It may take me a while to finish writing and publish the 18th instalment of Robin's Blues (I am after all, once again, in exam season) but I will make it up to you all with some snippets of another work of mine!
Alfred both loved and hated his granddaughter’s blue eyes, Thomas’ eyes.
He loved them because they reminded him of the man who once laughed through halls and who smiled like he held all the secrets of the universe.
He hated them for the same reason.
And now, they’re gone.
It should be a relief.
It is a relief.
But it’s also a wound.
Something sacred has vanished.
And Alfred is nothing but pain and reprieve held in the same trembling breath.
Because Thomas is gone.
Because Thomas will never really leave her (him).
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4163446
Had this strange really lucid dream about yet another AU of my AU (that I am never getting around to write) in which Bruce “died” like in Final Crisis # 6.
Now, for obvious reasons, Dixie can't really stand in for him, because the kind of work it would take to make her look like her dad would be enormous, but Jason (who has a really good, really strong, relationship with Dixie) can.
And it's very traumatic for him, but both him and Dixie know that it is what ‘must be done’, so he does.
But the end result? Hilarious.
Because Nightwing follows Batman around like a concerned mother hen and Robin (Damian) just REFUSES to listen to Batman (he can occasionally be reigned in by ‘Wing).
It's obvious and yet no-one ever figures them out, up until Joker escapes from Arkham and has a face-off with Batman and the Dark Knight has a full-blown panic attack.
And yes, Jason is trained, he is capable, he craved a confrontation with his murderer ever since he came back, but…but doing it wearing his dad's suit, his dad's skin, feels wrong. Hence the panic.
And Joker is convinced to have finally bent the Batman, until Nightwing just pummels herself from the darkness and bashes his head out with her escrimas, all the while laughing like she did as a kid: bright, joyful, just shy of manic.
Crooks are terrified.
Utterly paralyzed in horror.
And that horror only amplifies when Nightwing, once again more like Nightwing and not the horror dressed in a traffic-lights suit she once was, hugs Batman and manages to calm him down, all the while she is completely drenched with Joker's blood and brain matter.
Some witnesses say Robin critiqued her technique but gave her praises for her brutal efficiency, but those witnesses also checked themselves in Arkham spontaneously, so who knows.
Tim still went on his world travels trying to prove his theory, so I guess that's why he didn’t appear.
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?
I KNOW for a fact that my own genderbent version of Dick Grayson is far more serious in her out-of-the-suit public persona than she is in her in-suit public persona, but I think it would apply to most female reinterpretations of her character.
Let me explain:
1 being the daughter (and not the son) of a billionaire Dixie/Rikki/Rachel/Mary/Whatever is ALWAYS gonna be considered shallow, there is no way around it. Even the way she dresses herself (because, let's face it, she is a girl, she HAS to go out dressed half-way decently if she doesn't want to be submerged in hate mail) is gonna paint her that way, because half-way decent for an heiress is a VERY expensive thing.
2 She wants to change the world, in any identity she takes, but she can't do it from the bottom. She can't. Too beautiful, (perceived as) too soft, too delicate, all things to say “TOO FEMALE” to ever be a cop either in Gotham or in Bludhaven.
So, wanting to change the world, she has to take a different road, the attorney road, which demands seriousness and respectability from a man and absolute and total seriousness and respectability from a woman, especially one raised by Brucie Wayne.
3 If she is too easy-going, too joyous, too her, she is gonna be criticized and she is gonna have EVERY aspect of her life put under scrutiny, not only the private ones.
Those are the reasons Why, I think, in the end, Nightwing will always be fem-Dick more joyous and (in some ways) spontaneous side, because Nightwing is an Heroine and, even being both women, she is gonna be allowed some kind of leeways her unmasked self could never achieve.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4163446
One of the things that I will NEVER stop going feral for when reading comics is the general notion that
When Dick is young, Bruce focuses so hard on his work as Batman and his assertion that Batman is the truer and more important of his two identities, that he accidentally creates a Dick Grayson that thinks he is worthless if he is not Robin.
I was reading Robin: Year One and (SPOILERS FROM THIS 2001 COMIC) Dick gets fired as Robin after Two-Face nearly kills him. And once he has recovered, runs away, and he leaves a note for Bruce that contains the line "You don't want a partner. And you don't need a son. I'm sorry I failed you." and I lost my ENTIRE mind.
And to me, this always has to be a MAJOR part of why Dick is so hurt when Robin is stripped away from him permanently. Yes, it is his mantle, and yes, he thinks that his work as Robin is generally important, but ultimately, it stings so much because he is convinced that if he is not Robin, then he isn't ANYTHING to Bruce. Because Bruce doesn't need a son. Because if he's not Robin, then he has failed him.
Idk if Ao3 is playing tricks on me by showing one inexistant extra comment on one of my fic or by hinding said comment from me.
If it's the second instance I am very sorry for my missing reply, but I quite literally CAN'T see your comment.
Me, in a creative slump (that I can't even call writer's block because I AM writing, I just don't think what I am writing really fits into my series without sounding repetitive/superabundant).
Also me, panicking because the first anniversary of "Robin's Blues" is fast approaching and I would really like to publish something in that date.
Anyways, how would you all feel if, before a confrontation of sorts between Dixie, Bruce and Talia, I talked a bit more about what happened just after Dixie's death? Specifically focusing on Bruce, Talia and Damian?
In my works I often delve into themes such as pregnancies, abortions and parenting and Idk who needs to ear this, but I woke up with the visceral NEED to say a couple of things about it all:
I was born in an extremely religious country in which, strangely enough, abortion was legalised fairly early on. This doesn't actually mean it's easy to access to it, because of society's views on it, that trickle down on gynaecologists as well. About 70% of gynaecologists in my country consider themselves conscientious objectors, which means it is basically impossible to access voluntary interruption of pregnancy, except if the woman's life is at risk (or if you pay a shit ton of money in a private clinic, money that, often enough, one doesn't have). This (sadly) doesn't mean we receive any kind of sex Ed in schools (no, not even the crappy kind often showed in films) or any real help/guarantees for new parents, so basically you just have to pray that the condom won't break, because it's near impossible to actually have an abortion and you have almost zero support if you actually decide to keep an unplanned baby. That said my country is now also trying to make those laws even more restrictives (ex banning abortive pills, prediliging the hiring of doctors, nurses and anestheticians who are C.O.etc.), hiding the way our governement tries to rule over women's bodies behind our rapidly decreasing fertility rate.
One summer, while I was still in high school, me and my friends had to drive for over ten hours to reach the only region of my country where the objectors rate it's lower than 15% because one of my friends couldn't wait two months for the only gynaecologist who performed it in our area.
I was the only other girl in my friend group and, at my friend's request, I stayed with her the whole time. It was a traumatic experience, even not being the one having to undergo the procedure. Half of the nurses treated her like dirt and one of the counsellors (that are hired to help women or, more in general, people with a female reproductive system, in this kind of situations) started ranting about hell and damnation, while gripping my friend's wrist so hard it bruised. I literally had to pry the woman away from my friend and to throw her out, and I only managed to do so when I threatened to press charges.
While I always knew on an abstract level that in other countries, countries extremely close to my own, having access to abortion (or even to a morning after pill) was easy, easier than in my home country and decisely less frowned upon, it was all just news for me and I never really paid it much attention.
Then I left my country and studied abroad for a while and, during this time period, I met my partner. A couple of years later I discovered I was pregnant and I panicked. I was scared shitless because while I love kids, I hadn't planned on having one back then (or even now, to be honest). Even then I thought about it. If I decided to keep the baby I would have had actual support from the institutions, both economical and time-wise so my choice was actually mine and mine alone, not influenced by a frightening lack of resources.
I decided not to continue the pregnancy. I went to the clinic with my boyfriend and the procedure was quick, painless and nobody tried to make me rethink anything by guilt-tripping me with tales of eternal damnation.
I never felt any kind of guilt about it while living there. Nobody was forcing down my troath pro-life Ads or picketing the clinic when I went to do a check up specifically meant for people who had had a "traditional" abortion.
Even now, when I think about a traumatizing abortion, I don't think about mine, but my friend's.
Even now, when I see my nephews or my little cousines faces I don't ever regret having walked into that clinic.
Even then, the tinge of guilt in me resurfaces, sometimes, now that I live in my home country. A tinge of guilt I can't really explain, because I was lucky enough to be raised in a pro-choice familial enviroment. A tinge of guilt I shouldn't feel, because it was my choice (as it should always be) and I don't regret it.
What I am trying to say is that, even if you don't know it there IS a right way to do things and we should all fight to make them available to the largest number of people we can.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer.
My country tried to make it as such.
Now our fertility rate is at an all-time low from which I don't think we will ever recover and there are whole generations of women literaly terryfied of falling pregnant, because they do they are gonna lose their jobs and everything they worked for in their lives, without the possibility of actually making a choice on their bodies.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer, the possibility of chosing in authonomy for your body and for your future is.
Writing the AU of one of my own AUs, I discovered that, in my mind, Wally West enjoys the musicians of the summer of love.
Idk why, it just kinda fits, expecially because I dare you to look me in the eyes and tell me that Wally West wasn't made to belt out at the top of his lungs " With your love" by the Jefferson Starship (I know, back in the '60s they were the Jefferson Airplane, but alas) half-jokingly serenading the love of his life.
I actually wrote a fanfic centered around cabin 7, in which one of the main characters is Lee Fletcher. I already made a post about it, because the fanfic itself spawned from a tumblr prompt whose author I can't find (the post was on Pinterest and it was cropped).
The fanfic is called "Cabin seven's tango" and it is on Ao3, here is its link!
ALSO ALSO
THERE SHOULD BE MORE FANFICS ABOUT THE SILLY BACKGROUND CHARACTERS
CASTOR, POLLUX, LEE FLETCHER, MICHEAL YEW, ETC ETC!!!!
please
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helecthra/pseuds/Helecthra
42 posts