I’ve been in the thick of it for a while now. I got into it writing fics with OCs and canon characters I loved in some cartoons, but I eventually started reading reader inserts and then normal fics. All of that happened because of the particular time in my life I was entering fandom, and how fandom was shaping up then. Everything is so different, now, but I’ll talk about general things I find useful that I’ve learned over the years... all this is super long, but I think this deserves a thorough answer.

So--process! It depends a lot on the type of fic I’m writing (fic focused on a pairing, gen, reader insert, etc.), but I usually start with a basic concept. This concept can be anything. Often, I think figuring out your setting is a good jumping off point.

Is this an AU? What kind of AU? (Star Wars? High school? Post-apocalypse?)

Does this take place in the canon story? If so, when? (If it was a batfam fic, is it when Dick or Bruce was Batman? Or who is Robin? Or is there a storyline this takes place right after? Or before? Big events like Death of the Family or Alfred’s death are the kinds of things that are fun to explore.)

But your concept could also be something more specific. What would happen if the batfam played Clue? Or what would happen if current 13 y/o Damian was swapped with just-arrived-at-the-manor 10 y/o Damian in some universe hopping shenanigans? Maybe you can pick a favorite character and center the story on them. If I’m writing about Jason, maybe it’s a fic about him going to the Gotham library for the first time since he got resurrected, and this place he visited all the time as a kid now feels unfamiliar and haunting. Or even simpler, like Tim, moved out of the manor, tries to make brownies and is struggling and his elderly neighbor smells the burning and volunteers to help and it’s pure.

I think the thing that usually gets me in the ~writing mood~ is an idea so exciting I’m constantly thinking about. For example, my Explosions And Other Saturday Morning Activities story? I started thinking about what would happen if a Wayne Enterprises intern accidentally one of the bats secret identity, and then gets dragged into the messiness... I didn’t have the plot beats down, but once I had the basic concept, I started thinking about plausible ways for that idea to play out. Lately, I’ve been working on some original fiction (wack I know), and I’ve mostly been excited to write it because I love all these characters I’ve created and I enjoy thinking about scenarios to put them in.

But writing is hard! Sometimes you might have a great idea that gets you excited, and then you’ll sit down to write and... your brain halts and it’s tough. There’s no one way to get in the writing mood. I often start outlining what I want to write rather than writing it out, or listen to music/make a playlist for a fic, or go read something totally different than come back. I think once you start writing a lot, you’ll figure out the strategies that personally work best.

The most important thing, though, is that writing fic should be fun for you. I won’t necessarily say that fic writing should be for yourself, though I generally think that’s a good principle for a lot of people. Fic writing should fulfill some inner self-desire to be creative, but, also, one of the best things about making fic is sharing!! It’s so exciting to post something and get feedback, like “I made this!! And someone out in the world liked it!! And told me!! Sweet!!!!!” That’s how it is for me, certainly. But you shouldn’t feel like you have to write for your fellow fans/your audience. It should always be a fun thing for you!

In terms of not feeling confident, I have sooooo many snippets of fics that have never left my google drive, and probably never will. But I think the only way to get better is to put something out into the world--even though you know it’s not the best--and get feedback, figure out what works, what doesn’t, and then keep going, keep writing, keep rewriting. Like with any art, I think writers are plagued with self-doubt. “What if people don’t like it??? I don’t even like it!!” But, with practice and time, you’ll grow, and maybe come to be love your stories unabashedly.

The fics I wrote literally eight years ago? I look back at them with a bit of cringe, but mostly fondness. They’re bad, but I was so excited to write them, and, as childish and strange as those fics read now, the passion I felt then is the same passion that drives me now. My skill has improved a LOT, but my basic love of storytelling is the same. And when I compare then and now, I’m really proud of how far I’ve come.

And, finally, if you have more specific questions about reader inserts or like how to write batfam or anything else, feel free to message me off anon or just send more asks if that’s what you’re comfortable with.

Good luck writing!

#asks #writing #jules stuff #jules blabs #anon #good luck my friend!!

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tyrantisterror · 5 years

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TT Rambles: Building a Kaiju Cast

As far as I’m concerned, the kaiju renaissance is in full swing - not just because of movies like Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Pacific Rim, but because of all the original novels, webcomics, etc. that the kaiju fandom is publishing. It’s beautiful to see all these new kaijuverses blossoming.

and I want to see more of them

It takes me back to that brief, shining period in the early 2000′s where there were DOZENS of thriving kaijuverses on Deviantart, all with weird and wonderful takes on giant monsters that oozed with style and creativity. God that was a good time and

I want to see more

So, as a person with a semi-successful kaiju-verse of my own, I’ve been thinking about how I could encourage people to make more kaiju beyond, like, just making my own and hoping it resonates and inspires people like the kaiju-verses that I see inspire me. And then my teacher brain got to thinking - one of the best ways to help people create is to give them structure to build off of. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Friends, enclosed here are some written instructions on how to build a fun and dynamic kaiju cast. You don’t have to follow these rules to the letter, mind you, but if you don’t know where to start, this might help.

Step 1: Pick Your Flavor

There are more ways to make a kaiju story than you may realize, as the genre is deceptively diverse despite its obscurity. However, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to try to reduce it to two main categories:

Hero Monster(s) saves the world from evil monsters

Hero humans attempt to save the world from evil monsters

This is a crucial fact to figure out before you make your kaiju cast, because the differences between these two variants will inform how you structure your monsters. In the first approach, the monsters not only need personality and motivations, but character arcs, and benefit from being as distinct from each other as possible. In the second, the monsters generally have to be a bit simpler and less, well, person-y, so we don’t feel as bad when they’re cut down by the heroes. They also tend to be more uniform in appearance, origin, and personality, to make the division between humanity and monster more clear cut. The first approach will generally result in a “humanity needs to be more open minded and compassionate to those we deem as other” sort of message, while the latter will generally show how humanity needs to pull together in the face of catastrophic threats. On the surface these two story routes may seem very similar, but the differences between them are important ones.

Step 2: The Main Kaiju

In addition to OC kaijuverses, another big trend in the glory days of the DA kaiju fandom was revamping/redesigning the cast of the Godzilla franchise. There were dozens of different takes on it, and a friend of mine noted a peculiar but important lesson that could be learned from each of them: if you looked at how each artist redesigned Godzilla himself, you could basically predict how the rest of the monsters would look. This is because Godzilla is the crux of his universe - all the other monsters are designed to play off of him, and thus any change made to Godzilla will be reflected in the rest of the cast.

You can see this in other stories as well - Batman’s cast is built around his gothic horror/detective fiction roots, Spider-Man’s around his teen drama/sci-fi genre mashup, etc. As a general rule, stories are tailored to their protagonist, and in kaiju fiction, the protagonist is generally one of the giant monsters. Therefore, figuring out your main monster is important, as they will ultimately shape the entire story.

Now, when I say “protagonist,” I mean this in the “main/most prominent character” sense, rather than the “hero” sense. Your main kaiju may be a bad guy - they may be the villain of the story, the face and root of its conflict. Alternatively, they may live up the hero label in every sense of the word - one of the coolest things about the Kaiju genre is that it sports a LOT of heroes that are also non-human characters.

If you are going for the second variation of the kaiju genre - that is, the “Humans destroy evil monsters” story - your main kaiju still matters, even though it likely isn’t a prominent enough character to really qualify for protagonist status. In shows like Evangelion and Ultraman, or movies like Pacific Rim, there are still essentially “main” kaiju - that is, kaiju who define the style and approach that monsters in the series will take. Often they’re the first monster the heroes encounter - Knifehead from Pacific Rim, for example, establishes early on the aesthetic and rough personality of the giant monsters featured in the movie. Other times they show up later in the story to make a big impact - Red King and Gomora in Ultraman both showcase the creativity of the show’s designs while having unique personalities and power sets that really leave an impact on the viewer.

When creating your main kaiju, consider the following questions:

- What if your monster’s main motivation? Is it looking for something? If so, what? Is it seeking revenge? If so, why? Is it defending its territory? Is it investigating civilization? Is it searching for food? Company? The greatest kaiju characters have clear and defined motivations to bring them into the plot, just like all good characters do. What is your monster’s drive?

- How tough is your monster? Kaiju generally get into a lot of violent conflicts, so determining how much punishment your monster can both withstand and dole out is important.

- What are your monsters’ vulnerabilities? This includes both physical weaknesses and psychological ones. Are they weakened by the cold? Incapable of flight? Slow moving? Quick to anger? Stupid?

- What strengths/powers does your monster have? Can it heal fast? Is it smart? Does it have unique weapons? Is it creative?

- What quirks does your kaiju have? Is it gluttonous? Cocky? Graceful? Clumsy? Does it beat its chest or dance in triumph? Does it cackle maniacally while wreaking havoc?

- What is your monster’s relationship to humanity? Does it hate humans? View them as food? Feel indifferent to them? Is curious about them? Cares for them? How does humanity feel about it in turn? Does this relationship change over the course of the story?

- What is your monster’s attitude towards other monsters? Is it hostile towards them? Friendly? Indifferent? Does its attitude vary depending on the monster? Is its attitude mostly consistent with a few exceptions? Does it have friends? Enemies?

- How did your monster come to be? Is it an atomic mutant? A mythic beast? A space alien? A prehistoric creature from a forgotten age? We’ll dive into the archetypes associated with these origins later, but keep the question in mind.

Part 3: Other Kaiju Roles

Once your main kaiju is figured out, you can start building the cast proper in reaction to it. There are LOTS of ways you can do this, but I’m going to focus on a few common roles supporting kaiju have to play:

- The Arch Enemy: the King Ghidorah to your kaiju’s Godzilla, the Gyaos to its Gamera, the arch enemy is exactly what it sounds like: your main kaiju’s recurring nemesis, a big bastard of a monster that your main kaiju absolutely hates. You don’t have to limit yourself to one of these, of course - most main kaiju in fiction have a LOT of enemies, since monster battles are one of the main draws of a kaiju story. At the same time, most kaiju stories also tend to have one kaiju that is more wicked than most, whose grudge with the main kaiju is more vicious than normal. Creating an arch enemy for your main kaiju is a good way to give your story structure - every protagonist needs a primary antagonist to struggle against.

- The Guardian of the Earth: a lot of main kaiju tend to be anti-heroes, often starting off as enemies of mankind before slowly becoming protectors of the earth. As a result, a lot of kaijuverses often include an explicitly good kaiju who exists in contrast to both the main kaiju AND the main kaiju’s enemies. If the Arch Enemy kaiju is often what the main kaiju could become if they don’t change their ways, the Guardian of the Earth is what the main kaiju usually works towards being. Or, in short: every Godzilla needs a Mothra to be the angel on their shoulder.

- The Damage Sponge: Sometimes there are kaiju who are famous not for their prodigious destructive power, but rather for their ability to endure ridiculous amounts of damage, even by kaiju standards. The damage sponge normally isn’t the main kaiju, since the main kaiju’s job is to establish a baseline, while the damage sponge is defined by being more durable than other monsters.

- The Runt: a smaller than usual kaiju, who often compensates by being faster and more clever than the usual kaiju.

- The Giant Among Giants: the kaiju that makes other kaiju feel small, generally used to escalate the plot by its sheer power.

- The Rival Turned Ally: since kaiju generally socialize by fighting, most kaiju friendships begin with an unsuccessful fight to the death. Often your main kaiju will have at least one friend who began as a bitter enemy.

- The Big Eater: In large kaiju casts where the kaiju have different motivations and morals, there will almost always be one kaiju whose ethos can be defined as “neutral hungry.” It’s not good, it’s not evil, it just wants to eat, and unfortunately everyone else looks like a viable meal.

- The Brute: while all kaiju are generally violent and tough, the Brute takes it to another level. Its violence will be more extreme, its bloodthirstiness beyond compare, and its raw strength will surpass most if not all of the other monsters on the cast list.

- The Clever Bastard: like the Brute, the Clever Bastard makes for a harder than normal fight. However, instead of relying on sheer strength, the Clever Bastard uses cunning to make the fight more vicious, being a devious schemer who thinks significantly more than the average monster. It may also have more than a few tricks to its biology to help it as well, and generally manages to throw the heroes off guard by doing things they wouldn’t expect.

- The Innocent: in a world full of violent monsters, this kaiju is a notable exception for its sweetness and (relative) vulnerability. It means no harm and often has few ways to defend itself, and as a result is generally imperiled by the more vicious and bloodthirsty giants in the setting. The main kaiju may actively try to protect it, though the harsh world of kaiju means its likelihood of survival is rather slim.

Part 4: Kaiju Archetypes

Ok, now that we’ve talked about the more substantive personality based stuff, let’s get onto some fun surface details. The origin and design of your kaiju are important in their own right, but work best when they are made in service of your kaiju’s personality and role in the story. A lot of people start with these archetypes first - “I’m gonna make a fire breathing reptile!” - and while this can result in a good monster design, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a memorable kaiju character. Tailoring the design and origin to your kaiju’s role and personality, on the other hand, is more likely to result in a character we remember, since the design is now more than a surface detail - it’s an extension of the character.

Archetype 1: The Fire Breathing Reptile - best exemplified by the big two, Godzilla and Gamera, almost every kaijuverse has at least one big reptilian monster, and that monster likewise almost always has the ability to breath fire. It calls back to the many European dragon myths, and is just a fun visual in general. This archetype is so prolific that many modern kaijuverses actually skip it because it’s considered cliche, but while it may be hard to make a fire breathing reptile kaiju standout, the trope is still a classic and one many people think of as synonymous with the genre.

Archetype 2: The Big Ape - similarly, King Kong has made giant apes a staple of the genre, to the point where they are almost as common as fire breathing reptiles are. King Kong vs. Godzilla in turn made it customary to pit these two archetypes against each other, and as a result every kaiju story that has both a fire breathing reptile and a big ape will almost always portray them as natural enemies. The Big Ape is one of the archetypes that is most likely to be presented as sympathetic/heroic, following the logic that more closely related to humanity a creature is, the more noble it must be.

Archetype 3: The Magnified Bug - since kaiju are in part defined by being way bigger than an animal has any right to be, one of the most extreme visuals you can bring to a kaiju design is to take something that is normally very small and make it HUGE, because this emphasizes just how exaggeratedly big the kaiju is. As a result, giant arthropods - insects, spiders, etc. - are very common in the genre, as they really sell the idea of kaiju being unnaturally enormous creatures. Magnified bugs are generally not treated as sympathetic kaiju for the same reason big apes usually are - if we treat “more human = more good” as true, then bugs, being distantly related to humanity, can’t be very good creatures. However, there is at least one prominent and notable exception to this rule, and to be honest it’s a rather shitty rule anyway.

Archetype 4: The Mechanical Doppelganger

Ever since Mechani-Kong stepped onto the silver screen, it has been a tradition for a main kaiju to have a robot or cyborg made in their image as part of their rogues gallery. Hell, even Gomora from Ultraman got one, and that’s a show where the monsters aren’t protagonists! Like the previous tropes, this is one that comes to mind when people think of the genre, as countless parodies (including an infamous episode of South Park) have shown.

Archetype 5: The Alien Invader - a monster from another planet, with all the strange biological quirks such an origin implies. In Monster Saves the World kaiju stories, the alien is usually brought in late in the tale to heighten the stakes by delivering a stranger threat than the usual kaiju. In Humanity Saves the World kaiju stories, however, most kaiju tend to be alien in origin, which is used to justify wiping them out since they are an invasive species by nature. Alien kaiju are rarely sympathetic or heroic.

Archetype 6: The Mutant - whether the result of atomic fallout, genetic engineering, pollution, or some other unnatural mistake, the mutant is a new lifeform whose monstrous form is the direct result of humanity breaking the natural order of things. A LOT of kaiju are mutants, as the kaiju genre began during the atomic age as a direct reaction to the discoveries of what radiation could do to living creatures (discoveries that ranged from “Wow these radioactive fruits are really big!” to “Oh god this radioactive man is full of tumors!”). When a mutant is in a kaiju story, it exists at least partially to point out how humanity is screwing up.

Archetype 7: The Prehistoric Monster - often (but not necessarily) going hand in hand with the fire breathing reptile, the prehistoric monster is a kaiju whose kind lived millions of years before humanity evolved, in a time when giants ruled the earth. It is only a monster now because the world moved on while it didn’t - small creatures took over while it slumbered in some hidden location. This trope is becoming less common now that science has marched on and we treat the giant fauna of prehistory less like monsters and more like, y’know, actual animals, but it’s still a fun one to play with even if it has little basis in actual science.

Archetype 8: The Sea Monster - the ocean is full of weird animal life, and creatures are able to get much larger underwater than they can on land. As a result, giant sea monsters are a trope as old as story-telling itself, and are particularly prominent in kaiju fiction. Sea monster kaiju have a tendency to be particularly huge and abstract as kaiju go - one of the perks of hailing from a relatively alien environment.

Archetype 9: The Mythic Monster - While the earliest kaiju stories lean more sci-fi than fantasy, the genre quickly stretched to take elements from both. As a result, it is just as common to see kaiju based on real life myths as it is to see ones that are atomic mutants or space aliens. In fact, some of the bigger names in the kaiju genre have even alternated between having sci-fi and mythic origins, being atomic mutants in one tale and guardian monsters of ancient kingdoms in the next.

Archetype 10: The Defense Robot - Often (but not always) overlapping with the Mechanical Doppelganger, this enormous mecha is humanity’s ultimate weapon in the struggle to survive a world filled with kaiju. The actually effectiveness of the defense robot varies from story to story, but they often have greater offensive capabilities than flesh and blood kaiju while at the same time being a lot less durable. The Defense Robot rarely gets out of a battle unscathed - though it just as often comes back with a new remodeled look to fight another day (and also sell more toys).

Archetype 11: The Human Kaiju - most common in Humanity Saves the World from Kaiju stories, the human kaiju is, well, a human who becomes a kaiju. Sometimes it’s a temporary transformation, other times it’s permanent. Human kaiju are almost always the main characters of their given story, as the story potential of a human who can take the fight to the monsters is VAST.

Archetype 12: The Blob - our final archetype will be the blob, because sometimes you just want a big ol’ heap of goo in your story.

Conclusion

To reiterate, none of these things should be considered “requirements” for a kaiju story. Think of this as a set of guidelines rather than strict rules to follow. Many of the best kaiju stories have thought outside these archetypes, roles, and character questions, so you should by no means feel constricted to follow these ideas to the letter. However, if you want to start on your kaijuverse but don’t know where to begin, please consider this as a starting point. If you work with this approach, I think you’ll be on your way to making a fun cast of giant monsters in no time!

#TT Rambles #kaiju

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adreamygirl · 5 years

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Hans’ possible Redemption Arc PART 1: Deconstructing Hans' character

Hey, guys! So this is my first post analysis, meta, observation, whatever you wanna call it, so if it’s seems incomplete or lacks of depth please add your opinions as well! Also English is not my first language but argentine Spanish, papá, so don’t judge me plz. I don’t want to encounter with any anti or hater, and if you have the necessity to speak your mind anyways, do it but in a cordial way.

I’m going to divide this post in 3 parts I think, since is very long, and I have a lot to say for my favorite Jerk redhead Prince 😆

Ok, let’s start, shall we?

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1) Is he really a sociopath?

You know, this is something that upsets me quite a bit. The fact that you can just say “Oh well, he’s a sociopath so he’s manipulative and lacks of empathy” is something that annoys me a little, or at the very least, disappoints me. TBH, you don’t need to be a sociopath (a psychological and mental condition) to be manipulative, apathetic or cruel. I’m trying not to rationalize his actions in Frozen, because he still was wrong by harming two innocent women, but by saying that he’s a sociopath it makes his character a little more… shallow? Simpler? My point is, that a shitty toxic person can be anyone, and it simplifies the complexity that they brought on the table on the first place.

But the questions still remains, is he truly a sociopath?

Is tricky, since we know nothing except that his family is shit, and that he is a chameleon, a mirror to other people. By the end of the movie, and by the interviews that Jennifer Lee gave to us, it seems to me that he does have sociopathic traits, but he is not a sociopath per se. Hans can be a sociopath, as much as he could be not, if it’s given a proper character in-depth and backstory.

I think that by calling Hans a sociopath is an easy way to make the GA and the Frozen Fandom to disconnect with him since statistically we have normal-functioning brain, and because people with ASPD diagnose have a negative -though justified most of the time- stigma surrounding them.

2) Grey Morality: The line between good and bad, where we all fall.

“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.” ― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke.

As I said before, I like the idea of a morally questionable prince. A more grounded, realistic, game of throne-like character as Hans is. What I don’t like, is the seemingly automatic white to black view that we have for Hans, while at the same time, we have one of our protagonist letting almost die a whole kingdom, and her sister, to escape her duties and crippling fears –unintentionally, but still-. An empath or normal person can commit crime or bad things given in extremes situations of distress, anger, etc. And we see that with our own eyes in Elsa. She almost gets tempted to kill two men, you can see the fury in her eyes, in her face.

It is self defense, yes. But regardless of that, her people knew nothing about her powers and they just knew that she cursed them and ran away. No matter how morally wrong Hans was by trying to kill Elsa, or letting Anna die, he also helped her. He helped them both.

If she indeed killed those men here, I don’t think anyone whould’ve ever trusted her. Not even her own men, whom remember, they witnessed her actions and they were attacked too.

A normal person lies. A normal person manipulates. Heck, we even can choose to not feel empathy if it is inconvenient for ourselves. How many times did you pretend to feel empathy for someone just to make them feel comfortable? How many times did you see a homeless person asking for a money and you just walked away?

Again, I’m not trying to normalize these negative traits, but to be sincere about it. And is something that makes us very complex as human beings, we are true neutrals, and we can be good or bad, depending of the actions taken at certain moments, and how it impacts to others.

Yes, some people are irredeemable monsters, but I don’t think that’s Hans’ case. And so he does have redeemable qualities as well, even if it might be for personal gain, or perhaps some of his actions were genuine, we don’t know for sure.

When did we not see an ambiguous morality in Frozen? Or when did we not see ambiguous morality in some Disney characters, in general? Is hard to find, but we do certainly have our morally wrong characters redeemed. Here are a few:

- Abused both physically and psychologically Cinderella. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Imprisoned Belle. -Verbally violent towards his subjects and Belle. -Almost harms physically Belle. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Killed a bear out of vengeance. -Let motherless a bear cub, that after he would befriend. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Almost kill a bear out of vengeance too. On top of that, was his own brother (though he didn’t know). CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Tried to kill Simba and take his pride. -(invoked) Forced mating with Kiara. -Almost attacks Simba. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Tried to kill Simba. -Attacked the lionesses of his pride. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-He was an asshole to everyone. -He ordered a guard to throw an old man through a window (still lol). -He tried to let homeless a whole village for his selfish desires. -He betrayed Pacha’s trust. -He let Pacha on his own fate (probably to die). CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-Along with Syndrome, she plotted the death of many superheros, including Mr. Incredible. -Almost kill Mr. Incredible. -She almost kill a whole family, including the children. CURRENT STATE: Redeemed.

-He tried to kill Elsa, and let Anna die alone for personal gain. -Deceived Anna, Elsa and everyone else. -Plotted the death of Elsa at some point in the movie (unclear when exactly). -Degraded verbaly Anna. -He tried to break Elsa’s heart to make her give up her life. Redeemable Qualities: -He took care of Arendelle while Elsa and Anna were gone (though, it still can be interpreted as gaining popularity). -He went off to look out for Anna. -He ordered the Arendelle guards and the Merchant’s not to harm Elsa. -He calmed Elsa’s rage, avoiding her to kill. -He tried to reason with her.

Elsa is shown that suffers of guilt and insecurities, yet throughout the majority of the movie, she still rejects Anna and her responsibilities as Queen. Even to a point where she witnesses hurting Anna with her magic,

yet she just casts her away from her Ice Castle. Or after the misery that she caused -and she’s visibly hurt by that- she’s still thinking of running away, instead of trying to change things. Hans pleaded her to stop the winter and bring back summer, but she said that she couldn’t.

My goal here is not victim-blaming. I’m not blaming Elsa for her insecurities or self-defense actions. But her character at the end of the film, has a lazy realization, and for me, an unsatisfactory conclusion in terms of story-telling, because we never she her develop for herself, or working hard to balance her bad actions throughout the end of the movie, but anyway.

I’m not trying to rationalize morally questionable/wrong actions either. A good action doesn’t cancel the bad one, but my main interest is to analyze the human psyche, character growth and development.

3) Love and Fear: a constant subject in Frozen, and a constant subject for a “Prince”.

So cut through the heart, cold and clear Strike for love and strike for fear See the beauty, sharp and sheer Split the ice apart, and break the frozen heart.

—Disney’s Frozen “Heart”

DID HANS ACT ONLY OUT OF COLD AMBITION, OR HE WAS ALSO AFRAID?

For what we know from A Frozen Heart, interviews and extra information, is that Hans is abused so much by his brothers, that he just accepted their behavior and doesn’t fight back, is something normal for him. Nor he tries to improve his relationship with them. His relationship with his father is also painfully cold and toxic, and their dynamics are comparable to Zuko and Ozai, Tyrion and Tywin, or Theon and Balon. Hans seems to have an inferiority-superiority complex, and so, his pride is fragile and as well (just as previous Zuko, Theon and Tyrion).

But how? He’s very charming, and his body language never shows signals of insecurity (though that’s debatable). Or when he confesses his true intentions to Anna he has a sexy smug smile in his face, and his voice is soft and low, cruel and never trembling. How is that I believe that he was afraid or scared? Well, the movie itself states that he does have a terrible relationship with his brothers, the novelizations extends this to his father.

So by knowing this, a person copes with the pain and abuse in different ways: Elsa’s fear is hurting her loved ones, so she forced herself to an emotional -and literal- isolation towards them, specially with Anna. In Hans’ case, his fears are being trapped forever in his “home”, and being rejected by his father. So his way to acclimatizing himself in such negative environment, is to avoid his true feelings and morality. Avoiding his true identity, in essence. Thus, becoming into the Mirror Hans (more on that later), allowing him to become the very thing that he actively tried to avoid for years.

I think that here’s the point where he started to panic; where the fear of going back to his depressive life, and the taste of power that Anna gave him when she left him in charge, took him over completely, forcing himself to toss apart any bit of true morality and compassion that he had for Anna and Elsa. Where his mind started to realize that executing Elsa was the only way to bring things back to normal.

But is also the fact that Anna dissapeared, and Elsa was the only rightful heir to Arendelle, so his conflict was “What do I do? What’s next?” If Hans decided at the moment to execute her, and Anna was dissapeared, he wouldn’t get to be King of Arendelle, and he would back to his hell home. His conflict is both emotional and materialistic, and fear started to get under his skin too. Some might argue that he’s just reflecting Elsa’s emotions, which is valid, but keep in mind his goals, his backstory; try to read him beyond what the movie told you. Link the dots to picture his mind.

Some other might point out this scene.

[SIDENOTE: To me, it seems like another atempt to make us dislike him more. In my eyes, is like that the creators tried to manipulate us to hate him, but anyway don’t mind my defensiveness towards him LOL. He’s a terrible person Angie! Stop it, goddamit!]

It interpreted this part as Hans joy of finally seeing the chance of escaping his prisonic home, dehumanizing Elsa completly. WHICH IS BAD regardless. Is he a sadist? The book implies that he takes pleasure in feeling physical pain, but he does not take pleasure on harming others.

So to me, is a smile of almost getting to win a big bad in a videogame, or well... that’s the type of face when I’m about to eat a pizza so, IDK :v 🤷‍♀️

THE MACHIAVELLIAN KING VS THE MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCE: The Lion and the Fox.

One of the reasons that Hans didn’t fit his family -besides being the smaller and weaker member of them-, is that his morale and philosophy clashed with the imposing, hard power that his father values. Being flexible and benevolent to the common people is a sign of weakness for Hans’ father and brothers. The king sees himself and his other sons as strong and powerful as lions, and he compares Hans to a mouse because he doesn’t fight back, nor shares his value of hard power. The King’s philosophy is kinda like Darwinism with Machiavellian shades. So in one side, we have the cruel side of the Machiavellian philosophy, the one that values fear over love:

“From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

“One can say this in general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of profit...Love is a bond of obligation that these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them to do so; but fear holds them fast by a dread of punishment that never passes.”

But in Hans’ side, he believes (or puts in practice, at least) that appearances and benevolent acts are better way to influence people, to gain more popularity. This is the softer side of power, the more deceitful and diplomatic Machiavellian route:

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

“Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.”

So we see the two opposing sides of the Machiavellian philosophy, one relies on hard power, and the other in subtle power. In essence, Hans’ father rejects the soft power because of his imposing pride and ego. But both characters share the same Machiavellian influence in their beliefs, the only difference is that Hans takes no joy in being cruel and tyrannical, thus preferring the softer, more subtle side of power.

Yet at the end of the day, he embraces the cruelty, and fails to become the hero he expected to become, and by the time he realizes his mistakes and regains his morality, is too late.

What I’d like to see in Hans’ Redemption Arc, is a discussion between the characters (mainly Hans and Elsa) about this matter. An intellectual battle, and him realizing that his father was wrong. Not so in-your-face, because I can see people getting bored over political philosophy, but in a metaphorical way. And Hans coming in terms that deceitfulness and fear, aren’t the only way to gain trust, but love and true friendship as well.

He can be a fox, and a lion too.

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Part 2 Here

#disney #disney meta #frozen #frozen meta #frozen fandom #prince hans #hans #redeem hans #niccolo machiavelli #the prince #elsa #anna #disney villains #disney princes #redeemed villains

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justgotham · 6 years

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In my experience, Gotham is a polarizing TV series. Any superhero-themed program is sure to bring its critics, but Batman is a character near and dear to the American heart—as he is the last universally beloved billionaire—and it was certainly a risk going with a prepubescent Bruce Wayne. I’m a big fan of Gotham, and even I’ll admit that I’m not completely sold on its interpretation of the franchise’s main character. But that’s OK, because Gotham isn’t about Batman. It’s about the villains. And they’re almost all great. This was not an easy list to compile.

Gotham just feels like Batman, and it’s in large part thanks to the carefully crafted, over-the-top performances in some marquee roles, so without further ado, let’s get to the best Gotham villains.

I should also note that it would be impossible to do this properly without some spoilers. I’ll avoid any spoilers from the last few episodes of this season, but if you’re not caught up on this season of the show, some of this will definitely get you up to speed on where everything stands as of the Season Four finale.

15. Captain Nathaniel Barnes Played by: Michael Chiklis Michael Chiklis just looks like a cop, and that alone qualified him for the role of Jim Gordon’s boss. And his evolution from hardened lawman to judge, jury and executioner in the face of the future Commissioner Gordon’s heroics provided this political science major with a stark analogy for the tradeoff between idealism and pragmatism out in the real world. Every conflict of Barnes vs. Gordon centered around the way things should be versus the way things are, and the finale of Chiklis’ arc (for now, no one in this show is ever truly gone) raised good questions about where the line between the vigilante justice of Batman and The Executioner really stands.

14. Ra’s al Ghul Played by: Alexander Siddig The spiritual father of the proceedings carries a heavy burden. Not only must he justify the spiritual aspect of the rise of Batman (and the Joker), but Siddig also has to pull off whatever a 2,000+ year old man looks like. It’s a difficult ask, and he’s not had enough screen time for Ra’s al Ghul to seem like anything more than a narrator guide from a video game, but he’s given plenty of major moments, and he hasn’t come up short yet.

13. Butch Gilzean Played by: Drew Powell What Powell does with a character limited to being the main muscle on the show is the embodiment of the saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” He is one of the chief figures of strength on Gotham (and that was before he fell in a swamp filled with goop from Indian Hill), but his moments of vulnerability are what bring life to the character. His romance with a woman farther up on this list than he is reflects Butch’s limits, but perhaps new frontiers will be unlocked with his evolution into the famed Solomon Grundy from the comics.

12. Commissioner Gillian Loeb Played by: Peter Scolari Scolari brought a new face to this eternal foil of Batman and Jim Gordon, as the comics’ brusque blackmailer in the pocket of Carmine Falcone has been replaced with a shadowy figure in the pocket of Carmine Falcone. Scolari’s semi-detached performance is a fitting reflection of where our political reality currently resides, and he is very much a figure emblematic of the times.

11. Ivy Pepper Played by: Clare Foley, Maggie Geha and Peyton List Poison Ivy is still in development on the show—as evidenced by the three actors who’ve played her—but all three did well building a foundation for what should be a future supervillain the likes of which Gotham has never seen before. Both adult actors have provided the sex appeal intrinsic to the character’s strategy to exploit the stupid part of straight men’s brains, but it’s the child-in-an-adult’s-body aspect that makes this version of a hall-of-fame Batman character so compelling. After falling in dirty water (superhero origin stories would lead you to believe that the healthiest thing you can do is shower in uranium), Ivy Pepper’s accelerated womanhood might’ve been a missed opportunity for more comic relief, but her relationship with Selena is always engaging. Without it, neither of these characters would have the humanizing characteristics necessary to make their time on Gotham worthwhile.

10. Theo Galavan Played by: James Frain James Frain’s arc on the show was an original storyline, one that began with a plot to kill Bruce Wayne, then elevated him to Mayor, and culminated with him assuming the character Azrael from the comics. Frain’s smooth performance is underlined by an intense focus on a mission that all just feels Batman-y, even though this arc is not found in the comics.

9. Tabitha Galavan Played by: Jessica Lucas Theo was powerful, but his sister got the larger share of the badass genes in the family. Like her brother, Tabitha is an original creation of the show, and even though we’ve since lost Theo (granted, death is far from final in this universe), it’s difficult to envision Gotham without Tabitha at this point. Her romance with Butch is the only one on the show that’s convincing at all (a major new one is still TBD), and she was clearly placed in this universe to provide a positive role model for Catwoman—who did not make this list because she’s still stuck at the kids table with Bruce Wayne. Of all the major muscle on this show, Tabitha is the muscle-iest.

8. Hugo Strange Played by: BD Wong BD Wong has played so many doctors by now that part of me actually believes he is a doctor. Of all the doctors he’s played, my favorite by far is Strange. The main reason why no one on this show will ever die, Wong does a wonderful job of straddling the line between madman and genius—nailing the image of what Gotham’s mad scientist should look like.

7. Barbara Kean Played by: Erin Richards The NBA has a most-improved player of the year award, and Barbara Kean would have won Gotham’s MIP award the last two years. Initially, I lamented Richards’ on-screen demise as she was cast as the generic wet blanket to Jim Gordon’s hero (Kean was Gordon’s wife in the comics). Gotham almost lost me early on with their romance—as I just cannot take network TV’s portrayal of relationships seriously—but this new “take whatever she wants with a freaking glowing hand” version of Kean has unchained Richards, and her talents shine through in every scene. Gothamis right to structure a central narrative around her.

6. Mayor Aubrey James Played by: Richard Kind I’ll admit I’m biased on this one. I’m a politics writer here at Paste, and Kind’s performance as America’s bumbling mayor is a little too real to consider given the madness that America’s former mayor, Rudy Guiliani, is displaying every day on cable news. His portrayal of the character is the perfect summation of every empty-suit politician who ever lived, and it really resonates in a country overflowing with these vessels for the superrich. The mayor’s cowardice behind the scenes when contrasted to his stern public statements is just…*kisses fingers*

5. Victor Zsasz Played by: Anthony Carrigan The infamous hitman is a perfectly sardonic bit of comic relief, as Carrigan always finds the right kind of oomph behind his “Hey, boss, so when should I kill these guys?” salvos. A hyper-competent, semi-powerful character is a difficult needle to thread, as there must be a reason why Zsasz has yet to rise to the level of other A-list Batman villains, and it’s simply because Zsasz loves his job as an assassin-for-hire. It’s not about the power he could gain through his proclivity for mass murder, but the pure, utter nirvana that he derives from of every shootout.

4. The Penguin Played by: Robin Lord Taylor Oswald Cobblepot is not just an awesome name, but a fitting vessel for a character whose only real lasting public face is Danny de Vito’s snarling performance in Batman Returns. Robin Lord Taylor has brought a more refined air to the ringleader of Gotham’s underworld, and The Penguin serves as the yin to Jim Gordon’s yang. The universe of Batman is based on the premise that crime is a major industry in America—oftentimes involving our political leaders, as Mayor James demonstrates. Cobblepot likes to present himself a pragmatic choice in a chaotic world, and when the Gotham City Police Department finds itself with its back against the wall, some of the moral choices he presents are inescapably compelling. If crime is going to exist, why not try to bring some order to it? The GCPD can’t do that, but The Penguin can.

3. The Riddler Played by: Cory Michael Smith When arguing sports, I typically argue that numerical rankings should be eschewed for tiers. It’s difficult to compare a lot of similar folks, and drawing lines in between good, very good, and great is a far simpler task. I bring this up because this is where the top tier begins. Cory Michael Smith’s depiction of what I have always believed to be an underrated villain belongs in the Batman hall-of-fame—and frankly, it’s better than Jim Carrey’s semi-unhinged version (which I also enjoyed). It’s clear whether Smith is playing Edward Nygma or The Riddler simply from his posture and facial expression, which makes the Jekyll and Hyde-ian battle raging inside of him all the more engrossing. (Photo: Michael Lavine/FOX)

2. The Joker Played by: Cameron Monaghan Technically, we’re not allowed to call this character with a high-pitched laugh, a thirst for chaos and a bizarre love of Bruce Wayne (and now a purple jacket!) “The Joker,” as Monaghan revealed on Twitter. You know, copyrights, branding and all. TV stuff. Monaghan’s portrayal of The Joker would make fans of The Dark Knight proud. The choice to literally sew a new face on to Jerome evokes the same uncomfortable madness as Heath Ledger’s scars, and the amount of emotion that Monaghan is able to communicate through that mess with simply his face deserves some kind of award. “Jerome” is a delightful madman who brings an unbridled sense of joy to his criminality. I’m excited to watch this new, more serious iteration of this classic character, but I will desperately miss his home run performance as Gotham’s signature weirdo.

1. Fish Mooney Played by: Jada Pinkett Smith Stick this character in any gangster TV show or movie, and tweak the surrealism depending on context, and she’ll fit—that’s just how good Jada Pinkett Smith is. Fish Mooney did not originate in the comics, and the creators of Gotham should be universally commended for springing such a Gotham-y character to life out of the ether. Granted, Mooney likely wouldn’t be as engrossing if not for Smith’s electric performance. The woman completely owns every single scene she inhabits. Fish Mooney gives this show a good excuse to ignore the rules of death, because why would anyone want to take that out? Screw death and copyright law. Fish Mooney deserves to live on for eternity.

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breakingarrows · 2 years

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Another new year another time spent musing on the sort of topics that make the rounds on twitter seemingly every other month regarding criticism. What is its purpose? What makes something good, or worthwhile? What factors do we weigh more than others? Something I have homed in on this past month has been, “What is it that I seem to be drawn to?” If I look over the landscape of movies, games, books, media in general, what is it that I appear to be drawn to, and can I categorize wide swaths of that landscape into nice little boxes as we are so often drawn to do? Knowing your own taste can be very helpful in picking what to spend precious time with, and I just thought it would be fun to examine my own taste and see if there were any insights I could gain from listing out and boxing up the things I find appealing in media.

Firstly are those that I have a deep personal history and attachment to due to nostalgia. Things I watched, played, let’s just use consumed even though its a problematic phrase of experiencing media its also a good and understandable shorthand for a large variety of different types of media, when I was say, between the ages of consciousness and probably 2012 when I first started to take the idea of publishing my opinion and voice online for others to enjoy seriously. Some are very deeply rooted in my memory such as West Side Story, Hook, Calvin and Hobbes, Superman (1978), Batman (1989), Spyro The Dragon, Spider-Man (2000), Pokemon Gold, Jak 2, Spider-Man 2 (2004) and things further along into high school such as Infamous, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Grand Theft Auto IV, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 3. These are media that I have a fondness for regardless of their ultimate quality in my eyes or the barometer of the current culture, I love them for what they are and what they meant to me then and what they mean to me now. They are unchanging portals into a different time period of my own life that can tickle that part of the brain that forgets the pain of the past in favor of its simpler happiness. Some of these set the foundation for what would come in terms of my taste, and others would just be a special thing to me even as I recognized its failings more and more as I grew older.

When going online the most I hope for is to find something to make me laugh. Something stupid, something clever, something entirely weird, doesn’t matter so much as it evokes a chuckle. In media I tend to favor the black comedies of Fight Club, American Psycho, Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Favourite. I also really love slapstick and gag-a-minute whacko comedies such as Freaked, Police Story, The Naked Gun, Airplane, and Mars Attacks. Mel Brooks has a place in my heart based off of Spaceballs alone. Disco Elysium is one of the funniest video games I have played, mainly based on its internal dialogue your character has with various aspects of his personality.

In film critic circles there is a lot of talk about what cinema is. Scorses put it this way, “For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.” I think part of this for me is also attributed to surrendering oneself to that which is in front of you. Being absorbed by it, existing within that world that is on display whether on a screen or in your mind, and being utterly enthralled by it from start to finish to where you feel a bit empty at its close. These are the things that usually take on a form of fantasy, not just a fictional version of our world but of another one. Princess Mononoke, Star Wars, Final Fantasy VII, Hyper Light Drifter, Beetlejuice, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Rich worlds of adventure you can’t get here. Then there are those that come closer to our own world: Superman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Tampopo, Apocalypse Now, Inception, Neuromancer.

Some things I admire for both their world and characters but also for the technical skill in putting them together. These are the sorts of things that inspire me to attempt to make my own version of them in my own way, whether it be a video essay or written piece (this right here is very much more a personal blog than piece of professional writing I’d put on a portfolio). These are things that are airtight in their plotting and dialogue, in how each piece of it flows and is cogent with the next, something I never tire of no matter how many times I see it. Things like Batman Returns, The Terminator, Police Story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Shin Godzilla, F For Fake, Alien, Drive, Zodiac, Apocalypse Now, LA Confidential, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies, Portal, Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, American Tabloid, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. This technical skill can also be singled out as the one thing that makes a game “slap,” mainly how what we think of when we think of gameplay, games such as DOOM (2016), Metroid Prime, Batman Arkham Asylum, Final Fantasy Tactics, Half-Life 2, Apex Legends, Titanfall 2, and the latest Hitman trilogy, simple things where you see or know what must be done and simply execute the required actions to accomplish it.

Part of the cinema experience is large enough to merit its own separate box is The Vibes. The ethereal are things such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Twin Peaks, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Dreams, the meandering such as Under the Silver Lake, Ad Astra, The Neon Demon, Minecraft, or something that is the peak of a combination of visuals and soundscape like Blade Runner and 2049, Dead Space, Hyper Light Drifter, Transistor, Control, Sable.

I like things that make me sad, even if they put me off of ever watching them again. Despite having a depressing feeling they make me feel more whole. I see the value in sadness and the range of human emotions much like Deckard’s wife in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and their mood machine that she uses to put herself into a deeply depressive episode that I, thankfully very rarely, have fallen into. These are things such as Midngiht Cowboy, The Virgin Suicides, Trainspotting, Wages of Fear, Satantango, Paths of Glory, Halo Reach.

Lastly are the things that have ambition, and the things that have ideas and require further examination like a scientist, which are frequently two aspects shared by the same games, stuff like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Fallout; New Vegas, LA Noire, Mirror’s Edge, Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions/Resurrections, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Alan Wake. Having ambition doesn’t quite mean they will be the best regarded pieces of media and instead may have significant flaws but I still really appreciate that they really went there and tried something.

#writings #criticism #me #Video Game Criticism

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moonie-love · 7 years

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I received an email on Oct 7, 2017, asking, “Do you support a simple and fair tax plan?” from Trump Headquarters.

First off, I did not sign up for any email from the GOP, and so it concerns me that they have my email address. Probably shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered, but I don’t have to like it.

Second, I don’t trust them. So, let’s see what this survey is really about. They’re already off to a bad start for me because of the subject line. It is written to garner immediate support. People like simple and fair. Complicated and unfair are confusing, frustrating, and upsetting. So instead of a neutral subject, it is grooming the reader to support it. Blech.

“Official Tax Cuts: Supporter Survey”

That’s not biased at aaaaaaall. Sarcasm. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but labeling it “Supporter” seems to be setting up the “correct” response for the reader.

“Do you agree it’s time for tax cuts that benefit the middle-class and hardworking Americans rather than the wealthy and special interests?”

Welp, yeeeeeeeesss. ... I don’t trust you. Why are you asking this? It seems to me like another ploy to gain immediate support and start the reader in the habit of saying Strongly Agree. Especially since it’s being sent to my middle-class butt. Plus, wow that’s vague. How useful would any data gained from this be? I can’t imagine that very many people would disagree, right up until maybe they gave a percentage. After all tax cut could be 1% or 25%, and those will have very different reactions, but there’s no specific number or range here.

“Do you agree we need a simpler tax plan that, for a majority of Americans, can be filed on a ‘postcard’ rather than outsourcing and paying for a professional?”

Side-eyes. One, you want to eliminate an entire job category. Gotcha. Second, simpler is sooo tempting. People like simple. BUT. Would it work? What would we sacrifice to get that simpler plan? From my tax experiences, the complications are generally where we find the tax breaks. The question of “did you buy a house this year” adds another line, which means that it makes the process more complicated. But, correct me if I’m wrong, that is designed to give some relief to those that did buy a house. Get rid of the question, get rid of the benefit. That’s probably an oversimplification, but the question of trade-off still stands. What would be the cost of simplifying taxes? This survey doesn’t address that. It just wants the reader to check that Strongly Agree box.

“Do you agree we need to eliminate harmful, devastating taxes such as the Death Tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax?“

Holy bias, Batman! You just led the reader to the acceptable answer. Of course we should “eliminate harmful, devastating” things. What person would argue with those adjectives? Eliminate those three words, and you have a much better survey question on principle.

Moving on, Death Tax, isn’t that where someone dies and the closest relatives, aside from grieving, are now being taxed. Well that sounds horrid, but let’s go look up details. ... Why is estate tax showing up in all my search results? Click link. Ah. Same thing, different name. And we have bias again. “Death” tax sounds much, much worse. Alrighty, details. Yeah, it’s a tax on the transfer of wealth from the deceased to the living, but lookie here. It’s related to the gift tax, and I know from experience that the gift tax has a limit. If the gift is under it, no tax. I wonder if there’s something similar for the Death Tax...yep. What’s the limit? ... 5 million, rounding down. -_- So the only people paying this are already, or going to be, insanely wealthy, and my middle class butt probably won’t ever have to worry about it. So that means they want to get rid of a tax on the wealthy. Yippee. -_-

(Note, since this is a federal survey, that’s what I’m looking at. Some states have a lower limit on their estate tax, but that’s not the focus here.)

Alternative Minimum Tax, what’s that? ... Ow. That made my brain hurt. What I took away from it was that due to it not being adjusted over the years, it’s started to affect lower income households, but it seems to be designed to affect higher income and corporations. I can’t tell if it lets them pay less overall or if it’s an additional tax (brain hurts). So I can’t comment on that. However, it was mentioned that repealing this would be costly, in the hundreds of billions or into the trillions range of costly. That sounds like a bad idea.

(I googled and clicked wikipedia for these, and the AMT looked to be out of date [200X instead of 201X], but I just wanted a general idea of what it’s talking about.)

I find it interesting that, even though the survey opened with a question about the middle/lower classes, both taxes it just mentioned affect, or are designed to affect, the upper class. That seems fishy to me.

“Do you agree we need tax cuts that encourage American companies, jobs, and capital to remain in the US rather than overseas?”

Yeeesss...that sounds good, but what’s the catch? Who would be getting these cuts? Since it mentions companies and jobs, I’d assume they would. Again, not aimed at the middle class. Next, if the problem is that they’re going overseas, what is the reason? If taxes aren’t sending them away, then cutting them won’t necessarily address the problem. I don’t have enough experience or knowledge to comment further on this one.

“Do you agree we need tax cuts that support 3 percent growth in the next 10 years to supplement millions of new American jobs and higher family incomes?”

I am convinced that these people couldn’t write a sound survey to save their lives. Growth! More jobs! Higher incomes! Apply here! Again, this leads the reader to the answer. And again, I’m not convinced that tax cuts will accomplish the proposed goal. Again, again, who gets these cuts? It doesn’t say.

In conclusion, this is a badly written survey (for the purposes of gathering unbiased data at least, I’d bet it will do a splendid job of gathering biased data to support the conclusion the writer(s) wanted in the first place). It seems to address itself to the middle/lower classes, yet it’s topics seem to be tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Now, what on earth should I do with it??? There is an “Other, please specify” category. I could use that. But would it help? It’s better than being silent, so let’s do it.

Out of curiosity, anyone else get this survey email?

Edit: something I just noticed, the options are Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, No opinion, and Other. Skipped right over Strongly Disagree, didn’t it?

#long post #survey analysis #politics #us politics #us tax politics #tax politics #how not to write a survey #holy bias batman #moonie-love puts on their thinking cap #i'm gonna regret posting this aren't i

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unavenged-robin · 7 years

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Badly injured Dick or nightwing with Jason getting all mushy snd emotional thinking Dick's actually dying this time (because fake deaths don't count in Jason's book). Pretty please if that's okay.

Sorry this took so long but I loved the prompt the minute I saw it! :)

Read on AO3

It’s almost morning when he walks into the cave expecting a good, big, fat fight. Screams and accusations thrown at him with deadly intentions, and then fists and kicks and bo staffs and daggers to finish the job. He’s ready to take it too, honestly. Well, not the daggers maybe. But insults and a couple of fists? Yeah, he’ll give the kids that. He knows he deserves it.

But the cave is quieter than ever, only a distant beeping of machines and the lazy flapping of wings from a couple of insomniac bats to fill the silence, and as Jason carefully ventures towards the med bay it becomes pretty evident that there are no little birds hidden in the shadows trying to kill him. How weird.

The only thing that hits him the moment he sets a foot in the infirmary, is the strong smell of blood. It’s not a strange occurrence, and it’s definitely not an unfamiliar one, but his stomach turns anyway.

He finds Dick exactly where he expected him to be, strapped to the gurney in the middle of the room, wrapped in bloodstained bandages quite literally from head to toes. Five bullets, Tim said. One grazed him just above the right ear, one in the shoulder, two - the worst ones - in his chest, and one in his left leg. A big, blue, Nightwing-shaped bull’s eye, that’s what his brother looks like. And it’s Jason fault.

“Hey”, a tired voice says, and Jason shifts his gaze to look at Tim, currently sitting crossed-legged on the floor of the room at the feet of Dick’s bed, hands tinkering with a device Jason doesn’t recognize. He takes in the dark circles under his eyes, the messy hair, the rigid posture, and his brain immediately conjures a red neon sign flashing the words not good into his mind.

“So?”, he asks anyway.

Tim bites his bottom lip and shrugs before he answers.

“We did all we could, we just have to wait for Leslie.”

His voice is flat and just above a whisper, no detectable emotion behind it. Jason knows better. He knows pain, and he knows worries, and he knows his family. But pain and worry are one thing, and anger and betrayal are another and those emotions they usually do not hide.

“Look, Tim…”, he starts, clearing his throat, but his brother immediately shushes him with one hand, gesturing towards the bed Dick’s resting in with the other.

Confused, Jason turns around, and that’s when he notices Damian curled up into the chair next to Dick’s gurney, Tim’s cape wrapped around him. Asleep.

Well, at least that explains the silence and the lack of violence, Jason reasons. Damian is in no better shape than Tim, looking tense and angry even in his sleep, and granted, being Damian, this could be just the normal way the kid naps, but Jason has his doubts about it.

As already stated, he knows his family, he knows which people are important to them. And Dick’s been at war with Bruce for the first place in every Robins’ heart for a long time now. Winning, for the most part.

He wants to say I know it’s my fault your brother’s dying, and I’m sorry, and so much more. Instead he keeps his eyes on the sleeping boy and softly asks: “Shouldn’t he be in bed? I don’t remember that chair being particularly comfortable.”

Tim raises an eyebrow at him but has the good grace not to call him on his bullshit. He’s a good person like that.

“I need to be at WE in a couple of hours”, he explains in the same low voice. “And we don’t know when Bruce and Alfred are going to be back.”

And, of course, neither of them want to leave Dick alone. Jason sighs.

“I’ll stay.”

Tim tilts his head and looks at him.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You two catch a couple of hour of sleep.”

Tim wants to say something. Jason can see it in the way he bites the inside of his mouth, can feel him considering the pro and the con of the argument that will positively arise if he decides to make a comment on it.

“Just make Dick proud and get the kid to bed, Red”, Jason says, offering an easy way out for both of them.

“I can stay with you”, Tim offers back. “I don’t think I’ll sleep anyway.”

He could stay and they could talk and Tim could prove to Jason that he’s not angry, that he doesn’t blame him, that he’s welcomed and wanted and unblamed, and Jason really, really doesn’t want to hear any of that right now.

“Then just lay down on your bed and pretend to be dead. It’s a good exercise”, he snaps.

Tim considers him carefully, furrowed brow and attentive eyes. He’s weighing his options again, trying to decide whether it is worth to push or if it’s best to leave it alone. Sometimes he’s so similar to Bruce it irks Jason for no other good reason.

But unlike Bruce, Tim usually makes the good call in this kind of situations, and this time is no exception. So Jason watches him standing up with a sigh and approach the sleeping Robin, and finds himself not really that surprised to see him gently brush the kid’s hair from his forehead before settling his hand on the little shoulder to shake him.

“Damian? C’mon brat, let’s go to bed.”

Damian moans - a very childish, very sleepy and very cute moan - but gives no other indication that he’s awake or that he plans to wake up in the nearest future. Tim sighs and decides to play dirty.

“Damian? If you don’t get up I’ll carry you.”

That does the trick.

In a fast sequence the kid opens his eyes, yawns, stirs and hops off the chair while grumbling all the time. Jason waits for Damian to see him, bracing himself for the kid’s reaction - the first proper reaction of the night, he thinks, because when it comes down to fighting, Damian never disappoints.

But be it the drowsiness from the interrupted sleep, the fatigue of the long night, or the vivid concern for his favorite person’s well-being, the kid barely spares him a glance before focusing his entire attention back to Dick.

Damian moves closer to the edge of the bed, fingers outstretched towards but not quite touching his older brother’s hand, a silent confusion on whether he’s allowed or not to claim it for himself.

And yet, a hand for a hand they say, and Tim’s one is quick to find again its place on Damian’s shoulder. It lingers there for a moment, then moves to the back of the child’s head, rubbing softly the nape of his neck, and the gentleness of the gesture followed by the resounding lack of violent reactions feels like a punch right into Jason’s throat.

Tim says something, Damian answers, Jason puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket and doesn’t listen to it. He knows what it’s about, and he leaves it to Tim to convince the kid to do the smart thing. He’s ready to undergo a fight but he’s not going to provoke one. Not tonight. The voices start soft, then grow in harshness but not in volume. An entire fight made out of whispers, surely a novelty for both his younger brothers. But Tim never withdraws his hand, and Damian never steps away from the comfort it offers, so - again - Jason really knows better.

When they leave, walking side by side, Tim’s hand is back on Damian’s shoulder, and the kid is rubbing his eyes with his own.

Jason’s not used to associate his family with tenderness - or with anything that is not blood and sacrifice and a bittersweet homesickness, to be honest - but he knows he’s at fault there. There are good memories somewhere in his past, warm nights and simpler days. Years worth of brotherly resentment put aside the moment a soft touch was required, a hand always offered easily and unconditionally, no matter the past.

He takes the chair Damian’s just left and forces himself to look at Dick again. After that first and only glance at him, his eyes have been wandering on everyone and everywhere else, grateful to the distraction Tim and Damian provided. Now he has no more excuses.

Dick’s profile in the dim lights comes out more authoritative than Jason would’ve ever thought. All sharp angles and straight lines, no smile and no baby blue eyes to soften his brother’s features.

Not good, yeah. Bad. Bad enough for Bruce and Alfred to leave everything else and go fetch Leslie from the other side of the world. Bad, but hopefully just not the worst kind of bad, although it’s hard not to be fatalists when you start the day knowing that every night can be the last night. When there’ve been so many last nights already.

“I think I broke the kids, Dick”, Jason starts, leaning forward as if he were whispering a secret. “I mean, you broke the kids - or at least you being like this did - but since you are my fault I guess that for the associative property of guilt multiplication they’re my fault too. Three siblings out of four in one night must be some kind of record, don’t you think?”

Dick keeps what he thinks to himself, and Jason sinks back into his chair, nervous fingers tapping against his knees. He is suddenly very self-aware of having hands and not an idea on what to do with them.

“Look, I don’t want to be the moron who gets all monologue-y in front of a hospital bed - this is not even a hospital bed, by the way - but I…”, already am, his mind supplies. Jason shakes his head, looks up at the ceiling, rubbing his face with one hand. He feels stubbles under his fingertips and tries to remember when was the last time he took a shower. He lets his thoughts wander far away from the room for a moment or two, lulled by the soft beep of the machinery around Dick’s bed.

“It was my case”, he finally says, closing his eyes because for some reasons there are words that need to be spoken in darkness. “And I know I asked you to take a look between one thing and another, but for fuck’s sake, when did “take a look” become “get yourself trapped with a bunch of bad guys when you’re not in your costume” in your head? I mean, what the fuck Dick, you were- are supposed to be smart. You were the goddamn Batman.”

Silent consent from Dick. Maybe dismayed ascertainment that life is bullshit sometimes.

“If you die”, Jason whispers, eyes still closed. “It’s going to be my fault. They’re gonna say it isn’t, but we know better, don’t we?”, so you’re not gonna die, are you?, but that he doesn’t ask.

There’s the soft sound of a dipping mattress, and Jason freezes because he knows Dick’s not the source of it. Knows that if he opens his eyes there’s going to be a Robin sitting at the foot of the bed, and is not going to be Damian.

Bullshit. So much bullshit in his life.

“He’s not going to die”, he says, louder this time, and his voice fills the room with anger and fear. “He’s not going to die, so back the fuck off, kid.”

Just like Dick, Robin keeps his opinions on the matter to himself.

Blindly, almost unconsciously, Jason reaches out for Dick’s hand, the one Damian was too scared to take before. He holds it fiercely in his own, and the warmth reassures him more than a thousand words could have, but not as much as the eight that follow his outburst.

“Jay?”, Dick asks groggily, sounding like he’s not sure about what direction the real world is. “Who the hell are you talking with?”

#igodownwithmyshipz #jason todd #richard grayson #damian wayne #tim drake #red hood #nightwing #my fic #mushy jason is a beautiful prompt #i love mushy #shari writes

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honeylikewords · 7 years

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PT.1 Eddie is so enamored with his s/o that he probably wouldn't even notice he's in love until months after the fact. Kinda like how you don't notice you're hungry until your stomach starts growling. As such, he can't pin point the moment he fell in love; just the moment he realized he had, if that makes sense. And it's not even in a sense of, "Oh my god, I'm in love with you" so much as it is, "... Oh... So THAT'S what this is. ... Oh, wait--!!"

PT.2 There's a literal myriad of ways he could confess but the one that currently comes to mind is that you guys were on a date to yet another museum. You'd driven out to Chicago to see the art museum and you were holding his hand throughout the entire thing. It was when you came upon Fuseli's "Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1" that you attempt to crack a joke:

PT.3 "That moment when your friends send you to kill a spider but then you see how big that sucker is," you smirk, referring to the look of horror and disgust upon Macbeth's face as he regards the head at his feet. Jokes between the two of you are not unusual, even when in such an institute. And yet, there's something about this one joke of yours that makes Eddie's heart...flutter. Flutter differently than how it normally does in accordance to you. But he decides to pay it no mind...

After the museum date, he takes you to a comic book shop just down the street. He giddily begins plucking issue after volume of items on his wishlist, stopping only when he hears you gleefully go, "Holy crap! Eddie, look at this!!" When Eddie turns, he sees it. You're holding a DVD omnibus of the second season of Batman: The Animated Series, priced quite decently for what it was.

PT.5 You eagerly purchase it, saying that the two of you could watch it tonight at your hotel room. In your excitement, you don't think for a moment that the "it" Eddie first saw was your radiant smile, and not the DVD. Eddie isn't as talkative that evening. THAT was the first sign something was amiss. You ask him what's wrong but he insists nothing is wrong. "Just tired," he says, offering a smile.

PT.6 Too tired to go on about the paintings you saw that day? Too tired to give you the history on all the graphic novels he'd purchased today? Too tired to say more than seven fun facts about Batman: TAS? You weren't buying it. But no matter how much you asked, Eddie insisted nothing was wrong. He wasn't lying: He was only thinking. Thinking about why your joke today seemed so different. Why the smile you gave him so many times before suddenly felt brighter.

PT.7About your eyes, about how you'd look in the morning, about how you'd want him to get up early to grab you a donut from the continental breakfast so that you could sleep in, how you'd do the same thing if you were married and in your own hou-- Eddie's eyes widen, and not because of whatever new scheme Joker was planning. He glances at you. Your eyes are trained o the TV, it's glow flashing on your features. You were making that face you made whenever you were intrigued. That face he loved --

PT.8Eddie's heart ricocheted about his ribcage. "Gotta go pee," he mutters, getting up a little too quickly for someone who'd claimed to be tired. He uncharacteristically disregards your "hey!" from losing the body you'd been propped up against. In the bathroom, he leans over the sink, face burning beneath the droplets of water he'd splashed into his face.

PT9So. This was it: He loved you. Like, he loved you before but now, he LOVED you. How geeky you were, how you humored him, how everything just fit right. He wasn't scared; Eddie never knew fright. But he definitely wasn't out to march out there and -- *knock knock* "Eddie?" he hears you call from behind the door. "Is everything okay?"

PT10"Uh... Yeah," he responds, still not quite lying. Everything was okay. Everything was gonna be okay, he told himself as he dried his face. Flushing the toilet and washing his hands to throw you off, he then inhaled deeply before exhaling. Everything was gonna be just fine. He opened the door to see you standing there, worry inked into your features. "That was the most active I've seen you all evening," you say. "Yeah, well..." Eddie says, making his way back to the couch.

PT11"You can only be so active at a museum," he offers, a smile accompanying his reason. You give in, seeing no point in pushing it. "True," you admit, joining him on the couch. "And I can't say that a comic shop is a gym either..." The two of you are quiet for a moment. "God, we're geeks," you suddenly say. This causes Eddie to chuckle. "What? It's true!" you say. "Who drives out to Chicago just for the art and comics!?" "Art students." "We aren't art students, Eddie! We do this for FUN!!"

PT12"True..." Eddie admits. "But at least I'm a geek for you," he says. And damn, it sounded so much cooler in his head! "Yeah," you scoff. "You take six months out of the year to perfect your (Y/N) cosplay to go to (Y/N)-Con in the living room," you continue sarcastically. "Well, no..." Eddie begins. "But I do love learning things about you." He bites his lip, uncertain as whether or not he should go on. His heart kicks his brain out of the way, making him do exactly that.

PT13"I know how you like your tea; I know that you call babies 'baberts' and cry when one waves at you; I also know what songs you like on your playlist and which playlists signify what you're feeling. I know a lot of other things, too, and I love them all. But... Well, it's not enough for me, I guess." "... Eddie?" Is he breaking up with you!?

PT14"I'm a geek for you because...you're an endless trove of things to learn. You're interesting, funny, smart, kind, all around wonderful... Plus, you're a huge geek, too. I know that normally I would be waxing poetic but sometimes simpler words can be just as powerful so... So here it goes!" You blink frantically, trying to figure out what the heck this man is saying. "(Y/N)!" Eddie says, his regularly loud voice returning for the first time in hours.

PT15"(Y/N), I -- I --" Everything is gonna be fine. Everything is gonna be fine. Everything is gonna -- "I'm your biggest fan!!" ... Smooth, Edward. Mrs. Collins from AP English and Mr. Craig from college creative writing would be so proud. It is as he considers hiding his face in the pillows that Eddie feels your hands pressing against his cheeks, forcing him to look up at you. "Yeah..." you whisper

PT.16"I'm your biggest fan, too, you knucklehead." Batman: The Animated Series plays on, forgotten as your lips meet with a confirming kiss, followed by many, many more, passionate ones against your lips, cheeks, neck, and shoulders. It is about ten minutes later, as your back is pressed against the sofa cushions with Eddie hovering over you that your beloved suddenly notes, "You know, couches in hotels are often left uncleaned by the staff." "Dammit, Eddie! Read the mood!!" THE END

“so i’m not getting-” “you are not getting any tonight.” “god damn it.” “at least, not on this couch. that much i assure you of.”

can you just imagine his smile when he wakes up? she’s curled into his neck, hand on his chest, and he lays there for a while, playing with her hair and beaming brighter than the sun because... he loves her. he loves her, and she’s in his arms, and there’s nothing that could be better.

except, perhaps, to say it and hear it said back in return.

so while she’s sleeping, he moves his lips over her cheeks, her brow, her ears, her jaw, murmuring “i love you” softer than morning breezes. nearly silent. little kisses here and there that tickle her awake, bringing her into the waking world with a smile on her face.

“good morning, most adored darling of mine.” “and a good morning to you, most handsome one.”

and his heart is so full of joy that he can’t help but kiss her, firm and fast and true, to somehow convey how much love her feels for her. how much infinite, unnameable, unbelieveable love he feels.

#i LOVE YOU SO MUCH #fave #long post ///#mr. mccarthy #messages #Anonymous

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