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ghouljams · 8 months

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Yes- hi- hello, tis I, the moth that will ram into your window :3

Anyway

My brainrot for Fae!Price is so hhhhhgggnnnn and I've backed myself into a corner by crafting the idea of Witch Darling trying to fluster Price in return for all the times he's done so to her. Like- they're just doing their daily thing and Price pulls out a cigar but Witch just snaps her fingers and lights it for him and he's like "Why'd you do that?" And Witch immediately follows up nonchalantly "Pretty boys shouldn't have to light their own cigars."

And Price is fucking floored

Like- he's had experience with people flirting with him, especially debtors trying to get a better deal when talking to him, but when it's coming from Witch?

GOD DAYUM

Okay back to lurking for me, take care of yourself and drink water if you haven't already. I will find a way I to your house and bring you water if you don't <3

Hi, hi, hello! I am taking care of myself! Had a good birthday and didn't write anything which was very weird but very nice to have a break. I return with Witch and Price because I desperately miss writing for them.

I've had this idea of Witch showing up at the 141's usual bar and causing trouble and this is the perfect ask for it. Here's Witch being well... far too pretty for her own good, and Price being a terribly weak man for her. Witch's dress is based on one from 1964's "What a Way To Go" which has some of the most spectacular textile artistry I've ever seen.

Price's knuckles drag up your back as you lean against the bar to order a drink. You're not used to this many eyes on you, but it's worth it for the single pair of cool blues that study you like they've never seen you before. His fingers hook in the double line of pearls that trail down your spine to your skirt, thumb counting over every one before his fingers reach the sleek silk of your dress.

"Can I buy you a drink?" You ask him, Price's eyes follow his hand where it hovers over your bare skin. More than you think he's ever seen of you. You like throwing him off, it's rather fun seeing him at a loss for words.

"Fuck sweetheart, buy the whole bar for all I care," he presses his hand against you, spreads his fingers wide against the small of your back. Each one a threatening display of his adoration. "What're you doing here?" He can't ignore the stares anymore than you can. A witch in a fae bar, your back exposed, vulnerabilities on display, you can feel the hunger that rolls through the room. You're not as easy a target as they'd all like to think.

"Good looking guys like you shouldn't buy their own drinks, so here I am."

"Here you are," Price breathes, you like the heat in his eyes. It's hard to match him, you aren't exactly flirty. Not by nature at least, and you don't have his easy self assurance. You're confident in yourself, but not quite in the same interpersonal sense. Still, if anything was going to set you up for success it would be Price. His eyes, his touch, there's something to having his attention so fully focused on you. A room full of people and yet you're the only two in it that can touch each other.

You signal the bartender for two of whatever Price drinks, watching him pull a cigar from his pocket in your periphery. You snap your fingers to conjure a flame and hold your hand out to him. The little red flame flickering on your pointer finger dances happily as he takes your hand and holds it to his cigar. You try not to be too flustered when he moves his cigar to extinguish your flame on his tongue. The slick muscle curling around your finger, making a heat coil in your stomach. He settles your hand on his shoulder, forces you to turn on your stool to watch him press his lips to the inside of your arm.

"You almost make me wanna wear a suit," he sounds, hm, it's an admission, but not one that lines up with his actual words. Not a lie, never a lie, a rephrasing of a truth. He almost makes you want to ask.

"You'd look good in a suit," is all you can think to say.

"You look good in white," he responds, the hand on your back tugs you off your seat. You do your best to avoid stepping on his toes as he pulls you to stand, turns your back against the bar, and boxes you in. A physical barrier between you and the open room, Price's strong arms rest on either side of you, his fingers tapping the bar as you stare up at him. You're supposed to be making him flustered. You really have to up your game.

You slide your hand from his shoulder to his chest, feeling the firm muscle there, the slight give of his skin and the tension your touch brings to him. There's a tightness in his jaw when you look up at him, a flinty edge to his eyes as he watches the bartender.

"What're you thinking about pretty boy?" You ask. He blinks, surprised, and looks at you. His eyes trace over you, gaze sliding like magma over your form. You try to keep your breaths even, try not to be affected by him. When he looks at you like that you can't help wanting more of him.

Your fingers slide down his chest to hook in his belt loops, and Price draws a shuddering breath. He cannot talk to you like this. Whatever has gotten into you is bad for his health. Whatever has gotten onto you as well. He takes a long drag of his cigar, tries to keep his eyes off the cling of silk against your chest. Made much more difficult when his smoke takes it upon itself to fall over you, slide down the soft curves of your body so he can feel the shape of you.

What's he thinking about? You, always you. In every position, you.

The bartender sets two whiskey glasses between his hands, behind you. Their eyes rest too long on your exposed shoulders. Price gives them a warning growl, enjoys the way it rips from his throat, the way your fingers tug ever so slightly in response. You tip your head back to see what he's growling at and- God you are just- a tease, that's what you are. The way your neck stretches for him, the way your lips part, your back arches. He tips your head forward again, keeps your pretty little self contained and off the bar.

"Are both of these for me?" He rasps, God he hopes so, could use all the liquor he can get.

"One's mine." Are you keeping your voice low like that because you want to drive him mad? It's working.

"You even like whiskey?" He's never seen you drink, but he would bet you're preferential to something sweeter.

"I can drink it, if that's what you're asking," you twist to grab your glass, and quickly tip its contents into his. Price takes another long drag of his cigar watching you raise the glass to your lips and take a sip. You lower it with a sigh, your lipstick staining the edge. You hold the glass out to him, or up for him, as he exhales.

Oh you are sweet the way you breathe in his smoke.

Price takes the glass from your fingers and keeps his eyes on yours as he takes a drink. He savors the way you watch him, how focused you are even with your eyes lidded. He hands the glass back, and watches you swallow a pull of the amber liquor as he smokes. When you lower the cup from your lips he tips your head back with a gentle finger under your chin, leaning down to hover his mouth over yours and breathe. He feels you pull his smoke into your lungs, feels where it escapes your lips to curl over your cheeks, your jaw, soft magic to make your head spin. His favorite kind.

"You're awfully forward tonight little Witch," he hums, feeling you tilt your head, just barely brush his lips with your own.

"Trying to give you a taste of your own medicine," your honesty always hits him between the ribs, Price smiles, "is it working?"

"Perfectly," he feels your tongue flick against his lip, catching a last hint of whiskey, and his hand wraps around your neck. God what you do to him. "The things I would do for you," he breathes, you're testing his resolve. Lucky he hasn't spun you around and pressed you against this bar. It wouldn't be the first time someone had gotten what they deserved in here.

"Don't you mean to me?" You smile, he can feel the curve of your smile, so tantalizingly close.

"No," he takes a half step closer, feels you press yourself top to toe against him, "I mean on my knees, with my tongue, with my fingers, with my cock, with whatever you asked for. For. You."

You shudder against him so nicely. A valiant effort, he thinks, but how could you ever think you could beat him at his own game?

#cod x reader #x reader #1fae1 #john price x reader #captain john price #captain price x reader #captain price x oc #captain price cod #captain price #john price x oc #oc: witch #x oc #cod x oc #Witch has a fairly conservative style except when she wants to show off #and then all bets are off #i think about this dress every goddamn day #and i know Price will be thinking about it forever too #Witch you are so lucky this man has the self control of a saint

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zephyrine-gale · 8 months

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day 4 of one dan heng a day until he comes out plagued by the past

day 3 renheng i think i hauve mara

#honkai star rail #dan heng #dan feng #blade #renheng #my art #dan feng is so gorgeous i originally had imbibitor lunae as the figure in the cape but #bye bih im weak for a man who dresses like a conservative old man yaoi #didn't miss a day!!#im keeping day 3 under read more bc #my mother knows my tubmrl and im hoping shes media illiterate enough not to click it lmfao

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sandinmybed · 6 months

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can i be fr for a minute?? sending abuse to people online for holding different views than you is not activism and in fact actively hurts your cause. most people are not extreme in their viewpoints, you can give them a new perspective if you're willing to spend some time explaining shit. if someone is saying something you disagree with and you rush in there to condescend to them and call them disgusting and subhuman and dont even TRY to explain calmly why their views are harmful, they're going to shut you out instantly and double down on their views.

most people are simply genuinely ignorant to the issues they're talking about - they just pick their views up from the news and the world around them and express opinions because that's what every person does. if you run in there and tell them they're scum for it, what then? if someone does that to you, are you going to think "maybe i should do some research" or are you going to think "this person is an asshole, im blocking them." a lot of you think you're activists and then refuse to do any kind of actual WORK to support your cause.

#this is not about the isr*el thing even tho thats obviously a huge issue rn #its just a pattern ive observed online #im not saying you have to be kind to people who oppress you dont twist my words #but if youre trying to support any cause and you think calling people names is going to help #youre a fucking idiot lol #people call themelves activists and pro-X cause because they called their opposition dirty c*nts online #how the hell is that meant to help anyone? theyre just going to retreat into their propaganda chambers because you proved what the leaders #of those spaces have been telling them #you can obvs block people if you dont want to deal w them but thats a neutral action. sending abuse harms ur cause.#text #like educating ignorant people is hard work! yeah! its also the entire fucking point of activisim #and if you think its too much effort then just stop pretending you give a shit tbh #like my parents managed to change our neighbour's very xenophobic stance on migrants with a calm conversation #some people will listen and some wont and shes not exactly going out to protests for migrants rights but shes not hostile anymore #and a lot of yall think that isnt good enough but let me tell you it IS good because these things take time!#unlearning things is MUCH harder than learning them in the first place and a lot of people grew up in environments that taught them #very discriminatory and conservative views and its actually not their fault. and its hard to educate yourself differently on something you #have no idea is not true. where do you start w that?

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aangarchy · 1 year

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Azula is not the most powerful firebender in atla

Now before you shoot me in the kneecaps for saying something so controversial, hear me out

Azula is a fantastic bender. She's a prodigy, learning at a very young age and being able to bend blue fire despite the extra effort it takes. She's mastered lightning at 14, a skill that's considered quite rare. She also uses her acrobatic skills she learned from Ty Lee to her advantage to make her even better, swifter, lighter on her feet, not needing to be steady in order to bend like other firebenders. BUT:

There are arguably two benders in the show better than her. Ozai and Iroh. Iroh isn't that hard to explain; he invented new skills by observing other bending forms, something that can only make someone more powerful. He is also able to spit fire from his mouth without being roided up from the comet (the only firebender we know of to do it w/o the comet's help). He's also a master lightning bender, and was able to keep more than a dozen Dai Li plus Azula at bay long enough for Katara to escape the crystal catacombs.

Ozai does not have a lot of screentime compared to Iroh and Azula. We only ever see him in flashbacks or sitting down on his little throne. We see him fight twice, once against Zuko and once against Aang. The fight with Aang he was roided up by the comet yes, but he still portrayed amazing skill. Lightning, propelling himself with only fire, spitting fire etc. But it's the earlier fight with Zuko where things get interesting. Ozai was able to tell when the eclipse ended by merely closing his eyes and focusing on the sun. He sensed it. Even Azula needed a cue to understand the eclipse was done: "oh sounds like firebending's back on!" Furthermore, Ozai immediately fired lightning at Zuko, and not only did he manage to do that without having to 'charge' first, he shot it out of both hands, which is something neither Azula nor Iroh can do (or at least we've never seen them do it, Azula has always had to charge her lightning and only uses one hand to shoot it, same for Iroh)

Honestly while Ozai has definitely looked like a chump in the show, I'm not sure Azula or Iroh could take him in a one v one. That might be one of the reasons his rule was never challenged, because nobody dared to take him on. I feel like the fandom underestimates him bc we only saw him fight twice and he lost both times (once bc Zuko's unknown skill took him by surprise and once bc Aang's avatar state eventually overpowered him).

#i just think it's super interesting #like the details that are planted in the show are so good #I'm also convinced ozai is able to bend blue fire if he wants to but he chooses not to to conserve energy #but azula bc she has to be perfect at all times chooses to use blue fire to intimidate everyone around her #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #zuko #azula #ozai #iroh #prince zuko #princess azula #firelord ozai #uncle iroh #aang #avatar aang

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quietwingsinthesky · 2 months

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see my brain just doesn’t register the idea of anyone having a ‘one true love’ which is why the common fandom tropes of making canonical love interests terrible in order to justify why your ship is better always bugs the shit out of me. it feels like the only reason you would do that is if the idea of the characters in your ship having any other sort of romantic relationship that was important to them, even in the past, is a threat to their current one, therefore all their past relationships need to be demonized in order to make them ‘not real love’ so that they remain pure and chaste and ready for the True Love of the endgame ship.

#im not crazy right like other people notice that trope ajd get annoyed by it right #its a very weird trope to be so common from my perspective because like. why not just. break up the couple you dont want.#for reasons that arent ‘i made this person into a charicature of themselves to justify why my blorbo would have never actually loved them’#you know? its weird. its weird right?#and then of course there’s the offshoot of this that intersect with fandom misogyny where that demonized person is usually the female love #interest. or sometimes not even that. sometimes she was just standing there a little too close to one of the guys and that made people feel #insecure about their ship so they make her a bitch. gwen cooper. im. im talking about gwen cooper. people do this to gwen cooper and ill #never know peace about that.#anyway. is there a word for like. heteronormativity for monogomous people. because thats what i think this falls under.#because it is a very. like its a very conservatively monogomous idea. i feel like it is not unrelated to christian values of not having sex #before you’re married. that maybe someone in fandom might manage to ditch that particular ruleset to make their blorbos fuck nasty but NOT #the underlying idea of it that you can only ever have One Person you share that love and intimacy with. so you still end up perpetuating the #same toxic beliefs. you know? sorry im rambling it just annoys me

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welcometogrouchland · 2 months

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I love Steph's origin as told in the Secret Origins 80 page giant- I just overall think it strengthens her character by giving her a lot of pathos and adding to her heroism (which isn't something writers were focused on in her actual intro in detective comics #647 since she was just meant to act as a plot device back then) BUT there is one tiny detail in it i will begrudge, and that is the portrayal of her having a minor love at first sight moment for tim

Secret origins 80 page giant, ID in alt

(or well, technically this was their second meeting in that story (the brick was the first) so...love at second sight?)

Mostly because Stephanie showed no interest in her introduction and only showed romantic feelings towards Tim AFTER this moment here:

Robin (1993) #4, ID in alt

Straight up the progression here goes:

The adventure in 'tec where they first meet -> Tim investigating the same crime scene as Steph -> she beats him up not knowing it's him at first, apologizes but says he shouldn't have scared her -> he remembers her/the moniker she goes by -> they talk about plot for a few pages -> Stephanie starts flirting

Robin (1993) #4, ID in alt

Which...is so fascinating to me and says so much about Stephanie. She highlights the fact that Tim "remembered" her. Like. Steph. Girl. This is our bar? It's sweet but kind of speaks to how much Stephanie is ignored at home/how little and sporadically she's shown interacting with her peers (and rarely ever the same kids twice). Her idea of peak romance is just...being on someone's mind even when you're not there.

Kind of also adds layers to Steph's proclivity towards jealousy later on, a manifestation of her insecurity and loneliness (though don't get it twisted, she's not written this way bc Dixon and co think it's an interesting character flaw, they wrote it bc they think it's an inherent character flaw of (particularly young) women/girls, which is very apparent in how he approaches Ariana's character as well from what I've read)

Also the fact that Steph becomes so smitten for Tim almost immediately after this is (a few issues later she aggressively flirts with him during AN ACTIVE HOSTAGE SITUATION. WHERE SHE'S THE HOSTAGE) again is kind of a mixture of kind of funny and sad. One boy is nice to her once and she's fully ready to wife him. Girl you are deranged (affectionate) (concerned)

#ramblings of a lunatic #dc comics #stephanie brown #tim drake #timsteph #meta #< ??? ig #robin 1993 #made this post and forgot to finish. saved it in drafts. saw posts that annoyed me. proceeded to finish it #the subset of fans who think they're doing a righteous feminism by giving steph more flaws than she has in canon...headaches #yes flawed female characters are important representation no i dont think you projecting chuck dixons conservative values onto her-#-is doing her character a great favour. if so you need to commit to the bit and make tim a stone cold nark /j #sorry okay im done vaguing. there's real things going on in the world that matter. the bad take is the mind killer etc etc #anyway the zero to 100 progression of early timsteph is fascinating. on the one hand i know it's mostly a product of its time #both in terms of portrayals of romance (esp teen romance) and partially of women and girls by dixon (not extremely boy obsessed-#-but there's a. dark shadow of the boy crazy trope. a gentle whiff of it in the air. just a little)#but bc this aspect isn't blatantly/egregiously author bias i choose to analyse it #i could also analyse how steph in general is portrayed as liking guys she can't/shouldn't have a little #(her crush on the much older detective in bg2009 and also tim a little bit w/ the secret identity thing)#(but that's a whole other discussion. also that aspect of the romance in bg2009 is. also a little sexistly motivated-#-and also dropped part way through to an extent so like..not exactly ripe for analysis)#ANYWHO i love you Steph <3 you're unwell and yet so adorable and compelling Steph <3

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scintillyyy · 5 months

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actually there is another super interesting way in which you can tell dixon is trying to narratively reward steph for her perserverence (aside from writing her to fit his sexist worldview and rewarding her for that) & almost the... "pick oneself up by their bootstraps and succeed no matter your circumstances and what barriers there may be" narrative he kind of has for her and that is with the evolving nature of her social class through her appearances while he writes her imo (the ultimate bootstraps story that conservatives love) (which also contributes to the vast difference of interpretations of steph's economic status)

so honestly, in her first appearance in detective comics #647-649 she is very much coded as coming from a background of lower class/working poor/welfare stereotypes with a criminal father and an addict mother.

their house is visibly run down & not taken care of. crystal is emaciated and wears a robe all day/doesn't bother to get dressed, doctor shops for pills, and is whiny about how she'll get sicker without the prescription pills she's addicted to (you know nothing about crystal's initial aesthetics screams welfare queen imagery to me, tbh. they certainly don't seem to be implied to be "scamming the system just to live it up on steaks and lobster" and dixon would be way more overt about welfare fraud. i would call this more "white trash poor person" imagery as i imagine he sees it.).

interestingly though is the framing of steph by dixon as incredibly positive in comparison to her surroundings. in a way she's conceived as someone who is fighting against the poor circumstances that she was born into--she's going to be spoiler and rise above her criminal father and compared to her mother who can't be bothered to get dressed because she's always high, steph's going to dress nicely. those jeans she's wearing? that back pattern pocket is pretty iconically calvin klein. those were like. status symbol jeans of the 90s. now i'm not here to argue about affordability indicating she's way richer than she actually is here, because this was the 90s and steph very much could have afforded nice clothes and a vespa for herself on her summer/part-time job (in fact the clothes she wears on her vespa are pretty implied to be some sort of part-time job uniform), but it's a very interesting contrast that dixon draws, especially considering his biases. like you can tell he thinks that steph is in no way responsible for her circumstances (it's not her fault that her dad is a criminal and her mom is an addict) & and that being born into her circumstances don't mean she's doomed to end up like them--as long as she works hard and does the right thing, she'll be rewarded. in this case, she'll present herself as higher class/act classier than her unfortunate surroundings (via her external presentation of herself--she'll work hard and get the things she deserves for her hard work and effort) & resoundingly reject following her criminal father's footsteps by becoming the spoiler in order to cement herself as Not Like That. like he went out of his way to make her circumstances be more stereotypically poor and then show her as being above all that. she's the noble poor to her unfortunate white trash circumstances. (which is in line with dixon's classism and conservative viewpoint that it's okay to be poor, as long as you're white and don't act like those people do and hate your circumstances/are motivated to rise above them).

and this thread of how crystal is/stephanie's circumstances continues through crysal's next two appearances in robin #3 and showcase '95 #5 (though this was was written by keri kowalski, not dixon). she's still presented with very stereotypical aesthetics: she's never dressed, at this point, it's not implied she works...

and again, you can tell that dixon likes steph despite the fact that he wrote her as poor in her initial appearances because he often writes her as though he considers her above her circumstances (because those aren't her fault and she's working hard to not be like that).

the interesting thing is how this evolves once crystal kicks her addiction. which. frankly, i don't believe we ever see exactly when this happens? she's still an addict in showcase '95, but by her next appearance in robin #43 in 1997, she seems to. certainly be different than she was portrayed in her few initial appearances and appears to probably be sober at this point.

she's well put together and clearly employed, a far cry from the initial imagery dixon initially used for her. now it doesn't say she's a nurse here, just that she works at the hospital, but the white shoes and dress are an imagery giveaway. and now making steph's mom a nurse is actually kind of a soft retcon of her previously implied situation and a pretty interesting one at that because nursing--nursing and teaching occupations back in the 80s and 90s (and even today for nursing) iirc were considered good jobs to the middle class, on account of them being professional and steady jobs that required a degree of some sort that couldn't be automated or sent overseas (and there's a shortage, they need nurses!), like other jobs that were being lost at the time. so by making her mom a nurse, dixon was explicitly cementing their family circumstances as middle class as opposed to implied poor like their very initial appearances (or even what might've been considered "working class" at the time by certain economic theories, given that nursing isn't necessarily considered an "unskilled" job and does require college + it may be considered a pink collar job but in general there's good job security so it's such a gray area) (forgive my use of quotations here, i don't personally believe that jobs are unskilled and that the working class is a nebulous term that is illdefined and covers many different jobs with vastly different potential salary opportunities. a union working class electrician could very well be upper middle class based on salary, low cost of living, and lack of debt compared to someone who works at minimum wage, lives in a HCOL area, and has 75k in college loans but both are considered working class because they provide labor for wages) (i'm thinking of a 90s working class that was viewed between the middle class and the poor that consisted of a lot of what people considered blue collar or routizined work, but again, that means almost nothing in terms of salary potential and economic opportunity. plumber and warehouse worker are both considered blue collar, but their economic circumstances can vastly differ, but i digress-)

which is actually a pretty interesting evolution to her initial implied socioeconomic circumstances. because if her mom is a nurse & has a middle class job, then their economic issues previously weren't necessarily just that they were poor. it's that they were middle class fallen on hard times. which also coincides with the shift in the 90s where people were starting to be frightened of the middle class getting ravaged by the opioid/drug crisis. so now crystal isn't a stereotypical poor white trash addict, she's a middle-class worker who fell on hard times. and if they were struggling with finances, it wasn't that they were poor, it was more to do with struggling on account of crystal's addictions and having to deal with steph's dad/pay for him/he used their money and house for his villainy. and you end up because of this retcon having this issue where yea, she was initially presented as poor. but for the vast majority of her appearances, when she more consistently started to have a presence, she's written as middle class fallen on hard times. and you get this dissonance in her reading where it's like, yea, at the beginning, she was poor (and in far more stereotypical circumstances), so you can't say she never struggled financially. but also to claim she's just poor is to go against a lot of imagery that indicates more of a lower middle class (middle class, but struggling/tighter finances/no significant wiggle room), such as having a mom who's a nurse, having a home computer, etc. and in this case i really don't think this was just a case of dixon not knowing how to write a poor person (though that's definitely somewhat involved, this is dixon after all), because the choice of profession for her mother and giving her access to a home computer in the 90s and the overall improvement of her perceived home environment as the series progressed do seem like a deliberate choice on dixon's part. he probably would have known that nursing was considered a "good, steady" job to have.

anyways, i don't necessarily think this retcon is. necessarily worst thing in the world. it's much less stereotypical than poor/bad people are in poor/bad situations because of their choices and it acknowledges that people in all socioeconomic tiers can struggle with issues like crime and addiction.

alright, continuing on. there's an interesting thread in the steph pregnancy arc that has crystal ruminate on how steph ended up that way because crystal was a bad influence for marrying arthur and the pills. but because chuck has decided that the browns are more lower middle class than straight lower class there's a bit of a redemption/reimagining of his initial poor view of crystal once she gets sober and a marked improvement in the appearance of their socioecomonic status. take robin #58 for example.

crystal gets to support and affirm steph, be present (unlike her initial appearances). and in robin #84 after she's aware of steph's going out as spoiler after having recently found the spoiler costume (and trying to put her down about it--compared to when steph was doing spoiler stuff in the kitchen and her mom didn't even notice because she was high) and the visual design of the inside of their their house has definitely improved from run down to standard middle class, fairly nice looking.

which again feels fairly deliberate to me. because it doesn't just seem like dixon not understanding what it means to be poor, there's a deliberate moving of steph's socioeconomic status up more towards middle class once her mom gets sober which i feel like aligns nicely with chuck's viewpoint that if you're poor, you're poor because of bad choices and once you make good choices you can settle back into relative comfort.

and notably he gives even bigger reward to crystal for kicking her habit and make better choices and renouncing her husband's criminal ways (when she found out steph was spoiler and turned him in she was like "hah, serves him right"--compare this to when she was implied to be visiting him in steph's first appearance and she was being presented poorly): she, like steph, will now get sympathy for being put in a situation out of her control and the hard times that have fallen upon them. in robin #93 and #94 arthur comes home and parks himself there and nobody likes it.

and yea, they're shown to be struggling--crystal doesn't have extra money laying around to hire a lawyer to kick our her husband--a long, arduous, expensive process (+in robin #94 she's shown as being fed up with the court process as well). but rather than her being treated bad by narrative for not having money, she's presented quite sympathetically. she doesn't want them there or have anything to do with them. she's a hardworking, middle class woman who maybe fell on hard times because of her past addictions and having a criminal husband, but because she did the right thing and got clean and renounced those ways. she's not being seen as culpable to the situation--she's being seen as a victim of it this time. anyways, dixon eventually resolves the situation by sending dinah over to kick out the villains inhabiting her home, which shows that he thinks that they're (crystal and steph) deserving of being saved from the circumstances that keep them down (because they're hardworking people who are actively trying to get out of their situation and better themselves). and it aligns quite nicely with his conservative view of the world, that people who work hard get rewarded for their hard work and good things happen to them.

like i'm not going to pretend that the browns are rich by any means. they're clearly not. but there's an interesting way in which dixon improves steph's class as a reward for her perserverence. the last mention we get of any potential class by dixon is her conversation with tim in robin #100 where tim is catastrophizing about the loss of his money (which i know is nagl), but it also doesn't exactly imply she's poor and she's not exactly mad at him for being tone-deaf. she's just matter of fact about not understanding the big deal--just that she fights crime on a budget. so it's more her way of telling tim that he doesn't have to worry about the money thing/going down to middle class when it comes to being robin--after all, she's done just fine as spoiler by being smart with her money. which is actually fairly in line with dixon's viewpoint that if you make good decisions with your money, you'll do just fine and can/should afford to do what you want.

his biases and politics are sooo obvious with the browns tbh. all in all, the way he writes the browns (crystal & stephanie) wrt class i get a lot of flavors of that stupid fucking hillbilly elegy book. they're not poor welfare recipients because they're the true, hardworking people who deserve to be middle class. they were down on their luck and made bad decisions and had unfortunate things happen to them (arthur, crystal's addiction), but they overcame that like good hardworking americans (became spoiler, got sober) and as a result their economic situation improves as god intended. anyways, like i said before. it makes it so hard to be like "yea, steph was poor!" without leaning into dixon's stereotypes of poor people (addiction, criminality) and when he does write them as poor/struggling he writes them as the "true poor" "the good poor people who would never depend on aid, they just work hard to reject their circumstances and elevate themselves as they should". but it's also hard to uncomplicatedly say she was middle class, because despite being presented as lower middle class for a lot of her appearances, it's also another part of dixon's classism that has him improving their economic class over time because it's an improvement inexorably linked to his belief that hardworking americans can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps because he shows steph and crystal doing just that.

& i think of how it was initially dixon's idea to maybe make steph robin in a storyline & i can't help but feel that's almost a continuation/conclusion of the bootstraps narrative he has for steph.

idk it's just hard for me to say that dixon looked down on steph for being poor/being lower middle class because her story of self-improvement is so tied to the conservative belief of upward mobility with hard work. it's extremely classist. and yet it's still there. on the paper.

bonus, just to prove he sees them (the browns) as a lower middle class family who wouldn't be struggling so much if the government would just stop taking all their money in taxes:

#listen tim gets to be a dixon mouthpiece a lot to extoll the virtues of the rich #but the browns are also very much written as his way of extolling the 'poor dears plighted by taxes to pay for the poors' lower middle clas #and it's hard to be like well that's unrealistic when that socioeconomic class has gotten convinced of the ideals of conservatism #it's just another one of the unfortunate realities of her creation and the fact that she was dixon's darling #no matter which way you perceive her...classism and conservative ideals of economics are involved

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