fanon really built up "Cass is Bruce's favorite child" and meanwhile I'm sitting over here with a whole stack of panels in a folder labeled "Dick is Canonically Bruce's Favorite Child" adsfghjkl
Me, writing a very serious story about Batman's family.
Also me, adding a whole paragraph with Hal Jordan discovering that Batman's daughter (Female!Dick, and the only child of his the league knows about because he too was young and naive, once) is a cheerleader, cheer captain even, in which he talks about Bring It On and Mean girls and teenager dictators, while Batman broods (supposedly) because his daughter had the *audacity* to be preppy and "no daughter of mine will be preppy in this goth household, go change back from that cheer uniform, here is your everything-black and your white foundation sweetie."
It may take me a while to finish writing and publish the 18th instalment of Robin's Blues (I am after all, once again, in exam season) but I will make it up to you all with some snippets of another work of mine!
Alfred both loved and hated his granddaughter’s blue eyes, Thomas’ eyes.
He loved them because they reminded him of the man who once laughed through halls and who smiled like he held all the secrets of the universe.
He hated them for the same reason.
And now, they’re gone.
It should be a relief.
It is a relief.
But it’s also a wound.
Something sacred has vanished.
And Alfred is nothing but pain and reprieve held in the same trembling breath.
Because Thomas is gone.
Because Thomas will never really leave her (him).
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4163446
I feel like Dick grayson embodies so well the song "Stay frosty royal milk tea" it isn't even funny I swear.
You mean to tell me that this
"I think I got too many memories getting in the way of me/ I'm 'bout to go Tonya Harding on the whole world's knee"
Or this
"Some princes don't become kings/Even at the best times I'm out of my mind/You only get what you grieve"
Or even this
"The only thing that's ever stopping me is me, hey/The only thing that's ever stopping me is me, hey/I testify if I die in my sleep/Then know that my life was just a killer dream, yeah"
Or, lastly
"Seems like the whole damn world went and lost its mind/And all my childhood heroes have fallen off or died/Fake tears, we are living fake tears/But the alcohol never lies, never lies"
Doesn't SCREAM Dick Grayson to you too?
I KNOW for a fact that my own genderbent version of Dick Grayson is far more serious in her out-of-the-suit public persona than she is in her in-suit public persona, but I think it would apply to most female reinterpretations of her character.
Let me explain:
1 being the daughter (and not the son) of a billionaire Dixie/Rikki/Rachel/Mary/Whatever is ALWAYS gonna be considered shallow, there is no way around it. Even the way she dresses herself (because, let's face it, she is a girl, she HAS to go out dressed half-way decently if she doesn't want to be submerged in hate mail) is gonna paint her that way, because half-way decent for an heiress is a VERY expensive thing.
2 She wants to change the world, in any identity she takes, but she can't do it from the bottom. She can't. Too beautiful, (perceived as) too soft, too delicate, all things to say “TOO FEMALE” to ever be a cop either in Gotham or in Bludhaven.
So, wanting to change the world, she has to take a different road, the attorney road, which demands seriousness and respectability from a man and absolute and total seriousness and respectability from a woman, especially one raised by Brucie Wayne.
3 If she is too easy-going, too joyous, too her, she is gonna be criticized and she is gonna have EVERY aspect of her life put under scrutiny, not only the private ones.
Those are the reasons Why, I think, in the end, Nightwing will always be fem-Dick more joyous and (in some ways) spontaneous side, because Nightwing is an Heroine and, even being both women, she is gonna be allowed some kind of leeways her unmasked self could never achieve.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4163446
Im just feeling a certain way rn
Idk if Ao3 is playing tricks on me by showing one inexistant extra comment on one of my fic or by hinding said comment from me.
If it's the second instance I am very sorry for my missing reply, but I quite literally CAN'T see your comment.
In my works I often delve into themes such as pregnancies, abortions and parenting and Idk who needs to ear this, but I woke up with the visceral NEED to say a couple of things about it all:
I was born in an extremely religious country in which, strangely enough, abortion was legalised fairly early on. This doesn't actually mean it's easy to access to it, because of society's views on it, that trickle down on gynaecologists as well. About 70% of gynaecologists in my country consider themselves conscientious objectors, which means it is basically impossible to access voluntary interruption of pregnancy, except if the woman's life is at risk (or if you pay a shit ton of money in a private clinic, money that, often enough, one doesn't have). This (sadly) doesn't mean we receive any kind of sex Ed in schools (no, not even the crappy kind often showed in films) or any real help/guarantees for new parents, so basically you just have to pray that the condom won't break, because it's near impossible to actually have an abortion and you have almost zero support if you actually decide to keep an unplanned baby. That said my country is now also trying to make those laws even more restrictives (ex banning abortive pills, prediliging the hiring of doctors, nurses and anestheticians who are C.O.etc.), hiding the way our governement tries to rule over women's bodies behind our rapidly decreasing fertility rate.
One summer, while I was still in high school, me and my friends had to drive for over ten hours to reach the only region of my country where the objectors rate it's lower than 15% because one of my friends couldn't wait two months for the only gynaecologist who performed it in our area.
I was the only other girl in my friend group and, at my friend's request, I stayed with her the whole time. It was a traumatic experience, even not being the one having to undergo the procedure. Half of the nurses treated her like dirt and one of the counsellors (that are hired to help women or, more in general, people with a female reproductive system, in this kind of situations) started ranting about hell and damnation, while gripping my friend's wrist so hard it bruised. I literally had to pry the woman away from my friend and to throw her out, and I only managed to do so when I threatened to press charges.
While I always knew on an abstract level that in other countries, countries extremely close to my own, having access to abortion (or even to a morning after pill) was easy, easier than in my home country and decisely less frowned upon, it was all just news for me and I never really paid it much attention.
Then I left my country and studied abroad for a while and, during this time period, I met my partner. A couple of years later I discovered I was pregnant and I panicked. I was scared shitless because while I love kids, I hadn't planned on having one back then (or even now, to be honest). Even then I thought about it. If I decided to keep the baby I would have had actual support from the institutions, both economical and time-wise so my choice was actually mine and mine alone, not influenced by a frightening lack of resources.
I decided not to continue the pregnancy. I went to the clinic with my boyfriend and the procedure was quick, painless and nobody tried to make me rethink anything by guilt-tripping me with tales of eternal damnation.
I never felt any kind of guilt about it while living there. Nobody was forcing down my troath pro-life Ads or picketing the clinic when I went to do a check up specifically meant for people who had had a "traditional" abortion.
Even now, when I think about a traumatizing abortion, I don't think about mine, but my friend's.
Even now, when I see my nephews or my little cousines faces I don't ever regret having walked into that clinic.
Even then, the tinge of guilt in me resurfaces, sometimes, now that I live in my home country. A tinge of guilt I can't really explain, because I was lucky enough to be raised in a pro-choice familial enviroment. A tinge of guilt I shouldn't feel, because it was my choice (as it should always be) and I don't regret it.
What I am trying to say is that, even if you don't know it there IS a right way to do things and we should all fight to make them available to the largest number of people we can.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer.
My country tried to make it as such.
Now our fertility rate is at an all-time low from which I don't think we will ever recover and there are whole generations of women literaly terryfied of falling pregnant, because they do they are gonna lose their jobs and everything they worked for in their lives, without the possibility of actually making a choice on their bodies.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer, the possibility of chosing in authonomy for your body and for your future is.
I might have cried (multiple times already) while writing the anniversary bonus work of my series Robin's Blues.
THIS THING ISN'T FAIR
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4163446
I hate the 15th of may.
I had my first cycle on the 15th of may.
It was at your home, not at mom's.
I panicked.
I knew what was happening, and yet I cried anyways.
You didn't say a thing.
Not that it was normal.
Not that it was growing up.
You just rubbed my back and left me some pads while you went heating an hot water bag.
When I came out of the bathroom you were there, ankward, handling me the bag and some painkillers.
You said you didn't know if I would need them.
I felt like a little kid crying in your arms that afternoon.
Like I felt at three years old when you would holst me up your shoulders and the whole world felt so far away (when I KNEW you would be there, and that you would never let me fall).
You were more kid than what I ever managed to be.
It wasn't always a good thing.
It wasn't always a good thing, but you had a levity of living I always lacked.
I never knew how to be a child.
I was always too cerebral, too strange.
But then you would pick me up from school on windy days, a kite in one hand, and I managed to be a kid, too.
Someone once wrote that grief was like walking up the stairs to your bedroom, in the dark, and finding a step missing.
It's not wrong, per se.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to call you, before remembering that your phone sits in one of my drawers, battery dead, and that no-one, least of all you, will ever pick it up again.
I hate the 15th of may.
I hated it at ten and now I hate it still.
But maybe hate too, is just another word for absence.
Maybe hate too, is just another way of saying “I miss you”.
Me, ugly crying on a fanart because it fits perfectly one of my fanfic even if it is just a coincidence.
(The fanart is objectively stunning tho)
TOApril Day 17 - Lamentations of Broken Fathers
I'm not comfortable enough with dramatic lighting to be able to say that this is my best work but oh well
"Who's under the shroud?" you may ask. Well if you reject the bounds of PJO's timeline and use enough imagination it could be literally any of Apollo's children :))))
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helecthra/pseuds/Helecthra
42 posts