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kaldurahms-lover · 11 months

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Cardigan

Pairing: Jason Todd x Fem Reader (version of jason isn’t mentioned but i wrote it with his original storyline death from Batman: A Death In The Family, not a later, retconned version)

Warnings: angst but also fluff, reader is a famous singer, use of Y/N, pet names (baby, sweetheart, princess, lmk if i missed any), swearing, makes references to other songs (Lover by Taylor Swift, Lucky People by Waterparks, and Favorite Record by Fall Out Boy), i reread this like 8 times but i couldve missed things so don't flame me if theres any fuck ups in there lmao

Word Count: 4,175

A/N: (yes i know cardigan is part of the teenage love triangle songs, yes i made it into somewhat fluff because i fucking wanted to, whats it to you? I was just listening to cardigan (by taylor swift if you were unaware) in the shower and had this beautiful idea of like what if rather than it being about getting cheated on, i make it about the reader experiencing Jason’s death (and resurrection)? also i color coded the dialogue which is something i normally don't do soooo fun little touch i guess.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Italics mean it’s a flashback, bold and bigger means it's a song lyric, regular text means it's happening in real time. (with very obvious exceptions) Cool? Cool. also, real quick, THE FLASHBACKS ARE NOT IN PERFECT CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER!!!!

“HELLO GOTHAM CITY!” The crowd roared in excitement. Y/N was excited too, it was her first show in Gotham in a long time. This was her first tour in a long time. Of course, she let the public think that it was just because she was a teenager focusing on school, not because when she was 16 her first love the love of her life had been brutally murdered…

“It’s really nice to be playing a hometown show, and since this is my first one in forever, how about I play you something brand new?” Screams erupted in the audience, people pulling out their phones to get the first recording of a brand new song.

“This one means a lot to me, it’s about someone very special to me, and how he came back to me when I needed him most. This is a quieter one so I'm gonna need you all to listen, and please don’t judge me if I cry during this. Alright, this one’s called ‘cardigan’ everybody!”

Rows and rows of people buzzed with excitement as the music began to play.

Vintage tee, brand new phone

Y/N and Jason walked in, strutting about as if they were models in the new vintage tees Y/N had bought for them at the thrift store just days before. They strolled about the mall, eventually making the stop to get Jason a new phone, he had dropped his from a rooftop on patrol the night before. Oops.

“Jay, baby, you can’t just use Bruce’s credit card without asking all the time” Y/N smiled, knowing Jason wasn’t going to listen to her

“Says who? Besides, I told him I was taking it. If he didn’t want to pay for me to get a new phone, he should’ve given me a secure pocket in the suit for it like I asked.” Jason shrugged. He wasn’t atrociously rebellious at all times, but he knew Bruce had more than enough money for him to get a new phone, and to treat his girlfriend, and best friend, when he wanted to. “Plus, if I didn’t take his card, I wouldn’t be able to spoil you, would I?” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing a kiss to her temple as they walked out of the store.

High heels on cobblestone

Y/N’s heels clicked loudly against the cobblestone walkway as she made her way to the entrance of the Wayne gala, arm linked with Jason’s.

“Are you sure I look alright? I’ve never worn a dress this fancy Jason. Should I even be at a Wayne gala I mean–” Jason cut her off.

“Sweetheart you look perfect. And if anyone tells you otherwise I will personally ask Bruce to kick them out.”

“Jay you can’t do that.”

“According to who? I have adopted Wayne privilege and you’re the one who’s Bruce’s favorite”

“I am not Bruce’s favorite!”

“Yes you are princess.”

He dragged her into the gala, excited to spend a night with her, and after that, her first Wayne gala was nothing but history, as she attended every single one at her lover’s side.

When you are young they assume you know nothing

“That boy is a delinquent Y/N! I doubt you even know anything about him, has he even told you how he came to meet Mr Wayne?” Y/N’s father shouted. He’d never liked Jason, despite him being Y/N’s best friend for years before things ever became romantic. She used to be able to avoid it, but when her mom moved out of state for work and Y/N wanted to stay in Gotham… well this was her only option.

“Yes dad, I know how he met Bruce! You realize I knew him long before he was adopted by Bruce Wayne right? That I didn’t just go for him because he was rich? You assume because I’m young that I know nothing!”

“Clearly you don’t know anything if you would choose to be with a boy who is a thief! He tried to steal Mr. Wayne’s tires!”

“He was trying to steal them because he was living on the streets and needed money to fucking eat, Dad! Clearly you’re the one who knows nothing here!”

She stormed out of the house, furiously texting Jason and trying to will away the angry tears.

Sequined smile, black lipstick

Y/N grinned at Jason, her black lipstick fresh as they prepared to go to a party. Bruce had cleared Jason of Robin duty for the weekend and they’d decided to take time to enjoy being normal teenagers.

“What do you think?” She asked, still smiling

“I think… I’m really tempted to kiss that lipstick right off of you”

“Come do it then.”

Sensual politics

“Do you ever think about sensual politics?” Y/N looked up at Jason, her head in his lap as he read a book.

“What the fuck do you mean ‘sensual politics’?”

“Like the politics of being flirtatious or like building a relationship with someone, but like also kind of a play on sexual politics and people’s perception of the difference’s between men and women and the politics of it, you know? Like they’re both very different things but you can name them the same thing”

“And you’re calling that sensual politics?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“I wish I could understand what’s going on in that brain of yours, you’re such a nerd princess”

When you are young they assume you know nothing

“Jaybird if you hurt her I hope you know I’ll have to break your legs” Dick shrugged as if this was common knowledge.

“I won’t hurt her, Dickwad. She’s the best thing to happen to me.”

“Okay, but you’re young and stupid, anything could happen.”

“Just because you knew nothing when you were young doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

But I knew you

Years ago, Y/n was 11 and Jason was 10. Y/N was on her way home from the school when she saw someone she recognized.

“Hey! You’re the boy from the library! You showed me my favorite book!”

Jason flushed, unaware that she’d remember him, or that she’d take the recommendation he’d once given her seriously

“Yeah uh, hi. My names Jason, Jason Todd.” He stuck his hand out to shake.

She placed her hand in his and shook. "Y/N."

Dancin' in your Levi's

Y/N and Jason slow danced in her room, her record player spinning some old collection she’d snagged from Wayne manor.

“I was unaware that Levi’s were ballroom attire Monsieur.”

“And I was unaware your bedroom counted as a ballroom Mademoiselle”

Drunk under a streetlight, I

“Jason you’re drunk.”

“No I’m notttt. Please Y/N pleeeeaaassseee be my girlfriend.”

“You’re drunk Jay, if you weren’t then you’d remember I already am.” She laughed, watching her lover shoot up in excitement

“Really? That’s so cool!”

I knew you

"Y/N what do you think? Do you think he'd like this for his birthday?"

"Why are you asking me? You're his brother!"

"Yeah but you know him better than anyone else"

Hand under my sweatshirt

"Jason Peter Todd get your cold ass hands out from under my sweatshirt!"

"What do you mean princess?" He dragged his freezing cold hands further up her back

"Eek!"

Baby, kiss it better, I

Y/N carefully finished wrapping the bandages around Jason's waist.

"I can't believe you got stabbed!"

"Kiss it better?"

"Dork." She pressed a kiss to his bandages, before making her way up to his lips.

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan

Under someone's bed

You put me on and said I was your favorite

“What’s got you down princess?” Jason quirked an eyebrow, the moment Y/N entered the manor there was an unhappy energy on her, like she was faking her smile. He knew her all too well. “Come here”. He opened his arms to her, gesturing that she should come lay with him on the excessively large couch (rich people bro) and she happily obliged, latching onto his side like a koala with her head on his chest.

“It’s just… I don’t know, sometimes I feel like an old cardigan, under someone’s bed. Just… forgotten.”

“I could never forget you. Sometimes people lose things that are important to them. If you’re an old cardigan then I’m finding you and putting you on because the whole time you were my favorite.” He pressed a kiss to her hair.

“How poetic” She could feel his chest shake as he laughed.

“What can I say? I’m a man of literature. Speaking of which! Do you want to watch Pride and Prejudice?”

“Again?”

“Yes, AgAiN”

Y/N looked up at her boyfriend, beaming. “Always.”

A friend to all is a friend to none

“You can’t keep acting like nothing is going on Jason. You love her, so why are you friends with someone like the asshole who ruined her reputation?”

“Dammit Dick, I didn’t even know that he was the one who did that until a week ago!”

“And you’ve hung out with him twice since then! A friend to all is a friend to none, Jaybird.”

Chase two girls, lose the one

Surely all of Gotham had heard them arguing from their favorite spot on the roof of the library.

“Jason I understand that you want to go meet your birth mother, but why does that mean you have to not be in touch for an undetermined amount of time? I don’t understand why finding her means leaving me!” Y/N hadn’t meant to shout. She wasn’t actually mad at him. She understood why he wanted to go, but that didn’t make him leaving hurt any less. Why should she have to lose contact with him, let him run off to another continent without any knowledge of if he was okay?

“Sweetheart I’m not leaving you, I’m just trying to find my mom…”

“Yeah, at the expense of me! Jay I will never prevent you from doing something this important to you but that will not change the fact that this hurts me. That I’ll be lying awake at night not knowing if you’re okay or if you’re even going to want me when you come home! Not even being able to ask Bruce if you’re okay because you plan on doing this without his knowledge! For fucks sake Jason do you realize how that would feel?”

“God dammit Y/N why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Because you’re LEAVING ME. You know what, go ahead and go Jason. You’re choosing to chase two girls and you’ve lost this one.” She made her way down, trying not to let her hands shake from all the emotional turmoil, at least not until she was on the ground again. There was no way she would know how much she’d regret saying that to him.

When you are young, they assume you know nothing

“It’s your first heartbreak Y/N, you’ll get over it. It was teenage puppy love, something was bound to happen.” Her father had no clue. It had been days and she hadn’t heard from Jason. Last she checked with Alfred, Bruce had followed him out to the middle east somewhere.

“This was, this is so much more than that. You’re doing it again, assuming that because I’m young I must know nothing.”

“Clearly you don’t know anything.”

But I knew you

“When were you gonna tell me that you being a literature nerd was knowledge Dick wasn’t supposed to get his hands on?” Y/N gave him a look. The look that says ‘i didn't know this was a secret so you can't be upset i spilled’

“Shit princess please don’t tell me you told him… he’ll never let me live it down!”

“Oops?” She shrugged. He started to say something else but she kissed him before the words could escape. “It’s alright Jay, it makes you a romantic. And it means I know you better than him.”

Jason smiled. “I guess you’re right…”

Playing hide-and-seek and

“Do you wanna play hide and seek?”

“Sweetheart aren’t we too old for that?”

“Who said that? Come onnn"

“Y/N.”

“Hm?”

“You know I can’t say no to you.”

Giving me your weekends, I

“You know we don’t have to spend every weekend together right? You can hang out with your friends or your family if you want.”

“Why would I do that when I could give you all my weekends?”

I knew you

"How did you know to tell Bruce I wanted adjustments on the Robin bike?"

"Because I'm just cool like that. And i know you. Now come on let's take it for a spin!"

Your heartbeat on the High Line

Y/N pressed the side of her head to Jason's chest as a stranger took their photo on the High Line. The trip to New York had been spontaneous, something they'd decided to do for spring break.

After taking her phone back from the kind stranger and thanking them, Y/N turned to her dear boyfriend.

"I could hear your heartbeat you know."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you'd think it was our first date or something." Y/n grinned.

"Because you make me feel... I don't know, like Pip if Estella was actually good for him?"

"Did you just reference Great Expectations at me as a way of expressing your feelings?"

"Maybe?"

"Kiss me."

Once in twenty lifetimes, I

Y/N often thought of how her mother had once told her that true teenage love like the one she had with Jason only came once in 20 lifetimes. Although, in retrospect maybe it's twice in two lifetimes, or once in one, for the partner who didn't die.

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan

Under someone's bed

You put me on and said I was your favorite

"Would I still be your favorite person if I was a worm?"

"Well no cause you wouldn't be a person anymore, but you'd be my favorite worm-"

"You know what? I'll take it."

"You'll always be my favorite."

To kiss in cars

"Jason Todd you are a menace to society."

"What? How?"

"You brought me out to Bruce's Rolls-Royce to make out."

"So?"

and downtown bars

"Who would've thought the boy wonder had a fake ID?"

"Maybe his girlfriend who's cousin made it for him"

"What? Which one?"

Jason smirked at her, knowing it was going to eat her alive not knowing yes im projecting how nosy i am onto the y/n "Sorry princess, that stays a secret"

Was all we needed

You drew stars around my scars

"Jason it's just an old scar from scraping my knee a little too deep, it's no big deal!"

He continued drawing small stars around any scars he found on her, gently dragging the red marker along her skin. "I didn't say it was!"

But now I'm bleedin'

When Jason hadn’t come back, Y/N had done one of the only things she promised him she would never do: taking up vigilantism. She told Bruce it was only temporary. She told herself it was only temporary. But the longer she was in the game the more attached to it she became.

"FUCK!" Y/N yelped as she sat on her bathroom counter, pressing a damp rag to her wound, carefully wiping it off. "God dammit, I used to be patching up Jason's stab wounds, not getting stabbed..." She picked up her phone, dialing the only number she cared to call anymore.

"Yeah, Dick? Can you come over real quick? Need you to make sure this stab wound doesn't kill me..."

The audible "WHAT" echoed throughout the bathroom, despite the phone not being on speaker.

'Cause I knew you

"How'd you know I'd be here?"

Y/N found Jason at their spot on the roof of the library after Dick informed her that he'd had a particularly rough argument with Bruce.

"Because I know you better than anyone else."

Steppin' on the last train

Jason dragged Y/N towards the last train of the night, what they never knew would be their final date before everything went astray.

"Come on! The last train is the best one!"

Marked me like a bloodstain, I

The image of Jason, dead, being carried away by Bruce was forever marked in Y/N's head. He was dead. There was nothing else to say.

I knew you

Speaking at Jason's small memorial was never something Y/N saw herself doing.

"I uh- I really don't know what to say. You all always said I knew him better than anyone else, and I just wish I could've known the way to prevent this."

Tried to change the ending

Y/N tried so hard to change the ending of her story. Make it so she wasn't just the girl who lost herself in grief. But until unless she saw Jason again, nothing was going to happen.

Peter losing Wendy, I

As she sat there writing 'Cardigan' it occurred to her that Peter losing Wendy was a choice, and her losing Jason never was, but it fit. Their love was a magic only to be found in Neverland.

I knew you

"Hey Red, do I know you from somewhere in civilian life? You seem familiar..."

"No way, too new in town, sorry."

She knew she knew him. She just couldn't place why...

Leavin' like a father

Even though she'd told him just to go, Jason still stopped by Y/N's house before he left to find his mother.

"Please don't leave me Jay." She cupped his cheeks, pressing his forehead to hers as tears streamed down her face

"Don't cry baby, I'll be back before you know it."

Running like water, I

Of course, Y/N hadn't known the identity of the Red Hood the first time she'd spotted him. All she had time to think was wondering why such a large man, with guns nonetheless, ran from her like she was out to get him.

And when you are young, they assume you know nothing

"Why do people love to assume that because I'm young I must know nothing about love or heartbreak?" Y/N had asked one day. No one answered. No one knew, they only knew that they were all too aware of just how much she truly knew about both of those things.

But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss

"I want a blue jay on my forearm. Full color. Can you do that?"

Y/N had walked into the tattoo parlor like she owned the place. She needed a way to let him permanently linger. The kiss of a needle in her skin the only way to physically represent him.

I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs

"What if I had made him stay?!"

"Y/N there's nothing you could've done that would change things."

"But what if—"

"There was nothing any of us could do."

The smell of smoke would hang around this long

"Thought you told me that you quit smoking years ago Red."

"Yeah, well, old habits die hard."

"Rough day huh?"

"Yeah. Girlfriend from before all this almost saw me in the library today. She doesn't know about me."

"About you being a vigilante?"

"She thinks I'm dead."

"You know, maybe I'll do this and be totally mistaken and realize im delusional, but I swear to whatever fucking god is listening if i tear off that domino mask and Jason Todd is under there I will be pushing you off this rooftop."

"If I've been hanging out with Y/N this whole time I'm throwing myself off."

'Cause I knew everything when I was young

Y/N was playing a show in Los Angeles, touring at age 15 was insane, but then again, she never thought anyone would listen to her music.

"Alright everyone, I may be young, but I also consider myself to be quite versed in romance, who knows, maybe it's my lovely boyfriend, or the fact that I'm a hopeless romantic, but either way, this one's called Favorite Record!"

Even at a young age, she'd known everything she needed to about love, because it encased her every moment she spent with her favorite person.

I knew I'd curse you for the longest time

She sat at Jason's grave in the Wayne family plot for more hours than she could count, swearing at his headstone

"God dammit! Why didn't you come home? Why didn't you come back to me?" Sobs wracked her body. "I was waiting for you to come home."

Chasin' shadows in the grocery line

Every once in a while Y/N would see someone and think someone was him. Maybe it was her brain's sick way of coping. She reached towards the stranger in front of her.

"Excuse me-"

But when he turned around Jason was gone. It was just another high school boy who had vaguely reminiscent hair.

I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired

A knock came on Y/N's bedroom window. She opened it warily before the Red Hood came clinking in.

"Thrill of letting me think you were dead over?"

"Y/N please-"

"Did you sit and watch as I grieved? Stand by while I lost my mind because I thought I'd lost you?"

"Sweetheart just let me explain–"

"Don't fucking 'sweetheart' me. Get out. Get out of my fucking room."

And you'd be standin' in my front porch light

"Get off my damn porch Jason." He was standing in civilian clothes, shuffling his feet nervously as if he was a little kid again.

"Not until you let me explain!"

"Fine. You get to come in for five minutes. See if you can explain to me how there is any way you can justify this."

And I knew you'd come back to me

Y/N sat with her jaw slack in shock after hearing Jason's story. How saying he died wasn't even a lie, how he'd been brought back, the madness he'd experienced, the resentment for nobody killing the Joker. (she flat out told him she would've if she thought she could do it without getting herself killed in the process)

"i'm such a fucking asshole."

"No you aren't"

"No you went through this whole traumatic experience and I've just been a dick to you!"

"And it's been totally justified! You should've been the first person to find out I was back. Honestly I'm surprised Dick or Bruce didn't tell you..."

"I'm going to ignore the urge to castrate both of them and just be happy you came back to me."

You'd come back to me

"I'll always come back to you."

And you'd come back to me

"Make sure you come back in one piece?" They were on the same mission, much to Jason's dismay, but they had to be split up.

"When have I ever not come back to you?"

"...."

"Don't answer that."

And you'd come back

They'd made it out of that atrocious mission. It all worked out in the end but it certainly had taken longer than they planned.

"hey, you came back in one piece, just like I asked."

"I always do, just for you."

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan

Under someone's bed

You put me on and said I was your favorite

Y/N heard Jason coming in. His duffel bag clunked loudly against their closet floor, and she assumed he changed out of his gear at a safehouse before returning to their apartment. She flipped over the edge of the blanket, making room for him to crawl in bed with her. Once sufficiently comfortable behind her, arms wrapped tightly around her waist, Jason spoke.

"Hey Y/N?"

She turned around in his arms so she could face him. "Uh oh, you didn't call me any kind of pet name, just my name, whats up?"

"Nothing I just... I just wanted to let you know you're still my favorite."

The tears were flowing freely by then. The audience screamed, cheering at the sweet song. “My favorite person didn’t get to be around for a while, but… he came back to me, and that’s all that matters. Now that's enough crying, I’ve got some much more fun songs, ARE YOU READY GOTHAM CITY!?” And with that, the show went on.

Hours later, Y/N made her way backstage, where she was immediately enveloped by the arms of a mystery man. She wasn’t scared though, she knew who it was. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he spun her around.

He sat her down gently, beaming. “You wrote a song about me?” “Jay… baby a lot of my songs are about you.”

“What?”

“I’m going to ignore the fact that you managed to not know that even though I’ve told you before.”

“I just assumed you weren’t serious!”

“... You really think that Lover or Lucky People or Favorite Record, could have possibly been about anyone else?”

“And if I just like hearing you say it?”

“Then I’ll tell you forever.” When their lips met, it was a promise, one that this, this feeling in this moment, was real, and that it wouldn’t ever go away, because they knew everything when they were young.

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #the red hood #red hood x reader #jason todd imagine #jason todd fluff #jason todd angst #red hood angst #oh how i love this man #need to marry him NOW

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canonmisogynyvictimstournament · 7 months

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PROPAGANDA

NATASHA ROMANOFF (Marvel Cinematic Universe) (CW: Forced Sterilization)

1.) Was reduced to “chick who fights” and wasn’t given any characterization at all outside of that up until Winter Soldier, the third movie in which she played a major role. Her sideplot in Age of Ultron revolved around dating Bruce, whom she apparently related to because she felt like a monster for not being able to have children (we’re never shown why she actually wants them, it was the first time she’d ever mentioned it), she was the only original Avenger to die before the final battle in Avengers: Endgame and her death was mostly used to give the other male Avengers a reason to fight on. Most of the movies she was in, she spent in a cat suit that was halfway unzipped. I think there are maybe four movies in the entire MCU where she interacts with another named female character. In general, she’s a super interesting character who was super underdeveloped despite being in a ton of movies.

2.) Due to being forcibly sterilized and not having a family of her own, she concludes that when someone has to sacrifice their life For The Greater Good^tm, it should be her (who has spent the past few years as a –if not The– leader managing the security of a superpowered, post-disaster Earth), instead of her guy friend (who has spent the past few years committing war crimes while hiding from his entire support network) because he had a family (that disappeared due to Magical Scifi Bullshit and Might come back if they succeed on their quest) that has been fully capable of supporting themselves while he’s been away secret agent-ing in the past and aware that he might not come back one day from his dangerous job.

Out of universe, there was very little merchandise of her (even in group shots) and it took ages for her to get her own movie in the Everyone Has Their Own Movie Or Three franchise.

3.) She was fridged to upset all the men in endgame and didn’t have a word spoken of her after her death unlike Tony who got a whole funeral.

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

#polls #round 3 #week 6 #new #cw forced sterilization #cw pregnancy

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afewnovelideas · 7 months

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Dealing with insomnia part last night and this fic idea came to mind. It's a merging of several past fic ideas I've played withat one point or another.

Janet is/was secretly CIA officer and Jack was originally her handler who she fell in live with and married

The Haiti Incident wasn't an archaeological trip that got intercepted by terrorists. It was a CIA mission investigating the League of Assassins that fell apart due to a double cross

Janet didn't die. She was captured and presumed dead due to explosion. The explosion is also what caused Jack to be injured badly enough to be thrown into a coma

Ra's had Janet captured because he was obsessed with her as a new potential paramour, but she despises him

However Ra's manipulates her into obedience by threatening to go after Tim is she doesn't comply and work with the League (similar to how the League threatened their Administrator person's family in the Red Robin comics). If she won't serve him as a consort, she can serve him as a spy. In the CIA she was in black ops division.

Ra's reveals to Janet her son is a Robin, and because of that the League could easily take him out if they wanted because Batman sends him out alone on patrols and missions too often and he's always vulnerable to the League

Later Janet discovers she's pregnant with Jack's child. She was only a few weeks along when Haiti happened and it wasn't until midway through her second month with the League that she started feeling and showing signs. Ra's allows her to keep the child but only because of is another way to ensure her loyalty. The baby's name is Emily

Jack freaks out when he discovers Tim is Robin because he's always been afraid Tim would followed in his mother's footsteps one day. Being in the CIA, FBI, or some other aspect of the US government intelligence or military is a family legacy for Janet's side.

Janet's mother, Vanessa Grey, is actually still alive and is acting Director of the ARGUS. She is Amanda Waller's boss in this AU. Waller is the head of the Suicide Squad division and reports directly to Vanessa. Steve Trevor, also reports directly to Vanessa as head of his own spec ops team within ARGUS. He's at equal level to Amanda. They are Vanessa's left (Waller) and right (Trevor) hands respectively.

Vanessa knows her daughter has been captured by the League of Assassins, but their organization is so tight that an extraction has not been possible to organize safely. She is also aware that the League is likely threatening Tim to keep her daughter in line, as her spies have noted how League agents are always in distant but convenient orbit around her grandson.

Vanessa knows Tim is Robin and that Bruce is Batman. In ARGUS, only Waller and Trevor share this information with her. This information is kept top secret between the three of them. Trevor protects this secret because he was actually close friends with Janet and cares about her family. Waller protects this secret because she has "thoughts" on the value of knowing that Bruce Wayne is Batman.

Back to Janet... While in the League, she ends up in... something... with Talia. They aren't really "friends" but they do respect one another. Talia ensures Janet's baby is cared for and protected when she is forced to go on covert missions. In return, Janet acts as a double agent for Talia regarding what Ra's and White Ghost are up to at any given point in time. Because of this, Janet meets with and interacts with both Jason and Damian before they leave the League.

Janet recognizes Jason as Bruce Wayne's adopted son. Where Talia was trying to turn him into a League agent loyal only to her, Janet, while being forced to train Jason in espionage, couldn't help but care for him as a person... as a teenager not much older than her own son. Jason also started drifting towards Janet as a mother figure, and even grew fond and protective of Emily as a baby sister. Janet also spoke a lot about Tim.

Titans Tower and the Red Hood's interactions with Tim are different because of this. Talia kept it a secret that Jason met Janet. Ra's noticed Janet was becoming "comfortable" so decided to remind her of her place by ordering a threat on Tim. Talia heard of this and offered "manipulate" Jason into doing the deed, sweetening the pot by tempting Ra's with the idea of all the chaos Jason's return to Bruce's life will cause in Gotham (because Jason still hates Bruce in this AU).

Jason goes to Gotham with two things in mind: (1) Pretend to threaten Tim just enough to get the other League spies/assassins that are threatening Tim to back down. He goes in with a plan to injure Tim just enough to keep him off the streets and out of uniform for at least a few weeks, if not a couple of months. and (2) to go after Bruce for all the things he's angry at his adopted dad about involving the Joker.

Janet meets and bonds with Damian while he's under Talia's care in a similar way as she did Jason. Damian sees Janet almost like a favorite Aunt. However, Ra's ends up taking Damian away for long stretches at a time to reduce the influence of Talia on the boy as he "trains" Damian personally. But when the time comes that Talia sends Damian to his father, Janet tells him not to reveal anything to Tim about her. He's confused about that. Janet tells him it's because if Tim knew she was alive, he'd stop at nothing to find her... and Ra's would use that against her, both her children (who Damian views as cousins), and Damian's father Bruce, who had adopted Tim after Jack died. So when Damian goes to Gotham to join Bruce's family, he does not make any attacks against Tim, though he is distant to the teenager. Being around Tim makes him WANT to tell him about his mother, especially when he observes how much Timothy still misses her.

Tim doesn't reunite with Janet until BruceQuest. By then Janet and Talia are seperated. Ra's questions Talia's loyalty after she sends Damian out of his reach and sends her away in exile. Janet is sent to the Cradle along with her daughter, who is three years old, almost four at this point. Everything happens just as it does in canon during BruceQuest, except when Tim wakes up at the Cradle and Janet catches wind that he is there and was injured by the Spiders, which is a case she'd been assigned to figure out and stop, she goes to him.

Tim at first doesn't believe what he's seeing when he sees his mom alive and well. At first he thinks she's a fake or a hallucination. But then at the sight of Tim injured and surrounded by ninjas and assassins, Janet goes off, screaming at them to get away from her son. But then the White Ghost himself puts a blade at Tim's throat, and still being injured, Tim can't react fast enough to stop him. Janet freeze with terror as White Ghost reminds her of exactly what SHE has at stake. Just because Timothy is in the Cradle doesn't mean that the sword of Damocles isn't still hanging over his head. Then White Ghost orders a couple of the other assassins to turn their blades on Janet too, which sends a spike of alarm immediately through Tim. White Ghost is quite pleased with watching Tim's expression as he realizes that just as they can threaten him to keep his mother in line, now in addition to Tam they can threaten Janet to keep Tim in line.

Afterwards, when the three of them are finally able to be alone together in Janet's "suite" which is just a comfortably furnished prison cell with a couple of rooms, Janet explains everything to her son and Tam. After she's done talking, Tim asks her why she hasn't tried to leave, even when Ra's has her out in the field. It's at that time one of the side room doors open and little Emily warily peeks out. "Momma? Is it safe?"

Tim is frozen in shock at the child as this child with Jack's brown hair and Janet's blue eyes (the same as his own) is beckoned forward by his mom. "It's ok baby. It's safe. They're safe." The girl asks who they are. Janet smiles sadly. "Y'know the stories I told you about our home back in Gotham? This is your big brother." At that, Emily's eyes light up, fear blinked away and replaced by wonder and curiosity. "Tim?"

After that, Tim ends up working alongside his mother in order to figure out this whole deal with the Council of Spiders. He gets to see his mother in her element and sees a whole side of her that he never knew existed. He also realizes that a lot of his observational and investigational skills, the way his mind works to connect clues and solve cases are traits he inherited from his mom. While they work, Tam stays with Emily, who is happy for the company that isn't assassins. She misses her cousins Jason and Damian who she'd grown up with, but she loves getting to know Tim. When they are resting at the Cradle, she follows him around like a duckling.

Things happen as they do in the Cradle at the end of everything. While Ra's thinks Tim and Janet are under his thumb, what he doesn't realize is that now that the two are working together, Janet seizes the opportunity to activate several "contingencies" she's been quietly integrating into the Cradle for what she hoped would be her eventual escape. The only reason she hadn't activated any of them was she had no way to get Emily out safely with just her. But with Tim there now it's possible.

During the escape from the Cradle, Tim quickly learns that his mother has no limits when it comes to protecting him, his baby sister, or Tam. One of the first things Janet does when the Spiders attack is to get her hands on as many firearms and ammo clips as she can carry, and she's a crackshot with all of them. She's in full on black ops mode when the fighting starts, and her mission is to safely extract the hostages by any means necessary and cut off pursuit by any hostiles.

Oh, btw... Tim may have originally set up his virus to just blow up the Cradle, but while he was out in the field on earlier missions to locate the Spiders, Janet snuck in behind him and boosted the reach of the virus to go after nearly all the League bases that were on the same network. This was Janet's big FUCK YOU to Ra's for everything he put her through over all these years.

Once they're back in Gotham City, the final showdown with Ra's and his assassins happens, but Tim is not alone when he faces down Ra's, at least not completely. When everything started, Tim left Janet with Emily under Red Hood's protection. Tim wanted his family under the protection of someone who would DEFINITELY shoot to kill if someone threatened them. However, Janet had a feeling Tim was gonna run off and face Tim alone, so she followed after while leaving Emily with Jason, who promised to watch over his baby sister.

In the skyscraper office, just as Ra's is about to try and kick Tim through the window, he catches a glint in the reflection of the cracked glass window and barely turns around just in time to avoid being shot through the head, instead catching Janet's bullet through the shoulder. Janet doesn't hesitate, doesn't even give Ra's the chance to monologue, just stares him down with ice cold eyes as she empties half the clip from her Glock center mass into his chest before putting one last bullet between his eyes. Once she knows Ra's is down, she immediately starts mother henning Tim, checking on his injuries and fretting about infection because he still lost his spleen.

Afterwards, Ra's body disappears before it can be picked up by authorities, because of course it did.

Tim returns to live at the manor and delivers the evidence that Bruce is alive. Janet and Emily relocate there as well for the time being to rest and recuperate from their harrowing ordeal. Jason comes back as well because (1) he missed Janet and sees her as a second mom and (2) he wants to be there in case anyone from the League tries to retaliate again, which thankfully they don't. Janet made sure that the League was severely crippled by what they did at the Cradle. Damian is also a lot lighter now his Aunt Janet is back in his life again, along with Emily.

Eventually, about a week after everything settles down, Steve Trevor shows up at the front gate of Wayne Manor. He's come by to both say welcome home to his best friend and to extend an invitation. Tim asks what's going. "Oh, it's just an invite from your grandmother to have Sunday dinner with her. She wants to finally meet her grandchildren." Tim blinks at her. "Wait? GRANDMOTHER?! Since when did I have a grandmother?!"

#tim drake #fanfiction #red robin #batman #jason todd #damian wayne #batfamily #batfam #janet drake #fanfic #brainstorming

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gamesception · 6 months

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Sception Reads Cass Cain #24

Batgirl (2000) #9 Words: Kelley Puckett Pictures: Scott & Campanella

The end of the 'Cass gets her powers back' arc, some good stuff in here, including Bruce going to Cain in the hopes that he might gain some new insight into how Cass was trained in the first place that will help her now, while Cass goes out to find Shiva, who is able to give her what Bruce can't, in exchange for the promise of a proper fight to the death a year later, establishing a new temporary status quo and letting Cass's Batgirl title get back to the mostly stand alone stories, at least for a while. I'm sick as hell right now, so once again we're just picking out a few scenes to look at in more depth, but you know the drill, this is still mostly the original team, still ~mostly~ on their A-game, so yeah if you've never read it before go check it out.

So Bruce sneaks into David's house, again, this time trying to find insight into David's training techniques that might help Cassandra, and there's this little flashback sequence via David's proud papa family films (please forgive the more-extended-than-usual cut and paste):

Setting aside the comic-book unreality of the scene, It's important for a number of reasons. For one, it again contrasts Cass's two father figures, who are otherwise so often in parallel.

Yes, they both drive her towards isolated lives of violence and darkness, and away from everyday life in the light and normal human interactions. Yes, both love and care for her, but also see themselves echoed within her so strongly that they end up treating her more as extensions of themselves, as protege, partner, agent, or legacy, rather than as a person in her own right who should be allowed and encouraged to live her own life.

but Bruce has lines he won't cross, and David doesn't.

More than that, though, we get to see here something that Bruce can't.

Bruce sees David crossing his lines and snaps into vengeance mode, all black and white morality. "You weren't training her, you were just abusing her." But while shooting Cass was absolutely abuse, it was also training, and more importantly than that it was play. It was a game.

Look at that smile. Even in the middle of tremendous pain, Cass is having fun. She's playing a game with her dad, and winning, and her dad's going to be so proud of her for winning the game.

These are the sorts of extremes little Cass was not just willing but eager to go to in order to earn her father's approval, and Bruce is too distracted by his own righteous indignation at her abuse to register this dangerous and self destructive character trait - central to who Cass was even before she was consumed by guilt - or realize how her new life as Batgirl is feeding it.

Yes, David abused Cass in ways that Bruce never would, but rather than helping Cass recover from that abuse - instead of offering Cass the kind of unconditional parental love that would allow her to start living for herself instead of for a father-figures approval - Bruce is instead using Cass's abuse in furtherance of his own crusade.

And that's something that's only possible because Bruce refuses to acknowledge Cass's gleeful participation in her own past abuse. 'David abused her, but I never would. I'm not forcing her to join my crusade, I'm simply allowing her to do what she wants to do, and if what she wants is to be just like me, that's just because we're so much alike' - ignoring how her abusive upbringing influenced what Cass wants or how she behaves towards father figures.

...

Sadly, as with a lot of this early set up stuff, we don't ever really get a proper payoff to this. Creative teams change and characters are retconned and terrible editorial decisions are imposed and by the time any stability returns to Cass as a character not only is this intricate web of character connections gone, the structure it was built on also no longer exists.

.....

Anyway, Cass is also in this Cass comic, asking if Shiva can give her back her powers.

It's kind of a cheap cinema-sins ding style complaint, but... how exactly can Shiva give Cass back her body-reading ability? Especially so quickly and easily? Especially without any impact on the language centers of Cass's brain which used to be processing the body reading stuff and are now processing language? Like, there isn't even an arbitrary wizard here. This bit works on an emotional or story logic level I guess, but always felt kind of arbitrary. Especially how Cass was able to have both the body reading and normal speech after this, when they were so deliberately positioned as an either-or sort of thing before.

But whatever! We're not doing that anymore! And the looming death match that Cass expects to lose ties so closely to her core character motivations that I'm cool with it. But I talked about that stuff at length last time, no need to re-hash it here.

David Cain and Lady Shiva are problems for the future. For now this little stretch of serialized stories is over, and Cass can go back to episodic Batgirl adventures for a bit, only with more narration I guess.

#cassandra cain #batgirl #sception reads cassandra cain #sandra wu san #bruce wayne #david cain

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strangesickness · 4 months

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thinking about how much a death in the family sucks again (tbh idk why i always expect the comics that are deemed "important" to be good. because they aren't.)

long rant under the cut, cw for discussion of the anti-iranian racism in the comic

like we start out with bruce and jason in conflict and i want to see that play out! because we just saw how things went with dick and so i'm reading this thinking about how i want to know how bruce is going to handle things, did he learn from his mistakes? (no) will he and jason work things out? (even bigger no) and then we get the bit about jason's bio mom and thats interesting too and could be fun, jason going on a globe trotting mission to find his bio mom, i was personally hoping that jason would also come away with new understanding that just because catherine wasn't biologically related to him doesn't mean she wasn't family. that kind of thing you know? and like i already knew how this story ended so i knew this didn't happen but i think it could've been a really important moment in bruce and jason's relationship, bruce could've realized that he screwed up with jason the exact same way he screwed up with dick and found a way to make things better and jason could accept bruce as family after realizing that catherine didn't have to be related to him by blood to be his mom. that kind of thing. sickly sweet? maybe. but a guy can dream lol. but jason's death just feels? forced? like i know he was around pre crisis so its not like they introduced him then immediately killed him (although compared to dick his robin run is shockingly short pre & post crisis combined) but you don't give a guy a brand new origin story just to kill him off a year later. and i know it was down to a vote or whatever, but i'd be pretty damn inclined these days to vote to have bruce wayne killed off if DC asked, that doesn't mean they SHOULD.

and then theres the racism, which is abundant and took a boring comic with a poorly thought out plot thread into an unbearable slog of a read. i don't know how i never heard about the racism in a death in the family until after i read because it really is horribly pervasive. the entire thing is just "iranians are terrorists". i know i sure as hell never heard this until after i had read it so: if you guys didn't know! a death in the family is about the joker selling nukes to "iranian terrorists" and then he becomes an iranian ambassador for the UN because "their views align" or some other bs. the story doesn't work if it isn't racist, like it's genuinely tied into the fabric of the story. there's no a death in the family without racism.

also the racism makes the story completely nonsensical to anyone who isn't a racist asshole because it relies on the reader believing racist stereotypes, so if you just, don't believe those things, then the story makes no goddamn sense.

basically what i'm saying is a death in the family is disappointing and i DO NOT recommend reading it. even if you haven't read it, if you're in the fandom you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens anyways. just read the wiki page or something, you'll save yourself half an hour of racist bullshit.

#a death in the family #batman #jason todd #bruce wayne #robin #analysis #<- does this even count as analysis?#posts afflicted with a strange sickness #red's bat problem

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professional-termite · 7 months

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Give me your HM headcannons or else I will also eat your HM fanart

(your style is so squishy and warm like a freshly baked brownie or cookie)

you would EAT the termites art?? you would eat the termites art like cookie??? oh! oh! jail for anon!! jail for anon for 1000 years!!!

but seriously, i will GLADLY spew all my headcanons at you (buckle up anon!!) (also, thank you!!! this made my day :D)

kent:

first off, i like to think that his dad was an actual priest. idk which denomination (i think thats the word) he would be. basically, i headcanon that movie kent is queer (not labelled or anything. in my au hes gay tho) basically, his dad didnt accept him, and since kent was a basement dweller still living with his dad, his dad kicked him out, which is how kent ended up in new orleans working at a costume store and pretending to be a priest.

also, i headcanon that he was living out of his car during the movie, and thats why he was so excited to move into the mansion/do all the food runs. hes homeless.

also, he plays d&d and his character is 100% a half-elf cleric.

ben:

bisexual he/they. idk if he uses the label masc enby or demiboy, but...look at him. the most bisexual he/they to ever bisexual he/they.

also he has autism. thats canon because i say so.

gabbie:

i havent seen this one as much, but i also hc gabbie as bi. she just gives off the vibes idk.

also, i like to think that she used to play volleyball in high school. not for any particular reason, she just seems like the type who would be like "yeah im just a mom, lets play volleyball with my middle aged friends :)" and then she just absolutely MURDERS everyone

leota:

lesbian.

also, she charges $3 every time someone asks her a question post-canon. for kent, the price is $5. she calls it the idiot tax. she thinks kent is the biggest idiot to ever be stupid.

harriet:

LESBIAN.

also, she has, like, teenage-girl style posters of leota all over her room. i think, by extension, her celebrity crush would be jamie lee curtis (if she exists in this universe.)

also, i like to think that she would be a jennifer tilly simp (in homage to the original leota actress) and she would be a total chucky lore buff.

travis:

hes got the autistic swagger as well. once everyone gets used to him at school he ends up with a load of friends that think hes actually really cool. he gets to brag about having such a big family, and he tells "elaborate" stories about ghosts during class.

bruce:

elder gay. he helps kent come to terms with himself, and acts like the father-figure he needed. he's supportive whenever kent needs it, lightens the mood when the mood calls for it, and teases kent like hes a middle schooler whenever kent talks about who hes romantically interested in.

(i hope you dont mind that i didnt do any ghost hcs--i feel like not many hm blogs focus on the people from this movie! if you want to hear my ghost hcs, feel free to ask :D)

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theresawritesstuff · 10 months

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On my knees begging for a response letter from Lenny per your most recent prompt

p.s. Wanted to let you know how appreciated and admired your work is—Guess Who’s Coming to Yom Kippur is an all time favorite

Thank you so much! ❤️❤️❤️ I've had so much fun writing these crazy lovebirds. Guess Who's Coming to Yom Kippur was my first go at writing for the Maisel fandom and it has been so touching hearing how many people it's resonated with. I've loved writing it every step of the way. I think I originally came up with the vague idea while watching season 3? After I caught up on season 4 I finally decided to take the dive. And here we are! Just goes to show it's never to late to write the fic. It's becoming a series because I fell in love with the story and the more I write, the more I discover yet to tell.

And now, by popular demand, let's here from Lenny...

Dear Midge,

No gout here out west as far as I'm aware. It's a big state, so there's probably some poor schmuck stuck with it out there but the Bruce family abode remains unscathed.

It's nice to hear from you. I dig the pink stationary. Is it lightly scented? Or am I imagining things? Quite possible. I've been thinking about you too.

California is okay. Still adjusting to the amount of sunshine and phony smiles, still can't find a decent deli, but Kitty is here and she's great. That's my daughter's name, by the way. I don't know if your delicate headwear would fit over my ego bloated cranium but I'm sure she would love to add to her dress up collection. We've been raiding my mother's limited stash in the meantime.

There's no one else who's turned my head. I'm starting to think no one else ever could. It's like my nose became a compass that fateful rainy night we shared the back of that cop car, with you as my true north.

Perhaps that's how we always seem to find each other.

As much as I'm sure the neighbors would love the show, the streaking is unnecessary. You've always had my attention. I've been captivated by you from the very start. Since you saw through my bullshit and asked me point blank if I loved it.

If you simply must be naked, I am powerless to stop you. All I ask is a chance at a private audience.

I've often considered the calculation of time zones well into the night as well, if I'm being honest, but well… maybe we can revisit that another time.

I wouldn't mind seeing you behind Gordon's desk, but I'd much rather you get paid for it. Or have your own desk, better yet.

I'm proud of you for keeping at it. It's not an easy game, this comedy shit. And television is a whole other ball field. All the censors and meddling producers. Audiences across America to play to instead of the folks right in front of you. But I still believe you can do anything you set your mind to. Just keep looking for that spotlight. You'll know it when you see it.

As for the thank yous of your letter, it was always my pleasure. Lending a hand, an ear, a shoulder, the coat off your back… It's what you do for the ones you love.

You know…I've always been partial to blue but between that negligee and the shades of your eyes it's cemented its place as my favorite color. And the night at the Mayflower… I want you to know you were always worth the wait.

If you do ever find yourself with a ticket to the west coast, perhaps we could find ourselves in another someday.

I've still got the legal stuff, and now the kid stuff, and some of my other stuff…but I'm trying to figure it out. Be someone worthy of worshiping your show corset. Or the dentist corset. Do you have a corset reserved for air travel? I'd be interested to find out, if you'll let me.

I can't make you any promises. God knows you deserve so much more than I can offer. But a part of me holds out hope all the same, selfish as it may be.

Give Peluso my regards.

Yours. Always.

Lenny

#midge x lenny #midgelenny #tmmm fic #Follow up ficlet #Love letters

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jhirowolf · 7 months

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Bruce was out on another patrol, keeping it down low, just like the last couple of days....or maybe it has been weeks? Bruce couldn't tell at this point, the days and nights started to blend together.

He heard a women scream, and rushed in her dierction on instinct, even if he knew that it could've been on of Selinas traps, it still could've been someone in need, and Bruce wasn't gonna leave it up to chance.

When he arrived on the rooftop right above the origin of the scream, he saw a young woman held with her arms behind her back, two cuts on her abdomen. The hand that constricted her wrist was pure white, as was the rest of the giggling horror in front of Bruces eyes.

He jumped down in front of them. "Let her go, Joker." "But of course, Batsy!" He giggled more as he let go of the womans wrist, she bolted it down the alley and away from the two. Bruce wished it was one of Selinas traps. "What do you want?" Batman stood still, rigid and uncomfortable as Joker started slowly walking to the side. "Oh you know, the usual, homicide, terror, chaos, cover the WE building in ice cream, come up with new ways to traumatize a person and..." His non-shalant walk stopped as his eyes fell on Batmans figure. "Putting you back together."

"What?" Batman raised his eyebrow. "A little birdie told me you haven't been quite yourself, darling." He kept playing with his blade. "I mean... the violence is a tuesday, and your relationship with the cat was always deemed to fail." He let out another giggles, ones that sounded chocked down by him, like he was holding something back. "Hard for something to work out when they don't know you, that's why we were always so good together, even at our worst, we still gave our all to the other." "Shut it." Batman said with gritted teeth, Joker chuckled.

"But fighting your family? Now THAT'S what got my attention." Another group of giggles escaped his rosy red lips. "I MUST say, i nearly died LAUGHING when i heard that after all my attemps to BREAK you, to finaly SHOW you that you don't need them, that you're better alone...you did it ALL by YOURSELF." He burst out into laughter.

Batman had enough, he charged at Joker, grabbed him by his shoulders and pinned him againts the wall. "I said SHUT. UP." Bruce leaned, barring his teeth like an angry dog. Joker laughed some more. "By why? Why should i keep it quiet, Bats? Does the thruth hurt?" He nearly started another fit of giggles if Batman hadn't punched him in his gut. "And you still haven't heard the best part!" Jokers hands flew to Batmans face, cradling it as he stared into the white lenses. "About what you've done to your. Little. Baby boy....JASON." "SHUT UP!" Bruce punched him again, sending the laughing maniac to the ground.

Bruce stradled him and grabbed him by the neck. "You do not get to speak of him!" Joker laughed. "Oh you HYPOCRITE!" Suddenly a knife was in Bruces side. "You think I ruined his life?!" He pushed Bruce to roll over, before sitting in his lap, forearms idly resting on Batmans chest as he leaned in. "At least I had the GUTS to end him! At least I could finish the JOB! Because, sweetie, I just killed him, i didn't force him to live through broken bones, ruined spine, punchtured lungs and a concussion of his life. " He held in another laugh, propably at the thought of it, maybe at the memory of that day, or at the memory of the stolen autopsy report. "No, no, I gave our boy mercy!" Bruce grabbed Joker by the throat and sat up before forcing Joker back down and punching him. "MERCY?! YOU PUT HIM IN THE GRAVE!" He hit him again.

"AT LEAST I DIDN'T PUT HIM IN A WHEELCHAIR!" He laughed, so loudly the rest of Gotham might've heard, tears flooded his toxic green eyes as his body shook and his feet kicked the air. Bruce let go of his neck. "What?" He took a couple of steps back. "No, I stopped him from ruining his life even more than he was, I gave him the chance to live a normal life." After a moment Joker caught his breath and bearings. "Oh yes." Joker got on his knees. "NORMAL. Normal, exept for the joys of fighting, of the outside world, of the pleasure of human body, of being able to have a dog." His arms spread wide with glee. "Because living hidden away from strong emotions and...anything above the most mundane of tasks is SUCH a normal ways to live." He giggled again as he got up, Bruce was leaning againts a wall, trying to keep his breath in check.

"Admit it, doll, i might've killed him, but at least i didn't RUIN his life." "YOU KNOW THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Bruce let out in panic. Joker stopped. "What? Are you talking about his little red hood?" Joker laughed again, leaning his head back in the process. "I didn't do THAT! I wasn't the one to bring him back or gave him the resources for that, as much as I'd love to take credit for what ended up happening. That was out of my hands....THIS, thought? That was ALL you." Joker laughed as he slowly walked up to the now panicing Batman. "C'mon, sweetheart, admit it, admit that it wasn't ME or any other villian of yours, but YOU who made you do this." Joker walked up to Bruce and cradled his face again as he gently put him againts the wall and looked into his eyes with gentle care and passion. "Admit it, for me, Bats. That you ruined his life, that it was you who conviced you to cross the line, you who made your family hate you, that you're no better than us....please, Batman." He whispered as his thumb ran circles on Bruces cheek. "You know that I am right, that this isn't my doing, or Nygmas, or Crocs, or Cats, not Tetchs, just...yours." Bruce looked down in defeat. "I admit it." Joker smiled as he leaned his forehead on Bruces. "That's all i ever wanted to hear."

He let go of Bruce, who's knees and palms hit the ground. "I hate you, Bruce, I really do, this was supposed to be MY win, but you can't let me have even that, can you?" Joker was sad, dissapointed. He let out a sigh as he watches Bruce helplessly on the ground, blood staining his suit, all fight gone from his body. "Bye, my love." Joker put his hands in his pockets and walked away, no triumph in his soul, he didn't feel like a winner, even if the Batman was broken.

The world felt hazy to Bruce, but he didn't fight it, there was nothing to fight, with Alfred gone, his family hating him, Selina fighting him, there was noone that needed him, Bruce let go.

#dc #dc comics #batman #bruce wayne #batfamily #batfam #batman 138 #joker #gotham war #spoilers #this hit me and i was overtaken by a need #tw: death #tw: violence #tw: long post #tw: abuse #tw: character death

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dailycass-cain · 1 year

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How do you take a minority character in Cassandra Cain, who had an ongoing series that lasted over seventy issues, was part of the core cast at the time, downgrade them from an "A-list" (to me she was) hero to D level, and her importance gone? DC Comics found a way. Tonight let's talk about it.

(2022 me: I wrote these series of tweets back in 2020. Originally, I posted my original essay of this in five parts waaaay back in 2015. Here’s part 1).

Like many things, it wasn't just a singular major cut but several ones, and lots of smaller ones that ousted the character from said position, and probably ran the fandom for the character to other places.

The first big cut is THE story of Batman in the early 2000s, Hush. Many people's "go to" or favorite story for Batman universe. Why? because it features almost every single Bat-Family and major rogues at the time appeared in it. Save for Bane and-- Batgirl.

For Bane it's quite understandable, he was in a story at Gotham Knights at the time. So his story was "being played" out elsewhere. Cass however, the story is notorious for excluding her. I believe even to this day because of the lack of appearance is a key reason why we're here.

Everything "birthed" from Hush has ruled the Batman comics roost for years since it's publication. You might say even to this day, Batman comics cannot escape the shadow of the story or some of the bad characterization within it (2022 note: Oh how right I was back in 2020 when I wrote all of this. We’ve gotten yet another addition of this story, a new omnibus, published this year with a new five page story from the same creative team).

Key among them is this mythical level that the story puts Babs' time as Batgirl. It along with the Tommy and Jason portions are given Bruce's justification for wanting to kill the Joker in it.

There is this thing. This myth that Barbara was the greatest Batgirl ever because simply, she was the one who was in live-action. The one in Batman: The Animated Series. That she should still be Batgirl was played out by writers during this period.

As I said earlier today she was given this chance. Where as Cassandra never really has ever been given a chance save for cameos and some really bad video games. But even then, Tim was in those too? Yet how did he get a pass but Cass did not?

There also lies a rather confession from now former publisher at DC for his distain for legacy characters. How they "age" characters up. I believe this also pertains why Barbara is always Batgirl as well. Since it ages her and Bruce up.

.The irony is, we always get the Robins (save poor Stephanie) in media too. So it's rather-- hypocritical and kind of sexist really that all the boys get their time in the spotlight but the gals do not? Why is that? This myth for Babs as Batgirl and viewpoint on legacies already puts a great hinder on Cassandra as a character. You already have factors going against the character. But wait there's more.

There-in lies the second big cut. A great famous comic writer once told me on a forum, if he didn't like a character he'd just ignore them. Better ignore than write them badly. This sort of thing does make sense but-- in Cassandra's case for one writer it was taken to an extreme.

After War Games event in 2004 does anyone want to play a guess how many times Cassandra appeared in the mainline Batman comics to the end of her ongoing in 2009?

The answer isn't much, just a handful. Not to mention the love affair over returning Jason as well was all over the place. Jason this and Jason that. A fact that this was so metaly pointed out in Batgirl Vol. 2 #1.

There-in lies a revelation tonight I had. I always wondered why the writer of Batgirl Vol. 2 wrote Nightwing so awful in it. Then it hit me across the face tonight: the book's writer at the time. The thing from 2006 to even now there's been an editor/writer who kind of obviously doesn't like the character of Cassandra. In fact his own contribution to this happened in Nightwing as Batgirl Vol. 2 was ending. The whole "family" subplot throughout his entire Batman run.

There in lies the second major cut, the ending of Cassandra's ongoing. Why was it canceled? Not due to sales. Other comics that survived/relaunched into OYL were selling worse than Batgirl. No it was canceled to make room for a Batwoman ongoing.

A Batwoman ongoing (by Devin Grayson) that would never see the light of day. The inker of #73 confirmed this because I guess one female Bat comic was one too many for that day and age. Oh, the sexism was high at DC.

Of course, the third major cut came not too long after. Turning Cassandra into a "dragon lady" villain.

So you take everything fans loved and adored the character. And take it into the trash to give us the worst stereotypical character ever. Worse, is the aftermath following in Robin #152.

Why is it worse? Because it downplays Cassandra's importance in the family to now being a "sad troubled" girl. .....

Fans didn't take well to this all at all during the time period. Cue this article from Wizard #182 (which came out October 2006) when fans were ticked and higher ups threw the Robin writer under the bus at conventions.

And that would come in Titans East over in Teen Titans in early 2007 where we get this crazy retcon to explain it all.

With some extra padding in some oneshots of 52 to show, "Hey Cass did good things in the missing year. Things we'll never see." Aka devaluing her story unlike say Tim who we got to see the complete tale of him at the time.

Back to Titans East, throughout the story neither Tim/Dick help Cass in her problems they instead hinder her more after learning the truth. Thankfully for Tim that characterization would later be course corrected. Dick-- not so much.

So DC said they had "plans" for Cassandra. After East we were teased things in Black Canary mini in the summer of 2007 that Cass had feld from her sect of the League of Assasins.

And as I let you all know here. Well, we all know where Cassandra ended up, as a supporting character in Batman & the Outsiders.

But this in line also ties into DC Nation blurbs where we were teased in Batman & the Outsiders #3 we would be getting a new mini for Cass.

So interesting to note during this period as you know Chuck Dixon was writing Batman & the Outsiders. He really laid out his plans for both this and Robin on podcasts (and one issue of Robin slipped into solicitations).

When I personally attended the Wizardworld Chicago 2009, Dan DiDio said at the DC panel when the subject of why eventual writer for Batgirl Vol. 2, Adam Beechen was person writing this comic. DiDio answered by saying Beechen was the only creative at DC giving him pitches on Cass.

Turns out, DiDio lied as prior to that year in December 2008, Dixon went on the Word Balloon podcast and talked about a “filler” issue of Detective Comics that could include Cassandra Cain.

Of course, as we got said mini with one hand, on the other hand several Bat Family comics were winding down. Those included Robin, Nightwing, and Birds of Prey. And as #6 was closing things out so this was being teased in the final issue of Nightwing.

That is so not Cass, but Barbara as Batgirl kissing Dick in his current Nightwing costume. The heck? Well, at it turns out (as we later learn). Higher ups already were planning Cassandra's ousting from Batgirl even though they gave us a mini. So DC giveth and DC taketh away.

However, prelim hype around the book teased Cass would be Batgirl going in. Note the bulletin board on who was listed as Batgirl (courtesy of IGN, but here’s the Multiversity article on it).

Of course, DC didn’t know WHO was going to Batgirl even at the time this article was posted as they were debating all over the place at this point. Much so in fact it made it to another DC Nation (after Stephanie was chosen):

"2010 will have big plans for our favorite non-lethal assassin".

Yes, we did get Cass in 2010 but just in Red Robin #17. Such a "big plan" that was. A single appearance. Well, okay we did get the retcon on why Cass wasn't Batgirl any longer too. But there wasn't much at all.

So you have DC downplaying the character. And then you get Black Bat.

But as I said before a few days ago, any importance of Cassandra that was coming from the new Batman writer was short-lived as the New 52 rolled out fully on Babs back as Batgirl. Many got their wish (higher ups included) Babs was back as Batgirl. The "myth" was a reality again.

At the very least, Stephanie got one final adventure as Batgirl even if, plans were in place to make her Spoiler just in case her as Batgirl wasn't allowed.

What followed was an agonizing three years of DC downplaying the two characters completely. Why you ask? The easiest answer: jealousy and sexism. Look at how loyal we fans of the two characters are. What if that love was directed at them instead of Babs.

I guess you could say now "two" female Bats were okay, but FOUR?! FOUR iS SIMPLY OUTRAGOUS!!!!

Course the controversy would be a embargo of the two characters by DC. Embargo that hit Stephanie more with the online Smallville comic and Lil Gotham.

I'm also reminded the mindset of DC higher ups at the time period post Battle for the Cowl as we recently learned from the SDCC: Batgirls panel (2020): Higher Ups: "Cassandra leaves." Writer: "WHY?!" Higher Ups: "Cause she just does-- so your book can exist."

Suddenly this begins to explain Lady Shiva and the lack of Cassandra Cain in Batman: Hush now.

That's the cruel mindset DC higher ups had with Cassandra and eventually Stephanie. So when you say, not to give either character a chance. This is what people you're defending.

So you add ALL OF THAT, four years is quite a long time. A long time for fans to move on or just forget DC Comics. But we Cass/Steph fans persisted. Better we did get them in 2014 even if it was an alternate reality (and Gail's final issue).

BUT... Cass in the main universe? Yeah, Stephanie can be slotted in because she has the Spoiler identity to fall onto. But Cass? She was Batgirl. So what do you do when you have a Batgirl, but can't use Cass?

Simply you just create a new identity, Orphan. But by not making her Batgirl you take away three key things away from the character. #1 Who she's truly loyal toward.

#2 Who mentors her.

#3 Where she is in the Family order. By including Babs as the new "daughter" figure in Bruce's life. You take away Cassandra's. Why do you think a certain DC Direct statue with the family earns my ire anytime I see it? For that.

Babs is no daughter figure to Bruce, she's an equal. That's a downgrade to her role in the family. But it is rather curious two ongoings with Barbara and not a single appearance of Cass in them (so far). Makes you wonder?

So you take away Cassandra's importance in the family, you downgrade her identity, don't give her a bat symbol, take away her mentors. What does that leave you?

You wonder why. Why do I'd stick around? I mean honestly, there are probably really vocal Cass fans out there in this world still. One of whom did a retrospective multipart video earlier this year of Cass (and he comes to the EXACT same conclusions).

Because as I said quite recently, "What is the greatest lesson for Cass fans in Batman media given all the mess DC and Warner Bros. does in treating this character?

It took almost TEN YEARS to finally see Cass in her OG Batgirl suit earlier this year. Almost TEN YEARS to see a solo story which-- dammit was like the greatest gift to us. Like seriously to all those involved going thru all of this.

I really hope the creative team realizes just how special that graphic novel is to the fans. Like literally, it showed all the greatest things we love about the character. The fighting is just the added bonus. I bow and try not to cry at being so grateful to this creative team.

But this is the road we fans and the character of Cassandra Cain have to endure. So if you're wondering why we're ticked at the Gotham Knights video game (2022) not including her outright? This is our reason.

This is why I am still grateful for BoP movie. It may not have been the role I wanted to see of Cass as the damsel in distress, but goddammit we got so much Cass comic content this year because of it. JUST FOR THAT ALONE-- I'm grateful.

That's why if any person in media can hear me. Just give Cass a chance. A short. A main role in the video game. Heck, an episode. JUST GIVE CASSANDRA A CHANCE PLEASE! You might be surprised at what you get.

Just know that Cassandra will NEVER be a placeholder. She is Batgirl, and dammit she deserves that role and that role so BADLY. I know Stephanie is too.

Gods I love Stephanie too. But I just always hate that DC did that to both characters. Pitting their fans against one another. It guts me. Like the lowest thing for DC to do is pit these two close friends against one another.

That's why it kills me. Part of me YEARNS for a new Cass ongoing, but goddammit Stephanie got screwed too in this. So if both get ongoing with Babs I am okay with this. Because dammit these characters need love, not freaking hatred.

DC really does owe it to both characters and their fans this. THEY REALLY OWE THEM for the hell these characters had to endure because of idiotic higher-ups who had horrible agendas and wanted to push a fast buck.

So now you know how DC did it. How they took this character who was a major fixture in the Batman comics and downplayed her SOOOOOOO much with bad storytelling and shuffling her off to be a side character.

I'm mentally exhausted worn now. I just hope you take these lessons to heart. To learn this shady stuff that DC Comics did and turned an amazing character-- to something less. How fans want more from that character again.

Update July 2021: Gail Simone’s tweet (that she deleted soon after) on this nugget of how the character of Cass was changed due to studio higher ups.

Update September 2021:

....

Here I go again with an UPDATE. After all these years. Confirmation at last (even if they aren't mentioned). We all know WHICH characters by now Dan DiDio is talking about here.

(You can read the whole interview here.)

#cassandra cain #dc comics #the tragedy of cassandra cain

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alfredsolos · 1 year

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So most of you don't know this but for a long time, the main continuity had 2 Supermans. I will do my best to explain it as accurate as possible, but if you come across a mistake or incorrect info please let me know. This whole ordeal is very confusing.

So the story takes place in the New 52, where things are darker compared to the previous retcons and people trust the heroes less (With Wonder Woman killing Max Lord and because the writers wanted to make things more realistic). In this time period, Superman is dating Wonder Woman and he doesn't have a son.

The story begins with the news of Superman dying. He is dying of Kryptonite poisoning and him getting weaker and weaker due to his recent fights:

So, Clark goes out to give this news to his friends and family. He visits Lana Lang, Kara, Bruce and Lois. Along the way, Diana finds out of course and we see emotional panels between these characters.

But there is another problem. A new threat that identifies himself as Superman:

This guy proves to be very troublesome. He dresses up as Clark and goes to work at Daily Planet even though everyone clearly sees that this guy is not Clark Kent.

This pisses him off and he goes around to fuck things up, while Superman tries to stop him even though he is getting weaker by time and is slowly dying.

One night, the Fake Superman visits Lois and tells her a secret. About another Superman that has been living in their Earth for a long while without anyone knowing:

He takes Lois to their location and obviously Lois is shocked:

This version of Clark Kent has taken the name Clark White, along with his family. We also meet Jon Kent (Or Jonathan Samuel White).

Obviously, a fight breaks out between them. Because this Clark feels theatened due to the fact that his son is with them and is in danger.

But before that I want to talk about the reason why another Superman is living on this Earth.

So there was an event called Convergence. Personally, It's a bad run that is all over the place. But basically, heroes from different Earths come together to stop a threat.

As expected, they beat the villain and Brainiac offers the heroes a prize. Everyone can go to any Earth they want and continue their life. Some go to their original Earth, some don't:

Clark, Lois and baby Jon go back to the first crisis (Which is the New 52) to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse and try to prevent bad things from happening.

I will call this Clark Pre New 52 Superman, and the one who dates Wonder Woman New 52 Superman.

Anyways, since there couldn't be 2 Supermans at the same time, Pre New 52 Superman takes care of things behind the scene.

So whenever New 52 Superman goes to space and stuff, he looks after Earth.

So, coming back to our main story, New 52 Superman and Pre New 52 Superman meet and team up to beat the Fake Superman.

New 52 Superman knows he is about to die, so he punches Pre New 52 Superman back to Earth and basically sacrifices himself to save the Earth.

After he beats the Fake Superman, he starts falling down to Earth, but before he can crash Pre New 52 Superman saves him.

This doesn't change anything, as he dies later on from kryptonite poisoning:

After this whole ordeal, things happen and the New 52 Lois Lane dies too. So what happens next is that, the Pre New 52 Superfamily take the place of the New 52 versions of themselves.

But this was again retconned in Son Of Kal El, and it was made it out to be that Clark and Lois were together all along and she gives birth to Jon in the Fortress of Solitude.

So the three of them being from Pre New 52 was erased and they were written as being the original Superfamily.

I know this is very confusing (because it is to me, too) but I think it's a very interesting and fun concept to play with.

(Again feel free to correct any mistake or add some details of your own to this post.)

#dc comics #batman #wonder woman #bruce wayne #clark kent #kara zor el #diana prince #superman #supergirl #lois lane #lana lang #superboy #jon kent #jonathan kent #brainiac

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bloustorm · 1 year

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DC- Actor Au

[I'm just going to post what I wrote in this draft totally unedited and all so enjoy the mess, I have some more ideas and stuff so feel free to like ask me (pretty pls)]

Jason dying wasn't actually planned in the show but then Jasons actor got sick (idk cancer?) and they didn't want to recast someone to replace him (as in his role) they had a few ideas as to how to write jason out of the plot but it ended up being a poll (jason's actor wanted the fans to decide) most didn't know it was actually serious it all played out like it did here so he got voted off to die, then through a lot of arguments miscommunication etc it ended up being that gruesome and messy death, maybe the plot line with his mother wasn't supposed to happen idk yet

anyways years later Jasons actor managed to beat his illness and with the help of a lot of physical therapy regained strength and went back into the actor business, it actually took a bit before the agents reached out to him again because they wanted to give him time to get used to acting again and make sure he would be up for the standard, but he had been a very beloved choice and the writers wanted to get him back into play, especially because it meant they could actually bring back the ideas they had to shelf

the fact that jasons actor was back on set got leaked but then the whole thing with clayface happened so most assumed that was it, especially because afterwards the fact that he was still on set was way more guarded and this time it was ensured there would be no leaks again

jason was always meant to grow apart from the family and lean into darker morals and do a lot of soul searching and find his own way, it wasn't meant to be as dramatic as it later turned out more family drama in moderation that the big blow up it was

he was always supposed to come in contact with talia and the league but in a different way (perhaps he and damian should have had a bonding arc? without revealing his relations to bruce at the moment?)

Tim had actually been a detail that was carefully hidden in the background and some fans theorized that he would become important later, originally he was supposed to have an arc with dick and jason that would then bring him into the fold so he could take over Robin when Jason branches out as his own hero (and gets his solo arc/ series that never happened in that way) but with Jason dying it had to be speed up and that's why the way he joined is kind of a lot iffy (he was never meant to be someone who made it his mission to fix batman, batman was never supposed to become that dark)

Maybe Cass had been supposed to be a silent assassin who spoke League Dialect and nothing else? but while casting different actors and stunt doubles for the role the director fell in love with the grace that Cass actor put out on a normal level and decided to hire here, the problem was that she was mute after an accident in the industry injured her horrible 8but undergoing voice therapie maybe?), after a long debate they decided to change cass background a little bit and turn her character completely silent to match and not bother with voice overs but for really little moments (unless we say cass actor gets a little bit better with speaking and uses it)

#blou talks #actor au #blou writes #dc #jason todd #tim drake #cassandra cain #idk what to tag this as so i won't

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ijuststareatstuffhereok89 · 2 years

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Nights at the Circus: Part XXI

Loki’s heat is driving you crazy, but when Steve returns from his time away with nothing but daggers for you both, and tensions almost instantly re-ignite, you have more important things to think about: like making sure you and Loki don’t inadvertently rip The Avengers apart with your relationship!

SERIES MASTERLIST

Content Warning: fighting Word Count: 3k

“So, do you really want kids one day?”

Hours later, you and Loki had just finished round two, and had gone back to lying in one another’s arms, looking up at the ceiling. He was playing mindlessly with your hair, face, and the strap of your nightie, while you ran fingers up and down his torso, still cool from his Jotun skin receding, but not emitting steam when your warm skin made contact.

“Yes,” he admitted with little hesitation. “I’ve always aspired to having a large family with a lot of children. But I hardly think we would be capable of having any.”

“We? Why not?” you asked, turning over to face him directly.

“Because, my dear, I know it’s easy to forget: but we aren’t of the same species,” he reminded you. “As much as I would love to perform this breeding ritual in earnest, it will probably never work. Besides, I hardly think the body of a delicate mortal could withstand an Asgardian OR a Jotun pregnancy.”

“Thor courted a Midgardian,” you added. “If it wasn’t possible, perhaps instinct wouldn’t be guiding you Asgardians to our beds?”

Loki sighed and thought on this a moment. “Thor and that girl…I can’t really say what’s happening between them. Maybe, but for as long as I’m in this sex-starved heat cycle, it won’t matter anyway.”

“How long will it last?” you asked.

“A week or more,” he answered, combing his long, nimble fingers through your warm hair, which faintly sparkled with ember as you basked in afterglow. “Sometimes they can endure for the better part of a month. The good news is, they only come about every so often, more than a Midgardian year apart at a time.”

You sighed with sadness. “How is that good news? I could let you do this to me all day.”

Loki chuckled. “You desperate little cockslut,” he whispered flirtatiously. “Is there any time or any place you wouldn’t open your legs for me to pleasure you?”

Giggling you suggested, “The hood of Steve’s car?”

“Ha!”

After a few moments of serene quiet just enjoying being in one another’s presence, your mind wandered away to something else: to what Wanda suggested before, that your ability had a specific origin, and that she knew what it was.

“Loki? Wanda approached me earlier,” you said softly, changing the direction of the conversation.

Loki was silent a moment. “She won’t tell me what her inkling is, if that’s what you’re trying to bring up.”

“She asked about my age and seemed surprised,” you added. “Like, do I look OLDER or YOUNGER than 28?” You shot up suddenly, running your hands along your face and body, as if checking for wrinkles.

Loki smiled. “I don’t believe she was trying to insult you,” he insisted, gently running a hand up and down your exposed back. “Just gently prodding for clues before promising a lead, perhaps.”

You grunted. “Either way, she’s being quite cryptic about it. She wants to me to arrange for her brother’s release first.”

“It shouldn’t be that difficult,” Loki suggested. “I know what Bruce is coming up with, and it should be ready in a few days.”

“What will be ready?” you asked.

“A sort of medication to temper his lightning metabolism,” he answered. “Honestly, very little if any intervention from you may be required. Last I heard, the injection was almost ready.”

You whined a little. “We’re drugging him, then? Against his will?”

Loki sat up and wrapped his strong, toned arms around your torso, just below your breasts. “I know, and I agree with you,” he said solemnly. “But they force our hands, and by ‘they’ I mean S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“There must be some human rights violations going on here,” you said quietly.

Loki gently began laying kisses on your bare neck and shoulder, his skin going blue again. “Oh, certainly, love, but remember me,” he whispered. “The entire world looks at me through a paranoid lens, and I’m fully subdued.”

“You use your seidr to remove my panties all the time,” you laughed, turning to look over your shoulder at him. “You aren’t subdued at ALL, genius.”

He laughed and went back to fiddling carelessly with your hair from behind. “Touché.”

You sat in silence another moment. “When do you think Steve will be back?” you finally asked, breaking the silence.

“Hard to say, but duty calls him like a nuisance mother-in-law. He won’t be away long.”

You shook your head. “I’m not worried about how long he’ll be away. He left in such a huff…I’m more concerned with how he will treat us when he returns.”

Sighing a moment in thought, Loki slowly ran a cool hand over a breast, gently rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. That touch in and of itself was enough to bring the floodwaters back to your cunt. “Let’s not worry about him now. I doubt there will be anything to worry about. Now, my pet, is it just me or is my touch making your writhe with need again?”

-------------------------------------------------------

You didn’t have much time to wait and worry about how Steve was going to treat you upon his return. Three days later, he arrived back at the Tower with a duffle and a desperate need for a shave and a hair trim. You happened to be relaxing in the library with a book when he walked in and looked around, as if needing to find someone.

“Oh, you’re back!” you’d cried, hoping the friendly tone would let his guard down a bit.

No such luck. He only sent a ‘mmhmm’ your way before leaving again, looking almost disgusted to see you. Hey, wasn’t the point of your leave to calm your hot head, Soldier Boy? you thought, disappointed that even now, he seemed to have the social maturity of a teenager.

Later that day, you realized it had been a few since you’d practiced with your own magic, and you chose to retreat to your gym to let off some steam. Feeling a bit angry, you decided Rammestein would pump you up in the way you needed, putting Reise, Reise into the sound system and letting it deafen you.

You hit every target with ease, now that you were getting used to using your gift for something other than theatrics. It was amazing how in two months, letting yourself have free(ish) reign over your flames had improved not only your accuracy, but your intensity. You threw fireballs the size of softballs all over the place, grateful that Tony Stark knew how to fireproof a room.

Will learning my history really unlock more achievements? you asked internally, laughing at how much you were making your powers sound like a video game stat. Why does Loki think so? Can my flames get hotter? Can I shoot them further? Can I turn myself into a human nuke or something. Because that would be damn awesome.

Lost in thought for a moment too long, you weren’t initially conscious of Steve’s presence entering the gym. Only when you saw his shadow walking towards yours did you turn around.

“Could you turn that garbage off?” he barked, raising his voice above the metal sound.

You put your hands on your hips in a defiant stance. “I could turn it DOWN…if you said please.”

“I can hear it from downstairs, and it sounds like a satanic ritual being played backwards,” Steve scoffed. “I can’t think!”

“They’re one of my favorites,” you replied, quickly going to the stereo remote and flipping the music off, leaving a ring in your ears. “You could have just asked instead of insulting my tastes.”

“Yeah? Well, your tastes leave a little to be desired.”

You took a step back and looked at Steve a moment, shocked by his rough attitude. “This from the man who wants to lose his virginity to The Andrews Sisters’ Christmas album, I’m guessing.”

Steve gritted his perfect teeth. “Don’t you go there—”

“—I thought you were going to come back and be over this,” you said, disappointed. “I really did think more of you, you know. I may have even looked up to you! And now because I chose to ride someone else’s dick instead of yours, I’m suddenly not worth your respect?!”

“You knew how I felt about you!”

You looked him dead in the eye, and you felt your skin burn hot as your hair ignited as it so often did when your emotions heightened. “And why is the fact that I fell for someone else my fault? Don’t you think if those kinds of feelings were in our control, YOU’D be able to get over me??”

“Look, Y/N, I’m sick of this as much as you are,” Steve growled. “But seeing you tramp around with Laufeyson—”

“—what about Laufeyson?”

Loki appeared in the doorway, and the three of you suddenly found yourselves in a very familiar scenario once again…

“Oh great,” Steve mumbled.

“Don’t let me hear you talk about my lover in such a disrespectful manner ever again,” he threatened, moving in with bold confidence. “Now that we are bound, I will not be afraid to defend her physically if need be.”

“Loki,” you whined. “Please don’t add fuel!”

Loki turned to you. “Darling,” he said, almost too sweetly, as he purposefully nudged Roger’s shoulder going past him, sweeping you up into his arms and kissing you so strongly on the mouth you thought your lips wouldn’t be able to keep up. “You’re mine now,” he hissed, looking at Steve a minute. “I am your devoted bodyguard if you want me to be.”

“Thank you,” you replied. “But what I WANT right now is for everyone to cool it!”

“But, Firebird—”

“—do NOT Firebird me right now, Loki,” you warned, your tone quickly rising with authority so much that even he had to step back and look down submissively. “Now, goddamn you both and this Days of Our Lives love triangle shit!” you expressed. “Even after we go public and you go off to sort it out in your head,” you pointed to each of them as you call them out on their bullshit. “This melodramatic arguing continues! Well, I’ve had about enough of it from ALL SIDES!”

You went to leave the gym before both men called out for you in tandem: “Y/N!”

You turned back. “Look, we’re going to settle this forever, and we’re going to do it MY way!”

Steve bit his lip in worry. “And how is that?”

“I…I don’t know yet!” you whined, turning away again and leaving the two alphas in the dust, silent and stunned at your sudden turnabout of mood.

----------------------------------------------------------------

“Bruce, Natasha, it’s gotten so out of hand!” you whined in the kitchen, standing by the coffee pot as it dripped that blessed tonic to bring your mind back into your skull (and, admittedly, protecting it from Bruce’s horrendous lack of brewing ability). “I thought Steve would come back a changed man and leave Loki and I alone!”

Natasha shook her head as she ran a mindless finger around the rim of her empty mug. “I thought so too. Steve is usually so collected.”

“I didn’t think falling in love would do this to everyone,” you admittedly, your tone softening. Nat bit her lip and briefly looked over at Bruce.

“Well, maybe not falling in love, per se, but falling for the God of Mischief and Lies, former would-be-genocidal maniac probably did a number on his psyche,” Bruce suggested. “To someone with the hero complex that The Captain has, it’s probably like watching a girl he likes go off with Benito Mussolini.”

You shook your head. “My choice had literally nothing to do with him,” you answered. “Why can’t he just be an adult and get over it?”

Natasha laughed. “Asking any of us to get over any of your problems is a huge undertaking.”

“Maybe we should have group therapy where we all sit in a circle and a shrink tells us we all want to fuck our fathers,” you sighed, your joke extracting a small smile from Bruce.

The coffee pot rang out that it was finished, and you didn’t bother waiting an extra moment to grab the pot and pour your mug full. “Anyone else for Bones’ S’Morey Time? It’s my favorite,” you asked with all the sincerity of a commercial announcer.

Natasha smiled and held out her cup for you to fill, which you did. You took a second to sip at the hot liquid, the taste filling your mouth with bitter happiness. “That’s tasty,” Nat agreed. “We’ll have to stock up.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” Bruce mused.

“Group therapy with a Freudian doc? Or stocking up on small-batch flavored coffee?” you asked, quickly shaking your head. “It was a joke, Bruce!”

Bruce smiled sheepishly. “No! No! No! I meant…mediation.”

“Mediation? With Loki??” you asked skeptically.

“Yeah, why not?” Bruce replied. “Sometimes you need a third party…or fourth, I suppose…to sort everything out. I’m pretty sure stuff like this happens in offices every day around the world.”

You thought a moment about it. “Again, I repeat: with Loki? Isn’t mediation, like, a last resort type of scenario for a warlord like him?”

Nat frowned. “By now, you know more about him than any of us, so you tell me how he’d do with it.”

You reflected and realized that maybe Loki WOULD be on board for mediation, if he was so bent on making you happy now that your relationship was signed, sealed, and delivered. Maybe he’d see how it would put your mind at ease, ease the tensions in the three-way relationship you had with these two miserable alphas.

“It may not be a bad idea,” you finally admitted. “But how do we go about doing this?”

“I can mediate you,” Bruce offered. “I’m kind of an outside player in this whole thing, and all I want is for people to stop yelling at each other.”

Nat chuckled. “We all feel that way, but I agree, Bruce, you should do it.”

You quickly interjected. “Um, we’re asking the guy who literally turns into a big green punching machine when he stresses out to keep Loki and Steve from ripping each other’s faces off? Pardon the skepticism, but…”

Bruce shrugged. “She has a point.”

“Then I will be there as well,” Natasha volunteered. “I know how to handle the Big Guy.” She looked at Bruce with a wink, which made hm look away. You swore you could see a little blush rising in his cheeks.

You smiled and nodded a silent thanks. Having Natasha there would not only ensure that the inevitable squabbling wouldn’t coax out The Hulk, but would also mean you wouldn’t be the only woman in the room, which gave you much relief. Amidst all of the happening you found yourself in the middle of, once in a while it really stood out that you were one of only two (now, three) female Avengers amongst the dudes. It didn’t help you when you felt lost in between the cracks of everything going on.

“Okay, let’s do it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

--------------------------------------------------------

Loki slowly walked towards the conference room, still hesitant about being out while still under his Jotun sex cycle, but he was able to suppress the urges (and the blue skin) for the sake of the note he’d received from you in the afternoon, having slipped it under his door:

Loki Darling,

Please meet Steve and I in the conference room at nine tonight. We’re settling this once and for all, okay? I’m getting tired of it. Please be on time and please BEHAVE YOURSELF until then!

Your beloved Firebird

“I’m proud of you, Bird,” Loki muttered to himself, as if you were nearby and could hear him. He was impressed at the initiative you were taking to settle this whole debacle and it was when he saw how stressed you were becoming just standing in the presence of himself as well as that bloated backyard barbecue of a man, Rogers.

He wanted nothing but your happiness, and he knew he felt more confident than Steve walking into this meeting, having the upper hand, but Loki was a self-aware being, he knew of his own potential to say the wrong thing once in a while.

“Please don’t forget that I am yours and you are mine,” he prayed, again, wishing you could hear him as he went downstairs for the final leg of the journey to the conference room.

Rogers, of course, was walking from the other direction, crossing paths with Loki just in front of the door to the conference room. He also had a note in his hand, which Loki was sure didn’t contain quite the same language.

“Laufeyson.”

“Rogers.”

“Am I to assume you’re only here to impress your girl?” Rogers asked bitterly.

Loki knitted his eyebrows. “Am I to assume you’re only here to win her from me?”

Steve looked defensive and took a step back. “You know my feelings for her are just as strong as yours.”

Your boyfriend shook his head. “No, I love her. Unlike you. I’ve been listening to her heart as well as her loud, low moans for my body. I haven’t just been putting my cock in her sweet, juicy pussy every night, you know!”

Rogers regained his composure in spite of Loki’s taunt. “You disgusting, poor excuse for a man!”

“Ah, but that’s your next mistake, Rogers,” Loki replied. “I am not a man. I am a god. You somehow expect both too much and too little from me.”

The door suddenly opened, Natasha standing on the threshold. “You two had better shut up and get in here, before she sets the whole floor on fire. We all can hear you.”

Nat opened the door wide enough for the pair of fighting figures to walk in, where you stood with Bruce, dressed up and looking every bit the role of the mediator (it boosted your confidence to dress like the part, even if you were nervous as hell underneath it all).

“Boys, welcome to the summit,” you said calmly. “Please, have a seat, and let the fun begin.”

——————————————————————

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