#based on that post about Bruce being so jacked because he wants to be able to pick up any of his kids and Jason came back huge

[lithiumseven]

I love my mom

#based on that post about Bruce being so jacked because he wants to be able to pick up any of his kids and Jason came back huge #batdad #Batman #batfam #Bruce Wayne #batfamily #tis i #jason todd #dick grayson #tim drake #damian wayne #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #duke thomas #barbara gordon #terry mcginnis #matt mcginnis #Helena Wayne #harper row #cullen row #carrie kelley #dc #dc comics

[nerdybirdboy]

Relationships: Tim & Jack Drake

I’m going to start with telling that this is my view and how I will rp my Tim. It’s based on what’s in the comics and I’m trying to not add or remove things to it, just patching the holes and analysing what facts I have. I know many will disagree with me, which is fine. This post will also contain some general info about Jack himself. And as usual, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

First of all, Tim does not think he’s been abused by either of his parents. Were they the best parents there is? No, but unless you’re the Kents or Graysons (and let’s be honest, parents like that doesn’t exist in the real world), that will apply to most parents. Did he wish they stayed home a little more often? Yes, he did, but he knew they loved him, although at times he did doubt, and when they couldn’t be home, they made sure he was at boarding school or if he couldn’t stay there, that the housekeeper stayed with him. Tim, however, had a tendency to sneak out, something rarely noticed by others.

When away on digs or business, they made sure to contact Tim daily, either through a call or messages. Sometimes that wasn’t possible though, since some digs were at remote locations. Which is another reason to many missed flights, trains and other modes of transportation, the location didn’t give much to choose from in those regards.

During the periods his parents stayed in Gotham, Tim spent more time with his dad than his mum. Usually because he and his dad had more similar interest and Jack used to tell him about the digs he’d been to and how to best obtain the artifacts (which he donated to Gotham Museum). Tim has always felt proud about his dad’s achievement, even if he wished he’d been home more or that he could’ve joined him on the digs.

(Red Robin #26)

(Batgirl #32)

They were also on different outings together, like fishing trips and sports event. Though, he was still away too often and it wasn’t uncommon for Tim to be without his parents more days of the year than being with them and he quickly learnt to be self sufficient, despite having a housekeeper when living at home. This is the reason his parent didn’t notice his obsession with Batman and Robin, never seeing the scrapbook he had and when they were home, Tim hid it. There was also a lack of emotional display. There were no hugs or words of affection.

However, after Janet died and Jack himself nearly perished too, he tried to change. He apologised to Tim for how absent he’d been and that he was going to change, that he wanted to spend more time with him. Something that gave Tim a rather bittersweet feelings, and a lot of guilt since he knew he wouldn’t be able to be around as much as his dad would like (and Tim does want to get closer with his dad, but Robin is needed too and it’s an important part of who he is).

(Batman #480)

(Robin #7)

So far we have a relationship based on love, because yes it is there, uncertainty and a lot of guilt on both sides, and for Tim, there’s also some repressed anger.  Why wasn’t he enough for them?

(Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #4)

Though despite it all, Tim knows his dad is trying and he does want them to be closer and he too is going to try.

(Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #6)

Jack also has a bit of a temper (something we will later see Tim has inherited as well) and that he doesn’t listen to others when angry.

(Robin #45)

All in all, they have a rocky relationship. Things goes up and down for them with both of them genuinely trying their best, but Jack doesn’t know how to be a dad all the time (and he was beaten by his own dad, using a belt) and Tim has his and Bruce’s secrets. However their relationship does improve with time, especially after Jack meets Dana.

Jack doesn’t exactly react well when finding out that Tim is Robin, ending up threatening Bruce and making Tim retire. Later though, he does come to terms with it. He doesn’t like it, but he understands.

(Robin #130)

(Robin #131)

In the end, they manage to develop a pretty good relationship, especially after Jack finds out Tim is Robin, but then, he gets murdered.

(Identity Crisis #5)

Some facts about Jack Drake (canon and headcanon)

He has a major in business management and a minor in archaeology.

Strong interest in (you could call it obsession) archaeology and art.

Was CEO of Drake Industries, but more famous for his archaeological contributions.

He played football in high school.

Jack and Janet had been together for about two years, and married for one, when they got Tim.

He was 38 when Tim was born. (Janet was 27.)

He was a member of a secret club called the Ninth Legion.

Hi, this is Niko, the mun, again. I know Jack and Janet is generally viewed as abusive, but neither me nor my Tim can view them in that way. Yes, they weren’t the best parents, but I could never call them abusive. To me, Jack is a pretty average dad. Yes, he could’ve paid more attention to Tim and Tim felt lonely a lot growing up, but what kid doesn’t feel that. I’m not intending on stopping anyone from having their view, but this is mine and my Tim will never claim that his parents abused him.

#tims relationships #about tim #headcanon

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

I have said a Lot about the “Raph is a system” theory over the past several months, so this is something of a compilation post. It’s got some new stuff, it’s got some old stuff. (You’re reading Part 1) (Part 2 is here) (Part 3 is here)

---

Firstly, “system” is the term for someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. (The term can also apply to some folks with OSDD.) Someone might develop DID after experiencing long-term trauma at an early age- roughly five or six years old. To paraphrase the DSM-V:

1. We’ve seen three (possibly four) distinct personality states who speak, act, and perceive others differently.

2. The personality states, or “alters”, don’t necessarily share memory, and Donnie insinuated in “The Clothes Don’t Make the Turtle” that Raph has a bad memory in general.

3. Problems arise when alters don’t get along or aren’t on the same page. That none of them seem to be quite aware they’re a system doesn’t help either; it’s hard to work on communication and cooperation when you don’t know they need to be worked on!

4. This whole situation isn’t a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice, or just Raph playing make-believe. (Though I wonder if he had “imaginary friends” when he was younger...)

5. It’s also not because Raph’s been smoking the devil’s lettuce or whatever. “Pizza Puffs” was one long weed joke and he was the only one “sober” (not poisoned) throughout! We don’t see this happen to other mutants, so it’s not a bizarre side effect of mutagen either.

(I’ve seen a few people joke that Mikey has “multiple personalities”, but that’s a tad yikesy and also just plain incorrect. His “doctor” personas are something he does deliberately, and youngest siblings are just Like That.)

So yeah, Raph is pretty heavily DID-coded. We’ve seen four alters so far:

“Host” Raph (HR): He’s our everyday Raph. A “host” is an alter who fronts most of the time and takes care of “business as usual” situations. They are often unaware of past traumatic events, such that they can appear “normal”. (Ex: the host of a child who lives with an abusive parent could be unaware of the abuse. Otherwise, they might cry or be uncooperative whenever the parent is near, further invoking their wrath. This unawareness allows them to be a “good child”, and stay under the parent’s radar sometimes.) Some systems have more than one host, but that the others have shown up so rarely in this story suggests HR is the only host (for now?).

Savage Raph (SR): Debuting in “Man vs. Sewer”, he’s a survival-oriented alter. HR probably could have defeated the Sando Brothers on his own under normal circumstances, but being in the middle of a breakdown doesn’t do much for your fighting skills. SR got pulled to the front to deal with them instead.

“Red” Raph (RR): “Red” is just a placeholder since we don’t actually know his name yet (or even if he has one, not all alters do), though I’ve also heard folks call him “Angel”. He’s got a “tough love” approach to problem-solving, which was probably a helpful thing in the past. LDM were no doubt rowdy children! We were (officially) introduced to him in “Pizza Puffs”.

Mind Raph (MR): MR could just be a manifestation of HR's thought process via Cartoon Goofery, but that possibility doesn’t give me anything to work with so I’m ignoring it. He’s pretty similar to HR, maybe a tad more upbeat. We (officially) met him in “Raph’s Ride-Along”.

When “Pizza Puffs” first aired, I was like “ah yes, this is the alter who has the cranky edgelord tendencies we’ve seen in previous iterations of Raph. He probably broods on rooftops in the rain when he’s in a bad mood.” Combining that with the whole “Red Angel” thing gives off some Batman vibes. And, of course, SR is similar to the Hulk. Those two heroes are pretty different, but they do have one major thing in common...

A sudden, violent loss. Given how prevalent rushing water is throughout “Man vs. Sewer”, I’m thinking a flood came through and separated Raph from his family. (You could probably argue that turbulent water symbolizes a turbulent subconscious? 🤷) Again, DID stems from long-term trauma, so Raph must have been gone for... a while. A couple of months, maybe more? It’s hard to say exactly; we have a little wiggle room when applying human developmental psychology to a human/turtle mutant. Since Splinter still needed to care for the other three, he wouldn’t have been able to devote much time to searching for Raph, and the New York City sewers go on for miles and miles. The longer Raph was alone, the more convinced he would have been that the others had drowned and he was the only survivor.

How old would he have been? I know the turtles are “different ages”, but they were all mutated at the same time so I’m pretty sure Splinter was just like “the littlest one is the youngest, the biggest one is the oldest, and the medium-sized ones are the middle children.” They’re all probably fourteenish by “Finale”. Back in “MvS”, Leo said, “You know how savage Raph gets when he’s alone”. He didn’t say anything like, “You know how savage Raph gets when he’s alone ever since such-and-such an incident happened”. This suggests that LDM straight-up don’t know something traumatic happened to Raph; they were too little to retain concrete memories of that time. In their minds, Raph has always been like this. Draxum isn’t known for his patience, so even though he wasn’t able to immerse the hatchlings in mutagen for long, they probably mature a bit faster than humans. And since humans usually can’t remember anything from before four years of age, three sounds about right for the turtles, though they would have been stronger and steadier on their feet than any human toddler. I doubt Raph would have survived otherwise.

I think he’s sort of... “stuck” back in that trauma. Catching food, building a fire, making a weapon, and getting camouflage aren’t the behaviors of someone who’s only been gone for a few minutes.

When SR called for help, I don’t think he was expecting anyone to answer.

But Raph did manage to hang onto something as he was swept away! It wasn’t much, but that little ragdoll gave him comfort while he was scared and alone.

(The rabbit design on Bruce’s pajamas is probably a coincidence, but...)

Raph seems the type to have sympathy for odd-looking toys. His knockoff Mrs. Cuddles plushie was the emotional crutch he needed back then.

And then he was separated from that as well. Lowkey associating Mrs. Cuddles with this traumatic event would explain why HR was so scared of her. That he doesn’t remember the trauma means he has no context for this fear, making it seem silly and baseless to him (and to the rest of his family), which is why he denied being scared at all in the first part of the “Mrs. Cuddles” episode. It would also explain why he collects teddy bears instead these days, they are a “safe” toy. (The moral of the story is to not make fun of triggers that seem silly.)

(I wonder what would happen if Mrs. Cuddles encountered Savage Raph? Perhaps he’d be quite sympathetic towards such a lonely little raggedy thing! Timestuck as he is, he probably wouldn’t question why a stuffed animal can talk... and it wouldn't be hard for her to persuade her “new bestest fwiend” to get rid of some “mean ol’ nasty sewew monstews” for her.)

That whole “sewer monsters” thing suggests Raph ran into... something while he was wandering alone. Y’all have heard those rumors about alligators living in the New York City sewers, right? Encountering Leatherhead could trigger a flashback.

It would be pretty easy to introduce Leatherhead into the narrative. One of the episodes the Rise crew had planned was titled “The Island of Dr. Noe”, and alligators have very impressive teeth. The Mirage comics had a story where Leatherhead and several cryptids were brought to an island to be hunted for sport.

Noe seems to have quite a few cronies/friends/rivals he could entertain this way. Since he’s got that obsession with Raph, Noe captures him as well, knocking him out with those darts so he can’t waste his energy trying to escape too soon. (Let’s just assume everyone’s powers are glitchy because they all hit another wave of puberty, meaning they can’t just curbstomp the lower-level villains lol.)

HR wakes up on the island and, of course, starts to panic because he’s lost and alone. While wandering, he runs into Leatherhead, which would trigger a flashback to getting attacked by that alligator all those years ago. But Leatherhead doesn’t want to fight! He’s just as scared and confused as HR is, and could really use a partner to help him survive this island.

HR and SR come into conflict because Leatherhead is/isn’t/is/isn’t/is/isn’t a threat. HR eventually wins out, reasoning that even if Leatherhead is that alligator, it wouldn’t be fair to judge him for what he did back when he was an animal.

But time and dissociation can make memories unclear. That our first look at Leatherhead was in Draxum’s “bluh bluh I’m gonna mutate all the humans” bit in “Bug Busters” means he’s a human-base mutant. He wasn’t the alligator back then, but the hunter tracking it. Leatherhead isn’t one of Noe’s targets, he is one of Noe’s guests! And he wants no one to interfere with his quarry, so he’ll play nice long enough for him and the snapper to take out the rest of the hunters and the freaks. Then the two of them will have the island all to themselves...

Years and years ago, Jack Marlin was a big game hunter prowling the New York City sewers in search of an alligator. He did manage to find and kill one, only to realize it had also been hunting! He had inadvertently saved the strangest little turtle creature.

Marlin had become too skilled at this point, the hunt held no challenge for him. This turtle sounded very young, and he was quite big and strong already. An adult could be tough and intelligent enough to entertain him. Marlin tried to get Raph to lead him back to “the others”. But Raph had been lost for some time, and as far as he knew, his family was dead. Hearing that put Marlin in quite the sour mood. A little mutant snapper is a better catch than none at all, so Marlin tried to haul Raph off. Raph fought back and bit off Marlin’s hand. He escaped, but lost his rabbit in the scuffle. Marlin retreated as well, taking some time to recover, scheme, and hunt other game. (And to pocket that rabbit. The blood loss had made him woozy, and he wanted to have some kind of proof he hadn’t just hallucinated the snapper.) Perhaps he turned that alligator’s hide into a vest, which provided the genetic material for his mutation when he eventually got bit by an oozesquito. Like his Mirage counterpart, Marlin didn’t take losing a limb as a sign he should retire, and instead got a tricked-out prosthetic. Who knows what he could do with it in such a mystic setting as Rise.

Raph eventually reunited with his family, but those distrustful, high-strung survivalist traits he had picked up weren’t helpful anymore. He once again had to be the good and patient big brother who didn’t bite when someone play-tackled him or shook him awake at three in the morning because they’d had a nightmare. Those two states gradually got partitioned off more and more, and now they know little, if anything, about each other.

So Leatherhead and HR are chasing away some mothmen or whatever, and things are going pretty well... until one of them knocks Leatherhead over and a familiar ragdoll rabbit falls out of his pocket. SR realizes that Leatherhead is Marlin and switches in to fight him off again. They’re evenly matched, or perhaps SR is even in danger of losing, when LDM arrive to provide support. Leatherhead is enough of a tactician to know that he should retreat. Donnie and Mikey pursue him while Leo stays behind, placing the rabbit in his stunned brother’s hands. “Remember when Pops made this for you? You were always really gentle with it, ‘cause he wasn’t good at sewing back then...”

(This thing really needs patching up, he’s got sewing stuff for whenever he needs to fix his bears/Blue isn’t a threat on his own/Wasn’t he just back at the lair?/Blue gave back the rabbit/Why does he feel like he got hit by a train?/Blue doesn’t want to fight?/ ...Leo?) And that’s enough for HR to switch back in. He’s probably missing memory from his whole time on the island, so while Leo does his best to tell him what happened, they don’t have enough puzzle pieces between them to truly figure out what's going on.

They defeat the bad guys, release the cryptids, save the day, etc. (Leatherhead managed to lose Donnie and Mikey in the woods. A battle for another day.) Once they return to the lair, HR gets help from Draxum to modify the memory spell from “E-Turtle Sunshine” so he can try to fill in the gaps. Surely he wouldn’t get rejected by his own subconscious... right?

Cue part three in the saga of Raph Punches Himself In The Face. SR isn’t happy that HR is essentially trying to poke at an improperly-healed wound, and attempts to chase him off. HR assumes that SR is just a psychic white blood cell like the Lou Jitsu constructs in Splinter’s mind, and retaliates.

But, of course, fighting is not the answer here. All that accomplishes is giving the body bruises. Eventually HR realizes “stay away” and “back off” are a little different than “get out”, and that SR is just scared. So HR tries another tactic. Over the following days and weeks, he tunes in to calmer memories and just sort of... talks. About what happened yesterday, about his teddy bear collection, about how he finally managed to get a good picture of that pizza pigeon. It takes a while to establish a connection, and even then, it’s spotty at best. Using the spell too much can cause headaches and nightmares. There are days when SR is nearby, and days when he’s not there at all. But he shows up when he can.

And then there’s awkward, stilted conversation and questions neither of them know how to answer and questions neither of them want to answer and more scrapes and bruises and strained silences and apologies, but they finally, finally reach a compromise. SR still doesn’t let HR near those memories, but he tells HR what happened as best he can. (The audience would see those memories, with SR as a voiceover.) Afterwards, HR still visits the mindscape that’s starting to become more solid. They talk some more, they watch light and shadow flow around them, they listen to half-forgotten lullabies on scratchy old cassette tapes. Eventually, HR doesn’t even need to use the memory spell, meditation is enough.

They’ll never get along all the time. But it’s a start.

(SR is going to be so clingy when it finally clicks for him when he finally lets himself believe that his family is alive.)

---

This took eight million years lmao. Parts 2 and 3 will come out eventually, they’ll focus more on MR and RR. Let me know if I need to tag this stuff as anything.

The usual disclaimer applies, I am not a system or a mental health professional so if you’re one or both of those things then feel free to give me some of that good good constructive criticism.

#you called for help... but nobody came. #rottmnt #rottmnt theory #the 'raph is a system' theory #rottmnt raph #savage raph #mrs. cuddles #leatherhead #jack marlin #plot bunnies free to a good home lmao #long post

[thattimdrakeguy]

I’m writing this fic about the Batfamily and I’m afraid of writing them as OOC. If you are able to, could you please give some tips on each of the Batfam’s personalities and characteristics? To specify, Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph, Cass, Babs, Damian, and Duke are the characters I’m using. It would be really helpful! Thank you!!

This is a tricky question, because I don’t know the story of your fic to help you in any specific way. So if after this you wanna DM me for more specific help on how to work things out, I’ll be there to help you right away unless I’m doing something, but I have no plans.

I’m going to go from easiest for me to do to least easiest, because I obviously know Tim the best, but even then, it’s hard, because going off the character’s you are choosing, it’s set during the part of the timeline were he went OOC, but I’ll do my best just to say his general character so you can use that as a base for things. Like how he was developed in his origin and all that, and notable characteristics he’s had as he grew while still in character. With some that even if they weren’t around with some of those characters, would apply to them.

His is also going to be the longest, like way too long, because he’s a way more nuanced and complex character than anyone ever gives him credit for. So he takes a lot longer to explains by a freaking large margin. Like sorry if it’s too big, I just kept saying more as more came to mind because I feel like his nuances are what makes him interesting and easy to right. Once you get a hang of his nuances, and you get used to it, it makes it easier to put yourself into his mindset to how he works, which makes him easier to write as well.

(THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY LONG POST, AND I APOLOGIZE. I just really wanted to be thorough and give contexts to stuff. It’s less of tips and more of an overly long description of what I know about each character and what’s in-character and what’s not going off of how the character’s were developed to be, and not counting the out of character writing. So really sorry about this being so freaking long)

Tim:

Tim’s origin right off the back is having met Dick at a very very young age, I don’t think he could even strongly walk yet, so I’mma say three. He was instantly attached to Dick, he just admired him instantly just for giving him affection. He was his hero. But he was also there the day Dick’s parents died, which traumatized Tim and gave him nightmares for years. But being able to remember that night so thoroughly, he remembered a specific move that Dick could do that very few could, and that’s how he found out Dick was Batman, and logically, Bruce Wayne was Batman.

There’s a large misconception that as a little kid, Tim followed Batman and Robin around, but that was not the case. At least not physically and literally followed them around. Closest being when I believe he happened to come across Batman in his origin story, and purposely did his best detective work to figure out where Dick would be.

As shown several times but most strongly in his origin, but wasn’t as strong the more he went on, he’s sort of socially oblivious to what’s considered normal or not, or what other people are thinking of him.

For instance he just knocked on Starfire’s and Dick’s apartment, asked Kori (Starfire) if Dick was home because he needed his help, and when she said no, just bolted even when Kori asked his name. Just concerning the crap out of her. Even when he first met Dick, he just wouldn’t say his name because “NO TIME”, he just squirmed around place to place on his bike being completely oblivious of himself. In his first miniseries he searches up information on Clyde (a former government agent he saved and befriends) that he shouldn’t have, unaware that that’d obviously be crossing a line for some people. Even taking his girlfriend to a car show, where there was a lot of bikini models around, and it didn’t even occur to him what it’d look like he was there for. He was just genuinely bubbly to see the cars.

He doesn’t do any of those sorts of things out of malice, he’s always just presented as being incredibly oblivious of himself quite a bit. Most likely from not having his parents around that much as his childhood progressed, and typically just living in boarding schools, or with a nanny. So he didn’t really developed right as one interpretation, and another being (that was actually almost confirmed if it wasn’t for Tim getting a writer before another could say it) is that he’s on the Autism spectrum. Which is technically verified, as he has many symptoms of Asperger’s. But that isn’t technically canon, as it never got to be officially said. But it’s valid enough.

Tim’s main strength is his detective work, he also knows how to use a computer to his advantage. Many modern comics act as if Tim is a master hacker who could hack into anything. But he actually mostly used them for detective work, and small hack jobs, some of which he failed. He seemed to have learned more about hacking from Barbara, or at least some what implied, as Babs let him help her build a big computer, or something of that sort.

He also took karate as a kid, and is implied to have also taken gymnastics. It’s stated that he’s actually really good at gymnastics by Alfred in Tim’s origin, but his fighting skills, despite the karate lessons he had previously taken, isn’t as good as the others. Hence his staff, and having to be clever in how he goes about a fight.

How Tim operates as far as emotionally or mentally depends too. Sometimes he’ll go straight from the heart and get himself in trouble, but other times he’ll take his time to really plan something out for himself on the spot. It depends on how his emotions are at the time. If he was just picked on or beat up, he’ll be more agitated, and if something really really bad that happened, he just go so far in he just beats the crap out of everyone as bad as he can. As shown by trying to apprehend someone that shot someone he knew at school, or Batman betraying his trust (in an honestly out of character story). If he’s calmer though, or at least doing his best to be, he’ll use his brain more before he starts. I think his talents in planning have been overstated for ages, because while he’s good at it, he’s not exactly the greatest or overall good. Just enough to work fine enough to get the job done.

One of his biggest mental weakness’s, is his constant insecurity. Somethings that’s so constantly on his mind is letting someone down, rather it be Batman or his dad Jack, or even Nightwing, or his team. The reason why Tim acted so different and more of a seriously brooding personality in Young Justice, was because he was so insecure about not having powers that he thought he had to push himself to his limits. So he used some Batman leadership tactics, and fought harder than he ever fought before just to seem like he was even worth having around. When by himself though, it’s more of a sadness, an upset feeling in his gut. Tim has anxiety about things, rather or not he’s good enough. He’s not a super confident person when it comes to himself. He doesn’t think much of him.

One editorial person answering fan questions in the back of comics as they used to, even described Tim as meek. He doesn’t brag or think much of himself as super according to it.

He’s also stated and shown to be internally scared quite a bit, even shaking when he first got his own Robin suit. Another occasion saying the cold water might excuse his shivering. Which goes along with his anxiety.

Another thing about him that is more low-key and not as noticed, is how Tim, even though he clearly thinks of himself as a kid, heck even the letter column above says so, he has also said since being Robin he’s never had time to be a kid. But he is also still a kid.

As they specified his voice a bit more, he tended to use heck, Holy crud, dang, fudge, weenie, and even Pus Bucket (a reference to Ghost Busters) as his choice of cussing (if that even remotely counts).

And even if it’s not noticeable at first, is shown as having a secret teddy bear that he kept hidden under his mattress so I assume no one would see it.

He’s also a pretty innocent kid despite what all he sees. His mind doesn’t go to the gutter. He trusts people far faster than he should, even trusting Lady Shiva, the world’s most dangerous woman and know criminal right away.

Even Tim’s step-mother saying so out-loud. Showing that this is also the case in his personal life as well.

It also goes along with his social obliviousness. This stuff being rounded into not having any street smarts, which was a main theme for Tim directly in his first miniseries. As well as being naive.

Of course as life went on that wasn’t the case as much, but in the above screenshot, Dana (his step-mom) is saying that as Tim is already 16.

Tim in-general also being a super hero fanboy. As a kid he watched the news, clipped out the papers on them, collected, and even drew his own Batman art (and potentially) others to put on his wall.

Tim’s general behavior while socializing also depends on his emotions at the time. He’s normally very nice and friendly, when not super depressed or down on himself he’s bubbly. But he’s also still a kid, he can pout when he’s hurt, and passive aggressive to people he doesn’t like. Examples being, literally not listening to a jock that picks on his friends, an over-arrogant jerk he met in France, and even Steph because she kept being reckless and flirting with him when he didn’t like it.

Nothing straight up insults, but just generally passive aggressive, give them a clue he doesn’t like them very much even if it never worked. He just wants them to go away, unless they’re a straight up bully. Tim, if it’s no one he specifically knows that will invade his personal life, will beat up bullies. He really can’t stand a bully.

Another thing about Tim is that even though he’s an introvert typically, he’s also not very shy. A shy kid wouldn’t travel miles on a bike (and I freaking hope busses) to meet someone he barely knows because he believes in Batman needing a Robin. He also stands up to bullies, and unless he’s really uncomfortable could talk to about anyone. He even slept in only his briefs and undershirt in the house of someone he doesn’t know, with two people he also barely knows. With that example also probably adding up to the socially oblivious part of his personality.

As far as his relationships go, he canonically thinks of the Bat-Family as his family. Dick calls Tim his little brother, Babs treats Tim as her baby brother as well as acting like his/ Aunt/ Mom depending on the situation (I think Tim fell asleep on her couch after eating pizza while using his cape as a blanket and drooling. So Mom’s a stretch but still), Bruce is his distant but still father figure, Alfred is his grandpa (who he actually plays video games with), even Cass to an extent treating Tim as a baby brother as well.

He is very much the baby of the family. And Tim talks to them about personal stuff (bar Cass cause he was scared of her in the beginning), most of them from Alfred and Dick, to the mute hunchback in the Batcave Harold (who is a real character and I love him). He was always collecting advice from where ever he could get it.

He’s also intensely morally operated. He hates killing. He said he took an oath to let himself be killed before ever killing, getting PTSD from feeling responsible for a death, and even crying when he had genuinely thought Bruce killed someone.

As far as how he tries to present himself, he is constantly doing his best to take everything as seriously as he can, even shunning himself when he starts to stop taking things as serious, he wants to be seen as serious, trustworthy, and reliable desperately so he doesn’t let anyone down. He is constantly hard of himself, and is always trying to be what he thinks Batman wants him to be. Which is were a lot of his anxieties from. Even trying to think of what Batman or Dick would do because he regards them so highly. Even calling Bruce the great man he’s ever known I believe during one of his post-origin pre-Robin appearances.

He’s naive and oblivious of himself, as well as childish in some areas (I think his nanny yelled at him once for it), but overall what he tries to hardest at is taking everything seriously as possible, and using his brain as much as he can. He may not be the most mature, often actually handling situations very immaturely, but he does his best to at least seem like he’s mature, and to an extent he actually can be genuinely very mature, or at least as much as a naive oblivious child can be.

Dick:

This ones a lot shorter probably, because I don’t read him as much, but still have a good handle on him.

I think he’s a character very few always write correctly, because they ride too much into the friendly, compassionate guy. Which, compassion being his main motivator in how he goes about as much as he can, and he’s incredibly friendly, he’s also a very angsty and angry person deep down.

He’s a perfectionist, a trait fics tend to give to Tim more, but actually belongs to Dick. He gets really hard on himself when he thinks he messed something up badly, having nightmares over it, he doesn’t like himself when he messes up something badly. And even if he’s not a naturally angry person, when he is angry, he can be VERY VERY angry.

And until Batman writers in the early 00s started it, I wouldn’t even had considered him all that chatty. He had some jokes in him, was very light hearted when not in distress or mad, but as he was developed by Marv Wolfman, who basically created the Dick that has remained the base for him ever since, he was relatively a generally calm guy when he wasn’t emotional.

He was polite, a charming guy, the type of person you want to bring home to your parents basically. He dressed well. Did his best to keep people accommodated. 

He wasn’t a goofy, constant jokester that’d talk your ear off or keep begging for hugs. 

He’s not that kind of guy. He’s just a gentlemen.

He’s also not that much of a thot. He’s a “wait till it’s right” sort of guy when it comes to sex.

He’d do anything in the world he could to make sure his friends felt right too, and that they were okay.

But all this doesn’t mean he’s not just a one note personality. Depending on how bad he feels like he messed up, he’ll distance himself from people, stop caring as much about his appearance, get more violent and mean. He also doesn’t take well to Batman’s nonsense, he’s probably the person he got specifically mad at the most. He didn’t like the way Batman went about stuff after a while. He had complicated feelings towards him.

Despite people nowadays just thinking of Dick being Batman’s son officially, adopted, end of. That wasn’t exactly their relationship. Dick had a complicated relationship with Bruce. Part of him looked at Bruce as a big brother, and another half a dad, and he wasn’t even adopted, just a ward. Something that Dick was actually quite insecure about, till apparently he got adopted as a grown adult man (which I dunno is true or an edit, but I’ve seen it somewhere).

Dick’s relationship with Tim is pure big bro baby bro. He was very protective of Tim, calling him the closest thing to a brother he ever had, and little brother, before they were ever even officially brothers. He’d push Tim out of the way in times of big trouble, make him stand back, ruffled his hair all the time, and loved teasing him. But when they started off, Dick just sort of thought Tim was a weird annoying kid, given that Tim was acting so screwy during his origin, Dick really didn’t know what to make of him, but the closer they got, they got very very close. Dick cared a lot about Tim a ton once they got accommodated. Tim would even call Dick on the phone just to talk to him about anything from his day to his problems. Tim could count on Dick to help when ever he could. Tim was Dick’s dweebie baby brother who he took care of when needed. Even teaching Tim how to wash clothes personally since Tim didn’t have a clue. 

I don’t think him and Jason really had a relationship. He gave him a number to talk about stuff like Robin angst, and a few pics show they hanged out at least once or twice, but nothing suggests they were close. It seems like Dick was hard on himself, because Jason died before they could get close. After the Red Hood, Dick’s just kind of a-- dick to Jason, and Tim was too, but I don’t consider that in-character. Neither Tim nor Dick would be even remotely okay about the killing, but I can’t picture them treating him like he’s a joke and less than trash. Too much emotional baggage there. Tim would be distant to Jason, and Dick would be uncomfortable and conflicted. That’s my guesses on a more accurate relationship.

Dick’s always had a really big crush on Babs ever since he was a kid to the point they were stuck in a small area together and Dick lost dignity over-- I dunno, puberty effecting him. There’s no way I can put that that’s comfortable. But Dick has a crush on Babs, that got put into a romantic relationship both ways when they aged down Babs, but for some people the relationship is relatively gross because of the age gap, and feeling the need to age down a character like Babs, who just looked at Dick like a kid, to just date him. It’s complicated, and I dunno enough about them besides that exactly. I’m not the guy to ask on that.

He doesn’t have a proper relationship with either Duke or Steph, but it doesn’t seem like Dick’s ever been the fondest of Steph. And Duke’s new, and they only ever been around each other in fan service moments. So I don’t think he has a real actual relationship with Duke.

Dick and Cass despite I don’t think ever being shown much together, also had a sweet relationship. With Dick doing his best to make sure his sister (before she was adopted, but Dick treated her as one nevertheless much like Tim as Dick’s baby brother) was comfortable, acting goofy, and to  me coming across as if he’s always really wanted a sister. But they weren’t super close, but there’s enough there to say that they easily could become close.

Dick and Damian was mentor mentoree, and to a large extent Dick was Damian’s father figure as Bruce was dead. As written by Damian’s creator, Dick didn’t seem to like Damian at all in the beginning, but as Dick could realize and understand his responsibilities more, they did gain a closer bond. Dick would put Damian in line (besides when bad writers were too afraid to make Damian seem like he’s in the wrong fully), sometimes even the hard way, and could be very proud of him. They aren’t big bro little bro like how some current writers act for pandering purposes. But they did grow to be close, even if Damian’s naturally really emotionally distant. Dick always wanted the best for Damian, even if he couldn’t always handle it the right way or knew what to do. He was a guy in his early to mid 20s with the responsibilities of reraising a 10 year old kid that was raised and abused by a cult, who can blame him.

Damian

I’m kind of just getting Damian out of the way, because to be frank, he’s been a really crappily written character since his origin, because he personality just absolutely switches between every writer, and he’s just so badly written that way.

But I’ll go off of what I believe to be what his writer wanted, since that’s the most accurate you can get.

Damian was raised and abused in a cult. That dictates a lot of how he thinks.

He was not close to his mother (which is out of character for Talia, and they later switched that after the reboot, but to be frank if Talia was always in-character Damian wouldn’t exist as we know him. He’d be a total different person and character). And he seemed to despise the way his dad goes about things. He seemed very indifferent and had his mood set to angry in general when he first met.

Which made it all the weirder when an issue later Damian seems to want his parents to be together, despite making it clear he doesn’t even like or think much of either one of them at all.

He was also very entitled, because despite being treated as an experiment some of the time, he was also treated as a prince the other half of the time. He thought the world was his, and he deserved everything.

He nearly killed Tim because he thought he deserved being Robin, as Tim was just adopted and not a “real” son. Seemingly he thought that was what he had to do to have his dad accept him and treat him as he thought he should.

He also seems to think he’s above Jason as well.

He’s also shown as sexist and homophobic.

He was brash and reckless about everything. Had a talented in just about everything just because of how he was raised, and goes off on his own to do stuff, because I assume he thinks everyone else holds him back.

After Dick though, Damian learned to not be a murderer (which I also think he might’ve learned before cause he wants to live with Bruce, It’s a little weird and not given enough time to actually be developed fully in an easy to digest way. Which is another reason why I think he’s such a poorly written character), also more reserved, and reckless.

As he was originally intended, he was very tall and not cute. His height being around 5′2 to 5′4 at age 10. Meaning he was an inch taller than Tim was at 13 when Damian was 10 off of that first one, and only an inch shorter than Tim at the age he  met him, where Tim was 17 going on 18. It may not be drawn that way, but you also have to remember this is 00s and beyond era DC Comics were Tim despite being described as looking 12 got drawn as big as Dick sometimes. Don’t always use the art to go off of certain information. I say he wasn’t intended to be cute, because there’s a scene were he was at a gala, where a woman clearly wanting to gold-dig Gotham City’s most eligible Bachelor Bruce Wayne by getting close to her son, but she immediately backed away when she saw him.

Which sounds harsh, but Damian’s also basically the “anti-Robin”, he was everything a Robin wasn’t meant to be and he was intended to just die and that’s it. Hence why he was with Dick to keep the Batman and Robin dynamic intact, just in reverse. As you can see, they completely forgot what made Damian interesting when his character gained some consistency with his creator.

Damian’s development was that he grew a actual caring heart even if he still carried the generally same personality. He was dismissive of people, sexually harassed Steph, was generally anti-social-esque. 

And honestly because every writer after (even the one everyone seems to think is his best writer, which I massively agree times a billion and infinite more) just kept reverting him, again and again, even when they wrote stories with character development, it was gone again. And applied a whole bunch of traits that aren’t like Damian in the slightest, so if you pay attention. Ya can tell Damian’s not Damian, he’s literally not even a shell of his self. They just painted another one to look kind of like him, and even then they don’t do that because he freaking looks completely different some of the time. They botched him so much.

But that was the main thing about Damian. 

I think one reason he got close to Dick and no one else was because Damian from his origin (no matter how poorly written they showed it), always wanted to have a proper parent. Which it seemed he could never have. And Dick grew to serve that purpose, as Dick was the one teaching him lessons, and making sure he was actually safe.

But of course later on DC Comics literally forgot everything that was letting him slowly become a better character. So that sucks.

I partially came into this fandom because of Damian. So when I actually got to read him, I was so freaking miserable after. I genuinely wanted to like him so bad, even voicing that to people I was chatting too as I read the comics, but I literally just couldn’t see why anyone cared for his comics. I don’t think any of them are fully well-written.

But it did help me grasp what Damian’s suppose to be like as I could tell what he’s suppose to be and not suppose to be, much like how I learned about Tim’s actual personality vs the one writers that don’t care about him write.

Steph

Just doing this one to get a more negatively centered one out of the way, because I struggle to find any personality traits I deem actually likable when put under context.

Because she’s full of her self, reckless, cynical, more or less sexually harassed Tim, kissing him against his wishes (and before ya say Tim did that first. it’s a little less offensive when Tim didn’t do it sexually or romantically. That was just for a dumb trope. A reward kiss. It’s still gross, but it’s a different context that’s less directly offensive), goes behind people’s backs sometimes, can be emotionally abusive, and shows signs of physically abusive.

So I don’t exactly find her super likable. And her spot in the Bat-Family was so contrived, that often nowadays I just don’t pay attention her anymore, but in fairness a lot of that’s just cause she has crazy stans that start fights that were barely there, be hypocritical, and group bully folks. So it’s relatively hard for me to wanna look at her these days.

But to be more specific before she seems like an actual freaking demon woman or what ever. Some of that doesn’t come across as bad compared to what it could be. Besides the emotional abuse, that was just a thing and the comics and people just elected to ignore it even though that was written by her creator.

She’s reckless in a way where she clearly doesn’t have proper training to make sure no one or herself gets hurt. She’s been shown causing herself to get hurt or underestimate stuff. She also doesn’t listen to people that know more about what they do, and she usually relies on luck to get by.

She’s full of herself, because she more or less says she’s an adrenaline junkie, and might just be beating up bad guys because she finds it really fun and exciting. She likes the thrill. And tries to put a title of super hero on herself sometimes, because she tries to seem heroric as she does it. She also does it to make up for her dad, which is more admirable, but behavior wise and focus wise it’s more pinned on her just being an adrenaline junkie.

She also just constantly just flirt with Tim even when he didn’t want it. Which is what sexual harassment is. She also kissed him for her own satisfaction twice, once nearly getting them both killed cause people were shooting at them, and another as them and other people were close to freezing to death because they were stuck under snow. That kind of behavior able to be under sexual assault given the context for her kisses was just for herself. Even the time she tried to say it was to make up for Tim’s reward kiss, she quickly makes it obvious it was just because she’s very sexually attracted to him.

She also just nearly lets criminals die a lot because “What’s one more life”, and seems to not care much for the lesson of not killing, specifically her dad. Like she still has the moral standard not to kill, but compared to the others it’s not one she takes as serious. She learned her lesson on being cynical, but it’s still ingrained in her personality.

I also have a whole very long post on why her relationship with Tim doesn’t work, and how she was abusive. I don’t feel like going over that again but that’s a thing.

Besides Tim she has no real relationship with the others besides Cass, which is another relationship I don’t fully understand, because Steph borderline insults her, and Cass thinks she gets in the way so much she just fractures Steph’s jaw to knock her out. They gave them some admittedly cute moments, but it’s never felt right to me. Always felt forced and pandery, but it’s a thing. They’ve played tag each other, and talked about how both of their parents are abusive.

She also had one with in Batgirl, but the best I can describe that is, she helps Steph so she doesn’t hurt herself, and she can be pretty gruff sometimes, but is also caring. it’s just kind of a been there done that sort of thing.

A lot of Batgirl is sort of forced. Bat-Family has reasonable criticisms of her, writer does something to make them more unlikable so readers still like Steph, Steph proves them wrong, they respect her. It’s a formula for a few stories in her Batgirl run.

People have also said her and Damian have a sibling relationship, but I don’t agree with that. Damian sexually harassed her and kept looking at her boobs. Damian had a crush on her, but he was also a stubborn entitled jerk to her. Steph just got back at Damian by making him dress as a normal kid to embarrass him, and when she saw Damian never played before got him to jump on a bouncy castle. Besides generic banter that’s about it. And given Damian’s personality, they never did anything like that bouncy castle thing again. It’s a really big stretch to call that sibling-like. And even the stuff you could stretch is still doesn’t pay attention to the Damian talking about her boobs constantly thing. Parts of it was just pandery, as a lot of that Batgirl run was.

So I don’t overall have a good opinion of her. She’s perseverance and doesn’t give up, and won’t take no for an answer, but given the context it’s not in a good way besides saving Tim’s and others lifes a few times.

Babs

Despite having read her a lot I don’t know her a lot, because she’s typically always the other character in things. The lady that gets the information.

So I only know a few things about her.

She has the perseverance and won’t take no traits, but in a more positive context. She has no use of her legs but that doesn’t stop her from fighting crime and helping people.

She’s a serious, and mature personality. Every case is very seriously to her, besides a few Tim got into because they were just very goofy.

She can also joke a lot. She has a very teasing personality in her as well. Especially with Tim, she seemed to find Tim really cute and loved teasing him.

I pretty much only have panels of her and Tim besides a rare few maybe, cause as I said she’s mostly a side character helping out.

I have read Birds of Prey but that was possible a year or two ago, and I didn’t really pay attention so I’m not as sure.

She’s very leaderly, and will direct the traffic so to say. She’s a magnificent detective and hacker. Stands up for herself. Inquisitive. Her mind always seems to be thinking of the next thing to think about.

She’s a character I can’t talk about as well without it being one dimensional.

Cass

Cass is another character I don’t have the best grasp on but been trying to learn because she’s probably my second favorite Batkid even if I don’t understand her as strongly. But I do get a lot of her basic personality, and a bit of the nuances, even if I’m not ultra confident on it yet.

She’s quirky, she knows how to tease, but she can also be a bit objective based unless she’s bored it seems, like she does watch TV, but when she has a goal she will not stop until the goal is done. She’s a fully compassionate person as well, she sees little kid needing help, she helps little kid.

Also given her upraising she can be more socially oblivious than anyone else, even Tim. She’s walked around an apartment she was sharing with others butt naked. I think she accidentally flirted with Babs (not a shippy thing, it’s a, Cass said a thing she didn’t understand thing), because she couldn’t tell the difference between a platonic thing and cheesy romantic thing as she watched TV. 

She doesn’t always listen. She will just beat by her own drum unless she believes in something someone else said more.

Given her mind wasn’t raised to be socializing, a lot of this stuff makes sense and is kind of obvious when you think about it.

Cass can also be very stubborn when she has a goal, even when it’s against someone else’s wishes.

She’s mostly been a loner by herself, but she has grown to seem to genuinely like having company around to bond with.

She’s been shown being protective of Tim. Literally carrying him out of a fight zone.

Babs’s is more or less her mom.

Dick and Steph’s I’ve described before.

Distant with Alfred, but Alfred will occasionally drop by to help out. They’re still carrying if they aren’t as connected as others.

Not gonna lie I can’t remember her relationship with Bruce.

But that’s some of the basics and slight nuances of Batgirl. I’m still in the early part of learning about her. So I’ll probably understand her more later on. I genuinely really like her though. I like how she isn’t a one dimensional character like some writers make her out to be. She’s genuinely really fun to read.

Jason

I actually know Jason quite a bit because I made a big long post about his time as Robin (post-crisis only, not counting the scripts written before the 80s reboot, or anything inconsistent).

He’s anti-authority, angry, cusses, smokes, violent, murderous tendencies, aggressive, but also has a genuine heroic spirit, is appreciative of the opportunities he was able to have, loved being able to learn especially, had insecurities, and a lot of his violence was in the name of being a more aggressive way of justice. He’d never hurt an innocent.

A lot of this is explain by the fact he was raised on the streets more or less.

When ever he got especially violent was because of a bad guy hurting or killing an innocent or committing abusive acts of any sort. He probably seen a lot of bad stuff on the streets and doesn’t handle it.

He’s pretty decently cynical because of thinking that’s the best way to deal with it.

He was also moody, but after his upbringing that’s to be expected, and unlike what some thinks, Batman was actually understanding and did his best to help Jason back even if he didn’t get it as first.

Jason isn’t a villain, he is a pure anti-hero, he wants to help, he loves to help, when he feels like he should help he does. He just has his own way of doing it that lots don’t agree with.

When he became the Red Hood, all of this stuff just became amplified because of the traumatic event he went through and the feeling of not being avenged and abandoned again.

Where as before he’d nearly kill people, he outright does now with even left empathy. He had a sack of decapitated head once just so other criminals knew he wasn’t playing around. 

However his moodiness came out in different ways. He was actually a very calm, chill personality as the Red Hood, until his traumas got poked at, where he’d go back into his angry bitter ways, but to a more unstoppable way. He’d be more violent, more angry, more inconsolable, more unstable.

As the Red Hood, he is a very far ahead planner and tactition. People always call Tim the planner, but to me Jason is the planner and tactition of the group. He had a large plan that took a while to do, but caused him to accomplish a lot in a short time. Tim does it in the moment or moments before and does a fine enough job, but he isn’t a good leader. Dick is a good planner tactition and leader, but it can also just be shortly before he does something. Jason thinks very far ahead and how people will react and think, how to get under their skin, what will piss them off, what will give him what he once etc.

When he’s not unstable, he’s calm and collected, and is always trying to get under people’s skin. Not in a large over the top way, but just a bit. In an almost charming sort of way. A sly way. He pokes buttons when he’s calm and collected.

As to be expected his relationship with the Bat-Family is complicated. He’s mostly just in the Bat-Family almost purely because of his past in it, more than what he is currently. He’s more of a loner type that will get help when needed, but until the New 52 said otherwise, he’s not much of a team player as he mostly works by himself.

Bat-Family wants him to get better, but at the same time I think they recognize it’s gonna take a lot for Jason to get better, and since Jason is dangerous it creates a lot of overwhelming feelings. Bruce is upset at himself and is almost grieving Jason all over again, Dick has regrets he never had a chance to know him till then, and Tim’s relationship has been so varied and never really felt right, I’d say  most likely Tim would be scared of Jason, and upset at him. Jason was a Robin that killed. Going off of how Tim reacted to thinking Batman killed, he’d probably be genuinely miserable at the thought of what Jason became, and be distant from him.

Jason is sly and hard to read unless he’s emotional.

Duke

Duke is the hardest to say anything for, because he’s the newest, most obscure (even tho he is gaining quick prominence), and so therefore has less to go off of. Not helped by a lot of writers making him very two dimensional at best a lot of the time.

He is a natural leader, a dare-devil, very willing to put his life on the line at any time, and passionate and almost stubborn about helping people. He wants to save people, and he’s always wanting to help, because he wants to make his neighborhood a better place.

And that’s almost all I can say, because having read his mini-series he doesn’t have many character traits, and WE ARE ROBIN, where he was introduced and I got that from was short lived.

He’s only with the other Batkids when they really wanna pander, so I can’t even accurately say anything, and the few times you could make a guess it’s not in-character for the other. So he’s just hard to tell. Besides Cass.

I think he’d naturally get along with Bruce, Dick, and Tim, and he’s shown being closest to Cass in the Outsiders series. Considering Cass a sister I believe. They console in each other, care about each other, worry about each other, and look after each other. That’s the closest relationship he has.

But it’s hard to say a lot for him.

AGES:

To be blunt I can’t say with full accuracy because there’s so many inconsistencies plus reboots.

But I’ll go into oldest to youngest, because some don’t realize some ages.

Dick, was 21 when Tim was 13

Jason was 18 when Tim was 15

Cass is the same age if not older than Jason

Steph is two years older than Tim

I believe Duke is around the same age as Steph

and Tim and Damian’s ages off of that is pretty obvious.

--

Sorry this is so freaking long, but like I said, just DM me. I’m about to watch a movie, but I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. I at least hope this helped some, and if it’s too long, just message me because it’ll probably be less overwhelming then.

#long post

[vikingpoteto]

Red Robin under the spotlight

Read on AO3 

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Relationships:  GEN. Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake

Summary: Red Robin and Red hood are basically urban legends, no one is sure they're real. That is, until there is a picture of the two of them grinning at each other on Gotham Gazette's front page.

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Tim Drake is having… a day. 

Stuck in his office for the afternoon, he is praying for nightime to come soon so he can put on his suit and vent his frustration by beating up some unsuspecting criminal. He’d known being a CEO wasn’t particularly fun, but he didn’t expect the board of directors to be babies for so long. 

He skims his proposal for what feels like the hundredth time unsure of how to make it clearer that that is the best course of action for their investments. The fact that he is only 18 should not trump his very solid, data-based arguments. 

So he’s already in a bad mood and praying for a distraction when his office door swings open and Tam Fox storms in.

“Timothy!” she shouts. 

He feels like he's about to learn he should be careful with what he wishes.

“Hey, Tam, I missed you too?” He tries.

Behind her, his secretary makes a helpless gesture as if trying to communicate she tried to stop Tam. Tim gives the woman a tired smile and makes a dismissive gesture.

Ignoring that, Tam slams the door closed and repeats for emphasis: “Timothy.” She pushes an iPad into Tim’s chest. “What is the meaning of this?”

Raising an eyebrow, he takes the iPad and looks at the screen, noticing he’s staring at a Gotham Gazette article and… Tim’s heart stops.

The headline screaming at his face says RED DYNAMIC DUO? by Vicki Vale and beneath it…

“Oh god,” Tim whimpers.

Beneath the headline there’s a picture of him and the Red Hood. 

Or, well, Red Robin and Red Hood. They’re sitting on the fire escape of one of the abandoned buildings in Jason’s territory and both are seemingly at ease. Too at ease. There are two BatBurger bags at their side and their fingers are intertwined. Red Robin is staring at their joined hands with a wide smile. Fucking hell. Tim always makes a point of never smiling in front of anyone when he’s in his suit, he has a reputation to protect. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that Red Hood isn’t wearing his helmet, because it emans his open grin is visible as well - and thank god  Jason has the habit of wearing a domino under his helmet. 

Who the hell took that picture? How the hell did they go unnoticed by both Tim and Jason?

He then starts reading the article, every word feeling like a punch to the gut. 

Gotham City has seen its share of vigilantes over the years and, unlike public figures such as Superman, they prefer to keep to themselves, making many people wonder whether they’re even human. As a shot captured by an amateur photographer that chose to remain anonymous, we find out at least a pair of the many Gotham “heroes” are closer to us than we thought. 

The vigilante known as Red Robin Gotham's patheon of heroes a couple of months ago and little is known about him. He’s been seen working with the likes of Batman, Robin and even Batgirl, making us all think he’s one of the good guys. It seems like Red Robin’s circle of friendships doesn’t include only Justice League members, though.

The Red Hood, the man so tenderly smiling at Red Robin, is a notorious mob boss whose territory's size, GCPD especulates, rivals Black Mask’s. Red Hood wanders between both criminal activities and a violent brand of justice and, while he's been seen working side-by-side with heroes like Nightwing, a hero that since has only been seen in Bludhaven, no one can claim to have seen the Red Hood so comfortable around one of the bats of Gotham

The two young men were pictured in a tender moment. Could this mean that Red Robin is straying towards villany? Is the Red Hood is considering changing his ways? Or, perhaps, are we facing a pair of starcrossed lovers, separated by different set of morals, but still unable to stay away from one another? 

Tim makes an inhumane sound. The words  star crossed lovers  jump from the screen, burning his eyes and making him wish he was going over a dumb business proposal still.

“Well?” Tam demands. “What is that, Tim?”

“I don’t know, Tam,” he answers, his voice weak. “What on earth- How the hell… Oh, god .”

“Why were you hanging out with the Red Hood?”

“Stakeout,” Tim says simply.

“Why were you on a stakeout with the freaking Red Hood?”

At that, Tim recovers enough to feel a bit miffed. That’s the same tone she had last year when Tim was working with assassins and he gets offended on his brother’s behalf. Even if, you know, said brother had also been somewhat related to the assassins in question. In the past.

“Hey, Hood is not as bad as the news make him look. Sure, he’s not exactly clean, but he’s a valuable undercover agent and…”

Tam makes sounds of a woman whose white Valentino bag had liquid lipstick spilled in. “Does that mean you  are  dating the Red Hood?”

“What? NO!”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. God, what a mess. 

“He’s my brother,” he says. 

Tam looks like she goes through the 7 stages of grief in a very short time and, honestly, Tim feels for her. He likes Tam a lot. She is smart and strong and the poor girl has had to deal with so much since she and Tim became friends.

“Are you telling me… that Dick Grayson…”

“No, Dick’s not the Red Hood.”

She stares at the picture again and then at him. “This isn’t Duke or Damian, Tim.”

“You’re right. It’s a long story. I can’t tell you, though. I trust you but Hood’s identity isn’t my secret to share.” 

Tam closes her eyes and breathes in and out slowly. After all the crap she had to deal as one of Red Robin’s friends, a stranged brother that happened to be a crime lord (an anti-hero, really) wasn’t that far fetched. She didn’t know much about the Drakes because Tim didn’t talked about them, so, for all she knows, Red Hood could be Jack’s or Janet’s bastard child. Although Tim can figure her theories, he doesn’t try to explain anything. Whatever she works out is better than letting her know Red Hood is Bruce Wayne’s son brought back from the dead.

“Fine. You’re not dating a criminal. You’re a criminal’s brother.”

“I mean… if you think about it, I’m a criminal too.” He smiles sheepishly under her glare. “Being a vigilante isn’t exactly something I can put on my resume.” 

Shaking her head, Tam checks the picture again. “What were you even doing? Because it looks like you’re holding hands and finding it hilarious.”

“We… hm. We were thumb wrestling.”

She stares at him, her expression empty of any emotion. Tim cringes.

“Look, not everything is death traps and high risks, alright? Sometimes stakeouts get boring!”

“You were laughing your head off because you were having a thumb war with the Red Hood,” Tam deadpans.

“Hm. Actually the thumb war wasn't that funny, that was him cheating. I was winning so he kept talking shit about Dick’s past to make me laugh and lose focus.”

Tam finally sits down and she looks at ceiling as if she’s considering all the life decisions that lead her to this moment. At this point, Tim knows she’s just being dramatic, because knowing Red Hood cheats at thumb war for certain isn’t more shocking than the time she met Tim. 

“The thumb was isn’t important now, though,” Tim says. “ This  is a huge problem. Hood’s gonna be in hot water if people think he’s  friends  with a hero.”

He refuses to use the word lovers, because ew. Sure they’re not related by blood, but… ew. Tim  sees  him as a brother, damn it.

“Well, I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do now,” Tam says apologetically. “The article’s been up since this morning. Even if we have them take it down, it’s already out there. #RedDynamicDuo is trending on Twitter.”

Oof. That’s… oof.

Tim intertwines his fingers and glares at the tablet in front of him as if waiting for the puzzle to solve itself. He knows it won’t, so it’s up to him to fix this. His burnt out brain suggests calling Bart and asking him to run back in time and stop that cursed thumb war. His practical brain has half a mind to call Oracle and see how much online evidence she can get rid of. He has to contact Gotham Gazette and threaten them into not putting vigilante’s identities at risk by posting such pictures, although he doesn’t hold high hopes for that course of action. What he needs now is a bigger scandal, although he fails to think of something more dramatic than Red Robin and Red Hood being buddies…

Right as he’s starting to feel a bit forlorn, his phone buzzes on the table. A picture of Dick smiling flashes on the screen and Tim allows himself to perk up for a moment. Dick for sure will be able to help him.

“Dick!” He picks up, full of hope.

Tim is greeted with cackling. Dick’s cackling.

He groans. “Richard.”

“AHAHAHAHA O-oh god, you… aha... b-baby bird, you… HAHAHAHA--”

Tim isn’t paid enough for this. He hangs up.

“Can you help me with this?” He asks.

“Don’t I always?” Tam quirks an eyebrow.

Smiling tiredly, he stands. “I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off. Can you take care of… you know… day job stuff?”

“I guess. Good luck with your… your family thing.”

 THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: *insert game of thrones joke here*

In the hood: Go fuck yourself, Stephanie

spoiler alert: not judging u bro he hella cute

WonderWing: steph please

cassandra cain-wayne: ?

send me a Signal: they’re talking about that picture of Hood and Red holding hands cass

yumm: were NOT holding hands

cassandra cain-wayne: I print that picture.

In the hood: W H Y ! ?

cassandra cain-wayne: cute :) 

spoiler alert: she right and she should say it

In the hood: Steph, turn on your location. I just want to talk.

yumm: stephanie I hv pics of u sleep drooling on me from that that 1 patrol dnt test me

spoiler alert: shut up red dynamic duo

 Tim hates the internet.

Barbara is kindly trying her best to muffle the online reaction, but there is only so much she can do without outright deleting people’s tweets. Tim knows for a fact that that would only cause a bigger uproar, so he asks her to settle for burying mentions of them under a fake algorithm. 

He has yet to think of gossip hot enough to top the rumors, but he doesn’t think even his fake engagement to Tam last year received so much attention. A glimpse into Gotham’s elusive heroes’ personal lives was too exciting to let go quickly.

When he walks into his apartment, he wants nothing but to take a hot shower and a nap. He knows he can’t, though. 

As well as he knows he isn’t alone. 

He plays it cool, walking in as though he doesn’t notice the person in the shadows. He drops his keys and phone on the nearest table as he would normally and turns around too abruptly to allow a reaction, his fist connecting to… someone’s palm.

“Nice reflexes, Baby Bird,” Jason says, quirking an eyebrow as though mildly impressed.

Tim groans. “Would it kill you to use the door?”

“It might, better not risk it.”

“It shaves five years of my life span every time I come home and you’re waiting in the shadows. Of all of Bruce’s habits to pick up…”

Jason simply shrugs. “So… what’s up,  honey? ”

“Ew, don’t say that,” Tim groans.

Keeping his nonchalant facade, Jason lets himself fall into Tim’s couch as though he belongs there. Tim heads to his room to change into more humane clothes.

“I’m assuming Dickie shared the news already,” Jason says.

“He couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say anything,” Tim replies from his closet. “Tam was kind enough to show me, though.”

“Tam… is that your ex-fiancée? Hmm… The news sure keep shipping you with everyone, speaking of which.”

Grumbling the whole time, Tim puts on a purple hoodie he might or might not have stolen from Stephanie and that he wears whenever he’s stressed. He wears that hoodie a lot. Heading back to the living room barefoot and feeling slightly more prepared to deal with the situation, he says:

“I’m assuming you aren’t here just to hang out.”

Jason gives him an unimpressed look. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

Tim blinks once. Twice.  No, it can’t be that… “ Everyone thinks you’re a rat.”

“Bingo.”

And this situation keeps getting better and better. Red Hood is feared enough that he can get away with hanging out with the goody two shoes every now and again and keep his rep. Being caught eating burgers and giggling with a hero was a whole new animal. 

They have to assume Hood’s safe houses were compromised as well. The point of having many hideouts is that you’re never left with nowhere to go, but even Jason wasn’t prepared to have everyone in his territory turn on him. That and they all had been raised and trained to be paranoid. It was too big of a risk to assume he��d be safe in a known place.

“Crap,” Tim mutters. 

“I considered ditching Gotham and spending some time with Roy instead…”

“But that would be as good as a confession. You’d never gain their respect again,” Tim completes for him.

Jason nods. 

The only silver-lining about this situation is that this is Jason. Granted he isn’t too angry to think, Jason is practical and willing to do what’s needed, even if it’s annoying or if it makes him uncomfortable. Tim likes working with him because of that.

“You know where the extra blankets are,” Tim says. 

Because, of course, if Jason can’t be at his own place and he can’t be with Roy and Kory, he’d crash Tim’s place. The manor isn’t really an option for him and Tim doesn’t blame him for that. 

“The plan of action?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out.”

Jason sighs. “I’m going to punch something in your Red Robin cave.”

“Be my guest.”

 Damage control is necessary, of course, especially for Red Hood’s safety, but there is something bothering Tim more. He opens the news and studies the picture. It’s a damn good shot, almost looks like it was staged. He closes his eyes and tries to remember that night. In order to take that picture, the photographer would have to be in of of the buildings across the street and they’d have to be good enough to go unnoticed not by one, but by two highly trained vigilantes, one of which had his senses enhanced by the Lazarus pit. 

He messages Babs quickly for more info on whoever sent those pictures to the news, but not even Oracle had managed to track them yet. It sounds like the photographer walked into Vicki Vale on the street and handed her the picture, because there was no digital footprint of such interaction.

Without any more ideas, he puts on his suit and heads out, glad that is patrol night. Perhaps punching criminals will give him some clarity.

Tim is nowhere near closing any of his cases and Gotham is unusually quiet because of course the criminals would choose tonight of all nights to be chill. The night Tim needs a crime. That’s why he’s more than a little thankful when a crackling sound in his comm lets him know someone’s trying to send him a message.

“Hey, hot stuff,” a familiar voice calls, “I have an underground gambling den to dismantle tonight, you want in?”

Red Robin smiles. “Is that a date?”

“I don’t know, is it? I don’t want Red Hood coming after me.”

“Batgirl.”

She laughs shamelessly. He hopes Barbara isn’t listening. Although the alternative would be Wendy listening, and he doesn’t know which one would be worse. Steph’s sense of humor isn’t for everyone and while, Tim doesn’t mind their inside jokes and got used to her eternal flirting, he feels as though those should remain between the two of them only.

“I’m serious, though,” Steph continues. “I don’t think backup is needed per se, but I miss fighting criminals with you. Plus I figured you could use a punching bag or two.”

He grins. He just  really  loves Steph. 

“Send me the details. I’ll meet you there.”

Turns out it’s a pretty standard burst for them. Gambling den covering a massive drug operation, because this is Gotham. Why wouldn’t they use an illegal thing to cover another more illegal thing? That sounded like a great idea. 

He finds Batgirl waiting for him on top of a building. She simply smiles and points at the shady alley down the street. 

“Gentlemen first?” she offers. 

“It’s your case.”

With a nod, she dives towards the ground and Red Robin follows her closely, frowning in confusion when she doesn’t dropkicks any windows. Instead, she casually strolls towards the back of the alley where a suspicious metal door that could easily go unnoticed if it didn’t scream CRIMINAL ACTIVITY HERE. Batgirl knocks at the door and gestures at Red Robin to stay away.

A slit on the door slides open and a confused crook tries unsuccessfully to see who’s there. With both vigilantes’ out of his line of sight, the poor bastard has no option other than opening the door to check. Batgirl swiftly pulls him into a headlock as soon as he walks into view and Red Robin’s grinning face is the last thing the man sees before the pressured applied makes him pass out.

Red Robin doesn’t figure what Steph’s plan is until she cuffs the unconscious bouncer and stands straight, offering her arm.

“You’re so dramatic.” He rolls his eyes, even as he takes it.

“Shush, you think I’m awesome.”

That he does. Especially when the two of them climb down into the basement turned illegal cassino with their arms locked as if they’re a couple. It’s cartoonishly comic how long it takes everyone to realize Red Robin and Batgirl are standing on the entrance, looking around at the 50 different illegal activities happening at once. 

Not as comic as when Batgirl shouts over the music: “Please, don’t stop on our account!”

The gamblers sober enough to freeze in horror. 

“Before we start, anyone wants to just give themselves in?” Red Robin offers.

That’s when guns start firing and all hell breaks loose. 

 The night ends, as it would, with Batgirl and Red Robin walking home a trio of strippers. The women weren’t to blame that their work environment was less than ideal and they certainly didn’t need to be left tied up waiting for the GCPD like the mobsters Steph and Tim beat up tonight.

Red Robin wanted to just watch them from the top ot the buildings and make sure they got home safe, but Batgirl insisted they walked alongside the women. Their costumes don’t look completely out of place near them and Red Robin doesn’t know what to think of that.

For a second, he thinks he hears someone behind them. Everytime he turns around, he finds nothing but an empty alley, so he shrugs if off as him getting hit tooo many times.

While Batgirl excitedly chats with two of the women about their future employment - one of them is in this line of work just to get by, the other genuinely enjoys sensual dancing as a form of art but wishes she could work somewhere better - when the third of them discreetly detaches herself from the group to walk closer to Red Robin.

She still looks tense and guarded, her arms tightly wrapped around herself and Tim wishes he had a jacket to offer her. The way she sideeyes him says she wants to say something, but is too nervous to start. Not wanting to betray his persona, he simply waits, trying to appear as non threatening as possible.

“Thanks a lot for savin’ us, Red Robin,” the woman says finally. “I can’t believe I’m meetin’ ya.”

He gives her a small smile. “I’m just glad you’re safe, ma’am, there’s no need to thank me.”

“I just wanted ta say… I get ya.”

Red Robin tilts his head to the side. “Ma’am?”

“The thing with your man. Must ta’ be hard dating the Red Hood. I know how it is.”

He was… He was getting sympathy from a stripper with bad taste in men.

“There’s nothing gross between Hood and I!” He lets out before he can help himself, his voice a little louder than intended.

The other women startle at his outburst and turn to him, wary. One of them reaches for what is clearly a pocket knife that she thinks is cleverly hidden in her bra.

He sighs. “I’m sorry, ma’am, just… Batgirl, I believe you’ve got things from here. I’m taking off.”

She gives him a concerned look, but ultimately nods. Under Batgirl’s and the three strippers perplexed glares, Red Robin grapples his way out of there.

 Tim wakes up around noon feeling as though he was hit by a truck, as he does when he sleeps longer than three hours a night. He slowly sits up and looks around his messy room, wondering how come he’s feeling so miserable. The smell of food stirs him into some sort of alertness.

Right. He’s not home alone today.

Yawning and scratching his belly, he forces himself to get out of bed. He know that the longer he stays the more likely he is to slip into a coma, his body demanding compensation for years of sleep deprivation. Tim drags his feet towards his kitchen where he finds one of Gotham’s most dangerous vigilantes humming to himself as he makes breakfast. Or Lunch. Brunch. Whatever.

“And here I thought I was the family’s zombie,” Jason says in lieu of good morning.

Tim grumbles something about his brother being too comfortable in Tim’s kitchen, but he doesn’t dare complain. Jason is probably the only person that uses Tim’s stove and one of the perks of having him over is that he does cook. A lot. 

The one disadvantage about having Jason over is…

A knife lodges itself on the counter in front of Tim when he tries to reach for the coffee pot. Tim didn’t even see him throwing it. He glares at his brother.

“Food first. Coffee after,” Jason says. 

“I’m too nauseous to eat, I just woke up.”

Again without breaking eye contact with the pot he’s stirring, Jason blindly reaches for a package of crackers casually left on the counter and hands it to Tim.

Tim makes sure to give him his best rebellious teenager glare before grabbing the stupid crackers and sitting down to eat them. Stupid Jason with his stupid boredom. Tim had forgotten Jason goes into full mom mode when he has nothing else to do and that he’s particularly obnoxious about Tim’s eating habits.

“I consume the necessary calories,” Tim mumbles over his cracker.

“Okay, Damian.”

Tim throws a cracker at him. Jason easily dodges without looking, which is kind of annoying.

After that, the two brothers fall into comfortable silence. Tim knows Jason wants to talk about their plan of action, but he knows Tim is nowhere near awake enough to hold a conversation. Besides, Jason doesn’t like being bothered while he’s cooking anyway.

By the time the food is ready, the crackers worked their magic and Tim no longer feels as though his stomach is ready to puke out its emptiness. He grabs dishes he hadn’t used in quite a while and sets the table for the two of them. The brothers start eating in silence, Tim slowly recovering his sense of self - no wonder he goes for so long without sleeping, he takes too long to reboot when he does - and Jason mindlessly scrolling through his phone. 

Then something on the small screen makes Jason choke on his food. 

Tim quirks an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“Hm… Timmy, you may wanna take a look at this.”

“What?” Tim takes Jason’s phone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake !” 

It’s another news article. The picture is fortunately less detailed, just a red and black silhouette against Gotham’s sky that may or may not be Red Robin standing over one of the many gargoyles. The text, however.  

RED ROBIN MAKES HOMOPHOBIC REMARK AND SHOCKS ADMIRER

Gotham’s newest vigilante busted an underground gambling den last night. Despite his heroic deed, his words after the fact were less than commendable. When questioned about his relationship with the Red Hood by one of the women he rescued, the hero allegedly said that there’s “Nothing gross between him and Hood.”

“Personally, I was shocked,” said the woman in question, Krystal Math, 25  years old. “Red Robin became my favorite hero when I heard he also has a dead-beat boyfriend. I was starting to finally see myself in one of those bats, you know? I couldn’t believe when he said being gay is gross. Never meet your heroes, I guess.”

   THE BIRDNEST

WonderWing sent a screenshot.

WonderWing: red robin is cancelled for homophobia, pass it on

Robin: Good. It’s about time we rid ourselves of him.

Cassandra Cain: Little brother does not approve gay rights? :(

yumm: im literally bisexual

spoiler alert: he avoiding the question

in the hood: #redrobinisoverparty

yumm: I hate this fucking family

 Tim hasn’t stopped pacing around the room since he read the most recent article. Those were his exact words by the letter, meaning someone had been listening. He doubts Krystal, bless her heart, was the one going to the news with his “homophobic remark”. 

Having basically given up on getting Tim to calm down, Jason is the one to get the porch door open for Steph. Because apparently she’s been learning from Jason and acquired his hatred for front doors. Steph knows how Tim gets, so she promptly ignores him and gets comfortable on the reading chair to check the article fully.

“This is nuts,” Steph says. “We were being careful. I made sure of it.”

Tim believes her. Batman and Robin are basically public figures at this point, even if they don’t interact with civilians if they can help it. Red Robin and the Signal were heard of and spotted around the city, but not a lot of people really  know  of them. Red Hood was basically a urban legend until recently and Black Bat sill is. Batgirl, however, is known for being a people hero. 

She was, back in Barbara’s time, stopped for a bit with Cass, but Steph embraced the old tradition whole heartedly. She would walk people home late at night to make sure they were safe, wave at little girls in the bus, talk to kidnapping victims until they were under heavy blankets handed by the police. Steph was extroverted and charming and she used that fully as Batgirl like she never could as Spoiler. That being said, she and Barbara always made a point to avoid pictures, security cameras and whatnot. If there was a hero good at hanging with civilians while unnoticed by the media, that hero was Stephanie Brown.

Tim’s phone is buzzing. He ignores it in favor of stomping around some more. 

“Well, something must have slipped your watchful eye,” Jason says, shrugging.

Steph glares at him. “Mine, perhaps, but are you implying someone went unnoticed by Oracle?”

“Well, someone obviously did,” Tim snaps, tossing his phone at the couch in frustration. “What happened after I left, Steph?”

“Nothing,” she says honestly. “I walked the ladies home. Krystal was a bit miffed but she didn’t say anything, so I thought she was just a shipper upset that her OTP wasn’t canon.”

“You think she went to the news after?” Jason suggests.

Steph frowns. “Why would she? She didn’t look like she had media connections exactly.”  

Tim’s phone, that bounced off the couch and fell with a soft thud on the carpet, continues to explode with texts. He sighs and stops to pick it up and finally answer them.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Jason argues. Then turns to Tim: “You should look into her. I’m gonna check other possible sources.”

“Hm-hum, just a second,” Tim mumbles, typing furiously. “Damian is being a nightmare and asking for help on a case.”

“Wack. Are you telling him to solve his own cases instead of using your intell to impress Bruce?”

Tim glares at Jason.

“Really? C’mon, Timmy, we’ve been over this.”

Stephanie gives them a puzzled look. “You’ve been over… Dami being a nightmare?”

“Jason says that whenever someone is mean to me I should reply by attacking them where hurts the most,” Tim explains.

“He knows all of our weaknesses and he has the quickest thinking,” Jason says, frustrated. “The least he should do is stand up for himself with that knowledge!”

"Kinda rich coming from the guy that tried to kill him," Steph says, quirking an eyebrow.

"Steph," Tim scowls. "He didn't know me then and the pit rage--"

"Timmy," Jason cuts him off. 

Tim sighs. "Besides now I could off him in 20 different ways if he tried any of that shit again. There. Happy, Jason?"

"That's my baby brother."

Steph smiles at him. “You know what? You’re onto something, Jaybird.”

Tim interrupts his walk of worry again to smile a bit. Something about Stephanie and Jason agreeing on something is immensely satisfying.

Still, on the matter at hand, Tim says, “If I go off on Damian, Dick’s gonna get mad…”

“Then go off on Dick as well,” Steph promptly suggests.

Jason high-fives her. “Atta girl. Besides if Dick doesn’t want us to tell Damian to fuck off he has to work harder on teaching him not to be a little shit. Everyone here has a tragic backstory here and we all know Damian goes too far sometimes.”

Tim shakes his head again. “Regardless, Damian’s case will have to wait. We’re gonna go with your plan, Jay. And Steph…”

“Wow, no way, José. I’m just here as an eyewitness. I don’t want to get involved with homophobes and end up shipped with Jason or some shit.”

Tim glares at her. “I was going to offer you some of our leftovers, but since you’re not interested, that’s fine.”

While Jason laughs and Steph protests, he proceeds to look for his laptop, hoping this isn’t going to be a dead end. 

 “This is a dead end,” Tim declares.

From what he can find, Krystal wasn’t even paid for her impromptu interview. Apparently Vicki Vale showed up at her place to confirm the veracity of a story that she heard God knows where. 

Dick is in Bludhaven, but he insisted on facetiming them when he realized his brothers were struggling, even if he mostly just made worried faces from Tim’s phone as Tim, Jason and Steph exchanged notes. As a rule of thumb, Tim doesn’t involve his siblings in his cases since he became Red Robin, but this is definitely an all hands on deck situation. Tim isn’t desperate enough to get Bruce involved, but he’s getting there. Especially when Dick says:

“Babs couldn’t find anything in Vicki’s email or phone. She’s double checking all of Vicki's sources, but so far it’s been no good.”

“We could always get Vale and hang her by the ankles on top of some building until she talks,” Jason suggests. "Let's go old school on her."

Everyone ignores Jason. Tim stands for another mug of coffee. Dick lets out a frustrated sigh. Steph keeps watching all of them from the couch, where she’s been lying down and tossing gummy bears into her mouth for the past half-hour. 

When no one acknowledges him, Jason sighs and stands. “Alright, this’ been fun. I’m going to patrol.”

Dick frowns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“He can’t vanish,” Steph says. “One thing is crashing Tim’s place to make sure he won’t get ambushed in his down time. If Red Hood goes AWOL he might as well admit he’s working with the Batclan.”

Jason nods. “If I don’t do my job, next thing I know Black Mask takes over my stuff.” 

“Can’t have Black Mask taking over his stuff,” Steph agrees.

Dick glances at Tim as though expecting him to disagree with the plan. Tim lets out a defeated sigh. “He’s right. Just… make sure to find a safe place to change into your gear so no one sees you. If there are any safe places, that is…”

Jason rolls his eyes. Tim knows he’s going full Robbie Downer mode, as Jason likes to call it, but he can’t help it. It’s not often that he finds himself without any ideas. He  should  have been able to solve this already. Since nothing comes to mind, he starts imagining unrealistic scenarios in hopes that they’ll give him some insight outside of the box.  AU in which I was never shipped with my brother by some nosey reporter. AU in which I went out Damian instead of Jason that night.

Tim groans in frustration. “Why did it have to be Jason? We could get away with me having a thumb war with literally anyone. If it was Batman out there, this wouldn’t be that much of a problem.”

“Maybe if you hung out with all your brothers and not just Jason there wouldn’t be as many rumors about you and Red Hood,” Dick mumbles.

Tim glares at the phone. 

“Really? You wanna go there? You wanna talk favoritism, Richard? Because you’ve been favoring Damian for-freaking-ever.”

“Drag him!” Jason cheers. 

“Tim,” Dick says, looking genuinely upset, “I love all-”

“Save it,” Steph cuts in. “We all have favorites Dick, there is no use denying it.”

Because Dick’s eyebrows are knitted in confusion, Tim clarifies: “Bruce’s favorite is Cass, yours is Damian, Jason’s is… I don’t know, his guns. Steph is my favorite, unfortunately. Steph’s favorite is Cass, Cass’ favorite is Duke, Duke doesn’t have favorites, he’s the only good person in this family, and Damian’s is also you.”

Steph nods. “You did it! You broke the Bat Family dynamics to its bare essentials!”

“And that is why Tim is my favorite. After my guns,” Jason adds.

“Jason, we do not rate our siblings.”

“That’s why you’re in last place, Dick.”

Ignoring Dick’s enraged noises, Tim sets his mug aside. “I’m going patrolling, even if today isn't my turn. Solo this time. Hopefully Red Hood and Red Robin being separate out there will help the rumors die down a bit.”

No one has a better idea - Tim’s least favorite sentence - so that’s what they do. 

 It’s another infuriatingly quiet night.

Red Robin stops a couple of muggings, scares the crap out of some drug dealers. At some point, he considers contacting Poison Ivy and asking if she has any corrupt CEO she wants help with. He could, you know. It’d stop Ivy from killing someone and on his last run with Harley Quinn she did let slip that Tim was Ivy’s favorite Robin. 

He almost falls mid swing at the memory, thinking he might be onto something, but then he remembers Harley hadn’t particularly recognized Red Robin as the third Robin. She was just ranting about how the new tiny Robin had no sense of humor and Ivy missed the last one. Besides of course Harley Quinn wasn’t feeding Vicki Vale some BatFanfic. Tim’s brain must be really burnt out if that’s the best hot take it can come up with. 

It’s almost 3am and he’s taking a pair of muggers that can’t be much older than Tim to the police. He’s about ready to call if a night when someone shouts:

“Red Robin!” 

He looks on instinct and his stomach drops when he sees Vicki Vale running towards him.  Crap.

“Red Robin, can I get a statement?”

He keeps walking. He’s just one dirty alley away from GCPD, otherwise he’d just tie the stupid muggers to his back and would use his grappling hook to get out of the situation, grapple safety be damned. The muggers gingerly attempt to hide their faces as the reporter runs to them swinging a digital recorder. Vicki acts as though she can’t see them.

“Red Robin, what do you have to say about the rumors of your relationship with the Red Hood?”

The rumors you created?  Red Robin quickens his pace and the muggers trip over themselves. He stares straight ahead, pretending he doesn’t notice the woman basically running in heels to keep up with him. 

“Are you ashamed of it? Is it because he’s a criminal or because he’s a man?”

Red Robin wonders if the muggers would walk the rest of the way and turn themselves in if he asked nicely.

“Don’t bother, lady,” one of the muggers says. “He’s a nasty bigot.”

The other mugger  nods and the two of them are wearing matching pouty expressions. Now Tim just feels bad. He didn’t become a hero for the recognition and he’s not in the business of doing PSAs like Superman, but he doesn’t want the strange socially woke criminal youth of Gotham to think they’re being arrested by a homophobe.

“I have no problem with two men in a relationship, I’m bisexual,” he tells the muggers. “Still, I’m not dating Red Hood. Just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante I run into.”

At that, the two crooks look mildly surprised and suddenly they seem to feel a bit better about being arrested. Would you look at that. 

Red Robin delivers them to the police, painfully aware that Vicki Vale is nowhere to be found anymore. He feels like he’s going to pay dearly for being too prideful to let himself be mistaken for a heterosexual person. 

 Lo and behold, Twitter, on that very same morning.

@Gotham_Gazette:

Red Robin hints that he might be bisexual. “No, I’m not dating the Red Hood, just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante,” said the hero on the rumors about his relationship.

        @dgraysonman hints??? he literally said he’s bi smh

        @stephssss wow only the male vigilantes? biphobic. let red robin date batgirl too

        @babsgeez be gay do crime, be bi serve justice

        @thomascommaduke no cops at pride, only Red Robin using a bi flag as cape.

“Timmy…” Jason starts.

“Don’t. Just leave me alone to die.”

“That’s fair, have a nice day.”

 At this point, Tim is surprised Bruce hasn’t intervened. As unaware of social media as Bruce can be, he’s always on the look for anything that might compromise their secret identities. Tim pulls two all-nighters in a row doing detective work and still makes no progress on his search for the person that sent Vicki that picture and overheard his conversation with Krystal. He fully expects Batman to jump him on his next patrol and give him a lecture.

When he comments that to Jason, he gets a confused look in response.

“You didn’t get a lecture? Bruce was the one that told me first. I had to hear about being careless for 20 minutes before I got home and could take off my comm.”

Tim frowns in confusion. Bruce had talked to him once or twice after the news got out and he didn’t comment anything on it. 

“That’s Batman’s psychological profiling,” someone suggests. 

Tim almost jumps out of his skin when Steph casually walks into the living room with a bowl of chips. 

“What are you doing here? And are those my clothes?”

Steph shrugs in the sweater that clearly doesn’t belong to her. “Jason and I are doing movie night.”

“Movie night,” Jason mocks. “She’s been here for the past two days. Did you seriously not notice, Tim?”

Tim’s jaw drops. 

Steph sighs and her expression turns guilty. “Fine. My mom is out of town for the week and Jason is a better cook than I am. Is it a crime to bum off your ex-boyfriend and his bizarrely talented in the kitchen brother?”

Before Tim can say anything, Jason interrupts: “What were you saying about Batman, Steph?”

She heads to the couch and starts looking for the remote, her feet propped on the coffee table. “B knows Jay will just shrug it off and deal with the consequences, hence the need of a lecture. If he annoys Jason, he’ll stop and reflect on it, even if out of rage. He knows Tim’s already overthinking and working his butt off to fix it, so he doesn’t want to add any pressure.”

Both Jason and Tim stand in dumbfounded silence.  Since when does Steph know Bruce so well?

She raises her gaze when the quietness stretches and quirks an eyebrow at them. “What? Am I wrong?”

“Hm. No. That’s pretty much what we’ve been doing,” Jason admits, if a big begrudgingly. “That’s annoying though.”

Steph simply makes a dismissive gesture and pats the sit beside her. “Tim, you need a break. Wanna join us?”

Tim hesitates. On one hand, the fact that Bruce trusts him that much is a tad touching… and knowing it makes him feel he has to solve this as soon as possible. On another… it’s kind of annoying that Bruce knows him so well and yet doesn’t think about offering any assistance. Tim is not stubborn enough to refuse a helping hand when he’s on a pinch.

“You’re not going to solve anything if you’re hallucinating from sleep deprivation, Timbers,” Jason points. “Besides we’re watching Avatar.”

“Fine,” Tim says.

If for nothing else, just to prove to Bruce that he’s  not an overworker and he can slack off in the absence of a parental figure.

Tim falls asleep in the middle of the second episode. Steph and Jason vow to take him to bed once they’re sure he’s completely out, but they only last until the end of the first season. The three sleep soundly on the couch for good eight hours and regret dearly when they wake up with necks too sore to fight crime for at least a day.

 Consequences. They always come.

Almost a week goes by in which the rumors are but an annoyance to Jason and a source of stress to Tim - but almost anything can stress Tim if he tries hard enough, so that’s not saying anything. Jason is still staying at Tim’s, but he’s considering going back to his own place when they go for three days with no new article and nothing unusual has happened. 

Until it does. 

It’ a rainy night Tim is going over reports for the next WE meeting when he hears a noise coming from the balcony. His stomach gives a familiar twist when he recognizes Batgirl hunched over the weight of one Red Hood. 

He rushes to her aid, already feeling nauseous. There’s no blood in sight but whatever happened must be serious if Jason is willing to let Batgirl give him a piggyback ride. Tim lets them drip water all over the floor and, in his panic, has half a mind to appreciate that Batgirl’s boots have enough traction that she doesn’t slip.

“What on Earth…”

“The most ridiculous thing,” Steph bables as she and Tim drag a very dizzy Jason to the couch. She then starts ranting so fast Bart Allen would be proud. “He was doing his thing as usual, but some of his people turned on him and there was an ambush and so many flipping people against one poor Hood and good god that guy shot his helmet at point-blank which,  damn , that was so stupid, of course the freaking helmet is bullet proof, it just ricocheted and…”

“Steph, calm down,” Tim interrupts. “Jason, can you report?”

When he gingerly attempts to take off his helmet, Steph takes over and undoes the safety measures before carefully removing it. There is a dent on the back part where he had been presumably shot. 

“Hm,” Jason grunts, squinting even behind his domino mask. “Ambush. Shot. Concussion. Very concussion. Ankle hurts? Prolly not broken, tho. Also stabbed?”

Tim nods. “Steph, get the medical supplies. Where’s the stab wound, Jay?”

Jason points to his thigh and there is an improvised bandage keeping him from losing too much blood. Considering how well done it is, Tim figures it’s Steph’s work. He nods and starts checking his brother’s vitals and making sure there aren’t other serious wounds.

When she comes back with the supplies Tim needs, Steph has her cowl down and a somber expression. She turns off the lights for Jason’s sake, the only source of light left on being the lamp near where Tim is already ripping off a piece of Jason’s pants to have better access to his wound. Steph sits by Jason’s side and grabs his hand, much to Tim’s surprise. He’s too busy taking care of the stab wound to ask, but he doesn’t have to. Steph breaks the silence:

“I’m so sorry, Jason.”

Jason gives her a confused look. “You saved my ass?”

“Yes, but…” Steph sighs and turns to Tim. “Babs is with the Birds of Prey tonight, so I was on my own. I was messing around with my comm frequency when I accidentally got into Jason’s. I heard the mess and it sounded like he was in trouble so I panicked. I went to get him and… Well, if there was any doubt that he’s working with the Bats, there isn’t now. It was too obvious that I was protecting him.”

Jason squeezes her hand. “Hm. Pigs.”

“Right. Then the police arrived and instead of leaving right away I stopped to make sure Jason wasn’t bleeding to death. More than a few cops saw me patching him up.”

Tim sighs. Well, shit. 

“It’s not your fault, Steph,” Tim says. “I mean… he literally wears a bat on his chest. People were bound to find out it isn’t just to stick it to Batman.”

“Is too,” Jason mumbles.

Tim ignores him. “The situation isn’t ideal, but we all prefer people knowing Red Hood is associated with the Bats than him being dead.”

“I died before.”

“We know, Jay.”

“Do not recommend.”

“We know, Jay.”

Steph fidgets a bit, still looking guilty, but ultimately nods. Tim is about to start stitching Jason’s wound closed when she says: “There’s more. You, hm, you know Renee Montoya?”

“The one valid pig,” Jason says. “I like her.”

“She was there. She helped a ton keep the other cops away from us before we could escape,” Steph says. “I think she wanted to check on Jason and…”

Tim stops moving. He knows Montoya, worked with her before and she’s a nice woman. That being said, she doesn’t have any connections to Hood. Why would she… Oh. The gay rumors. Damn wlw/mlm solidarity.

“What happened?” Tim asks, already fearing the worst.

“Hmmm, we’ll tell you, but I’m concussed, so you have to promise you won’t be mad.”

“Jason.”

Jason sighs. “Well. She asked about our relationship and… Hm. I might have told her we’re brothers.”

Tim stares at them. Steph is cringing and Jason is too out of it to care. At this point… Tim starts laughing, making the other two - even the concussed one - frown in worry.

“Aw, man,” Tim says between chuckles.  “What the fuck, am I right? I’m too old for this. Who cares? Not me! Fuck it. Fuckety fuck fucky-fuck.”

“I think we broke him,” Steph whispers even as Tim resumes stitching his brother.

They went from not-sure-if-real to a freaking cop knowing about their family in the span of a week. Tomorrow #TimDrakeIsRedRobin could be trending on Twitter and Tim wouldn’t care. Not anymore. Let them come.Literally everyone in his friend circle is a vigilante, a hero or a criminal at this point, he doesn’t even care about endangering anyone.

 It takes actually two days for it to hit the news. He’s alone in his office when Tam texts him a link to Gotham Gazette online. Judging by the lack of other words, Tim figures she’s cutting ties with him again.  

The newest article has no actual pictures, but a sketch of Red Hood standing with his guns pointed at the viewer and Red Robin standing behind him, his face only partially turned. The thing looks more like superhero fanart than an official sketch, but that never stopped Vicki Vale before.

 VIGILANTE FAMILY? by Vicki Vale

Red Robin, one of Gotham’s many masked vigilantes, was cause of intrigue recently. Many  people noticed the hero doing his work around Red Hood’s territory, something not even Batman dares on the regular. Speculation turned into a craze of theories when both red-themed vigilantes were caught sitting on a roof sharing a meal from Batburger and many thought perhaps there was more than your regular vigilante team up. 

Turns out the hero and the mob boss aren’t lovers, against popular belief. When questioned about the nature of their relationship, Red Hood snapped and confirmed one of the less popular theories: the two men are, in fact, related. “Red is right and he should say it,” said Red Hood to a bewildered policewoman. “Of course he’d say it’s [REDACTED] gross, he’s my little brother.” When asked about the conversation overheard by our reporter, the policewoman in question refused to give any more details and requested to remain anonymous.

It’s hard to be sure how such development came to be. The Red Hood has been active in Gotham for years as a mob boss and, more recently, a vigilante and ally to Gotham’s bats. While Red Robin is a newer vigilante, could it be that he was trained by the Red Hood? And how do the two brothers fit with Gotham’s oldest vigilantes? Unlike his older counterpart, Red Robin has been often spotted working side-by-side with the likes of Batgirl and Robin, making some question whether Red Robin is distancing himself from his criminal brother. However, sources spotted Hood being aided by Batgirl more recently. Could it be that his former sidekick is bringing Red Hood closer to the side of justice? More on the Red Twins as the story develops.

 THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: RED TWINS

WonderWing: R E D  T W I N S

send me a Signal: ~ * R E D T W I N S * ~

in the hood: uhhhh my bad?

yumm: dis is great

yumm: now im hoods stranged sidekick

yumm: i fucking hate u jason.

in the hood: hey, if you didn't want to be my sidekick you should've picked another color

yumm: screw u u dont own the color red

in the hood: I was born first

yumm: u died first 2

WonderWing: Tim!

spoiler alert: oof 

send me a Signal: wow Tim that was too far

in the hood: I’ve never been prouder to be your brother I taught you so well Timmy

send me a Signal: … I stand corrected. I sometimes forget everyone in this family is clinically insane

 “Hey Tim. There is discourse about you and Jason now.”

Tim lets out a whimper. 

“So apparently some people still ship you two. But those people are being cancelled because shipping incest is problematic.”

“Steph, are you planning on going home? I noticed you took one of my drawers.”

“There’s fanart of you two.”

“I don’t want to see it. That'll scar me for life."

“I’m DMing it to you. By the way there is civilian Red Robin fanart and for some reason they made you blonde.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s more fun to ship people with different hair colors. Should we dye your hair?”

“Why.”

“That way when you finally hook up with Co-”

“Finish that sentence and I kick you out of this apartment for good.”

 With the cat out of the bag, they start doing different damage control. 

Red Hood is now openly working with the Bats, so Steph and Cass dismantle Hood’s former safehouses around Gotham which mostly means getting Jason’s books and bringing them to Tim’s place. Jason suggests the places should be converted into something useful for the neighborhood, such as libraries or a community center of sorts, so Tim starts working on what needs to be done by WE to make that reality. Tim also makes sure Bruce pretends not to know Jason is using a lot of money illegally acquired to getting himself new hideouts.

They dance around the topic a lot and nothing is really said until Steph brings it up. Steph, whose mother returned days ago. Steph, that definitely doesn’t want Jason to leave, because apparently she suddenly has a new favorite ex-Robin. Steph, that is currently eating homemade waffles in Tim’s kitchen, even though Tim is 83% sure she didn’t sleep over last night.

“Why doesn’t Jason just moves in?” she asks.

When neither boy replies immediately, she continues:

“I mean, it’s more practical, isn’t it? Tim’s place is already secure, he has a hero hideout downstairs and you two already work together all the damn time. Tim’s office can be converted into a room for Jason, because, let’s face it, I spend most of my free time here and Tim never uses it. I once saw him take his laptop with him to the bathroom and then return to the kitchen table instead of using the office. We wouldn’t even have to take the shelves, because Jason would fill them.”

They exchange a look. 

“You know, she’s right,” Tim says. He shrugs like it’s no big deal, really.

He isn’t nervous at all while Jason stands there, his expression unreadable. It’s not like he enjoys way too much having his brother around and got way too comfortable with having a roommate and a half (if you count Steph) on the past weeks. Tim doesn’t care, he’s cool like that.

“I mean. I guess having you as a roommate beats living alone,” Jason finally says.

Tim fails to hide his grin. “We can start working in turning the office into a room this weekend.”

Jason smiles back and messes his hair. 

Tim’s first theory is that Steph wants Jason off the couch so she has an official place to sleep, because apparently Jason’s cooking is that good.

His second theory is that she noticed how happy Tim is to finally share a house with family. The Wayne Manor had been home for a while, sure, but despite Alfred’s best efforts the place wasn’t the coziest. It wasn’t the same as sharing an apartment with a brother, bickering about sharing chores and openly discussing their night jobs before shifting the conversation to a video game they want to buy. Sharing actual meals and making sure one another wouldn’t end up dead in a ditch.

Tim decides to stick with his first theory, after all it’s easier for Steph to make Red Twins jokes if Jason and Tim are under the same roof. 

 Even without new gossip, the idea of vigilante brothers is too interesting for the general public to let go. Tim and Jason start acting mostly in the shadows and having no interaction with civilians at all and they’re still the topic of Gotham’s variety shows and online discussions from time to time.

Because they don’t slip again, Bruce has yet to bring up the subject with Tim, but the mystery remains. Who listened to all those conversations and how? Tim keeps expecting the other shoe to drop, to get a message demanding ransom for their secret identities, something,  anything , but nothing happens. Nothing freaking happens and he’s never been this frustrated.

That is, until, it happens. The ultimate betrayal. 

Dick’s next visit coincides with the time Cass is over for the week. Because Bruce is secretly a sap in the wrongest way, he suggests they all go patrolling together. Such great family time. 

Despite their initial protests, they must all be the same kind of freak, because they all agree. They split up soon to cover more ground, but keep their comms on so it still feels they’re all in a big menacing group. 

Red Robin is somewhere near the crime alley when Nightwing announces he noticed some of Two Face’s goons getting into a building. He checks his wrist pad for their locations and notices Nightwing isn’t that far from where he is. The next closest person is Red Hood.

“I’ll take care of it,” Nightwing says over the comms.

“Negative. Two Face himself might be there,” Batman intervenes. “Wait for backup. The Red Twins--” And he stops himself as though realizing what he’s saying.

“Batman!?” Red Robin gasps in a betrayed voice. 

Nightwing is already having a laughter fit over the comms almost drowning the sound of Bruce’s disappointed sigh.

“I’m sorry, Red,” his father says and he even forgets to use Batman’s scary voice. “Nightwing and Batgirl have been saying it so much that-”

“Save it,” Hood groans. “And stop laughing, Jerkwing!”

The worst part is knowing that, even if he solves the mystery, the Red Twins thing is probably going to follow him to his untimely death. 

 Tim all but lost hope when he gets an email from Barbara. “To my favorite Red Twin” says the subject. He groans, but opens the email, because one does not simply ignore a message from Oracle. Then he almost drops his phone. 

Attached there is a grainy picture of a young woman talking to Vicki Vale. The image had certainly been enhanced digitally as it’s probably from a shitty security camera, but you can still see the woman’s face clear as day. She looks like she’s handing Vicki something, her shoulders tense and her expression wary. The body of the message is, most likely, the woman’s personal info. Her name is Lisa Harris. She is 27 years old. She lives somewhat close to Jason’s territory. And, most importantly, Babs added to the end of the message:

The picture is from the night before the Red Twins article ;) Vicki didn’t talk to anyone other than her coworkers and our pal Lisa on that night.

Jason comes out of his room when Tim trips on the coffee table in his hurry to stand. “What’s up?”

Tim hands him the phone. Jason’s eyes grow wide. “I don’t care about subtlety. We’re both going after this chick.”

“Agreed.”

“Should we wait for Steph? She’s gonna be mad that we went when she’s in class.”

“Jason, Steph doesn’t live here.”

“Doesn’t she, though?”

“We’re not waiting for Steph. She’s not involved.”

“Aight, but when she’s bitching I’m gonna say I remembered her and you said no.”

 They leave their bikes behind first for stealth sake, but mostly because the place they’re going isn’t that far from their place. Tim shivers at the thought of someone so dangerous living near him. He wonders what kind of information Lisa might have gathered and for how long she’d been watching them. Is she a new enemy? Perhaps a member of the league?

The shitty building she lives in doesn’t suggest that. It’s just another grimy Gotham apartment complex that didn’t age well. The place they’re looking for doesn’t have a balcony, only a useless fire escape so rusty it would probably crumble under any sign of flames. It’s a perfect hiding spot, because nothing suggests a villain lives there. It’s just a building, home to many underpaid bachelors, nothing too suspicious about it.

Red Robin reminds Hood of that before they nod to each other and split. Jason goes into the building with a ton of confidence, for such a big guy trying to go unnoticed. Tim uses his grapple to reach the right window, not trusting that fire escape for even a second. 

The window is open and he finds himself looking at a place not that different from the one Jason lived before moving in with Tim. Mismatched furniture of the living suggests whoever lives there didn’t have money for fancy decor or that they don’t mind how the place looks. However, something about the place looks… well, lived in. It doesn’t look like a criminal temporary hideout, but rather someone’s place.

As he hesitates, a woman walks in. The woman of the picture, Lisa Harris. Her long blonde hair had been tied in a knot on top of her head and she’s getting ready for bed, if her oversized T-shirt and pajama pants say anything. She’s holding a bowl of cereal.

She reminds him of Steph and that causes him to hesitate for a second. What if this girl is innocent? Their evidence is circumstantial. Maybe she just happened to talk to Vicki Vale at the wrong time.

That hesitation costs him dearly. The woman appears to feel his eyes burning the back of her head. She glances at the window and their gazes meet.

Crap. 

Lisa inhales sharply and drops her cereal bowl. Before he can reassure her of anything, she’s bolting for the door. He pats himself in the back for his backup plan, because just as she opens the door she runs right into Red Hood’s chest. Lisa stumbles backwards, her expression horrified.

“Knock knock?” Hood quips.

She lets out a squeak and guilt makes Tim wince. Once again he opens his mouth to tell her they’re not here to hurt her when she… vanishes. 

She simply disappears right in front of their eyes.

“Shit, she’s a meta,” Hood hisses. 

Red Robin’s thoughts fly a thousand miles per hour, finally making the conexions he stupidly missed for so long. Of  freaking course.  He was so used to dealing with a bunch of idiots in colorful costumes and assassins and whatnot he hadn’t taken in consideration that ninjas aren’t the only exceptional enemies they face. And if his theory is correct. 

“She’s still here,” he says. “If I’m right, she can turn invisible. That’s how she’s been listening to private conversations.”

A soft gasp follows his statement and Hood is moving almost as fast as Red Robin’s insights. An invisible woman is still solid and her clumsy footsteps are still audible, so on the moment that follows Jason seems to embrace air. 

“No!” She cries out, flashing in and out of sight for a few seconds.

“Careful,” Red Robin warns.

Hood is wearing his helmet, but Tim knows him well enough to know his brother is glaring at him as if saying  duh?  

Lisa tries to stomp on Hood’s feet, she squirms and grunts, but he doesn't budge. Apparently invisibility is her only power and she looks terrified.

“It’s okay!” Red Robin hurries to say. “We’re not going to hurt you!”

She turns her frantic gaze to him. Her brown eyes suddenly become watery. 

Shit.

“Hood, let her go,” Red Robin says. 

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You’re not going to try to escape again, are you, Lisa? We just want to ask a few questions.”

He wishes they had waited for Steph.

Lisa hesitates, paralysed, but slowly nods. Her eyes never leave Red Robin once their gazes met, not even to check whether Hood is going to let her go or not.

“Hood,” he calls again. 

Groaning something about being too trusting, Jason lets her go. He is gentle about it, too, making sure to let her feet touch the floor carefully instead of simply dropping her. Regardless, as soon as she’s left to stand on her own legs, her knees give in and she drops on the floor. At that, Tim can tell even Jason is hiding guilt behind his helmet.

He shakes his head to regain focus and crouches in front of the woman. If at this point they just apologize and leave, they’ll have traumatizes this poor woman for nothing.

“Lisa Harris,” he starts. “That’s your name, right?”

She trembles when he says her name and that should have been the first red flag. He blames it on the stressful situation and moves on.

“I’m sorry for startling you,” he says. He keeps his expression empty, even if he again can tell Jason is cringing at the understatement. “No one here is going to hurt you. We just want some answers. Is that alright?”

Her hands are balled tightly on her lap as though she’s making a lot of effort not to move them - perhaps to punch them, defend herself? But again she doesn’t look prone to start a fight.

“You’re him,” she whispers, her voice heavy with… something. It almost sounds like affection. “You’re really the Red Robin. In my room.”

That  red flag is harder to ignore. He is about to check for other shock symptoms when Hood calls.

“Hmm… Red? Are you seeing that?”

He follows his brother’s gaze… and his chin drops. On the wall opposite to the door hangs a giant corkboard. On the corkboard, held by black and red tacks there are dozens of Red Robin pictures. Some blurry, some taken from so far that you can barely be sure it’s really Red Robin or not, the infamous picture of the thumb war (demon horns had been disturbingly scribbled on Jason on that one) and… He doesn’t have words. 

“You’re my hero!” Lisa claims.

“Is he? I couldn’t tell,” Hood says.

Red Robin punches his knee, which is all he can reach from where he is, and turns his attention to the woman in front of him.

“Lisa, for how long have you been following me?”

“Since you saved me,” she says. “Well… Hm. You didn’t save me. But you stopped a heist at the Central Bank a couple of months ago and I was there. I could've died without you.”

Aw, crap on a stick.

“Do you… do you know who I am?”

“You’re Red Robin,” she repeats.

“He’s asking about his identity behind the mask.”

The way she glares at Jason doesn’t suggest she had been shaking in fear moments ago. “He’s Red Robin,” she insists. “I don’t need anything else.”

“If you don’t know… how do you have so many…” Hood gestures vaguely at her creepy corkboard.

“I did detective work,” she says and glances at Red Robin as if expecting a pat on the back. “I noticed you always go on patrol on mondays, wednesdays, fridays and saturdays. Then if I wandered around long enough… It was just a matter of hard work and bit of luck, really.”

Damn. Now that Tim thinks about it, the one time he went on patrol spontaneously was also the night Vicki Vale found him by coincidence rather than magically knowing what happened. 

“Fuuuuck,” Hood groans. “I told B patrol schedule was a dumb idea!” Then, in a deep growly voice, “ It’s a matter of efficiency Hood, don’t be paranoid. Who’s paranoid now, Batloser?”

“Not the time, Hood.”

“Right. Proceed.”

Red Robin sighs. “Why did you sell my pictures to Vicki Vale?”

At that, Lisa looks suddenly ashamed. “I.. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you were  involved  with  him  and I panicked. I thought… I thought seeing what it would do to your reputation would make you see that he’s not good enough for you.”

“Rude.”

“Hood.”

“What? She is.”

“I was trying to learn more about him, you know? I was. When I found out he was your brother, I realized you had no option, right? Family is family. I even told the news again to clean your record.”

So he had a stalker. A stalker concerned about his love life, no less, that’s… great. Just great. Of all the scenarios he considered they’d have to face, this is not one of them. Before he decides what to do, however, Lisa speaks up again. 

“You sound so… nice.”

Tim stares at her in confusion, unsure whether to thank her or not. Regardless, she didn’t sound like she was complimenting him.

“I mean… aren’t I supposed to be?”

“No! I mean… you’re… you’re dark and brooding and serious and you don’t waste time with civilians unless forced…” She frowns and Tim figures she’s thinking about the night with the strippers. “You’re… the night.”

Jason snorts. Tim punches his knee again. “Lisa, I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of Batman, not me.”

Her expression twists in such fury both vigilantes prepare to restrain her, but instead of directing her anger at them, Lisa scoffs.

“Don’t  get me started on Batman! All that crap about being mysterious and working alone? Then he joins the freaking Justice League? Just… Batman, in the middle of a bunch of rainbow wearing clowns. And then… all those freaking kids. Why does he have so many kids?”

“Lady, we ask ourselves that everyday,” Tim admits.

Lisa is wearing the same expression Krystal had when Red Robin denied his relationship with Hood.

“I’m sorry, Lisa, I’m grateful that you admire me, but you can’t keep following me like this.”

Her eyes teary again, Lisa swallows dry. “Clearly, if you’re  sorry  about it.”

They can’t exactly take her to Arkham for taking pictures. Tim feels less bad about the whole thing when the woman stands and starts telling them in a  very loud voice  to get the hell out of her house.

“Fine,” Jason says, heading to the corkboard. “But I’m taking this.”

“Take it,” she shouts. “I don’t need it anymore. You’re  just like Batman!”

And that’s how Red Hood and Red Robin find themselves standing in the middle of a dusty hallway, Hood with a conspiracy board under his arm. 

Well, that happened. 

 In the end, Steph  was  furious about them going to the stalker’s house by themselves, but there was not a lot she could do except doodle on every picture of the stalker board. 

There must be something very wrong with their sense of humor, because their text group becomes a mess of jokes about the stalker Robin being stalked. At that Tim has no problem exercising Jason’s lessons in holding grudges and refuses to help them with any of their cases unless they stop it. The thing is that all of them find the whole thing hilarious.

All of them except Duke.

“Give it a while,” Tim tells him. “You’re the most recent acquisition to the family. In due time your idea of funny will be just as warped as ours.”

“Hm. When was the last time you slept, Timmy?” Duke asks.

“Tuesday.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“Hahahaha yeah.”

“... Jaaaaasooon! Come over here! Tim is going into The Ring territory! Do something about it!”

Bruce doesn’t find it funny either. He isn’t happy that there’s a deranged meta he didn’t know about, but Tim thinks that was the least surprising part of the whole ordeal. He reckons a lot of metas doesn’t want to be a hero or a villain, they’re just regular people that live regular lives and happened to win in the metagene lottery. 

Or… well. In Lisa’s case, not so regular.

And that’s why upon hearing the story for the first time, Bruce  completely freaks out. He starts considering possibilities from scaring the woman as Batman - “That’s a terrible idea, dad, you heard she likes that shit,” says Dick over facetime - or having her arrested - “Father, having bad taste in men is hardly a crime. She has yet to do anything to harm Timothy” Damian helpfully reminds him - and finally to fill out a restraining order - “For who, Karen?” Jason snaps. “Red Robin? Or you want to walk into that nut job and tell her she’s not allowed near Tim Drake-Wayne?”

Long story short, it’s chaos. Tim has had enough of a crazy night, so he sits back near the training area of the cave and sips the tea Alfred made him. Bruce is doing Tim’s stressed out circuit, pacing back and forth around the cave while his children follow him - Damian is holding the phone higher than his head so Dick can talk to Bruce at eye level - and they try to talk him out of doing anything stupid.

Most of them, anyway. It looks like Duke is definitely looking into the possibility of a restraining order.

Cass detaches herself from the mess and heads towards Tim. She looks calm, as Cass always does, and some of that calm transfers to him. When she takes a seat by his side, he smiles at her.

“Okay?” she asks. 

Tim shrugs. “Weirded out, mostly. I’ll be fine.”

She points at her then signs Tim’s house as a question. She’s asking him if he wants her to come over.

While Cass is one hell of a bodyguard, Tim thinks of Steph, who’s most definitely playing with his video games back at home, and of Jason, whose schedule mostly matches Tim’s, hence he is, more often than not, at one shout of distance. Tim can’t think of any place that feels safer than his home right now.

“I’m fine. Jay and Steph are taking care of me. I’ll just have to be twice as careful during patrol,” he says.

Cass nods, satisfied. She gives him a forehead kiss and leans against his side. The two of them watch their family yell at each other for the next ten minutes, matching serene smiles on their faces.

 Bruce settles for keeping Lisa under occasional watch. 

Barbara stalks her online and finds that Lisa has left a Red Robin fanclub (Tim did not know those existed) and closed all of her threads on the Red Robin subreddit (Tim knew about those, but kept his distance), making it seem that learning that Red Robin is just a polite-ish kid really killed her love. 

Bruce says he’ll keep tabs on her because he know she’s a meta, it’s not like he’s being overprotective, he totally knows Tim can take care of himself, really. 

Other than that, Bruce is way too happy about Jason’s new living arrangement. He even  almost smiles. 

 Tim… is fine. The whole thing is creepy, for sure, but he finds out that his siblings making so many jokes about it makes it easier to handle. Yay for their unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

He doesn’t think he will ever be okay with media, though. It’s annoying enough that he has to deal with reporters as Tim Drake-Wayne, he definitely doesn’t need the attention as Red Robin. 

Luckily for him, his siblings help him with that too. One time he’s wrapping a gang bust with Nightwing when a reporter comes running towards them, begging for a few answers. Red Robin cringes inwardly realizing there are no close buildings to use his grapple, but before he can say anything, Nightwing squeezes his shoulder. 

“Go, Timmy. I’ve got this.”

Tim smile. “Thanks, Dick.”

And he leaves the silent and swift way only a Bat can do. 

 Things are great. As great as they can be in Gotham, at least. Tim wakes up at 9am - an early time for a vigilante, but he got at least 5 hours of sleep, so that’s something - and heads to the kitchen. He finds Steph (who still swears she doesn’t live with them) and Jason bickering over pancakes they’re making. Smiling to himself, Tim mumbles a good morning and starts washing the dirty dishes from last night.

The peaceful morning is interrupted by Steph’s phone buzzing. She use a paper towel to clean her hands before checking it and…

“Uh… Timbers?” she calls.

He freezes, the pan he’s washing suddenly forgotten. “What now?”

Steph is trembling with contained laughter when she hands him the phone. Duke just sent her a link to a news article. Tim clicks and finds himself staring at the headline RIVALRY BETWEEN HEROES? followed by a clear picture of Nightwing and a blurry shot of Red Robin.

The article follows:

After dealing with an infamous gang of contrabandists that operated near Gotham’s harbor, Nightwing and Red Robin went their separate ways without much courtesy. Despite the short collab, it appears that Red Robin didn’t appreciate Nighwing’s help, his farewell words being a sarcastic “thanks” followed by calling Bludhaven’s hero a “dick”.

Tim raises his eyes to the other two. Steph is hiding her face into the crook of Jason’s neck, her shoulders still trembling a bit. Having read the article over Steph’s shoulder, Jason is biting his lip.

Tim deadpans: “This is the funniest shit that ever happened to me.”

The three of them explode in laughter and they cackle for a good minute, until the three of them are breathless and their cheeks hurt.

“I-I want to print that and frame it,” Steph manages between giggles. “Let’s hang it on the living room.”

“Good… ahaha… Good work, Timbers,” Jason says, smiling wide. “For that, you can have extra pancakes.”

Tim is still grinning when he goes back to his dish duty. Maybe being under the media attention isn't so bad after all.

#batfam #red robin #tim drake #jason todd #red hood #stephanie brown #red bros #poteto writing #lmao here take this

[myupostsheadcanons]

Books “Read” in 2020

Previous entries: 2019, 2018, 2017

I don’t rank these based on actual literary quality, but by how much i enjoyed reading/listening to them. Hopefully with Audible’s new “Premium Included” feature it would cut down on so many Average/Below Average books next year, it’ll give me more of a choice on what kind of books/podcasts i want to listen to rather than given a handful to pick from a month.

The “Top 10″

Forging Hephaestus / Bones of the Past: Villains' Code Series - Drew Hayes has became one of my fav authors over the past couple years, from his Vampire Accountant series, 5-min Sherlock, and his Spells, Swords, and Stealth books. FH is one of the few times he wrote Adult Fiction. This is the second time Drew created a world of super heroes (the YA Superpowereds), thus previous experience in dealing with the nuisances and meta of super meta dynamics. I love the main character, Tori, and especially love many of the side characters (like Ivan) and the comedy is the right tone of dark and not-in-your-face (not quite as well -written as something like The Venture Bros or The Tick, but being adult fiction you can get away with having characters named Johnny Three-Dicks and Captain Bullshit)

Dreadnought / Sovereign - the second super hero series I’ve placed on my top list this year, this one is Young Adult. This one is far more serious and deals heavily in issues like trans and women’s rights, mental abuse, and social acceptance. The main character is full of angst, but that should be a given for a 15 yo with lots of mental baggage and new social pressures. The main character is the main draw, most of the side characters are a bit more one-dimensional.

The Trouble with Peace: Age of Madness, Book 2. It isn’t a “First Law” book if you don’t want to strangle half of the main characters. Many are stepping outside of the shadow of the previous generation and finding themselves falling flat on their faces. If they aren’t at each other’s throats, they would soon have to deal with rebellion in the streets and the constant looming presence of Bayaz, who waits to sweep the board clear and rearrange the pieces the way he sees fit.

Michael J. Sullivan’s: The Riyria and Legend of the First Empire Books.

Riyria Revelations: Theft of Swords / Rise of Empire / Heir of Novron

Riyria Chronicles: The Crown Tower / The Rose and Thorn / The Death of Dulgath

Age of Death / Age of Empyre, Pile of Bones

After finishing the Legend of the First Empire books that came out earlier this year, I went ahead and read the prior series that takes place in the same world. I would suggest reading the entire series by Publish order, but they can be read Chronologically. I read the Legends books first, and it helped me see where Sullivan was heading and when he started to plan out the Legends books in more detail. (The early cameo of the Main characters from Legends in a mural in Heir of Novron, and knowing who is behind the events in Dulgath)

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks / Battle Grounds - They really should be read as one book, because that was how they were written. It is a Feast of Crows / Dances with Dragons situation, where the book got too long and got split up. The fans are pretty divided by the book(s) ending and how some of the main characters are handled, but these are Jim Butcher’s characters not theirs and he can drop bridges on whom ever he wants.

What Lies Beyond: Cycle of Galand, Book 6 - This is a “mythology” book (like Sullivan’s Age of Death was) where it introduces most of the Pantheon of their religion and corrects much of the mythology that had been lost over the decades. They seek a weapon to vanquish the Litch and save their world and the afterlife from oblivion, but not all of their Gods are happy about it.

Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash - Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation!) has to be one of my favorite internet personalities for the past 10+ years, and I eat up every book he puts out and because he wrote the books, and is an actor himself, he could deliver the lines as they are intended to be. The sequel to Will Save the Galaxy for Food does not disappoint and even ups the stakes from the previous book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - This has to be one of the most charming books I’ve read. It is magic and wonder at it’s finest, no need for long explanations on how the world works. If you like Ghibli movies, you’ll be interested in this book. It has its dark moments but isn’t outside of what you’ll find in something like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca.

The Goblin Emperor - the youngest son of the Elf King finds himself emperor after the death of his father and brothers in an assassination. The only problem is, that he is only half-elf... his late mother was a Goblin, and he had been in exile as an embarrassment to the family for most of his life. He knows nothing of how the courts work and what’s left of his own family work against him just for being who he is.

Lost Gods: Brom - I liked this book more than I did American Gods (which I read a few years ago). It is darker and bleaker by the bucket loads. One of the few books with a downer ending that I actually liked. I would compare this book to books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men-- but it is a Fantasy!

Above Average.

Siege Tactics (Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Book 4)  - What happens to adventurers after they retire? A fun concept that is explored with our party of NPCs running across a town full of epic-level characters that no longer have a player.

The Arthurian Saga - The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills  / The Last Enchantment / The Wicked Day - A more realistic version of the Arthurian tales, taking the POV of Merlin, bastard son of a princess, as he earns notoriety as a scholar and wizard.  The Wicked Day takes the POV of Mordred, making him far more sympathetic than other iterations of his character.

Arc of a Scythe - Scythe / Thunderhead / The Toll - Science and Technology eliminates death and in order to prevent over population and complacency an order of grim reapers are chosen to randomly deal out quotas of permanent deaths. An example of what happens when every need and want is satisfied by a higher force and the apathy that causes rot in human society and the superiority complex of those in charge of life and death.

The Diviners / Lair of Dreams / Before the Devil Breaks You / The King of Crows - Horror during the Roaring 20′s. Tackles issues as Racism, Poverty, Government Secrecy, Christian-Evangelical Cults, Nationalism Cult Mentality, Communism, Labor Unions, Eugenics, Post-WW1 trauma... It could almost pass as an adult fiction book. I wouldn’t recommend giving it to someone under High school age.

Ancillary Justice / Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Mercy - Artificial Intelligence takes over human bodies as a form of capital punishment, controlling ships and space stations. The dominate human empire outgrew the need to label any gender, using “she” to refer to everyone rather than the vaguer “them/they” pronouns, and only outlying colonies stick to the binary ideals. Think of “The Left Hand of Darkness” but on a more broader scale and as the default majority/ruling empire. Toss in a solid military action novel on top and it isn’t nearly as boring as Left Hand.

Children of Time / Children of Ruin - War destroys the human population of Earth and those that remain are the ones that headed out to the stars on tera-forming missions. A virus created to advance life forms to prepare a world for human habitation runs amuck with out its overseers, creating intelligent arachnids, crustaceans, and squid.

The Licanius Trilogy - The Shadow of What Was Lost / An Echo of Things to Come / The Light of all that Falls -  It is very heavy on info overload, there is a lot to keep track of, so much so there is a summary of book one and two at the start of the third. I like the twist at the end of the first book and that the villain is actually trying to help save the world, and you spend most of the second stuck between who thinks they are doing the right thing and who is actually doing the right thing - a lot to talk about doing the lesser of two evils.

Mythos - Steven Fry - A humorous retelling of Greek mythology. I read Mythology - by Edith Hamilton prior to this book, which is a more scholarly take on the myths, and helps if you are unfamiliar with classical mythology prior to reading Fry’s take on it.

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History That Inspired Game of Thrones - a nice history book about Iron Age royalty. It is actually refreshing to read after going through so much faux fiction that is in Philippa Gregory’s books.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Children ask questions to a Mortician about death and what happens to bodies after people die. I listened to her autobiography last year/year before and it is worth picking up this one along with it.

Average, but still good.

Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet Universe: Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, Book 3) / Tarnished Knight: Lost Stars, book 1 - The realistic space battles just drag me back in each and every time.

The Case of the Damaged Detective: 5-Minute Sherlock - Drew Hayes can’t write a boring book. It isn’t quite on point as his other series, but still fun to read. Hayes is really good at making YA books with Adult Protagonists. It is a road-trip book, the main character is a washed-out operative that is getting his second chance playing bodyguard and future assistant to the 5-minute Sherlock.

Locked In / Head On - Do you remember “Surrogates”? that Bruce Willis movie where people walk around in robotic avatars, well... it’s almost the same thing. A virus kills millions, save for a select few that experience “lock in” syndrome and are able to connect to robots via their brains and the internet.  The main character is gender neutral and you get a choice to listen to the book with a male or female reader.

Murder by Other Means: The Dispatcher Book 2 - more John Scalzi! The first book was in my top list a few years ago, and i enjoyed the sequel just as much. Between Scalzi’s The Dispatcher and Locked In series, i like the Dispatcher more.

The Shattered Sea Trilogy: Half a King / Half the World / Half a War - Joe Abercrombie’s attempt to make Young Adult books. It keeps all the grim dark, but lacks all the swearing and humor that made The First Law books more enjoyable. Many of Joe’s favorite character tropes are still present and is one of the better “Fall to Darkness” stories I’ve read. It also has different POV characters each book and is one of those “faux fantasy” settings.

Mage Errant: Books 1, 2 & A Traitor in Skyhold: Book 3 - If you are wanting to get away from Harry Potter, pick up this book series. It takes place in magic school, but it is its own world and setting and not just a hidden world within our own. The main group of kids are misfits among the school, unable to master their powers, that get taken up by the badass librarian to be trained in more unconventional ways.

Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening Book 1 - the main character has ptsd from growing up in an abusive household, and i thought it was handled rather well. He would be rather competent and cleaver most of the time until he gets triggered into an episode, he fights really hard to overcome this short-falling of his. Standard classic affair else wise, family leaves home because the local authority figure doesn’t want them around anymore, goes to big city, kid wants to do good and avenge the deaths he was accused of, joins the badass school of hard knocks...  big powerful evil thing trying to consume the world.

The Rage of Dragons - It shares a lot of tropes and story points with Red Rising... just in a fantasy setting, not in space. If you are wanting fantasy with POC main characters and a non-European-centric culture, that doesn’t pull any punches, give it a shot.

Earthsea - Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea - I had read the first three books several years back, and i did re-read them in order to refresh myself prior to reading the final two.

The Secret Garden - I absolutely loved the movie from the 90′s as a kid, and finally got around to listening to the book.

Six of Crows - A heist book in fantasy world with the magic users being heavily “Jewish / Slavic” coded by how they are treated and persecuted. I might have thought more favorably about the book if i hadn’t read other books with “street rat slum” main characters. (Seriously, after spending six books with Royce in Riyria someone like Kas is just second bananas)

Unconventional Heroes / Two Necromancers - Comedic Fantasy, the humor’s not on par with say MogWorld, and has more jokes than Fred The Vampire Accountant. It is still a parody of villains and heroes in fantasy worlds. I would find it safe for a 12/13yo to read, cursing and all, though they might not be aware of many of the tropes that are being deconstructed. The reader of the book did better in this one then he did with Six of Crows and Beezer, still the audio needed some editing because it repeats itself a few times.

Once More Upon A Time (Free Audio Book)  - I don’t always care to read romance stories. I like the idea behind it however, to trade their love for each other in order to save their partner’s life, then learn to re-love one another again.

Monster Hunter International - If you think Dresden is too liberal, this takes a hard turn to the right.. replace the magic with GUNS, lots and lots of GUNS. An organization that hates the government but hunts monsters for government bounties. The main cast is multi-ethnic and they do make fun of that at one point. There isn’t a lot of thought into the plot, because action is #1, but it is fun enough to ignore the politicking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Collection - i bitched about there not being an omnibus last year, and then Audible uploaded one. The ending is still one big clusterfuck.

Stephen King’s Insomnia - this book is the bridge between Steven King’s two universes. It is a sequel to IT and brings up the Darktower often. IT dealt mainly with childhood fears, Insomnia deals with Elderly and feminine fears.

D’Arc / Culdesac: War with No Name - I liked D’Arc more than i did Mort-e, and Culdesac is more on track with Mort-e. The virus that mutated the ants and animals reminded me of the virus from Children of Time/Ruin, even though i read Mort-e first, reading D’Arc after CoT let me notice it.

Michael McDowell’s:  The Amulet / The Elementals / Gilded Needles / Blackwater - From the guy that wrote the screenplay of Beetlejuice, and the pioneer of the Southern Gothic Horror. Gilded Needles is a bit out of place, taking place in 1890′s, and is more of a social horror rather than a super natural horror the other books are.

Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 - high fantasy dark fiction. if you really want some CHONKY door stoppers, there’s over 10 of them in this series. Could’ve done less with the manipulative bastard mage that speaks in 3rd person. I had read The Willful Child, an attempted comedy science fiction novel by the same author, and it showed that the author was unfamiliar with that kind of genera and should stick to grim fantasy.

The Knife’s Edge / Citadel of Fire: The Ronin Saga - This is one of those series that I’m always going “oh, that reminds me of [insert another better series]”  At times it reminded me of The Licanius Trilogy, Shades of Magic, Arc of Scythe, Riyria, Korra... It is just shy of being as good as them, and is rather firmly in that Sci-Fi Fantasy Ghetto and has a bit of “anime” feel to it with their magic users having ‘power levels’ and the power creep. 

In Calabria - My only problem with the book is the massive age-gap between the Main character and his love interest. Outside of that, the whole Unicorns in the modern world concept is done very well.

Pout Neuf (Audible Free Book)  - Journalism and romance during WW2. A quick read and the book really shows that research had been done about the setting and time period.

Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist: An Audible Original - Not only does it talk about the heist, it actually touches on the subject of migrant farmers and slave labor, as well as the desertification of the California Valley.

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (Free Audio Book) - a neat little informative podcast if you are looking for an introduction to some of the harder science fiction.

Mythology - by Edith Hamilton - Text book about Greek Mythology. Like “used in schools” text book. It is a good read if you don’t want to go through Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and all the other classical writers on your own.

The Space Race: An Audible Original - America didn’t win the Space Race. Russia did just about everything first. The only thing we did first was put people on the moon. It also goes into detail about how the inventor of the Nazi’s V2 rockets became employed with the US Space program. As well as the government’s announcement to let space travel become privatized.

Pale Blue Dot / Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - It’s Carl Sagan. Come on! Everyone should be reading them. Pale Blue Dot was being turned into an Audiobook in the 90′s but with Sagan’s death, only the first few chapters were read by him and his partner reads the rest of it (she does a decent job, and i understand why they wanted her to read it, it should’ve been done similarly to Cosmos, with guest readers doing each chapter)

Thicker Than Water (Free Audio Book)  - start up pharmaceutical company scams people out of millions with promises of a miracle machine that was ahead of its time. Story told from the whistleblower himself as he recounts what his job was within the company and how he knew the owner/founder of the company and how coming out about what was going on ruined his relationship with his family and friends.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - biography on Douglas Adams and the history behind the creative process behind the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The Genius of Birds - It reminded me a lot of “The Soul of an Octopus” in quality. It is rather informative about birds, how they behave, and how we judge intelligence in non-human animals.

It’s “ok.”

Les Miserabes - I can see why people favor movies and theater versions because of how dense the book is, getting the cliff notes version of the book instead of reading several chapters about the Battle of Waterloo. 

Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons (Audible Free Book) - It’s cute, and I spent the next several weeks humming that freaking song.

Challenger Deep - A book about mental illness by the same person that brought us The Arc of a Scythe series. It isn’t a bad read, but if you are prone to get panic attacks and have mental illness yourself, you might get too into it and make you uneasy. It can help with neurotypical people with understanding how some illnesses work.

Into the Wilds (Warriors, Book 1)  - Ah, the cat book. It is prob because there are soooo many books in this series that it over-saturates the kids impressionable minds.

House of Teeth (Audible Free Book)  - I read this book prior to Monster Hunter International, and thinking back on this one, i am reminded about the other. Save for this one is PG. So... the kid friendly version.

The Martian Chronicles - Space Horror, on Mars. If you like old science fiction, like Classic Trek, Wells, or Forbidden Planet stuff. There is a lot of zerust.

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - The third superhero series I’ve read this past year. It is not as ground breaking nor subversive as Villain’s Code or Dreadnought. The humor is a bit too forced and parts of it falls into “we can be more offensive because it is an adult book” category.

Interview with the Robot - Don’t really care for books or programs that are set up in the “interview” format where it is two people talking to one another. (I have no fucking idea how this book got top Kids book of the year on Audible, it is more of a YA book... it must been because it was Free and lots of people picked it because the rest of the choices that month were complete garbage)

Micromegas - perhaps one of the oldest examples of Speculative Science Fiction. Written by Voltaire, it is about a giant from another solar system that is so big that humans and life on Earth are microscopic. “what value are the lives of ants to a man?”

The Three Musketeers - i had forgotten how much espionage there was in this book. I would say this is a good companion book to Don Quixote, as it takes its fair share of inspiration from and even name-drops the character a couple times. 

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist / David Copperfield / A Tale of Two Cities - DC is the standout IMO among the three, it is Dickens’ Magnum Opus. Les Mis did a far better job with the Revolution than Tale did as well. I felt rather obligated to reading these books because of the subplot in the Age of Madness books being about Poverty during the Industrial Revolution and Workers Revolts against the Ruling Class.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the version i listened too made most of the Americans sound like GWB... which is funny because one of them is Canadian, and the Comic Relief character about how boorish Americans are.

Stuck (Free Audio Book) -  it is a neat idea, getting jarred free of time but everybody else isn’t and doesn’t remember. It gets a little heavy for a kids book near the end, edging into YA territory as the character gets older mentally and the people around him age physically.

Phreaks (Free Audio Book) - i knew a lot about Captain Crunch and other phone hackers of the 60′s. There is a subplot of the big radioactive corporation covering up causing cancer to their workers, and the father (voiced by Christian Slater) being in the closet but still homophobic about it.

Silverswift (Free Audio Book) - If you like fairy tales set in modern times, it is worth a look. It is similar to In Calabira in that way. The mom being the nonbeliever and thinking grandma is off her rocker, but the granddaughter knows it in her bones that grandma is telling the truth.

Sleeping Giants - alien mechs from the distant past, once mistaken as the titans and gods form mythology, now being studied and experimented on by the government. This is another “interview style” story telling.

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes - there is a lot of names and stories, it is worth prob getting a physical copy of the book to keep things straight and to use as a reference.

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps - A love letter to The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and other RPG games.

Casino Royal: James Bond - the movie was rather faithful, including the part of being tied to a chair. I do wish they kept more of the book’s ending where Bond was ready to retire prior to his secret-spy love interest gets killed.

Aliens: Bug Hunt - a compilation of Alien stores about people landing on various planets and encountering aliens, not always the Xenomorphs we know, but the term “Bug” came synonymous to any dangerous alien lifeforms encountered.

Macbeth: A Novel - retelling the story of Macbeth but in a novel form. If you can’t get past the language of the original play, this would help. It sets it more firmly in historical fiction.

Hannibal: A Novel -  I went ahead and re watched the tv show after finishing the book. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, and i understand why they changed the ending to the movie. The book is the main one that characterizes Hannibal and the show uses a lot of the plot. Hannibal Rising wasn’t really needed because Hannibal (in this book) does think/talk about what happened to his sister and home, and i can see why Harris didn’t want to write that book either. The audiobook is rather poor quality, they talked too fast in places and i don’t really care for their acting...

The Power of Six - I read I am Number 4 several years back and this one popped up on sale so i nabbed it. I like Neil Kaplan, and i think this one is better than the first one and actually gets into the meat of the story.

Cut and Run: A Light-Hearted Dark Comedy - body parts harvesting.... mmmm.

Calypso - non-Fiction, biography of the author. Talks about his family, his life with his partner, and what he does. Much of it is charming and it is read by the author. this was prior to him loosing his marbles about retail workers and becoming a karen.

Our Harlem: Seven Days of Cooking, Music and Soul at the Red Rooster - the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I didn’t mind this podcast so much because i was reading The Diviners during the same time.

Malcolm and Me - another biographical book. one of the free books i got during Feb’ Black History Month.

History of Bourbon (Free Audio Book) - Informative about the liqueur industry in America.

Junkyard Cats: Shining Smith Book 1 - post apocalyptic action science fiction novel. the moment that guy showed up i was “that’s your bf.” and it was so... the plot wasn’t hard to figure out, it’s all about the action and setting.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - One of the better Heinlein books. The man can’t write romance and he is rather big on casual polygamy and open marriages. An anarchist-revolution book written by someone that is more on the Libertarian side of the aisle. Mycroft (the computer) comes off as rather antiquated, an AI that runs on a closed server, communicating through the telephone lines and printed paper, makes me wonder what Heinlein would’ve done if he was told about the internet and Deep Fake tech. (the book takes place in like 2075, but written in 1966)

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - the production of coffee and it’s prevalence around the world.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert - Exactly what it says on the can. *rimshot*

The Real Sherlock: An Audible Original - a biography of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Design of Everyday Things - using psychology to improve the design of systems, products, and the modern business model.  It gives proper terminology for several common design features and how to improve on existing structures.

Bottom of the Barrel.

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity. I was hoping there would have been something in there about European Religions, there isn’t, and the book was mostly Greek and Roman life styles and how gods are worshiped. It let me know where the word “auger” came from and why it was used in the Licanius Trilogy.

Life Ever After - disjointed at best. a couple that aren’t good for each other spend the next several hundred years in a crappy relationship.

Beyond Strange Lands: An Audible Original - The audio was complete crap on half of the voices. Which is bad because this could’ve been better. It is a Pod Cast Show and the director couldn’t make sure everybody had decent recording equipment and the sound effects often drown out the actors.

Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde: An Audible Original Drama - They were going for a modern telling, but the language used is archaic. They speak like Dickens characters even though they talk about cellphones and computers.

A Crazy Inheritance: The Ghostsitter book 1 - The concept is there, but it is too nerfed. It was made for the 8-12yo crowd in mind by people that don’t know how to write for children.

Tell Me Lies (Free Audio Book) - It really wants to be smart. Who’s playing who and who is the actual villain of this story? If you want a quick “who done it?” maybe look into it.

Evil Eye (Free on Audible Plus) - told through phone calls between a mother and daughter. The whole genera of evil boyfriends/husbands isn’t really my cup of tea, and the boyfriend’s actor was too fake and the set up to the meat of the story was annoying.

The Half-life of Marie Curie - I didn’t mind learning stuff about Marie Curie... falls squarely in “made for TV lifetime movie” quality though. You should not carry around a vile of uranium where ever you go.

Alone with the Stars - A girl in Florida hears the call for help from Amelia Earhart, but nobody listens to her. Part fiction, part biographical. It would’ve been better as a biography and talking about various conspiracy theories about what happened to her and finding the pieces of the airplane.

Beezer - The son of the Devil learning to become a good person with a found family... however, most of the characters are annoying.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Free Audio Book) - very heavy on the subjects about loss and death.

Complete Garbage.

The Getaway (Free Audio Book) - A man being a POS by stalking and abducting women. It broadcasts just about everything that is going to happen.

Agent 355 (Free Audio Book)  - Do you like “American Mythology?” Like the whole “the founders are the greatest people in the world” kind of vibe? I don’t. I also hate the main character for being one of those “i’m smart, because i read books that women aren’t supposed to” girls when she doesn’t really think for herself at all.

#myu reads #books read in 2020 #audiobooks #booklr #Audible #long post

[daresplaining]

A Daredevil Comics Introduction for MCU Fans

    I imagine a lot of MCU Daredevil fans are feeling pretty lost right now. The first thing the Iron Fist twitter account did after the show ended was provide a link to the comics, and since the Daredevil account wasn’t kind enough to do the same, I wanted to put together some basic information for Netflix show fans who are unfamiliar with the comics and want to keep Daredevil in their lives post-cancellation! 

    To start, there are a few basic continuity/character differences you should know about: 

    1. Matt has beautiful red hair. (This isn’t an important detail, I just... wanted to make sure everybody knew). Sticking with the theme of superficiality, he’s also significantly taller than Foggy. 

    2. Foggy was one of the last people to find out about Matt being Daredevil (though he is currently one of the only people who knows, thanks to a recent universe-wide mindwipe). Foggy also didn’t grow up in Hell’s Kitchen. He is from out-of-state and from a semi-wealthy family. He has a crusading party-girl younger sister named Candace, and his biological mother is the ruthless attorney Rosalind “Razor” Sharpe, with whom he has a distant and shaky relationship. 

    3. Karen Page is sadly no longer living. She was killed by Bullseye during a 1998 story arc. She was also never a journalist; rather, she was at various points Nelson & Murdock’s office manager, an actress, a social activist, and a radio talk show host. She and Matt dated on-and-off for a very long time. Matt has also dated many, many other people, and most of his girlfriends have died/suffered horribly in his presence. He is currently (and uncharacteristically) single. 

    4. Conversely, Ben Urich is very much alive. He was one of the first people to figure out Daredevil’s secret identity, and this formed the basis of what became a long-held and emotional friendship. (However, thanks to the recent mindwipe mentioned above, he no longer knows.)

    5. Elektra and Matt dated in college, where Elektra was a political science major. She was born and raised in Greece, and her father was a Greek diplomat. When he was killed thanks to Matt’s amateur heroics during a botched hostage situation, Elektra left the country and trained with both the Chaste and the Hand, which sent her down a painful path that molded her into the expert assassin she is today. She was killed by Bullseye back in the 80s, but she got better. 

    6. Matt is a swashbuckling, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants adrenaline junkie, which is why he’s called “the Man Without Fear” and... well... Daredevil. He chose/reclaimed the name Daredevil as an act of empowerment during his first superhero outing (“the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” is not a thing in the comics). He became a superhero to avenge his father’s death, which occurred when Matt was in either college or law school, depending on which writer you ask. Both Matt and Foggy attended Jack Murdock’s final boxing match.

    7. Matt is much more religious in the show than he has ever been in the comics, since in the show he was raised in a Christian orphanage and in the comics he was raised by his father. There are a few story arcs that depict him as religious, but they are vastly in the minority.  

    8. This is true in the show too, but since it was sometimes unclear, let me reiterate: Matt cannot see. He doesn’t perceive any light. All of his sensory input is non-visual. He has superhumanly-enhanced senses, and something he calls his “radar sense”. The actual nature and parameters of the radar sense vary between creative teams, but it’s best to think of it as something like echolocation. It allows Matt 360 degree perception of solid objects up a certain distance from him. He could clearly do this in the show too, but it was never actually mentioned.

    I could keep going, since there are plenty of other differences, but you should be able to catch on without too much confusion!

Where Should I Start?

    You should start with Matt’s origin story, since there are a few key differences from the show’s version (some of which I mentioned above). The very first issue of Daredevil is quite good. However, if you’re put off by 1960s comics, you don’t need to start from the beginning. A really good retelling that is modern reader-friendly is Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Daredevil: Yellow. It covers all of the basics, and is a very nice read. You may also see people mention Frank Miller’s Man Without Fear mini-series. It’s also good, though PLEASE NOTE that it was intended to be an alternate version of the story, and thus isn’t entirely canon. 

    Once you have the origin down, you can move to the main series. Don’t be intimidated by the 55 years-worth of comics-- again, you DON’T need to start at the beginning, and you don’t have to read everything if you don’t want to. All huge, decades-spanning series like Daredevil are filled with different jumping-on points in order to remain accessible to new readers. This can sometimes create confusion-- Daredevil will have been re-started six times as of February 2019, so if you look for Daredevil #1 you’ll get a whole bunch of different issues. Each of these re-starts is generally referred to as a “volume”, and if you follow this blog you’ll notice mentions of Daredevil volume 1, volume 2, etc. For the purposes of simplicity, in this post I’ll just be identifying the volumes based on the year they began, because that’s how they’re labeled in Marvel Unlimited. Marvel Unlimited is Marvel’s official digital archive, to which I highly recommend subscribing if you’re interested in reading a lot of back issues. All of my comics links in this post will take you there. 

    There are two starting points in particular that I recommend. They are both very good, but they're tonally different, so you can pick whichever suits your personal preferences. 

     1. If you crave more of the gritty noir of the Netflix-verse, I recommend starting with Daredevil (1998) #26. This is the first issue of the main thread of Brian Michael Bendis’s run, which is a phenomenal run that provided tonal inspiration for the show. At that point in continuity, Matt is still recovering from Karen Page’s death. He and Foggy have started up a new iteration of Nelson & Murdock (there have been many) and are doing very well; the run starts with them winning a multi-million dollar court settlement. The other important piece of context for this first arc is that Wilson Fisk was shot in the head in a previous story, while left him blind and weakened his criminal empire. Bendis’s run is quite long and will lead you directly into Ed Brubaker’s, which picks up immediately afterward with issue #82 and is also very good. 

    2. If you want something a bit lighter and more swashbuckley, I recommend starting with Mark Waid’s run. It’s my personal favorite Daredevil run (and I like a lot of Daredevil, so that’s saying something), and it’s a great jumping-on point because it starts a new volume. It kicks off with Daredevil (2011) #1 and goes through #36-- at which point the comic got another new #1. Thus, Waid did a little mini-series called Daredevil: Road Warrior to bridge the two volumes, then carried on the story with Daredevil (2014) #1. Context for this run is a little weirder. Matt has just recently returned to NYC after getting possessed by a demon and then taking a mental vacation to get over it. Upon his return, he and Foggy rebuild Nelson & Murdock yet again, and Matt decides that after all of the pain and suffering he’s been through, he’s going to be happy and enjoy life no matter what. It’s also important to know that his secret identity is basically public knowledge at this point, since a newspaper got ahold of the information and outed him during Bendis’s run. 

    From there, there are any number of places you can go. Here is my big post that goes into more detail about other recommended and essential Daredevil reading! And if you’re looking for other characters and/or other specifically-themed reading guides, here is our whole archive so far. (I also have an Iron Fist blog-- bookoftheironfist.tumblr.com-- for anyone looking to break into that area of the comics.) 

What’s Going On Right Now?

    As of right now (December 2018), Matt is in an exciting position! The latest Daredevil run (AKA Daredevil (2015) or Daredevil volume 5) just ended with issue #612. Currently, Matt is in Marvel Knights 20th, which is a six-issue bi-weekly mini-series about an alternate universe-type situation in which the world has been made to forget superheroes. Matt, Frank Castle, Elektra Natchios, Bruce Banner, T’Challa, and various others have to regain their own memories and figure out what happened.  

    Then in January 2019, we’re getting a five-issue weekly (yes, that’s right, weekly) mini-series called Man Without Fear (not to be confused with Frank Miller’s Man Without Fear, which I mentioned earlier). This will be a retrospective, with each issue covering a different significant person/group of people in Matt’s life. 

    And as soon as that ends, in February 2019 the next volume of the main series will begin, with Daredevil (2019) #1! GET EXCITED!

Where Can I Get Comics?

    I already mentioned Marvel Unlimited, which is attached to the Marvel website, through which you can purchase digital issues in addition to subscribing to the archive. Another great source for digital comics is Comixology (though sadly, just like everything else on the planet, it’s owned by Amazon). And of course, you can buy physical copies. Don’t hesitate to visit your local comic book store, because they are great resources and can also be nice places to connect with other fans. To find stores in your area, check Comic Shop Locator, and to make sure they’re good ones, check Hater-Free Wednesdays. 

    New comics come out on Wednesdays. 

Other Daredevil Resources

manwithoutfear.com This is an invaluable resource for everything Daredevil-- information on each issue, up-to-date news, comic previews, creator interviews... everything. If you ever need to know what’s going on in the world of Daredevil, this is the place to go. 

The Other Murdock Papers This is everything our blog pretends to be. Christine Hanefalk, who runs The Other Murdock Papers, is a Daredevil expert who has written essay after essay over the years on everything you can imagine, from detailed storyline analyses to tracking Matt’s shifting hair styles. She is a particular expert on his hypersenses, and her work formed the basis of our own understanding of Matt’s powers. Do yourself a favor and browse through this website. You won’t regret it.  

Daredevil 101 @pluckyredhead is in the process of tirelessly summarizing every single Daredevil story arc. Go have a look!

    And of course, never hesitate to ask if you have any questions or want more recommendations or advice. I love getting people into Daredevil comics-- they changed my life, and I hope they’ll do the same for others!

#Daredevil #Recommendations List

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Prompt: Alternate route to the ABO thing where instead of working together, A! Ra’s killed his competition and claimed both O! Tim and O! Jay, with or without resulting pregnancies and Ra’s stealing them away while framing Roman for the crime.

I was having trouble coming up with what to do about these (especially that last one because I don’t see Ra’s agreeing to that unless he gets something big) and found my answer in combining them.

Is it maybe cheating a little because I only have a couple left and I’m losing steam, and I really miss my wips? Maybe.

Buuut you get a longer fic so yay!

This is based off the Double Omega ask/verse thing that ended up being taken to the next level by Queen_Louise.

Here are the links to the relevant posts: One, Two, Three, Four (last two are Queen_Louise’s lovely stream-of-conscious fic which is how she phrased it and Iike it)

200 Followers Celebratory Prompt-A-Thon

(Prompts are closed. Thank you to everyone sent one in! I’ll be filling them the rest of the week! And a big thank you to everyone who follows me!)

Ra’s/Tim/Jason (Alpha!Ra’s/Omega!Tim/Omega!Jason)

Words: 2340

Rating: Mature (nothing explicit just mature themes, mentioned rape, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, coerced sex)

(This is really long but I haven’t had a chance to put it on AO3 yet. I’ll add that link later)

Ra’s is grateful that Roman is so careless. It’s going tomake things so much easier when they’re finished.

He doesn’t seem concerned about leaving his seed all overthe place, he’d removed a glove earlier to feel warm flesh against his palmwhen he started slapping his omega around, and now he has that bare hand bracedagainst the wall while he knots the poor boy’s mouth.

Far too easy. With Ra’s’ own deliberate movements so that hedoesn’t perspire, keeping his gloves on, careful to keep each drop of his own cometrapped securely inside Timothy… there will be no evidence that he was everhere. Any trace left behind can easily be explained away with how often he interactswith both boys but what Roman is leaving behind will make it impossible tosuspect anyone else.

The crime lord probably figures it doesn’t much matter.Jason will remember him and what he’s done, then the ferocious omega will goafter him. Roman’s probably counting on it, with the deep, bloody bites he’sleaving all over the boy. It’s unlikely he’d be able to resist Roman’s commandsin any meaningful way.

It’s almost a shame. Black Mask is a vicious sadist but he’sclever and adaptable. Their partnership in this endeavor has been wildlysuccessful and a very smooth going for an altercation with the Bats.

But Ra’s al Ghul is going to get what he wants. Someone hasto take the fall for that.

In the end, Roman Sionis is replaceable.

He waits until they’re in thetransport, Black Mask’s helicopter hijacked by League assassins, then shoots thecrime boss with a powerful tranquilizer. He’d have preferred to kill him. Buthe’ll need to assert his dominance over Roman, in front of Jason, in order tooverpower the bites.

Ra’s sighs at the addedinconvenience. He’d miscalculated Roman’s lust for the boy. Never expected himto bother with mating bites the way Ra’s had with Timothy.

The second team calls to checkin. They’ve secured the omegas, wiped, stolen, or destroyed the securityfootage, and searched for any sign that Ra’s had been there, destroying anythingthey might have found.

He wastes no time when theyreturn to the League’s headquarters. There’s only a day or two left of theomegas’ shared heat. He fights and kills Roman in front of both boys. It waslaughably easy. The mobster wasn’t a fighter like Ra’s. Then, taking advantageof the heat haze, the wash of hormones telling an omega they want the mosteligible Alpha mate, he claims Jason too, digging his teeth in deep, past howfar Roman went. It’s the only way.

When both boys come out of theirheat, collared and leashed to his giant bed, Ra’s explains their situation tothem. The growls and threats and curses are to be expected. As is the snap ofteeth when he gets too close. But it won’t stop him. They’ll fall in line soon.

Several weeks later, Ra’s isirritated when it’s Jason who ends up with child. He knows it’s not his.

The omega spends the next monthsseverely distressed after Ra’s has the pregnancy terminated without the youngerman’s consent. Timothy’s presence seems to comfort Jason but even with Timthere, the older boy is distant and unresponsive when Ra’s breeds him.

He ends up giving Jason somespace and focusing his attention on Timothy. But he still allows the boys tospend most of their time together.

It may be that small courtesythat helps them to gradually accept their new place. It takes Jason nearly ayear to come out of the deep depression of having his pup taken. And even then,Ra’s thinks that it is largely thanks to the fact that Timothy, the one Jasonconsiders his mate, is now expecting and that has soothed away some of thepain.

Meanwhile, Batman tears apartGotham, and then the world looking for Black Mask.

Jason shifts a little to get a better position and Tim smotherssome giggles when his mate’s nose brushes lightly at his swollen belly.

“Hello little one,” Jason whispers, lips moving against thesoft green fabric of the robs Tim wears, thumb rubbing little circles nearTim’s bellybutton, “Your mommy and I very excited to meet you, Jackie.”

“Jackie?” Tim smiles down at him, running his fingersthrough Jason’s hair and appreciating how he finally looks healthy again. For along time after his—after Ra’s took his pup, Jason wouldn’t eat until Ra’sforced him (and later, when the Demon finally realized that was doing more harmthan good, not unless Tim encouraged him), wouldn’t sleep until his bodycollapsed. He’d been pale and gaunt and… sad.

But now the sun from the balcony lights up cheeks full ofcolor and Tim can see his mate in those turquoise eyes again instead of theemptiness that had been there for so long.

“I don’t know. Could be a cuted up nickname for Jack or shortfor Jacqueline or even just be Jackie.”

“Jack? Like my dad?”

Jason pauses, fingers twisting the fabric and letting goseveral times. “He tried to stop you from being Robin. If he’d succeeded youprobably wouldn’t be here. Seems like an ok guy.”

“He was,” Tim hums, tightening the arm he has draped overJason’s waist and twirling his black curls between his fingers, “I like it,Jay. It’s sweet.”

Jason sighs sadly. “It doesn’t matter,” he nuzzles his faceinto Tim’s belly, “Ra’s will call it whatever he wants.”

They sit in silence for a moment and Tim can’t help butglance toward the door. It’s locked from the outside. Their suite of rooms isexpansive and luxurious and Ra’s allows them to stay together. But there areonly two doors to stronghold beyond and they’re both well guarded, only openedon Ra’s’ orders.

“Jason?”

“Hm?”

Tim tugs on his hair gently and he comes up easily, carefulto keep his hand on Tim’s stomach.

When Jason is looking at him Tim moves his hand from hishair to cup his face.

“This is our baby.Whatever else has happened or will happen, youare my mate. And I’m yours.”

He wants to add that any children they have are theirs. But he’s hesitant to remind Jason that he’llbe expected to breed. Ra’s has already been making prodding comments aboutwhether Tim thinks he’s ready. He doesn’t expect the older man will wait muchlonger. Especially as Tim gets further along and Ra’s will undoubtedly wish tosee his other omega heavy with the evidence of his Alpha virility.

Jason gives him a small smile and rests his head on Tim’sshoulder.

“It’s thoughtful of you to try to protect me,” he says,breath puffing against Tim’s chin, “But I know it’s just a matter of time.”

Another short silence as they just sit, quietly takingcomfort in each other. Then Jason speaks again.

“And I know they’ll be our kids, Tim. But they will also behis. And we’re not in Gotham. We’re not in the manor. This is the League ofAssassins. We won’t get much say in anything. We won’t get to name them. We won’tget to argue over how best to raise them because we won’t be given a choice.They’re going to be raised like Damian. They won’t get childhoods. They’ll bemolded into weapons.”

Tim swallows. He knows this. He’s been thinking about it alot. He’s come up with the best plan he can think of. Even if he hasn’tcompletely given up hope that Bruce will save them or that Ra’s will let hisguard down.

He’s wanted to talk to Jason about it, he deserves to know,to have a say. But again, Tim’s been reluctant to broach the subject with thestate he’s been in.

Well. Jason brought it up.

“Now that you mention it,” he begins carefully, “I’ve had anidea that might get us some more control over that. But, in the incrediblyunlikely event that Ra’s accepts… it’s still going to be a very big sacrificefrom us.”

Jason blinks at him for a moment. Then they both start whenthey feel the baby kick.

“Tell me.”

Ra’s narrows his eyes.

They are being unusually subservient. Both boys are on theirknees, gaze downcast in deference.

It’s a beautiful picture, especially since getting them tosubmit is still such a chore. His cock stirs but he doesn’t trust it for amoment.

“What is this?”

“A small preview of what we’re offering,” Timothy says,voice steady but pleasantly obsequious.

“Which is what, precisely?”

“For starters, we won’t fight you anymore, we’ll give youwhat you want,” Jason’s voice is less sure but Ra’s is a little surprised toeven hear it at all. This is first time the older omega has spoken to him sincehe had Roman’s child aborted.  

“We’d like to make an arrangement,” Timothy finishes for hismate when Jason doesn’t continue. The sight of the boy kneeling, not meetinghis eyes, belly swollen with his progeny, makes him want to throw them both onthe bed and put a child in Jason as well. The idea of them carrying at the sametime, willingly and eagerly giving into his whims… at the moment, it’s his mostfervent desire.

“What kind of arrangement?”

They look at each other out of the corners of their eyes.Jason gives Timothy the tiniest of nods.

“We don’t want our children raised like Damian—“

“My children,” Ra’scorrects. They better come to understand this simple truth very quickly.

His statement earns him twin scowls of anger and their eyesflicker up to his and stay there.

“That’s the deal we’re asking for,” Tim says, much lessservile this time, and Ra’s thinks it’s a small reminder that they’re actingagainst their instincts and their own wants to bring this to him. The least hecan do is listen. “That they’d be our children,all three of ours. We’d like to work out a balance between League training andletting them have childhoods.”

“Out of the question,” he’s disappointed in Timothy. The boyshould know him better than this, be smarter than this. “My heir needs—“

“That’s the other part,” Jason interrupts quietly, eyesdropping again now that the attention is on him. Ra’s likes this meek look on biggeromega. “The kids get to choose for themselves, when they’re old enough, whetherthey want to stay with the League or make their own way. When one chooses tostay, the Lazarus Pits will give them all the time they need to learn what youwould need them to learn, so there’s no need to make it their entire life from thejump. And we’d… we would…”

He falters again. Closes his eyes and takes a deep breathbut stays silent.

“We’d stay with you,” Tim all but whispers, “For as long asit takes for one of our children toagree to inherit your empire.”

Ra’s’ brows shoot up. He was certainly not expecting anoffer like this.

“You would subject yourselves to this? You would willingly enterthe Pit? Allow it to wash away age and illness to stay by my side until theterms are met?”

“Yes,” both boys mutter together.

“And if you’re allowed to have such an active role in theirupbringing, you would undoubtedly encourage them to pursue alternate paths?”

They glance at each other again. “We… will try not toinfluence their decisions,” Timothy answers.

“Unless you do,” Jason adds, voice thick with conviction,“If you’re whispering in their ears then we will too.”

They’re thinking about their future children, notthemselves, like all good omegas. That’s why they misunderstand.

He won’t mind if they try to nudge his offspring away frombecoming his successor. A willing pupil is better than one forced after all andthey’re correct about the Pits.

So they misjudge his motivation for asking. He he can waitfor one of his future sons to agree. He’s in no hurry if they’re willing to sitat his feet, warm his bed, and bare his children. If these two beautiful prizesof omegas bow to his will and do his bidding, obey and serve as they were meantto, through possible centuries…

Ra’s closes the small distance between them, runs hisfingers through Timothy’s hair before gently grasping Jason’s chin and tiltinghis face up.

He gives the boy a pleased hum when he keeps his gaze on thefloor.

“Accepted,” he rumbles in that low Alpha register, makingboth boys shudder, “We can work out some details in the morning.”

He runs his thumb over Jason’s bottom lip. He can feel Timothy’seyes on them, watching closely, untrusting and protective.

“In the meantime,” he pushes the digit into the omega’smouth and smirks when he meets no resistance. Even if Jason’s eyes havesqueezed shut and his breath has quickened, he seems determined to hold up thesubmissive part of the deal. “I believe it’s past time you resume your longneglected omega duties.”

Jason’s chest heaves up and down even more rapidly as Ra’smoves his hand from the boy’s mouth to his hair, grip firm but not unkind. Theboy’s eyes remain shut tight.

Ra’s waits patiently for him to gather himself, certain theomega knows, and will give him, what he wants.

Finally Jason’s lids flutter open. He stares resolutely atthe floor and wets his lips.

“Yes, Alpha,” he whispers, almost inaudibly.

He glances back to Timothy in time to catch him sigh in whatseems like defeat but this is their deal and Ra’s has accepted it withoutalteration.

“Go sit at the head of the bed, Timothy,” Ra’s orders, “You’llwatch while you wait your turn.”

The boy swallows hard under Ra’s’ piercing stare and Jason stiffensunder his hand.

“Yes, Alpha,” Tim mumbles and moves to obey.

#jason todd #Tim Drake #Ra's al Ghul #ra'stimjay #double omega verse #omega!jason/omega!tim #Queen_Louise #200 follower celebration #prompt-a-thon #not nice stuff is mentioned

[flyingaroundinabusinesssuit]

How to Safeguard Your Tech, and Your Money, While Traveling

Experts strongly recommend not connecting to unsecured public Wi-Fi systems anywhere in the world, not only at coffee shops but also in airports and hotels.

Travel companies were hit by one data breach after another last year — firms including Marriott, British Airways, Delta Air Lines and the travel booking site Orbitz.

Marriott estimates that as a result of its breach — in which the reservation database of Starwood-branded hotels in its portfolio was hacked — 383 million guest records could have been affected and 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers were possibly compromised. And experts expect breaches in the travel sector will continue.

“Travel companies are a prime target of cyber thefts” because they have “highly sensitive, personally identifiable information,” said Eva Velasquez, chief executive of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a national nonprofit organization in San Diego that supports victims of identity theft and seeks to broaden public awareness.

But travellers do have options to protect their information.

Bruce McIndoe, president of WorldAware, a risk management company, recommends creating a “digital persona” when booking travel or making other online transactions. This can include setting up a new, disposable phone number using a service like Google Voice and RingCentral to screen any calls based on caller ID and to forward these to the phone number that you want to protect.

Mr McIndoe also suggests creating what he calls a throwaway email address, to be used only when booking online, to protect your actual personal or work email from theft. You can also keep your home and work addresses private with a service like iPostal1.com, PhysicalAddress.com and PostScanMail.com, which can create a new mailing address for you. And you can rent a post office box from the United States Postal Service, though this cannot be used for many online transactions.

There are many steps you can take to protect any device you bring on business trips. If you work for a large company or service provider, like a law or accounting firm, your employer may be able to provide clean devices, even some with special protections appropriate for whatever destination you visit.

Before leaving on a trip, Sam Rubin, a vice president of the Crypsis Group, a cybersecurity consulting firm, advises all travellers, regardless of the size of their employer, to make sure their laptops are encrypted, via software like BitLocker for Windows laptops or FileVault, for Macs. He also suggests backing up data regularly, installing application updates and deleting unneeded and old data from devices.

The Global Business Travel Association, a trade group for a business travel agency, suggests using a privacy filter on your laptop and tablet screen when you’re travelling. To prevent theft, lock your devices when you’re not using them, through a PIN, password protection or physical locks and alarms. The group also recommends using a juice-jack protector — attached to the end of your USB cord — to protect against data skimmers when you plug the cord into a public charging station. If you bring your own charging device, you won’t need a public charger.

Experts strongly recommend not connecting to unsecured public Wi-Fi systems anywhere in the world, not only at coffee shops like Starbucks but also in airports and hotels, among other places. If you must use these, Si-Yeon Kim, chief risk and compliance officer of American Express Global Business Travel, suggests minimizing the number of documents you open and being careful of whatever information you transmit.

Christel Cao-Delebarre, the global privacy officer in London for Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a travel management company, advises being “very careful about speaking with colleagues and possibly sharing confidential information in public places.” She also urges travellers not to leave confidential documents unattended either in conference or guest rooms at hotels and elsewhere.

When it comes to working online, Mr Rubin advises using two-factor authentication on all Internet-accessible accounts. He suggests locking and password-protecting your mobile phone and configuring it to automatically lock after a period of inactivity, and using secure passwords, with a different password for each device and account. Password managers like LastPass and Keeper can help you remember and manage these.

As for making purchases online, consider signing up for a credit card to be used only for such transactions. You also can set up a virtual credit card for a one-time purchase whose cost you can limit. Some of these can also be used to pay for recurring charges; those amounts can also be limited. Virtual credit cards are issued by companies such as Bank of America, Citi, Capital One, American Express and Privacy.com. According to Mr Rubin, if the virtual credit card is compromised, it should have no impact on your physical card.

Another payment option, possibly more secure than credit cards, is PayPal, said Robert Austin, president of KoreLogic, a cybersecurity company.

BCD Travel, another travel management company, and TravelManor advises against posting pictures online of your itineraries, tickets or boarding passes. It also urges travellers to never leave their boarding passes and tickets on an aeroplane or in a hotel room and to shred these once you’ve used them, all steps to keep cyberthieves from obtaining your travel details. Another protective measure is to use digital boarding passes issued by the airline, and apps like BCD’s TripSource, TripLingo, Apple Wallet and Google Pay. This information will be protected by the security code on your mobile phone even if the phone is lost or stolen.

John Reed Stark, former chief of the S.E.C.’s Office of Internet Enforcement and author of “The Cybersecurity Due Diligence Handbook,” advises setting up your credit card account to automatically notify you of all transactions via email or its app, which he said will make you aware of every transaction as it occurs. He also suggests setting up a separate email account for these alerts, so you can easily track them and not clog up other accounts.

To further track any suspicious activity, he advises subscribing to a credit and identity monitoring company — such as Experian, TransUnion or Equifax — that can provide alerts relating to your credit rating, credit cards and banking.

For additional protection, Mr Rubin suggests the purchase of an individual cybersecurity insurance policy, offered by companies like Chubb and NAS Insurance. Although such policies have long existed for businesses, individual policies are a new development.

Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel research company, said his company had found that a growing number of travellers were becoming uncomfortable with sharing their personal information with travel sellers.

“The lesson for travel suppliers here is that no matter how good they think their cybersecurity hardware and software practices are, they may never be good enough,” Mr Harteveldt said. “Sadly, there will be one hacker a step ahead at some travel company.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/business/traveling-protecting-technology-tips.html

[somar78]

For Sale: Mickey Thompson’s Original Challenger IV Buggy

This article was written by Rory Ward, the man who restored the Challenger IV back to racing condition and then took it back to the desert to contest the brutal Mint 400 desert race.  Challenger IV is now for sale and you can contact Rory via his website here if you’re interested.

In 1977 Mickey Thompson (MT) set out to build one of the most technically advanced off road race vehicles ever created. While the fastest off road cars on the dirt (at the time) were Class 1 Unlimited Buggies based off of VW suspension, with a whopping 10 to 12″ of wheel travel, and 2276cc VW motors, Mickey decided to “Super Size” his ride with an American V8 and 15 to 18″ of wheel travel.

Mickey started with a chassis (known as Challenger IV or CH4) built by Smokey Allerman, who was famous for building sprint cars back then. The car looked a lot like a sprint car but the suspension was altered to get more wheel travel out of it with custom built A-arms and a 3 link rear suspension arrangement.

While the chassis was built by Allerman, Mickey had John House (MT’s crew chief), son Danny Thompson, and Bruce Parrish finish the racer and drop in a 383 stroker Chevrolet V8 engine pulled from one of his old Indy cars, along with a 2 speed Powerglide automatic transmission.

One of the biggest and most talked about items on this car when it debuted at the 1978 Mexicali 250 was the size of the rear shock absorbers. Each shock was 3″ in diameter and 41″ long. There was nothing like it in the off road racing industry at that time and it took until the mid to late 1980’s for that shock technology to really take off. A 3.0 shock is standard today on just about any off road racing vehicle but not back in 1978.

Right out of the box this car was turning heads. The competition could not believe that this overweight, big, and bulky buggy could out manoeuvre and out power their lightweight buggies that had been dominating the deserts from the inception of the sport.

Well, MT had them all talking and scratching their heads. That first event in 1978 saw Challenger IV leading the race and doing it impressively until a drive line problem catapulted the car into the air and rolled out of contention. The car was rumored to run 150 mph on the highway sections but made MT nervous because the car was all over the place and needed to be stabilized.

At the next race, the 1978 Mint 400, Challenger IV’s wheelbase was lengthened 8″ to 110″ to help with the stability. MT started 24th off the line and after the first 100 mile lap (of 4) he was leading overall by 10 minutes. At that time Challenger IV had recorded the fastest lap ever recorded at the Mint 400 and was on his way to the win but got tangled up with slower traffic in the dust and put an end to his run.

This was the story of Mickey Thompson, always a front runner but could never have a clean enough run to win a race. People said he was way too hard on equipment and if he would just slow down a little he would probably be way more successful. That was not MT’s style, it was “checkers or wreckers” and when asked why he didn’t just slow down a little he responded with “It just doesn’t feel right to slow down”.

The construction of Challenger IV at Mickey Thompson’s facility in Southern California 1977 – Photo credit Bruce Parrish.

After a few seasons of hard luck and near misses, CH4 was retired for the new and improved Challenger V that debuted in mid 1980. Some parts were scavenged off of CH4 to use on the new car and there it sat in the shop, on jack stands, alone…..until that dreadful day in March of 1988 when Mickey and wife Trudy were brutally murdered outside their California home.

A year or so later the cars were split up between family members and Challenger IV went up to Eugene Oregon at his daughters shop with a few more cars and sat. It wasn’t until 2011 when I found a picture of CH4 sitting in a loft on the internet.

After some investigating I was able to track down the person who took the photo and a link to a website. From there I was able to get in touch with Lyndy Thompson (MT’s daughter). I wanted CH4 but Lyndy wasn’t giving it up that easy. It wasn’t about the money, she wanted to know what the plans were for this historical vehicle. After a couple of phone “interviews” Lyndy and Rory agreed upon a price and CH4 was off to its new home and a restoration.

Challenger IV found in Eugene, Oregon in 2011 at Lyndy Thompson’s (Mickey’s daughter) race shop with Rory’s daughter Hanna in the foreground – Photo credit Rory Ward.

Three years later in 2015, CH4 was completed and ready to be raced at the recently resurrected NORRA Mexican 1000 which was billed as a vintage off road race. CH4 did as expected, running up front, surprising a lot of people and then broken down on the side of the road about 600 miles into a 1000 mile race, and then immediately retired….again.

In 2016, CH4 was once again pulled out of retirement and decided to give it one more try at the Mint 400. Mickey Thompson Tires jumped onboard with sponsorship and set out to try and make MT proud. CH4 was running great and with 5 miles to go from the finish the racer coughed and came to a halt. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? NOW?!?!? REALLY?!?!!?

Seems there was an air pocket in the fuel system when they fueled the car during the pit and the tank did not get fully topped off. Luckily Rory was able to get 5 gallons of gas delivered by his pit crew out on the course and won 1st place in the Vintage Class at the Mint 400.

Challenger IV now sits quietly at the Off Road Motorsports Hall Of Fame Museum at the Terrible’s Casino in Jean Nevada. If you ever want to see this impressive machine in person that’s where it will be for the next 12 months.

This article was written by Rory Ward, the man who restored the Challenger IV back to racing condition and then took it back to the desert to contest the brutal Mint 400 desert race.  Challenger IV is now for sale and you can contact Rory via his website here if you’re interested.

Editor’s Note: The next Mint 400 is due to take place in March 2020 just outside Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is billed as “The Great American Off-Road Race” and every fan of racing should really try to attend at least once, if you’d like to read more about it or read the 2020 Spectator Guide you can click here.

First race: the 1978 Mexicali 300, Mickey Thompson (silver helmet) and Danny Thompson (yellow helmet) driver change – Photo credit Bruce Parrish.

Mickey Thompson strapping himself in Challenger IV during testing prior to the 1978 Mint 400 after adding 8″ to the wheelbase to the car after crash – Photo credit Bruce Parrish.

2015 Mint 400 photo shoot with the Mark Stahl Chenowth. These two cars competed in the same class together with the Mark Stahl car being the “standard” type Class 1 cars back in the day. Look how much bigger Challenger IV is compared to the buggy – Photo credit Jeff Furrier.

Images courtesy of MadMedia

Mickey Thompson Challenger IV Buggy Art by Rory Ward

The post For Sale: Mickey Thompson’s Original Challenger IV Buggy appeared first on Silodrome.

source https://silodrome.com/mickey-thompson-challenger-iv-buggy/

#cars

[getseriouser]

20 THOUGHTS: Trade Radio Ga Ga (’is this real life or just a fantasy?’)

WHAT a stupid year. 

The losers of the NRL Grand Final are paid out as winners by bookmakers, and not because of a silly betting promotion but because the code and its officials are as relevant and effective in their jobs as contraception to Irish catholic newlyweds on their honeymoon.

Where Donald Trump himself is evidence our species might now be regressing, the fact endless hours of Trade Radio always have talkback callers is the proof in that devolution pudding.

And in a year where all the conservatives and right-wingers in this country should be as excited as a Beagle on full lipstick following ScoMo’s Steven Bradbury effort in May, they’re got their pantyhose and pressed slacks in a twist because of what some Volvo factory-worker’s teenage daughter has to say about the inclement weather conditions.

There was chaos and anarchy on Swan Street for the second time in three years last month but Hold Kong locals asked Richmond fans if they could hold their beer. We lost Polly and Spud, and said vale, gone too soon, to Saturday Night Rove. Five clubs let go of their coaches, Pope Francis delisted one of his cardinals, and a ginger from Christchurch defeated his own country by the virtue of most boundaries.

But at least we retained the Ashes in England.

  1.       Let’s start with the footy, trades season is almost done. Hutchy to his credit was a genius for seeing revenue opportunity in this trade period, with an ‘insert sponsor here’ open line and hours and hours of coverage, its been a windfall and then some for his business. But I reckon we’re only a year or so away from the unwashed realising there’s no relevance in any of it until the final day. There’s only so many Terry Wallace orations on the merits of list analysis before your average punter switches off. Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, Craig.

2.       The biggest name out there with a day to go is Joe Daniher. Was that meeting with Tom Harley a personal one or an actual, official Swans’ approach? Soft tacos, hard tacos, why not both? Now we have Essendon playing hardball and who knows if it gets done. Chances are it does, Geelong last year with Tim Kelly was more exception than example, if the Swans want him bad enough, they’ll lump up the pieces, especially if they fear as I do that Bud’s barely got ten more games in him in a market that requires a star.

3.       St Kilda has a lot on. Jack Steven and Josh Bruce are two big losses, but getting in Dougal Howard, Bradley Hill, Zak Jones, Paddy Ryder and Dan Butler are some nice pieces. If Ratten can indeed coach, and as an ex-Clarko assistant he should be just fine, next year looks properly solid down at Moorabbin.

4.       Whats the thinking with the Dogs? Aaron Naughton looks like a key forward gun, and Josh Schache was just starting to show something as a footballer without being a star. Yet they’re throwing all the cash at Josh Bruce for a go at a third flag? I do know he was free to a good home because the Saints were hellbent Max King’s twin at the Gold Coast would head home next year – not now after that re-signing yesterday. Couple big mistakes there for mine.

5.       Tom Papley worth pick nine? Righto. And the Masked Singer will be popular on Australian television too, right?..... Yep, pick nine sounds about right then, forgive me.

6.       Jack Martin though, to Carlton, that’s the steal of the whole thing. Martin is a freak, who has gone underappreciated playing in the ghost town that is Gold Coast, for a horribly weak side, in a club that can’t develop anyone not named Tom Lynch. But has talent to burn and could easily become one of Carlton’s top 10 players next year, in fact based on the player he can become, he should. Think 2019 Michael Walters. Seriously. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

7.       Collingwood have cap issues? Really? Firstly who really knows, unlike North American sports where contracts are public, only each club really knows how much room they’ve got and how that ever would be divulged puzzles me. And yes they have to pay Grundy, De Goey and Moore next year, although the latter won’t be all that much given his hamstrings are like an Uber driver with turrets, unreliable and could snap at any time. But given the Pies were offering Tom Lynch the same financial terms as Richmond this time last year, with Scott Pendlebury out of contract next year and coming down in salary, with less stars to pay than West Coast, how is this a thing? It isn’t. Chris Mayne is overpaid, sure, but that’s it. Wells has retired, Beams took a cut, and unless George Calombaris oversaw their player payments and there’s backpay to cover off, I think it’s a total beat-up. But sure, let James Aish being wanted by his former backs coach at Freo to fuel that fable.

8.       Crows hired Matthew Nicks. Reckon that’s got fail all over it. Adelaide’s list is in a heap, the review basically said their post Grand-Final plans two years ago totally wiped the place out like a broken toilet on a buck’s weekend, and not seeing to the damage since has only exacerbated the crap spilling out all over the shop. Good half dozen or so quality players leaving this offseason, Walker and Sloane are the wrong side of 30 and they’ve got only a few good kids, most clubs around them have better youth and are more rapidly improving. Either Nicks can’t coach at the level or he can but the Crows will be a bad side regardless, either way it doesn’t see him making a new contract beyond whats given out today.

9.       NRL. Definiton of a pub league. Your local Wednesday night basketball is better run. And with better officiating. That Six Again controversy was the most befitting thing you’ll ever see to a sport, a sport where 13 of its 16 clubs run insolvent, but that’s ok because all their giant pokies-infested leagues club venues write them all a cheque to cover the losses each year. Absolute pub league.

10.   If an umpire or referee makes a bad call, it’s only made worse by changing that decision midstream. If a player marks the ball, but then the umpire overrules saying no, it was touched, its no mark, and because you’ve claimed it and made no attempt to get rid of it its now holding the ball, you just can’t do that. Kids are taught to play to the whistle. Except in rugby league then. Because chances are what the ref just said isn’t what he is about to mean in a couple seconds time, just be patient. That referee shouldn’t be crucified for what’s essentially just one error, but in the grand scheme of things, he needs witness protection. Or better yet, stay off the roster for trips to Canberra next season.

11.   It was mentioned in the preamble but no wonder SportsBet paid out all Canberra to win bets. The Raiders had all the momentum, it was 8-all, and it was near the Roosters tryline. They were no guarantee to score off that play, at best they might have got a repeat set. But if there was anyone more likely to break that deadlock given who was playing better but also, more importantly, the territory battle, it was the Green Machine. This isn’t SportsBet just being philanthropic, the result is just that shady.

12.   Speaking of Sportsbet – Western United. Made their A-League debut on the weekend, won one-nil in front of some fans at Wellington. But it was midweek that we saw their announcement which said “we are proud to announce SportsBet has joined the club as its exclusive sports wagering partner”. Firstly, poor form, in a city where all the AFL clubs are quite publicly backing out of gambling revenue, to be going the other way stinks big time. But secondly, what does that even mean? That if I go into a TAB all Western United games are unavailable to bet on. Coz that’s just not even close to true. Dumb and stupid in all of the ways, that.

13.   So the new boys have their home opener this weekend down at Geelong, even though they’re a team based out of Tarneit. Melbourne Victory when they’ve ventured down to Sleepy Hollow attract 14,000 or so, who knows how many turn up for the novelty first time around this Saturday. But going forward, given Melbourne City don’t exceed 10,000 and they play in town, if they’re getting anymore than 5,000-6,000 in what’s otherwise a 36,000 AFL venue, its going to look oh so pretty on television. What’s the opposite of the eggplant emoji?

14.   Few more on the A-League, firstly, why have your opening round smack bang in the middle of an international window? They were so hyper vigilant to schedule their opening round after the AFL and NRL had ended they failed to recognise all of the good Aussie players will be off winning 28-nil against Chinese Taipei or Christmas Island or whoever it was. Its like Victoria Police planning a social function on New Year’s Eve. No-one’s going to be able to make it you morons.

15.   And you open up with the Melbourne Derby. Lucky Victory is a terrifically run club with a strong, loyal fanbase. But only 33,000, with zero promotion? These should be nudging 50,000.

16.   Lastly, you know they’re going really well when the free-to-air partner this season is the ABC. Even the VFL got a commercial broadcaster, yet the country’s premier round ball competition shares a channel with Gardening Australia and Four Corners. And the cherry on the top is when it comes to finals, and I’ll quote the ABC press release on this one, where “one A-League match per round broadcast live on ABC TV and iView around the country… and a selection of A-League finals on delay, including the grand final.” Delay?! Remember those days? You can’t make this stuff up.

17.   Darren Weir got done for using jiggers. Rest of racing stays dead quiet. Right. Now is that because Darren is their mate and despite the heinous crimes blood is thicker than water in the industry and they have some empathy for him? Or is it a case of if he can get caught, then maybe some of the others equally as guilty could so easily as well, and staying mum is step one of avoiding such scrutiny? I wonder.

18.   So, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier for running a marathon. Phenomenal achievement, just ridiculous to even comprehend the feat. Amazing. But it won’t count as a world record. Why? Well it wasn’t a race. Old mate contrived the event with a couple dozen pacers to help him do it and that’s it. It’s like if me and some mates hire lane eight down Altona Pool Thursday morning, and fresh off a high-protein breakfast and a quick hit of flakka happen to break 20 seconds for one-lap of freestyle – you think FINA will recognise it? You think Kieran Perkins will shout me free Light Start for life off the back of it? As a milk crusader I could only dream of such a reward but yeah nah. Nice stunt Eliud, you’re a freak of a human. But we’re in the same boat brother.

19.   Tough one, not just for boxing because its bigger than that, but Patrick Day is in real bother and sincere optimism about his recovery to one side, so is his sport. Day was knocked out in the tenth round in a bout with Charles Conwell in Chicago in the weekend, which in itself is not unusual. But the consequences of the blow are such that Day is in a coma and in an “extremely critical condition”. Again, nothing but positive wishes about his eventual recovery first and foremost, but in an era where concussion in the football codes is as alarming as ever, combat spots’ existence, like boxing, could/would/should be on borrowed time with cases like this.

20.   TV ratings worry the pants off me. By far the most important and major revenue source for all the sport we love to watch, it helps grow the professionalism and the standards, and the access really. But as TV viewership declines, so does the viewership with live sport. And we all waited with bated breath for the NRL Grand Final numbers in the hope maybe they would be good, and it wasn’t just sport in general in trouble, that maybe rugby league was still on an upward trajectory and its just everyone else.

Nope, it was down too. Usually something that rates at times near 3m nationally, it was around 1.8m. The AFL Grand Final, with an engaged Sydney audience, has been on a trajectory over 3.5m, topping 4m occasionally, it was under 3m for the first time in years. Australia Open primetime slots were down, cricket was good but still down, be it the summer on Seven or The Ashes mid-year on Nine.

What does this mean? It means less people are watching live sport. And when advertisers hear that, they’ll be paying less to the networks for the privilege of putting 30 seconds of their product in front of the eyeballs of footy fans. And that then means TV networks will hand over less cash, subsequently, to the sporting bodies for the rights to broadcast their fixtures.

It doesn’t mean that we’re all destined to see the days of the 1980s return where players need a job outside of footy and only one game is broadcast a week and all that nostalgia. But the idea that salaries will keep going up and up is gone, the idea the game can grow at the same rate looks doomed. So unless someone makes Foxtel honest (nudge nudge Amazon Prime) or this is only a lull, and once we get over Fortnite and Korean boy-bands we will all fall back in love with Friday night in front of the telly watching footy, it’s a big, big concern. 

[theconservativebrief]

Richard E. Grant has been a familiar face since his breakout role in the British black comedy Withnail & I, in which he played the perpetually drunk out-of-work actor named in the title. He’s had a long stretch of strong work since then, ranging from supporting roles in movies like The Age of Innocence and Gosford Park to roles on TV shows including Girls and Game of Thrones.

His latest big-screen role is as Jack Hock, the roguish sidekick to Melissa McCarthy’s down-and-out writer Lee Israel, in Can You Ever Forgive Me, based on the real-life Israel’s memoir. The pair meet in a dingy Upper West Side bar in the middle of the afternoon. Mutually lonely and prickly, they develop a sort of friendship and then a partnership in crime, when Israel starts forging letters by famous writers and passing them off as the real thing to sellers of rare books.

Both Grant’s and McCarthy’s performances drew praise during the film’s fall festival run. Grant’s take on Jack is electric — he’s a live, uncontrollable wire, an endlessly cheerful fast talker, and a delightful hustler with a misanthropic streak that stands in stark contrast to Lee’s more straightforward bristly exterior. But he’s also sick and lonely, slowly wasting away, and his friendship with Lee is, for a time, a cure.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is as much a buddy-heist comedy as drama. Mary Cybulski / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

In person, though, Grant is charming, friendly, and delightful. On an October Saturday in Manhattan he sat down with me for a few minutes to talk about the film, his role in it, the loneliness of characters like Jack in New York in the early 1990s, and why Melissa McCarthy is “impossible.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Alissa Wilkinson

How did you get interested in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Richard E. Grant

I got a call from my agent in November [2016], saying, “You have 24 hours to read this script.”

I said, “What is it, like, Mission Impossible? Is it gonna explode?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Well, who’s dropped out? Who’s passed on it, or dead?” And she said, “Don’t concern yourself with that because it’s irrelevant.” I said, “Do you know?” She said, “Read the script.” So I did, and I saw there’s Melissa McCarthy playing Lee Israel and Marielle Heller, I knew from Diary of a Teenage Girl. I said, “Yeah, great, when do we start?”

Alissa Wilkinson

Did you know Lee Israel’s story before?

Richard E. Grant

I didn’t know her story, but I had her biography of Tallulah Bankhead, which I’d read, and which is really good. I had her name on my bookshelf but this story, I didn’t know. I thought, “How is it possible that I didn’t know about this story?” It’s such an extraordinary, grand feat of literary ventriloquism that she pulled off, passing off these letters of really great writers of such disparate talents and styles in the 20th century. I thought that was an amazing thing.

Now her story’s out there. I just wish that she was alive to see how celebrated it is for her crimes. Crimes of passion really.

Alissa Wilkinson

That’s a good way to put it — passion for whom?

Richard E. Grant

Passion for the written word. Passion for the great writers who may have become more neglected from an audience now that don’t know the breadth of Noel Coward or Lillian Hellman or Dorothy Parker — these people that she held in such high esteem.

Alissa Wilkinson

The movie is about Lee’s story, but it’s also almost like a buddy heist.

Richard E. Grant

It’s a buddy heist. It’s like a buddy road movie to me, one that happens to go through the highways of Manhattan, from bar to bookshelf to bar to bookshelf to seedy apartment and then back again. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the Wild West of Manhattan and downtown in the 1990s, without the guns and the pistols. There’s no dead bodies.

Alissa Wilkinson

And that makes you Robert Redford, right?

Richard E. Grant

In your dreams. More like Ratso and Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, probably closer to the mark.

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Alissa Wilkinson

All good road movies have a journey of discovery built into them. Your character is not the main character — but you still have your own arc. How did you approach him?

Richard E. Grant

Lee Israel’s memoir was astonishingly scant on detail about him, which tells me how eccentric she was — thinking that she was the only person involved in this story. I know the producers who knew Lee, who spent years trying to get her to write this story, who knew all the ins and outs — which is what the screenplay fleshed out so cleverly.

He was from Portland. He was blonde, was tall, was charming, had died of AIDS at the age of 47 in 1994, used a stubby cigarette holder because he was a chain smoker but thought he wouldn’t get cancer by using that, had been in jail for two years for holding at knifepoint a taxi driver in a dispute about a cab fare, which absolutely fit the bill. That is as much as I knew to go on.

And also the fact that she praised him, because once she had been rumbled by the FBI and couldn’t go out and sell these letters anymore, she got him to do it. Where she thought he might predictably get $500 or $600 for a letter that she conjured up, he came back with $2,000 or more. That was testament to how good he was at scamming or schmoozing people.

Alissa Wilkinson

Hustling.

Richard E. Grant

Yeah, just a hustler. A street-grifting hustler.

Alissa Wilkinson

And yet he’s very lovable in the film as well. She’s a downer, and he’s very cheerful in a manic way.

Richard E. Grant

I always think of them in animal terms. I think of people I meet in animal terms: what kind of animal are they, first and foremost? She’s a porcupine to his Labrador. He will just go schmooze, wag his tail, and lick anybody into submission until they finally give him some food, give him a shag, give him a bed, or give him a bone to go chew on, figuratively. I thought that was the most bizarre dynamic: Two animals that would never, ever be together, but somehow they go through little journeys together.

The odd couple, plotting. Mary Cybulski / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Alissa Wilkinson

So you end up with an odd couple dynamic.

Richard E. Grant

Exactly. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple, 1968 — that was the other movie reference along with Midnight Cowboy that I thought of. It’s what the essence of this movie was.

Alissa Wilkinson

I’d somehow had never seen the original Odd Couple until this summer.

Richard E. Grant

You’d never seen it?

Alissa Wilkinson

I know! But it’s interesting that both that movie and this one are about single people who band together to find their own family. And then drive each other crazy.

Richard E. Grant

Lonely people in a city — millions of people, but you can still be lonely as a cloud surrounded by everybody.

Alissa Wilkinson

The fact that your character and Melissa McCarthy’s character find each other in the bar in the middle of the day tells you everything you need to know.

Richard E. Grant

Absolutely.

Alissa Wilkinson

Part of the reason this movie is so appealing to me is that I’m a New Yorker, but I wasn’t here in the early 1990s, when the movie is set. So it’s a New York I didn’t know. It looks kind of dingy. Were you here much during that time?

Richard E. Grant

I first came here in 1989 — 42nd Street in Times Square, all the sleaze of that. It wasn’t all floodlit and touristified like it is now. There were sex joints and strip joints. There was hustlers. You felt like you were in a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape: “Hold onto your wallet, keep your head down.” It had a sort of seedy, fascinating, roughish quality. Nothing had been gentrified to the degree that it has now, when you have to have a lot of money to live in Manhattan.

I had done a movie with Sandra Bernhard. We played husband and wife in Hudson Hawk with Bruce Willis, which was a disaster. Sandra was living in the Meatpacking District. And I was so shocked in 1991, because on more than one street corner I saw men who were dying of AIDS. Young, younger than I was, who had placards saying, “Abandoned by my family, no medicare, no money, please help me.” It was so shocking to see that.

In the middle of this film — it doesn’t make a big deal out of it — Lee says to Jack, “Can I trust you, telling you this story about this scam that I’ve got going?” And he says, “Oh, you can tell me, because I don’t have anybody else to tell; all my friends are dead.” He’s flippant about it. And then of course, at the end, you realize that he is dying of AIDS.

That really hit home. I thought, that was the reality of that generation. There are no photographs of him. I imagine his backstory: He would have been abandoned by his family. It was pre-social media, so there were no photographs. Polaroids that might’ve existed were gone. All his friends were dead. He’s somebody that lived and grifted, lived for the day. As soon as he got any money from some shady deal or whatever he was involved in, he just spent it. He wanted to live a life of pleasure and then pay the ultimate price at a very young age.

Alissa Wilkinson

The movie has a huge undercurrent of anxiety — being anxious about where your money is coming from, whether you’ll be able to have healthcare. A lot of writers I know — including myself — walked out of the screening and said, “Well, that’s a horror film,” because of how familiar that feeling is. It’s something we’re seeing here and in Britain, something that’s resonating with a lot of people.

Richard E. Grant

And the loneliness! I walk around the streets now — the silhouette of our age is heads down to a tablet or a mobile. People are not looking at each other. We see people, couples having dinner and they’re looking at their mobiles and they’re not talking to each other. That need for connection is so strong in this story. People have responded to that in this movie.

Richard E. Grant and Melissa McCarthy at the premiere of Can You Ever Forgive Me? in Toronto in September 2018. Photo by Suzi Pratt/Getty Images

Alissa Wilkinson

So what was it like playing this character alongside Melissa McCarthy?

Richard E. Grant

[Grins slyly] You can’t even imagine what a nightmare it was to work with her. I mean, can you really imagine how difficult that was? She’s so grumpy and uncooperative. She was Lee Israel. All this persona of her being warm, cuddly, and lovable in real life? Ha! She should not be up for any awards at all, because she is that person. She is impossible.

Have you seen her today?

Alissa Wilkinson

No!

Richard E. Grant

Oh, you’ve been spared!

Alissa Wilkinson

The first role I ever saw her in was on Gilmore Girls — have you watched?

Richard E. Grant

Yes, I have.

Alissa Wilkinson

Her transition from that to Bridesmaids and then a career in comedy was such fun to watch.

Richard E. Grant

She’s also done a huge amount of drama off Broadway in the early 1990s, so the fact that she’s come full circle in a sense and now playing this role in a movie is not what I think people have expected to see her in. Yet she mines the comedy and compassion out of it in a way that only she can.

Alissa Wilkinson

What was your dynamic like on set, since the dynamic between the two characters was so important?

Richard E. Grant

[The grin returns.] It was terrible. Oh, it was terrible. We hated each other. Never saw each other. I didn’t speak to her between takes. It’s just awful.

No, I absolutely worship and adored her and we’ve become great friends. That was the bonus. I think it’s the only movie I’ve ever been on when you have days off you think, “Oh my god, what am I gonna do, I’m in New York?” And you’re gonna go see this show and you’re gonna do that and this museum, that art gallery, see these people perform and every day we had lunch together when I was working. That’s real testament to the bond that we forged on this. I think it certainly shows in the final movie.

Alissa Wilkinson

The movie is also suffused with books. Did you do any supplementary reading?

Richard E. Grant

Yeah. I’m a voracious reader so I re-read the Tallulah Bankhead biography, and I read the other books that she’d written, and then of course, the memoir that the film is based on and the great writers that she loved. The fact that she liked the most caustic and witty writers of the 20th century was in such contrast to this porcupine saying, like, “I’m not budging.”

The fact that she was so politically incorrect, uncompromising, and unwilling to change anything — even in her court confession. She could have been contrite and full of public remorse while privately thinking, “Oh, fuck the lot of you.” She just says quite blatantly, “Well, yeah, I know it wasn’t the greatest thing that I’ve done, but it’s the best work I’ve ever done, and it’s the best time I’ve ever had.”

The fact that she says that, you kind of go, “Yes!” She’s just the most quintessential unlikely romantic heroine that you could possibly conjure up and I loved her for that and I know Melissa did too.

Alissa Wilkinson

She takes so much pride in the fact that she thinks her forgeries are better than the real thing.

Richard E. Grant

“I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker.” I guess Lee really was that fantastic.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? opens in theaters on October 19.

Original Source -> Richard E. Grant on playing a “Labrador” to Melissa McCarthy’s “porcupine” in their new movie

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[getyourgossip0-blog]

'Jack Grealish owes us nothing, he has been a pleasure to watch' - Aston Villa fans have their say

New Post has been published on https://getyourgossip.xyz/jack-grealish-owes-us-nothing-he-has-been-a-pleasure-to-watch-aston-villa-fans-have-their-say/

'Jack Grealish owes us nothing, he has been a pleasure to watch' - Aston Villa fans have their say

There’s been plenty of reaction from fans surrounding the subject of Jack Grealish’s future since Aston Villa’s play-off final defeat to Fulham.

Here’s what the fans had to say about stories focusing on the Villa midfielder:

On a potential rumoured move to Manchester United:

Rob Tomkins: “And so once again the vultures from Manchester, Merseyside and London start swooping.”

Spencer Smith: “Crazy as the team needs building around him.. If we accept a bid for him then I think we will be fighting in the championship for a very long time.”

Will Forrest: “If we have to sell him then bring him back on loan for a year, with an option of a second year if we get promoted. Hope he doesn’t go. I’d wave the captaincy at him to get him to stay.”

Adam Lane: “Hate to lose him but if he had to leave I’d say anywhere but United. With Mourinho in charge he wouldn’t be the same player.”

Marianne Mackenzie: “I won’t believe anything until I see it on the Aston Villa website, losing the game was hard enough not going to start reading into speculation.”

Peter Smith: “If he goes would be better off going to somewhere like Everton or West Ham give us 30 million plus Snodgrass or Rooney.”

On Grealish’s decision following defeat in the final:

June Sayce: “Build the team around Jack and go up next season as Champions. He is living every fans dream playing for the team he loves. Do whatever it takes to keep him. Simply he is our future.”

Janet Lewis: “Jack has a great family background, he lives at home still with his Villa mad family who keep his feet on the ground. So hopefully he’ll give us another season to achieve promotion, fingers crossed.”

F rederick Ennis: “Rooney was a mad Everton fan but moving to Manchester Utd never did his career any harm and he was younger than Jack. It all depends if he wants to retire rich or poor.”

Roger Holder: “When England fail miserably again in Russia surely it is time to abandon this stupid idea that no player outside the Premier League is good enough. Or outside of London Manchester or Liverpool for that matter. Let’s hope Jack stays and sets that trend.”

Steven Irvine: “I hope he doesn’t make that mistake of being lured away by money and a fickle promise of a national place. Yes he is def good enough for England but if he stays at the club he loves and supports he will have a team built round him and when we get up to the prem his dreams then will come true.”

Andy Diskin: “Sack Bruce jack was the only one trying only one with creativity we need more plays like that. Terry, Snodgrass, and the rest of dads army need to go.”

Kev O’Donoghue: “I would love to see him stay and a team properly built around him. Sadly i think he will go and more then likely, based on our recent transfer record, we will squander the money. Either way owes us nothing and has been a pleasure to watch.”

On rumours that Terry and Grealish will both leave:

Wondwossen Y. Gebretsadik: “Can we get rid of both? If it was not for J. Grealish we could have won the game 2-1. He missed two goals from unbelievable distance. The worst Aston villa player ever.”

On Grealish exit rumours:

Graham Davis: “As much as I want him to stay, we owe him the chance to play in the EPL, and play for England. He has far more natural talent than Delph, and he picked up a Premier League title and a trip to World Cup in Russia.”

Simon Shingler: “If we had been able to play Jack all season we would have gone up automatically.”

Wayne Lawrence: “One more season please Jack, couldn’t blame you if you leave for one of the top six premier league clubs after that if we don’t go up.”

That United rumour

Jack Grealish has emerged as a shock transfer target for Manchester United.

The 22-year-old is Villa’s prized asset and may be sold this summer following the failure to win promotion to the Premier League.

The Red Devils are expected to complete the signing of Fred in the coming weeks.

And now Old Trafford boss Jose Mourinho is turning his attention to Grealish.

According to The Sun, the Portuguese is an admirer of Grealish and could attempt to force through a move the former England Under-21 international.

Manchester United monitor Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish – reports

Brazil midfielder Fred has revealed he is aware of strong interest from Manchester United.

The Premier League side have been linked with a £44million move for the Shakhtar Donetsk player.

The 25-year-old says the interest has come after United’s rivals Manchester City also made enquiries earlier this year.

Fred is currently with his national team squad in Brazil preparing for this summer’s World Cup in Russia.

Manchester United ‘make first bid’ for Serie A star – but PSG and Real Madrid could be tempted

Speaking at a press conference covered by Globo Esporte, Fred said: “The talks had been in progress since January with City. Soon after, City and United talked to Shakhtar and my agents.

“And now, if I’m not mistaken, there was news of a very strong bid from United.”

Manchester United make £96million bid for Lazio star Sergej Milinkovic‑Savic

Fred, however, says his immediate focus is on the World Cup and the matter will be dealt with by his representatives, who include former Arsenal midfielder Gilberto Silva.

He said: “As far as negotiations go, I am only (focused) on the World Cup. You just think about that, forget about other things. My agents are taking care of it.”

On the interest from the Manchester clubs, he said: “It is an honour to have the attention of the great coaches of Europe.”

Will the United move happen?

Anthony Jepson from the Manchester Evening News believes it to be an unrealistic target.

“The rumour – and it is just a rumour – that United fancy Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish isn’t so far-fetched as to completely dismiss it. “But it is a long long-shot.

“He’s a young, talented, attack-minded player who should be looking to play at a higher standard than the Championship.

“But United have different priorities at the moment. They are on the verge of landing £50m Brazilian midfielder Fred from Shakhtar Donetsk and have an interest in the more offensive engine-room talents of Lazio’s Sergej Milinkovic-Savic – as well as a certain Gareth Bale.

“And they are not exactly short of options in Grealish’s mould either with the likes of Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata already fulfilling similar if not identical roles linking midfield to attack.

“Fans and gossip columnists always like a name out of left-field and you can make a case that Grealish’s young talents are a worth a gamble but a move to Leicester – also linked – seems more viable.”

Colly says

Former Aston Villa striker Stan Collymore has called on the club’s owner to tell the fans what the club’s direction will be in the next three years.

Speaking in his column in our sister title The Mirror, Collymore explains his fears for the future at Villa Park.

He stated: “I fear the pain is going to set in for Aston Villa after they missed out in the play-offs.

“They should have gone up and now have only one year left of parachute payments – at a greatly-reduced level – have the biggest wage bill in the division by far, and are spending big money on players who have played well in spells.

“I feel there has to be a massive financial recalibration and some serious thinking done by billionaire owner Dr Tony Xia, who needs to tell the supporters what the club’s direction will be over the next two or three years.

“But these are worrying financial times for Villa.”

Gabby’s gone

Outgoing Aston Villa striker Gabby Agbonlahor has paid an emotional farewell following his departure.

After 13 professional seasons, 391 appearances and 87 goals Agbonlahor has left his boyhood club.

The 31-year-old forward’s last appearance in claret and blue came against Sheffield United on December 23 and he’ll now weigh up his options ahead of his next move.

Posting on Instagram, Agbonlahor wrote: “At school I had my doubters but I always said I would become a professional footballer.

“Thank you Aston Villa for making my dream come true!!! 17 years, 391 games, 87 goals for the team I’ve supported all my life is something I would never have dreamt of!!

“Thank you to the fans who have supported me all my career you have made me feel proud to put a Villa shirt on! And also to the staff and players I have had the privilege to work with. I will miss you all.

“I look forward to watching the great young talent we have at the club and watching this special club get back to the where it belongs!

“The pleasure has been all mine, Aston Villa.”

‘Really severe’

A football finance expert says Aston Villa’s predicament is ‘really severe’ and has predicted sales this summer.

The claret and blues were resigned to a third successive season of Championship football with defeat to Fulham in the play-off final at Wembley.

Steve Bruce’s expensively-assembled squad is now expected to be broken up this summer as the club desperately attempt to stay within Financial Fair Play restrictions.

The club’s most valuable asset, Jack Grealish, is already being linked with a host of Premier League sides with Villa likely to sell at least one of their top players.

Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in football finance at the University of Liverpool, discussed Villa’s problems at length with the BBC.

Cash cuts

“It’s really severe for Villa because this is the second year they’ve had parachute payments. They got around £35million from the Premier League to cushion the blow of relegation.

“Those payments get cut back severely next year so they’re going to have £20million less coming in. I think the problem for Villa is that the owner has gambled in the last couple of years on recruiting players on big wages.

Read the full story:

“It’s really severe” – Aston Villa and Tony Xia warned of the grim reality now facing them

Gil to depart

Aston Villa are finally set to get Spanish playmaker Carles Gil off their books as the club’s summer transfer business gets underway.

Gil has spent the last two seasons on loan at La Liga side Deportivo La Coruna and played 11 times as they were relegated from the Spanish top flight this term.

Villa owner Dr Tony Xia revealed last year that Deportivo had an ‘obligation’ to buy Gil this summer.

Recent reports in Spain claimed relegation from La Liga would prevent Deportivo from honouring that agreement, but their new sporting director has since addressed those claims.

Carmelo del Pozo told Marca: “Carles Gil’s compulsory purchase will be effective, then we will see if he wants to play in Segunda and if he is convinced of playing in Segunda.”

Gil joined Villa in 2015 from Valencia and made 34 appearances in 18 months at the club.

Manchester United monitor Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish – reports

[tessatechaitea]

Kamandi Challenge Special #1, Part One: “Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth!”

A 40 page giant spectacular?! Welp, there goes my whole day.

I can't tell if Doctor Canus is a family name or a derogatory slur.

This is what happens when you edit your own material. You think scrawling "ME!" really hugely across every other page is what the readers want. The readers are not your unchecked massive ego, Jack! Assuming Doctor Canus is actually a doctor and not just a dog pretending to be a doctor like half the dogs I've ever met, what does he know about alien lifeforms? Why should Kamandi take his word for it that she shouldn't excite it? My guess is he's talking from experience. "Look at how scorched my proboscis is! This thing is dangerous! Also, for your own edification and the satiating of your curiosity, this creature does not seem to have an anus." Doctor Canus (hey! That has "anus" in it!) is a typical dog with low self-esteem so he has to pepper everything he says with multi-syllabic words.

It's called a boner, Ben Boxer.

Instead of saying he's learned to communicate with it, Doctor Canus says he "established some sort of contact with it." Christ, Doc. Do you have to molest every form of living being that lands on your pervert dog island? I assume the contact is sexual based on all the dirty talk on the previous pages about how the alien made Ben "grow" and then "reversed" the process and then, I'm assuming, took a nap.

When you edit yourself, "we" and "us" are different.

Doctor Canus might be able to talk and remove gall bladders now but he still talks like an idiot dog would probably talk. "Look! It is one thing! Now it is two things! Now it is many things! ROWF! ROWF! I'm a good boy! I scienced!" Doctor Canus concludes that living energy is the ultimate life form. I should probably accept that this dog knows what he's talking about. Jack Kirby didn't spend a few hours at his desk with a pencil in his mouth thinking, "How do I convey to the reader that this talking dog really knows what he's talking about? Oh! A high collar! And make him a doctor!" The living energy just wants to go home but it can't find it's way. Ultimate life form, my ass! I almost never forget my way home when I leave the house. I'm so much smarter than this living energy. Me the Alien throws a temper tantrum because it's upset. It's tantrum takes the form of an electrical storm and begins killing all of Prince Tuftan's adorable royal tiger guards.

Doctor Canus uses the most tried and true disciplining tactics he knows. Lucky for the living energy's tender proboscis, the future doesn't have rolled up newspapers.

Doctor Canus explains that Me the Alien trusts him because he is a scientist. I wonder how it knows he's a scientist? I know I couldn't tell a cool dog from a nerdy dog. Doctor Canus heads off with Me the Alien to examine the flying saucer it came in. That's probably a good place to start if you're looking to help it find it's way home. Prince Tuftan and Kamandi look at each other covered in sand and dog shit and share a moment where they both laugh uproariously at how stupid the other one looks. "You're a walking, talking tiger covered in sand fleas and seaweed!" "Well, you're a young topless girl in hot pants and go-go boots!" Then they laugh and laugh! Afterward, Prince Tuftan makes sure to mention how he hasn't laughed in a long time because there's nothing remotely funny about the end of the world. Except maybe the idea that a dog can do science. It turns out Prince Tuftan is also a teenager like Kamandi. It's hard to tell since he's a tiger. While the two teens hang out on the beach and smoke the reefer, gorillas attack Tuftan's ship off-shore! Fucking monkeys! You know they're on the villainous side because they're monkeys. Sentient apes and gorillas always wind up being bad guys: Grodd, Mallah, probably other ones. Unless they have the possibility to fuck a hot chick like in Angel and the Ape and then they'll generally behave. One platoon of gorillas storm the island to capture Prince Tuftan and Kamandi.

The monkey men work for the Wayne Foundation. Of course it survived the apocalypse! I bet Bruce's brain is in an ape's body now.

Chapter Two ends with the reader discovering that these are "Gorilla Commandos" and the reader falls all over themselves with laughter at the pun. How old is this comic? Is he the first to use the Gorilla/guerrilla pun? Probably! I bet it's why people hold him in such high regard. I just realized this entire series wasn't just written by Dan Didio. I guess he lost his hold on rewriting all of Jack Kirby's characters when DC flushed The New 52 down the Rebirth toilet.

I don't think I'm reaching when I say there's a whiff of subliminal sodomy in this dialogue. The lead gorilla's name is, after all, Ramjam.

The gorillas are only interested in kidnapping Prince Tuftan. They seem to think of the humans as animals. Thanks, Trump!

To be fair to the ape, he understood the regular English language as well as the language of violence.

Kamandi rushes off to fetch Doctor Canus. Usually it's the other way around, amirite?! No? Anyway, Kamandi is flipping the fuck out like anybody who was the last girl on Earth being threatened by anal sex fixated sentient apes. She's all, "Dog! Dog doctor! Doctor who is also a dog! Attack! Kill!" Doctor Canus is all, "Well, this is most unfortunate! I'm busy doing science and those damn apes are interrupting the sciencing!" And Kamandi is all, "Also they're killing tigers and kidnapping Prince Tuftan!" And Doctor Canus is all, "But I'm about to make a major science breakthrough with science! Can't those damn apes wait?!" And Kamandi is all, "They're going to sell the U.F.O. which I probably shouldn't call a U.F.O. because it's totally an alien space ship and not unexplained at all and currently not flying either." And Doctor Canus is all, "What? They're going to sell the ship?! They must be stopped!" Fucking scientists and their agendas and priorities. They don't care about human or tiger life at all. They just want to make some kind of major science breakthrough so they'll get a treat. Doctor Canus explains to Kamandi that they'll make Me the Alien fight for them. But Kamandi is all, "Is that right? Should we really exploit it in such a manner?"

Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I mean, I sort of want to know. Okay fine. I desperately want to know!

The fourth chapter is called "Satan in the Sand!" With the exclamation point which I feel I need to explain since American copy editors would insist the exclamation point go on the inside of the quotes even if I were using it to express my own excitement of the name being "Satan in the Sand!" Maybe. I don't really care what copy editors say. I edit my own writing. The Gorillas move in to take the space ship when they're confronted by Doctor Canus and Kamandi.

"I am a scientist! I am not defenseless!" "He's a witch! WITCH DOG! WIIIIIIITCH!"

Most of the gorillas, being typical post-world morons, are all, "A talking animal! It must be witchcraft! Spells! Sorcery! Fake news!" But Ramjam, being the leader which means he probably went to college and understands science and how it can be used to manipulate idiots by telling them science is full of bias and agendas, points out that anybody can teach an animal to talk. So easy! Also maybe the scientist was using ventriloquism! To keep Ramjam from Of Mice and Menning Doctor Canus, Me the Alien takes the form of a giant sand giant which attacks the gorillas. Gorillas, being a superstitious and cowardly lot, mostly run off to complain about how arrogant Doctor Canus is. But Ramjam stands his ground and throws a grenade at the beast. He also calls the grenade a "demolition dumpling" which is so poetic that I just flipped off Robert Frost for wasting so much of my time. When the Demolition Dumpling fails to defeat Me the Alien, Ramjam and the other gorillas surrender. Doctor Canus locks them in Me the Alien's spaceship. Me doesn't seem to suspect that perhaps he made a terrible deal. That's his fucking way home, not a prison for bone-headed apemen! Prince Tuftan arrives and explains how he escaped: the apes forgot to kill the tigers. At first it sounds like Jack Kirby just ran out of room and was all, "Fuck it! The apes probably lose interest in things quickly and wandered off. Day saved!" But instead, Tuftan was just pointing out that the only safe tiger is a dead tiger. So he and his fuzzy guards slaughtered the ape-men. Doctor Canus and Kamandi congratulate him but don't shake his blood soaked hand. Instead they send the prisoners off with him. Kamandi chooses to stay on the island and help Doctor Canus make a body for Me the Alien. That seems weird. It's easier to make a body for an unknown life-form than to fix its space ship? Anyway, I'm particularly glad I don't have to read the second issue based on the title.

Yuck! It must be pretty disgusting to be a bigger surprise than World War II.

That's it for Part One! Be here whenever next time is for Part Two of Kamandi Challenge #1!

#Jack Kirby #Kamandi Challenge #Kamandi #The Last Boy on Earth #DC Comics