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hintofelation99 · 3 years

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Hi! I love your posts and want to ask your opinion on something. Who do you think in the batfam has the most and the least common sense of a normal person? If you can, can you also list how they are arranged? Thank you!

Ooohhh, this is a fun one! In my mind all bats lack common sense. Like obviously they're hella smart, after all they are a family of detectives, they just aren't very bright.

Here's a quick rundown (least to most): Tim and Dick tie for first place, both lack common sense in just in completely different ways. Then Damian (mostly cause of the whole 'being raised by league of assassins' thing), Bruce, Cass (controversial ik), Steph, Jason, Duke, Babs, and last on the list is obvs Alfred. (Kate is probs between Cass and Steph, but I've only really seen her in the DCAMU and need to get to know her better).

And Ima add a 'keep reading' cause this is gonna get long.

Tim:

Tim is one of the smartest in the family. He deduced Batman's identity as a child, majorly fucked up the League of Assassins, and has been honored (I say this v sarcastically just btw) with Ra's creepy obsession. He's smart, plain and simple. However, when it comes to just day to day survival and being loved, goddamn that boy is dumb.

He regularly mixes energy drinks and coffee. Sometimes he even mixes energy drinks, alcohol, and coffee.

In his mind warnings are optional. "Tim, did you just sniff that drano?" "Yeah, why?" "IT LITERALLY SAYS DO NOT SMELL" "Oops"

He regularly tests shit on himself. "Why is Tim on the floor?" "He mixed joker venom and fear gas to see what would happen" "HE WHAT"

Also if you try to compliment him or tell him you love him he will find a way to misunderstand. "Tim, I love you and you are an amazing son." "I don't know who this Tim is but he sounds great" "It- it's you, literally you. Timothy Jackson Drake." "I'm a bit confused, I didn't know you knew two Timothy Jackson Drakes. You should really introduce us."

Dick:

Dick in many ways is a total himbo. He's a complete sweetheart, super supportive, and very ditzy. His ditzy-ness directly correlates to how relaxed he is. Chilling in the manor? Peak himbo. A mission in space? Absolute genius and amazing leader. Just took down a bunch of thugs? Slowly reverting into dopey boi. He always has the ability to be super analytical, smart, and big brain, but he likes being whimsical and even airheaded. And that's not a bad thing, it's just him taking mental breaks, being lighthearted.

"YOU PUT DIESEL IN YOUR CAR?" "...Yeah, in my defense the nozzles look basically the same" "They're different colors?! Also the diesel nozzle doesn't even fit into your gas tank, how did you get it in?" "I'm a good pourer."

He always responds to the word dick and it always confuses him. "God Ra's is such a dick!" "What?" "Ra's is a dick" "I'm not Ra's!" "Wha- no! I mean penis dick!" "Ohhhh, yeah he is a penis dick"

Once Dick is safe he reverts into himbo pretty quickly, even after stressful situations. "Hey Wally?" "Yes babe?" "I forgot how to change my lock screen again" "Dick, you just hacked into an alien spaceship not even an hour ago??" "What's that have to do with anything?"

Damian:

Damian lacks common sense from growing up with the League of Assassins. He's an amazing warrior and super analytical but casual human interaction alludes him. He is getting better though, so eventually he'll be lower on the list than Steph. But for now he's a senseless bby.

The first time someone tried to give him high five he assumed it was an attack and flipped them. Same with a fist bump.

This is complete canon but his original treatment of Alfred, his brothers, and, well, everyone. Like bby boy please read the room.

His ego can easily override common sense. Like he wouldn't jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it, but if someone said he couldn't he'd immediately swan dive off that bridge.

Bruce:

For the world's greatest detective he can be a major dumb bitch sometimes. Some of it's growing up rich and some is being so wrapped up in his 'crusade for justice' that he just misses basic shit.

One time he walked in on Roy and Jason making out, the next day he saw them cuddling, then they mentioned moving in together. It took him three months to realize that they're dating.

He doesn't understand coupons, like at all. Jason has tried to explain them but Bruce just gets even more confused.

Bruce tried to make coffee once. He literally just poured coffee beans in water and microwaved it. He was surprised when it didn't taste good.

Cass:

Cass is similar to Damian in she lacks common sense from an unconventional upbringing. However she's learning way faster than Damian and depending on where in the timeline you're looking she might have more common sense than Babs.

Basic things like lines, turn taking, and speaking when spoken to aren't innate to her. Like, she knows and understands them, but often forgets about them.

There are many times that she blurs the line between civilian and vigilante because she'll do something that looks v stupid and dangerous for a civilian. The thing is she never notices when she does this.

One time she was in a restaurant and there was a cockroach on the wall across the room (cause Gotham) and instead of getting up and killing it like a normal person she threw her steak knife and impaled it.

Steph:

Steph is probably lacks common sense the most conventional yet slightly concerning way. She lacks common sense in the same way a cartoon character or sitcom character would. Like it's sorta realistic but at the same time damn bby girl why are you such a disaster??

She will do anything on a dare. Anything. There is a rule against daring Steph to do things while in the manor or on patrol.

Every time she hears someone say Red Robin she yells yum. This has gotten both her and RR shot.

Steph is v lucky that 1) she's a badass and 2) the batfam loves her because she annoys absolutely everyone just for shits and giggles and the only reason she hasn't been murdered is that Cass scares everyone.

Jason:

All common sense is lost when dramas at stake. Say what you will but Jason is the (second) biggest drama queen in the family. Also he, like most bats, lacks a sense of self preservation which leads to shit common sense.

He tried to steal Batman's tires.

Sometimes he listens to music during patrol and tries to hit people/shoot on beat. This has lead to stab wounds.

Jason loves to loudly quote classic literature while on stake outs. This is a problem for obvious reasons.

Duke:

Ok this is around the time you get to average common sense levels. But he still runs around Gotham beating people up in tights (or kevlar) so he doesn't get full points. Also he's still not Babs level common sense. One area Duke lacks common sense in is how to deal with the Batfam (which is v understandable tbh)

One time Duke was joking around with Jason and decided to steal a roll off of Damian's plate. This ended in blood.

Other than lacking Batfam common sense, most of his poor judgement moments are less notable but still concerning.

For example the time he challenged Dick to a hot dog eating contest then went on a roller coaster.

Babs:

Other than being a vigilante Babs almost has normal human common sense. However being a vigilante has negative side effects on ones common sense.

While Babs' sleep schedule isn't as bad as Tim's it's not a whole lot better. She's stayed up 72 consecutive hours multiple times.

She has accidentally poured coffee onto her computer instead of into a coffee mug.

One time she drank an entire gallon of milk before realizing it was a month expired.

Alfred:

Most assume that working for Bruce Wayne is a sign of him lacking common sense. But nah, it's him knowing, understanding, and challenging his own limits. Also it's him being a charitable human being. Like he has enough common sense to go around and tbh it's the only thing keeping the family alive.

"Master Bruce, you may not use Elmer's Glue All to close a wound."

"Master Dick I would encourage you not to teach Master Duke acrobatics on the glass coffee table."

"Miss Stephanie I would not advise trying to consume an entire jar of peanut butter in one sitting, and no, I do not care if Master Jason dared you to."

Tada, there's the list! Sorry that was probably a lot longer than anyone wanted, but I enjoy talking about how ditzy the batfam is. Like they're all geniuses but at the same time they're just sooooo dumb.

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invincible-selfxmade-punk · 3 years

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My So Called Rise Against Life

All lyrics written and owned by Rise Against

No band, not even AFI, sings the soundtrack of the last 20 years of my life like Rise Against has. I was dragged to my first Rise Against show by Emily. Emily, the suicide girl, quite possibly the hottest girl in Corpus Christi, barely 5'1 and 98 pounds soaking wet, covered in tattoos and with Angelina Jolie's lips. To this day I cannot imagine why a girl who looked like that wanted to hang with me. I had never been to a gig at that little club called The Underground where the disenfranchised youth of Corpus Christi congregated. This was the very cusp of my punk rock midlife crisis and I went in scared to death because I'd heard concerts of this nature were violent.

At this point I was already considering the decision to become straightedge. I was curious but knew little about it. The sum of my knowledge was this: two of the guys in AFI were, and the guy at the mall was. The memory of this guy never leaves me. Like a stray dog with a tennis ball, catching a welcoming scent on the air, then chasing after a passing stranger who never looked down, I chased after him and each year I spent in that fruitless pursuit felt like seven. His friendship I would never win, but he would remain on the outskirts of my life, like the brass ring I reached for again and again only to fall on my face. I would see him that night too, but I didn't know this when Em invited me out. It was billed as a hardcore show. I had no idea what hardcore was back then, I just assumed it meant a rough crowd of millitant straightedge vegans that would have a sixth sense that I wasn't one of them and chase me out the doors. Rise Against was headlining and an equally unknown band called Avenged Sevenfold was opening. I'd never heard of either. Emily wanted me to go and I wanted to get out of the house for the night so it wasn't that hard for her to twist my arm in the matter. I met her at her apartment which was filth ridden, with drug paraphernalia everywhere, a wall size Misfits poster that took up the entire SIDE of her apartment, and electric guitars propped next to skateboards. As she slipped out of her clothes and into something slinky much to my viewing pleasure, she pointed me to her freezer with a purloined bottle of tropical Schnapps from the liquor store she was working for. Toasting in miniature tea cups I downed the bright blue liquid. I remember it so well, the frost covered bottle, cold in my hand, the electric blueness pouring into what looked like a child's tea party set up. This wasn't the last drink I would take, that would come two months later, yet I remember every detail of the experience. Suited up in skimpiness, we were off to the races. We hauled ass in Emily's SUV and she sat behind the wheel, dwarfed by it's hugeness and her smallness, joint in hand, careening down the expressway and swerving around orange construction barrels. As we exited into the worst part of town I had ever seen I must have looked uneasy. She turned to me and proudly exclaimed "Don't worry, I know this place! I used to score crack here!" We walked in and the first person I saw was the straightedge boy, who was taking money at the door. It was a good sign of things to come. It would also mean I would completely ignore Avenged Sevenfold's set in s stupid quest to get his attention long enough to make conversation. But Em was a champ, she stayed with me through the whole thing. In fact, I don't remember having the guts to say a word. She talked to him, I watched him talking to her and twenty feet away M. Shadows was screaming his sexy, tattooed, egotistical lungs out but I was utterly oblivious. From there we went to the merch booth where Em bought me an Avenged Sevenfold poster that I kept for years on my wall before finally giving it away right on the cusp of actually starting to listen to them. She also bought me a Rise Against patch that is still on my Dickies bag today though it is nothing more than a mess of black thread. We wandered over to the PETA booth, watched some gruesome videos, signed up for mail and picked up a cookbook I would later use to make one of the mall kids a vegan birthday cake. Then Emily spied someone she knew and I followed her over, still looking suspiciously through the crowd sure someone was just going to come up and punch me for no apparent reason. Still following, I watched as she struck up a conversation with this cute guy in glasses. I politely listened in as they talked about how they haven't seen each other since Warped Tour. For the life of me I can't remember what they talked about. I was distracted by a guy that looked like Davey Havok. Their conversation muffled to a drone until the guy looked at his watch and said "Oh crap!! I need to be on

stage! I'll talk to after the show!" and it was at that moment I realized Emily had been talking to Joe Principe of Rise Against. This was our cue as well though there was already too much of a crowd to get near the front. There were maybe one hundred people there and Tim held every one in the palm of his hand. I was amazed. I had never heard them before in my life so I can't tell you the set list but I knew from that time on I wanted to hear more. At the end Emily and I waited at the stage to talk to Tim. I had no idea what to say so I just shook his hand and now I wish I had held on a little longer. Emily got a shirt signed and talked to him for a while. Again I was too preoccupied with the AFI look-alikes in the crowd that I wasn't paying much attention. To this day I wonder if the dude I thought looked like Davey was actually Zacky Vengeance. I'll never know for sure. Soon enough Joe was with us again and he and Emily were engaged in conversation when he turned to me and said "Did that hurt?" I had NO idea what he was talking about, I was too overwhelmed by his very presence. I actually thought he was pointing past me to the PETA booth and I stupidly sputtered "What KFC is doing to chickens?" I swear to god when I'm miserable and in need of cheering up sometimes all it takes to make me smile is thinking "Hey, Joe laughed at my joke." The night drew to an end, Emily went out with the band, and being married, I went home. Next to singing a line with Dave Peters of Throwdown, that first night with Rise Against was the best night of the last ten years of my life. The next time I would see Rise Against they would be back in Corpus, opening for Bad Religion. This happened during what I call "The Emo Dave Era". I met Dave because of Rise Against. He was a little emo boy wearing a Rise Against shirt, skipping school at the mall. I stopped him and asked him about it and well that was it, he just kept coming around. I would end up knowing him for five years and eventually hiring him to work for me. By the second time they came to town Siren Song of The Counterculture was out and I remember bragging to Dave that if it was any other band I would have just downloaded it, but for them I would actually spend my hard earned money. I remember DRINKING in the songs, trying so hard to memorize all of the tracks before the gig hit. I remember the second Rise Against gig for many reasons. It was the first gig I went to alone at a time I was in the grip of panic attacks whenever I had to be in wide open spaces by myself. Two of my "mall daughters" met me at the gates and stayed with me the whole night. I remember that. I remember Dave hitting the merch table before me and buying me Rise Against stickers that I regarded like they were jewels and kept them in some special place until I hid them so well I hid them from myself. Dave and I and the girls were in the front row together, and sadly none of them I am in contact with now. Not only that, but Dave and one of the girls I was up front with would end up working for me and stealing over $1300 from my business during their tenure as my employees. Years from knowing this though we happily stood side by side and sang along for the whole set. What I remember most about that second gig was standing in front of Joe and when he sang "Single file like soldiers on a mission." I saluted him and he saluted back. Tim was wearing the exact same shirt he wore at the first gig but I was probably the only one to notice it. And when Tim asked "Who was here at our first gig when only 20 people showed up?" I proudly raised my hand. All the memorizing I did was pretty much for naught because I was so excited to be in the front row I damn near forgot every word to every song, but for some reason I knew every word to 1,000 Good Intentions. The first Rise Against show was in August, I can't tell you the date of the second one. I made my commitment to becoming straightedge sometime between December and January. I don't know the exact date because I was so scared about the whole

thing I kept it to myself "You're the new revolution The angst filled adolescent You fit the stereotype well..."

.All I know for sure was that I'd been edge several months by the second Rise Against gig at Concrete Street in Corpus. he second Rise Against gig also brings to mind another phantom of my past: a girl I was close to named Amanda (not the Amanda I went to Warped Tour w/, that Amanda I've always called Di because her screen name was Dionysus). This was Amanda's first night aout after being kidnapped and raped. Her parents were druggies and didn't want the cops involved so the guys who did it just got away with it and I'd see them at the mall all the time afterward and I couldn't do shit. It was her and her big sister who met me at the gates and stayed with me all night. I loved those girls. . . . Again, digressing. From First To Last opened and we spent the whole set talking about how much they looked like AFI. I ended up leaving the gig early, going to the house of one of them who still lived with his folks, ringing the doorbell and leaving a note in the mail box that said 'YOUR SON RAPES LITTLE GIRLS----just thought you should know'. It didn't really help anything but it made me feel better. During this mindlessly courageous time I was blinded by my commitment. I jumped into being edge with a fervor reserved for things like joining the Hari Krishnas or Jehovah's Witnesses. It was a complete make over of every idea I'd ever held. I didn't know a great deal but once I found it, I knew it was all I had been looking for. The only other person I actually knew who was edge was the straightedge boy, who now had become god-like in my mind. He was the first face of straightedge for me, the ideal, the standard, the one thing I felt I had to live up to. Sadly, by this time he was long gone, moving away from the mall where we worked and on to better things. This fact only drove me forward in a Holy Grail level quest to find him. When he was there I was terrified of speaking to him and then when he wasn't I kicked myself for not having the courage. I was sure that if I did make my way to him, he could impart some knowledge, some advice that would make my whole solitary experience make sense. The soundtrack of that quest was Blood to Bleed: "Steps I take in your footsteps Aren't getting me closer to what is left of the dreams of what I once claimed to know Within my bones this resonates...." Within weeks of each other three amazing things happened: Ceci, my best friend Amanda(Dionysus) and I went to Warped Tour to see AFI and in the process saw Rise Against as well. Then The Sufferer and the Witness came out, and at the same time Jadey and Ceci came to visit me in Corpus for quite possibly the most idyllic summer of my life. It was that summer we saw Rise Against for the third time. At that Warped Tour again we were in front of Joe, and again when Tim sang "Single file like soldiers on a mission... " we saluted Joe and he saluted us back and it was like a little piece of heaven fell to earth, the moment was so perfect. The set was

short because it was Warped Tour but we didn't care. We were together, we loved each other and we sang along with every song we knew. Sufferer and Witness came out in July right in time for Warped Tour and the girls coming down for a visit. I remember this so well because I had a cd of the straightedge boy's band and it seemed so important for me to play it for Jadey and Ceci. Do you remember that line in The Lost Boys: "Now you know what we are, now you know what you are." ? That was how it felt for me, this romanticized notion that my edge was not my own and it was all owing and belonged to someone else. I wanted to be able to trace it like a family tree to say, if I had not met him I would not have found out about AFI, I would not have made my committment, we would have never met, so therefore the life and friendship we have shared has all traced back to THIS. Well, they weren't all that impressed. I have a very clear memory of us being outside the Sonic Drive In and Jadey asking me "Please turn that noise off and put in something else." That something else was the The Sufferer And The Witnessand it stayed in the player for the rest of the trip. Ready To Fall was the song that defined the next year, much later, that I made my edge my own. In my journey I had looked to so many others for advice or reassurance or validation. I did this because I didn't believe in myself. I thought I was weak and sought in others what would make me strong. Sometimes I received it, like messages sent back and forth the guys in Throwdown and the near religious experience of seeing them live all the times I have, of singing a line with Dave, shaking his hand. Most of the time though my search was in vain. I remember very clearly seeking out help online. One guy told me I would never know who I was until I went to a hardcore show. This wasn't exactly bad advice, hardcore shows had the most amazing energy flowing through them and it did feel good to be surrounded by like minded people. The only thing I really learned about myself through going to hardcore shows was that if God had wanted me to hardcore dance, He would not have given me boobs. There was another guy who told me only the most insecure person would EVER wear a straightedge shirt out in public and if you were sincere about it, you'd keep it to yourself. I thought that guy was nuts. The whole POINT of being edge to me was proving I was not like the idiots around me. "With your eyes Glazed and half-smiled Explain to me the details of your God-given right You point your finger In my face but You can't remember what you did last night" I asked another guy what to do if I was tempted to drink again and he told me if I was tempted I was never really straightedge to begin with and I should just do the scene a favor and kill myself already. Then there were the kids that thought I was just the bees knees and were coming to ME for advice. I had no idea what to tell these kids, but I wasn't about to tell them not to wear sXe gear or kill themselves. Because of my own search for answers I refused to turn any kid away. One day they were telling me I was their hero and begging for advice, the next they were telling me I was out of my mind and to get lost. It took a good four years before I learned not to believe them in either case. "This could be my great awakening But how would I know when it's all noise to me? Are these words falling on deaf ears?" Right in the middle of this I had the good fortune to meet a guy named Chris X from Philly. He neither worshipped nor ignored me. He was simply THERE. I have the most vivid memory of this one morning. I had the same dream about the straightedge boy only this time I stepped out and stopped him and asked him if the hormones levels in milk made people more aggressive the way steroids did and asked if I should stop drinking it. Why this popped into my head I will never know. As usual the alarm rang before the blurry form opened his mouth and imparted wisdom. I woke up at 5 am and suddenly HAD to know

the answer to the question. It happened that Chris X was up too. I contacted him and he took the time out of his morning to discuss this with me completely out of the blue. I don't know why this sticks out in my memory but it does: Him being up at five am and taking an hour out of his morning to answer some moronic question from a girl he didn't know and being so nice about it. He is still edge, we are still friends and he is still there when I need him. He is the exception to the rule. Friends fell away and I remained steadfast, yet alone. Slowly though there came the time when I realized I needed to look no further than in the mirror. It wasn't like this was a new thing. I was told this many times and yet I never believed it. Right about this time Rise Against released Ready To Fall: "But here in this moment like the eye of the storm It all came clear to me I found a shoulder to lean on An infallible reason to live all by itself I took one last look from the heights that I once loved And then I ran like hell" The heights I once loved were ego driven, the compulsion to wear a straightedge shirt every day and X's for every gig and dare anyone to tell me otherwise. It was that romanticized notion of my edge,--that it hadn't been mine and all I was, was owed to someone else. It was as if I believed someone had physically stood between me and a fridge full of alcohol that first year and kept me from it. Or that someone had been there to comfort me when my husband was drunk or in a bad mood and was calling me names or throwing me around because I dared come home with a book of Marxist writing or simply did not shut up and go along or renounce my beliefs. I healed myself, I comforted myself and I did almost all of it completely alone. It was slow in dawning but it finally came to me that I was the only one I had to inspire or impress, and my own approval was all I needed. This revelation was scored by every track on Sufferer and Witness. The fourth time I saw Rise Against, I met Ceci in Austin to see them at Stubb's. Stubb's BBQ is a grand place to see any band because if you get there early enough, you can have lunch on the balcony while watching the band's sound check. We found this out the first time we went there, seeing The Rollins Band open up for X. Going to the Rise Against show I told myself "It's not big deal, I've seen them three times before, I'm just going to kick back and eat and enjoy the sound check" but as soon as Tim and Joe took the stage I could barely consume a thing I was so overwhelmed. As we waited in line after lunch for the doors to reopen, I met Ceci's brother Jordan who is, wildly enough, still my friend. Jordan. He hovers on the edges of my life, always there with a kind word whether I actually deserved it or not. He is the only good thing to come out of my friendship with Ceci. Evergreen Terrace opened that show and we were right in front of the guy in the Straightedge Soldier tshirt and that and a brilliant cover of "Mad World" was all I remembered of their set. Circa Survive came on next and Ceci and I took turns booing them and flipping them off. Not that they were necessarily bad, but we were in no mood to entertain the mopey emo set at that point. Soon we were all piled together up front, again in front of Joe. I didn't get to salute him at that gig. Ceci's arms were too tightly around me. Ceci, her girlfriend Grace, Jordan and my husband were tangled in a sea of arms, so tightly that I wasn't sure of whose hand I was holding most of the night. Though by that time I was perfectly comfortable in my commitment, Blood to Bleed still only reminded me of one person and Ceci knew this. I felt she understood me then, I felt she was one of the very few who knew me best. Beside me was my husband, but in my heart was a dream of someone else, of someone who shared my commitment and my ideals, a dream of an idea more than a person, the perfect guy/relationship/life I would never have. Two months later I would find out my husband was seeing a girl from work

that had got him hooked on heroin. Two months later he would come to where I worked and attack me in front of multiple witnesses and when called, the police would do nothing. Two months later I would sit sobbing in the back of a police car because I was too afraid to go into my own apartment and get my things. When responding to my call the enormous officer would glare down at me and say "Why are you afraid to walk in your own home? Are you on drugs or are you just retarded?" Instead of accompanying me inside to get my things they would search me for drugs. Two months later I would realize why Henry Rollins hated cops so much. Two months later. after ten years together, I would leave my husband. I did not know any of this then. All I knew was that in that instant my heart was bleeding inside of me for want of some friendship I would never have, the one thing I believed would make my life complete. It was that friendship, that idea of a person, of perfection, of everything I wanted myself and my life to be, that seemed like the holy grail of the second part of my life. Looking back, maybe it held value only because it was unobtainable. I had not yet learned to find it in myself so I sought it so furiously in a stranger. So, with the ridiculously angelic vision of the first straightedge boy I ever met in my head, and my unfaithful husband beside me, in that crowd at Stubb's, Rise Against tore into Blood To Bleed. It was our first time to hear it live together as they had not played it at Warped Tour. Ceci looked down at me, wrapped her arms around me and held me tight because she knew exactly who I was thinking of and why. As she held on to me with one hand and ran a hand through my hair, we both screamed out those lyrics that had haunted me and driven me on for years. "This place rings with echos of lives once lived, but now are lost Times spent wondering about tomorrow I don't care if we lose it all tonight Up in flames, burning bright.... Within my bones this resonates Boiling blood will circulate Could you tell me again what you did this for?" And just like I was blind to what was about to erupt with my husband I was just as blind to time bomb ticking inside of Ceci that would turn her into a complete stranger the next time we met, at the very same place it would turn out. Had I known that this was the last time she would hold my hand and sing with me and look down on me with love and empathy in her eyes, I would not have wasted my sorrow in grieving for a friendship that never was and instead would have known to grieve for the real friendship I was losing. I should have grieved for hers, but in retrospect, it was no more real than the idea of the one I chased after so fruitlessly. "I don't love you anymore is all I remember you telling me never have I felt so cold But I've no more blood to bleed Cuz my heart has been draining into the sea...." And the strange footnote to that day, that time, that moment of hope and loss and all that was to come is this: Even though his friendship I never actually earned, in his status of a wise, polite stranger, that straightedge boy I never really knew was far more civil than Ceci. His responses, however short they were, however long it took to get them, were genuine. It is such a small thing, his honesty, yet it is more than I can say for ninety percent of the people I've known in the last several years. Another song we sang together that night was Prayer of the Refugee. I had no idea then but that song was about to describe my life. "We are the angry and desperate The hungry and the cold We are the ones who kept quiet and always did what we were told But we've been sweating while you slept so calm in the safety of your homes We've been pulling at the nails that hold up everything you own."

The split with my husband was brutal. First I had to deal with police that didn't care, who told me at one point "Well, if he tries to kill you, call us back, otherwise there's nothing we can do. He's your husband and he has the same right to live here as you do." Thanks to the police not doing anything, I was thrown out of the apartment I had paid for for ten years. The battered women's shelter was full and I would have found myself homeless had it not been for my friend Lilo. Suddenly I was having to start from scratch and then, upon finding a place, having to pack up ten years worth of my life and move it all by myself. "I hit the ground and I'm still running but I need a place to stay tonight I swear I'll be gone in the morning I just need some place warm to close my eyes." Every day I worked until the afternoon, went home and packed until 2 am, fell asleep until 5 am and then got up and did it all again. Then once I was packed I had to move it all. I can't remember why I didn't ask for help but I moved it all alone except for the bed, entertainment center and tv. "The drones all slave away They're working overtime They serve a faceless queen They never question why Disciples of a god That neither lives nor breathes But we've got bills to pay Yeah we've got mouths to feed I won't go back..." This was such a strange time. There was no way to hide what was going on: my husband came to where I worked and jumped me in front of everyone there, I had to tell my boss "My husband kicked me out and I'm homeless at the moment, could I possibly get my check a day or two early to put a deposit down on an apartment?" and I had to own up to the fact that I was straightedge and my husband was a heroin addict. "We're broken but still breathing We are wounded but we are healing We pick up right where we left off Breathe on the ashes that remain So that these coals may become fire To guide our way.." This made my life suddenly seem a really bad B movie. There was nothing to do but go on. I would have asked myself "What would that straightedge guy do in this situation?" if I'd had any idea. Instead I asked "What would Dave Peters of Throwdown do?" and of course the obvious answer was "punch something". As much as I wanted to, I couldn't do that. However, I knew for sure what he wouldn't do and that was curl up in a ball and cry. So I didn't do that either. It was a such horrible time and yet when I look back all I remember is my own strength and the exhilaration I felt when I finally left. "So give me the drug Keep me alive Give me what's left of my life Don't let me go... Pull this plug, let me breathe On my own, I'm finally free..."

Lilo and Di swore I looked great, like I had suddenly gotten 10 years younger. They said I was glowing, but unless I had come in contact with radium I certainly didn't see how. I remember thinking "Well hell, maybe the Socialists were right. Maybe 16 hour days are the way to salvation." "Wake me up inside Tell me there's a reason To take another step To get up off my knees and, Follow this path of most resistance. And where ever it takes us, Whatever it faces and wherever it leads" As I came into my own power, the straightedge boy who had loomed so god-like over the first years of my commitment shrank back down to human size. Deep down I still hoped that if he was to know of all I had gone through he would be a little proud of me for surviving with my integrity intact. But if he didn't, well that was okay too. Survive I did, survive I continue to. "Somewhere between happy, and total fucking wreck Feet sometimes on solid ground, sometimes at the edge To spend your waking moments, simply killing time Is to give up on your hopes and dreams, to give up on your... Life for you, has been less than kind So take a number, stand in line We've all been sorry, we've all been hurt But how we survive, is what makes us who we are" When I had my own place and my own life again, to celebrate I bought myself a Christmas present: a tattoo of a sparrow carrying brass knuckles in her beak. It reminded me of this lyric that had been echoing in my head the whole time: "And if strength was born from heartbreak Then mountains I could move If walls could speak I pray that they would tell me what to do." I enjoyed more than six months of solitude in my cozy little apartment on Airline. I filled my weekends with walks on the beach, solitary shopping excursions for meatless dinners, and nights were spent at the House of Rock and the Underground watching bands, enjoying the freedom of staying out without getting yelled at or called names. I spent Christmas alone on Lilo's floor stuffing myself with processed cheeseballs and watching movies. It was my first UnChristmas. The Jehovah's Witnesses would have been proud! "Warm yourself by the fire, son, And the morning will come soon. I’ll tell you stories of a better time, In a place that we once knew. Before we packed our bags And left all this behind us in the dust, We had a place that we could call home, And a life no one could touch."

But I am flawed and cowed and crippled by the Christian concept of forgiveness. And by the time I would be seeing Rise Against again, my husband would be back by my side. In West Texas his mom had ran him through the MHMR system, let them start him on 7 different drugs, ---including three different tranquilizers and pills for hallucinations and seizures, which he never once had,--- used him to get on welfare, disability, and Medicare. Once he's served the purpose, she called a friend in the sheriff's department and had him pulled from her house, drugged out of his mind on meds at the time, and stuck on a bus to Corpus Christi. The Glasscock County Sherriff's Department called me at work to TELL me "Your husband is on a bus to Corpus, he'll be there at two am. He's your responsibility now." On the bus, because of his state of stupor, he was robbed of everything but his clothes and as much as I wanted to just shove him into the closest homeless shelter, I couldn't. Had it been me, as unlikely as that would be, I would want someone to have compassion. "We are the children you reject and disregard These aching cries come from the bottom of our hearts You can't disown us now, we are your own flesh and blood And we don't disappear just because your eyes are shut" I took him in. At first it was easy. Thanks to the drugs he was sleeping 18 hours a day. Finally I started to investigate what they had him on, what he could do without and how to get him back to normal. I'm not sure how I did it, but I weened him off of every drug he was on. At first it was out of necessity since I was making too much money for him to stay on state sponsored help and he'd have run out eventually. Looking back though, had he sustained that amount of drug intake for long he would have probably died. So he was back for good and conversely Ceci and Jadey and nearly every other friend I had at the time would have turned their backs on me and flocked to other, cooler individuals. All those kids that convinced me they would have killed themselves, starved themselves, cut themselves to shreds, OD'ed, etc had they not met me, who all imposed their problems and lives on mine for five years or more and took up every spare moment of my time and every inch of my heart all turned 18 at once. In turning 18 they realized they knew it all and I was no longer worth their time. "And if you think your words will ever make a difference Think again and carry on..." My husband and I are still together, but all those friends are long gone. I wish I could say he gave up all his demons, but he didn't. He simply traded the big ones for a myriad of lesser evils. He will never be straightedge. And though he claims to be proud of me, to this day he is convinced, utterly falsely, I am hiding some secret affair with the straightedge boy from years ago. I sat him down one day and asked "Do you get that we are straightedge? Do you get that in being straightedge we could not possibly cheat on our significant others and remain straightedge? Do you get that no matter how much he influenced me I barely knew him and he barely gave me the time of day? Do you get that what you are accusing me of is utterly impossible?”

Despite his insistence on this, the idea doesn't bother him enough for him to give up his own addictions and become edge himself. He no longer asks me to change and he is no longer violent, thank god. I no longer ask him to change, though I pray every day he will. We have been together for twenty years now and I have never been with anyone else. This doesn't keep me from dreaming of some nice sXe man who shares my ideals. But I think of it much like I imagine racing on the autobahn, knowing it will never actually happen and knowing I’d never do it even if I could. "We live on front porches and swing life away We get by just fine here on minimum wage If love is a labor I'll slave til the end..." Things in my life settled down for a bit as we prepared to see the boys again at Stubb's BBQ. Through myspace I found my friend Linda that I had not spoken to in fifteen years. As we sat on the balcony at Stubb's I kept one eye on the stage and the other on the door waiting to see her again. When she walked through the doors it was like the last fifteen years never even happened and instantly we picked up right where we left off and again were tearing through Austin with her at the wheel like we had so many times in the past. Because of this joyful reunion I was not first in line when the doors opened, I was buying rainbow necklaces in the gay shops in town and snickering over whether the guy behind the counter was flirting with my husband or not. - That was a strange memory for me, being in the very back of the audience for once, singing alone as Aaron sat on a rock and read a Robert Jordan novel. I was happy to be there, the music was incredible, but the feeling was all wrong. I was isolated and alone, in the back row with my fist raised and Aaron tugging at my arm every other song asking "What song is this? Do I know this one?". I wondered if Ceci was there in the front row, holding on to someone else and convincing them she would have killed herself if they hadn't come into her life. I imagined others in the front row, in our place, saluting Joe, singing our songs while I was the interloper that did not belong anymore. We walked out of the sold out show before the encore, a long drive home facing us. Aaron never lets me stay for the encores. He always wants to hit the road. As we walked to the car, with Worth Dying For wafting through the air above us, I blew a kiss to the wind and told Ceci goodbye. "Feel me rise in the strength I've found inside the warm embracing air Like a glacier melting watch me dissipate I searched for love in an empty world but all I found was hate" It was the lyrics of Rise Against that echoed in my head when I sat down to read the words of Marx and Lenin for the first time as a whole other world opened up for me. It was Rise Against that drove me on as I worked sixty hour weeks. "We're losing daylight but I can't work any faster Under the veil of dust we go on..." Their lyrics saw me through every major event of the last several years of my life. Appeal to Reason was released in the Fall of 2008 and though the year found me miserably poor and unemployed, I still bought it the day it came out. It was on my mp3 player and as I sat in the welfare office applying for food stamps I would hear the lyrics "Despite these petty fortunes we still can't afford a life...." for the first time and I would pause a moment just for the whole zeitgeist effect of it. For Christmas of 2008 I received an email from Ceci after a year and a half of ignoring my every attempt at contacting her. I had tried everything, even terribly childish measures to get some kind of reaction but every letter---first polite, then angry, then groveling-- every call, email, and package was met with silence. A year and a half passed and then I got the email saying "I got the new Rise Against and it made me realize how much I loved and missed you and loved AFI and I want to be friends again. I know you can't forgive me but can we be friends again? There's this song on that new Rise Against that

reminds me of you." True to the bond we had once held there was certainly a song on the new Rise Against that reminded me of us too: "Identities assume us as nine and five add up Synchronizing watches To the seconds that we lost I looked up and saw you I know that you saw me We froze but for a moment In empathy I brought down the sky for you but all you did was shrug" This was exactly what happened the last time we saw each other when she turned up her nose and pretended not to know who I was, just a week after sending me a letter saying how much she loved me. This led to the year plus of her not speaking to and ignoring all attempts at contact I made, even the immature ones. "And if you see me please just walk on by Walk on by Forget my name and I'll forget it too Failed attempts at living simple lives Simple lives Always keep me coming back to you." But too much time had passed and although that Christian weakness crippled me so with my husband, for once I stood strong and had no trouble in keeping the door to my heart shut. I told her not to contact me again. "I count the times that I've been sorry Now my compassion slowly drowns If there's a time these walls could guard you Then let that time be right now."

That doesn't mean that my mind does not still light to her like a bee to a flower, the years we were friends, that feeling of love and camaraderie and the bond I imagined we had. The last three Rise Against albums play the soundtrack of our friendship whenever I turn them on. When I play Appeal to Reason I wonder if this song reminds her of me:

"It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgotten what the color of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them" If I close my eyes I am there again in that Port Aransas condo, the night we met face to face after talking online for so long. We are huddled together in the bedroom sharing the earphones of a cd player listening to Placebo's Sleeping With Ghosts. I am pulling down the zipper of my boot and showing her three freshly razored X's cut into my ankle, the blood still stuck to a wad of tissue pressed between my sock and skin. She is crying and wrapping her arms around me and telling me she understands everything and that someday she will show me her scars too. "I'll show you mine If you'll show me yours first Let's compare scars I'll tell you whose is worse Let's unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words..." She never did show me her scars. I wonder now if she even had any. There are lots of songs that transport me back then when she was my world. But now I know nothing about her nor anyone else I knew then was real and I wonder if that song ever reminds her of me and the way she led me to believe I was her lifeline, right up until the moment she cut me off and forgot me like a favorite toy after adolescence destroys the need for such playthings. "As the telling signs of age rain down a single tear is dropping through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten ..." This is the music that accompanied my feet hitting the pavement of park sidewalks and treadmills, it is the melodies that buoyed me through endless work weeks and settled into the recesses of my heart in times of quiet contemplation. As I read words written years ago by writers we were never allowed to study in school, it is the soundtrack that played in my mind when those concepts began to make sense. When I read Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed, what I was hearing in my head was

"but these ghosts come alive like water and wine walk through these streets singing songs and carrying signs, to them these streets belong.." As I struggled to understand the Communist Manifesto I was thinking to myself: "Unknowing, we lie and wait for the rain To wash away what they have made Face down in the dirt with your foot on my back In the distance I hear thunder crack C'mon Stand up! This system of power and privilege is about to come to an end Here come the clouds The first drop is falling down" I look back at many things and laugh. I remember when I was first looking for straightedge shirts I came upon one that said SUPPORT LEFTIST HARDCORE. I had no earthly idea what it meant and was way too scared to ask anyone. Now I can quote Trotsky. When I first turned edge I stopped eating meat for several months until my husband found out and started calling me a Communist. At the time it seemed like the worst thing in the world to be called. He still calls me a Communist but now with laughable results. I'll cock my head, say something to him in Russian, he'll mumble under his breath 'Yeah you only say that because you've had sex with the entire Communist party!", I'll roll my eyes and we go back to our common denominators of movie quotes, comic books, and making fun of people. I always loved the way the Russian alphabet looked and shortly after we were married I got a tramp stamp with his initials in Russian. He now claims it actually means "Welcome aboard, Comrade." I just laugh and we kid each other and life goes on. In the great Holy Grail of a search for wisdom that I thought could only come from the first straightedge boy I knew, I had one great fear: what if I found him again and he was no longer edge? I was terrified of this, sure that if he fell I would too, that if that touchstone was gone, all would be lost. This no longer worries me. I would be sad if it happened, but it would not affect my journey nor cause me to stumble because I have found my own way. It was hard way full of work, trial and error and pure blind luck. Maybe it would have been easier if things had gone differently and yet it is all mine and no one else's.

I have now seen Rise Against eight times each with its own small dramas, like when I was working for Job Corps, worked an 18 hour day, literally passed out in my car from low blood sugar and exhaustion—luckily before I had started the engine. I somehow made it home, downed two peanut butter sandwiches and went to the show where I had no energy to dance, but just stood there and sang.

The last show was the best in years for me. I was in the second row behind a little boy and his mom. His mom was my age and it was her son’s first concert. He was there to see NOFX. They put on an incredible show and I did my best to keep the crowd off the kid. As a reward, the mother gave me their spot and they went to the back when Rise Against came on. I had not been in the front row since that show with Ceci. I felt like I was twenty again. Rise Against is the music that scores ALL of this in my memory. It is the sound of hope and loss, of new directions and ideas, of the brass ring becoming just another small cog in the great, silent machinations of my soul. It is the music of discovering that the strength of the world lies inside my own heart. It is the sound of me walking away from what I loved, it is the joyous noise of friends you're certain is lost forever coming back to you. This is my so-called Rise Against life

#rise against lyrics #rise against #long post under cut #spilled ink

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jinmukangwrites · 4 years

Text

Whumptober Day 3

Forced to their knees | Held at Gunpoint

Warnings: Canon typical violence

Ao3

-o-o-o-o-

Jason wakes up to a hand pressing down on his shoulder. Immediately, he's awake. His eyes fly open and his hand snatches the gun he keeps under his pillow like the cliche paranoid lone-wolf characters always do in the movies. Except Jason does it unironically. There’s been many times he’s woken up to an unfamiliar and leering face. A gun normally forced them to back off.

And this time is no different. Well, except the face that backs up this time, hands raising in the air in surrender, isn’t one of ill intentions. It’s of familiarity. Of goofy, lopsided, apologetic smiles and familiar eyes.

"Dick," Jason grumbles, letting the tension fall in his frame as he lowers the gun ever so slightly. Not all the way. Dick should know better than to wake Jason up so suddenly, especially if Jason's crashing in one of his safe houses in the bad parts of town like he’s doing now. Jason won't shoot him, and the idiot knows that there were only rubber bullets filling the chamber of his pistol, but it’s the thought that counts. right?

Within moments, his sleepy, adrenalin filled find catches up to him.

Dick is in his room. Dick.

Holy crap.

"Where the heck have you been?" Jason hisses, throwing off the layers of his blankets to stand up. The chilled morning air hits his bare chest, but thankfully he previously decided to hit the hay in sweats. "It's been three weeks since anyone's heard from you."

Dick shrugs, lowering his arms and keeping his stupid bright, wide smile consistent as he leans nonchalantly against the wall. "Here and there. Secret stuff, ya know?"

Jason scoffs. Yeah. He knows. Stupid Grayson and his stupid undercover missions he doesn't bother to tell anybody about. And the worst part is, Jason was actually worried about him. Everyone was. Even Bruce, seemingly, even though now Jason suspects the old man is in on it.

Fuck. Jason thought they were fine with this undercover crap years ago, after the Spyral escapade and all that shiz.

Well. Apparently, not. A swell of anger enters his throat. He lifts his weapon.

"Are you gonna elaborate on that? Or are ya just gonna stand there and watch me shirtless like a creep?"

"That's actually why I'm here, Jay," Dick says with a sigh. "To elaborate. Something… came up. I need your help."

Jason now decides to lower his gun, dropping it onto the rumpled sheets above his now depressingly-empty-of-his-sleeping-body bed.

He would love to tell Dick to go screw himself and then go back to bed. The entire family has been busting their butts with worry, trying to figure out where he's gone off to, and of course it just ends up being a super secret undercover mission. If Jason had half a mind, he'd punch Dick then drive to the manor and lock Bruce into the manor’s barn with Tim's dirty laundry for the rest of the day.

Tim might disagree, but everyone besides him has come to the conclusion that Tim's body odor is the worst . Yes they rank each other's body odor. They're boys and Cass , what do you expect? Jason holds the record of best smelling body odor and Duke can shoot his urine off the roof of the manor the furthest. It's known facts of the family.

Anyway, he gives Dick an unimpressed glare, his blood beginning to boil at the sheepish look on his face. How can he stand there knowing that everyone's been frantically looking for him and look sheepish about it?

"Go tell Daddio then, I'm not interested to deal with your bullcrap," he grumbles. "You're in this together, dig yourself out of whatever hole you've fallen in together."

"Bruce can't know," Dick says quickly. Too quickly. Sharply like he's... worried. That grabs Jason's attention. The golden boy… doesn't want to tell Bruce something?

Jason lifts an eyebrow and Dick sighs, his smile finally dropping just a bit as he reaches an arm up to rub the back of his neck. "There's a new smuggling group in town and I was put in charge of going in undercover to get information. The thing is, they found out that there was a mole. They don't know who it is, but they also don't think it's me. They trust me. But there's a woman who works with them who they do suspect. I haven't seen her in three days."

"And that means you can't go to Bruce… why?"

Dick gives him a look like Jason's not understanding something. He scowls, sighs again, then sticks his hands into his jean pockets. "They're cracking down on the signals we're putting out now. Checking our phones and such. I can't call Bruce otherwise they'll figure me out. And I can't drive to the manor because there's a higher chance of me being tracked."

"Payphone, then."

Now Dick doesn't bother to hide an annoyed expression. "Look. You're the closest and the easiest to contact. And… and this is my mission. Mine alone. I can't…"

He can't fail it.

Jason gets it.

He hates that he does.

Jason exhales sharply, already deciding he's going to regret this. "What's the plan?"

Dick's bright, plastered smile returns along with a glint in his stupid blue eyes. "I overheard some higher-ups talking about an abandoned lot by Gotham Bay, and I saw a boat covered in a tarp in one of the warehouses they use. I think they're going to drop her in the bay. We just need to get there and take them out in a way that won't lead to suspicion. Just Nightwing and Red Hood saving a girl about to be drowned out of the goodness of their hearts."

"Bold of you to assume I have a heart," Jason grunts, "but sounds solid enough. Anything about these guys I need to know about? Names? Titles? You're being awfully vague."

"Sorry, Jay-lad," Dick says smoothly, and the nickname rings in Jason's ears. "Can't have the bats catching on."

-o-o-o-o-

Jay-lad.

Jason launches himself over a two story roof down towards the empty roads lining the bay. Sometimes, during the summer, there'll be parties and picnics in the parks circumferencing the ocean, but they're few and far between. Never that much fun. Especially when it starts to rain for the twenty-billionth time that day and a dead body washes in on the shore.

Jay-lad ?

Nightwing lands besides Jason. All smiles and perfect teeth like always. The brightness of his smile shines even in the dim, harsh light of Gotham's half-assed lampposts. Ahead of them is what definitely could be described as an abandoned lot. In Jason's opinion, it looks more like someone tried to build a department store on the shore and forgot the tide exists. It's half submerged, walls rotting and the roof caved in. Graffiti of all kinds litter the walls, no attempt by anyone to ever clear it up.

Did Dick really call him Jay-lad ?

To the side of the building is a boat, floating softly right where it's just deep enough to do so. It's tied to the building though, not going anywhere for a little while longer.

Dick's never called him Jay-lad before. That's… that's Bruce's thing. Jason's always been Little Wing, or Jay bird . Names he's always hated, but might have been secretly proud of a few times in his life. Names he’s always hated, but they were Dick’s nicknames for him.

"They might be in the building trying to get last minute information out of her," Dick says, his voice still way too happy. All smiles. Perfect teeth. Jason didn't think it was odd a few hours earlier, but now it's grating on his nerves in such a specific way that he can't help but search for all the little things that's bothering him about Dick right now.

For one, the nickname.

For two, the happy go lucky attitude. The guy is optimistic, sure, but he knows when business is business . Business includes saving a woman wrongfully accused of being a spy in a group of criminals he was spying on. He should be full of guilt and anger right about now. Dick's a martyr, and he hates it when people are being hurt for something he's done.

For numero three, the way he flips over the roofs. Or well, the lack of flips. Jason didn't see him flip once . Just jump, land, jump, land, keeping up pace with Jason and not making any useless chatter along the way.

Dick's been gone for three weeks, and he comes back with a vague excuse with holes and acts… wrong.

It must be in Jason's head. It has to be.

"So we go in through the windows and get her out before we have to swim to get her," Jason says and Dick nods his head.

"Let's go," Dick says, rushing forward just like that. No jokes, no verbal announcements of why they're doing this, no keep safes .

Let's go. Just that.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong and Jason can't figure out what.

So he goes along. Follows Dick towards the building and watches the dim windows for any movement. There's none. Which is strange. Normally, when a Gotham villain wants to get rid of a mole, they do it rather dramatically and over the top. Gotham criminals are rather proud of that status, and when someone enters their ranks pretending to be one of them they take it as a personal offence.

Regardless of that, when Dick chooses a window closest to the shore and begins wading through the water, Jason trails after, his hands twitching for the guns on his hips.

By the time they make it to the window, they're mid-thigh deep in chillingly freezing water. Dick makes a signal for Jason to stay put for a second, looks in the window, then opens it to climb through. Jason waits in the ice-cold water for Dick's signal, trying not to think about what the salt water is going to do to his pants but also definitely thinking about what he's going to do to Dick if his pants are ruined.

"Clear," comes Dick's voice after a solid minute of waiting. Jason releases an uneasy breath, ready to get out of the ocean but also still feeling like something is very, very off about this entire situation.

Jason shoves the doubts to the back of his mind, grabs onto the ledge of the window, then hefts himself up.

The first thing he notices when he enters the room is that it's dark. Empty. Dust lingering in the air. The next thing he notices is that Dick is nowhere to be seen.

The third thing is that Dick is, in fact, here, but he makes himself known by jamming a fist into Jason's throat and grabbing the collar of his leather jacket. Before Jason can recover from the attack on his neck and catch his breath, he's shoved against the far wall, away from the window.

Away from escape.

Anger puddles in Jason's gut.

"What the hell ," he snarls, his voice scratching, as he ducks under another swing. Dick's fist rams into the wall, resulting in the wall gaining some shining new cracks. The force of the punch was definitely enough to break fingers, even if properly thrown, but Dick doesn't even flinch. Just reals around with a frown on his lips and a downward, furious tilt to his brow. Jason grabs his guns, aiming them at the man he's just begun to consider family again. Dick stops in his tracks at the sight of the weapons being aimed at him and glares.

"This isn't anything personal, Jay-lad," Dick says slowly, but he doesn't make any moves to back off or surrender. He just stands there. Heartless milky eyes staring through his mask.

"There ya go again, calling me that," Jason hisses, keeping his aims steady towards Dick's chest.

"I always call you that," Dick says, and Jason almost sees green.

"No you don't," he growls. "You've never called me that. And you've been acting weird all night. Off. And now you're attacking me? What the fuck is going on?!"

And for the first time in a very long ass time, Jason watches the one expression that doesn't look pretty on Dick pass on his face. Frustration. Annoyance. Rage.

It's an expression Jason hasn't seen in years . Not since Jason was still in his early teens and still believed Robin gave him magic. Not since Dick and Bruce were at each other's throats whenever they were anywhere near each other for whatever reason. The downturn to his lips, the crinkling under his eyes, the scrunching of his nose, the sneer. It's not a good expression on Dick.

It's a terrifying one.

"You'll have to find out, wontcha, hoodie?"

And Dick charges. Teeth bared, fists clenched. Jason just manages to block the next punch with the back of his arm. He lashes out with his free hand, the one holding the gun, and attempts to toss a pistol whip. He succeeds, smacking his cheekbone with a crack . Dick's cries out, stumbling back a step before charging again, fire in his normally cool eyes.

Jason tries to hit him again, but Dick anticipates the move, hitting Jason on the inside of his arm with enough force for Jason to accidentally let go of the weapon. The gun goes sliding across the weathered floor, clanking against the far wall. He doesn't go for it, just shifts to a more hands on approach to take care of this. He throws his fist, hitting Dick along the jaw, but Dick retaliates by throwing a leg up and kicking Jason right in the gut. Jason gasps, pissed now that his breath has been knocked out of him two times now, and immediately kicks back.

The fight continues. Hits here, kicks there. There's no quips. No banter. Just the sound of panting breaths and the dull thuds of blows being exchanged.

Jason goes to smack Dick's ears and disorientate him, however he doesn't get to finish his blow. Dick ducks under his arm and slams his entire body weight into Jason's stomach. Arms wrap around Jason's middle, sending them both to the floor. He shouts when his back lands roughly on the ground and his head thunks in the inside of his helmet, but he immediately begins to shove Dick off from him.

He succeeds in that regard. But Dick almost rolls off of Jason himself, getting to his feet in a blink of an eye and sprinting for the other side of the room.

Jason realizes why the moment Dick bends down and snatches up Jason's lost weapon.

The gun.

For a second, Jason almost believes that Dick will smile, drop the weapon, and say this was all some huge test or spar. But then, Dick lifts the gun, aims with accuracy, and squeezes his finger on the trigger.

Jason has a blink of an eye to roll out of the way of the first bullet, but the second one hits him right in the thigh.

And he knows he has rubber bullets. They're not meant to be deadly.

But they sure as hell are painful.

Immediately, it feels like someone took a baseball bat to his leg. He tries to stand up, but his leg persistently wants to buckle. He manages to scramble to his feet, using the wall as support, but then there's another blast from his stupid fucking gun and he stumbles. Next thing he knows, a hand grabs his shoulder and pulls him down, slamming his stomach against a bony knee heartlessly. He falls to his knees, gasping for air, hardly aware of the hand that goes to the hidden latch at the back of his helmet until there's a hiss and air hits his skin.

The barrel of his own gun presses against his head as the hand still on his shoulder squeezes. Jason sucks in air, then glares up at Dick who's wearing a triumphant smirk.

"Not so tough now, are ya?" Dick says, and Jason snarls. He goes to stand up, but the gun presses harder against his skull. A rubber bullet is still a bullet when at point blank. He stills.

"What the hell is going on?!" He growls, and Dick smirks.

"You've been raised by the world's greatest detective, right?" Dick asks, his voice singsong. "Figure it out."

And Jason hates that. Everything Dick is saying. Doing. Acting. It all feels fake. Practiced. Like he's playing a part but not playing it completely. Like the backup actor for when the lead one calls out right before a performance.

Acting. Fake. Practiced. Wrong. Different.

Holy shit.

"You're not Dick," Jason acuses, the realization slamming into him like a truck. This isn't Dick. It's so clear now. He's so dumb for not realizing earlier. It's all been some sort of set up. And maybe it was easy to look past the strange actions because he was, dare he say it, relieved that Dick was okay and alive and standing in his bedroom after three weeks of being missing. Three weeks and counting now. "Who are you?!"

The fake laughs, twisting the barrel of the gun against Jason's head. Jason has no doubt he'll shoot it. "My name isn't important. What is important is that I'm wearing the face of the most trusted guy in the superhero world. You were the field test, Hood. Looks like besides a few hiccups here and there, I'm ready for the big league."

Jason stills. Hiccups ? This guy, whoever he is, knows things that he shouldn't. Secret identities. Nicknames. Personalities. He's had to get his information from somewhere. And three weeks seems like a pretty realistic timeframe to get that kind of information.

"Where's Dick. The real one. He in a room like this too?"

Because he can't be dead. He can't be.

"Course he is," the fake replies, "have him stuffed away somewhere you'll see soon. Seems like there's information he got wrong and left out, enough to get you suspicious of me. That's fine though, he was pretty tight lipped at first. He loosened up after a few days. We'll just keep trying on the both of you. I think I'll be able to fool Batman himself soon enough."

And shit. If that isn't a scary thought. Because it seems… true. Believable. Like Bruce can actually be fooled by this man that looks exactly like Dick.

"This isn't going to work," Jason says, instead of voicing his real thoughts.

The fake's grin widens.

"It already is."

Then, he brings the gun back, smacking it against Jason's forehead with a snap.

Jason goes down hard, and he wonders as consciousness begins to fleet, how long it will take the rest of the family to realize something is wrong.

With the chirping of laughter that sounds so familiar to Dick's that it makes Jason's stomach churn, his eyes shut against his will, and darkness embraces him warmly.

-o-o-o-o-

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated!

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smallmediumproblems · 4 years

Link

Summary: The Magnus Institute budget waits for no eldritch entity, and there are only two archival staff with enough patience left to answer Elias' questions.

Note: I missed the deadline to submit this to a contest ages ago, and kinda forgot about it...? but, it’s finished now, so, here y’go! Takes place sometime mid-season-3.

. . .

BASIRA: Do you think he's going to notice?

MARTIN (tense): I think there's not a whole lot we can do if he does. Not much he can do to us, either. I mean, who else is willing to put up with paperwork for him?

BASIRA: I'm a little surprised he still trusts you. With anything.

MARTIN (more tense, looking for an excuse to lash out): It's almost like I try to be helpful and cooperative all the time so people know they can rely on me.

BASIRA (not sure about the method, but approves of the results): Huh. Sneaky.

MARTIN (has snapped): Nothing about this is sneaky! We're literally asking him to finance his own-

MARTIN (CONT'D, lowers his voice, reminds himself that they’re not supposed to talk about Secret Plans): You know.

BASIRA: Fun, right?

MARTIN: You're totally sure we got everything on the list?

BASIRA: I checked with Daisy just this morning. She’s not happy about it, but she was very thorough. Melanie's, erm, needs , are pretty straightforward. Tim is being actively unhelpful.

MARTIN: He seemed pretty enthusiastic.

BASIRA: Doesn’t make him helpful. Anyway, you said it yourself. It’s too late to worry about it now. What’s the worst he’s gonna do to us for a little light subterfuge?

[Cut to several minutes later. BASIRA and MARTIN are sitting in ELIAS' office. BASIRA has her game face on, and her confidence is infectious. MARTIN has calmed down a bit. But only a bit.]

ELIAS: First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for meeting with me today. I know that our working relationship is a bit… strained, at the moment, and I appreciate the degree of professionalism this demonstrates in both of you.

MARTIN: That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me.

BASIRA: I just didn't want to leave him alone with you.

ELIAS: I believe you two were in charge of drafting the archive’s most recent budget request, is that correct?

BASIRA: That’s right.

ELIAS: I had some concerns to discuss with you before I filed everything.

BASIRA (somewhat defensive): This is the pared down version. We had to make some hard choices for what to cut.

ELIAS: I would be interested to hear what you decided to forego in favor of…

[Very brief beat as ELIAS flips through the budget, which he has printed out for the express purpose of quoting at them disapprovingly]

ELIAS (CONT’D): ...four dozen assorted hunting knives.

MARTIN: Mostly, it was just more knives.

BASIRA: Daisy goes through them pretty quickly these days. We figured it might be good to have a few stashed around the archive. For safety.

ELIAS: I hardly feel safe giving you easy access to weaponry, considering Melanie’s new hobby. Not to mention your collective history of emotional outbursts.

BASIRA (trying to pretend that she cares, not trying very hard): Oh, your safety. Yeah, that makes sense.

ELIAS: On the subject of safety, I see that you've opted to restock with what I can only call an excess of fire extinguishers. Hardly necessary now that Jane Prentiss is deceased, but I understand your concern.

MARTIN (eagerly): No, you’d think that, but they’re really good for a lot of things. I mean, we ARE dealing with a fire cult. The archive’s enough of a hazard already. Loose paper, old electrical sockets...

BASIRA (supportive): They’re great for self-defense.

ELIAS: I suppose it is a better alternative to knives.

ELIAS (CONT’D, continuing to flip through papers): Speaking of excess, you appear to have ordered twice as many supplies as you normally need for the breakroom. Would you care to explain why?

MARTIN: We’re not the ones who hired a bunch more people. We barely had enough for four of us, and now we've got five! Six if you count Daisy. She’s mostly in and out, but I’m not going to tell her she can’t have a cup of tea while she’s waiting for Basira.

ELIAS: You’re certain it has nothing to do with stocking a second meeting space that you’ve decided to assemble at without my knowledge?

MARTIN (carefully): ...no?

BASIRA (more casually; no plans here, Vader, just a diplomatic mission to Alderaan): Sounds kind of far-fetched.

MARTIN (deciding to roll with it): Should we do that? It could be a good team-builder.

ELIAS: My main concern is that you’ve listed a frozen margarita machine among the requested furnishings.

MARTIN (oh! that’s all it was): Oh-

BASIRA (to Martin, confused but not upset): I thought you took that out.

MARTIN (annoyed): Tim must have snuck it back in. That- that’s an honest mistake, we didn’t mean to submit that.

ELIAS: Then we’re in agreement that it doesn’t constitute a reasonable business expense?

[MARTIN makes a doubtful noise.]

BASIRA (also doubtful): I mean...

MARTIN: I wouldn't say that.

BASIRA: Have you talked to Tim lately?

ELIAS: Hmm. Point taken. Still, I can't spend Institute funds on it in good conscience.

[ELIAS scratches out the line item and continues to page through the budget intermittently as he talks.]

ELIAS (CONT'D): Let's move on to some of the miscellanea. Cassette tapes are entirely understandable, but are you certain you need this many?

BASIRA: The tape recorders follow Jon around, yeah? I figure, if he doesn’t come back, they’re going to stop showing up on their own. We need to plan ahead.

MARTIN (angrily; clearly they have argued about this before.): That is not why.

BASIRA (conceding, more amused than apologetic): And it makes more sense for each of us to have our own supply instead of ransacking Jon's office whenever we run out. That’s what Martin keeps telling me.

MARTIN: She won't stop stealing his pens!

BASIRA (frustrated. This is also something they've argued about before.): I need them. You never gave me any office supplies.

MARTIN: You were supposed to put that in with the budget.

BASIRA: Hard choices, Martin. This was one of them.

ELIAS: Is that why you’ve ordered nearly a gross of glow sticks?

BASIRA: Oh, no. That’s for research.

[Beat as ELIAS waits for BASIRA to elaborate. She does not.]

ELIAS (forcing a patient tone): What kind of research?

BASIRA (condescending, as if this should be obvious): Spooky research.

BASIRA (CONT’D): I’m not convinced the People’s Church is as dormant as we thought. I’m toying around with defensive strategies- redundant light sources, stuff like that.

MARTIN: It’s been very festive!

ELIAS: Would that also explain the assorted sports equipment?

BASIRA (it would not): Research.

ELIAS: The smart-home device and speaker system.

BASIRA (definitely not research): Research.

ELIAS: And is this a miniature zeppelin?

MARTIN (pleased with himself for contributing): Ooh, that one's me. Er, yeah. Research.

ELIAS: Is it meant to resemble a shark?

MARTIN (yes, it is): I… hadn't noticed.

ELIAS: What about the petrol?

BASIRA (Smugly. She knows that ELIAS knows exactly what she wants to use petrol for.): Definitely research.

ELIAS: I think not. I already cannot trust you with sharp objects. I don’t see how accelerants are a possibility.

MARTIN: We did also ask for a lot of fire extinguishers. You've got to look at the whole thing in context. There's a system here.

ELIAS (crossing out several lines): Regardless. That will also not be making the final list. One other item in particular drew my attention simply because of the price. What do you need a GPS tracker for?

BASIRA (immediately): Jon.

MARTIN (disappointed): Yeah.

ELIAS: Out of the question.

MARTIN: What if he goes missing again?

ELIAS: A tracker is an optimistic but unfeasible solution. The things that have an interest in Jon are likely to take him somewhere he cannot be tracked.

BASIRA: Plan A was to give him a bunch of knives, but you shot that one down.

ELIAS: In any case, the only way this would work is if he wore it every minute he was outside the Institute. Don’t you think that’s a bit invasive of his privacy?

[MARTIN begins trying not to laugh, and is quite unable to do anything else for a few seconds as the conversation continues.]

ELIAS (icy): Something you'd like to share with us?

MARTIN: I’m sorry, I- I can’t tell if you’re being serious.

BASIRA (trying to ignore him): We did talk to Jon about it. It’s not like we were going to stalk him.

MARTIN (would be sarcastic if he wasn’t still laughing): Who would do such a thing?

ELIAS: Do we need to postpone this?

MARTIN (managing to calm down): Nope, yep. I’m good. Hmmmmmkay. Where- where were we?

ELIAS: I believe we were at the start of a very serious human resources inquiry.

MARTIN (feigning interest): Ohh! Whose is that?

BASIRA (tired): GPS unit is a no, that’s fine. I’ll get him one of those kid-leashes out of pocket. Elias, was there anything else?

ELIAS: The rest of the budget looks to be in order. If I could discuss one other issue with you, I have some similar concerns with your reimbursement requests. I take it this list is similarly ‘pared down’?

BASIRA: Yeah, I didn’t do that.

MARTIN (alarmed): What?!

BASIRA (unmoved): Yep. Just put everything in a list and printed it out.

MARTIN (rapidly cycling through the five stages of grief): Why??

BASIRA: Because we all have massively more important things to do.

ELIAS: Perhaps if you had taken the time to edit the list, this meeting would have been much shorter.

BASIRA (smug that she’s managed to make this ELIAS’ problem, not hers): Misery loves company.

ELIAS: Indeed. You mentioned Tim’s instability earlier. He’s put down several months of a gym membership and listed the explanation as ‘vengeance’.

MARTIN (uncomfortable, unhappy about TIM’s state in general but unwilling to show it here, of all places): Yeah, that’s… been a thing.

ELIAS (dismissive): I don’t suppose he’s intending to punch the Unknowing out of existence?

BASIRA: We haven’t actually sorted out who he’s planning vengeance against. Could be Jon. I don’t think he’d punch you, but I don’t know him too well.

MARTIN: Honestly, it’s been a good way to keep him busy. I won’t say it puts him in a better mood, exactly? He’s not less angry, just, erm, distracted. I think it helps. He thinks it helps, that’s what matters.

ELIAS: It is at least easier to rationalize than the margarita machine.

ELIAS (CONT'D, flips a couple more pages): One last thing… Ah. I also wanted to discuss some of Jon's travel expenses.

BASIRA: Is this from when you framed him for murder?

ELIAS: I think you’ll find that my involvement led to him being found innocent, but yes. This would be his absence during your investigation with Officer Tonner.

BASIRA (resigned): Alright. What’d he do, now?

[ELIAS slides a piece of paper across the table.]

ELIAS: Is this a typographical error, or did he really try to request this much compensation for ‘emotional damages’?

[BASIRA makes an interested noise as she reads the figure.]

BASIRA: Sounds about right.

ELIAS (stern, disapproving): We have an entirely separate form for that. It hardly counts as a travel expense.

MARTIN (did not know this. stunned, distant, half to himself): We have a whole form for emotional damages…

BASIRA: I think he just wanted to pay back his friend. Rent, groceries- I think Orsinov did some property damage, even?

ELIAS: Ahh. I see. We should be able to provide for that, if he can acquire some itemized receipts.

MARTIN (muttering to himself): What else do we have forms for?

ELIAS (darkly): A great many things, Mr Blackwood. Let us hope that you never find yourself in a position to discover them.

MARTIN (refuses to be disturbed by whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean): So, like, a sabbatical program? Have we got educational incentives?

ELIAS (perhaps a bit annoyed that Martin isn’t playing along): Don’t you already have a degree?

MARTIN (defensively): Maybe I want another one.

ELIAS: Then I suggest we have that discussion in a separate meeting. I doubt that Basira needs to know the details of your plans for personal growth.

BASIRA: Depends on the kind. Daisy might be in the market for a new gym partner.

MARTIN (terrified, dead sure that’s a euphemism for something violent): Oh wow! That’s. Great, Basira!

ELIAS: If you two are quite finished, I have other things I need to accomplish today.

BASIRA (sarcastically): Good luck with that!

BASIRA (CONT'D): I’m heading out, see you two on Monday.

MARTIN: Basira, it’s not even lunchtime. On Wednesday.

BASIRA (referring to Elias): What, is he gonna fire me?

[beat]

ELIAS (disgruntled): Enjoy your weekend, detective.

[Door opens and closes as BASIRA leaves.]

ELIAS (ominous): ...while you still can.

MARTIN: Do you do that every time someone leaves the room?

ELIAS (oh for- what now , MARTIN): Do what?

MARTIN: Say ominous stuff while no one's listening.

ELIAS (chuckles. If there was a camera, he'd be grinning directly at it): I can assure you, Martin, someone is always listening.

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #fanfiction #smallsays

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aspiratinganxiety · 6 years

Note

Can I request the sleepover head canon ?💕

Of course you can, baby doll! I am sorry it took me so long to get to it…

Anyway, I am writing these headcanons as though the reader and the character are already in an established relationship. Rather than offer a play by play of what sharing a night with this character looks like, I’m instead breaking down how the topic of overnight stays developed or effects the relationship between the reader and their partner.

If you were wanting platonic interactions or some first time sleeping over imagines, please let me know! Also, I tend to write female insert characters unless otherwise directed or inclined.

If you’d like this same prompt with a male s/o, please tell me.

Also, I ran out of steam before getting to Damian. I may very well come back to add him to this post. For now though, it is 3:17 am, and your girl is tired.

Now, this prompt is the letter S from @imagine-mcu‘s alphabet of headcanon prompts. Thank you, imagine-mcu. I am grateful for the access to this resource, and I hope you don’t mind that I am using it for DC materials 😂

Dick:

-Listen, you are positive that you’re not the first girlfriend whose home Richard Grayson has quietly annexed. There’s a method, okay? A foolproof strategy designed to optimize the amount of time he has with you at every opportunity.

-As far as he’s concerned, it is the only logical way to progress in a relationship that he deems serious. His line of work is perilous, dammit. He’s a patient man, but he’s not a friggin’ saint. Tiptoeing through the awkward do-si-do of “should I stay or should I go?” every single time the two of you wind up fooling around in one or the other’s apartment is a waste of effort that could be geared toward activities that are much, much more fun.

-Even before you outright know that he’s Nightwing (you heavily suspect), Dick’s begun the invasion. First, he always wants to stay at your place. Works for you. Sleeping in your own bed is a gift, and he has a lot less to worry about in terms of hygiene maintenance.

-Why fight an agreeable tide?

-And that’s just what he counts on for Phase 2. He wants to keep a change of clothes and some extra toiletries around your place now that it’s the go-to.

-Some pajamas.

-Maybe a jacket and a pair or three of socks.

-Oh, yeah! He forgot to mention that Bruce sometimes calls him into the WE office on short notice to contract with the sub-company under his name. Could he have a sliver of your closet for a suit? He does’t want it to get wrinkled in the drawer you cleared out for his things.

-Sure, normal enough… except that you’ve only been dating for a month n’ a half. Exclusively for a scant three weeks (Your last boyfriend lived out of a duffel bag that you kept by the shoe rack in your front room for 9 months before you even let him have the drawer).

-Whatever. You and Dick both keep tight schedules, and it’s not as though anything is feeling rushed or overwhelming. Just the opposite: you feel like you can’t spend enough time with him!

-You quickly make a habit of using his man-smell soap for a change of pace on occasion. Or a spritz of his cologne here and there when it’s been a busy week and you miss him, even though it’s only been 4 days since he was last there. 2 days since your lunch date.

-Shut up.

-You haven’t quite mapped out the rest of the moves that he put into play, but before you know what’s happening, nearly all of the space in your weensy, Tupperware container of an apartment is divided equally between you and your boyfriend of less than three months.

-All of this to say that Dick’s sleepovers don’t feel like sleepovers, they’re just Tuesdays. Or Saturdays. Or Wednesdays. Whatever the hell day he shows up, lets himself in with the spare key that you didn’t so much as hesitate to have made for him, and goes about eating all of your Frosted Flakes.

Jason:

-Sleepovers are rare for Jason toward the beginning of your relationship. Not just because he accidentally punched you in his sleep once, though that did put the kibosh on overnight visits for a while. The predominant reasoning that he cited when apologetically declining one of your invitations involved his hours being flipped completely around. Most nights, when sleepovers are meant to be happening, Jason is hard at work sussing out the details of a case or running a patrol.

-Simply put, he felt like there was no reason for him to be skulking in and out of your place in the dead of night, disrupting your rest, just because he’s chosen to live one doozy of an unorthodox life.

-However, this noble resolve deteriorates quickly.

-Jason’s dedication and the singular advantage of being the only full-time vigilante in the whole batfamily also means that he’s out of the country on lengthy, long distance assignments more often than any of the others.

-The nights Jason gets home from these missions had proven to be the best time for you to arrange overnight stays. Days, sometime weeks of being completely out of contact with one another has a way of asserting all of the comforts and satisfactions that you find in your partner’s company, both physically and emotionally.

-He’s real weak to the line, “But baby, I’ve missed you so much!” too…

-10/10.

-It’s super effective!

-Look, it’s not like you pressed when you got the impression that he didn’t want to have you over or be at your place because he needed space to work through something risky or complicated.

-You’re not stupid or some spoiled, manipulative brat.

-Jason’s life is hard, painful, and incomprehensibly dangerous. He’s not looking to change one damn thing about that either. His lives exactly as he wants, minus some small tweaking here and there where old ghosts are concerned.

-You understood this from day one.

-Unfortunately, it took a much longer time for him to figure out that you didn’t give a single fuck about missed sleep or nosy neighbors assuming he was a drug-dealer and filing complaints because he buzzed in at 4 o’clock in the morning. With the way that he lived…

-No, because of the way that he lived, you wanted to capitalize on every single moment that he could bear to spend with you.

-Some people went lifetimes never knowing a love like the one you had for Jason. Hell would be seeing a snowstorm if you were gonna’ let the idiot continue to rob you of his presence because he was afraid of inconveniencing you.

-Once that was through his thick, self-depreciating skull, the need to orchestrate sleepovers was no longer necessary.

-You moved in together, renovating the loft he owned in the Cauldron district to be a bit more Welcome Home! and a lot less Marks with Bodyguards Cost Extra.

Tim:

-Oh, Tim.

-Sweet, wonderful, awkward, angel-baby Tim.

-The first time he slept over at your house, it was January. He passed clean out on your living room floor during a power-binge of Stranger Things that he had been apologetically procrastinating since the season release in October.

-You didn’t have the heart to wake him, not even when he started to drool, snore, and suddenly sit bolt upright, shouting?

-His proclamations made zero sense: something abstract about Scarecrow robbing some guy named Oswald of his prized Wyandotte laying hens.

-A cursory attempt to talk to him indicated that he was still, to your horror, fast asleep in spite of sitting perfectly straight on his own and lecturing you about the dangers of yellow scented candles.

-You settled him back down on your nest of blankets and flipped the TV off, loosely praying that this was some kind of fluke and you wouldn’t have to worry about your boyfriend accidentally leaping off of your balcony in a state of gibbering semi-consciousness.

-You messaged him in a panic when you woke the next morning to find him missing, terrified that he slept-walked into traffic while you caught some rest on the floor beside him. You detailed the entire scenario for him, omitting nothing to spare his pride. (The man had scared you nearly to death. His ego wasn’t exactly your top priority when he said he’d snuck out because he liked sleeping in his bed better than he liked your floor.)

- “Sexy, right?” he replied with a winky face.

-It wasn’t, he hadn’t, and he hasn’t ever since. The explanation: ”It only happens sometimes when I’m way too tired and I’ve had way too many energy shots.”

-Even so, that first experience proved to be surprisingly indicative of the bizarre occurrences that would befall you when Tim ended up sharing a night with you.

-First the sleep talking, then staying up all night crouched over his laptop like some kind of gremlin while you slept not three feet away, arguing about the benefits of avoiding blue light in order to actually let your brain power down, and, finally, physically wrestling you to keep you from putting his phone in your nightstand drawer so that he would just lay the F down and go to bed.

-Tim does his best to gracefully make it seem as though your bickering is all in good fun despite your very real frustration with his lack of ability to focus on spending time with you and disengaging from his crippling responsibilities to both Wayne Enterprises and the endeavors of the Batman himself.

-You’re honestly still working on it, but he does forfeit all internet capable devices after 9 pm while in your home.

-At first, it was out of obligation and only at your explicit request. Now though, having garnered some of the soundest, most rejuvenating sleep of his life every other week or so at your place, he tosses the phone in the drawer himself as you get ready to tuck in.

-Tim doesn’t know if it’s the regular sex or the down pillow-top on your mattress, but he can fall into blissful, dreamless unconsciousness in under half an hour by your side.

-Perhaps it’s the near ritualistic way that you insist on sharing a cup of chamomile tea before heading toward your room? Maybe the laundry detergent or the weight of your too fluffy comforter?

-Regardless, shortly after he’s eagerly relinquishing his tech in favor of a solid night’s sleep and some quality time with you, an uptick in his demeanor and proficiency appears.

-You find it endlessly endearing that he needs a measurable statistic in order to justify asking you if he can stay over every week, rather than biweekly. As though you need data to be convinced to spend more time with him.

The lovable idiot...

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years

Text

Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Two (20% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eight.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Not as bad as everyone seems to remember, but also, not good.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Martina barely has lines to start with, and she’s not even in the same country as Betty, so...no.

Female characters:

Martina.

Betty Ross.

Male characters:

Bruce Banner.

General Ross.

Joe.

Emil Blonsky.

Stanley.

Jim Wilson.

Samuel Sterns.

Tony Stark.

OTHER NOTES:

Bruce sees a bunch of guys harrassing Martina, and he almost walks away to avoid a conflict that could set off the Hulk, but then he thinks better of it and comes back to confront the guys and save the girl. It’s a shorthand way of showing the audience that Bruce is a good guy, not letting his own fear get in the way of doing the right thing, blah blah. I support that message, obviously, but I do wish they wouldn’t use ‘woman in jeopardy’ as their go-to method for proving something about a man. Martina only exists in the film for this purpose, she’s just a pretty prop so Bruce can prove his morals, and that’s not cool. Female characters existing only as props is not cool, and violence against women being used to demonstrate/further a man’s story isn’t cool either. Get a better lazy shorthand, movie.

Lou Ferrigno cameo is clearly the highlight of the whole film.

At least 60% of Betty’s lines are just her saying ‘Bruce’ with different intonations, usually as a question. “Bruce?” she whispers. “Bruce?!” she calls. “BRUCE!!!” she screams. She also almost definitely yells it in slow motion with the sound cut out during dramatic climactic points in action scenes. I don’t know, I didn’t think to take note of that.

Oh. This movie. It might be the first of the MCU films I ever saw, back before they had committed to the idea of actually doing a Cinematic Universe, so it was just ‘a Hulk film’ that I watched, filed as ‘bad’ in my brain, and never revisited again, even after the MCU got going in earnest and - years later - I got sucked into the vortex and wound up watching and re-watching all the movies in order. It’s easy to leave this film out of the chronology (and many people do); despite a totally pointless scene with Tony Stark at the end of the movie, it doesn’t actually tie in to the rest of the MCU in any meaningful way, and as an intro to the Hulk it isn’t really necessary: firstly, because most people who don’t live under rocks already know who the Hulk is from popular culture, and secondly, for anyone else, they get a perfectly serviceable introduction to him in his next film appearance (The Avengers), in which the role has been recast with Mark Ruffalo, who plays Bruce Banner/Hulk in every future MCU film and leaves this Edward Norton vehicle as a weird outlier better forgotten than incorporated into one’s understanding of the character. Edward Norton is a fantastic actor who has done so much great work over the years, but this was not a good role for him, and having rewatched this movie now nearly a decade after seeing it the first time, I’ll probably go back to giving it a miss whenever I trawl through the MCU. It’s a film with, basically, nothing to offer, neither as a standalone nor as part of a wider franchise. That’s a pretty sad indictment, but there it is.

Is this the worst film in the MCU pantheon to date? Probably. Not absolutely - I think the door remains open for debate (the other contenders for the title, we’ll get to in due time). The thing is, this movie is not as bad as history remembers it: most of it is actually fairly decent. Not remarkable, not impressive, but decent in the sense that it is stock-standard playing to expectation, it isn’t making any negative waves, it’s just there. The bad rep this movie has is owed almost exclusively to the way it ends, with an embarassing and meaningless Hulk/Abomination battle in which the CGI is absolutely not capable of upholding even the basic visual storytelling of two beast-creatures whaling on each other. Bonus features of that fight include: Hulk clapping his hands to put out a fire and SAVE HIS LOVE, and a truly abysmal use of the iconic ‘HULK SMASH!’ line. By the time the final fight mercifully ends, any and all goodwill the rest of the film had built up has been obliterated, much like the neighbourhood and the lives of all those poor collateral-damage civilians that no one cares about. Some beast-creatures whaled on each other in shitty CGI. That’s what we came for, right?

What makes this ending so particularly bad is how out-of-place it is in the rest of the narrative. Yeah, we 100% EXPECT a Boss Battle at the end, because that’s the formula for these things, but the movie does a really awkward job of not actually building up to that climax in a meaningful way that lets it feel earned rather than perfunctory. Let’s rewind; the premise of the whole film is that Bruce Banner is trying to keep his Hulky genetics out of the hands of the military, specifically a program overseen by General Ross, who happens to be the father of Bruce’s former co-worker/lover Betty, because of course he is. This detail is not actually important for any reason, it’s just an excuse for Bruce and Ross to conflict over Betty like she’s a cool shiny object, because ultimately she has no more narrative function than Martina the hot Brazilian chick. Anyway: Bruce is on the run from Ross, Ross is on the hunt for Bruce so that he can experiment on him forevermore, and Betty is there sometimes to say Bruce’s name as a question. Ross chases Bruce with lots of army guys, Bruce Hulks out at various points so that the action sequences can involve more than Edward Norton running away, and there’s a long-term goal for Bruce in the form of getting some Science to another Scientist so that they can Science a cure for his Hulky genes and he can stop running once and for all (it doesn’t work). It’s not a very inspiring script. It’s fairly straight-forward and predictable, but there’s nothing especially bad about it other than the pointlessness of Betty (the same as this is a front-runner for the MCU’s worst film so far, Betty is a strong contender for Worst Inclusion of A Useless Love Interest). Norton may not be a great Bruce Banner, but he does a solid job of giving weight to Bruce’s plight, and the overall effect is at least passable as a film, if forgettable. The problem here is Emil Blonsky, the marine tasked by Ross to head the operation to capture Banner, and the man who eventually becomes the Abomination whom Hulk battles in that cringe-worthy film climax. And the problem with Blonsky is not that he’s some kind of weak link in the script. The problem is, he’s the best character in the movie.

Maybe it’s just that Tim Roth is too good for the material (he is), but Blonsky is easily the most dynamic person in an otherwise flat film, and he’s the only character whose narrative arc isn’t instantly predictable the moment he steps on screen. He’s a consummate soldier, all about the job, and getting into the thick of things himself to make sure it gets done right. His road to becoming Abomination begins partway into the film, as Blonsky grapples with the aftermath of his first encounter with the Hulk - for which he was brutally unprepared due to Ross’ failure to provide essential mission intel - which led to the death of many of Blonsky’s men. As Ross comes clean about the super-soldier serum experiments that created the Hulk, he plucks at a few delicate nerves, noting the physical toll that years of service have taken on Blonsky’s body. Blonsky laments that he can’t take the experience he has now and put it into the body he had a decade ago; Ross suggests that, maybe, they can arrange something kinda like that. It isn’t played as outright manipulation - Ross has just told Blonsky that there were other experimental treatments in the same line as Banner’s work, and Blonsky knows what conversation they’re really having and has already seen what the side-effects could be if it goes badly - but there is plain prompting from Ross, to say nothing of the treatments he then actively facilitates, most notably the second dose which he offers despite having originally stated that if Blonsky experienced any adverse effects (which at that point he has, in limited capacity) the treatments would cease. It’s a situation in which Blonsky rapidly loses his agency, and for which Ross isn’t even a little bit blameless. What’s significant about this is not just that Ross is the ‘villain behind the villain’ in this case, but that Blonsky really...isn’t a villain in the first place.

Now, ‘villains’ in stories (and especially comics) who start out innocent/unlucky/well-intentioned and then become twisted are not uncommon, but the key to making those narratives work is that the story acknowledges the pathos of that journey; that this person never meant to end up as the villain, and it’s a sad turn of events that brought them down that road despite themselves. This is where things fall apart for this movie, because they kinda, oops, forgot to either (1) make Blonsky’s pre-serum behaviour clearly villainous, or (2) match his unwilling descent into villainy with a tone of empathy and regret for how his character has been turned astray. He isn’t presented as some paragon of goodness to be torn down, but he also doesn’t act maliciously or imply that he draws sadistic pleasure from his work. He consents to that first dose of serum, but it isn’t for evil reasons, he’s not bloodthirsty, he’s not going after the Hulk as a personal vendetta: the primary emotional motivation he displays is curiosity. He wants to get the job done, and he recognises the threat that Hulk represents, and he’s interested in finding out exactly what kind of a world he’s just been looped into. He may be antagonistically positioned against the protagonist of the film, but his intentions aren’t reprehensible from any angle. Thing is, the serum he takes is depicted as having a narcotic effect, impairing his judgment and fostering an escalating addiction that ultimately creates the Abomination; it’s all downhill for Blonsky after that first dose, the situation spins wildly out of his control, and he loses himself in the process. This is where the pathos should fit in as an essentially good (or at least neutral) person is lost to this drug, but it doesn’t. Instead, Blonsky becomes Abomination for the final act of the movie, and all of his characterisation evaporates so that he can just mindlessly smash things for no apparent reason. If he had been shown to be someone who engages in unnecessary violence and/or enjoys it at some prior point, then Abomination would be an escalation of existing villainous predilections, and it would work, but that isn’t the case. Where Hulk operates off an established base of anger/raised heart-rate/physiological response to heightened situations, and his destructive tendencies and absence of higher cognitive functions make sense in that context of reactionary hind-brain behaviour, Abomination has no established parameters or reasons for developing as he does, and searching the only information we have - Blonsky’s characterisation - for answers turns up no satisfactory results. Abomination’s rampage has nothing to do with ‘getting the job done’ (Banner is in Ross’ custody by that point in the film, in fact, so the job is already done), nor does it have anything to do with the Hulk himself - Blonsky and Banner never had specific personal beef with one another that would make a final confrontation meaningful (Bruce doesn’t even know who the Abomination is/was) - so Abomination’s entire existence feels pretty pointless. It’s just there so that Hulk can pick on someone his own size.

The final fight scene is objectively bad from a technical standpoint, with the dodgy CGI and the way-too-corny contrivances and the muddy uninspired visual mess of it all: it’s just plain bad to watch, but it is also not only devoid of emotional relevance or weight, it’s devoid of emotional logic. We’ve watched this process of Blonsky ‘becoming a monster’ in a literal sense, and it’s been the only part of the movie with any life in it (it’s not a deep well of complexity, but again, I think it works because Tim Roth is fucking making it work), but a boss fight is not a fulfilling conclusion to that narrative because we haven’t been given clear stakes in the outcome. Considering that Blonsky ends up a victim of Ross much the same as Bruce Banner is, it really should be Ross’ villainy that is ultimately defeated to bring us a satisfying conclusion, but the film forgets its own narrative in the course of pretending that Blonsky was the main bad guy all along, to such an extent that it bizarrely turns around and rewards Ross in the end. After transforming into Abomination, no one so much as suggests that Blonsky is still in there somewhere (his name is not even mentioned), he’s just a beast-creature now, and Ross gets to keep him and do all that fun experimenting that he wanted Hulk for this whole time, and no one challenges the idea. Remember how the whole movie was about Bruce trying NOT to get caught and experimented on forevermore by the military? Remember how that’s supposed to be a bad thing that Good Guys want to stop? Eh, who cares? Apparently not Bruce Banner, whose upstanding morals don’t extend far enough to want to save anyone else from the fate he has thwarted for himself. Not very heroic, just kinda leaving some other dude to take your place. As hardcore as Bruce was about keeping the formula out of Ross’ hands, etc, apparently he has no qualms about this derivative, and he just whistles on out of there, and that’s it. The end. Not a second thought for Blonsky’s fate, no fulfilling closure for Bruce’s ACTUAL villain beef with Ross, the bad guy gets what he wants and no one cares, the good guy completely forgets the ideals that he was fighting for the entire time and therefore kiiinda renders the whole journey of the film pointless, and worst of all, there’s no sense that the story comes to these conclusions deliberately, that it’s supposed to be off-kilter in any of these ways. It’s like they got to the final act and literally forgot everything that had happened in the film previously so they just stopped without actually closing any of the storylines, it’s a totally incongruous ending.

I’ve focused largely on how much they screwed over Blonsky in this process because I considered him the film’s saving grace the rest of the time, but really, the ending screws over every character, theme, and narrative thread in the whole story, and that’s the huge disconnect that leaves the audience remembering a bad film, not just a bad ending. Granted, it wasn’t a good film to start with, and if you were less engaged with Blonsky than I was and you didn’t latch on to one of the other slim elements the story offered instead, then the whole thing turning to shit in the end really can’t have been much of a loss. It’s not that they didn’t, at moments, have the makings of something that might be good, or glimmers in scenes that suggested a quality idea that might have shone if someone had polished it a little better. For anyone reading this and going ‘well, don’t you know they had loads of behind-the-scenes issues with redrafting the script and other bullshit?’, yes, I am aware of that. Thing is, it shouldn’t matter. A 150-million dollar major Hollywood franchise project doesn’t get to use ‘oh, we just didn’t really bother making sure the script made basic sense before we filmed it’ as a valid excuse. If everyone’s doing their jobs properly the way they should be at this level of the industry, then the audience shouldn’t be able to see your BTS issues bleeding all over the finished product; major script redrafts should be a Did You Know? trivia point, not an ‘oh, NOW I get what went wrong here’ explanation. At the end of the day, no one cared enough about making this a movie that would matter in the long run for an expansive Cinematic Universe. Tanking the whole film into a forgettable mistake that viewers would gladly leave out of their Marvel marathons was, ultimately, the one thing they did successfully.

#Marvel Cinematic Universe #The Incredible Hulk #MCU #Bechdel Test #female representation

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