#which is a WHOLE nother kettle of fish I KNOW

[vettesebas]

silverstone: hello fans!!! welcome welcome hi hi hi here have a covered autograph session so the guys won't get wet when it rains, oh and have a gigantic fan forum in a concert shell where you can see your faves and ask them questions too!!! ok have fun we love u bbs 😊🥰🤗

montreal: hi i know we haven't had a gp in three years so here's a single autograph session in the middle of a field with no crowd control that we only let you know the location of 2 hours beforehand at 8 in the morning so you have to get up at like 6 to even dream of getting to the track to have a chance at a wristband. oh whoops i know you've been waiting two hours in the rain but the drivers are stuck in traffic and we didn't think to have this in a sheltered spot even tho it rains in montreal all the fucking time so turns out it's canceled after all. well bye

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Writing: 4 AM Argh

One of the good reasons to get regular exercise is to try to wear yourself out enough that you sleep through the original witching hours; about 3 to 4 AM. If you went to bed before midnight (hopefully), this is when you wake up having had enough sleep to get your brain semi-working, but not enough to face the day.

Not that that ever deterred the plotbunnies.

I, for one, prefer to sleep through those hours when possible. When not... I keep notepaper and a pen by the bed, so I can scribble down the bare bones of whatever insanity the plotbunnies are tormenting me with this time. Because the frustrating reality is what plays out in your head can be pages upon pages of Shakespearean speech!

...And if you’re lucky you get three sentences on the paper. Sigh.

Those sentences can turn out to be useful, mind. I’ve found more than one plothole because the bunnies woke me up at an ungodly hour going “but but but-!!!”

Fixing said plotholes is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. It requires a good, clear head, which means getting enough sleep, which means you probably can’t do it the day after the plotbunny eruption. Very. Frustrating.

An illustration. I had some Bad Guys set up a trap in Colors. Our Heroes, being no dummies, see that it is a trap, but decide to spring it anyway, because lives are at stake.

Unlike a certain Jedi we know and love, though, they spring it with overwhelming force. And explosives. You know, like sane people. 

Plotbunnies at oh-dark-hundred: But why did the Bad Guys set up the trap this way?

Me: *Head. Desk. Repeat....*

Ahem. Thing was, I’d actually reasoned out more or less why they did it. But I hadn’t nailed down the fine details, and “what their plan was” hadn’t made it into the text.

...Now it’s in there. At least roughed in. I’ll probably want to go back later once I fill in a bunch of other gaps, and do any more needed fine-tuning.

Part of the bad guys’ plan (and why it went wrong) depends on the fact that “vampires” is a category that covers a lot of different supernatural creatures. And what one critter is vulnerable to may not affect a vampire from the next country over. The bad guys planned for that. What they did not plan for, what they likely didn’t even realize, is that in this setting, different kinds of vampires have different levels of humanity.

There’s a big difference between a supernatural predator that may find it useful to hunt where humans want it to, and a vampire that still, actively, considers himself part of a human community.

And that means a trap you set for a vampire may be sprung by something else entirely....

[bedlamsbard]

*low whistle* I am LOVING the spy vs spy intrigues of the WS!Steve AU so much, as well as watching all of Hydra underestimate him so badly

Aw, thank you!

This Steve has had a tough time of it; no one really knows (including him! which is terrifying! he tries not to think about it!) what Pierce and co. tried to do with him before they decided to go for "sex will probably work to control him." They need a Captain America who's a Captain America, not another Winter Soldier (though like it's not as though they wouldn't be happy to get another one of those, but it's not their first choice), so they couldn't be too rough on him. Steve's danger sense was pinging pretty much immediately, but the situation was so weird (woke up in the future!) and he was kept so disoriented that he couldn't be sure that this wasn't just how things were now until they got to the chopping fingers off in the lab stage.

(HYDRA as pretty sure Steve Rogers liked girls, which is why they went for Natasha -- which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, since Natasha was fresh out of the Red Room when the turnover happened -- but if they had decided he preferred boys (I mean, my Steve likes both equally, but it's not what anyone immediately assumes about Captain America) it would have been Brock Rumlow in that position. Which would have been a completely different disaster.)

Meanwhile Fury's got...most of the Avengers, I guess, at this point; he's got Tony and Clint and I think they had to essentially spirit Bruce off before HYDRA could grab him, which Bruce was not happy about. I'm not sure how Thor 1 went down in this timeline, though I think something different did happen because HYDRA would have handled Thor differently than SHIELD did. Since the divergence point is before IM2, Rhodey's not War Machine yet, but he's doing...something. Probably still technically the liaison between Stark Industries and the government, may or may not know that Tony is alive but does not trust Obadiah Stane.

[thea-dacity]

Dancer drama. Petty Olympics Ahead

No one in this story is guiltless, not even me. But here's why I haven't been posting any photos of Oniya Divine anymore.

I want to say that I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt because she is a newcomer to the dance scene and we all make mistakes in our first couple of years and I think she's trying to do it all on her own- which is the hard way to do anything.

But.

Gotdamn.

First time I saw her was at a big open air festival and she was going by Princess Oniya. We saw her dance in a kind of 'sun goddess' costume that to the average non-costumer looks like a beautiful, authentic costume; but because my girlfriend is a costumer and I'm a dancer- we knew it was the 'belly lady' skirt from Amazon. She did not call it 'bellydance.' She called it 'feminine expression of water.' Which is fine! This particular show was big on being a little kooky with their lineup so why not?

Her dance was beautiful. I would have called it contemporary jazz. She has an amazing stage presence. Like there's a lot to appreciate about her performances.

I asked for an email address so I could get the photos I took to her and where I could find her on socials in order to cross promote, which is how I found her gigsalad.

I got nosy and read a little bit of it and the blurb was like 'never rehearsed, never the same- this dance is an expression of the soul and you never know what you're going to get.' Which is not a great marketing tactic but I was like… ah- improv.

See her again at a few different shows, do my bit. By this time she's solidly going by Oniya Divine. Which I think suits her because there was something a little ecstatic about the way that she danced. But she's also calling herself a 'bellydancer' and I'm like… hold on now. What style is this, because it doesn't look like any of the styles that I grew up with. It still looks like contemporary jazz, but with a hip scarf. Okay? I mean people use the hip scarves for samba and cha cha so its not a big deal.

Then there was arts fest, where she hired me to take photos.

She missed… a lot of cues. Like… a lot of them. Like she finished dancing a good 30 seconds before the song was done. Which is the downside of improv- if you can't hear the music to dance to it you're out of luck. But my job is to make people look good and I do it well.

Our troupe has been trying to get into the arts fest for like ten years.

The glamour is starting to wear off a bit at this point. But she comes up to me and my girlfriend and she's very sweet. She's very nice. And my girlfriend will talk to anyone so she started asking her questions. Oniya says she keeps her dance life very separate from her non-dance life, and I'm a touch confused by this because coming from a family of dancers its like… how do you separate these things? Dance is my community. Dance is my support. Dance is where my friends are.

But to each their own. Girlfriend gleans that she's very Christian, so maybe its a case of her church disapproving of the dance- which was never a problem for us but we were Methodist so that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

Which brings us to September with 2023 Mystics and Marvels- which is a show that I go to every year because its where I started doing event photography and I use it as a guide to see how I've improved as a photographer.

I did not post any of the photos of Oniya from that show, but she was there.

So here's where it gets… really messy.

Every performer at this show gets a booth for free because the gig does not pay well. It is a two day event at a fairgrounds with a dirt floor that features a lot of psychics, mediums, general weirdos. I turn a blind eye to a lot of the stuff that happens at this one because it would be like complaining about cultural appropriation at the cultural appropriation convention.

But I think we went a bit too far this year.

So the acts of this show were this: our dance troupe, a group of fire spinners, a dancer who does fire and sword balancing (stylistically distinct from the other sword and fire acts), a drag troupe, and Oniya.

I am told of a conversation behind the scenes- Oniya asked the show runner (Kay) if she could be paid more for her act, and Kay said no. She quoted what Raven (bellydancer, sword performer) makes for her acts and Kay told her that Raven makes more because she does sword. Oniya said that she does sword, she should be paid more. Kay said "she's worth more." Which is not how I would have phrased that, but I think that Kay and Oniya were already fighting about something else at that time so I can't know what was going on there. But that also kind of put Raven in one hell of a situation. And oh my god you do not tell a black woman that a white woman is worth more.

What the fuck, Kay?

So Oniya doesn't show up to her first set. She doesn't make it until her second set in the evening. When she arrives, I ask her about it and she waves it off.

But also.

She's wearing her usual 'belly lady' outfit in red, but there is a face mask attachment to it that's… so like its straddling the line of whether its racist or not but its sheer, cheaply made, and has coins on it- definitely in that family of 'orientalism' and yes- I know. The cultural appropriation convention.

There's another thing about this that not many people know- its traditional in bellydance to not be in costume when you're not performing. We typically wear some kind of cover around the belly area because in some countries where these styles of dance originate, you can be arrested for walking around with a bare belly. So out of respect for the culture that we're taking inspiration from, we tie a veil around ourselves or we have a cover up or we change out of it completely. She did not do this. So she's walking around in costume.

Again. She has no community. She keeps things separate. She doesn't have anyone to tell her that she's being disrespectful. But none of us are close enough with her socially to be that voice in her life and she's already beyond pissed (you could tell it in her performance that she was still mad. Like... you can tell when a dancer is mad because they dance differently.)

She's also… enigmatically, putting on some kind of affected accent, something in the Transatlantic meets Queens English. Like this isn't right. This isn't you.

What's going on?

(Also missing a set as a performer is one of those things that you can get blacklisted for.)

So she does her set. We do ours. She's in the audience for ours but I don't think she recognizes me as a dancer. Later, she comes up to Raven and says:

"Oh, its so NICE of you to LET your students perform with you."

Which I don't think she meant it in the way that she said it, but boy did she say it. And Raven was like… "We don't LET them perform with us, we want them to perform with us- because performances are part of building your skills and we want to see our community grow."

And not being present for the conversation I can't say what her response is other than 'oh.'

Her booth is doing tarot readings. There's a million tarot readers here, so its not surprising. But you can tell its her first time doing it and she's struggling. Which we all have a first time doing something, but its a little frustrating to see a line form for a newbie when I'm not getting much traction at all. Which is 100% sour grapes on my part but I'm starting to get rather annoyed by situation because its dipping into my business. And I start thinking about words like 'pretty privilege.' And that's unfair, I know, its jealousy. But I'm being... honest today. That's how I felt.

So that was day 1.

Here's day 2.

I didn't perform on day 2 because it was just the main troupe that day. So I got to do my photo thing.

Our troupe gets on the stage. Its a dirt floor. Raven is doing a thing with a sword and she does a move where she dramatically stabs the earth with it and dances around it. Its very elegant, its very cool, Its full of emotion and performed flawlessly. I catch it on film. Oniya is in the audience.

Oniya visits my booth, finally recognizes who I am. She is wearing something that I'm calling Esmerelda Cosplay, which- I know… cultural appropriation at the cultural appropriation convention. She glows about how she didn't know I was so talented, that I painted and wrote and did multi-media as well as photography… still doesn't recognize me as a dancer. But I can't get over like… how now that the glamour has worn off a little its like… is this genuinely you or are you being supportive because Raven had that conversation about community?

Then its time for her set.

The song she chose for her opening number is the exact same song that another troupe member performed for earlier, which means that the troupe member has to scramble and find another song to perform for her second solo (which wasn't like... the biggest affront because a lot of bellydance music is... similar, but it is very annoying to have to improvise like that at the last minute)

And… she's wearing a sword on her head.

And… okay, trade secrets. Our balancing swords are NOT sharp. They can be sharpened, but for safety reasons they are not sharp. We create the illusion of them being sharp by never touching the edge. You can still, absolutely, injure yourself on one of our swords and that's why we're very careful about performing with them. It is, once again, a skill that you have to hone. There's showmanship involved. The other performer who does sword performs with sharpened swords and I do not know how she does it. I would lose a toe.

I don't know how to describe the sword that Oniya is wearing other than that from far away it looks… plastic. I thought that it was a headband with a sword glued to it like a gag, from the distance that I was seeing it in the wings. But then it wobbled and I was like… okay, its actually balancing- sure. Why does it look so fake?

It doesn't have an edge. It doesn't have a tang. The thing is thick, like an inch thick and there's a texture to it that makes it look like a matte plastic. And its short. A typical balancing sword is about 2 feet long, but this one is like maybe a foot and some change? Like it looks like a toy.

And she is having a hard time keeping it on her head. She's got a headband and she's done her hair up to act as a barrier to keep it from falling backwards, but it is wobbling like the dickens and I don't know if anyone else could tell, but I could tell that it was like her first time using it.

I found the listing for it later on amazon while looking for a better quality sword for myself (I promise I didn't go looking for this, it just showed up when I searched 'balancing sword bellydance' because I was trying to find a 3-pounder) and the fucker is 1.4 pounds. The heavier a balancing object is, the easier it will be to keep it balanced and our lightest sword is 3 pounds, our heavy sword for dips and spins is something like 5 pounds.

So like... a comparison:

This is Seka doing a balancing act with two 5 pound Moorish scimitars. She can do complicated multi-object balance tricks (I have seen her do 3 swords at once) because that 5 pound sword on her head is not going anywhere anytime soon. She was able to do dips and kneels without them falling.

Raven here is doing a 3-pound saber, which requires a touch more body control to balance, and its why she's not doing more than one at a time. A 3-pound sword is what you use when doing 'fast sword,' which is great for the air-qualities of the sword- like slashing and slicing.

Here's a better look at the 1.4 sword. She's doing some tricks like leg lifts and splits, but those particular moves are not balance-focus movements- they're flexibility movements. She can perform those in her sleep because its how you do jazz contemporary.

Also- I'm glad I took a closer look at this picture because if you were trying to give the illusion that your sword was real, why would you hold it LIKE THAT?

There's a point where she tries to sell the illusion of it being a real sword with this move.

Never. Ever. Touch. The. Edge. Ever.

The comically fake 'ouch' on her face is such a disrespect to the showmanship of balance acts. Like... if you knew it was a sword and that the sword was sharp, you would learn that before you got on stage, would you not? "Yes, I know I am dancing around with a sharp sword on my head, but I am just now learning during the performance that its a sword that is sharp."

That is what you sound like.

She puts the oh-so-very-sharp sword back onto her head and continues her set.

It is not staying. If your sword is not staying, its because its too light. She catches it before it flies off, but she does not have the control to keep it on.

-culminating in…

…wait for it…

Stabbing the earth with her sword.

It does not stay in the earth, it flops over.

Raven was in the audience.

And she saw this.

And she's fucking livid.

Performance culture education moment: its rude as fuck to steal another person's bit.

Like… drag performers will make statements about their acts that no one can perform a similar act (a character, a song, a movement) within a 50 mile radius. Dancers will copyright certain moves and names of those moves. And if you're a dancer, and if you've been dancing for awhile, you just kind of get to knowing when someone has a bit. Like there are cues in the music, its somewhat hard to explain. But you get to knowing it.

Not Oniya- Columbus' #1 Bellydancer, though. All that went over her head- just like the sword went right over her head.

And she looks at Raven like 'did I do good?'

And we are being VERY professional because we want to see dancers grow, we don't want to discourage creativity. But. Yikes.

Her set moves on and its "Through Heaven's Eyes" from Prince of Egypt. And this is a very Jewish song, so to see a Christian woman dressed as a traveler who previously wore an embarassingly racist Arab charicature costume- dancing to a very Jewish song from a Very Jewish film- it makes me feel a certain kind of way. And I have some… hesitation about telling a black woman that she's being racist.

(Like… yes, I'm planning on doing Korobushka when I have the stamina, but I am at least learning the schottische so that I have foundational knowledge.)

…and she misses a lot of her cues. I'm seeing… the flaws. I decide that I'm not going to post the photos of her because its embarassing. And it makes me angry to see them. I'll send the photos to her so she could have them but… I need to think it over and cool off.

We don't really interact after that. Because we're busy packing up, we're tired. The troupe that's present that day decide to go get dinner and discuss the events and what is the appropriate reaction to… uh… that. Raven is the most pissed, and she has every right to be pissed because holy shit- right in front of my salad. You do not steal someone's bit.

So we give her some space to be a little unprofessional and vent about it and once we're all calmed down and have eaten we decide that the best thing to do is assume the best of her and extend an olive branch.

Plans go into the works about how we can educate better and we talk about doing some workshops on ettiquette, how to dance cultural dances while being appreciative, not appropriative. And those things are probably forthcoming. But what was decided was that we were going to invite her to the haflah (this is a party where bellydancers can perform for fun, there is usually a charity aspect do it, and there's usually workshops.) Because we would love to have her come, we would love to see her become part of the community so we can all learn from each other.

We sent two invitations and she has not responded. And maybe she's busy or maybe it went to spam email, but its becoming somewhat clear that she doesn't… want to be part of the community. Like… she's a solo act. She only dances her numbers.

We don't interact with her for months. Kay no longer books her for her shows so we don't see her.

I post a video of us on facebook, performing at Gallery Hop. She follows my photographer page, and she 'likes' the videos.

But she's no longer Oniya Divine.

She's Oniya Zhe Geisha. And her headshot shows her wearing the red dot bindi on her forehead.

Mad curious what happened here, I go to her gigsalad and she lists herself as "Geisha Zhe Genie AKA Oniya" and she's categorizing herself as a 'burlesque dancer' while her blurb still says "Columbus's #1 Bellydancer" so its kind of like… are you sure you know what ANY of these words mean?

And I'm being very unprofessional about it because I'm kind of bitter about the situation because I feel like I've been supporting this person only to find out that she's just trying on cultures like hats.

So now I'm pissed, trying to figure the situation out. Facebook tells me she took one of those 6 week masterclasses on 'art of the courtesans' that are like… seduction tips and how to embrace your 'dark feminine' and looks like she got herself some certification and that's why she's calling herself 'geisha.'

You don't get to be Geisha after six weeks of repeating 'I am' statements. Its a culturally-weighted word that you have to enter an apprenticeship for and I cannot stress this enough: you live in OHIO.

And if you're listed as a burlesque act, and you show up and you're doing bellydance and not burlesque, then you are going to have a VERY pissed off client.

A 6 week masterclass in seduction courses does not give you the right to call yourself a 'geisha.' Wearing a coin belt and voguing does not give you the right to claim the word 'genie-' a cultural connotation that we've been trying to distance ourselves from for the past 50 years. The dot in the middle of the forehead represents your marriage. Did they teach that in your courtesan classes?

All the while, we're thinking… she teaches. Teaches WHAT? Teaches how to steal a bit? Teaches how to put a toy sword on your head? Teaches how to miss your cues? Teaches how to piss off your community?

Teaches… scarf? (There's a bit she does with a scarf that you can tell is trying to do what we do with veil, but its not the right material and so it doesn't look near the same.)

(Scarf on left, veil on right)

And I know I'm being real toxic about this but I didn't come to dance to get gigs, I came to dance to be part of a community that I was missing, and to have fun and maybe once in awhile I perform for small shows. But she is getting a LOT of gigs, to the point that she's becoming a face in the local performance industry and it is giving me some real opinions about 'pretty privilege.'

I still want to believe that she's just… she needs guidance. She needs community. She needs friends in dance. She needs someone to tell her that that's not right.

But we've tried reaching out. We've tried including her. But I don't think she wants that.

So I'm hesitant to be like… 'canceled.' Because I want there to be room for her to grow. I think she has talent and just needs control, but yikes. I don't know if I can be supportive of someone using the diversity of the city as her personal playset.

Anyways, that's the whole tea. This is on my secret blog because I don't want her on blast. But I needed to put this SOMEWHERE because otherwise my head will explode.

[goldkirk]

I have not volunteered a single fact about my past and my new therapist has not asked a single thing about my past and it’s weird but I’m interested to see if trying therapy THIS way helps.

We talk about my symptoms, we talk about my perspective and thoughts about symptoms and events, and that’s IT. I keep waiting for her to ask about something or ask why I think xyz way or whatever and she doesn’t, and I thought it’d be best to start therapy by giving the best summary I could to therapists but I keep running away from them eventually and so this time I was like “what if I just don’t” and we’re three sessions in and she just asks lots and lots of questions. Like, questions I can ANSWER, about daily life stuff or what I think about xyz. I knew you could do it like this, just going in to get help with symptoms and not actually talking about anything, but I didn’t think that meant ME

[kirisaki-daichi-scenarios]

Hi! I hope you're well! Can I ask Haizaki with a best friend (like Aomine and Momoi) but they're attracted to each other and one evening for some reason they start kissing and finally understand their true feelings?

It can be a scenario or a headcanon, whatever you're comfortable with!

I'm sorry if my English is not good enough but it's not my first language!

Thank you a lot! 🌸 😊

(presuming this is haizaki x fem!best friend; haizaki falling in love with a male best friend would be a whole ‘nother kettle of fish)

man this is the epitome of the “i hate when you’re playing around with other girls,,, bc i want to be the girl you’re playing around with,, except i don’t want to admit it” trope

honestly this friendship would have been rocky for a while, ever since puberty - mostly due to haizaki just not knowing how to behave around members of the opposite sex

but, over time, it would be the only friendship of haizaki’s that would remain constant, so the friend would be the one ‘consoling’ (it’s not really consoling if haizaki refuses to accept his own emotions) haizaki over time

so it’s not surprising that haizaki ends up developing feelings for them: and it might just be the first relationship haizaki gets into where there’s more emotions, on his part, than just lust

anyway, let us retract a few steps to the Evening

haizaki and you are hanging out at his place (cause no one’s ever there), maybe watching a film (aka you’re trying to watch, and haizaki’s just making inappropriate comments), maybe sharing takeout (which haizaki ordered beforehand - it’s mostly foods he likes, but maybe one which is your favourite, but who knows whether he ordered it on purpose or whether it was a lucky guess)

and then presumably y’all get in an argument or something (gotta have that heated tension), and that’s when you spill your emotions

and haizaki responds, in his usual sensitive and not at all one-track-minded way, by just slamming his lips on yours, and grinning smugly over how he always knew he was irresistible

the rest of the night is spent with a lot more of that - particularly the smug haizaki stuff - with the film long forgotten, and with you feeding haizaki the remnants of the takeout, and with haizaki sprawled across you because man’s touch-starved, and the more physical contact the better

when his mother comes home at around midnight, she’s greeted by the sight of the two of you asleep on the couch curled up together like you used to when you were children

it’s the first time since childhood (ironically, also with you) that haizaki’s slept with a girl without sleeping with a girl

[daisyachain]

I was recently rereading Blue Flag since the volumes are now all out, and I came across your posts when looking for more content. Idk if this alters your perception in any way, but Masumi's husband is implied to be a trans man that transitioned relatively recently in Japanese, apparently. There are some hints of that in English, like when he doesn't know how to introduce himself and when asks if he looks too weird and if "this" works for him. But in KAITO fashion, that is up to the reader to interpret what he meant. But apparently the hints are stronger in Japanese? Just from how the language works and stuff

yep, I'm aware!! IMO a trans Mitsuyuki reading is the only one that makes sense, considering his existence as a comparison/contrast/foil to Futaba! And especially given that her arc didn't necessarily go as far as some people expected, he's a nice flourish to the end of the story and goes some way to tie up the subplot concerning Futaba's relationship to queerness and gender. Good lad

I didn't necessarily want to bring it up in my other post since that's a whole nother kettle of fish that would extend the post even beyond its many paragraphs haha ;; I've heard a bit of discussion about how Mitsuyuki being trans might affect interpretations of Masumi's story, including the following:

"Mitsuyuki is a man regardless of AGAB and his trans identity doesn't change that Masumi is a lesbian-coded character married to a man, which is a harmful trope"

"there's a lot of historical overlap between the transmasc and wlw communities (see Radclyffe Hall, Leslie Feinberg) so it's possible that Masumi identifies/identified as a lesbian and is still happily married to a guy"

"Masumi is canonically attracted to Futaba, who could be read as a transmasculine person who didn't feel the need to explore their gender further (as a lot of people probably are/were), so it makes sense for her to end up with a trans man"

(my take is probably closer to #2, I read Masumi as a kinsey 4)

but like you say! it's v much implicit but not quite explicit in the text, so I didn't want to stick it in the pro or con column for how Masumi's arc and orientation were handled, since without that explicit confirmation (like we got for Taichi) a lot of readers have assumed/will assume that Masumi has married a cis guy. And argument #1 has a point, though arguments #2 and #3 provide the groundwork for why Mitsuyuki's transness would support the idea of a consistent Masumi, he's still a guy and she's still a character that a lot of readers clock as lesbian (preserving the issue of whether her ending was good, lesbophobic, or otherwise)

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[douxie-casperan]

I’ve been thinking a lot about timings, specifically Douxie in Arcadia in regards to just the Trollhunter’s series and generally what he was up to at the time. He was clearly in the area before we saw him in Season 3 though his day to day was shown more by comparison in 3Below and thus thanks to an initial ramble in the tags I decided to go ahead and figure things out that make most logical sense to me and could well be completely wrong. As you do.

Prior to the start of Trollhunters it is very unlikely there would have been too many problems as all factions were largely keeping to themselves and under the radar of the others. However after Kanjigar fell, Bular was a LOT more active in Arcadia because of hunting down Jim and in turn because of trying to stop the Killahead project Jim was most active within town it's self at weird hours. As a result this greatly increases the run in risk with Douxie’s own night time wanderings however regular they were for dealing with non-troll related beings that are likely being attracted by the native magic (Ley-line) of the place. The changelings could clear up the messes a certain troll left behind, sure, but somebody who knows enough about trolls would start putting two and two together that the dynamic had shifted somehow and not in a particularly good way.

The easiest way to solve this problem would Douxie happening to be out of the area at the time and quite handily in his first appearance Claire mentions a tidbit that could easily do just that: Ash Dispersal Pattern was the opening act for at least one Papa Skull concert (Highly likely the one she went to with Steve) and it'd make sense to be fronting for more than one and it would keep him safely out the area for a while. After Bular is killed, it is much easier to again hand wave Team Trollhunter and Douxie/the hedge-witches simply not running into one another when something was happening on the Surface given the locations various things tended to happen with a lot less environmental destruction compared to recent times.  

In the first episode of Season 3 we see the kids have been placing warded signs under the guise of supporting Ophelia's campaign to help ward off Gumm-Gumms and that’s a giant neon sign something is there you're trying to protect for anybody with any magical knowledge. It's unknown how long they have been doing this though given Claire and Jim are planting them in the neighbourhood it's likely they started branching out after experimenting with the original hiding spot for Trollmarket (If with a few hiccups given one troll managed to stumble over them anyway) pretty recently which gives ample time for the source to be spotted before the sudden increase.

It stands to reason that around this period is when Douxie would have likely picked up there was now a human teenager running around as the current Trollhunter which I have no doubt he did side eye a bit as uh what and that Trollmarket had an emergency exodus to the Surface even if not knowing the reasoning behind either. Word will be passed on but it's still troll politics at the end of the day, nothing to do with us but worth keeping tabs on.

A few days maximum prior too will be also when a new unknown witch in Arcadia was noticed (Something I touched on here) whom he could just have easily innocently passed in the street. With Zoe's help they would be able to slowly pin down a bit more information (Teenager, likely in High School so gotta check 'em all) until through using Battle of the Bands as a ruse find out that person is Claire. Jim’s attempts at dissuading her joining in (The so-called ”after school activities”) would have confirmed any suspicion that she was also part of Team Trollhunter too which would stand out given they tended to be more solitary in that job role. While he did use very archaic terms (To us), he was being exceedingly respectful of another unknown magic user as appearance is no judge for true age as he proves himself.

Douxie is not seen again until he's on waiter duty at Mr. Benoit's and it's likely thanks to Darci's presence they don't fudge any mention of Trollhunting duties and not give him any tip offs/confirmation that Toby is also involved. Claire's initial outburst would have been very ?? but if you've been in customer service long enough it's a bit on the worrying side sure but not an immediate red flag. That said given the complete change in demeanour afterwards with very wrong vibes being given off to boot that would have been a whole nother kettle of fish easily leading to stealth texted Zoe while back inside say a bit of a situation was developing with the new witch and how best to handle it. I actually had a rough mention of this scenario here.

The next time he would see them, in passing or otherwise, whatever the situation was has been resolved thanks to the help of Strickler meaning whatever plans they had to research more or help would have been rendered unneeded which is good or bad depending on how you look at it. This would also mean the other magic users of Arcadia remained completely in the dark that both Morgana is actively in play and that she was right there in front of Douxie without him even realising it.

~

Author note: Due to the weirdness of the in the UK aired version, I cannot accurately speculate on Douxie seeing 100% possessed Claire as there are two jump cuts. The first during the bathroom scene just after Morgana leaves the mirror then where it then suddenly jumps to showing a few seconds of "I feel like a whole new girl" then a second jump to everybody walking home. I think there was a "Silence, peasant" in there from gif sets I've seen but aside from that I genuinely have no idea! Tried to do my best with what I know for certain.

~

Then you get the Eternal Night and ho boy this is precisely why I’m writing about it in a one shot and have previously had a mention of the situation here as well. Given Douxie’s outburst at the start of Wizards it stands to reason that Merlin never contacted him and this poor guy in turn had absolutely no idea that he’d awoken nor was in Arcadia. This meant that he (And very likely Hex-Tech too) were completely caught out when it hit which would match up with his being completely without the bracelet leaving him to defend Mary and Darci with a freaking flying kick and belting a Gumm-Gumm with his guitar. Honestly it does show he's not defenceless without it but damn what an entrance. Plus the little slip up with calling the attacker twits, that wouldn’t have registered with the girls but had Claire or Toby still been there? Oh that’d have been very interesting as that is not a term you know without knowing outting him on the spot very much like how it did for us as viewers. Alas they were elsewhere, his secret remains intact.

It’s very possible during this entire mess he might have seen Morgana too, distantly perhaps but very there given her colour of magic and the golds are very distinctive, leading to one very awful blast from the past but right now your focus has to be on getting these kids and any other stragglers to safety because that is where you can help right now and not on the field. Head down, keep going and freak out about it later. Oh and whenever get a spare minute text Zoe to check both she and any of the Coven in the area currently are holding up okay and if they need backup.

At the very least none of them would have to pretend they don't know what trolls are anymore, handy given at least two plus the two changelings who stayed behind though the same hat syndrome between Strickler and Douxie would be an absolute goldmine about now if they hadn't manage to have a run in prior. I am a simple person, I find the concept hilarious.

Finally there is one other little issue needs resolving. After the arrival in flying Camelot, Douxie much like the others appears far more worried about seeing Jim inside a crystal and not about the fact he's no longer human. Steve? There’s every possibility he found out along with Eli at some point from Toby but in the wizard's case, he would never have been in that friend (Or even kinda) circle to get that bit of information nor does Merlin pull him aside to mention it either. That leads me to suspect he may have briefly glimpsed Jim during the battle and put two and two together much like Aja did that they are the same person. It’s highly unlikely he knew of the Eclipse armour existence given how secretive Merlin tends to be (Plus he was 19 at the time not to mention a bit of a disaster but we love him anyway) however there would be absolutely no mistakening that it is the Trollhunter in a new coat... and new bluer form. Follow that train of thought enough and it leads to the fact there is only one person alive that could have pulled that one off: The very same one who created the amulet in the first place.

Oops.

[cetaceans-pls]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Bane (DCU) Additional Tags: Reconciliation, Developing Relationship, Dom/Sub Undertones, Bruce Wayne Is Trying His Best, The rest of the family play a very small role, Slow Burn Summary:

Change is a hard thing for people to grasp, even when they’re billionaire vigilantes and reanimated pseudo-criminals.

Going from parent and child to zombie-son-left-unavenged and shitty-father-figure was rough, and trying to find even ground after Bruce and Jason had been so fundamentally changed by Jason’s death had been almost impossible.

But after a year of improved communication, rooftop tacos, and the foiling of a terrorist attack, they find a new normal for taking care of each other.

I have written over 30k words for this gd fandom since the day @setsailslash got me hooked and every day the mania just grows deeper.

Or,

That time I scrapped smut 300 words in because I thought if I did that how would you know they love the hell out of each other and haha here’s 10k of the concept of Third Thursdays instead: An Odyssey

Read on Tumblr:

Change is a hard thing for people to grasp, even when they’re billionaire vigilantes and reanimated pseudo-criminals.

Going from parent and child to zombie-son-left-unavenged and shitty-father-figure was rough, and trying to find even ground after they had both been so fundamentally changed by Jason’s death had been almost unovercomeable.

Acknowledging the differences is key, though. Where it had been obvious to Jason that Bruce’s problem was that he couldn’t accept that Jason’s different from before, it had taken him a lot longer to figure out that he was still holding Bruce to the standards he’d held when Batman was more like a god than a distressed man desperately doing his best.

In retrospect, he reckons that death’s actually an infectious disease. Jason got the blunt end of a crowbar and his rose-tinted glasses ripped right off his face, and Bruce came away only slightly more lightly with yet another heaping of trauma, and a chronic condition wherein every day he wishes he could kill the Joker while absolutely knowing that he won’t. It’s self-enforced suffering; the Bat is ruled not by absolutes but by ‘should’s and ‘shouldn’t’s, because ‘can’ and ‘can’t’s are too thin a line for him.

It’s been a fistful of years since Jason’s gone full-time on this Red Hood the crime lord thing, and Gotham’s calmer than she’s ever been; if he wants to have the streets crime-freeish, he just tells his underlings to work less.

Heading a criminal empire provides a much better work-life balance than being Robin, and don’t that hit like a bullet to the head?

(Hahaha.)

It’s been a fistful of years since he woke up, and Jason thinks it’s about time that he have a sit-down with Bruce, because they really fuckin’ need to talk about change and loss.

So he orchestrates a casual heist on a quiet night, and sits at the rooftop of the Natural History Museum with a hunk of meteorite that’s ever-so-lightly laced with Kryptonite, and waits.

It’s frigid as fuck for late April, but to be a Gothamite you sure do have to earn it, and ‘it’ sometimes means sleet down the back of your neck in the middle of the night while you’re trying to meet a man. The helmet’s keeping his head dry and muggy as always, but Lord god he might need to come up with an on-brand scarf design to protect the gap between nape and jacket if the weather keeps being Like This.

Jason’s halfway through troubleshooting the concept of a leather scarf when heavy boots land dramatically on the top of the building, the quiet hiss of a grapple line disengaging in the background.

That’s a thing, too. Bruce generally errs on the side of being Creepy and Looming and a shadow creature of eldritch horror to get people to fear the Batman, but he’s all big loud moves when he’s with Jason, all shout-y and hand gesture-y and frowny. The mystique of him in full-on Bat mode disappears when Bruce strides towards him briskly like an agitated goose coming in for an attack, while his cape just drags on the floor instead of obscuring his fundamental humanity.

Bruce had made more of an effort to keep up the persona back before, tried harder to seem significantly less mortal with the cowl on. Now he’s just all human all the time around him, and Jason sees that Bruce is always bleeding out, only sometimes literally.

“Hey, B,” he calls out, though his helmet probably glows like a beacon to where he’s sat on the water tank.

“Red Hood,” Bruce growls out, too professional to use real names, but too worked-up to not be angry. “Why are you stealing Kryptonite? If this is a plot against Superman, I have no choice but to-”

Ain’t that a joke and a half. “No choice but to do what, B? For the guy calling all the shots all the time, you’re talking some pretty amazing shit.”

At that Bruce doesn’t snap back, turning this way and that instead to do a sweep of the roof before he seems satisfied. “Hood, if this is a plea for attention-”

“Ding ding ding,” Jason says as he unlocks his helmet and takes it off, groaning a little when the light drizzle hits his overheated scalp. “Got half of it in one. I’m not pleading for your attention, B, but I am going to get it. We’re going to talk.”

It’s a new technique, just for today. Usually, any interaction between them turns into a clash; somebody lashes out and the other hits back, and fifteen minutes later either somebody’s bloody or they’ve stormed dramatically off the side of a building.

Today, Jason’s going to pull a Batman ( Thou shalt not steal (the tyres off the Batmobile), Thou shalt not kill (the Joker) ) and put down lines in the sand, make this a lawful argument instead of a raging one.

Getting pissed on by freezing April showers, Jason’s feeling unusually benevolent. It makes him want to laugh, a little, that Bruce has the time and the luxury to be angry with him on a rooftop right now because that’s what Jason wanted to do tonight.

It seems to work, though. Bruce is quiet for the longest time, before he comes closer, clearly wary. “So talk.”

“Much as though I love looking down on you, old man, calm yourself down and just come sit with me. You know as well as me that this place’s in a blindspot, so get up here already.”

Another line, another non-request. Jason expects that he’s going to have to wear Bruce down with this, but instead there’s the quiet boom! of the grapple going off, and in six and a half seconds flat, he’s got a seatmate.

Facing the same way, they have as good of a view as you can get of Gotham; the museum’s on a hill close to the bay, and from here you can make out the city lights and the barest outlines of buildings through the mist and rain. Even the looming hills that cocoon the city and contribute hugely to the awful weather and spectacular air pollution are visible, if you squint.

Absently, Jason notes that this is the longest they’ve gone in a while without either of them shouting, even if Bruce is radiating enough tension to heat up a house.

“So,” Jason starts them off, because he should expect no help from the dumbass next to him, “you know that I, like, died, right, B?”

The sharp intake of breath is like a reflex at this point; if Jason ever wants to get a punch in all he needs to do is look Bruce in the eye and remind him of Jason’s death and bam ! An opening right there.

That’s not the point tonight, though. Not quite.

He keeps going before Bruce can interrupt. “I know you know I did, B. I know you blame yourself for it, and you blame me for being angry you didn’t kill Joker, and then you go back to blaming yourself for not actually killing the fucker anyways. You’re all twisted up inside, and you probably always have been, and I guess the thing is I kinda only noticed that recently.”

So recently, he realised it mid-conversation. Wow.

“If you only wanted me to come so that you can berate me, Hood, I have better things to do,” Bruce says, terse and hideously impersonal.

Jesus, he’s bleeding out right now.

Jason nudges him in the side, but mostly just bruises his elbow on kevlar and leather. “It’s not about that. If I was berating you, I would be real fucking clear about it. I just need you to get through your thick skull, that the boy you took in and did your best to kinda take care of, he died and you mourned him and you’re still mourning him, and that’s fine .” It isn’t, not really, because Jason wants Bruce to mourn him , but that’s just a whole ‘nother kettle of fucking fish, really. “He died, and I came ‘round in his place, and we’re not the same people. Death really changes a man, you know, and I’m not your son anymore. I made my peace with that.” Sort of. -ish. Enough to function, enough to know they need this conversation.

He turns to look at Bruce, right at the eery white lenses. “The question is,” he says with a heaviness he doesn’t usually like to show, “have you?”

Lenses can’t blink, obviously, but Jason’s looked at and thought about this man long enough and often enough that he knows what’s going on even when Bruce’s face is obscured.

It’s a stare-off that Bruce somehow loses. He looks away, jaw still clenched tight. Jason can see the muscles twitching there, can almost hear the grinding. If he closes his eyes he can even imagine the little purple case and the clear night guard that Bruce has on the counter in his bathroom.

He wonders if the case is still covered in the stickers that first Dick, and then he himself had covered it in. He wonders if the tradition continued with the newer Robins, and if the guard and the case is still there, or if Bruce in his unwinding madness had just, god, laser-cut his teeth so that they wouldn’t touch or something.

Bruce’s answer is a long time coming, but it does come, eventually. “No,” Bruce tells him like it’s truth taken through torture. “No, I haven’t.”

(It is, truth taken through torture).

Any admission of weakness was well beyond anything Jason expected, and while his first inclination is to take that given inch and make it a vicious mile, to mock the absolute hell out of Bruce, he doesn’t.

Instead, he finds himself scooting over closer, close enough that their shoulders are touching. Bruce flinches, and Jason ignores the tell of discomfort.

“That’s all right,” Jason tells him, mostly meaning it. “He died for me too, you know. So at least this time, B, you got a mourning buddy.”

They sit in silence for a long, long time, until Batman’s communicator goes off and the spell’s broken. Bruce doesn’t say anything after the transmission’s fed right into his ear, just leaps off the water tank and lands on cat-quiet feet on the roof.

It’s as clear a sign as anything that their potential bonding’s come to an end, and Jason’s resigned to going back to his ratty apartment and rage-eating some cold pizza.

Instead of leaping right into action, though, Bruce turns and looks up at him. He holds up his hand, and it’s the stupid chunk of greenish rock. Jason rolls his eyes, but can’t help breaking into a grin. How a man so big and imposing got around to having such sticky fingers is pretty impressive.

“Thank you, Jason.”

It’s the first time tonight Bruce has actually called him by his name, and it’s such a wholesale fucking miracle that Jason is actually left speechless as Batman smirks, turns on his heel so that his cape snaps out dramatically, and disappears.

-

They meet up semi-often, after that. Jason sent out a company-wide memo; every third Thursday, everybody just stay the fuck at home. Anybody found breaking the order gets to have some personal one-on-one time with Jason and his favourite toy for the week, and about two months after that first meeting, Gotham’s taken to scheduling their outdoor celebrations and festivities to take advantage of the periodic significant decrease in shit like gun violence and kidnappings.

Jason’s got no complaints; it means that whatever rooftop they end up on, they get a view of lanterns and glossy food-trucks, loud music booming up to the rafters even though it’s the middle of the workweek. There’s a taquería-on-wheels that usually sets up shop on the corner of King and 18th, and Jason’s made it his mission in life to make a pilgrimage to it every haloed Thursday to get half a dozen pulled pork tacos. He does it partly because they literally are the best tacos he’s ever had in his life, and also partly because if it’s the matriarch María José at the cashier she will inevitably pinch his cheeks, call him handsome, and give him a glass of rice milk on the house so’s that he can grow some more.

Three months into this, whatever the hell this is, and a whole two tacos regularly go to Bruce, despite the fact that Bruce always comes by with food from whichever truck he buys out that night, a takeaway bag for them and the rest sent to the charitable organisation du jour .

Jason feels a weird sense of satisfaction in providing , though, so he always says he’ll bring home whatever Bruce’s brought to eat later, and instead has them share his tacos and drink and whatever corner store trash takes his fancy on the day. Trying to get Bruce to just go with the damned flow is a lot like trying to socialise the world’s most paranoid cat, and the first time that comparison occurred to him Jason had laughed to himself because he thought it was hilarious.

It came in a little later that cats that are paranoid and wary of people usually have a damn good reason for being so, and if that ain’t just the world’s most relatable shit….

The meeting after that realisation Jason had splurged on two horchatas as well as some churros, and when María José had asked if it was for a date, he had said of course not, ma’am, I’ve still got my eye on you , but in his head he thought Jesus, maybe .

By the fifth time they meet for what amounts to late-night snacks and aching chats, Jason notices and works very hard not to mention that Bruce has foregone the heavily-armoured suit that he usually wears on patrol, and is instead in the Batsuit Lite™, the version he would keep in his office for quick costume changes but couldn’t take a bullet half so well.

The actual Gotham Bat is literally lowering his guard around him, and Jason feels so goddamned all-powerful that he almost wants to send out another memo to say that all crime is all cancelled now, thanks, just so that dinner and drinks with a Bruce who is slowly but surely coming to terms with Jason being his own man can happen more often.

It never sat quite right with him to be provided for, he learns over the course of these dinners. Call it the result of a rough upbringing, call it a trick of the mind, but Jason’s never felt so settled in his skin as when Bruce is sat with him on a night that Jason finagled to be calm enough for the Bat to get time off, eating food that Jason bought for him, dressed as casually as the Bat can because Jason was there to guarantee his safety.

He never really knew what to do with the lavish life Bruce gave to him, before.

He’s beginning to think he has an idea about what he wants to give to Bruce, now.

-

There’s nothing unusually worldly about Jason’s porn preferences. It’s a secret he’ll take to his second grave, but he has a paid subscription to one of those tasteful for-women pornsites because some nights he and his right hand just want to watch people be kinda sweet to one another, you know? He’s surveyed the length and breadth of what the Internet can offer, doesn’t have any use for the ones where people aren’t having a good time, likes actual orgasms both behind and in front of the screen, and has a good grasp of the kinks that make him tick.

It’s not even sexual, this thing with Bruce. Sortof. It’s literally not sexual to sometimes go as backup with Bruce on cases so wretched they would make even Dick blanch and get queasy, or to share intel he got through nefarious means, or to avoid a kill shot when he can go around after and put the fear of the Red Hood into a perp and a bullet into their kneecap instead. It’s intimacy, yeah, to pick up a phone that rings at 4 o’clock in the morning whenever the usual cocktail of screaming horrors in Bruce’s head becomes literally unbearable and he just needs to hear that Jason’s alive still, tonight.

It’s a sign that he can be there to support Bruce, when he went with the man to his grave next to the Waynes, to just say hello and thank you and goodbye.

It’s not sexual, but close to a year into this, they’re both better off and better people. It started small and it grew big, and Jason just wants to give Bruce even more, make him take it, and more importantly, make him enjoy it.

They’re perched on some gargoyles for old times’ sake tonight, and far, far beneath their feet thousands of Gothamites are out on the streets. Jason’s lost track of the number of new celebrations that have cropped up, timed to meet the regular lull in crime, but tonight’s thing has lots of live bands, and lots of people dancing in the streets, swigging beer from plastic cups as they loosen their ties and kick off their heels and gently groove their way to train stations.

Loud block parties in the city centre on a Thursday are so on-brand for Gotham; it inconveniences absolutely everyone, but also if anyone tried to make them stop they would be mobbed. On any given day there’s no telling if Jason loves the people here or wants to beat them into the ground.

The same can be said about Bruce, as though there’s anything more through-and-through Gotham than the Bat and the man. The night’s been pretty chill, a little on the quiet side, but Jason thinks he’s about to change that. He’s going to draw another line between them tonight, but this one he wants Bruce to actually cross.

Plus, who would’ve known? Unwind the Bat enough and Bruce ends up being pretty decent company. He had a deep well of deeply entertaining bitchiness that was usually smothered under the facade of superheroism, he listened to hostage demands and a casual recap of the latest episode of Love Is Blind with the same amount of near-angry focus, and had a powerful implicit bias for anyone he cared about. Jason’s still in that category, somehow, and that was another group lesson; Jason’s a different man but actually, at the same time, maybe not.

God, identity politics are a riot when you throw adoption and death into the mix.

Nevertheless, Jason’s at the end of his tether. Getting laid’s not got the same kick to it, and sometimes mid-fuck he’s thinking about checking to see if tangerines are in season because if he scores a tempting enough bag of fruit the gauntlets come the fuck off to facilitate the peeling of the skin.

It’s the surest sign possible that this madness has sunk right down into his literal bones; Jason’s speaking from experience, and Bruce drives people all sorts of crazy even at the best of times, so he’s probably been screwed since that day on the water tank when Bruce said “Thank you, Jason”.

And now he’s really just going to say to his former-father-figure some version of not only do I seriously want to fuck you, I want to hold you by the neck to make you be good for me, and then I’ll praise you for just how damn good you can be . Lately it’s starting to feel like the highest calling he’s ever gotten, to make Bruce submit and then aggressively reward him for it.

He waits until they’ve worked their way to the bottom of the tray of nachos, after he’s handed a pack of wet wipes over so Bruce can fastidiously clean his gloves off of neon-orange cheese sauce. Not only is he now the kind of man to go around with wet wipes in his pocket, they’re even the fancy biodegradable ones because B had tutted at him the last time he suggested just tossing a regular one on some shitty roof somewhere.

They’ve probably got a maximum of ten minutes or so before Bruce will get up and go perch on a stoop somewhere he can keep an eye on crime and Gothamites having a genuinely good night out, and Jason knows that that isn’t time he can or wants to intrude on, so if he wants to confess, he’s going to need to do it soon.

“B, you know how we’ve been getting along well, lately?” Innocuous, a softball, good start, Jay.

Bruce tenses a little, but he’s not ramrod straight and his lenses are still down as he turns to look at Jason with a piercing look. “What’s this about?”

“You know how months and months ago, I said we needed to talk ‘bout me, and I was right? Well. I’m bringing it up because I think we need to talk about me again.”

Instantly Bruce is on red alert, feet curled under him till he’s wound up like a fight on spring-loaded legs, and he’s looking around with the night-vision lenses up. “What’s wrong, Red Hood?” he asks, ready to leap into the middle of whatever it is that’s got Jason all agitated.

That’s not what he was aiming for, having Bruce get his back up, even if it’s in a show of needless sweet overprotectiveness. Actively winging it at this point, Jason reaches over and holds the approximate nape of Bruce’s neck, even if all his hand meets is vacu-formed reinforced kevlar. It’s what Bruce used to do when he was trying to calm one of them down, and the theory is that the thought of it transmits even if it’s not skin to skin. “Calm down, B, it’s alright. I’m alright. I just want to lay out some things on the table, okay, and I need to know what you think about them.”

Bruce doesn’t smack his hand off, even though he’s clearly disgruntled as he settles down a little, loosening his fists. “When have you ever wanted my opinion on anything?” It comes off harsh, but there’s no point getting angry over a statement of fact, is there?

It’s a fair question, after all. “All the time, B,” Jason says, honest as he can manage. “Sometimes, sure, it’s so that I know exactly what not to do. But c’mon, give me some credit. This whole reconciliation thing is working because I needed you to know what goes on under the Red Hood, and along the way I figured, hey, why not try and understand you under all those layers of trauma and self-loathing and machismo too, you know?”

The sound Bruce makes sounds like a growl, but everything does with a modulator. Jason knows enough to know a snort of amusement when he hears one. “Yes, that is me, an extremely manly man. Spit it out already, Hood. What do you need me to hear?”

“Hey, c’mon, you’re telling me you didn’t used to make us run around in sequined shorts and pixie boots ‘cos you wanted to look scary and macho by comparison?”

The lenses disappear, because Bruce is so dramatic sometimes, and he wanted to properly convey his aghast. “Robin chose the entire outfit by himself. My initial designs were based on my suit, and he refused all of them. He didn’t even want full-length sequined pants. When you came along, I just went with his choices. It’s beyond the scope of my abilities to understand the fashion preferences of youths.” Bruce glares at him. “And you didn’t complain about it once.”

Jason rolls his eyes, and tries not to feel giddy about Bruce relaxing into his touch, how close together they’ve gotten as they talk absolute shit. “One, you should have known by then that his fashion choices literally only make sense to him. Two, I wasn’t gonna turn down free clothes. Three, on God, please tell me that you still have sparkly leggings kicking around in the Cave, because Nightwing’s really due a makeover.”

If they had glossy green beads that clattered loudly with movement, Jason could die happy for the first time.

“Stop getting distracted,” Bruce says mildly. “Nightwing is always welcome to my facilities if he wants to update his costume, and PennyOne dreams of one day being asked for input. Jaybird,” Bruce grabs hold of Jason’s arm, squeezes gently. “Do you need help?”

God, he can’t stop the slightly manic laughter from bursting right through him. “It’s more of a B thing than a Bat thing, okay? And you can tell me yes, and you can tell me no, and they’re both okay. Third Thursday Tacos are gonna keep happening, bimonthly visits home are gonna keep happening, but there’s this thing that, uh.” Fuck, words are hard. He should have just texted instead, but Jason can already see his unbearable desire to drop an eggplant into a DM to make light of a weird, heavy situation, so.

Just shut up and say it already. “There’s something that I want from and for you. You’re probably going to take it badly, which is fine, but I need you to take it seriously. Okay?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just nods, rubbing his thumb against Jason’s arm.

“I love you,” Jason just goes for it, starts with the most fundamental of truths. “I want to smash you to pieces sometimes but I also literally, actually love you, in a whole bunch of really, really confusing ways. The thing is that one of those ways has me wanting to take you to bed, B, make you submit so you can be good for me and I can be good to you. So what I’m asking is, do I have your permission to try and get you to where I want you to be, B?”

The initial reaction will probably go one of two ways; complete stillness as Bruce digests the information and tries to parse his way through it, or a burst of action, probably a dramatic escape into the dark like Dracula’s the maiden who’s feeling a bit shy.

What Jason gets is neither; what he gets is Bruce’s mouth moving before his brain has come fully online, defensive and reactionary. “Jason! You can’t be serious-”

He’s not having any of that. With the hand on the back of Bruce’s neck he shakes the man a little, breaking him off. “I am, B.” He takes a breath, takes a chance, presses their foreheads together, human(?) skin to lead-lined cowl. “You can say yes and you can say no, hell, you can even say fuck off, but you cannot tell me what I do and don’t want. Christ, if you learned anything about me this past year, please let it be that I’m not a child, and you don’t get to dictate shit to me.”

They stay locked in a staring contest for what felt like ages, even as the boisterous sounds of a brass section going absolutely ham for 9 PM on a Thursday floats up on drafts to them. When the break happens, it’s not with Bruce forcibly jerking away and screaming at him, as Jason mostly expected.

Bruce pulls away lightly, like he’s testing the hold Jason has on him, like he’s testing Jason.

Jason lets him go immediately, of fucking course. He doesn’t even register that Bruce might be looking for a reaction; barring crime or injury, he’s not going to keep anyone where they don't want to be. Hell, part of being an Outlaw was the absolute unwillingness to be held down.

Plus, Bruce’s consent was the most important thing here. Jason figures that between the trauma and the jumble of unhealthy coping mechanisms that make up the man who’s thrown himself at the cancer of Gotham for decades, Bruce probably doesn’t get to make decisions just out of easy, selfish desires very often.

That’s why lunches and dinners would continue no matter Bruce’s answer, that’s why Third Thursdays were going to keep being a thing. Jason doesn’t want this to be a noose around Bruce’s neck, an obligation, a duty he needs to step up to for Jason.

He lets go, because he wants Bruce to want him more than he wants Bruce to listen to him.

They’re at a standoff, but not really. Jason keeps his hands up and visible, leans out of Bruce’s space, doesn’t talk or plead or cajole, just sits on his spiky gargoyle and stares at Bruce.

(God, even the concept of giving Bruce the option to say no satisfies that odd little kink inside of him.)

“I’m going to go,” Bruce says at long last, getting to his feet with a bit of a wobble, like he’s drunk, or like he recently got propositioned by a former-son at the end of an ambiguous dinner date. “On patrol. I’m sure you have things to do, Red Hood.”

Ah, back to full-on codenames it is, huh. This has still gone about a thousand times better than Jason’s most feverish and optimistic projections, though, so he doesn’t take it to heart. He doesn’t get up, gives Bruce the high ground as he smiles lazily up at him. “Oh, you know me. Ain’t no party like a Red Hood party. You gonna be okay on patrol?”

Bruce nods, head jerking like a marionette handled by a very bad intern. “Take care of yourself,” he says, then pauses. Grits his teeth, takes a breath. And then, with barely-there hesitation, “I’ll see you next Third Thursday.”

It’s not phrased like a question, but it definitely is. Jason just salutes sloppily instead of needling Bruce further on the meaning behind the hesitation. “‘Course, old man. Whatever you want.” And just to hammer his point further, “Whatever you choose.”

He sees it land like a body blow, and sees Bruce recover from it twice as quick. A brusque nod, and Bruce disappears into the streets below, a slab of black blocking the citizens from view.

Now left without an audience, Jason topples onto his back, and lets out an explosive sigh.

So.

That wasn’t a no, was it?

He screams at the sky, and a flock of roosting pigeons take off in a startled hurry.

God fucking bless Third Thursdays, holy shit.

-

Their next couple of Third Thursdays are stilted, but Jason’s willing to put in the effort because while it absolutely sucks to keep going like his confession never happened, he knows how Bruce’s jumbled-up brain works. If they haven’t sat down to have a wholly shitty conversation on how they’re father-and-son, Jason’s just confused, it’s some sort of transference of affection, and he should be finding a nice young someone his own age, then it means that Bruce is still processing. Bruce, after all, prefers to have clear lines drawn between himself and others, for maximum ease in warding off distraction and danger.

If Bruce was completely disinterested, the talk would have come in hard and swift, and there probably would’ve been a lot of screaming. Instead Bruce keeps showing up to TT., if in slightly heavier armour than usual, and Jason can see that he’s more aware of Jason, in full-on observation mode even as he talks about his latest case or any breakthroughs in figuring out who in the hell keeps stealing the good coffee beans from the Watchtower.

It’s progress that’s likely only possible because of how hard they’ve both tried to be better to each other over the past year, and Jason’s pretty sure at this point that when the rejection comes, as long as B’s happy to keep accepting stuff from Jason, they’re going to be alright.

It’s a pretty nice dream.

Things feel rough and uncertain but good on the whole, until it all goes to shit when it’s another Third Thursday and Bruce doesn’t show up on the rooftop of the Opera House. Crime never sleeps, even if it tends to take a nap at Jason’s demand, but B’s conscientious enough to usually text if something came up and he couldn’t come. Once while abducted by Harley and Pam for their weird bi-annual bitchfest, hopped up on Ivy pollen that she swore was a fantastic muscle relaxant and giving Harley his fifteenth bi-annual lecture on how she was far, far too good for Joker, he had even sent a selfie of them all sprawled on a banquette in an abandoned building somewhere with a sad emoji in explanation.

Today, there’s nothing to mark his absence except for his actual absence. Jason sits on edge of the roof and ignores the prickle of unease on the back of his neck. B is a whole adult who’s been roaming these streets doing what he can for literal decades; yes, it’s entirely unlike him to leave someone hanging, yes, it’s the first time he’s gone missing without sending word, yes, something about this stinks, but he could just be running a little late.

God, it’s amazing how optimism can get you at the most inopportune times.

Jason finally cracks, gets his helmet back on to ring the Manor to check in just in case , when the emergency alert trill nearly bursts his eardrum. It’s ingrained into every single person who’s ever worked with the Bat; Jason remembers as a kid seeing Commissioner Gordon startle so hard he dropped coffee on himself when somebody’s phone had gone off with a vaguely similar pitch.

It incites a Pavlovian response; Jason’s already up and running to gain altitude for a better sightline before the alert winds down, and he’s pulling himself up by an angel’s wings by the time Alfred’s voice comes on.

“Good evening, all,” Alfred says, polite even as he sounds incredibly strained. “We have a mass casualty situation. Bane appears to have taken advantage of Third Thursdays, and is in the process of blocking off Cathedral Square; we have reason to believe he intends to set all the revelers there on fire, so I would appreciate any support in evacuating people. Batman has gone after Bane himself, and I have lost contact.” He then rattles off the roads that have been blocked and how best to maneuver around them to get people out, but Jason’s already off and running.

Red alerts aren’t a fun time to be a crimefighter, but there’s a sense of solidarity in knowing that he’s not the only one leaping across rooftops to get to it. For all that Bruce tends to irritatingly emphasise how much he prefers working alone, the network he’s inadvertently set up of people who both love him and would go too far for him is a solid one. He can almost imagine the convergence; Dick coming up from the south, Damian probably rushing in from the Manor to the north, Tim legging it from the east because it stylistically fits with Jason bolting towards the square from the west.

That’s not even counting the girls. Christ, nights like these you couldn’t look up without seeing a terrifying phantasm flying across the sky.

Jason comes up to the main thoroughfare leading to the square first; it’s barely a ten-minute parkour sprint from the Opera House, after all, and he’s still falling when he shoots down a handful of Bane’s goons who have set up a barricade blocking people from leaving.

His timing’s gorgeous; they haven’t lit anyone on fire yet, and while a lot of the civilians are screaming at him and the downed men, that core of Gotham steel shines on through as women in neat dresses and men in business slacks slosh through a bit of blood to help him tear down concrete blocks to make enough space for them to wriggle through. Some sort of concert had been planned for Cathedral Square, and there’s enough panicked people that a few dozen climbing out quietly wouldn’t rouse much attention.

Urgh, a massive shiny red full-face helmet is pretty eye-catching for this, but with this many people around Jason can’t exactly take it off and hope to blend into the crowd as he goes hunting. He snags an absolutely loathsome fedora off the top of a loathsome-looking man, and rams it onto his helmet. Jason hopes no one will be around to take a picture of this indignity, but as long as he slouches, he’s not an obvious target from afar, and this is as good as it’s going to get for now.

A wave of whispers emanate from his makeshift exit, everyone letting the person next to them know before they disappear away, and it’s deeply inefficient as a manner of escape but Jason’s got to hold back from large-scale destruction until he can figure out how Bane planned to set all these people on fire. No point saving everyone close to this exit and having everyone else die because he tripped a trigger.

Look at him, he’s so goddamn tactical.

As he stoops and slouches and slinks in the shadows to get to the next inlet that he can crack open enough to let people escape, people seem to understand what he’s there for, and some even seem eager to contribute to his disguise.

He drew the line at a young woman whispering to him that she had some foundation in her bag and it could stick to anything, honest to God, do you want me to make your disguise more flesh-toned, Mister Red Hood?

He did accept her very pretty scarf that is much nicer than a douchey fedora. Some incomprehensible out-of-towner handed him earmuffs, even though the last time it snowed in Gotham was last week and the locals were already starting to move into summerwear, but it’s the thought that counts. He takes out three more goons close to a tiny side-alley that would lead out to a main street, has someone donate a wig right off of their heads, and when he takes out the mini-squadron protecting the back of the Gotham Central Library and its massive double-doors, he gets an oversized wooly cardigan and what looks like a faux-fur stole draped over him without his permission.

Jason can’t look at himself, of course, but he suspects at this point he probably wouldn’t be mistaken for the Red Hood until somebody was literally maybe four inches away from him. Through it all, though, he still doesn’t see where Bane’s secreted the equipment for mass murder. Hell, even the barricades weren’t difficult to disassemble enough to let people sneak out. He can imagine batty figures high up on the roofs of all the august buildings that butt up to the square running life-saving errands, but Alfred’s regular updates make it clear that everyone’s drawing a blank as to where the weapons actually are. Priority is on getting everyone out without causing enough of a stir that the bulk of Bane’s men up by the stage notice something and start opening fire, but everything feels a couple of inches off centre, and Jason can’t help the feeling of wrongness.

“Hey, PennyOne. What’s the update on B?”

Here Alfred’s smooth delivery of information stutters a little. “Still no contact from him, I’m afraid. Does anyone have eyes on Batman?”

Nobody does, and nobody can see Bane either. Given that Bane on his best day is a spine-snapping motherfucker, Jason’s not exactly happy with current events. Holding the wig tightly to his head, Jason abandons the plan of liberating the next passageway along, and heads straight towards the stage. Staging a large-scale attack is the best way to get Batman to come after you quickly, and if you’re dramatic enough, he’ll get there before he waits for back-up, because not even years of suffering have taught Bruce that he’s not solely responsible for every miserable thing that happens in Gotham.

Do it on a Third Thursday, and if you’ve been watching closely you might know that the Bat’ll come for you with less kit than usual. You might not catch him unawares because a soft British voice is always in his head, but you might find him significantly more vulnerable than literally any other night.

Jason tries not to scream, because he’s already dressed like a walking sartorial nightmare who’s a solid 5’11 even hunched over, and he doesn’t need to contribute further to anybody’s trauma. That’s one of the things that B always used to harp on; don’t get into a routine, don’t become predictable, never allow yourself to get comfortable while on duty.

All Jason had wanted was to make things a little easier, a little more pleasant for Bruce, and this is how karma decides to show him up. After all these years, how is he still surprised that fate is a whole-ass bitch? God literal damn.

All wrapped up in 8 different people’s outfits and a strong sense of self-loathing, Jason draws to a halt close to the stagefront, and surveys the henchmen there. A litle over a dozen or so, armed to the teeth because Bane has an aesthetic that he keeps close to, and all wearing that bored-and-disengaged haze in their eyes. It’s not a definite thing, but it sure would imply that Bane’s not asked them to do anything more intense than appear menacing and keep people in the square. That’s another strike against the big-time arson theory, but Jason takes note of how more than half of them are clustered around the backstage tent. Something important is clearly being kept there, and Bane’s got a less clear cut MO than most of the rogues’ gallery. Jason’s first thought is that it must be munitions, because Bane sure does love him some straight-up physical violence, but when Alfred’s voice starts to stutter and fade in and out, things connect together like the final jigsaw piece finally saw the light.

There’s a signal jammer, it’s got to be some sort of powerful signal jammer, and if Alfred can’t trace Bruce’s location or get in touch with him, then Bruce must be close by. Jason surreptitiously looks around for a Bat or a Bird that could double up with him to storm the tents, but maybe they’re too civic-minded to abandon the cause of evacuating civilians, because Jason’s reading the pattern and whirls of people movement and can’t spot anyone sneaking towards the front.

It makes sense to get people out of the way first before lunging into the heart of a battle: less collateral, it’ll just be bad men versus bat men (and women). Jason’s really only here because he believes in the average Gothamite’s ability to worm their way out of trouble given a little helping hand, and something about Bruce’s absence sits so badly with him that it’s unbearable.

The thought, when it finally hits, smashes into him like a bat to the back of the head. No clear signs of weapons to be used on a huge number of people, elite guards that don’t look too interested in guarding, no alarm being raised that dozens of henchmen have been felled at various checkpoints, comms jammer.

Jesus. Bane wants them to wear themselves out spiriting away innocents, be unable to communicate and coordinate, and have all of them herd themselves closer to whatever the hell else he’s got stored in the white tent. Minimum civilian casualty, but it’s a surefire way to take a sizable chunk of the vigilante community out in one night.

In a high panic, it’s not a terrible plan; all of their training always, always puts priority on saving the vulnerable, and with all hands on deck a full-frontal assault would favour the team that has more experience working together in creative and terrifying ways. It’s also enormously flawed, because while Dick might be the type to vault off a cornice and tuck-and-roll into a perfect landing on stage to demand a fair fight, there are also enough sufficiently suspicious bastards in their little pack that someone will inexplicably go off on their own and inadvertently execute a pincer attack.

No, if you want everyone to come together quickly and mindlessly, you’d need more motivation than a dozen gunmen. Hostages are a good idea, but even Red Robin can disarm someone with breathtaking accuracy given one batarang and about a hundred paces, so that’s also not guaranteed.

No, no, if you really want all of them to converge at the speed of instinct, you take a hostage, and the hostage just has to be B-

Oh, man. Oh man, oh man, he’s going to need to put down Bane, he swears he will, after this.

Jason’s first thought is to do away with the subterfuge and just go in all guns a-blazing, tear the tent to pieces to find Bruce and whatever Bane’s plan is all in one go. Jason’s read on the situation isn’t 100% guaranteed to be right, but the pieces all fit, and among the things you pick up during an apprenticeship with the world’s greatest detective is the skill to believe your hindbrain when it makes connections too smart for the rest of you.

He could take out 4 men easily from where he is; he probably wouldn’t be found out until he breaks cover to take out the other two patrolling on stage, and then it’ll be open-season with the rest of the men hovering by the white tent. He could take them, Jason’s pretty sure. He wants to take them, is the thing.

A thought is the only thing that stays his hand; it’s the memory of Bruce’s gentle grip on his arm, the night of his confession. It’s the serious face and the serious voice asking him, “Do you need help?”

Right now, Jason wants to say no, he doesn’t, he’s more than able to tackle this alone. It’s even the Batman-y thing to do, to take everything on by himself, but….

Ah, fuck. It’s the Batman thing to do, but Jason’s going to end up being a hypocritical son of a bitch if he’s angling to get Bruce to open up and accept that he should listen to other people sometimes when he refuses to do it himself. Jason feels a headache coming on; Bruce had taken on a heavy, weird confession about feelings and desires that even Jason hasn’t figured out the extent of.

Jason can at least take his head out of his ass, back down from a one-man Rambo show, and do this right.

It takes an effort of will to pivot on his heel and sneak back further afield until he’s free of the jammer and can communicate what he’s found out and what he’s inferred; Jason spends the entirety of their planning phase feeling a little irritated that Bruce has somehow made Jason actually cooperative and team-spirited without ever saying a word about it.

The bastard better appreciate the lengths Jason is willing to go to just to keep him safe, fuck.

-

It comes to a head with a flaccid little whump . Under the combined forces of the assembled and very angry Bat family, Bane’s operation is taken out at the knees. Tim and Babs jam the jammer, Cass and Damian handle the armed guards near the front, Steph and Dick demolish the biggest barricades to let the remaining crowd of thousands leg it to safety, and Jason bumrushes the tent because they’d all come to a quick consensus that if Bane’s pulled any sort of back-breaking bullshit, the definition of ‘unnecessary force’ is going to get a bit hazy for everyone involved so long as 1. Bruce never finds out, and 2. Jason tries to stop before actual death. The rest of the group will be along as soon as they’ve done their part, but Jason gets to lead the charge.

He rolls in with most of his costume still intact, because Tim and Dick have already taken a combined 300 pictures of him in his full Gotham Look and he has become unable to feel shame. Instead of a bitter fight to the almost-death, though, he finds Bruce lying on an operating table, and Bane crumpled in a heap on the floor, desiccated and unconscious.

“Uhm.” This isn’t exactly what he’d signed up for.

The sound of his confusion rouses a response from Bruce, a slight clench and unclenching of his fists. Jason’s by his side in seconds, feet slipping and sliding a little in the leaking Venom. He nudges Bane a little further away from the metal table with his foot, and feels proud of himself for not breaking a nose under his heel instead.

Priorities, priorities. He looks down at Bruce’s prone form, and breathes a little easier to see the cowl still intact. Bruce’s eyes are open, but they’re hazy and unfocused. Jason checks his pulse, and ignores the little signs of numerous brutalities that Bruce has endured just from tonight in the Batsuit Lite ™, fuck, it isn’t even the Batsuit Mild ™ that has been the go-to armour the past few Third Thursdays.

“You with us, big guy? The rest of the gang’s going to roll in in a sec,” Jason tells B with forced levity, even as his hands start assessing the damage and addressing the myriad tiny cuts and bruises before he moves on to the more serious hurts.

Bruce blinks like it takes all his energy, and then smiles. “Glad. Came with….. gang,” he forces out through a bruised throat.

“All your harping about togetherness finally got through to me, I guess.” Jason pulls off his scarf and breaks a donated pair of sunglasses to fashion mini-splints for two fingers on Bruce’s left hand. He can’t do anything about the wrist right now except for basic compression, and he is not going to think about how the actual patrol suit could have prevented a lot of this damage. “Mind telling me how you took down Mister Big Bad over here? To be honest, I was looking forward to mounting a hell of a cool rescue.”

“Cool enough.” The noise Bruce makes is half a laugh and half a wheeze from injured ribs. “Bane wanted to lure…. All of you. Kill in front of me.” A deep, shaky breath. “Nicked pipe with batarang….. Mid-gloat.” A derisive snort. “Not even…..titanium-plated.”

It’s beneath Bruce to say dumbass, but the implication is pretty damn clear. Jason just laughs. “Don’t give him any ideas, B.” He’s stabilised Bruce to the best of his abilities, and decides that he’d rather Bruce get some medical attention as quickly as he can manage it. He pulls Bruce to sit up, and gives him time for the motion blur to settle. “I know you’re drugged up, but is it anything to be worried about?”

He’s greeted with the littlest shake of the head. “Just standard HS-342. Excuse me.” With surprising speed for a man so thoroughly out of it, Bruce leans over the other side of the table and throws up. When he sits back up, he seems more present. “It isn’t Bane’s usual style to try poisons, and this suit’s filter isn’t the best, so he took me by surprise when I cornered him here.” Bruce rubs at his mouth with a bloodied hand, and he makes everything look about 200 times worse.

Jason’s offering a wet wipe before his brain even digests the sight; Bruce just accepts it without comment, now looking down at the unconscious Bane. “Lucky he was in the mood for a long and slow torture session; think he was too excited at the prospect of catching all of you and gloating about it to kill me when he had he chance. Had more aerosolised paralytics prepped for all of you, too.” Bruce nods his head at massive gas canisters tucked into the corner of the tent, all with skulls and crossbones on them. They’re pretty hard to see, on account of being hidden behind crates that held enough firepower to down the average sovereign nation, wow.

“Taking you hostage was pretty bright, but it’s kinda amazing how no one’s figured out that it’s always a crapshoot for me, the demon spawn, and Black Bat with all this drug stuff.” Even if they had just barged in, even if Bruce hadn’t worked his way out of this mostly himself, it might not have gone totally tits-up then, which is good to know.

They don’t talk about the concept of how torture counts as good luck, because Bruce isn’t exactly wrong, is he? “C’mon, let’s get you out of here.”

More from force of will than any actual motor control, Bruce heaves himself onto his feet and stays standing. “The weapons and gas-”

“Clean-up team’s on the way in. PennyOne was very explicit about getting you back to base ASAP, B, and it’s way more than I’m paid to question our highest power.” Jason tucks an arm around Bruce’s waist, and pulls Bruce’s arm over his shoulder. “C’mon. I’ve got you.”

“Yes,” Bruce says, sounding a little awed. “Yes, I think you do.”

-

Jason sees neither hide nor hair of Bruce until the next Third Thursday, but word on the street is that Alfred’s wrath and Dick pulling double-shifts meant that Bruce got some enforced time-off; a whole two weeks of downtime, wonder of wonders. He had texted to say that he had some business going on and would need to take a rain check on dinner, but it’s mostly to stop Bruce from showing up all battered and bruised.

Jason has actually been busy, though. Having an assault mounted on a Third Thursday’s a pretty grievous insult, and goes against the entire point of having it, so Jason’s been doing some housekeeping. A better shift rotation of patrolling criminals that keep a cap on how much evil can manifest on this off day, a shakedown of a couple of crime families that had helped Bane smuggle his weapons and his mercs in, a bit of a rampage in Crime Alley that reminded the people that the Red Hood’s not the sort to be ignored. He intensely injures a large number of people who really deserve it, but he keeps everyone alive because it’s supposed to be recovery time for Batman.

He does still come by the Opera House with his usual order from the taquería, because his circadian cycle is three weeks long and he had subconsciously worked to have the night free the way he’s done consciously for well over a year now. Besides, missing this would have María José worry, and she’s had plenty to worry about after the brush with Bane’s terrorism the last TT. Jason’s sat on the lip of the massive, ostentatious golden dome, enjoying the breeze in his hair when a shadow alights in his periphery.

It’s a strange thing, but all of them have a different texture to the darkness they shroud themselves in. It’s all to do with costume material and gait and build and posture, some indeterminable mixture of all these things, but with enough time of figuring out who’s who just from a patch of not-quite-pitch-black, it becomes as bright and loud a signature as them just shouting their names.

Bruce’s shadows fall around him like a hedge growing over a statue; a mix of organic and not, and the quick terror that manifests when they fall away and all of a sudden it’s just a not-quite-man that’s all sharp edges and shades of darkness.

Jeeze. B gets roughed around a little bit, and Jason’s gone all dramatic in his head. He doesn’t betray his thoughts, just leans back to scowl as dramatically as he can muster. “Could’ve sworn I said not to come, B. Bane’s magic gas did a number on your reading comprehension too?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything in response, just plods over with a paper bag in hand. “Here,” he says, dropping it on Jason’s lap before taking a seat next to him, posture still tense. “I was on my way to pick up Korean fried chicken from a truck close by the library when we caught wind of Bane’s plans, and I ended up missing our prior engagement.”

The bag smells like it’s filled with something divine, and Jason’s diving in and already breaking into a sweat from the expectation of tongue-turning spiciness. He loves fried chicken in all their incarnations, but KFC hits something different, oh. Jason’s downed two wings and half a drumstick before situational awareness comes back in. “On the list of things you’ve done wrong by me, B, not getting me food because you were too busy thwarting a terrorist attack’s pretty low down.”

Bruce just shrugs. “It’s a pretty long list.”

“It’s gotten shorter.”

That gains him a look of curiosity, tinged with doubt. Jason licks his fingers, and realises this is the first time he’s actually eaten something Bruce’s brought for him. There’s probably something there to unpack, but that can wait until after he’s had his fill. He doesn’t say anything else, just waits for the inevitable question.

“How?”

Jason just shrugs, and pushes his tacos over. “I got to know you as an actual person, I guess. You make enough mistakes all by yourself, and I figured that I didn’t need to be angry with you about things that I know you didn’t mean.” Like missing a dinner date to save a city, like coming when he’s supposed to stay away, like looking ready for a fight with Jason over an absence of snacks.

Like Bruce letting the Joker live didn’t mean that he didn’t love Jason in his wholehearted, visceral way. The justice system isn’t built to handle people like Joker; Jason’s come to accept that neither is Bruce, and that’s a fact that he can either take in and accept, or not.

When push comes to shove, it’s no harder than accepting a bag of chicken.

They subside into silence; Bruce is the only human being Jason has ever met who could eat a hard-shell taco while making almost zero sound, and it’s easily the most unacceptable thing about him.

The music coming from down below is a little muted; it’ll probably take another couple of weeks before the stress of Bane’s hot nonsense cools down enough for Gothamites to go back to their wild ways, so tonight all they get is the tinny screech of some fiddles that are occasionally drowned out by one determined elderly woman on an accordion.

“Jason,” Bruce says, and that means it’s time to be serious because they’re still in their suits. Jason has a premonition of what this talk’s going to be about, and settles himself into a state of casual resignation.

“Jason,” Bruce says again, emphasising God knows what. “The…. thing, you previously brought up. Regarding your feelings.”

“Yep, I remember, thanks for bringing it up in the most awkward way possible.”

There’s a squeak of leather as Bruce clenches his fist, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the squidge of a sauce-laden bit of lettuce squishing out. “I’m doing my best.” He sounds calm, even if he doesn’t look it. “Taking you to bed is out of the question, right now. But if there’s a, a better dynamic we could have because parent and child isn’t quite right, well.”

Bruce is clearly biting the inside of his cheek, and it’s a new tic, holy shit.

Determination sets in, and he turns to look Jason full in the face because neither the Bat nor the man have ever been cowards. “You have been so good to me, Jason,” he says with aching softness. “I think I want to try to be good for you.”

Jesus Lord Christ. Jason drops a chicken bone onto his lap in his haste to grapple for Bruce, to get a sticky handhold on the back of the cowl, to press their foreheads together. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, he must’ve died again without noticing and this time instead of seeing an al-Ghul on the other side, it’s just hopeless, unbearable Bruce.

He doesn’t let his thought process come out his mouth, doesn’t press in for a kiss that’s unasked for, but he does close his eyes and take in a deep, shuddering breath.

“We’ll figure it out, B.”

Bruce’s lips tip into a lopsided smile. “Thank you, Jason,” he murmurs right back, and.

Jason’s a goddamned goner.

-

A/N: Tumblr always swallows up italics which I viciously over use but I do NOT have the emotional capacity to trawl through this fic once again bc I’m more dead than I am alive atm. GOD I think I’ve found my one true calling: domsub stuff but with 4x more faffing about and 0% sex is my writing sweetspot quarantine rlly be out here making you Real Eyes

[bedlamsbard]

23 + 26 + 36 for the writing asks

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

I actually enjoy and think I'm good at doing both -- I'm a little bit "talkier" of a writer than I'm totally comfortable with, though, and one of the things I struggle with when writing dialogue is that I tend to write too much dialogue. I'm a little better at dialing it back now than I need to be -- this is mostly in terms of large chunks of single character monologuing rather than rapid back and forth banter, which I probably also write too much of. Once I get down to line edits, a lot of what I'm doing is a combination of -- uh -- adding more banter (lol) and adding description back into a scene that's a lot of dialogue. (The banter seems to translate well to the MCU, as I get a lot of positive comments about it.) I don't love writing speechifying; I have actually never been happy with Loki's speech in Yonder 4. One thing you may or may not know about me is that I am very, very aural, which is why switching VAs will absolutely make it impossible for me to recognize a character as the same person. This is really useful for writing alternate versions of characters, because every film writer writes them slightly differently, with slightly different dialogue patterns, so even if they don't switch actors/VAs I can compartmentalize each version really well. (The classic example I usually fall back on is Wake/Gambit; older Obi-Wan is very clearly Alec Guinness voice, Wake!Obi-Wan is JAT, Gambit!Obi-Wan is Ewan; Wake!Padme is Cat Taber and Gambit!Padme is Natalie Portman; Wake!Anakin is Matt Lanter and Gambit!Ani is Hayden. They're all completely different in my head. For something like Morning, I'm voice/dialogue-matching to the film where each member of the royal family is coming from, except for the altverse.) But doing it like that is a lot of work and I need to "refresh" regularly.

As for description...I like writing description. I'm good at writing description. I'm good at writing action. I'm good at set-building. I'm not necessarily a very visual writer, because I'm not a very visual person; I do however do a lot of what I call set-building, because I need the characters to be doing something (talking, mostly) in a place that's not just a void.

26. What would you describe as OOC?

Remember how I said up ahead that I'm extremely aural? If I can't "hear" the character dialogue when I'm reading or writing...that's OOC. There's a little bit of flexibility (I actually usually can't "hear" my POV character, but there's other stuff that goes into that), but if I can't hear the actor saying the lines? Backspace, rewrite, or, backspace, go back to the canon until I have their voice again, rewrite.

The other one is actually fight scenes. I write a lot of action. I love writing action. I'm always trying to match fighting style to that canon character's fighting style, which is occasionally problematic because characters' fighting style will change from film to film for various reasons. (Watch Steve fight in any of the Cap solos vs. any of the Avengers ensembles -- that is the most glaring example in the MCU, but Loki's another particularly bad one, for interesting reasons I won't go into.)

I'm assuming this is about me writing OOC rather than reading, because that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, but yeah, voice and fighting -- and body language, actually, that's another one. Those are the big ones for me. The actual decision-making process is not something I think about as being IC/OOC.

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What’s the one you’re most proud of?

they're all song lyrics except for Queen's Gambit lol that's how. I don't think I've done a non-song lyrics title since Gambit. I also do chapter titles, which is exhausting; those are mostly song lyrics too (except for Morning's chapter titles, obviously); a lot of the chapter titles in Backbone are Free Ryloth ships or more relevant to the story. I think Yonder's chapter titles are all song lyrics; I know Horizon's are. I actually really like The Horizon Line's title (which is, yes, a song lyric, though "the horizon line" is an actual thing); it was originally reserved for the Yonder sequel but it works equally well for the prequel. Yonder would have had a totally different title if i'd heard the song that eventually got transferred to the series title about two weeks earlier. I just go through my playlists for each fic/character/whatever until something clicks; it's not complicated.

[feather-dancer]

for ficwriter friday: favorite headcanon to write about? :3c

Since I’ve mentioned it twice in fics now I can probably get away with saying this one:

I’ve always been a firm believer than users/creations of magic tend to be a little more sensitive to it’s use, even if they’re not aware of what specifically it is or the cause, they can still pick up an off vibe it gives off beyond the visually flashy stuff. Whether they can do anything with that information is a whole nother kettle of fish.

How does this fit in with Trollhunters? Changelings. Magic makes up their ability to switch between forms and their very creation so it makes sense to me they’d be ones that pick up on these things even without the why. Strickler however, with his literal magical hoard he pulls out of thin air, clearly knows what he’s doing more than most of his kin in that regard and while still not able to pin point exactly what’s going on, would immediately notice a change from magic being used and be wary of what it might mean. In comparison Nomura would just think it’s an off feeling and have no context to know otherwise.

There’s two points this has come up so far in my fics, namely the Book of Ga-Huel in the Strickler fic (there is a bit of a tickle in the air about it but nothing too unusual for that particular item) and also in Ghost!AU (a flicker of a something rapidly seeps into the very air -- Strickler happened to notice the shift immediately, looking about in confusion for what exactly it was he felt for those fragile few seconds). The only other magic user in the house at the time clocked it as well but doesn’t have the knowledge yet to realise what it was (there was something odd that happened just before that, the really weird way his expression seemed to change and a feeling in the air) who is of course, Claire. I’m also gonna be using it as an excuse to get those two to talk to one another before the Eternal Night hits which will be valuable information for Claire in the future and the virtue of trusting her gut just like when it turned out Angor was spying on them.

It adds a neat bit of meta for me to play with and I was glad to find a way to throw it into here as well as it’s something I love to ramble about but don’t often get the opportunity for it. Plus magic can be more than slinging fireballs around! It can be subtle tells as well.

[apothecarywormcrud]

Sugar Packet, Card, and Cleaver? :3c

thank u felix i owe u my life. let the roasting commence. 

Sugar Packet: What kind of foods do you and your F/O(s) enjoy eating? Do you both have somewhat similar tastes in cuisines?

ok so to break it down: 

hazama: this man consumes nothing but tea and hard-boiled eggs, which he swallows whole. this is canon. i hc that because he’s a fake boy he doesn’t actually have proper taste buds, which means that in order for him to enjoy the taste of something it has to be incredibly strong, e.g. super spicy foods or. whatever noel vermilion cooks. he can and will consume culinary atrocities without a second thought, and then tell you with complete sincerity that they were delicious. astoria fucking hates this. 

szayel: this mans eats his subordinates like it aint no thing so as far as im concerned he’s out here eating whatever the fuck whenever the fuck. cockroach in the lab? oh i think you mean Free Snack. remains of hollow experiments? waste not want not. he seems like the sort of person to have refined taste but this only applies to human food. otherwise, if it’s alive it’s edible. (i originally had ths phrased as “if it’s organic matter” but then i started thinking about whether hollows actually qualify as organic considering that they’re made out of a completely separate set of particles than earthly beings which is. a whole nother kettle of fish.) 

as far as human food is concerned he’d probs like anything that’s particularly meaty, and also. fancy desserts. 

kabuto: subsists on a diet of day-old rice and water crackers. maybe some miso soup if he’s feelin frisky. i don’t know that he’s lived a well-adjusted enough life to have something like a favorite food. 

Card: Who seems to be the wittiest out of you and your F/O(s)? Who is the sneakiest?

hazama nd kabuto tied for sneakiest given that their jobs are literally just Being A Spy. i think hazama wins wittiest, everyone else is just kinda snarky nd kabuto’s specialty is deadpan and condescending. sadly kunikida does not win anything as he is a loud and rowdy lad. 

Cleaver: Who is the best cook? Do they prefer to cook sweet and simple dishes, or elegant and complicated ones?

kunikida is the only one of these fuckers i trust to cook anything. he’s a responsible young man, he knows what’s up. kabuto can also cook just fine but can’t be assed to make anything with more than like, three ingredients. 

hazama knows what cooking is. he knows how recipes work. he just doesn’t care. 

i hc that sayel can cook based on some throwaway gag dialogue at the end of an episode but yknow what? my city now. he either makes mad fancy shit or eats raw marinated meat straight out of the bowl, there is no in between. 

[whisperoftheworm]

Jay you said you’ve written from a kids perspective before? I’m trying the same but it’s hard ): it’s fine if you don’t but can you offer any advice for it?

Ok so I got halfway through writing all this, changed app to screengrab and then tumblr, a terrible application deleted this all so forgive me if this isn’t as detailed as I was intending ok thank u. Yes I am on mobile, no I haven’t seen tumblr on desktop in four years, yes I am aware this is not ideal.

So I’ve never really given writing advice before, so who fucking knows how coherent this will be. I think one of the biggest tips I can give in regards to writing children (or anyone for that matter) is not to do it in a vacuum. Observation is your friend, and if you have kids in your life that you can observe and see how they act, react, do things then that’s a good place to start.

That aside, another great thing to do is remember that children are actually people too. They may not be quite there as adults, but they still have their own thoughts, emotions, feelings, and all that jazz. On a personal level, the characters I’ve written, Oscar and William come from a traumatic, sheltered upbringing, and are on a level, different to most kids (making me rethink all this now but I’m this far in but fuck it). They’re seeing the world a lot more than they ever have, so there are a lot of new things for them. In a sense that rings true for a lot of kids, so a dash of wonder and confusion is often useful.

Inner Monologue:

This sounds a bit like I’m contradicting myself but it’s important to remember that kids see the world as more objective and black and white to your average adult (especially vulnerable traumatised kiddos but that’s another kettle of fish).

I’m going to reference some of my own stuff a few times here btw because I’m a narcissist.

This is from a recent draft but it seemed a good example. Oscar is seven, so a lot of his thoughts come off as quite scattered and short, flipping between the only two things he cares about in this moment, his dinosaur and William. Keep it short, keep it objective, but also keep it inquisitive to a degree.

Another example I could find is one from Will’s perspective. He’s the same age as Oscar, and is royally piss scared of water, watching his best pal out in the sea. Like many kids, he’s got a very vivid imagination, and the whole sea monster thing felt natural that he’d think that.

Dialogue:

If you’ve ever spent time around a child, you’ll know that they ask a lot of questions. With my characters’ ages and personalities taken into consideration, I tend to keep their dialogue quite short with no more than two or three sentences at a time. They tend to state the obvious and give more of an explanation than needed at times — which is also useful for exposition. Save yourself from that and just have your small character explain exactly what they’re doing.

Here he’s drawn a wee picture and is showing it off. He’s gone into detail about it while also being the same kind of insecure need for praise that kids, being kids, often need.

Some other things about writing kids and their dialogue is use of names. Kids tend to use names more than adults in conversation, which I also find helps to keep the flow going through long bits of dialogue without having to add a million speech tags. Furthermore, for one word answers and yes and no questions, keep it short for them. Have them nod and shake their heads, even keep them silent when it’s a question we already know the answer to.

Also while we’re here: Baby talk. Just don’t. It does entirely depend on the age, but if I have to sit through clearly written lisps and i’m a widdle baby uwu then I will be sick. The occasional misspeak and mistake is fine in my opinion. Making them cute is all well and good, helping readers develop an attachment to them by making them sweet is also great. But just don’t overdo it. I feel like this rings truer more for writing girls than boys, but that is again, a whole nother kettle of fish.

Just extra stuff that I can’t be arsed to make another subheading for:

Kids are gross. Remember that they are gross. Oscar likes to tell his grown ups whenever he’s done some kind of bodily function, which from my experience is the seven-year-old boy experience.

Kids get attached easily. Whether it be to caregivers or toys/objects, it happens. William has a stuffed rabbit that rarely leaves his sight. Don’t be afraid to make them fall in love with stuff, because having him hold onto his rabbit when he’s nervous for example is one of my fav ways to convey him.

Don’t reduce them to being cutesy and nothing else. I’ve probably said this like three times now, but it’s Super Important. Make them cute, but make them more than that.

—

This is all I can physically manage writing about this at the moment ngl. This took like two hours of distractions and smoke breaks and being in quarantine and tbh I’m not sure how much sense this makes. But thanks for the ask, anon you’ve given me something to do today.

[sonicranticoot]

About CTR, Money, and Both Together

Yeah I know I took a break. Regular types of posts to resume shortly. I haven’t actually ranted in a very long time (”Why does he have rant in his name, and never actually rants?”) but today’s...uh, news about CTR is such a hot topic in the Crash community I want to talk about it.

That being yeah. Microtransactions. How quaint. It’s 2019 and Crash Bandicoot has microtransactions. Absolutely beautiful. Mostly being that, a lot of you already know this but I’m making it even more blatantly clear. They’re not ok, but it goes a bit deeper than “not ok.”

One of my main reasons for being annoyed with them is that simply put, they hurt my trust in the game. Pre-launch, it was confirmed in several interviews there would be no in-game purchases or any of the sort and all content would be available in the game itself. Now it’s always possible Beenox really did mean they didn’t want to put them in and never did and they were forced upon by Activision. Although wouldn’t be the first time it has happened in the industry (as one example, Square Enix similarly forced them into Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at the last minute). publishers being willing to blatantly break promises made by the developers still paints a pretty bad message. Regardless of how it happened, it gives me reason to put less trust into Beenox.

It’s also a bit of a skewed priority here in my opinion that microtransactions are more or less taking priority in development. Of course we don’t know everything about what will be done in the patch that adds the content from the new Grand Prix but no patch notes like the last GP is kind of concerning. There are a lot of things aside from the Wumpa Coin system that are serious issues with the game, like no host migration making it very hard to actually find games at times, long wait times between online matches, invisible items, invisible walls, lack of online options, etc.

I mention online because online is obviously a part of the game Beenox and Activision are encouraging people to play a lot - not just with coins but also the increased Nitro payouts and the incentive of the championship leaderboard that gets you a kart/decal (the latter even for who got the kart in an earlier GP, giving them incentive to make the top 5% again). But simply put, it’s barebones, has difficulty functioning well, and the fact the game uses peer-to-peer instead of its own servers is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.

I mentioned coins before, and I know I’m not alone in expressing this fear, but with the already mangled coin handling last GP’s patch (honestly exaggerated, it’s better in some places, worse in others, it has actually encouraged me to vote for different tracks online than pre-patch but that’s just me), and the inclusion of microtransactions and them being explicitly said to help fast track coin collection, there’s...reason to believe that coin payouts are going to suck more than ever. Or they might jack up the prices to get people to grind even more, sucking out lives of people with limited time to play the game, or take the “easy way out” and get them to buy coins. Of course you also have to take into consideration that CTR is a kid friendly game that has this stuff. FIFA, rated E for Everyone, in recent years has cost parents literal thousands of dollars out of their bank accounts. Now I am unsure if CTR would ever get that bad since to my understanding FIFA has gambling and lootboxes which CTR currently lacks, but the real fear of a kid not versed in money spending too much on coins is a real thing. Or, people just wanting to catch up real quick, and with no self control, plunging into buy out the store.

Then there’s how the store actually works at the moment with its daily deals stuff that can, to a new player, actually make their cash-earned coins into either a test of luck by buying repeatedly, or just waiting forever. There’s a million ways that microtransactions can ruin people’s experiences with a game I don’t know where to begin.

I’ve heard all the excuses. “It’s all cosmetics.” “It’s optional.” “People need to watch their money.” “It funds the rest of the game!” Well some people would say, those are all pretty valid reasons at first glance, I refute:

Yes. They are cosmetics. That’s always how it starts. What if that’s a skin everyone loves? What if you’re the one person who doesn’t have it? What if that becomes a problem?

Yes. It is optional. Honestly I do think it’s the best argument, because you can do what I intend on doing: not buying into them. Sometimes, though, it’s not that simple; sometimes things feel so excessive they begin to not feel optional.

Sometimes, simply put, it’s not that simple. Today it’s easier than ever for a kid to randomly jack daddy’s credit card. Some people have genuine problems with money and have no control over how they spend it. It’s not that easy for some people. Maybe it is for you. It is for me. But it isn’t for everyone.

You know what else funds development? Game sales. You already paid $40 up front (or $60 if you wanted Robot Crunch that bad, I didn’t) and I don’t think you should be expected to pay more just to ease out of a slog that, depending on purchase date, can take months. Activision (or EA or Ubisoft or 2K or Square Enix or Warner Bros.) isn’t exactly light on money anyway.

Back to the grind for a little bit. Yes. Coin rates for offline players suck. Online sometimes gives you good coins and only does so when it wants to work in the first place. I, however, have a different take on the grind. The grind only becomes a grind if you make it into a grind. If you’re having fun playing the game, honestly? That’s what any good game does, it makes you play the game because you like playing the game. A lot of games have things that take forever to do, but are praised in spite of that because of things like strong game mechanics. CTR has amassed a dedicated community in spite of its well-documented issues because, simply put, this game is great. I’ve put god knows how many hours into it, admittedly sometimes as an active grind (I hate those battle mode challenges for the Grand Prix), but much of the time, it’s because I love playing a great racing game in my favorite gaming series.

Of course, that’s just me. Not everyone thinks a game is just a game, and sometimes the game itself these days gives off that message. Games you buy from a brick and mortar store operated completely differently before mobile phone games got big. Once those did, and devs started putting things into them, it just hasn’t been the same for a lot of people. Today, you have to log in to an account to play Doom, a game released 26 years ago, not on phones but after you pay for it with your own money on consoles current as of 2019. Mobile games and free to play games always operated differently from console games because that’s their whole thing, they generally aren’t console experiences and vice versa.

In summary:

If you love CTR, keep playing it, because without microtransactions, you have a game with a lot of good content and amazing gameplay.

However, actual issues with the game should be prioritized over trying to nickel and dime people, and with any game - not just this one - this message NEEDS to be loud and clear.

It is important for developers and publishers to see on the same terms, so they same message is given to consumers.

You don’t fucking put mobile game mechanics into video games that existed 10 years before Angry Birds and expect people to not talk about them.

Monetization is bad in so many ways it can hurt people and imply things about everything about the game in all kinds of ways. No ifs or buts about it.

Have a good night.