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writingcold · 9 months

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Hi there - welcome to chapter 5! If you’ve not been reading, you can find the master list here. I decided to do a bonus post. I love this chapter. I needed Mr. Jacob to come back.

What did you think about our last chapter? I think our friends are quite lovely. We have a lot that happens in this chapter.

This is a work of fiction, and is totally mine. Please do not take it for your own personal use. I’ve put in hours of research, hours upon hours of writing, re-writing, screaming, yelling and vomiting over this epic of a story. But it is mine.

Thank yous go out to @lvnterninthenight @gardensgatedaisy and @whitesuitjake

Content Warnings: Some angst and verbal arguing, Sam X Susannah smut. Oh my. Minors DNI.

Word count: approx. 8500

Chapter Five: Permanent Post, Junie’s Wedding - Cora

Cora arrived in town at 7:20 in the morning. The dark blue material of the outfit that Molly insisted that she keep back for Saturday, swished against her calves as the breeze had picked up. She came to a stop before the shop door, clutch held calmly at her side. She had barely slept: between her sister’s fear of her pending nuptials and speaking to Mr. Kiszka, her brain stirred with thoughts every few minutes. Poor Junie flinched and jittered throughout the night. Her dreams were plagued by the unknown of what she was to be as a wife to Mr. Archer. If there was a way to shield her from her mother’s decision, Cora would have gladly been her knight and savior.

Hearing the door’s bell ring behind her, she turned to greet her employer who stood with his typical toothy smile and warm eyes.

“Good morning, sir,” she said brightly.

He admitted her and she moved directly to the register to place her light coat and purse down in the cabinet. He politely waited for her to settle before he started to speak.

“I have been impressed, Miss Janas, by your work this past week. You are a very quick study,” he said with his formal tone.

“Thank you, Mr. Kiszka,” she said with a friendly smile.

“Thanks to your new friend Molly, you have certainly grasped the expectation of attire as well,” he continued. “I must say, however, I’m disappointed that you have utilized the kindness of my brothers this week.”

Her brows flinched, but she was able to keep any other emotion from surfacing. Keeping her voice friendly, she said, “I can only blame my own ignorance, sir, that I did not fully realize the need for better shoes for the posting. If you have decided to keep me, my priority will be to rectify the issue as soon as possible.”

“You’re very well-spoken for a farm girl,” he observed.

“My father placed high importance on education, Mr. Kiszka. He taught my sister and me to teach the other children of our family, not just to read but to enjoy a wide range of academia.”

Mr. Kiszka nodded with a thoughtful look. “Have you had any formal schooling?”

Her cheeks colored against her wishes. “No, sir. Not school proper - just my father. He did attend normal school, though. He was a professor at a small college for a while.”

“Sounds like you received a proper enough education,” he remarked, the same thoughtful expression playing in his eyes. “Aside from literature, what other subjects did he educate you in? Mathematics? Sciences?”

“Arithmetic certainly. He had me helping with the farm accounting before he passed, sir.”

“You have bookkeeping experience?”

“Yes, sir, but just the kind to keep the farm-”

“No different than a business, Miss Janas. I’m impressed all the more.” He glanced at the large clock above her head, then checked it against his fancy gold pocket watch. “I see no reason to continue your training post. You have exceeded my humble expectations.”

Her smile instantly brightened the space around her. “Thank you, Mr. Kiszka.”

“You are welcome.” He moved towards the register to begin morning duties.

“Sir, I do have one question,” she said as she reached for her apron. “Are employees allowed to purchase goods?”

“Pardon?”

“It would save a trip to town for my mother if I could purchase our few needs here in town. Of course, I expect to pay the full price, but-”

“Oh,” he said sharply. After a moment of thought, he nodded. “Of course. Place the items you need near your personal items - there should be room in that cabinet. We’ll deduct it from your wages.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said with a nod.

Renee walked through the door as he returned his attention back to setting up the cash drawer. The girl’s eyes flicked to their employer before looking at her with questions in her eyes. Cora grinned with a nod as her only conveyance that she was a permanent hire. She settled into straightening and stocking the dry goods. Renee worked on the display cases of baked goods. By the time Mr. Kiszka opened the doors for customers, she knew it was going to be a busy day. He retreated to his office with a “ladies” and a nod.

The morning was fairly typical, lots of customers at first, then backing off midday to allow them time for cleaning, stocking and ten minutes each for lunch. Cora took the reprieve to clean the wound on her foot, amazed that there was no pain as she unwrapped the bandages. She reapplied the salve and rewrapped the wound in between bites of bread and butter.

The afternoon was busier than ever. Cora found herself up and down the ladders. Her foot was beginning to tire and stiffen, but she pushed herself. Now that she survived the trial period, it meant that she would have to buckle down and hone whatever skills that she could to ensure that her tenure in the shop was never in question.

It was nearing five o’clock when the door swung open to admit Mr. Samuel and Mr. Daniel. She was up on the ladder reaching for a bolt of fabric when Jacob's voice struck her ear. She paused only for a moment, forcing herself not to stop or even to look in the direction she thought he would be in. Instead, she made her way back to the ground to finish her task, the hem of her skirt swishing around her calves.

As she turned, she caught sight of him as he was closing the door to the office. The heat coming off his face told her that there was an issue, however, there was a twinge in his eyes that made her stop completely. Nobody had ever looked upon her in such fashion. It was like he was seeing something within her that she could not cover and hide. Before she could analyze further, he had closed the door and broken the spell that may have only lasted seconds, but she felt like it would be a lifetime to really discern the meaning.

Minutes before six, Mr. Samuel and Mr. Daniel strolled out of the office. Samuel looked particularly tight, like he was trying to figure out the hardest problem in the county. Daniel, however, took a moment to share a smile as they made their way back out of the shop. Renee was just finishing up sweeping, while Cora was aiding a gentleman with a large order to carry out his goods and wares. She was lifting the last of the crates of dry foods for the man when she spied the twins at the back of the store. Stepping out to the man’s wagon, she smiled warmly. When she returned to the shop, Mr. Kiszka was handing Renee her wages for the week with a handshake.

Cora's eyes were drawn back to the office door, but did not see Jacob anywhere. Taking off the apron, she started to settle herself up for leaving. She drew close to Mr. Kiska and pulled up the few items she had selected and an empty potato sack.

“This is all you need, Miss Janas?” Mr. Kiska asked, eyeing the three cans of corn, two sacks of beans, two tins of dried beef, two jars of beets, a small sack of flour, a brick of lard and a few pieces of penny candy for them to indulge in.

She knew the items would come out to $1.10. She nodded as he was writing the ticket for her. He reached into the drawer and withdrew two dollar bills. When he tried to give her the money, she withdrew her hand.

“I’m sorry, sir, that was not the agreed upon wage,” she said, her brows pinching. “With my items removed from my earnings, I should only receive seventy cents, Mr. Kiszka.”

The smell of a fresh lit cigarette filled her nose and nearly distracted her. Mr. Kiszka tilted his head as his eyes moved to Jacob who was moving behind her.

“And if I say the extra is a tip?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I would say that is not the agreed upon wage and a dollar thirty would be too generous to be considered a tip,” she said with a nod.

He smiled, but this time it was not the toothy smile he used in his business transactions. It was warm. Genuine. “She’s quite sharp, isn’t she, Jacob? Very well, Miss Janas. I appreciate your honesty but I insist you take at least this to call your week square with me.”

He took back one of the dollars. She nodded and took it, although did not feel good about the extra thirty cents. Cora smiled as she put the items into the empty potato bag.

“We will see you here eight sharp Monday, Miss Janas,” Mr. Kiszka remarked as he started walking back towards his office. “You did really good work this week.”

She put away her apron and retrieved her clutch before turning to find Jacob waiting for her at the main door. He smiled as she came out from behind the counter.

“Are you ready?” he asked, taking her sack of goods to carry.

She nodded. They walked from the shop out into the crisp evening. Her hand was tucked in the crook of his elbow as they moved together. His car was waiting out on the boulevard. She watched as he opened the door for her, setting her bag behind the seat before holding his hand out for her.

Straight home. Jacob, unlike his younger sibling, drove straight to her home. She did not have to remind him where to turn. She did not have to remind him her family was waiting for her. For the briefest of moments, Cora felt a little sad that her short time with Jacob was over.

She watched as he slipped out his door and walked to her side. Their eyes met when he held his hand out for her to take.

“Thank you for bringing me home,” she said, noticing that he did not let go of her hand right away.

He smiled almost shyly, the evening light catching in his features. “Thank you for allowing me to bring you home.”

Cora watched as he reached around her to retrieve her grocery items, then held out his elbow for her to take. Before they took a step, she paused.

“I’ve been remiss, Jacob. Thank you for talking to Mr. Kiszka about my posting. I cannot believe he has made the position permanent.”

“That was all you. I never was able to speak with him. You honestly impressed him.”

She felt a blush cross her cheekbones as he grinned at her. Her heart began to pound as he started to walk her to the door.

“Perhaps I will see you tomorrow during church services,” he said, his tone was warm, simple.

Cora looked at him. She had not realized that he had noticed her on Sundays. He never seemed to see anything about her before.

“I’m sure,” she said with a nod. “My sister marries tomorrow after regular services.”

“Oh, happy celebration then.”

She hesitated and his smile dimmed. “No, you’re right. Happy celebration.”

“I was not aware you had an older sister.”

“No. It’s my younger sister, actually.”

His brows pinched together like he was troubled. “I see.”

She felt the corners of mouth twitch. When Cora looked up at him, she certainly tried to hide the hurt for her Junebug, but he saw it. He looped one finger through her own and gave it a squeeze. He handed her the sack of groceries before he stepped back.

The door opened revealing her mother. Jacob nodded to her with a pleasant “good night”. Cora watched as he walked away. Her body yelled at her to follow, but she turned towards her mother’s solemn form, handing her the sack of goods and the dollar she made.

“At least that man had the sense to get you home for supper,” she remarked coldly.

Cora looked out at the automobile. He had cranked the engine and was looking back at her from behind the wheel. She held her hand up and he mirrored her before she moved inside the home. The children were all at the table waiting. Junie was filling the bowls with thin chicken stew. Matthew, Jonathan, and George watched her as she hung up her light jacket to reveal the expensive material of her dress. Junie grinned as she sat down, though the lightness of her expression waned in a quick fashion.

Once they were all seated, they prayed and ate in silence. Cora’s mind was on the night before that she had shared with her new friends. She played the conversation through her mind. It was a foreign concept to her that eating and interacting could be enjoyable and fun. The joy they showed each other made her smile inwardly. She found herself wondering if Jacob behaved like Samuel at meals - animated and happy, talking about the picture show or a piece of music he had heard, or perhaps even a story he had read.

The curve of his red lips as he smiled echoed across her memory. The way that curve appeared each time her eyes met his made her skin warm and her cheeks blush. Clearing her throat, she sat up straighter and refocused on her simple meal.

Looking over to her mother, another memory struck her mind. One that drew her back before her father went to Europe to fight in that horrific war. The memory was brief, probably lasted for a few moments, but it was startling in the way it struck her. It was back when it was just her parents, herself, Junie, and Matthew. There had been laughter. Her father would tell them stories as they would eat. His features would light with love and caring when he looked across his whole family as they hung on to each and every of his words. That light was extinguished before he returned home. Cora would always remember that the man that called himself her father had lost his grit years before his demise. Cora noticed that her sister pushed around the stew in her bowl. Whatever glimmer a bride should have in her before her wedding was not present. Her mother had known some kind of happiness in her marriage. The notion of not allowing her daughter to know that kind of emotion stabbed at her. She wondered how long Rosemary would keep the yoke of the family in place on herself - until Matthew was old enough to earn a wage? Until all the boys were gone? Her mother did not hide the fact that she kept Cora from leaving to marry because she could not support the boys alone.

The need to cry was overwhelming. She realized that her mother was shunning her daughters from joy, just in two different manners. To marry off Junie to a much older man ensured the girl would have a relationship that would never be equal. Keeping Cora close to ensure she was viewed as too old to marry and keep her a spinster, void of knowing love. A flash of mixed emotions crashed through her. A glance to her mother, especially in the silence, would have sent her into a rage. A look at Junebug would have sent her into despair. Instead, she closed her eyes and moved inward.

Jacob sitting in the Earl, his dark eyes upon her. She should have run right back at him. She should have told him to drive anywhere, just take her with him. She was very aware that it was nothing but girlish fantasy, but the thought kept her from flying apart amongst the muted clanks and scrapes that was the only sound of their meal. Her body felt the flame of her anger towards her mother and the iciness of sorrow for her sister. Her mind provided her only escape - images of her week in the shop and the evolution of how Jacob looked upon her scrolled through her thoughts. Frivolous lines of poetry began to pair with each frame, just like the picture show that her mother had allowed her to take Junie to for her birthday the previous autumn.

“Junie, if you’re not going to finish…”

Cora did not hear what her mother said as she continued to speak. She instead looked at her sister who appeared defeated, head hanging forward. The dread in the poor girl’s eyes did nothing to move their mother. Reaching over, Cora took the bowl and rose up from the table to take care of it. Rosemary scoffed, but she ignored her. The boys were sent to go prepare for bed under their mother’s care, leaving the sisters alone.

Cora allowed Junie to stay at the table. The girl’s soft cries did not go unnoticed. With care, she wrapped her arms around her sister’s frail shoulders, discovering she was trembling in her effort to stay quiet.

“Oh, Junebug,” she whispered before pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Her mother’s derisive snort from behind them made them both freeze. Slowly, Cora rose up, keeping her hands on Junie’s shoulders. “Why all this bother? Mr. Archer is the president of the Northern Trust bank. He may not be a terribly rich man, but tomorrow night, you will be living in a nice home with food in your belly,” Rosemary said without covering the edge of her impatience. “Your situation will be very much improved. Even better than the plans that Cora thinks she has for the rest of us.”

Cora felt her rage step to the fore. Her skin sizzled from its heat. “How can you be like this towards your daughter? You can see Junie is frightened and you act like she should waltz into this situation like she asked for it.”

“Scared of what? A house that won’t flood when it rains and won’t be cold in the winter? Or maybe it’s the real food that she will be able to prepare? Oh. I know what it is,” her mother groused as the girls watched her incredulously. “She must be afraid of having nice clothes and a respectable position in town? Everything that you seem to be aiming for, Cora Rosemarie.”

Cora swallowed hard. “She’s afraid of not being loved,” she said, surprised she was able to form the words.

To further her surprise, her mother barked out a laugh. It was harsh and horrible, distorting her features. She glanced at Junie before sliding her hand into her sister’s.

“Love? What a stupid girl you are, Cora. There is no such thing - not for people like us.”

“You and Papa had it,” she whispered as Junie’s body pressed up against her back.

Her mother fell quiet, her eyes empty. “Tolerance is what your father and I had. Forget about what your Papa let you read in those storybooks, because there is no such thing. He was a fool to let you think otherwise.”

The girls folded against each other. Junie pressed her cheek against Cora’s shoulder blade as she sobbed. Cora bit into her lip trying to hold back her own tide, but failed.

“Get supper cleaned up and get to bed, both of you. I don’t want to see either of you until dawn.”

Rosemary stomped out of the house leaving them sniffling behind her. Cora, in her fury, lashed out at the air before wiping at her face.

“Junebug,” she said, voice rough. “Come on, Junie.”

The younger girl flinched as Cora pulled out her hanky and began to dry her cheeks.

“Come on, Junie, it’s going to be well,” she said with more determination. “Let’s get this taken care of before she comes back.”

Mechanically, they cleaned the tiny kitchen. Cora’s heart sloshed around painfully as she watched Junie. It was as if the light was dimming right out of her. She took a moment to change the wrapping on her foot like Jacob wanted her to before they prepared for bed. She heard her mother walk back inside just as they lay down. Junie allowed her to pull her body in close, holding on to each other as exhaustion overtook them. She closed her eyes in hopes of avoiding her mother. Instead, she drifted into a shallow sleep, aware of Junie's soft cries.

Chapter Five: Pt. 2, Susannah

She smiled at the news. Cora had won Joshua over on her own merit, that was something to be happy about. What they did for her was nothing but window dressing, but it was what it would always be - an extension of friendship.

The sight of her walking from the store to Jacob’s car in the early evening made her heart trip a bit. She watched from the upper window of the dancehall with Molly at her side. The dark blue of her dress matched that of his car, a nice touch on Molly’s part, and one that did not go unnoticed by Jacob, she was sure.

The way he kept his eyes on her, the touch of his hand on her elbow as they crossed the street, the smile as he held the door for her. It was as natural as breathing. Molly was rambling on, but she could not look away from the spectacle of Cora and Jacob. She wondered if either of them realized the shine that they gave off when they were near each other.

“It would be one too many meddling incidents to help that situation out, wouldn’t it?” she sighed as the auto moved out of sight.

Molly’s grin made her feel squishy. “I don’t think there’s going to be any meddling needed in that case, love.”

Standing up, she went to the wardrobe to dig through the costumes for her shift. Her head swam with ideas, but the edge of not wanting to interfere with what would obviously happen naturally if left alone was very present.

“Any of the black numbers tonight,” Molly called from the door. “Remember, Joshua wanted us to match the formal attire.”

She rolled her eyes. Susannah pulled the black dress with the slit that would end directly on her hip bone and the plunge of the neckline ended at her bellybutton. She grinned at the memory of the last time, and only time, she had worn the satin number. Samuel lost every shred of control by the end of the night and it was days before either one surfaced in the world.

Hair perfect with the flawless curl against her cheek and ostrich feather tickling her bare shoulder; makeup in place, and the final touches of the stark white gloves, Susannah was ready like she was going to battle. Hiking down the private stairs that would lead her all the way to the speakeasy, she hummed softly to the faint music that would welcome her like an old friend the moment she slipped into the cramped space.

The dance floor was empty, save for Molly, who strutted and swirled and romped her sinful frame to the wonderment of everyone who would watch. Her eyes strayed back to the table where Joshua would hold court for his family, only to find that he sat with Catherine in a frosty frame of a picture. She watched as Josh turned to look at the woman, his face void of emotion. There was a single word that crossed his mouth before she stood, mouth pursed. Susannah would swear she just witnessed Catherine being cut away from the eldest Kiszka’s side, but when her eyes drifted back to Molly, she second guessed herself.

Catherine walked past her without a word. The woman’s eyes looked destroyed. Susannah watched as the woman slipped through the door to the stairs and the relief that washed over her made her smile. Done. She could hear Josh say it - crisp and final. She was so focused on events beyond the floor that she missed her cue.

Molly, ever in step, had her sexy stroll turned on and moved before her with a sultry sway of her hips.

“Ready, baby girl?” she asked loudly, ensuring those around them heard.

Susannah blushed, but only for a moment. “Take me out, Mama.”

Molly grasped her hands, making a show of pulling her out to the main floor to cheering and wolf whistles. She blew her friend a kiss as Molly twirled away at the closing notes of her own number. Susannah retreated her thoughts to a quiet space, filled with tall grasses and the sound of a creek that she visited with Sammy the autumn prior. It held the magic that would protect her from how her body worked through suggestive slides and luxuriant poses that showed her body in a manner that would make most women blush. The music drove her muscles through it while her brain pictured her laying in the grass, her Sammy kissing her gently under the waning afternoon sunshine. And before she knew it, her dance would be over.

She felt her chest rise and fall as she gasped for breath. The crush of people were clapping for her as she peeled herself from the floor. The sticky heat of the room mixed with the clammy feel that she was always left with when her performance was complete. Sam was waiting at the edge, a drink in hand waiting for her. With the strength she had left, she sauntered over, making sure her long legs were seen along with the lacy garter and flash of her breast that had fallen from the security of her gown, as if it were a mistake. People were so gullible and easily shocked, parting with their money to tip the poor girl who’s routine was always mired in some kind of slip that exposed her in some manner.

He did not say a word. He only handed her the drink - whiskey, neat. His eyes were nearly black, his body taut. She sipped at the velvety liquid, her eyes steady on her man as he licked at his bottom lip.

“Hey, daddy,” she whispered, her voice low and sensual.

It was the breaking point she needed. He latched onto her wrist, glass falling to the floor. He did not even bother to make sure she was decent before they were falling out onto the street. Susannah’s heels clanked on the boards of the walkway quickly as she tried to keep up with the man’s long strides. He pulled her all the way to her home, shoving through the door and kicking it closed behind them as his hands grasped her arms, shoving her towards the bedroom.

“You think you can do that and not pay my toll, girlie?” he asked as he practically ripped his coat off.

“I love when you’re so needy,” she cooed, taking down the zipper of her dress.

He huffed as his vest, followed by his dress shirt, hit the floor. “I’m not the one flaunting my titties all over like I need to be fucked proper.”

“While that may be so,” she said as he kicked off his shoes, “I’m not the one walking around with a bone the size of Texas, darling.”

“That cock is about to split you in half,” he nearly growled as he watched as her dress fell to a pool at her feet. “Keep the heels on.”

He tore her panties away, leaving the pretty garters, stockings and her shoes on. She nipped at his neck as he slid out of his pants to reveal his dick, hard as rock and seeking her warmth. He gripped her by the hips and pushed to the bed to sit. She started to wiggle back, but he stopped her. He bent, grabbing hold of one ankle and extending it up until it rested on his shoulder. He leaned in, his large hand coming down against her cunt, pinching and pulling at her clit until she hissed.

“Let it go, sugar,” he whispered, his lips against her neck.

Two fingers pressed into her entrance and her body quaked as his tongue lapped against the fragile skin beneath her ear. He was so deft at bringing her to climax. He coaxed it from her. He bent his fingers just so, kissed her just right and the combination of having her melt at his feet was complete. She came hard around his hand, her entire body losing its ability to stay upright. He did not wait for her to ride her tide downwards. He pulled her to standing, bending her over until her hands hit the floor.

Her breath came in waves as she prepared herself for his pleasure. His hands disappeared from her hips. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, looking between her knees to find him standing, looking at her folded over, totally open. Their eyes met for a long moment.

“Samuel?” she asked as she started to move.

His hands came down on her to stop her. He knelt with his knees in between her spread legs. “Susannah, do you understand what you do to me? Damn you’re so beautiful.”

His eyes were soft as he took her in. She reached back, running her fingers along his hardened dick, looking to give him something to feel. He rolled his eyes closed before he leaned in against her, a chase kiss to her clit. Sam hummed as a smile crossed his mouth.

He flattened out his tongue and gave her one long pass from clit to ass, sending shivers through her body. He sucked one lip in then the other before doing it over again. She mumbled a curse that she wasn’t even sure what it was as he set in to worshiping her pussy in the most delicious of manners. His tongue danced languidly between all her points, taking his time to love each one. The tip of his nose grazed across her ass cheek before his tongue pressed against the back entrance. Her breath was coming in hard waves before cutting out completely at the feel of his teeth digging into the fleshy part of her ass with a groan.

He scooted his hips closer to her face without stopping his mouth. She could only move a fraction, but it was enough to suck in the tip of his dick and pull hard. He wrapped his hand around his shaft, pumping himself as she swirled her tongue the best she could as he continued to worship her pussy. Sam began to bite the inside of her thigh as he picked up his own pace. She sucked hard and his head tilted back as he groaned deep in his chest. He licked the skin at the very top of her thigh before plunging back in, focusing in on her clit, switching between hard sucks and kitten licks that sent her crashing forward blindly towards another high. He came hard with her, shooting into her mouth and across her chin as she cried out in pleasure. Her knees crumpled under her own weight. He caught her, bringing her down against him before kicking his legs out to lay her against him on the floor.

Their heavy breathing was all that could be heard. He snaked his hands across her waist and held her tightly. “Love you, baby,” he whispered, kissing the damp skin of her neck. “You are so good for me.”

“Good enough to take me to the picture show, walk in with me and not just meet me in the dark? Good enough to take for a stroll through the town?” she asked with a sad smile.

He passed a finger down her cheek. “Soon enough, Susannah, we’ll be able to do that. Just now…”

She sighed as she turned away from him, reaching for her robe. Before he could touch her again, she slipped away. “I know, Sammy. It’s just for now, not always.” The words they had repeated to each other over the course of their eight months together. Somehow, the words held less gravity than they once did. Her heart felt dark as she tried to keep her back to him as he cleaned up and dressed. A glance to him reinforced the idea that perhaps the words were feeling thin to him as well.

Chapter Five: Pt. 3, Cora

Cora was up before dawn, slipping into her barn coat and boots. She roused Matthew and they sleepily walked towards the Kilbourne barn. The boy rubbed at his face as she pushed open the heavy doors. Together, they pulled out the wagon. Mr. Kilbourne appeared on his way to milk the cows. He eyed her skeptically.

“Coming back to me, girl?” he asked as he waddled past.

“No, sir,” she said with a grin. “I’ve earned myself a permanent posting.”

He made a rude noise, but continued on. Matthew stopped her before they moved towards the horses. A look of annoyance crossed through his features as he seemed to draw up his shoulders. For the briefest of moments, she saw her father standing in her brother’s space, and it sent a wistful breath across her lips.

“Why are you and Junie so mad with Mama?” he asked, holding onto her arm.

“Not angry, Matthew,” she sighed as she started to yawn. “Just upset.”

“I thought women wanted to get married,” he said innocently.

She smiled warmly at her brother. He looked so like their father with his chiseled jaw and dark brown hair. “We’re all meant to marry and to love. Junie… Mama…”

He made a face just like their father would when she struggled to find words. Tears blurred her eyes as he reached for her shoulder.

“Men have an easier lot in this life, Matthew. At least when it comes to the affairs between men and women. It’s been that way forever it seems,” she whispered. “Mother has had to make a decision that will give Junie a challenge, but will lessen the burden on the family as whole. It was a difficult decision. Of that I am sure. But for Junie, it means that she must go her own path. She has to do this alone. She’s scared of what it may bring.”

“If I could help you and Mama, you know I would, Cora,” he said, his voice strong and sure.

“I’m sure Mama will be asking Mr. Kilbourne any day now to have you be paid for your chores,” Cora remarked as her eyes moved back to the end of the barn where the farmer was working. “You will be helping sooner than you think.”

They got the two horses out and hitched up to the wagon before tying them off with feed bags. Matthew was quiet at her side as they walked back down to the cottage until they were almost to the door.

“I’m sorry that Mama was so upset last night,” he said, his smile sad. He paused as a sparkle moved through his eyes. “Do you think that Mr. Jacob might be back with that automobile?”

“You liked that one, huh?”

“Yes. It looked fast.” He made to walk ahead, but stopped again. “And I liked that he was kind to you.”

Cora smiled as she watched him open the door for her just like a gentleman would for a lady. She tousled his hair as she passed. They sat down with bread and a smear of butter before getting ready for church. She could hear Georgie rousing and moved to get him ready before her mother had to. The littlest of them looked up at her with large dark blue eyes and arms raised for a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him up despite him being half her size.

Dressed in their church clothes, Cora helped Junie to tie her hair into braids that flattered her with delicate curls around her ears. Their mother barely looked at either of them as they climbed into the wagon with Mr. and Mrs. Kilbourne on the driver’s bench. Cora told herself that perhaps her words had sunk through the woman’s skull and made some semblance of sense to her, but she very much doubted it. Instead, she sat with Georgie tucked into her left side and Jonathan in her right. The boys were lulled back to sleep in the swaying of the wagon and long ride into town.

While Mr. Kilbourne aided his own wife from the wagon, he left the Janas family behind with a malign smirk. Cora climbed her own way down with Matthew’s help then proceeded to help the others. Their mother led the way towards the church, with Cora holding Junie’s hand tightly in support. Her eyes strayed as they entered the hall, looking for Jacob and his brothers. Mr. Archer approached with his two children in tow. He politely said hello to the family. Cora noticed that Junie was correct, though he spoke to her directly, he did not truly look at her, nor her face. The oddness bothered her.

Cora felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned to find Mr. Samuel and Mr. Daniel. They greeted her warmly, much to her mother’s displeasure. To rub it in further, she turned from her sister’s future husband to say hello to the two men.

“You look well,” Daniel remarked with a warm smile.

“I am doing very well, thank you,” she said, nodding.

“Congratulations on your posting,” Samuel said with a huge smile. “I knew you could do it. You’re a total natural in that shop.”

She smiled wide as Jacob came into her line of sight. His dark suit made his tanned skin look rich. He had not seen her yet, but the way he removed his hat, running his fingers over his hair to keep it out of his eyes made her insides feel warm.

“Cora,” her mother called out.

She smiled once again at Daniel and Samuel before turning back to her family. They were walking with Mr. Archer and his children. Though he walked next to her, the gentleman did not acknowledge his would-be bride. She felt the pit of her stomach clench as she followed. The man was talking about going to their home after the services for supper. The family would be welcomed any time they were in town. Junie tried to make mention that Cora was now working in town, but he just talked right over her like she was a child.

Taking their position in the hall, she sat down at the end of the row, her brain firing thoughts off so quickly that she could barely keep up with the shift in ideas. The preacher’s wife and family appeared at the front and shortly after, the Kiszka’s and Mr. Daniel walked in from the back. Her eyes trained on Jacob as he moved, his hat in his hands and his face turned in her direction. She hoped that he had seen her, but was unsure as he took his place six rows in front of her family.

Georgie started babbling and reaching for her. Cora snuggled him close and he sighed against her face with his hands on her cheeks.

“I miss you, sister,” he whispered, pressing his nose against hers.

She smiled as she put his head on her shoulder. “I miss you too, Georgie,” she said into his hair, breathing him in.

The air in the hall grew uncomfortably warm as the preacher moved through the service. Cora’s brain was not focused on the sermon at all. Her hand held the youngest of her brother’s while her eyes were unfocused on the pew before her. The man’s words held no importance. The music was unmoving. The coil that was being tightened in her chest made her want to grab hold of her siblings and run. Instead, she sat like a good girl and pretended to be part of the faithful. Her brain bent between being selfish and watching Jacob and the nuptials that would take place after the services.

Georgie looked up at her, his small, mischievous face bade her to turn her attention back to him. She allowed him to crawl back up onto her lap, to which he was asleep in moments. Locked into her place as the congregation began to dismiss, she glanced down the row, watching as Mr. Archer was standing up, his eyes trained to the front. With all the movement, she did not see much until a soft tap on her shoulder drew her back to her edge of the pew.

“Good morning, Cora,” Jacob said as he crouched down, his hand landing on Georgie’s back, smoothing down his shirt until his fingers brushed her own, looping his pinky with her index.

“Good morning,” she breathed, feeling the heat rise on her cheeks.

“Mr. Kiszka,” Mr. Archer called from behind her.

Jacob did not rise to meet the gentleman at first. His gaze dropped away, annoyance appearing at the corners of his mouth. He stood, his professional disinterest forming in his features. He did not offer his hand at first. Cora noticed that his jaw tightened when he finally reached out to take Mr. Archer’s offered handshake.

“Mr. Archer,” Jacob said. He returned his gaze to hers, but it was not the same. “I shall see you tomorrow, then.”

She looked back at the corner of the pew as Georgie roused dreamily. She turned to look behind her, seeing him stop to speak with Sam and Daniel. He kept his back to her, but she saw that he turned his chin to his shoulder.

“Sister,” Georgie whispered in her ear.

“I got you, baby,” she cooed.

The preacher and his wife were walking towards their family, their round faces filled with what Cora assumed was to be joy. Pastor Butterman was all hands on Mr. Archer as he shook the man’s hand and patted his shoulder. His eyes fell to her mother with a nod before finally moving to her.

“So this is the bride, then,” he started, beaming towards her. “Miss Cora, you are looking very happy today! I am sure your whole family shares this sentiment.”

Cora’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Instead her eyes darted back to the last spot that Jacob had been in, finding that he was now looking back at her, having heard the voice of the minister carry. Jacob’s dark eyes were hardening on the situation as she shook her head, near panic choking her to silence.

“No, sir,” her mother finally said, pulling Junie closer to her. “Junie is our bride today.”

So many of the words that had crossed her lips over the past days were hanging on her tongue. The wrongness of the moment pierced her. Georgie must have felt her stress and wrapped his hands tight around her neck. Cora fought with herself. The look on her mother’s face was stern, making her rethink what she wanted to voice.

The preacher hesitated. “Right. Junie, what a blessed day this is for you and us all.”

He took her sister’s hand and motioned for Mr. Archer to follow. Cora set Georgie down and took him by the hand. She felt her heart slog in her chest as she followed behind the family. She wanted to scream and fight for her sister to stay with the family and not marry a complete stranger. She wanted to slap her mother to force some sense into the situation.

Instead, she stood like a coward, heart in her throat while Junie looked like she was going to vomit. The preacher was droning on about happiness and love. Cora made a sound that made him stop. She kept her eyes down, but the pause made her have a bit of satisfaction. The man continued on, talking about commitment and loyalty - loyalty that the families can share as they become one family instead of two. Her stomach flopped at the notion.

The ceremony was over before she knew it. Junie’s terrified eyes met hers for the briefest of moments before Mr. Archer kissed her mouth with a quick peck. Cora could not hide the curl of disgust as her sister seemed to recoil. Rosemary smiled at the minister as if in triumph. Somehow, Cora knew that Junie was broken inside. Her big sister did nothing to come to her rescue. Instead, the family turned away, making their way from the church hall into the day beyond. Mr. Kilbourne and his wife were already back to their wagon, waiting. Cora’s mouth dropped when her mother told Mr. Archer that they needed to be moving along. They would have to visit another day.

Grabbing her sister into a hard embrace, Cora whispered into her ear. “Junebug. I love you. I treasure you so. Keep that close.”

She nodded, eyes on their mother who was already in the wagon with the boys. The coolness of the woman’s face stoked the fire within Cora. Matthew moved to edge, sitting down to provide her some support to climb up and take her place. Georgie crawled into her lap, his little face moving until he was nose to nose with her.

“Where’s Junebug?” he asked with all the seriousness that a six year old could muster.

Cora swallowed. “She has her own home now, baby. Perhaps she’ll visit us soon.”

“When you go to your own home, will you take me?” he asked, his hands pressing against her cheeks.

She sucked in a breath, startling the young boy. He threw his arms around her neck and held on tight. Her emotions that she had reigned in through the day were breaking loose. Her mother’s face grew hard. Cora found herself not caring. Georgie’s hands patted her back and he hummed a tune that was meant to be comforting as she wept for her sister. Matthew’s hand slipped into hers. She looked at her eldest brother and for a moment, it was her father looking back at her. Her heart hurt. Her mind hurt. She knew if her father had been there, things would not have been much different. In all likeliness, she would have been married to a man she did not know. She more than likely would have had a baby already. Blowing out a breath, she trained her mind onto the day to come.

When the night came, and she was alone, cleaning the supper dishes, her hands came down on the wash tub. If given the opportunity, she would choose Jacob. He may still have been a stranger, but he at the very minimum showed kindness. He showed interest. She could only imagine what her sister was facing at that moment in a strange house, with a strange man, and expectations that she had no idea how they fit in with her own existence.

Chapter Five: Pt. 4, Molly

When Molly roused, Daniel was gone. She sat up, listening for anything in the house, but there was no sound. Her brows pinched as she slid out of bed, grasping for her robe. The stillness bothered her. Sunday. She hated the idea of Sunday. Danny was required by Joshua to attend church services to keep up their appearance of being good businessmen, no matter what.

There was a light tap on her door as she was fixing a kettle. Susannah peeked her head around, the same weary look on her face.

“Hey, baby doll,” Molly said in a welcome, pointing her to sit at the table. “Eggs?”

“If you’re fixin’ them, sure,” she sighed.

Molly did not like the look that shone in her friend’s eyes. It was a common look that appeared frequently. Fishing out a few eggs and a heavy cast iron pan, she set into fixing breakfast. She waited until they were sitting down with food and coffee before them to ask what was going on.

“Have you ever wondered when we’ll be respectable enough to go to church with them?” she asked, hands folded in her lap. “Sure, we’re all right to take to the diner or the cafeteria. But anywhere else? We’re hidden, Mols.”

Molly took a sip of her coffee, eyes hard on the table before her. She hated that Susannah could openly ask such a question. She could not even form the words in her brain that there would ever be a time that Danny would deny that she would be part of him. That was not the truth, not fully. Sundays. Sundays belonged to nurturing their personas in the public. The four of them would attend church, visit others who were in their sphere - other businessmen and their families. They would travel all over the town through the day as a group. As they were bachelors, it was never expected for them to host anyone - why would they invite people to their home that was in the center of the row of mansions on the way out of town? Instead, they sat and conversed with those that were the pillars of the community as if their wings did not hold the soot of the underbelly they fed on a nightly basis.

“I hate Sundays,” Molly grumbled before shoving eggs into her face.

“I know I should feel stupid for even thinking this, but, really? When will we be able to walk on the arms of our men? They love us. Isn’t that enough?” Susannah whispered sullenly.

She blew out a long breath. Shaking her head, Molly dragged her teeth across her upper lip. “Unless we leave this town with them, I do not think that will happen, love. Too many men have seen… our act. Joshua would never allow their current reputation to be tarnished.”

“I don’t understand sometimes why we need to be ashamed of our work, when half the men in this town have been there cheering us on. Aren’t they just as tarnished in that sense?” she grumbled.

Molly nodded sympathetically, but knew this was an argument waiting to happen. Instead, she kept to her coffee and finished her eggs. She adored her friend, but the moods that overtook her at times were dark and complicated, there was no winning until her cooler thoughts returned.

Susannah helped to clean up then drifted back to her own home next door. Molly rummaged around her rooms, straightening up, pulling out the week’s clothes. She found pieces that would look good on Cora and set them aside to perhaps spend some time fixing them for her newest friend to wear. It also meant more to do to keep her busy until Danny returned.

Hope you liked this little bit longer chapter. Next week will be different - a chapter only for Cora - but you won't want to miss it! Hearts will be fluttering. I do have a tag list, you can join here or just let me know

@lvnterninthenight @doodle417 @luverleaver @jakesgrapejuice @fictional-duchess @whitesuitjake @milkgemini @positivegvfthings @songbirds-sweet @streamingcolors-gvf @gretavanbitches @samsurfgreenbass @joshkiszkas-admin @gardensgatedaisy @babyhoneygvfarchive @myownparadise96 @josh-iamyour-mama @starcatchercarol @loveisonaroll @jakesstarlight @myownparadise96 @reesetrippingthelight @kyrose11 @builtby-gvf @ignite-my-fire @ohgodthefeeling-gvf @wetkleenex-gvf @gold-mines-melting @starsasone @puzzle-gvf @mysticalstarcatcher @montenegroisr @takenbythemadness @brookes-so-done @way-to-go-lad @cal-a-bungaa @lightmylove-gvf @thewritingbeforesunrise @leftjudgeempathsuitcase @brokenbells11 @imborrowedshesblue @vanfleeter @sammysvanfeet @jakekiszkasbuttsweat

#greta van fleet #gvf #jake gvf #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #josh gvf #sammy gvf #sam gvf #daniel gvf #danny gvf #greta van fleet fanfic #greta van fleet fan fiction #greta van fleet fanfic au #greta van fleet au fic #greta van fleet x ocs

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bomberqueen17 · 1 year

Text

hi welcome back

My disorganized-bitch policy of never unfollowing people who go inactive unless a spammer takes over their zombie account is paying off and i’m seeing some ancient blogs come back online and resume their activity now that Certain Events have Transpired in the Greater Context of Social Media so I just sorta wanna say hi and welcome back and listen

listen

shit is weird, and the only way we’re all gonna survive is if we stick together and get even weirder, so like

come on in, the water’s fine, I’m doing my part to keep it unhinged with ya. Shop local, buy small, we can’t activism our way out of this one but we can do good where we can, tip your server, etc. etc., but really above all else remember, be unmarketable-to and as weird as possible.

(My particular part in this nonsense is that I write shockingly-coherent but unreasonably long intertwined epics nominally based on the concept of Witcher fanfiction (netflix? book? video games? yes and no to all three) but by this point they’re mostly OCs. We’re not at a million words yet but not for want of trying. This is not a marketable or rational thing to do. But if you were wondering what I’ve been up to, that’s what I’ve been up to, since March of 2020 when I realized not all of us were getting out of this alive.)

Pull up a coping mechanism. Be nice. Get weird. Ignore celebrities. Dismiss influencers. Avoid algorithms. Turn off the “best stuff first” shit. Look up things your damn self. Reblog all the good stuff you find. Use the queue function or not. Embrace the cringe. Post some titties. (as an aside: i have only seen like one pair of titties since they announced that, are we dead inside or what? come on man. no, no, i’m there with you-- I’m not posting shit until i see something i can believe in. So, free the nipple but like, someone else go first.)

Anyway hi. Some of us are still here.

Let’s get weirder.

#tumblr #this blue hellsite #about the author

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die-remastered · 1 year

Text

Night Raven College Majors and general hc pt. 1/??

Aka Night Raven College college

These are largely based on my experience, don’t take them too seriously lmao

Also these are very rough, but let me know if anyone wants to see more ideas (I may do a post of like embarrassing college moments that have happened to me as twst characters lol)

Vil

I bet you think I’m gonna be boring and say like acting or theatre…WRONG

Marketing major with a minor in cosmetic sciences (he does take theatre electives though)

He’s a nepotism baby with a solid career and high understanding of acting methods and techniques, it wouldn’t add anything to his repertoire if he just had an extra piece of paper

He went marketing to help him better share himself and his collaborations

He has a small cosmetics company and wanted the minor to have a deeper understanding of the craft

He still does like maybe 1 small theatre production at the college for the experience

He’s despised by a certain sector of the theatre majors and there is a theory that he buys his way into productions

He’s also been in a few short films for his fellow students

Everyone is surprised that he as an RA (cause like he absolutely doesn’t need the free housing and meal plan) but he just says he likes looking out for freshman and wanted the normal college experience

Ace

He’s a freshman and he’s gone through 3 majors already

He started off in sports medicine but didn’t like it, he then moved to civil engineering (solely for the idea of the salary) and dropped after attending one class, then he joined justice studies to be with his friend Deuce and didn’t like that

He is now undeclared and is getting all his gen eds done so he can find something he actually liked

He was this close 🤏 to just making his major psychology cause that’s what he heard people don’t know what to do do, but then met one (willing) psychology major and decided that he had a will to live and dropped it

He plays intramural basketball and is actually pretty good

He hates his RA (Riddle) and has ignored ever rule put into place, has never attended a floor meeting, and has a ban from the floor group chat because he was sending too many elaborate memes and accidentally started a debate on the morality of the seven

He absolutely did not want to be in the heartslabyul dorms but procrastinated picking a room and ended up in them.

He’ll tell you he lucked out with his roommate though.

He’s generally well-liked though, the chat notifications just make people annoyed

There have definitely been at least 3 noise complaints about him sent to housing

He wanted to join a frat and got rejected. He’s sooo not bitter about it and they totallyyyy aren’t missing out on his epic personality.

Cater

Uses social media buzz words too much

Like tooooo much, still says slay

Mass Media major

He has an alter ego on like yik yak that is fairly well known for some reason

Super nice but is the friend you worry about because there are at least 10 empty latte cups on his floor

1 of 3 Heartslabyul RAs

I imagine he runs like one of those tik tok accounts that like post random people on campus and give them a background story

Leona

No one knows how or why he become an RA of Savanaclaw (it’s a common belief his CEO brother pushed him into doing it) but he does a really nice job of it

5th year senior because his brother wanted him to be a business major but Leona threatened to drop out if they didn’t let him switch so now his family is just happy he is there

He’s a kinesiology and honestly doesn’t know what he wants to do

He’s the type that makes sure nothing horrible goes down, but let’s you have your freedom

Like don’t die and don’t interrupt his sleep schedule and you’re golden

Gets straight As without trying

Riddle

The most despised RA, he’s seriously hated

The type to get you in trouble for having a shot glass (nothing in it, you could literally have it to hold rings and he’d report you)

He’s good at heart though, he’s just over committed to his job since it’s his first year being an RA

He’s pushy but he believes he’s doing it to help the underclassmen reach their full potential

Premed major, he’ll tell his close friends that his mom pressured him into it but he actually found out he really likes it

Much like Cater he’s running on coffee, but his room is just cleaner so you can’t tell

The type of student to make you quiver in your boots

Like he’s the poster boy that you see on the college brochures. Internships, honors classes, club leadership, volunteering, and anything else you can think of.

Floyd

He has a habit of terrorizing Freshman

He’s also become an urban legend of sorts on campus, there’s like weird Magicam accounts dedicated to Floyd sightings but no one knows who runs them

Like Ace, his major it undeclared (he gets too easily bored)

More than likely he’ll stay extra time until somehow he randomly completes a degree and can get the hell out

He’s not an RA but decided to stay in the dorms because he thought it would be too boring to live somewhere without Jade and Azul

#I do actually love Riddle as a character #not that you can tell in this lol #I may do stuff that is like campus romance with prefect later if anyone wants it #twst leona #twst headcanons #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland headcanons #twst au #twisted wonderland au #floyd leech #ace trappola #leona kingscholar #riddle rosehearts #vil schoenheit

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jacksadventuresinwriting · 2 years

Note

How about: ‘Buck knows it’s going to be that kind of day before he even gets through the firehouse doors.’

Hey Megs, sorry it took so long. I'm a little slow 😂

I hesitated posting this, because it wasn't meant to be speculation, but then that article dropped yesterday so I guess it kind of is now? Eh, it is what it is 😂

Buck/Eddie | 663 words | read on ao3

Buck knows it’s going to be that kind of day before he even gets through the firehouse doors.

He’s out of sorts and worried about Eddie, and he knows from experience that actively wanting a quiet day is enough to guarantee a shift with back-to-back calls.

He’d spent the night alone at his loft last night, which always left him feeling a little lonely. Then, without the rush of getting Chris to school in the morning he’d overslept. He didn’t even get to talk to Chris and wish him good luck on his presentation because Eddie’s phone had gone to voicemail when he called. Eddie never ignores his calls, so something is going on.

When he walks into the locker room and finds Eddie, shoulders slumped and head in his hands, he knows he’s right about how the day’s going to go.

Buck drops onto the bench and knocks their shoulders together.

“Hey baby, you want to talk about it?”

Eddie groans and drops his hands, looking at Buck with the saddest eyes. Buck doesn’t think twice, he just turns to straddle the bench and pull Eddie into his arms.

“It’s stupid, I’m fine,” Eddie mumbles, burying his face into Buck’s neck with a sigh.

“Yeah, you sure seem fine, Eds.”

“Did you know Michael volunteered to take Harry and Denny out trick or treating this year? With a sleepover afterwards.”

Buck’s mouth twitches where it’s resting against Eddie’s temple. He sees where this is going. He doesn’t want Eddie to be upset, of course, but the epic pouting he figures is coming over the next couple of weeks is sure to be adorable.

Chris has been pushing for more independence lately, spending more time with friends and on his phone. He’s less interested in hanging out with his dad or his Buck. It’s making Eddie sad. Buck’s not feeling great about it either, but Eddie is taking it hard. He watches Chris with big, soulful eyes and wistful smiles and tries so hard be cool with all the changes. He wants Chris to be strong and independent, but he’s struggling a lot with letting go.

“No, I didn’t know that. They invited Chris?”

With another gusty sigh, Eddie pulls away and sits up. As soon as he sees the grin on Buck’s face, he glares.

“Can you not laugh at me right now? I just...I asked him this morning what costumes he wanted to do this year, and he just dropped that on me. No warning. Just a casual ‘Dad, Mr. Grant is taking Harry and Denny trick-or-treating, and they invited me to go.’ We always do Halloween together, Buck.”

“I’m not laughing at you, baby. I promise.” Buck reaches for Eddie’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “I’m sorry, I know your feelings are hurt right now.”

“I just want him to be happy. But why can’t he be happy and stay my little boy,” Eddie whines.

Buck laughs and stands, using their joined hands to pull Eddie up with him. Wrapping his arms around him, he pulls Eddie in for a tight hug.

“What do you say you and I plan a date night for Halloween, huh? If we’re going to have guaranteed babysitter, let’s take advantage of it. We can try out that new Indian place you keep drooling over. Maybe order in, get cozy and put on a scary movie?” He places a soft kiss to the corner of Eddie’s mouth, and watches a reluctant smile cross his face.

“Yeah, that sounds really good, Buck. We’ll have a nice night, and Michael can deal with Chris hyped up on too much sugar this year.”

He’s super pouty and Buck is endlessly amused, but he hides his smile and presses a gentle kiss to Eddie’s mouth.

Before he can say anything else, the alarm goes off. They share a rueful smile and take off running to the trucks. Yep, Buck thought, it was going to be that kind of day.

#buddie #buddie fic #911 speculation #i guess?#evan buckley #eddie diaz

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alwaysspeakshermind · 1 year

Text

When I say 'I ship it'

this is what I mean:

Because I believe just about anything and everything can (and should!) be analyzed, I have decided to post a trio of unnecessary charts I made once upon a time in college, while I was supposed to be studying.

Are they exciting? No!

But they do help illustrate the method to my personal madness, and I've got a 'favorite ships' list I've been needing to finish for like a year now that I feel like this will help explain, so there’s that.

How I ship: lazy little flowchart edition

For me, it’s not about tropes, aesthetics, or the following of/rebelling against canon. It’s essentially chemistry, story, and overall execution that sell me on a pairing, and all three need to be present in order to reel me in.

Ex. 1: If the chemistry is dynamite but the setup is meh or the storyline takes a dive/drags too long/rushes too much etc., I’m out. Maybe I'll read a fanfic or two for a taste of What Could Have Been If..., but effectively, I'm out.

Ex. 2: If the setup/potential is the most brilliant, epic piece of art in the history of the written/spoken word but the chemistry is blah or the actual execution of the relationship doesn’t live up to the preamble, I’m not just kind of out...I’m Viola-Davis-grabbing-her-purse gif out, and I’m locking the door behind me, and I might even be considering writing a strongly-worded rant on how annoyed I am over my time being wasted.

Ex. 3: If the relationship, whenever it finally happens, is the cutest/hottest/most magnetic and beautiful example of a well-written and loving relationship ever but the chemistry is so-so and the setup is barely there, I may not be out, but I’m definitely not in, because who in the world is excited to drink lukewarm coffee? Not me, so thank you, but no thank you.

That’s just how it is.

And even if I love a ship, certain writing choices can still turn me off of them/lessen my liking for them; while I do sometimes joke about cherry-picking from canon, I don’t as a rule just ignore things I hate and hype what I like because I can’t. It’s like lying to myself, and I don’t roll like that. When I ship, I’m ultimately shipping a dynamic (And yes, the dynamic is usually take-charge, kind-of-b!tchy girl and a feels all the feels/flies-by-the-seat-of-the-pants guy, but what of it?), but I need the dynamic to be built on something that feels organic to both story and characters so that the exasperatingly practical part of my brain isn’t interrupting with things like “But why would they get together?”/ “Why would they get together now?”

Like...I don’t care if we’re discussing animated mice (Disney's The Rescuers) or elderly assassins (RED). I need to see that they like each other, I need to see why they’re great together, and I need to see why it makes sense for them to get together when they do, as opposed to earlier or later.

So, in summary...I do not convince myself to ship. The ship convinces me, and there is a definable process.

Levels of shipping: cute (love-themed?) colors edition

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll be quick.

Lowest level = “I don’t NOT ship it” = the default level = the ingredients are all there, the finished product is just not tasty enough to tempt me. (Maybe they were mixed improperly, maybe the cookies were pulled from the oven too soon, maybe they had all the ingredients for a delectable layer cake and chose instead to make cornbread and call it dessert, maybe they just served me vanilla when I wanted chocolate, etc.) Highest level = “I hardcore ship it” = the rarest level of shipping I attain = however calm I claim to be about loving this pairing, I am downplaying it because I am actually unhinged. I adore them. You will never make me stop shipping them. The bridge is crossed so stand and watch it burn because babes, we have PASSED the point of no return and I have ZERO regrets.

Rough Shipping #s: extremely unscientific version that I would never let my old stat prof see b/c it would make her sad and possibly think about revoking that good grade she gave me

Whatever the fictional medium, my default shipping mode is neutral...most of the time, when I read a book or watch a show/movie, I don’t care one way or another about the relationships presented. My primary concerns are “do they work?” and if the answer is “yes, they have a not unpleasant dynamic, and the proper amount of work has been put into developing that dynamic,” then I sort of go “okay, good for them” and I move on.

If the answer is “no, they’re kind of boring/basic/bland etc. and they just sort of happen for no discernible reason and/or leave a bad taste in my mouth” then I roll my eyes, get through it as soon as possible, and move on. It’s out of the ordinary for me to love a ship, but it is even more out of the ordinary for me to actively dislike a ship, and it is rarest of all for me to hate a ship. So when I say I adore a ship, it’s kind of a big deal. And when I say I loathe a ship...yeah, well. You get the picture.

In summary:

When I say "I ship it," I mean all the above elements have clicked for me. I have gone through a process to reach this point. I'm not just going "ooh, pretty people, I want them together!" or "ooh, character I relate to most! I want them with character I'd want to be with most!"

Nope.

It's about the journey AND the destination AND the pre-journey prepwork, but it's also about an X-factor, something special I respond to with each ship...and at the end of the day, if that little unexplainable spark is there I'll ship it. If it's not, I won't.

#shipping #fandom #why i ship it #my post #random #how do people even ship them?#like this babe #this is how i ship #is this about varchie?#or karamel?#or westallen?#or my main doctor who ships?#or the fact that i multishipped people on himym and btvs?#or the fact that i can see the appeal of multiple ships on atla but i don't necessarily ship them bc i need more to go on?#or the fact that i was five years old pairing Barbie and Teresa with GI Joe instead of Ken?#we may never know

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independence1776 · 1 year

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@spiced-wine-fic asked: 2, 5, 9 and 20 please (for the Behind the Scenes of Fic Writing meme)

2. Do you participate in any writing events or challenges throughout the year? If so, what do you like about them?

Apart from Nano, it varies year by year.

Nano I’ve done since 2004 and I win most years. But 2023 is likely my last year of doing Nano; it’ll be my twentieth year and that’s a good stopping point. Right now, it feels like I’ve grown beyond Nano and the community I once had there is pretty much gone. Due to various things that came to light in early December, I no longer trust the Nano nonprofit.

There are always SWG challenges that catch my attention, though I can’t say that I always do them or that I post the results. They vary, they’re always interesting even if they’re not for me, and I love the effort that goes into them. I’ve often scrolled through the list of previous challenges just looking at them all. My favorite of these is the Matryoshka challenge; I will in fact go overboard given the slightest bit of leeway. (There was a lot of leeway with the recent one. I do not regret it.)

I’ve participated in TRSB as both a writer and an artist, but not every year. 5k isn’t on the face of it a challenge (blame Nano), but it’s been a challenge more often than not. As an artist, I like seeing what results from my artwork. But collaborations can be tricky and not everyone is on the same page about what collaborations entail.

I’ve also done Innumerable Stars off and on, which is always a fun, mostly low-key exchange. I’ve done other single-fandom exchanges, too.

I’ve participated in some themed multifandom exchanges (Darkest Night is the one I did most often) and those are fun. They’re also fraught because I’m too monofandom for most of them. Back to Middle-earth Month was something I did yearly because as a mod I felt I had to do something, even if that something was a true drabble. (Modding is hard work. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.) I occasionally do fandom charity auctions, but not on a regular basis.

In general, apart from the Matryoshka challenge, my favorite writing events are Big Bangs, where you write X number of words and get art for your fic. I prefer the ones that are “X number of words due on Y date” and not ones that have staggered “first chapter must be posted but fic can be a WIP until Z deadline.” But there’s something about the combination of motivation, deadline, and art that works for me.

5. What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

At home on my desktop with instrumental music playing in the background.

9. Do you prefer to write AUs, canon divergence, or canon-compliant fic?

Canon divergence AUs are hands-down my favorite things to write. I love exploring the what-ifs, how things could have gone differently, and the snowballing effects. In order to write them well, I think-- and I try to do this-- is to know canon as best as you can so that the divergence feels natural and that the consequences of that difference are realistic within the established worldbuilding. (It’s like if Frodo died on Mount Doom with Gollum. Even if Sam survives, what happens in the Shire after the Hobbits return wouldn’t occur the same way because Frodo isn’t there. But a story that ignores that falls flat.) As you can tell, I also like canon-compliant fic.

I have no interest in writing setting alteration AUs (like modern, mermaid, etc.). I write fanfic because I love the canon and I want to explore more of it. Changing the setting so everyone’s a werewolf or that they’re all human in the modern world takes away a large part of what I find interesting. The exception to this is Silmarillion space AUs, but those tend to keep the epicness intact.

20. What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

In Tolkien fandom, Elrond. Given how popular he is in general, it’s hard to remember just how minor of a character he is, but he is. He’s one of the threads tying the Legendarium together, both in-universe and thematically. And I love him to pieces.

#long post

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vicea · 3 years

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techno and dreams dynamic tho :c so good so pure. how dream said now they're closer and he doesn't want to jeopardize that by doing another big competitive thing against him (even though we'd all be happy to see it and they'd get so much clout) im luv them

oh my god how I literally have been waiting for this moment. technoblade and dream... the OP duo... the “Make-A-Wish” team... I MISS them so MUCH God when they work together, when they team together, when they have interactions I get so excited because there’s not a dull moment with these minecraft nerds.

you already mentioned one thing that literally lives in my head rent free and it’s the fact that dream said the main reason why he doesn’t want to do a manhunt against techno is because he does not want to make this “rival” status of theirs into this enemy thing between communities and between them because they’re friends and he doesn’t want to lose that- and like 🥺 dream really cherishes their friendship a lot !! and respects techno so so much. he’s always been such a big fan of his and they’re both overall super supportive of each other under the whole rivals bit:

exhibit A

exhibit B <- also has a link to techno and dream wholesome friendship moments where techno is seen being a dream stan (said it himself in minecraft chat) as well (for clout but lets ignore that part) and also being really supportive after the mrbeast duel

exhibit C techno referencing road trip here GGhhhHHGH

like i remember his first message to techno on discord was to team with him for minecraft monday too albeit probably for clout but lets be real this clout chase between them is a mutual thing and they both don’t mind at all. plus it’s fucking OP as hell

another thing that lives in my head rent free is the fact that dream wanted to just vc techno when they were the only ones on the dream smp and just wanted to talk (before sap, george, and bbh crashed their VC LOL) like... that’s crumbs yo. CRUMBS for rivalsblr. and also we cannot forget the infamous “dream is homeless bit” by techno... how dream had techno’s livestream pulled up and was listening in to his every joke and playing along by making a small diary and writing everything word for word that techno said as a joke. and then this part here too. like they easily bounce off of each other so well,, more interactions please.

GOD I cannot emphasize HOW funny it is whenever dream is trying to do lore and Techno is just pulling his “breaking the fourth wall” jokes in the middle (as he always does) because Techno would just be reading his donations aloud and dream would be patient and just barely tolerate it at first then BLOW UP AFTER THE FOURTH TIME OR SMTH. LIKE TECHNO LOVES PUSHING HIS BUTTONS ITS HILARIOUS god i love them

okay this is more dream smp lore related but like,,, c!dream being the only one that ever really stayed true to his word and never betrayed c!techno... and c!techno agreeing wholeheartedly, but then like both of them explicitly stating that they aren’t friends. we love to see it !! stating and !! respecting !! each other’s boundaries whilst blowing up countries together 😎 (like yeah i get it, both of them saw an advantage and took it but let me HAVE MY CRUMBS PLEASE) also dream and techno teaming up with tommy during the battle of the lake and winning... that was fucking epic and before the 3rd explosion of lmanberg and tommy’s betrayal against techno - techno goes “is this where you turn in your favor?” but then dream is like “pft what No you already wanted to blow up lmanberg” and techno goes “you know me so well dream” BHBJBJBHJ (SYNDICATE!DREAM COME TRUE OR ELSE)

OKAY also lmao I think it is always so funny every time I am reminded of how fucking sweaty dream and techno are even in the dream smp lore. Like the two standing facts of how dream literally made a WHOLE ass fucking obsidian grid above lmanberg with his fucking rapid TNT dropping thing and techno 1. breeding probably over hundreds of wolves as his army and 2. grinding for... way too many wither skulls. and both of them were on the same side. like holy shit they really know how to blow a country up.

also lets not forget the fact that once for buildmart, techno and dream “cheated” the MCC system by learning the builds for build mart (they were on separate teams too)- techno saying “there are 26 builds” and dream was like “actually 27″ they are absolute SWEATY NERDS and I LOVE THEM for that

speaking of MCC... when dream and techno teamed up that one time it was probably both relieving and stressful at the same time. because 1. they both play MCC competitively but in the case they are teammates, they will be more confident in each other’s skills and be like “oh i have dream/techno, they can do the heavy lifting.” whilst at the same time 2. because they are competitive and rivals, they want to outdo each other, they want to show off to each other as well you know?? like “I beat you in parkour” or “i outlived you in battle box” but also we’re on the same team and still winning LOL SO IT’S AN EZ DUBBB

OH WAIT and also that one time in minecraft bingo... i remember seeing a comparison of them being nervous due to the time pressure and it’s funniest thing ever. Dream talking really fast about what materials he has and asking questions to techno whilst techno is like the buffering noise. i love how complete opposites they can be

... we were robbed of rivalsblr content too from that one masquerade party one... could’ve had it all...

anyway! in conclusion, i’m going to drop some more rivalsblr crumbs here and here and god i love their dynamic so much please give me more content of them and also dream smp related- get c!techno to find out canonically that c!dream is imprisoned and being tortured. have him Feel Revenge for someone he didn’t consider a friend just an ally who had a common goals. and free c!dream and have a happy ending of them being besties who spar every day wooooo

just like i said with tommy’s post... fuck continuity, fuck plot holes. just want techno + dream interactions.

#dreamwastaken #technoblade #rivalsblr #dream smp #long post #rambles #vi's asks #thank you anon. thank u sm. i needed to gush about them somewhere SOMETIME. that is now.#cw torture mention #<- about c!dream :weary:

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ghoste-catte · 3 years

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I was curious what advice would you give to someone new to writing fics? I've been wanting to get back into it but haven't seriously written something since high school. I hope this isn't an annoying question or anything!

Not an annoying question at all! I'm just a little worried that I won't have terribly good or useful advice. To be honest, I also sort of stopped writing in earnest right as I finished high school, and didn't pick it back up until my late 20s. It's certainly an adjustment! But I think the few things that really helped me get back into writing fic as a hobby and something I spend quite a bit of time on would be:

Write for yourself first, then find your other motivations. My original inspiration in getting back into fic writing was that there just were not that many fics I liked for my favorite pairing, and I wanted more of them, and I especially wanted more with the tropes and characterizations I wanted to see. I think at the very core of anything you need that internal spark that drives you. At the same time, for me at least, if I just relied on my own drive, I would not get much done; I need some external guardrails. So having people send prompts, or writing for particular events, or writing stuff for friends really helps me to get my ass in gear and finish stuff. That may not be the perfect motivator for you, and that's fine! You just gotta figure out what is.

Be open to inspiration. Anything and everything can be spun out into a story with the right tweaking. Obviously stuff like music is a classic inspiration source, but I've also pulled ideas from poetry, from memes, from Reddit threads, from YouTube videos, from rambling conversations on Discord and from real life to make fics out of. So many times, someone will post a silly Twitter screencap, and I'll think, There's a fic in this. And a lot of the time, there is! Research is a wonderful thing, but so is serendipity. If you're out there actively looking for ideas, eventually one that you like will stumble past you.

Find your community. I can genuinely say I never would have finished more than one fic if I didn't have fandom friends to talk to about even stupid headcanons, to bounce ideas off of, and to encourage me (and to encourage them in turn!). Discord has been a godsend, and some of my closest online friends are people I met in the GaaLee discord server. As I've gotten more comfortable as a writer, I've also joined general writing servers and Reddit communities and have found them immensely helpful on both a motivational level (bingos, sprints, owe-me challenges) and on a craft level (plot workshopping and writing ethics and live grammar help). It's a lot easier to think about fic ideas and hash through problem moments when I have a constant stream of fandom-related chatter coming from the little people who live in my phone! Ao3 is an amazing website, and it's great as, well, an archive, but it isn't social media by design. If you want conversation and human connection and cheerleading, you've gotta forge out and find it.

Make it a habit ... If you want to produce anything longer than a couple hundred words, you really have to set aside time for it. And writing is just like knitting or dirt biking or painting little model figurines: the more you do it, the more easily it comes. When I was first getting back into the proper swing of things, I committed myself to 30 minutes of writing per week. Just 30 minutes. I didn't even hit that goal every week, but there were tons of weeks I got on a roll and went over that amount, and by the end of the year I'd written over 200,000 words. I used to spend an hour laboriously tip-tapping out 200 words, but now I can easily blow through 1k in a 50 minute sprint. It's all about training that muscle.

... But don't make it a chore. With fanfic, you aren't doing this as a job, and you aren't ultimately doing it for anyone other than you. That means you can take breaks when you need them, you can set deadlines and then fail to meet them, you can write stuff and then decide to never post it. When you start getting burnt out, when the practice loses the joy and energy, stop. There's no 'hustle' here. In our capitalist society we're so trained to push past our limits and keep going even when it hurts us, but the hobby you do for connection and relaxation and whatever else shouldn't be like that.

Ignore metrics. Sometimes stuff isn't gonna get hits, or kudos, or comments. There are some basic 'rules' as to the stuff that does and doesn't get traction, but every time you post something it's a roll of the dice. If you're focused on watching that kudos counter tick up, you will get bummed out fast. And any writer will tell you that the stuff you think is your best work will never be the stuff that gets the most accolades. So you have to find something else to give you a sense of success. For me, it's watching my wordcount go up in my stats and those occasional comments where someone has a lot to say and that one person who always leaves me a <3 emoji (and, shout out to @egregiousderp, having someone to have long one-on-one conversations with about the stuff that never made it to page).

Don't strive for perfection. It's really easy to want your first ever fic to be a complete showstopper, the best fic fandom has ever seen, hitting all the tropes and the ideas and the characterization that you just know fandom is missing and would be everyone's top favorite if only it was written. This is a trap. No one fic can be all things. Most people who want to write an epic as their very first venture will not see the end of that epic, because they haven't put in the practice hours to make something on that scale work. That's not to say you can't start out with a big, sprawling multichap, just don't expect it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread if you're just starting out, and be okay with abandoning it for greener pastures if you get to that point. Think of the first time someone makes a vase out of clay or bakes a loaf of bread. That's never their best vase or their best bread. If they keep up with it, they'll make more and better vases and loaves. Likewise, your first fic is probably not gonna be your best fic. See it for what it is: your launchpad.

You can't edit an empty page, but you can over-edit a full one. This kind of spins off of #7, but if the words aren't there, you can't fix them. Daydreams and headcanons are fantastic (and god, how many times have I wished for a speech-to-text engine that projected my falling asleep thoughts onto a Google doc for later perusal), but they aren't fic. If you want to write fic, you've gotta get comfortable with the idea of sloppy outlines and rough first drafts. You can't build a house without a frame and you can't build a man without a skeleton (I mean, you can, I guess, but he'd be one floppy man). The nice thing about fic is that it doesn't matter if that frame is structurally unsound or the skeleton has 18 too many bones, you can clean that up in the editing process. But you can't start hanging curtains and arranging furniture in something that doesn't even have walls. That's the process. But! Also know when to set down the editor's pen and say, "Okay, this is good enough for government work", and call it done. ("Done" doesn't have to mean "posted", but it does mean, "I'm done picking at this for now, and I'm gonna go write some more stuff".) Over-editing can make stuff seem laborious and forced, and it prevents you from actually improving. To continue belaboring the house metaphor, you can spend your whole life rearranging furniture in just one room, but the end result of that is a pretty narrow existence and a room with a lot of footprints and tracks in the carpet.

Write shit down. When you have ideas, jot them down--in a notebook, in a Google Doc, in the Notes app of your phone, in pen on the back of your hand. You think you will remember that brilliant line of dialogue or sparkling snippet of narration or genius plot that came to you in a dream, but you Will Not. Write it down. Write it down. Write it down! There have been so many times when a fic was completely saved by past!me having written down my shower thoughts about what happens next in the fic, that present!me had completely forgotten about and was floundering over.

Have fun with it! Try different stuff. Try stupid stuff. Try experimental stuff. Do stuff you've never done before that you aren't sure will work. It's important to get comfortable with your niche (for example, I know I'm never going to be the sort of person who writes intricate plots of intrigue or super long 100k epics or detailed battles), but you can't find that niche unless you explore lots of different niches! Figure out what you love and what you absolutely hate, and then keep doing the stuff you love.

Okay, so that was actually TEN things, but ... I hope you still found this helpful. Feel free to send another ask if any of this was confusing or unclear. Good luck with your fic writing and, if you want, send me a link to what you've written once you've written it! I'd love to read it.

#answered #anonymous #writing advice #i guess?#am i qualified to give this?#no #but im doing it anyway

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weirdlypersonalrpmemes · 3 years

Text

sentence starters: text posts i have saved, part 1. tw: blood, death.

❝ i do not want romance... i just want a big sword ❞

❝ me caring is a publicity stunt ❞

❝ im not a people pleaser anymore im a huge cunt now ❞

❝ an apple a day keeps anyone away if you throw it hard enough ❞

❝ some of you need to be told to shut the fuck up more. not me tho im super funny and my tits are fucking massive ❞

❝ do you ever eat popcorn out of the palm of your own hand with such ardent desperation that you feel like both a wild horse and the gentle schoolgirl feeding it treats to gain its affection ❞

❝ when i was in therapy i once expressed to my therapist that i really struggle with having pretty much zero idea of who i am as a person + she whipped out a piece of paper and suggested that we write down different aspects of myself. and i had no idea what to say bc ‘myself’ is a concept i’m not very familiar with so she started saying about my interests and how that’s a part of me + i was like okay!! that makes sense!! so she clicked her pen and was like “you said you like video games before” and i was like sure bud :) and watched her write down, in capital letters ‘GAMER’ and i’ve never had so much terror struck into my h ❞

❝ yeah this is my character cool josé. he’s like normal josé except he didn’t fail his driving test three Times ❞

❝ “what are you gonna do, cry about it?” yes . the fuck ❞

❝ a cute girl told me she has lots of plants in her house and i told her, for some fucking reason “damn the oxygen at your place must be mad crisp” and somehow still got her number so. chase your dreams. nothing is impossible apparently ❞

❝ *don’t stop me now by queen plays as i lay bleeding to death in walmart* ❞

❝ i love when men are scared to talk to me like yes dont fucking talk to me bitch!! ❞

❝ if you ever disrespected me and i was calm bout it.. don’t trust me ❞

❝ “first one always goes to blathers” i say as i hand my new born child to the owl ❞

❝ no your honor i absolutely can make my case like an adult. first things first, fuck the defendant and fuck his family too. secondly, ❞

❝ its just me and my gay little iced coffee against the fucking world ❞

❝ ‘gays cant cook’ then what the FUCK was remy fighting for in ratatouille ? ❞

❝ gender is a performance and im doing improv comedy ❞

❝ getting fake asked out in middle school is really a whole other form of trauma ❞

❝ do you ever associate the word “girlfriend” with wlw so much that you forget straight boys have girlfriends ❞

❝ *has video game open* hm i dont feel like playing this right now actually *closes it* man i wish i was playing video game right now *opens it again* hm i dont feel like like playing this right now actually *closes it ❞

❝ when i was young i used to think having interests was important. now as an adult i see there was no need for me to ever develop a personality. feeling a little betrayed, but not sure by whom. ❞

❝ he’s not baby he’s like 25 years old & doesn’t know how to clean the sink ❞

❝ this is all because i never experienced the triumphs and defeats the epic highs and lows of high school football ❞

❝ well well well. if it isn’t my old friend, the dawning realization that i fucked up real bad ❞

❝ idont have any talent. i like to look at grass and i dont have other hobbies. when people ask me how im doing i ignore the question ❞

❝ i only set you on fire a little bit. grow up. ❞

❝ i hate this place i want to go to build a bear ❞

❝ [wearing a fake leather jacket, eating ritz crackers out of the box, reclining in a casual position somewhere i shouldnt logically be able to access] im emotionally vulnerable as shit dude ill cry on any of you ❞

#sentence starters #rp meme #rp memes #ask meme #ask memes #inbox meme #inbox memes #mine #text posts i have saved

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princessphilly · 3 years

Text

Word Count: 3811

Decided to post tonight!

Tag List: @nazdaddy @texanstarslove @shortstacks-blog @missymore @hockeywocs @puckbitchesgetmoney @Defiant-Mouse @myhockeyworld87 @chicagostylehockey @laurenairay @fiveholegoal @besthockeyfics. @newlibrary @linkingdolans @heatherawoowoo @konecny-s @willieshakesqueer @joelsfarabee @himbos-on-ice @cutiesara23 @romanseggy@iangiemae @heatherlcrosby87 @alphalib22 @ohpuckyeah @pagirl6866 @dreamer1430

Join the tag list here!

It felt like a cold war.

Guentzy looked at Tanger while Tanger looked at Sid. Sid was ignoring everyone as he taped his stick. The whole locker room was strangely silent.

It didn’t help that the team had been in a bit of a losing streak. The captain wasn’t quite himself and it was affecting everyone. A month ago, Guentzy went from teasing Nina every morning as they both liked to start their mornings with Starbucks. Now, she wasn’t working with the team directly anymore and Cros’ temper had become epically short.

Guentz caught eyes with Rusty and Rusty shook his head. The team slowly got themselves ready for practice; some of the kids from the Sidney Crosby Lil’ Penguins program were attending practice and despite everything, Guentzy wanted to make sure that the kids had a good time.

Practice went well but midway, Sid hit another gear. Inwardly, everyone hoped that the captain was getting over his scoreless streak. Then Rusty commented, “Of course.”

“Huh?”

Rusty pointed up and Guentzy saw Nina. She was sitting with one of the girls wearing a jersey and the little girl looked just like her.

“I didn’t know Nina had a kid,” Guentzy said. Then another woman sat with them and the little girl said, “Mom! Mom, you came,” in a loud voice that everyone could clearly hear.

Guentzy smirked as Nina gave the woman a hug and went to leave. “Hi Nina!”

Nina turned around, her braids whipping behind her back. She smiled as Guentzy sang her name and waved. Sidney looked over and the smile on Nina’s face disappeared. Nina then blew the little girl and her mother a kiss before leaving.

The rest of the practice went uneventfully and the kids were allowed to come to the ice at the end of the practice. Sidney loved this part; he truly loved kids and he loved how excited they were at being on the ice. The enthusiasm and love kids had for hockey made even the bad days amazing. Then a little girl grinned at him and Sid swore he was looking at a younger version. “Hi, there, how are you,” he asked.

“I’m good. My name is Aryanna and my sister thinks you’re great on the ice and annoying off the ice.”

Sidney let out a giggle honk as the girl’s mother hissed, “Aryanna, that’s not nice!”

“That’s what Ni-ni says,” Aryanna said defiantly. “But if you give me a puck, I can tell her to like you.”

“I am so sorry, Mr. Crosby,” Tracey quickly said, giving Aryanna the eye. Aryanna looked down, wisely choosing to be quiet for once.

Sidney laughed as Guentzy, Rusty, and Geno laughed as well. “It’s fine, it’s funny,” Guentzy interjected. “She’s just like her big sister.

Aryanna grinned at Guentzy while Tracey facepalmed. “My sister likes cake,” Aryanna stagewhispered while one of her teammates jostled her.

Her teammate whispered, “Stop hogging all of the attention, Aryanna.”

“She’s right,” Tracey added. “Thank you so much for having this, Mr. Crosby. It’s a wonderful program. My son is an alum of the program even though he chose football over hockey. I’m happy to have my youngest in it as well.”

“You’re welcome.” Sidney gave Tracey his biggest and most genuine smile. As he moved down to talk to the other kids and parents, he felt happy for the first time in a while. Flowers and chocolate hadn’t worked but now he knew what to try to get Nina to forgive him.

Nina flipped through the chart as she entered the waiting room the next day. There were several people waiting but Nina was looking for just one person. Before she could call out the name, she saw Kris stand up, holding the hand of a woman with a cast around her arm. Looking down at the chart, she saw the name, ‘Catherine Letang’ and Nina nodded. Ushering them from the waiting room, Nina said, “Hi Kris. Hi Catherine, my name is Nina Jackson and I am one of the physical therapists here.”

“As in ‘the Nina’?” Catherine asked in her native tongue, as she looked over at her husband who simply nodded.

“Oh, that doesn’t sound good.”

“No, no I’m sorry. I’ve heard only good things about you.”

“Only good things, Ms. Jackson, only good things,” Kris interjected.

Nina grinned as she showed them to her new office. Pointing them to chairs, she closed the door. “Aww, that makes me feel so good, Tanger.”

“Anyone who causes Sidney to be in knots is someone interesting,” Catherine said and Nina had to work very hard to keep her smile on her face.

“Mr. Crosby is.. Interesting,” Nina finally replied. “So, how is your elbow?”

Catherine grimaced and spoke to her husband. Kris replied, “She says it hurts like hell. She took a couple of painkillers so I drove her here.”

“I see, she was prescribed Percocet. Be careful with those,” Nina began as she went over the injury and prognosis with Catherine and Kris. Given how the appointment started, it went well in Nina’s mind. Kris did much of the talking but Nina could sense that Catherine was rather shy. She reminded her of her best friend, Lauren; reserved in front of people that she didn’t know but open with people that she loved and trusted. Plus, the smile that Catherine gave her at the end of the appointment was very genuine.

The rest of her day was average, nothing really stood out. But Nina was tired when her day was over and went straight to her new office to get her coat and get the hell out. On her desk was a chocolate dolce cake from one of the best places on earth, Oakmont Bakery. Next to it was a card. Nina sighed as she opened it, she already knew who it was from. I know what I did was uncalled for. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me or tell me how to earn forgiveness? Miss talking to you.

Nina sighed as she read the card. That day was the catalyst to move back to just working with the general public, not with the team at all. She had no desire to deal with stupid men, their egos, and their stupid actions. Sighing again, Nina took out a fork and opened the package. As she took a bite of the cake, she closed her eyes in joy. “Okay, this is almost worth it.”

Nina thought to herself, ‘I’ll forgive him but he can wait before I tell him that.’

Unfortunately, the wait was longer than Nina planned.

Nina cursed as she cut off the TV.

“Not so fun being the one who needs the help?”

Nina turned around, pasting a fake smile on her face as Aryanna came into the room with a bottle of water and a fruit bowl. “Thank you, little sister.”

Breaking her leg was like hell on earth. For the longest time, Nina had been the helper. Nina had been the only child for most of her life until her brother was born when she was 12, followed by a baby sister when she was in college (much, much later than when she asked for one as a little girl). But after slipping on a patch of black ice coming out of work a month ago, Nina was the one who needed help.

“You’re welcome, Ni-ni. Can I watch TV now?”

Nina tossed the remote to Aryanna. She had one more month of basically bed rest before she had the joy of experiencing physical therapy on the patient’s side. At least she had only broken her fibula; her fibula broke close to her ankle so Nina had extended recovery time. If she had broken both bones, it would be a much longer and harder recovery process. But for now, Nina was back to living with her parents for the first time since she left for college.

Aryanna turned on the TV to some mindless cartoon. Nina complained, “If you’re going to watch cartoons, watch something like Gravity Falls or something. This one is stupid.”

“Okay.”

Aryanna flipped to on-demand and put on a Gravity Falls episode. Nina turned on her phone and scrolled through her messages, the tv forgotten. Despite breaking her leg, Nina was still making plans to leave UPMC. Being at home made it even more obvious to her that something had to give. However, a broken leg made interviews impossible.

Yawning, Nina felt her eyes begin to droop. It was time for a pain meds-induced nap.

Before she could fall asleep, Aryanna chirped, “Do you still hate Sidney Crosby?”

“Uh no,” Nina replied, perplexed. She knew Aryanna had met him that day after attending a practice with the Little Penguins. “Why?”

“I told him to buy you cake so I could get a signed puck.”

“So, that’s why Jason’s been mad at me? You got a signed puck from The Kid,” Nina said, rolling her eyes.

Aryanna laughed. “Yup.”

“So sneaky, you’re such a sneaky little girl.”

Aryanna bounced up and down, making Nina wince. “I like him though. He doesn’t have mean eyes like that guy George.”

“Greg,” Nina automatically corrected.

“He kicked Tess. I hated him. Sidney Crosby looks like he would be nice to animals,” Aryanna continued.

Nina looked at her baby sister. “Why you all in my business?”

“Yeah, that’s a good question, why are you in your sister’s business?”

Nina and Aryanna turned around to see Tracey standing in the doorway. Aryanna giggled while Nina shook her head. “Stop getting in grown folks business, little girl,” Tracey instructed. “Go play, you watch enough TV anyway, Yanni.”

Aryanna opened her mouth before closing it, finding it a better idea to keep what she was thinking to herself as she left the living room to go to her room.

After making sure her youngest daughter was long gone, Tracey whispered to her oldest child, “She’s right about Greg versus Crosby. Date someone who looks like they like cats, cats are the best tellers of personality.”

“You say that because you don’t like dogs, mom,” Nina playfully said as Steely curled up in her lap. Terrible Tess was sunning herself in the window.

Tracey smirked as Tess jumped down and walked around Tracey’s feet. “You’ve never dated a guy who Tess liked. Trust me, if Tess likes the next guy you bring home, marry him.”

Nina rolled her eyes before yawning again. Tracey patted her good leg as she said, “Get some rest, baby girl.”

Sidney laid back on his recliner, the weak early spring Pittsburgh sun cracking through the windows. It was one of the last weeks before the playoffs and Sid was enjoying a bit of solitude before his phone rang, announcing a FaceTime message.

“So, have you talked to her again?”

Sidney groaned as Vero asked that question. Flower was one of his closest friends and he had shared his feelings and frustration around Nina with him. He wasn’t surprised he had mentioned it to Vero.

“Actually, not since she accepted my apology. Nina doesn’t even work with the team anymore, she works with the general public,” Sidney replied.

Flower’s face popped into the screen and he chuckled. “My wife loves stealing my phone.”

“It’s not stealing your phone if you leave it right next to me,” Vero countered.

Sidney grinned as Flower and Vero bickered. Then Flower said, “Tanger told me that your future wife broke her leg.”

“She what?”

Sidney looked at his phone flabbergasted while Vero and Flower shared a look. “I would have thought someone would have told you,” Vero started.

Flower thought out loud. “Maybe no one said anything because she wasn’t working with the team?”

Sidney shrugged as he mentally created a checklist. “Now I know why I haven’t been running into her.”

“Did she become one of your pre-game rituals,” Vero teased, earning a blush from Sidney.

“No,” Sidney mumbled. “Last time I talked to her, I was a dumbass.”

Vero shook her head while Flower sardonically laughed. “Good job, Kid.”

“I tried to apologize when I realized I had fucked up but she tuned me out.”

“Ooh, I really like her,” Vero said. “Catherine says she likes her from when she met her.”

But as she got up to leave her husband alone with his best friend, Vero added, “Women aren’t a game. You can’t act like it’s all or nothing the same way you try to win the Cup, Sid.”

“Of course,” Sidney scoffed. “I know that.”

After Vero had gone away, Flower said, “She’s right.”

“I know,” Sidney admitted.

Flower advised, “Stop trying to control the situation and just let things happen. It’ll be easier that way.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Try.”

The flowers were a surprise. Nina looked at the bouquet her father brought in, her crutches keeping her from grabbing it when it was dropped off. There were red carnations, white daffodils, and purple and yellow flowers that Nina didn’t know the names of in the bouquet.

“Looks like your coworkers haven’t forgotten about you, princess,” Vernon stated. “This is nice.”

Nina mused, “It is nice. Too bad I’m not a big flower person.”

“Your mother is, so she’ll love them for you. Here, there’s a card attached for you.”

Nina took the card from her dad’s hand, carefully walking over to the dining room table. Opening it, she gasped as she read it; Pretty flowers for a pretty girl. Hope you are feeling better. - Sid. PS: Before you freak out, I picked out and paid for the flowers but Gretchen was the one who told them where to send them.

“Sid? Is this a new boy I have to threaten,” Vernon joked.

Nina shook her head. “No, Dad.”

Jason looked at the flowers and then looked at Nina. “Do I need to help Dad beat someone up?”

“No Jason,” Nina said with a sigh. “It’s not that serious.”

Jason’s eyes widened but for once, her big-mouthed brother kept whatever he was going to say to himself. “I’m going to go to practice throwing with Shawn, Dad. I’ll be at the field.”

Vernon nodded as Jason left. Then he looked at his daughter before saying, “Someone from where you worked?”

“Yes.”

In Nina’s mind, there was no reason to lie. Her father could put 2 and 2 together. Vernon just looked at Nina before saying, “Be careful, sweettart.”

“I am,” she said with a small grin. “I’m not going back to the Lemieux Center when I go back to work anyway.”

“Smart, but not exactly what I meant. I know exactly who this person is and… I’m not against it. Just be careful,” Vernon stated.

Nina nodded as she looked down at her phone. She chose to ignore the second part of her father’s statement. Instead, she worked on her new Tinder profile.

Next week, there was an Edible Arrangements delivery, the kind of bouquet that Nina loved the most. Nina sent a message through Gretchen telling Sid that she completely forgave him. But it was still too awkward to really try to talk to him, especially as she started her rehab. However, due to the family atmosphere that had been created at work, Nina heard enough about what was going on that she stayed in the loop. And when it became known that she was going to work at a different facility, Nina received enough messages through Gretchen about how much she was going to be missed.

But as Nina worked to walk with a cane, she didn’t feel guilty about leaving the Lemieux Center. It was best for her career. And as she struggle-dated through Tinder, if anything was really going to happen, it would happen, in her mind.

Nina carefully opened the door. This was her first day back at the Lemieux Center since she broke her leg and she felt happy but a bit scared at the first time. Rehab from the other side had been interesting. As much as Nina wanted to direct her own recovery, UPMC required that she worked with a PT. Mike was cool but they butted heads at the beginning, delaying her recovery.

A three-month recovery had turned into four, then five months as Nina struggled mentally with rehab. Then Vernon and Tracey both talked to their stubborn daughter about swallowing her pride and following Mike’s instructions. They both pointed out, how could she instruct her own patients to listen to her when she couldn’t even bring herself to listen to Mike when she needed help?

After returning, Nina worked out of office in Uptown, working mainly with the sports medicine office. Most of her clients were high school athletes and they were fun. The vast majority had aspirations for college sports so they were more focused on their recovery. Then COVID-19 had hit and everything changed. As a physical therapist, Nina had been considered essential personnel so she continued to work in-person. The amount of patients decreased though, even before implementing social distancing and PPE requirements. It was the hardest year and a half; Nina had stayed at home instead of moving into her own apartment again to save money. Aryanna and Jason both had school from home and Nina found herself spending more time helping her siblings with their school. Mom was working crazy hours as a nurse and Dad was still working as a trucker but he had cut down on the length of his trips due to the pandemic. Despite that, because Nina had more flexibility, she became more responsible at home for her younger siblings. Now, Jason was in college after getting a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina and Aryanna was starting fifth grade.

Now though, after increased vaccinations and a continued downswing in infections, Nina could finally return to where she started with UPMC, if only for three months, just to finish out Gretchen’s maternity leave. Then, Nina was going to move to a new physical therapy practice, based in Oakland.

“Oof!”

Nina braced her hands on the body of the person in front of her. She smelled their cologne and of course, it had to happen this way.

“Look who I bumped into,” Sidney teased. Nina sucked in a deep breath as she looked at him. He had some salt and pepper hairs now and a bit of scruff. It had been a while and he was looking way better than ever. And that attraction that she was sure had gone away, it flared up immediately.

Sidney gave Nina a soft smile. She was looking pretty as ever, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her brown eyes sparkling. He had missed seeing her in person and had given up on trying to go out with her. He had downloaded Tinder on a dare a couple of weeks ago and he had stumbled on Nina’s profile. Her smile was bright and she talked about how she loved to read, dance, lift, and run. But when he saw a couple of acronyms on her profile, Sidney knew that sooner or later, he was going to contact her again. And of course, because he was lucky, he ran into her this morning.

“Hi Sidney,” Nina finally replied, a nervous hand smoothing down her hair. Her hormones were going crazy again. The last couple of dates had been utterly disastrous and it had been a long time since she had been around a man that she was actually attracted to. Busying herself by ruffling through her bag, Nina felt unsettled. It had been so long since she seen Sidney and fuck, she was still super into him.

Sidney gave Nina space, feeling happy that it was obvious that she was still just as affected as he was. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.” Nina felt her cheeks heat up as she looked into Sidney’s eyes. Then he grinned again before walking away. She told herself, it’s just for three months, just three months. It’ll be alright and then she could fade away. But part of her heart said that was going to be impossible.

During the rest of the day, Nina adjusted to being back working with the team for the short period. There were just some little injuries for the beginning of the season, nothing major. Well, the only thing major was Kris Letang’s hand as he had suffered a hand injury in a preseason game. Gretchen hadn’t had many open PT cases before she had gone on maternity leave. Nina started some new cases for her, mostly minor cases as well as supervising the aquatic therapy program.

However, Nina didn’t really run into Sidney that much and it was a bit annoying. After seeing him once after so long, Nina wished she could see him more. When she did see him, there were always other people around. Well, except for that one day they both were at CVS and ran into each other in the candy aisle. Nina was looking for Reese’s peanut butter cups and Sidney had Reese’s pieces. They had both teased each other but when Nina touched his hand, Sidney had bit his lip. That had been it.

Nina decided to leave it at that. She was still trying to decide if she was going to say something to him when she left for good but there was still time to figure that out.

“How does your hand feel, Kris?”

Kris flexed his fingers. “They feel better than they did a week ago. I’ve been doing the exercises you gave me, Catherine’s been forcing me.”

Nina laughed. “That’s good, I’m happy. How is she and the kids doing?”

After meeting Catherine Letang over a year and a half ago, Nina really liked her. Kris replied, “They are doing well. You should come over, Cath would love to have you.”

Kris half-expected Nina to decline, claiming she had to work. But Nina said, “I’d love to.”

“You-you would?”

Nina grinned as she moved his hand around. “Yes, especially since I’m leaving here in less than a month.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“I’m opening a practice affiliated with UPMC with a couple of other PTs. We’ll be focusing on patients who suffered from long COVID.”

Kris absorbed that information as Nina put his hand down and wrote some notes. “That sounds awesome,” Kris replied. “It’s much needed.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Nina finished writing her notes and smiled at Kris.

Kris asked, “So you won’t be affiliated with the team or anything anymore?”

“Well, I’m not right now but I definitely won’t in a month. Keep working on that hand and you’ll be back on the ice in no time.”

Kris gave Nina a dazzling smile as he got ready to leave. Inwardly smirking, he sent a message to one of his closest friends.

#sidney crosby #sidney crosby imagines #Sidney Crosby imagine #nhl fanfiction #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #penguins imagines #penguin imagine #penguins imagine #penguins fic #blurbs #drabbles #all bets are off

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happyreid187 · 3 years

Text

Privilege - Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

WC: 2.1 K

A/N: Sad Spencer post nightmare comfort. Discovering and sharing feelings about each other. Mild angst then fluff. I wrote this after my season 8 rewatch but it’s not explicitly situated in any particular season.

Warnings: Brief mentions of Spence’s various trauma; case issues, mom issues, drug use, generalized dark and twistiness. Insecurity. Swearing. Single sentence implying reader grew up religious. References to sex but not actual smut.

____

With both of us working insane hours, we agreed early on to be casual, and then completely and entirely ignored that agreement in every way except verbiage. Avoiding labels and verbal expressions of affection, I pretended that it wasn’t emotional self destruction to spend every waking hour with this man who was notably not my boyfriend. With the amount of affection between us, it was easy to pretend it was something more. When we weren’t working, I essentially lived in his bed.

____

I was deep asleep when I heard him whimpering, waking to find him tossing and turning, breathing quickly. It took me a second to get my bearings, but when I did, I woke him as gently as I could

“Spencer! Spence.” His eyes shot open, and he immediately jumped, looked to me with his eyes welling up, and started shaking.

“Hey,” my voice was desperate as I wrapped my arms around him, “Baby, what’s the matter?” The pet name was generally reserved for other activities in this bed, but it felt appropriate now. I ran my fingers through his hair, trying to calm him. “Was it about a case?”

“It was about...” he started. “No, I don’t want to freak you out!” He sort of tossed and turned again, now in my lap. “This isn’t your job, you shouldn’t have to deal with this.” He sounded angry; with himself, and the situation. I tried to ignore the feeling that’s he might be angry with me.

“Why would it freak me out? Your job is depressing as shit, Spence. This is kind of predictable. Talking through it with you? None of this is work for me. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but you can.” I said, waiting for him to decide how to proceed.

He fiddled with his hands in that nervous way of his. “It was about you. First, you were breaking? Like glass on a windshield? Cracking but not falling apart. And everything around us was breaking; the phones and then the walls and then your face,” his voice broke then, “and then my own chest.”

Where the tears were only threatening to overflow before, he was really crying now, in a way I’d never seen him do before. In a way grown men rarely do in our terrible society if they can avoid it. In a way that made it hard for either of us to breathe. “But then it sort of mixed with work, and there was an unsub and he had you, and I couldn’t get to you. I tried, but I couldn’t get to you, and then...” he paused there, and I inferred the rest by his pained silence.

“You don’t have to keep going, I get it. And I’m not freaked out. I’m right here, Spencer. You’ve got me, and I’ve got you too. You are okay. You’re okay.” he didn’t say anything for a minute, and I rethought my words. “I’m not trying to belittle or silence you. I know you don’t feel okay. But you’re here with me, and no one’s broken, and you’re breathing, and I’m breathing, and you’re okay.”

“I’m not worried about me...” he grumbled, like it was obvious. Like I was wasting our time, worrying about him.

“Well I’m fine. I’m good. I’m happy to be here for you.”

He looked up at me doubtfully. “How can you be happy to be woken up at 4:02 am?”

Too sleepy to veil my feelings entirely, with words like adoration and devotion drifting through my head, I settled on saying, “It’s a privilege to have the chance to be here for you, and support you, and help you feel better. I have you, and you have me; okay? I’m here.”

“I’ve got you...” he softly echoed my words from earlier.

“You’ve got me.” I answered easily. It was a simple, honest fact to share.

There was a shift in him then. He pushed himself up with one arm, leaning back and staring at me, looking exasperated and vaguely frantic, like he just realized something was wrong. He looked almost angry as he asked “What the fuck are we doing?

I didn’t even know how to begin to answer that question. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m having nightmares about losing you, you’re like, taking over my subconscious, and renting all this space in my head, and then I wake up to find you here, in my bed, drying my tears and calling it a privilege! Like do you have to be so... I don’t know. Warm?” Well, that was a new one. I had never known that to be a bad thing, particularly with him. He flocked to my sentimentality like a moth to a flame.

He wasn’t done though. “I never intended to care about someone this much. It’s confusing for me. I know you have your catholic guilt, but you don’t have to martyr yourself for me. Dealing with my shit is emphatically not a blessing.” He took a deep breath and braced himself. He half smiled, half sobbed, and to be frank, he was freaking me the fuck out. “Unless you..” he trailed off. IQ of 187; an epic communicator, this one. I gave him a look that begged him to continue, holding my tongue as if he would break, like the dream, if I spoke. He sighed heavily, trying to catch his breath. I reached over hesitantly, unsure if he wanted to be touched, terrified of making it worse. Slowly, I wiped away the tears on both cheeks, willing him to look at me. He didn’t, choosing his lap instead.

I waited for him to continue. “I don’t have a lot of experience with fuck buddies,” he spit the last two words like they repulsed him, like they didn’t fit right on his tongue. Foreign words with uncertain and unsettling definitions. “...but I don’t think it’s supposed to feel like this.”

“Feel like what?” Despite the tears and the heavy air that threatened to suffocate me, I felt a new feeling. Like I would maybe feel better soon. I silently begged him to speak faster, hoping he could somehow telepathically pick up on my anxiety as I hung on every word.

“A privilege. That’s just...” he paused again, shaking his head. I could feel my anxiety coursing through my veins in a bizarrely literal sense. I wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this, and I waited in suspense as he chose every word carefully. He then looked with me with the warmth I’d come to know, to expect, and to crave. “I know you’re a really tender person but why would you do this if we're just sleeping together?”

IQ of 187, this one.

After his lengthy monologue with its intensely painful pauses I cut straight to the point. “Are we?”

The sadness vanished from his face, leaving nothing in its place but wheels turning. No more damned pauses; I have to be brave now. “I’m not.”

“What?” I couldn’t figure out what to make of his expression. It wasn’t relief. Concern, maybe? Or disbelief? “Just sleeping with you that is. Does that make you upset?”

“No, no, y/n/n, it doesn’t make me upset.” his eyes meeting my face. I could feel that he was about to ramble, finally, and I was intensely grateful. “It depends on what you really want. It’s hard for me to believe that you actually want this.” he points at himself, like that explained his insecure thinking. Honestly, how dare he speak about my person in such a way, but now wasn’t the time to critique his criticism.

“You want to be woken up by nightmares after cases? To sleep alone while I’m gone? and when I’m around deal with my neurosis and awkwardness and rambling? and family drama? and drug cravings?” He dropped his eyes and his voice, “You could do so much better.”

We didn’t have time to even begin to unpack all of that. Not in the middle of the night, on the edge of everything we both want. I could write a novel explaining how he is in fact the very best I can imagine, but that would take time to convince him of. Time like years. Time like marriage.

Again trying to move this conversation to the conclusion I ached for just a bit faster, I answered directly, “Yes. I want that. I want you.” Like it was the simplest thing in the world.

I searched his face for some sort of happiness or disgust but received a blank stare and a look of bewilderment.

“I just want you. I’ve wanted you this whole time. I thought you would figure it out.” I laughed, and he smiled, a real smile that touched his hazel eyes that somehow sparkled in the dimly lit room, finally. “With fuck buddies, I don’t typically snuggle and go on museum dates or stop seeing other people or stick around for months.”

“You want me?” he smiled, but doubt loomed, and his smile fell as his long fingers traced my jaw.

“You say that now, but I think you’re going to find that I am a difficult person to love.” He said, as if I didn’t already know him. As if I didn’t already see him in all of his brilliance and darkness, all of his complexity and baggage. As if knowing him hadn’t been a precursor to loving him.

“Spencer, everyone thinks that about themselves.” I replied, greeted with still more disbelief. I continued in spite of him. “Besides,” I shrugged with a small smile, like my conclusion was entirely self evident, “It’s too late now.”

“What, you think that about yourself? First of all, you are unbelievably easy to love. The easiest in the whole world, probably. I know that that sounds hyperbolic, but I really mean it - I sincerely think that you are the single most lovable woman on the planet.” he rambled, talking with his hands and earning a tearful chuckle from me. “In my world at least. You are in fact, despite my best efforts, impossible not to...” he paused to physically shove the thought away, moving forward with a grimace.

“Second of all, what do you mean too late? I have a feeling I might know what you’re going to say. Please say it, y/n,” he whispered like that would make it less scary. “Or do you want me to say it? I don’t want to spook you but... it’s too late for what?”

“Too late to stop myself from loving you.”

Finally, finally a look of understanding graced his face. A look like he believed me. He smiled that stunning, whole face smile of his that was reserved for special occasions.

“Can you say the whole thing?”

“I love you, Spencer.”

“I love you, too.”

He was only half sitting up anyways, so when I kissed him he fell to the bed, and protested immediately. “No! I’m so gross and snotty, stop.” I settled on peppering kisses on his neck and damp cheeks instead.

I laid my head on his chest, murmuring, “You can go back to sleep, and when you wake up, I’ll still be loving you, and I won’t be broken because of it, and I certainly won’t be gone.”

“Okay,” he responded, voice still broken, but no matter. He’ll heal. He’ll believe me more with time. Eyes heavy and stinging, my adrenaline eventually waned, and I was about to fall back asleep, when his voice pulled me back.

“Just to be completely clear, this is no longer a fuck buddy situation. Like, I'm your boyfriend. Right?”

“Was it ever really a fuck buddy situation?” I laughed “But if it was, it’s over. You are mine, Spencer Reid. If that wasn’t obvious.”

I could hear his smile in his voice “Sorry, it’s so late, and my brain isn’t really working and I just wanted to make absolutely sure.”

He paused for a few minutes.

“I’ll check back again in the morning.”

“I’ll still be here.”

~~~

In my half asleep state, his soft words barely registered. “Good morning, sweet girl. I’m so lucky to get to love you.”

“I love you too.” I mumbled, smiling without opening my eyes. There’s his confirmation. He’s always been one for collecting good data, I suppose.

“Please keep doing that.”

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blush-and-books · 3 years

Text

The End of Julie and the Phantoms - A [very long] Theory

The core of this theory was inspired by many posts that I have seen saying that Julie’s “everything was a dream” shirt may have insinuated that nothing happening on the show is actually reality. I brought my series finale pitch to my dear friend @willexx who then helped me develop this headcanon into something I cried about during lunch.

It starts out pretty heavy, but there are some little light things here and there because it’s what the himbos would have wanted.

We start here:

In the last episode, the boys are ready too cross over. It’s an emotional moment for everyone, they’re crying, Julie is sobbing, and we as an audience have definitely seen better days. With one last “we love you, Julie,” a flash of light overtakes the garage space, blinding our screens.

The scene flashes to Julie lying in bed, waking up from her ringing alarm.

She is visibly confused, clearly wondering how she got to bed when the last thing that she remembers is the boys’ painful departure. When she reaches for her phone to turn off her alarm -- it’s a school day -- she quickly notices the date:

It’s the same day in 2020 that she met the boys, that she was going to clean out her mom’s garage, and that she had to perform to keep her spot in the music program.

So, none of it was real?

Not exactly.

The experience was a sort of dream-like saga that was designed for her to be able to grieve on her own, and rediscover her voice in her own way. But just as the panic sets in that it was a complete figment of her imagination, the feeling of cold metal on her left hand becomes too hard to ignore: One of Luke’s rings.

Reggie’s leather jacket is hanging in her closet.

Alex’s fanny pack is slung across the back of a chair.

But when she runs downstairs, clad in her dinosaur slippers, rushing to the garage to see if the guys were there -- they aren’t. They have crossed over.

As she moves through the day, she’s a new Julie, but everything else is the same. Instead of a baseball cap and low ponytail, Julie throws on her black jeans and Reggie’s leather and lets her hair run wild. She’s displaying a confidence that Flynn hasn’t seen in a long time, that seemed to have hit Julie overnight.

Julie sings Wake Up in music, and keeps her spot in the program. She doesn’t oogle Nick in the halls and she tells Carrie off when there’s an attempt at an insult made.

Real or not, the boys helped her. They did their job.

When she gets home, and Ray irks her about cleaning the garage or selling the house, she is quick to insist that she doesn’t want to move and that if he needs her for the rest of the night, she’ll be in her mother’s studio.

There aren’t any instruments except for the piano, and the space has the original layer of dust that it had before her and the guys started using the space again. Julie feels empty. But she reminds herself that the ring on her finger is real, extremely real, so she retraces her steps that she had taken in the first episode and tracks down the Sunset Curve demo CD, puts it in the stereo, and plays it.

Nothing happens. Or, at least -- nothing that she could see.

The camera pans up as Julie is hard at work to organize the garage, and we see the boys in the chairs on the ceiling, watching over her fondly.

~This is where @willexx started to throw in some epic ideas~

The boys are real, and they have crossed over, which renders Julie unable to see them. However, in her reset reality without them, no one remembers Julie and the Phantoms or the fact that the boys existed in the first place. The boys, while she can’t see them, visit her and try to make contact with her as much as they can, even though their times with her are limited since they are supposed to be on the other side.

She’ll feel a ghost of a touch on her hand or her hair, and know that Luke is there. When she’s in the car and the radio is on a country station, she knows that it’s Reggie. In a journal for school, a small “okay” will be written in the corner of a page, and it is Alex. These little notes keep her going, and she’ll just sigh and say “my boys,” and leave everyone around her confused.

Sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning, the demo tape can be heard playing in the garage. Somehow she’ll get filled with hope that if she runs into the garage, the boys will be there rocking out without her like she used to scold them for left and right -- but no one is there. Ray comments that the stereo is broken and Julie has no choice but to nod along.

One day she finds Luke’s songbook that had been buried in the plastic garbage bags of the boys’ belongings. She still brings Unsaid Emily to his parents, and she cries herself to sleep that night.

When Julie blows up as a solo artist, she actually records Unsaid Emily, and she records Bright, and all of the other songs that her and Luke wrote together. Luke Patterson is in the writing credits for many of the songs, where Trevor never bothered to list him, and a part of Luke is at piece.

On the two year anniversary of Rose’s passing, Julie finds Luke’s “angst flannel.” Ray asks where she got it; she tells him a thrift store. But it feels warm, like all of the guys are there, hugging her.

Another morning, she could swear that Luke and Reggie are strumming out Flying Solo on level one volume, and once again finds herself darting to the garage with no good excuse except to keep her hopes up. They, unsurprisingly, aren’t there -- but a note is, that says “you’re a star, Jules. We love you.”

The handwriting is messy. She knows it’s from Luke, who probably fought the boys to even write the note because he just wanted to talk to her even though they need to move on and his handwriting is awful. The note gets tucked into the pocket of the flannel, and when she needs to be reminded that she’ll be okay, she pulls it out of the pocket and holds it tight.

Before every show, she reads the note, and mumbles a little prayer to them wherever they are -- even if no one else believes they are real.

When Luke’s flannel starts to lose it’s original sweet scent of Emily and Mitch’s house, Julie spends an hour crying on the floor of her bathroom. A faded orange beanie appears in her room the next day.

Little notes from Luke appear here and there, but never from any of the guys. In the shadows where she can’t see them, Alex tells Luke that in order for both themselves and Julie to move on, Luke needs to stop leaving her notes -- so most of the ones that Julie finds are even more messy than usual, like Luke was trying to write them without the guys noticing.

During one of their forbidden conversations, Julie says to Luke: “hey, I never told you this before... But I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what I would do without knowing that you guys were still around. I think I would have lost my mind, and would have been convinced that I went crazy.”

Luke could have ran to Alex, repeated Julie’s tearful words, and given the drummer a fat “I told you so.” But he doesn’t. Julie’s validation is the only validation that he needs.

Whenever her and Carlos and Ray make an extra seat at their dinner table for Rose, Julie imagines, deep in her mind, that it is for Reggie too. Reggie deserved a seat at their table; deserved to be a part of their family. A family that would have loved him. And when a fork falls off of the table, Julie knows he’s there. One day, Julie asks Ray how he would have felt about having another son. He responds confused, and Julie gets tears in her eyes, and neither of them bring it up again.

When Julie and Flynn go to Pride together, Julie wears Alex’s fanny pack even though she hadn’t gotten any signs from him since they had all moved on. He still doesn’t reach out afterwards, too overwhelmed by her gesture to think of a way to properly extend his gratitude and love for the girl who is keeping his spirit alive -- but Luke lets her know that he was grateful.

Luke still visits Julie like he visits Emily and Mitch. And on Luke’s birthday every year, Julie goes to a little bakery after school and buys herself a cupcake; sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to light a candle and sing happy birthday. When she lights the candle, the candle gets blown out. Every year after that first year, she gets candles that you have to turn on and off so that Luke can’t ruin the moment.

(He ends up throwing the fake candle on the ground out of retaliation.)

Julie is so emotionally stable for the most part that the complete change is a shock to Ray. He tries to ask her what happened, but she always acts like nothing happened and then hides in her room for hours. Sometimes, she makes random little comments out of the blew and Ray has many conversations with Victoria on whether or not he should have Julie seeing Dr. Turner again.

At her first solo concert, Julie walks into the dressing room to find “Stand Tall” written three times, in three different handwriting styles, in red, pink, and blue. The message in blue is the messiest by far, and is followed up with a heart.

The name of Julie’s first album is Phantoms.

#julie and the phantoms #julie and the himbos #jatp #jatp theory #jatp headcanons #julie molina #luke patterson

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snlhostharry · 3 years

Text

romeo and juliet thing

harry styles x reader

“rivals” to lovers au

~3k words

warnings: cursing, mentions of sex

my piece for @meetmeinfleetwood ‘s to lovers challenge, congrats on your milestone!

a/n: amazing thing I realized while writing this: if you don’t put it off you can actually get it done in a reasonable amount of time... I will not be applying this to any other aspects of my life

You’ve come to enjoy album release parties. The first one you’d ever been to was the one for your first album, something someone from your publicity team has put together, which they did a decent job on but you did not have a good time. You were so nervous about the album coming out at all that you tried to use alcohol to calm your nerves, so you can’t really remember anything about it besides briefly throwing up in the bathroom. After that incident, you resolved not to drink before the party ever again and the next few you’d been too for other artists were actually fun in their own special ways.

By the time your second album is on the cusp on release, you’ve decided that you deserved it after the mess of writer's block you’d gotten in the middle of trying to write the thing, which had gotten so bad that you’d been called into a “special meeting” by management where they talked for what felt like hours about deadlines and marketing and basically tried to intimidate you into finishing faster. Something happened that allowed you to finish, it was an odd timing but it did help.

But that was ages ago, and you’re trying to focus on the party.

Which is easy enough, winding through the room talking to friends and investors, small talk is easy when you're trying to avoid something else. You’re talking to someone who’s name you are definitely not going to remember when this is over, when out of the corner of your eye you think you see someone who should definitely not be here. When you're finally released from said conversation you walk around the room, trying to find the intruder. You make your way all the way back to the bathroom, when suddenly the person you’ve been looking for slams right into you.

You’re far enough in a corner that you think no one can see you, which is good because if anyone got photos of the two of you together you would never hear the end of it. Harry Styles looks at you like he’s been caught in the act, the guilty expression not leaving his face even as he says, “Funny seeing you here.”

“At my own party?” You ask.

He licks his lips, trying to buy time to think of something to say. “Before you say anything,” He says, treading cautiously, “I was told to come here.”

You narrow your eyes, “By who?”

“Someone who works for me,” He replies, “Which means that someone who works for you gave them the information.”

You groan, “Of course they did, well at least make sure they get your good side when someone comes around to take photos.”

He smiles at that, “That’s every side, love.”

You shake your head, typing a message on your phone and quickly sending it, “It’s not but it’s cute that you think so.”

“Ignoring that little comment,” He says, seeing that your attention is divided between him and the person you seem to be very angrily texting. “It’s a good song you wrote, I’m excited to hear the rest of the album.”

“Oh,” You say, eyes widening, “Thank you..?” He tilts his head to the side gently, clearly his way of asking a question without actually asking a question. “Sorry, I just didn’t realize we were doing the thing where we pretend this is normal, and you are normally at my party.”

He laughs, “Didn’t know there was pretending involved.”

“I’m just so used to pretending to loathe you all day everyday that it's just so natural,” You say, and wait to see if he’ll get the joke.

He shrugs, “Really? I don’t think of you all that much.”

Your phone buzzes in your hand before you can respond, one message sits unread underneath the ten you’d sent a few minutes earlier in rapid succession. Honestly? I invited him because I thought it would be fun. Of course that would be her rationale for not telling you about this very obvious stunt. Inviting your “rival” to your album release party is the perfect way to get your name in some headlines conveniently before the whole thing goes live, not like you need them but then again you do pay people to manage this kind of thing so they figure they should be doing something.

Oh yeah, Harry is supposed to be your “rival.” Think of some of the most infamous musical feuds of all time, and then knock it down a few pegs, and that’s where you would put yours and harrys. No one knows how it really started, something between a couple of twitter stans you’ve been told, but it suddenly gave each of your respective “people” the genius idea to milk that kind of exposure for all that it’s worth. The two of you have been pit against each other ever since the release of your debut albums, both self titled and both released within two weeks of each other. It hasn’t harmed either of you, being compared to the other, since you’re both pretty evenly matched in terms of talent.

It seems to only exist to make the occasional headline when the media remember that it “exists.” There have been headlines wondering if you’ve mentioned him in tik toks (you didn’t) in instagram posts (you were shading someone but not him) and if this whole thing started due to a one night stand that went the wrong way (definitely not).

You pull yourself back into the conversation, realizing you're being rude trying to think of something to respond to the text message. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

“Who are you rage tweeting over there?”

“Rage texting actually,” You say as another one comes through, “Fucking Melanie.”

“Unfortunate that her parents gave her that as a first name.”

You look up at him right away, “Not funny.” He laughs at his own joke anyway, “Melanie-” You say, holding up your phone for dramatic effect, “Is the head of the PR team, which is three people but anyway she is the one who seems to have coordinated this whole thing as a prank on me apparently.”

“It’s kind of funny,” He says.

You narrow your eyes at him, “I’m sure from your point of view it is.” Suddenly, someone comes rounding the corner near where the two of you are standing, and you freeze on instinct until they pass right in front of you without even looking in your direction. You realize that in a panic, you’d grabbed onto Harry’s hand and you decide that the two of you are going to have to finish this conversation somewhere else. “Come with me,” You sigh, leading him through the back of the room all the way to a small door that leads to an outside area at the back of the venue. You look at him again, his eyes glinting in the lights hanging above your heads. “What were we talking about?”

“Are you ever listening to me?” He asks, half joking.

“Don’t take it personally I’m only half listening to everyone,” You answer, “It’s called multitasking.”

“Seems tiring.”

“Better than being bored,” You say.

He looks at you for a second without saying and then shoves his hands in his pockets, “Why are we out here again?”

“I’m trying to figure out what’s the game plan here, if you’re supposed to be seen here alone, seen with me, if I’m supposed to throw some kind of tantrum about it.”

“Besides the one your already throwing?”

You stop looking at your phone, “Ouch.”

“Punishment for continuing to ignore me.”

You turn off your phone and hold it in your hand gently, giving him your full attention. “I’m listening, but only if you’re going to say something that it’s some kind of thinly veiled insult,” You click your tongue, “You’re one of those guys who flirts by making fun of girls aren’t you?”

He thinks about it, “That’s a type?”

“Yeah, for people who are still mentally in high school.”

“So you wouldn't be interested then?”

You smile, thinking about it. Here’s the thing, despite the fact you very much have been pretending to loathe Harry Styles for two years just so you don’t slip it if someone asks, you recognise now that he is objectively attractive. The curls, and the eyes and the borderline too busy suit jacket he’s wearing (that both of you know costs an exorbitant amount) is all contributing to a look that is working for you at the moment. Also working in his favor? The semi enemies to lovers arc that you have going on in your head. “Despite the fact that I think that kind of flirting is beneath you, at this moment, it’s currently working for me.”

You take a step forward, closer to him, and suddenly your phone starts going off again. You check it briefly, trying very much not to ruin the moment but very cognizant of the fact that this is your party and people are going to start noticing if you're gone. You look down, see it’s not a life or death emergency and look right back at Harry. “Let me guess,” He says, “She wants you to kiss me for the cameras?”

You laugh, “No, but I’m going to do it anyway.” You kiss him, he leans in and you think that you might just seal the deal with harry styles out on this very nice patio when your phone rings again. You pull away when it’s clear that whoever it is needs you desperately, you look at the message, and groan, “Fucking Melaine.” You look towards the door and back at Harry, “Okay this is not over, but I have to go take care of stuff, so just meet me here after the whole thing is over and we will finish this thing.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah,” You smile, “We could be an epic novel of forbidden lovers, like Romeo and Juliet without the ending.” You pause, “Well maybe with the end if Melanie kills me with her bare hands for not talking to this producer she wants me to meet.”

“Later, then.”

You take him back to your apartment that night. And you invite him back the next day, and then the week and then a few more times after that. As much as you had meant it a joke at the time, the kind of forbidden lovers aspect of trying to keep this whole thing under wraps is sexy in a way that you would never admit outloud.

You’ve both become shockingly adept at sneaking in and out of apartments, neighborhoods (Harry has multiple priorities; why that is you're not exactly sure) and sometimes clubs if you're in a group and it’s dark enough that you think no one will see you.

“Should I climb up through the window?” You ask Harry as you stand in the backyard of his house in London, swimsuit clad even though you’ve gone nowhere near the pool.

Harry looks at you from his place on the ground next to you. He’d refused to get a chirhair to sit on, so he just sits on the ground, looking out over the pool and the fence. “Why would you do that?”

“Romeo and Juliet thing, didn’t he climb through the window to see her?”

He shrugs, wrapping his arms around your bare legs in some attempt to keep your attention on him, “I don’t know, never read it.” He laughs a little, “But I think if you did that some pap would catch you with your ass hanging out of my window.”

You laugh too, “And you would never fucking stop laughing at that.”

“No, I would not.”

You kick your leg out so that you almost hit him right in the face, “Fucker, I thought you were over being mean to me as a tactic. You have successfully romanced me.”

“Really? Because you’re staring at the house like you’re going to kill me for my money.”

“You’d put me in your will? That’s sweet,” You turn to him, pulling your sunglasses onto the top of your head.

“You are so hot right now.”

“It is hot,” You say, looking out at the clear sky, “What an observation.”

“You’re screwing with me.”

“Because I’m too tired to screw you at the moment,” You say, “Can’t we just enjoy one day in one of your two properties out in the sun before you start making me exercise?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“It is work,” You say, rolling your eyes. “I’ve been thinking about that song you played yesterday, I think it needs to be less.. Ethereal.”

“What does that mean?”

You sit down next to him, laying your head in the grass. “Harry Styles is a rockstar, if you’re going to do a sad song, which seems to be your specialty, it needs to at least have a beat.”

“People don’t want to dance to sad songs.”

“Dude,” You say matter of factly, “Of course they do, I do and I think I speak for a very large section of the United States population.You need a sad song you can at the very least scream too, if not full out dance.”

“So what’s your suggestion?” He asks.

“Add more guitar,” You tell him, “Like a lot more. Take all the lyrics you have and put them on a track that sounds like it should be about your new puppy or something.”

“Who writes songs about puppies?”

“It was an example, H.” You sigh, “but you get the point.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t be like that.” He doesn’t say anything for a while, and you let it go as one of his moods for a while. But it goes on for longer than you thought it would be, and eventually you sit up. He’s staring down at his phone, frozen, and then he starts typing without saying anything to you. “What are you looking at?” You ask him, and he doesn’t say anything. “What is it H?” You ask again.

“Fuck it all,” He says, dropping his phone to the ground, and covering his face with his hands as he laid down with his head in the grass.

You pick his phone up off the ground and see that he’s opened twitter. Staring right back at you is a picture of the two of you kissing outside a small restaurant from the night before, you rack your brain trying to think if you saw anywhere when you were there and you swore you didn’t. Like it or not, everyone is going to know about the two of you now, including Melanie who had told you not to interact with Harry after the party expressly. “Shit,” You say, and your phone begins to ring the sound of Temporary Fix filling the small backyard.

“Fucking Melanie,” Harry says, still lying on the ground, “She’s going to ream me.”

“Well at least she’ll do it to both of us,” You groan, not even bothering to go and get your phone. You stand up, as a tension headache begins to form in your temples, “Well I’m going to get into the pool.”

“Now?” He asks you. “Seems like the perfect way to avoid this problem, doesn’t it?”

He also gets to his feet, and takes your hand, “Yeah it does.”

And together the two of you jump into the pool.

It’s an hour before you finally call Melanie back, even though you meant to avoid it for at least another hour. You sit at the kitchen counter while Harry takes a call in another room, dreading this call because you do not want to hear her yell at you for nothing, mostly because you're a grown woman and are above being lectured.

“Were you just not going to tell me about this?”

“Yes, that was the plan.”

“I told you not to-”

“Yeah but I had already made plans by then that I couldn’t cancel.”

“There was one man in the entire world, who you couldn’t fuck-”

“I know, what are the odds?”

“Could you please stop fucking with me for one second?” She says, “This is serious.”

“It’s not that bad, for you I mean.” You shrug, “I mean for me my personal business is all out on the internet now and I’ll be permanently known as one of Harry Styles’ girlfriends but for you what’s better press wise than a good ol enemies to lovers arc? I won’t tell anyone the enemies part wasn’t real if you won’t.”

You hear her sigh from the other end of the phone, and then tap her nails against the desk. “You might be onto something there.”

“I’m always onto something Melanie, I’m the artist here aren’t I?” And you hang up, before you say something that you’ll regret. You’d meant what you said, you were mostly just uncomfortable with everyone knowing who you're dating, especially the harry twitter stans who are known for being very excitable to say the least, you could see why they liked him so much but you would be lying if you said they didn’t scare you. You think of all the interviews you’ll do in the future where people will ask about him, about your relationship and maybe about how it ended.

Harry comes back into the kitchen and grabs two beers from the fridge. He opens both and sets one out in front of you. “How did it go?”

“Fine,” You say. You look at him, “Is this the part where we break up because you can’t be seen with me?” You put your face into the counter and let out another groan.

“Never,” He says, taking a drink, “No one else I would rather weather this shit-storm with.”

You smile, “Same here.”

#guys.. I wrote this so fast #it only took me two days #which makes me nervous that it's bad because it was so fast #but anyway #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again.

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit.

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family.

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more.

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh.

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason.

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write.

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives.

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.

#me @ me: wow shut up already #me @ @ me: Im not wrong tho #me @ @ @ me: yeah but still. jeez. take a breath much?`#okay Im gonna stop now

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