Letter To My Father

Me, literally giving a character my (very minor) disability in a fanfic I am writing.

Some person on Ao3:" don't talk about things you don't know, girls aren't colorblind".

(Just in much less civil therms, thus I cancelled it).

First of all we are in the DC comic universe, people come back to life every other day, and you are telling me girls can't be color blind.

Second of all, girls can be colorblind or have various types of color deficency, you can trust me and my Tritanopia

Signed: a tired fanfic writer who won the genetic lottery and who has to video-call one of her brothers (who actually won in a non-sarcastic way) every time she is alone at home and she has to properly coordinate her own laudry.

I WANT FOR AO3 TO HAVE A FILTER TO TAKE OUT ALL THE FICS I'VE ALREADY READ CUS MAN I'VE READ A LOT

I feel like Dick grayson embodies so well the song "Stay frosty royal milk tea" it isn't even funny I swear.

You mean to tell me that this

"I think I got too many memories getting in the way of me/ I'm 'bout to go Tonya Harding on the whole world's knee"

Or this

"Some princes don't become kings/Even at the best times I'm out of my mind/You only get what you grieve"

Or even this

"The only thing that's ever stopping me is me, hey/The only thing that's ever stopping me is me, hey/I testify if I die in my sleep/Then know that my life was just a killer dream, yeah"

Or, lastly

"Seems like the whole damn world went and lost its mind/And all my childhood heroes have fallen off or died/Fake tears, we are living fake tears/But the alcohol never lies, never lies"

Doesn't SCREAM Dick Grayson to you too?

Me, writing a very serious story about Batman's family.

Also me, adding a whole paragraph with Hal Jordan discovering that Batman's daughter (Female!Dick, and the only child of his the league knows about because he too was young and naive, once) is a cheerleader, cheer captain even, in which he talks about Bring It On and Mean girls and teenager dictators, while Batman broods (supposedly) because his daughter had the *audacity* to be preppy and "no daughter of mine will be preppy in this goth household, go change back from that cheer uniform, here is your everything-black and your white foundation sweetie."

I've been thinking a lot about Dick Grayson as I often do. Because like You are ten years old, and you've never really been normal, have you?But normal has never really mattered either. And why should it? You're ten years old, and you can fly, and every night your very existence is met with thundering applause and adoring crowds. You're not normal, but you've never needed to be.

Then it all gets ripped away. The crowds, the lights, and everyone who loved you, all gone the second you hear those bodies hit the ground. You are not normal, and no longer in a way that is okay.

You are eleven years old, and you can fly again. Not on the trapeze, but across Gotham's rooftops. You feel more alive than you have since the circus. Part of you starts to believe that Dick Grayson hit the ground with his parents while Robin flew away. You've done nothing but inhabit a corpse since that night, but behind the mask, you're alive again. Alive. But not normal.

You're in middle school, and the other kids like you alright, but they realize you're not normal. You put on your best act to convince them otherwise. It almost works. You play their games with false smiles. You become known for your charm. But it's hard. You have to make them like you, but not too much. Nice, but impenetrable. You're eleven years old, but you've watched Bruce very carefully, and you know that having people close to you is dangerous. You are not normal and you can never let yourself be.

You're a teenager now, and you spend more time in your mask than out. Dick Grayson has friends, sure, but Robin has teammates. And teammates are far more valuable. You have your Titans, and you finally fit in again. Right? It doesn't matter that they're older than you, but you've trained for longer, or that they have powers and you don't. You're still one of them. And they may not know Dick Grayson, but Robin is more complete, isn't he? Robin didn't die that night at the circus. Robin doesn't have to play normal to fit in. But you're still alone. Or, at the very least, still lonely. Lonely, and not normal. Even among aliens and superheroes.

You're an adult now, and your days with the name Robin seem like a lifetime ago. Dick Grayson still isn't a complete person, but you refuse to be like Bruce and hide forever behind that mask. But sometimes you still feel like you're doing little more than puppeting a shell. Nightwing is more grounded. Nightwing can still fly. You're not normal, and you've come to accept that you will never be, but you wonder if you could have ever been. Was it Bruce that sent you on this path, or did he catch you before you fell somewhere worse? Did Gotham make you like this or is there something in your soul that is just fundementally incorrect? Something that stops you from ever being normal? That makes your smiles false? Morphs your natural charisma into a character you play both behind and in front of the mask?

You will never know. It's one of the things that stops you from ever being normal.

Alfred and Ra in my series "Robin's blues" apparently:

Alfred "I really love my granddaughter and, even if I can see Martha and Thomas in her and it hurts me greatly, I couldn't imagine my life without her and I never want to see her suffer" Pennyworth

And Ra:" Finally one member of my progeny that doesn't completely suck, now we just need to put her trough more pain to really make her shine!" Al-Ghul

As I wrote some posts ago, the Bonus instalment of Robin's Blues will have more than one ending, one with Roy (obv) and one with Wally.

What I would like to ask you all, is if you'd like a third ending too?

Please Help me find a prompt so I can credit its author

Tumblr prompt:

A daughter of Apollo who finds that anything she even briefly mentions wanting tends to show up on her bed within a week. New watercolors, candies, hairties. She suspects that one of the Hermes' kids is doing it, but no one is willing to give them up. It stops after Manhattan.

I can't find the one who originally wrote this prompt, if you know their username please write it to me, I would like to credit them.

That said I strayed from the aforementioned prompt but I liked how it turned out, so, if you are interested on how this fic turned out, here it is!

All the pain in Aelia's life stemmed out of love.

Sadly her parents are innocent, ignorant to her woes.

Sadly Vivienne is long dead.

Sadly the memories of Luke's hands on her make her feel dirty.

Sadly the pain of her scraping never leaves her.

Sadly the person that always left her wonderful drawings and cute trinklets fights on the other side of the war.

Sadly her twin's face in her mind is horribly disfigured, just like it was when she had to wrap him into his golden shroud.

Sadly her little brother's body is never gonna be found.

Sadly, this sorrowful circle it is never gonna end.

This is your periodical reminder to download your favorite fics from ao3 every once in a while!!

Personally, I got into the habit of doing it once a year, when I'm working on my "Favorite" fic recs.

While I'm at it, here's a few tools I use that help greatly with my Ao3 experience!

Userscripts

Here's a few userscripts that I love for Ao3!

AO3: Kudosed and seen history: Highlight or hide works you kudosed/marked as seen.

This is the userscript that helps me the most when making fic recs. While browsing a tag or my history, I can see which fics I've already kudosed and I can decide to skip/hide individual fics (there's other userscripts out there if you want to permanently hide specific tags).

AO3 Review + Last Chapter Shortcut + Kudos-sortable Bookmarks: Adds shortcuts for last chapter and a floaty review box, sorts bookmarks by kudos.

AO3: Estimated Reading Time: Add an estimated reading time to a fic description in hours and minutes.

Calibre

Calibre is an ebook management software. You can download it here. I really love using Calibre to send fics I've downloaded to my kindle, but there's also a function where you can download all the fics in one Ao3 page, or multiple fics URLS, all at the same time. Just last night, I used it to download all my Buddie bookmarks. Super helpful! It also allows me to add my own covers to fics and use them on my Kindle. I love it!

Behind Blue Eyes entry 2

Bruce loved his daughter’s eyes.

Those eyes that have always been as blue as his father’s.

It was a quiet comfort, looking into her face and finding echoes of the man who made him.

But now, they’re different.

And it hurts.

Because Thomas Wayne is gone forever, and without those eyes, the illusion that he ever lived is harder to maintain.

His daughter's eyes aren’t Wayne eyes anymore.

But neither are they Al Ghul's.

And in that, Bruce finds strange solace.

His daughter's eyes are something left behind (just like her), unclaimed by legacy.