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athenadione · 3 years

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pizza and feverish confessions

No one:

Me: DID SOMEONE SAY WHUMP

Okay so it’s only light whump, with an emphasis on comfort. Will I go to the grave believing that Damian is a big softie when it comes to sick Raven? Absolutely.

Words: 3,909

Rated: G it’s all appropriate... this time ;)

Pairing: DamiRae

Click Here to read on A03

It starts out with a warm, fuzzy feeling in the back of her head. A little dizzying, but not enough to disrupt her equilibrium, so she brushes the feeling aside and chalks it up to a flare of her empathy. Throwing up a few mental shields to keep the plethora of auras at bay, she continues walking down the street with the rest of her teammates, nearing Pizza Corner.

A popular hotspot for locals, they have to request seating ahead of time so that the employees can prepare for a visit from the Titans. It’s always a daunting task to go out in public. The employees have to barricade a spot near the back of the restaurant for them to eat in peace, and constantly combat the flow of customers that walk in all for the chance to meet them. Obviously, they don’t do it often. The sheer amount of work it takes for them to dine-in never takes less than an hour. But today Gar insisted, and Kori can be a sucker for cute, green kittens; So naturally, they made a reservation.

The restaurant is already buzzing with activity by the time they turn the corner, still about a block away. Hosts and waitresses are shuffling people out and the crowd is growing considerably, all looking for a chance to get an autograph or picture with a Titan. They’re used to all the chanting and the yelling, but today it bothers her a bit. Already she can feel a tension headache blooming just behind her eyes, and she resists the urge to rub at her temples with her fingers. Maybe she stayed up reading too late last night.

She says nothing about her ailment and continues walking, appearing unaffected to everyone that doesn’t know what to look for in her face- a light grimace tugging at the corners of her mouth, and eyes that flutter shut a moment longer than necessary.

A few employees jog out to escort them the rest of the way, and Kori thanks them warmly, resting a hand on one of the men’s shoulders. The way the man looks back at Kori can make any woman mad with envy. Complete, undivided attention and adoration. Really, she can imagine literal red hearts leaping outwards from the pupils of his eyes accompanied by the loud sound of an ahooga horn. It nearly makes her snort, but instead she arches a delicate brow. With a reminder to herself to watch less Cartoon Network, she allows herself to be ushered into the building by another employee.

When she feels the brush of a well defined chest against the length of her arm after stepping inside it takes her a moment to realize it’s Damian. He must have stayed close behind her from the way he’s angled his body, shielding her from view. She remembers a time when his body wouldn’t even be able to take up half the space of the door. Now, at twenty two, he can easily provide coverage from the crowd- which she’s certainly grateful for. One would think after nearly a decade of superhero experience she’d be used to the publicity. Reluctantly, she admits that she’ll probably always be a little uneasy when it comes to large crowds.

“Beast Boy, stop flirting and get in here!” Jaime is seen tugging on the Changeling’s arm, practically dragging him in the diner. Gar comes begrudgingly with promises to the horde of females surrounding him to come back later for pictures. The foray of giggles that is heard a few seconds after leads Raven to believe that he’s said something else that’s borderline inappropriate, and from Damian’s eye roll she knows that he heard exactly what it was.

“Come on Beetle, I was this close to getting that blonde chick’s phone number!” Gar laments, rather dramatically Raven thinks, and continues his protests all the way to the door.

“Hurry up you two, we’re ready to be seated.” Kori says, shooting Gar a glance, the warning to behave clear in her eyes. Raven admits that she’s impressed when Gar doesn’t immediately shrink back like he used to.

“Sorry Star.” He mumbles, letting Jaime pull him past both her and Damian to follow behind Kori. Raven watches them a moment, willing the dull throb in her head to ebb, but it doesn’t cease. A light frown crosses her features when she realizes that she’ll likely need to meditate an extra hour today for the pain to subside. And perhaps take a few ibuprofen.

Behind her, Damian steps around her and lowers his gaze to meet her eyes. “Raven, are you okay?” He asks, touching her arm lightly. “You have a headache?”

Raven blinks, the only evidence of her surprise that Damian had been able to read her so well. But then she remembers that they’ve been teammates for years, and of course he would be able to tell, just as she can tell that the lilt in his tone is concern, not annoyance.

“Yeah.” She breathes and closes her eyes again. “I’m okay, I just need to meditate when we get back to the tower.”

When she opens her eyes again she sees him press his lips together and narrow his eyes like he doesn’t believe her and he’s definitely going to argue with her...but to her relief he says nothing, just gestures to the large booth where the others are already seated.

“Come on, the sooner we eat the sooner we can leave.”

She nods lightly, aware of how the movement heightens the pain of her headache, and turns to walk to where Kori is waving for them. Then Damian places a hand to her lower back and begins to guide her through the clearest pathway to the booth, unaware of the light blush heating her cheeks. Even after all this time she still hasn't gotten the courage to admit to herself what the pang in her chest is when he does little things like that.

Shoving back emotions that she refuses to interpret, she focuses her attention on the booth ahead of them, giving Kori a shrug when she sends her a curious look.

“Man they always have the best veggie pizzas. I wish I could eat here everyday.” Gar states to no one in particular. Jaime takes offense, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “How can anyone come here and eat vegetarian pizza? That should be considered felonious.”

“For once, I’d have to agree with Beast Boy.” Damian tells them both, stepping up to the booth first, then he reaches out with an open hand for her to take it. His hand is cool, contradicting the heat that she’s feeling from her headache. He gestures for her to step into the booth first and she scoots beside Jaime. Then he follows behind, effectively closing her in.

“Are you serious? Did everyone hear that?” Gar’s eyes widen in excitement, and he jumps in his seat, nearly sloshing his drink. “I want this in writing.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Damian quips back, eyes scanning the menu. The pout that Gar sends him makes Raven smile, mildly amused at the way his canines protrude over his upper lip.

Any plea that may have come from Gar’s mouth is silenced when the wait staff swoop in to get their orders. As quickly as they left, they come back with her and Damian’s drinks, and they are already set to make their pizza. Fast and succinct, the waist staff pride themselves on their service, and they deserve a considerable tip for the effort they’ve already given to allow them all to eat here. She makes a mental note to mention that to Kori when there’s a light itching in the back of her throat, and she takes a few sips of her water to combat it.

Conversations between her teammates continue, and Raven’s content to remain silent and listen to their banter, leaning back into the cool upholstery of the booth. The haziness in her mind grows, accompanied by a lightheadedness that makes her breathe deep, repeating her mantra to focus. In one corner, she finds a tear in the mahogany leather. Eyes beginning to glaze over, the longer she stares at it, the more black dots begin to swim along her vision.

At some point she vaguely recognizes Dick’s voice across the restaurant, joining them in his Nightwing suit. The joy she feels bubbling from Kori’s aura is enough to bring her back to the present, vision now clear, and she sees Dick slide in beside the Tamaranean. Everyone shifts to make room and Raven’s thigh brushes Damian’s when it’s her turn to scoot over.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” Dick asks the entirety of the table. There’s a series of replies, each ranging from a curt “Fine,” to “I’d be better if I had my pizza right about now,” to a bemoaned “Thanks a lot Nightwing! It was already hard enough getting phone numbers with Robin around, now it’ll be impossible!”

Raven just nods in greeting, knowing that Dick won’t consider her silence as rude. Something she’s thankful for. Dick takes it all in stride as he always does, and he easily fits in with their group dynamic, bantering back and forth with Gar and Jaime all the while shooting the occasional tease to Kori. He even manages to make Damian smile once or twice- a considerable feat to accomplish.

Eventually they all settle down again and her eyes begin to feel bleary once more. This time a light shiver follows all the way up her spine, and she barely contains the shudder that threatens to wrack through her body. It does cause her to lightly brush against Damian’s thigh again though, and she’s very aware of his keen, inquiring eyes on her. Looking up, she sees the question in his gaze.

And she wants to put the concern she feels in his aura at ease, but at this point the ache in her head has pretty much developed into a migraine, and any jarring movement sends her head spinning, so she just gives him a small smile, if a bit forced. And as much as she’d rather go home and lay down in the dark, everyone’s having a good time, and they don’t get to go on public outings often together. She doesn’t want to ruin it by cutting their trip short. Besides, she’s been through much worse.

Even so, when their pizza finally arrives Raven only picks at hers, taking a few small bites for show, but her migraine is starting to make her feel nauseous, and the itch in her throat is scratchy, making it uncomfortable to swallow.

After a while, a heat begins to sizzle over her skin even as she’s bundled in her thickest cloak. Beside her, Jaime is arguing with Gar over which pizza is the best on the menu. It escalates to a point where Gar begins to point out how many slices of each kind of pizza everyone’s been eating until he gets to her own plate.

“What’s wrong Rae, you don’t like your pizza? You love pepperoni.” Gar pipes up from across the table, a piece of veggie pizza in one hand and a crumpled napkin in another. His brows are drawn together in disapproval when she follows his eyes to her plate. Only one slice of the two that she had taken from the pepperoni and cheese pie in the middle of the table is half eaten.

Aware of everyone’s eyes on her, she feigns nonchalance as she fights back another shiver. “Yeah, I do. It’s good.” She swallows, then takes another sip of her water to moisten her throat, looking back down at her plate. “I guess I just don’t have much of an appetite today.”

Beside her, Damian narrows his eyes and turns in the booth to observe her blatantly, ignoring Dick and Kori’s curious glances. Feeling a bit self-conscious under his intense stare, Raven wraps her fingers inside her cloak, pulling it tighter around her body. His eyes sweep her figure pensively, then rest back onto her face, taking in the glazed expression on her face.

After a few more moments he crosses his arms and gives her a reprimanding glare. “You’re getting sick.” He deadpans.

Immediately words of denial bubble up her throat, still conscious of everyone’s attention. “I am not. I’m fine.” She says, and as punishment the pain in her headache blossoms tenfold right at the base of her skull.

Despite the clouding in her mind she can still feel the brush of Damian’s aura, a tinge of both worry and frustration lapping at her empathy. “Tch. You’re a horrible liar and this is ridiculous.” He vaguely motions at the table they’re sitting at. “You shouldn’t be forcing yourself through lunch when you’re feeling unwell.”

The others voice similar echoes of concern with promises that she shouldn’t feel guilty for staying, and Raven sighs because this is what she has been trying to avoid. She waves off their concerns. “I’m okay, really. Let’s just enjoy the rest of lunch okay? I’m fine.” She repeats.

“I think we’re all ready to go back anyway, right guys?” Kori asks before Damian can argue with her further, looking at Jaime and Gar. Together they nod and begin to shuffle as one when Kori and Dick step out- Dick leaving the group entirely with the check in his hand.

Guilt swells in Raven’s chest, knowing how much the team had looked forward to being together on a relatively calm day like this, which is so very rare. “Wait, Star.” She winces as the raspiness grows in her voice. “You said you wanted to go to the mall first, we still have plenty of time.” Kori’s been wanting to go for weeks now.

Scooting out of the booth to follow her teammates takes more effort than she’d like to admit, but Damian hovers close by, taking her elbow and helping her step down. His gloved hand around her arm is much colder this time, causing a shudder that she can’t contain anymore.

Standing is not a good idea, Raven thinks. Her legs wobble and she locks her knees to stop them from shaking, and gods why is it suddenly so hot in here? She completely misses the first half of Kori’s response.

“...and besides, the dress I want to buy will still be there the next time I go.”

The world tilts on its axis, or rather Raven tilts, taking the world with her when she takes a step. The sudden lightheadedness she feels is so overwhelming she doesn’t even notice that Damian still hasn’t let go of her arm.

Someone within the vicinity of her incapacitated hearing begins to speak. Is it Gar? His voice sounds so far away now and her movements feel sluggish. There’s a light ringing in her ears that increases in tune with the pounding of her head, and through it all she feels that she’s broken out in a light sweat.

“Raven?” She looks through bleary eyes to see Damian’s face contorted with alarm. It makes her want to reach out and cup his face because he’s normally so stoic, and the worry creases above his brows don’t suit him at all. What would he do if she reached up on her tip-toes to kiss them until they receded?

She never gets the chance to find out, because the black specks dancing at the edge of her peripherals fill her vision all too quickly, and before she’s able to take another step forward her knees buckle, falling into Damian’s arms as swiftly as she falls into unconsciousness.

“Oh my god, Raven!”

She’s not fully conscious when she catches hints of low whispers near her, nearly drowned out by the beep of a machine next to her ears. Groaning softly, her senses are overcome with the aching in her leg muscles, and how hot her skin feels against the sheets she’s tucked underneath. A shiver wracks her body and she involuntarily curls into herself on the bed she’s in. Cords follow her body, attached to the pulse oximeter that she briefly notices is on her finger, along with an I.V. in her arm.

Faintly, she hears the sound of the t.v. playing in the background. She thinks it’s Scooby Doo. Either someone had turned it on for her when she woke, or Gar’s been in this room recently. Nonetheless, it’s enough to make her realize with mild amusement that she reminded herself to watch less Cartoon Network, not more.

But that amusement is short-lived when there’s a dip in the bed, the movement making her moan as the aching in her legs heightens, and she opens her eyes hazily.

It takes her a few seconds to focus on the figure beside her. “Dami…?” She croaks and immediately regrets speaking from the sharp pain in the back of her throat. “Ah..hurts.”

Luckily Damian isn’t one for small talk and he just rubs her upper arm lightly. “I know, don’t speak.” He says gently, “You have strep throat and the flu. Your fever got worse overnight.”

Damian presses something cold and wet to her forehead, and she sighs in reprieve as it soothes her heated flesh. Her eyes flutter shut once more and she’s already drifting off to sleep, barely hearing his next words. “Get some rest habibti. I’m here.” The darkness takes her under, and this time she welcomes it.

The next time she wakes she thinks she must be delirious.

Damian is mere inches away from her, pressing his lips to her temple in a light kiss, and whispering something to her in his native tongue.

If she wasn’t so sick then this would be heaven- waking up to his soft kisses. And maybe it still is in her own mind, because she’s honestly not sure if this is real.

A wave of nausea disrupts that train of thought and it courses through her stomach. She shoots upwards into a sitting position, head spinning. And she must’ve done this before because a small trash can is placed directly under her mouth as soon as she sits up, and she grasps at it weakly, vomiting up bile. Hands gather her hair gently at her nape, holding it back for her as she continues retching. Then she’s just dry heaving for a few minutes after there’s nothing left to throw up, and her stomach twinges achingly.

Someone starts rubbing soothing circles at her back and cooing into her ear, and she finally has the energy to glance back, recognizing those familiar emerald orbs that look back down at her in sympathy. When it’s clear that she’s finished he takes the trash can and places it next to her bed, within reaching distance. Gratefully taking the hand towel from his outstretched hand to wipe her mouth, she wonders if she should feel mortified at the fact that he’s seeing her in this state, but another shiver wracking through her body halts that train of thought too.

“Raven?” She must’ve spaced out at some point because she’s now leaning back against the fortress of pillows that have been fluffed for her, and Damian is hovering above her.

He reaches out an ungloved hand and tucks a stray hair behind her ear, and she wishes she had the courage to ask him to keep stroking her hair like that. “How are you feeling?” He asks her.

She just shakes her head, not trusting her mouth to speak. Also, her throat feels raw after vomiting. The lingering taste of bile makes her grimace.

“Try to sit up for me, you need to hydrate.” He calls out softly and she wonders how she didn’t notice the glass of water in his hand before. Bracing shaky palms into the mattress, she manages to pull herself up enough to earn a hum of praise. A straw makes its way to her mouth and she accepts it without argument, knowing from the set of his jaw that if she tried to she would certainly lose. The few sips she’s able to stand helps ebb the burning sensation in her throat, and Damian encourages her to take a few more. Then, she’s shaking her head and pushing away the glass. He relents, murmuring his approval. Soft, low tones. “Good. That’s good, Raven.” A hand threads through her hair again and she leans into his touch, taking the small comfort he’s offering despite how out of character it is for him to be so...intimate.

The soft, rhythmic brush of his fingers through her hair distracts her from the ache in her legs, and the dull throb of her headache. It helps tether her to consciousness enough to open her eyes more clearly and see the gentleness in his gaze as he watches her.

When she opens her mouth to speak her tongue feels like cotton, but she continues anyway. “You...don’t have to stay.” Her voice sounds like she’s been screaming in terror for hours until finally succumbing to an unbearable torture, and she winces at how pathetic it must sound to him too.

He just shushes her and continues threading his hand through her hair. “I’ll leave if you insist, but I’d rather stay...if that’s alright.”

All she can do is nod. They fall into a comfortable silence, which Raven cherishes. Damian’s always seemed to know when silence is needed, and he gives it to her often. Having him here, helping her while she’s in such a vulnerable state sends another sensation through her chest, filling her with a different kind of warmth. Not the kind of feverish, sweaty, and boiling heat that’s bogged down her mind the past couple of days (It’s been a few days right? Truthfully she doesn’t really know). But it’s a warmth that slowly spreads throughout her entire being, pouring over into her soul that leaves a light tingling in its wake. It’s stronger than anything she’s ever felt before and it swells in her throat until it formulates into words, spilling out of her mouth before she can stop it.

“I love you.”

Another shiver reverberates through her body, and the combined ache of her muscles and persistent fever takes her back under- so much so that she doesn’t even realize the significance of what she just said. She just knows that it makes Damian give her a smile that she’s never seen before. One that softens every feature in his face, and lights his eyes in such a way that mesmerizes her through the fogginess of her affliction.

“I know.” He says in a hushed timbre, leaning down to press his lips to her hairline- an act that makes her sigh in content, despite her dazed state. “I love you too.”

He stays with her, fingers playing languidly with the strands of her hair as he murmurs into her ear- a mixture of both their common language and arabic, and she clings to the gentle undertone of his words, relishing in this new, welcoming warmth that’s now unfurling all the way down to her toes. She continues to listen to his voice as it lulls her back gently into unconsciousness.

And she knows that he’ll be there when she wakes up again, just as surely as she now knows in her heart that she loves him.

And he loves her back.

#damirae #damian wayne #raven #teen titans #fanfic #oneshot #whump #light whump #hurt and comfort #hurt and comfort feels #fluff #full text #sickfic

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catxsnow · 4 years

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BELIEVE IN YOU G.L.

Request: Could u do a gar imagine where gar loses control and kills someone and the reader is the only one to come to his defence when the rest of the titans start acting differently around him. I feel like gar needs a hype man bc he's constantly second guessing himself.

Warning: mentions of blood, death, fluff, gar being a lil cutie as he does

A/N: I don’t really have anything to say so I guess I hope you guys had a good day/will have a good day.

Word count: 3.2k

If there was one person in this world that you would trust with you life, it was Gar Logan. Gar was the kindest, sweetest person you had ever met in you life. He never failed to make you smile and he continuously showed just how resourceful he could be. There was never a time that he would give up, especially when it came to protecting his friends.

Gar never failed to to make sure that his friends knew that he was there for them. Whether it was out on a mission, or within the tower, he was there. When Rachel needed comfort, he was there. When Jason needed someone to talk to, he was there. When you needed a shoulder to cry on, he was there.

So when Gar lost control protecting you and his teammates, things changed. All Gar ever wanted to do was keep the people he cared about safe. He was still under the affects of what Cadmus had done to him, and keeping his tiger under control was far harder than it ever had been. He never wanted to hurt people, and yet he had no choice.

The mission Dick had you guys on was supposed to be an easy one. Something that just you and Gar could handle. Things had gone bad, fast. There were far more men there than expected and the two of you couldn't handle all of them on you own. A bullet passed through your suit and into your side. It was just a graze, but it was enough to slow you down.

Gar had no choice but to shift into the tiger if either of you wanted to make it out alive. While he had, he also didn't realize the lack of control that he had as well. When he saw one of the men try to grab you and shove you into their car, he had completely lost all sense of what was right and wrong.

The man that held you was mauled beyond repair. Those who hadn't already been taken down, were long gone. Gar, as the tiger, stood over the man. He hadn't looked at you, but the second his green fur was covered in blood, you weren't sure if you wanted him to notice you.

Finally, he shifted back into himself, realizing what he had done. Blood dripped down his chin, covering his neck and chest. His hands too were dripping with another man's blood. Gar finally looked over at you, petrified that all he would see in your eye is fear. You knew him well enough that this wasn't his fault.

The wound you had caused far too much blood loss and you were starting to sway on your feet. He needed to get you back to the tower, but he also feared of what the others would think.

He was right to worry too.

When you had arrived back at the tower, Dick and the others surrounded you with worry. They tended to your wound immediately, but as soon as you were patched up, all attention was on him. Gar had to explain that he had killed a man saving you.

Surprisingly, it was Dick that had taken it the worse. He had killed many people in his days as Robin, he had no right to yell at Gar for doing so. Not when he barely had control, Cadmus had done this to him, it wasn't like he wanted to do it. Yet, he was still yelled at for killing an innocent man. Even if he wasn't innocent at all.

When Dick stormed off in anger, Gar was the one that reminded by your side. You were passed out from being so weak, but Gar was just happy to see you alive. He grasped your hand in his and pressed them against his forehead.

Tears of shame and anger shed. He hated that Dick was mad at him for something he couldn't control. It wasn't like he had intentions on killing that man, it was the last thing that he wanted to do. He was already haunted by the others, he didn't need another on his list. Gar was furious at himself for losing control again.

But when he saw you getting taken, he couldn't stop himself. You were the person that was always on his side, he couldn't lose you. The tears got worse and worse until suddenly he was sobbing with dread. He had killed someone, that wasn't something that he could just take back.

The blood on his skin was dried up and he was acutely aware of just how disgusting he felt. Gar ripped his hand away from yours and bolted out of the room. He needed to shower, he needed to get rid of every trace that he had ever lost control.

It felt like hours that he was under the water, scrubbing away every drop of blood until his skin was raw. What would you think of him when you awoke? That was his biggest concern. Dick had already made his argument, and by the looks of it, Kori and Rachel were on his side. Jason would be too if he was still around.

Reluctantly, Gar turned the shower off and stepped out. A towel was wrapped around his waist as he sprawled out on his bed. The door to his room was open just ajar, but he couldn't get the motivation to get up and close it. That night wasn't suppose to have this turnout at all.

The creak of his door opening wider caused him to force his eyes shut, he didn't want to hear another lecture from Dick. "I heard you the first time, Dick."

"Didn't hear it from me." Gar's eyes popped open and he jumped up in his bed. You were standing in his door way, leaning against the frame. You skin looked pale from the blood loss and he could see your hands shaking.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," Gar scolded. He joined you at your side a swung your arm over his shoulder as he walked you his bed to sit. You winced as you sat, which didn't go unnoticed by him. It should have been him that got that bullet, not you. Things would have turned out completely different.

"Had to see if you were okay," You shrugged. Gar sat beside you. He didn't notice that his hands were also shaking until he saw them next to yours. You reached out to grab it, stopping the both of you. "Whatever Dick told you, he's a hypocrite for saying it. He's hurt a lot more people than you ever have, and ever will."

"He's not wrong though," Gar sighed. "I lost control. What if I had gone after you next? What if there were more people there? Innocent people?"

"Sleep, Gar," you finally spoke after a long pause of silence. You couldn't deny that for a split second, you worried that you were next. Gar would never hurt you, but the people at Cadmus? That was a different story. Your hesitance spoke loud and clear to him: you feared him.

You stood up from the edge of the bed, pausing at his side to kiss the top of his head. Gar leaned into your touch, soaking up every ounce that he surely wouldn't get again. How many more of these accidents would it take for him to be kicked off the team? How many more until no one trusted him again?

As badly as he wanted to avoid sleep and the nightmares that would follow, he couldn't stop the black void from taking over.

Gar noticed the difference with everyone in the tower by the next morning. Dick refused to acknowledge that he was even in the same room. Rachel avoided his gaze, she never thought he would be able to pull what he had. Even Kori had trouble sparking a conversation with him. You were the only one to send smiles his way.

The entire day, he moped around the tower, sticking to his room as much as possible. This treatment that everyone was giving him couldn't last wrong, right? He knew that he had made a mistake and he was doing his best to correct it. But how do you fix something that can't come back?

That night at dinner, you had missed the presence of Gar at the table. It had been quiet since Jason left, you didn't think it could get any worse - but without Gar, it had.

You found yourself tossing and turning for hours in bed that night. Your wound still flared up in pain at every movement and would for a while. There was no way that you were going to be able to sleep, and you were sure the boy in the next room couldn't either. That was how you found yourself knocking at his door at three in the morning.

You stood there for several moments, wondering if he was sleeping or even if you had awoken him. Just as you were about to leave, the door creaked open and the small amount of light coming from the hall lit Gar up. He was in his boxers, but eyes wide awake.

"Figured you couldn't sleep either," you told him of your prediction. Gar opened his door wider for you to step in.

"Why'd you come here?" Gar asked. He sat down on the edge of his bed. His sheets were all messed up and you knew that he had the same problem of not being able to stay still. You hadn’t talked to him much that day which led him to believe that you had the same judgement of him as your teammates.

"Because last time I couldn't sleep you came to my room and slept next to me so I could," you reminded him. It had only been a few months ago, but it felt like years. Nightmares plagued your for weeks on end before Gar finally offered you some sort of solution. You never expected it to work, but you had slept like a baby that night.

Gar huffed out a breath of air as a half smile graced his face. It was the first sign of any happiness you had seen from him all day. Gar remembered that night vividly. He could remember your scream of horror as you woke up from you nightmare and running into your room to see if you were okay. It was a simple gesture of seeing if you wanted him to stay, but you had never been more grateful.

"Did you come here for me, or for you?" Gar asked, finally meeting your eye since you came in.

"Mutual benefit," you shrugged. "It's just an offer, I can leave if you want to be alone." Gar's heart rate rose at your counter-offer. He didn't want you to leave, not when you were the only person that seemed to still trust him.

"Stay," Gar decided. You nodded, crawling into his bed as he turned off the light by his bed. Small cracks of light from the city penetrated his blinds just enough so that you could see the outlines of his face. The two of you laid side by side and quietness over took once more. "Thank you."

"You mean more to me than you know, Gar."

You woke up to an empty bed and a sore side in the morning. Gar was gone and if it wasn't for you being in his room, there would have been no sign that you had even slept in the same bed.

The bandage that covered your side was shaded red and you knew that you must have popped a stitch sometime in the night. Whether it was before or after you got to Gar's room, it needed to be fixed. So, you left the warmth of Gar's bed as his scent lingered on your skin. You had no idea where he could have gone to, but you had a more pressing matter at the moment.

The door to the med bay was propped open as you stripped your side of the bandage. Blood covered your stitches and it was evident as to wear you had tore them. After washing it down, you braced yourself for the pain that would come with doing a quick stitch on yourself.

It didn't take long to fix what you had torn, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Your eyes burned with tears as you held them back. As soon as you were done, you put a new bandage on and covered it back up with your shirt. No one needed to know that you had torn them, there was no need to cause worry.

"Where were you last night?"

"Fuck! Rachel! Don't do that," You scolded, hand over your heart to get it to stop racing from the surprise. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet propped up and a bowl of cereal in her hand. A coy smile was on her face, curious as to what you had been up to. "I was here."

"Your door was open all night and you weren't in your room," She continued on with a mouth full of food. "Did you just come from the med bay?"

"Yes," you rolled your eyes at her curiosity. "I had a few stitches rip, not a big deal." Maybe if you ignored her first question, she wouldn't push on with it. Thankfully, that was the case. Rachel didn't try to stop you again as you headed back to your room.

Although sleeping next to Gar once again had helped you sleep, exhaustion still wore you out. You worried about his connection with the others. Dick wasn't pleased about Gar's actions and you weren't sure if he would ever change his mind about it. Truth be told, you thought that he was just a little scared of Gar.

As kind-hearted as he was, he was powerful. Losing control like that, but against everyone would be devastating. Although you understood Dick's concern, he wasn't taking it well.

You knew it too when you heard him and Kori talking about Gar.

Finally, when Dick's harsh words got to be too much, you had swung your door open with anger written on your face. He had no right to be saying that Gar was a lose screw to the team or that he was unsure if he belonged there anymore. Not after everything that he had done - what Kori had done too.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Your chest huffed up and down with frustration. "You're the team leader, Dick. You shouldn't be shunning Gar for his mistakes you should be helping him through them! Don't you think that he fucking regrets what he did? He didn't have control! You know what Cadmus did to him and you're not even considering the lasting effects!

"And you have no right to judge for accidentally killing someone when you've killed so many on purpose. If you wanna keep up at this self-proclaimed leader bullshit, then you better step up to the fucking plate because right now you're being an inconsiderate asshole.

"I would have died if Gar hadn't done anything. If you wanna kick him off this little merry band of heroes you have going on, then count me out too."

"(Y/N)!" Dick called after you as you walked away from all of them. You didn't turn back, but simply raised your middle finger at him. You might have been harsh to Dick about the truth of his actions, but he needed to hear it. Nothing frustrated you more than Dick not realizing how much of a hypocrite he was being.

The door to your room slammed with so much force that it rattled the walls. Dick clearly wasn't expecting an outburst from you - if anything he thought you would have been on his side. You were the one there, you saw just how vicious he could be when he didn't have control. Out of everyone there, you were the only to stay by his side.

Someone knocked at your door as you angrily paced around. "If you're here to talk, Dick, I don't want to hear it," You yelled. The door cracked open and you nearly slammed it back close until you saw the tuft of green hair peak through. "Gar," your voice softened. He slipped into your room and closed the door behind him.

Without having time to say anything, Gar had thrown himself into your arms with his head tucked into the crook of your neck. You didn't hesitate to hug him back. "Where were you this morning?" You quietly asked. He had heard everything you had said for him, but you didn't wish to talk about that at the moment.

"Woke up early, decided to go clear my head," Gar mumbled into your skin. Though he had slept better with you by his side, it still wasn't enough. But hearing you argue against Dick for him? That meant more to him than you could ever imagine. He never would be able to stand up for himself like that, and you had done it without thinking twice.

Gar woke up that morning with you in his arms. That hadn't happened the last time that you had slept with him, but it was a comforting change. The smile on your face as you slept warmed his heart like never before - you had never looked so peaceful before.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from you. You could see the exhaustion written on his face from his previous nights. Gar didn't deserve this, he was the last person in this tower to deserve something like this to happen. Your hand reached up to his cheek, thumb swiping away the tears that he didn't seem to notice.

"Thank you," Gar trembled. His eyes were red and his whole body seemed to shake with anxiety. "For having my back, I know it's not easy standing up to the people you care about."

"I care about you, Gar. It's easy to stand up for the people that you care about, no matter who it's against," You assured him. "This wasn't your fault, no matter what Dick says. I know you, I know in your heart that you would never mean to do something like that. I believe in you, more than you know."

"You mean more to me than you'll ever know," Gar repeated your words from the other night. It was the truth, you meant everything to him. He wished that he could express how much he truly cared for you - just as you wanted for him.

"Stay with me tonight?" You asked. Truth be told you didn't want to let Gar out of your sight. You didn't want Dick to try and lecture him again, and you certainly didn't want anyone to spoil this better mood you got him in. “Mutual benefit and all, right?”

"I wouldn’t have it any other way."

#gar logan #garfield logan #gar logan imagine #gar logan one shot #gar logan x reader #beast boy #dc titans #titans imagine #titans one shot #dc one shot #dc imagine #dc #fluff

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scorpionyx9621 · 3 years

Text

I Hope Hopeless Changes Over Time: A Red Hood and Batman Fic

*Source of the image I found off of Pintrest. I tried to find the original artist but the link on Pintrest led to a dead Tumblr account. If anyone wants to find/point out the account to me so I can give proper credit to the artist please please do.*

I wanted to make a fic based on an ask I did from the lovely @dilfbatman about Jason and Bruce. I hope people enjoy this mini-fic that I've expanded upon.

TW: Blood, Physical Assault, Suicide Ideation, Swearing. Bruce being a shitty father but trying. Jason having demons

3.75K words.

Bruce was uneasy about Jason staying over at the Wayne Mansion. Even with other members of the family around. Jason has done so much wrong and has hurt so many people. However, at the end of the day, Jason still is his son. So when he gets a call from Jason in a hushed voice asking Bruce to stay the night. He hesitated for a second, but acquiesced, Jason was nothing if not independent, so to be asking Bruce outright to stay at the Wayne Manor meant something was wrong.

"Master Jason wouldn't reach out to any of us unless something was gravely wrong, Master Wayne." Alfred had reassured Bruce, who was staring absentmindedly at the glass case which housed Jason's old Robin costume. The costume that Jason had died in. Bruce always tried to repress the memory of holding his son's cold, lifeless body. The pain he felt from losing his parents burned in his heart as an everlasting stab wound. But the pain from losing Jason, his son, it was too much to bare.

"I'd be welcoming to Master Jason, but keep your distance. Master Damian is spending the night at Jon Kent's house, Master Richard is in Blüdhaven, and Master Timothy is with the Teen Titans tonight. I'll rest assured Jason doesn't try anything to harm you. But don't try to encourage a confrontation." Alfred explained. He always seemed to understand Jason to a tee after he came back to life.

"I don't know how you do it Alfred, you can read the boy like a book." Bruce had retorted. Cocking a half-smile to the man who raised him since his parents died.

"Master Wayne, Master Jason wears his heart on his sleeve. He always has. And one of the reasons why you two fight constantly is because, for as terrific as a detective you are, you are horrifically inept in reading the emotions of your children." Alfred had stated, those words bit Bruce. He wasn't expecting such sharp words from Alfred. "We failed Master Jason. And he's hurt, he's been hurt for years because of it. However he keeps choosing to come back and try and trust again. We needn't come at him with accusations of ulterior motives, but we should be supportive." Alfred stated.

"But cognizant of what Jason is capable of." Bruce added back. Jason may need help, but he's still dangerous. He has tried to kill Bruce and the rest of the Robins multiple times. He wants to trust Jason and warm up to him again. But the man who wears the Red Hood and stalks the streets of Gotham killing those he deems criminals is not his son anymore.

Alfred and Bruce greeted Jason as he walked in the large double doors of the Wayne Manor. The first thing Bruce noticed was the dark circles under Jason's eyes. It seemed as if the man hadn't slept in days. Jason was wearing sweatpants and a fitted black wife beater, accentuating his muscles. Jason would have looked more intimidating had his body language not suggested he was as disheveled as he was, physically and mentally.

"Thanks Alfred." Jason had said meekly towards the butler. He took one step into the mansion and looked at Bruce. Bruce noticed as soon as Jason's eyes met his, his tired irises contorted into anger. His lips pursed downwards but Jason chose not to say anything. Instead just walking past Bruce pretending not to acknowledge him.

"Master Jason, you will be staying in the guest suite on the main floor. I've already prepped everything for your arrival. Please make yourself at home." Alfred had said. Jason just shook is head as he headed towards the hallway leading the guest suite. Bruce didn't notice it immediately but the stench Jason had emitted stung in the air. It smelled like stale liqour and body oder. It seems Jason hadn't bathed in days. Bruce had wanted to say something but chose not to.

The evening went by quietly enough. Jason had taken a shower and changed into another fitted wife beater but still sported a tired energy about him. Alfred had put together a beef pot roast for dinner with red potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery over garlic mashed potatoes. A favorite dish of Jason's. The three of them ate quietly as Bruce continued to size up his son. He was conflicted. At one point he saw the man who blew up the head of a Gotham security force member with a torture decide he had created. On the other hand, he saw the boy who would beg for Bruce to buy him more books after he finished the maximum amount a library card would allow for a week in the span of 3 days. The son who told him being Robin gave him magic.

The dinner ended as it began. With awkward silence and the father-son duo eyeing each other. One with cautious trepidation and the other with abject hate. Bruce had decided not to go on patrol tonight as he felt he needed to be at the manor should anything happen while Jason was here. An uneasy sense of dread built over Bruce as he had said good night to Jason as the two passed by each other in the halls. Jason simply spat 'Bitch' at Bruce and walked into the bedroom. Bruce had been bad with other people's emotions, but something didn't sit right with the way Jason was carrying himself. He had decided to stay up tonight regardless. A sense came over him after being sworn at by Jason. A sense he hadn't felt in a long time. He felt as though his son needed help.

————————————————————

"You're a monster"

"Jason is a murderer"

"Stay away from Jason, he'll kill you."

"No one wants you around, Todd"

"You're just a good guy trying to be bad"

"This is the kid you had to replace me with as Robin? Bruce he's pathetic."

"I can't believe my daughter wasted the Lazarus Pit on a miserable failure like you."

"Maybe I'd be better off dead"

Jason tossed and turned. It's been days. He couldn't get the voices out of his head. Those whispery, moany voices that taunted and tormented him. He knew it was a result of the Lazarus Pit. Ever since Roy died and everyone left him the voices started taunting him again. He tried everything he could to get the voices to stop. He drank, he read, he worked out, he did everything he could. The only way the voices became quiet were when he was beating the ever-loving shit out of some criminals. This was not the mindset Jason had wanted. He wanted to go back to being supported by Bruce, the man who betrayed him. He knew that Bruce was weak. He couldn’t kill the Joker because of his weakness.

Jason got up and walked over to the connecting bathroom to the suite that he was staying in. He went to the sink and splashed some cold water on his face. Against his better judgement, Jason looked up to the figure he saw in the mirror. He took note of his jawline, his face, his green eyes, his muscles.. but one thing that caught his eye was the fucking skunk streak of hair at the top of his head. The physical reminder of his dip in the Lazarus Pit. He had just re-dyed the spot not two days ago and it already came back. He did everything he could to try to hide the streak. It’s what he hated most about his new body. The pit wiped away all of the scars he had on his body. And any new fresh scar or wound would just fade in a matter of moments due to the effects of the pit. The only thing that ever stayed was that damned streak.

Jason had nothing but disgust and contempt for the man he saw in the mirror, which, ironically, was himself.

“You’re just using the sarcasm to hide your hatred.”

“It’s your fault that everyone hates you.”

“Killing the sick of the masses to save those who are weak is your calling”

“Those reptiles deserve to die”

“I don’t want to kill unless I don’t have to.. I don’t want people to hate me..” Jason tried reassuring himself. The voices in his head kept getting louder and louder. “I want Bruce and everyone to love me again....” He continued to try to re-assure himself. It was a false sense of hope as always. His mind soon wandered to a moment where he was on top of Dick in a fight. Confronting his older sibling and reciting a quote he had heard from a Japanese philosopher and optimist as he had the barrel of a gun placed against his older brother’s temple.

“Do you know what the most convenient phrase in the world is, Dickie? It’s ‘I’m sorry.’ Anyone who hears that is obligated to forgive, no matter how hurt or angry they might be... There's no more disgusting phrase in all the world. It's used to displace your suffering unto others so you can escape your sins... The moment you employ it, your suffering becomes the other person's. A thing can be unforgivable, but oh, if they apologize... I say there's no reason to accept that suffering. You don't have to forgive them. Cast aside the mask of your conscience.“

“Stop this. Please stop this.” Jason had begged aimlessly into the air. He didn’t want to live like this anymore. He didn’t want to live, period. He just wanted all of this to end. He had caused so much pain and so much suffering to the people of Gotham all so he could attempt to hurt Bruce. But those words kept repeating in his head. He knew he had to stop this. He needed help, he wanted to go to Bruce and explain what was going on but Bruce would just have him institutionalized. His murderer of a son starts hearing voices in his head? A one way ticket to a padded room.

Jason suddenly stared back into the mirror and saw something he detested. The green eyes that stared into his soul. The one he hated more than anything else. Was himself. This thing was staring him in the face mocking him, and he wanted it gone.

“Do it Jason.” the voice had beckoned from the mirror. “Kill them all. Slit Damian’s throat and watch the fucker bleed. Bash Tim’s stupid face into the concrete until there’s nothing but mush. Rip Dick limb from fucking limb. Watch Bruce as you choke the last bit of life from his eyes. I promise all the pain will go away once all of this is done.” the voice sounded almost sweet as it promised to do all of this. Jason just retched as he saw the green eyed monster promising poison to him. He felt his vision fade to black.

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

STOP IT. SHUT. UP.

*CRASH*

Bruce had jumped up from the chair he was sitting on in the library, the voice came from the suite that Jason was staying in. Bruce didn’t have time to think. He just ran towards the noise. He threw the door to the suite open and ran to the bathroom. There he saw Jason in front of a heavily cracked mirror. Jason was hyperventilating and he saw blood oozing from Jason’s fist which was pressed against the mirror. Bruce saw from the reflection that Jason had split open the left side of his lip seemingly from a shard of glass. It wasn’t long before Jason glanced up at the imposing shadow in the mirror and noticed Bruce’s presence.

“YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME BRUCE.” Jason had shouted at his reflection. Jason was shaking. Bruce had wanted to assess the injury that Jason gave himself. But he knew he was cornering a scared animal if he pressed any farther forward. Bruce stood their frozen. Pondering between trying to press forward upon a killer, or to check up on his son.

“Jason, I just...” Bruce was cut off by another scream as Jason turned around.

“IF YOU COME ANY CLOSER I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL YOU WHERE YOU FUCKING STAND YOU PIECE OF SHIT.” Bruce finally got the cue. The hitch in Jason’s voice. This is the same hitch his voice made when he was a kid and was angry at Bruce. Alfred was right. This is his son. And right now Bruce needed not to be the Batman approaching the Red Hood. He needed to be Bruce, to help his son.

Bruce walked forward to Jason, still shaking as blood oozed from the gashes of glass on his fist. Bruce decided against everything in his gut telling him to stop this criminal. This monster who killed for sport and to prove a point. He needed to help Jason, his son.

Bruce was knocked back by a fist to his chest. Glass imbedded itself into Bruce as he felt the sting of their shards. Jason was right, he was going to hurt Bruce if he approached. Oracle was right, Jason had been abusing venom. The quick gain in muscle mass was proof enough but the stinging pain in Bruce’s chest also proved that hypothesis. Jason barred his teeth as his eyes displayed a seething hatred. Bruce would have been frightened on any other day. Today, Bruce felt a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time. Bruce collected himself and got up to approach Jason again.

“I TOLD YOU I’M GOING TO KILL YOU BRUCE. I FUCKING HATE YOUR GUTS. I WANT YOU TO DIE. I WANT ALL OF US TO JUST FUCKING DIE.” Jason screamed even louder this time. A hot stream of tears worked their way down Jason’s cheeks. Bruce no longer saw a rage-induced monster but the boy who took a tire iron to his gut on the streets of Gotham. The boy who would was thrilled at every opportunity he got to show Bruce the A’s on every test he got in school. This was his baby boy who needed his help.

“Jason Peter Todd that’s enough.” Bruce said firmly, but not harshly. Jason stared directly into his eyes. “Jason. I want you to listen to me.”

“Go to hell you motherfucker.” those words which escaped Jason were laced with poison. Bruce didn’t waver.

“You can punch me as much as you want Jason and I’ll deserve all of it.” Bruce came closer to Jason. Jason proceeded to physically make himself smaller. Like a scared animal. Bruce remember what he did to Jason after he had seemingly killed The Penguin. How he beat Jason to within an inch of his life. His heart plummeted to his stomach as he saw Jason cower like a scared dog over his approach.

“What are you going to do Bruce, beat me to a fucking pulp again? You hate me more than you hate the fucking Joker, don’t you?” Jason asked. Bruce truly saw the fear in those green eyes. He had to take a moment and realized just what he was doing. He unclenched his jaw and relaxed his shoulders as he approached Jason. This time he was back within striking range of his son.

“Jason. I failed you. I have been failing you for the past 10 years since your death. I have failed this city and this family in providing the protection it needs. I couldn’t kill The Joker because I’m weak.” Bruce sucked at emotions and emoting. But Bruce hadn’t felt this shaky and wavering since the day he lost Jason. His son needed to know the truth. He deserved to know the truth. “Jason I never hated you. I hated the actions you have taken against the people of this city. But I’ve come to realize that the hatred and contempt I’ve held is because you do what I can’t do.”

“Oh so now you’re coming over to apologize? I don’t owe you shit after what you’ve done to me.” Jason had stated. He may have been acting like a pinned animal. But his mouth will never not cut like knives.

“Jason, when we had fought in the abandoned apartment. And you had the Joker with you. You had tried to shoot me after I had turned away from you.” Bruce said. Inching ever closer to Jason while trying not to be imposing. “In that moment, I threw the batarang because I knew you were going to retaliate against me. But I need you to know in that moment I turned away. I turned away because I decided I wasn’t to be the one to decide the Joker’s fate. He had taken your life and it wasn’t up to me to decide. I want nothing more than for the Joker to pay for the countless lives hes taken and ruined.” Bruce swallowed hard as he felt tears beginning to well in his eyes. “I failed you because I couldn’t kill the Joker. But in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my baby boy back. I wanted you back in my life. I still want you back in my life.”

“Bullshit. Fucking BULLSHIT.” Jason spat at Bruce. The emotions were flooding out of his face. Anger, hatred, fear, but most of all sadness. Jason’s voice began wavering as he began to cry. “If you loved me why in the fuck have you never realized I’ve been trying to help the people of Gotham. Instead every time I take matters into my own hands all I meet are your fucking fists. I hate your guts Bruce. We’d all just be better off fucking dead. It’s all Hopeless. I’m hopeless.”

Bruce took a deep breath. He tried to find his resolve. He wanted nothing more than to be able to reach out to his son again. “You’re absolutely right Jason. I’ll bet Gotham would be a whole lot better without me. Without the pain I have caused. And no amount of apologies will fix the pain that I have caused you. No words will ever take back the transgressions I have taken against you.” Bruce was crying this time. “But know this. You always have been my son. And I love you so much. The day I lost my parents was agony. The day I lost you, I felt like I had lost myself I felt I had died a bit inside.” Bruce choked out. “We both have done so much we regret. If I could take back all the times I hit you I would do it in a heartbeat. But no amount of sorry will take back that pain. I shouldn’t be in the position to be asking this. But I just want my son back.” Bruce swallowed. “You have every right to hate me, but I will never stop loving you. You aren’t hopeless and you never have been. You never have been a burden. You are valued by so many people. I. I love you my son. I love you Jason."

Jason’s face relaxed from a position of contempt and hatred and soon was overcome with years of pent up tears. Jason let out a hearty scream as he proceeded to weep and sob. As if a dam had broke and was threatening to engulf a town in an apocalypse. Bruce went against everything he had known and was screaming from the inside of his body and wrapped Jason in a hug. He was almost as large as Bruce himself and barely fit around his arms. But Bruce held his son and hugged him tight. Jason was crying uncontrollably.

“I’m hearing these voices. They’re telling me I’m a monster and a killer and that I should kill all of you.” Jason shouted between sobs. “But I don’t want to. I’m so afraid Bruce. I don’t want to hurt anyone unless I have to.”

“Just breath Jason. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Let it all out.” Bruce had solidified his resolve and worked on being there for Jason. He couldn’t run away this time. His son needed him more than ever. And Gotham be damned. He’s not making this mistake twice. He’s staying here. For Jason.

It felt like hours before Jason had run out of tears and sobs. Jason was fading and seemed like he was about to fall asleep. The shards of glass that were imbedded in his hand seemingly prevented Jason from bleeding out. Bruce had saw Jason’s eyes glaze over as his breathing calmed.

“Jason, I’m going to pick you up and take you to bed.” Bruce had said, asking for permission from his second son. Jason simply nodded as he starred off. He was numb now. The pain seemingly gone for the moment. Bruce lifted Jason up and was taken aback by just how heavy his son was. He truly was 225lbs just like his records showed. This wasn’t the son who hid under the cabinets when Bruce first brought Jason home. But Bruce still saw the boy as his son nonetheless. As Bruce laid Jason on the bed Alfred had approached with a first aid kit. Proceeding to begin to clean up Jason’s hand. Jason was so exhausted he barely felt any of the picking and pulling or the iodine going into his wounds. He kept his eyes fast forward on Bruce.

“Bruce. I. I’m sorry.” Jason had said meekly.

“Don’t apologize Jason.” Bruce had stated. He ran his hand through Jason’s hair, giving a soft massage to his scalp. “You get some sleep now. I don’t think you’ve rested in days.”

Bruce had remembered the time he had read Jason to sleep. This time he had thought back to a poem that struck him from his phone. It was from a famous lyricist and singer. As Bruce pulled up his phone he had found the poem and recited it as Jason fell asleep. Things are far from perfect or even better. But tomorrow was going to be the first day of the rest of his and Jason’s lives.

“They told me once, ‘there's a place where love conquers all’

A city with the streets full of milk and honey

I haven't found it yet, but I'm still searching

All I know is a hopeless place that flows with the blood of my kin

Perhaps hopeless isn't a place

Nothing but a state of mind”

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

pHEW GOD THAT WAS LONG. I hope you all enjoyed the fic! This was my first published attempt at angst and whump and while I feel some parts are cringe. I am proud of what I made.

Big thanks again to @dilfbatman for inspiring this fic. The inspiration of the title is the song Hopeless: by Halsey. The quote about I’m Sorry is from the character Shadow Maya Amano from Persona 2: Innocent Sin. And the poem at the end is the first part of the lyrics to the song Good Mourning by Halsey.

#Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Whump #Angst #Hurt/comfort #Non-ship #Bruce being a good father #Jason trying his best #Jason getting the rest he deserves #The two have gone through so much but they can get help #TW Blood #TW Physical abuse #TW Swearing

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

What job would you pick out for Dick? I like physical therapist or maybe emt/firefighter? I know the latter wouldn’t work unless in a no capes au but I think they fit him

Tbh, I haven’t put much thought into no capes AU scenarios since they tend not to occur to me that much - I like the superheroics part of things too much to spend a lot of time thinking of settings without those elements, lol. But as far as the traditional superhero settings go......I could see physical therapist, but I usually default to gymnastics instructor.

I know it sounds like a pretty easy answer, but for me it actually combines a lot of different factors. The biggest and most important thing is I’m a big believer in balance.

Like, I hate Dick as a cop because y’know, ACAB, but also because I just don’t view it as healthy or sustainable for him to live his life 24/7 devoted to putting himself at risk and in dangerous situations for others. I mean, this actually goes for all heroes, tbh, but him in particular with all the stuff I talk about him having a low sense of self-worth....I think an inevitable end result of that sort of around the clock lifestyle is that its almost impossible for him to NOT end up with a skewed sense of his own value, where he just fundamentally doesn’t believe his life is worth as much as other peoples’, or that his life only has as much value as he in turn is of value or use to others. To me, that’s just a recipe for disaster and longterm emotional harm when talking about Dick in particular.

Then there’s the element of constant exposure to human suffering and misery - and this is also something that I would see carrying over to careers like emt/firefighter.....in the real world, people who work those jobs have off hours. They take a break from all the pain and death they’re witness to when on the job, and that’s incredibly crucial IMO, because nobody can be around that 24/7 without it taking a toll on them, even if its in the name of helping people. One of the things I think could use more focus in examinations of vigilantes/superheroes is that like......nobody can exist JUST to help others, having no identity of there own outside that, you know? This is what they CHOOSE to do with their lives, but that doesn’t mean that’s all their lives are FOR, and like, they need time to just be themselves too.

And when you take a character like Dick, who is extremely empathetic among other things, and if you look at him in the context of someone who’s been exposed to tragedy and heart-ache in just his personal life since he was a little kid....and then add to that all the horrors he’s seen and witnessed in his vigilantism and superheroics as Robin, as a Teen Titan, as Nightwing....all kinds of murder and torture and misery, and like....I think its crucial that he have time and opportunities to just....recharge, and get a chance to bask in the good parts of life and ENJOY things and remind himself of what he’s doing all of this for, that life isn’t just an endless stream of suffering, no matter that that’s inevitably what it looks like a lot of the time from his POV as a superhero....or as it would appear from any other sort of job where on top of his superheroics, he’s constantly being bombarded with people in pain and suffering from losses of their own.

So for me, I pretty much always like to pair superheroes with jobs where they just get to lay their burdens down for awhile and recharge by immersing them in things that they enjoy. By all means, like, let it be something that still contributes to society or gives back or is a way to improve other peoples’ lives, I think that’s still very inherent to Dick’s character.....but I feel like its important that HE gets something out of it too. And from my POV, gymnastics or acrobatics is always going to be where those things intersect most for Dick. Because its not just something he’s good at, and that he enjoys, and that he can help other people become good at and enjoy too....its also a way for him to stay connected to the Grayson part of him as much as the Nightwing part of him.

I focus a lot on his first family, because like.....I’ve always felt that fandom pays a lot of lip service to how important they and his family history are to him, without a ton of actual focus on what that IS and what that MEANS or looks like. And when you consider how important the idea of legacies is to the DC universe as a whole, to me its incredibly significant that Dick, who is pretty much the first legacy character in a lot of ways, like....however Robin began eighty years ago in the comics, its most commonly accepted rendition at this point is that for Dick, it began as a legacy every bit as much as it became a legacy after him. Its the legacy of a family of acrobats who passed down their acrobatics from generation to generation, who lived their entire lives together as a tight-knit family unit, inspiring others, entertaining others, making other peoples’ lives better TOGETHER. As a family.

And I think for Dick, that’s what it all comes down to, that’s what’s most important to him. Its why I feel he was able to put aside his own resentments about Robin being passed on without his inclusion and just embrace Jason as a brother, why he was able to do the same with Tim despite mourning Jason at the same time, why he was able to use Robin, specifically, as the vehicle for forging a strong bond of brotherhood with Damian....his life is about helping other people, yes.....but its also about family, and how important the very IDEA of family is to him.....and so that’s ultimately why I always go back to gymnastics teacher or coach for Dick as a ‘day job’.....because IMO its what allows him to be most complete, while being true to all sides of him and his history.

By night, he helps others as Nightwing, in the spirit of his second family, who make the world better via their superheroics. And by day, he helps others as the last Flying Grayson, in the spirit of his first family, who made the world better via their acrobatics and entertainment. Two sides of him, both equally important to him, and both equally deserving of his time and energies, so that he can kinda....stay balanced, without being weighted too far over in a direction that ultimately is doomed to be unsustainable IMO....if he has no opportunity to ever ‘course correct’ when things get too heavy and he just needs a way to put down his burdens or responsibilities and take a step back, just so he can catch a breath.

Incidentally, I view this as equally crucial for all the Batkids....my ultimate headcanon is for them all to end up pursuing passions for their day jobs, that allow them to...indulge themselves, while enriching others in ways that feed their own souls at the same time.

Like, for me, a pretty ideal future for all the Batkids is Dick as a gymnastics instructor, Jason as like, a pulp fiction novelist who gets a kick out of drawing from just the utter absurdities of various things he’s lived or been witness to in ways that cater to his morbid sense of humor and tendency to kinda make a joke out of a lot of the darkness he’s been subjected to. Tim I could see enjoying being a video game designer.

Cass, I like to headcanon as a choreographer.....yeah, I like her getting into dance and ballet as an outlet for herself, but rather than dance professionally I see that as something she keeps just for HER, but choreographing professionally....that lets her use her skills to help others pursue their own passions for dance, and also I see a lot of opportunity there for her to use her unique perspective to like.....not just enjoy the stories that are told through dance, but to tell her own stories through dance, imbue it with her own messages and emotions.

Damian, I like combining his love of animals and his art but adding a little twist in him eventually developing a passion for photography, especially if it becomes an unexpected way for him and Tim to finally bury the hatchet once and for all and bond, with Damian seeing value in this skill that Tim ultimately is the best suited to help him with....and then with Damian ultimately becoming like, a nature photographer, and any future environmentalism or conservation efforts of his guided and shaped by that particular focus.

Steph and Duke I’m still working on. Have a bunch of different thoughts for them but haven’t yet found the ones that fully click the way these do for the others.

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thepurplebutterflythings · 5 years

Text

Damsel in Distress (Part 7) - Jason Todd

Gif: Oliverbruce3 on Tenor

Tagging: @n-o-e-l-12 @oneshots-dc-marvel @my-only-friend-is-the-moon @perturbacja

Word Count: 2.6K

Paring: Jason Todd (Titans) x (f)Reader

Summary: Y/N returns the necklace to Jason after discovering the truth. Jason askes for some advice from the last person to hold the mantle of Robin, Dick Grayson.

Warnings: Angst

A/N: This is a little series I am doing about Jason Todd in Titans. I don’t know Comic!Jason very well so I’m taking all of this from the show, and at the moment he hasn’t been in very often, so please forgive any mischaracterizations.

Damsel in Distress Part 6 | Masterlist | Damsel in Distress Part 8

________________________________________________________________

All-day Y/N avoided Jason’s phone calls and texts, she barely answered the ones from her friends either, only texting Sandy to tell her why she wasn’t in. Y/N lied and said she had a stomach bug and went home. The whole day, Y/N stayed in her bedroom. It wasn’t hard as her parents were out as were her siblings, meaning there was no one there to object to her self-isolation. Even when her parents came home, they had other work to do and merely peered in to check on her.

“You feeling okay, hun?” Mrs Y/L/N cooed.

“Not really,” Y/N shook her head as she sat, curled up into herself, on her bed. “I’m not hungry.”

“Okay, hun, well, try and get some sleep.”

Mrs Y/L/N left and closed the door behind her. It wasn’t even dark outside yet, but Y/N was feeling tired, especially after her mother started to talk about sleep. Y/N threw the clothes she was wearing to the floor and pulled on her pyjamas instead, not even bothering to climb under the sheets but collapsing on top of them and quickly falling to sleep.

She dreamt of normality as she shifted in her sleep. In her dream, Jason was not Robin, but Y/N was with him romantically. It had that misty hue that dreams often had, a warming tone that comforted the dreamer, but it didn’t feel like a figment of the imagination, it felt real. In her dream, Y/N and Jason were at a Gala like they attended all those months ago, and they were dancing together, laughing and drinking and eating. Y/N wore a brilliant red gown and Jason wore a black cap with his suit, a cape similar to Robin, but it never struck Y/N as odd, and in her dream, she never thought of Robin, or that Robin was Jason, or that Jason was Robin; in her dream it was merely Jason and Y/N, dancing the night away together, being madly in love. Jason kissed her softly. It was at this kiss that something felt off to Y/N, something deep in her mind awoke. Jason kissed like Robin. Robin was Jason. Then she woke up with a start as her dream-self experienced all the memories from reality, of Jason and of Robin and what had happened. Y/N woke up the moment she realized it was a dream. She looked to her bedside clock and saw it was two in the morning.

“God,” Y/N groaned, burying her head in the pillow and trying to go back to sleep, but alas it was not to be as there was a tapping on her balcony door. Y/N pulled her head from her pillow and looked to see Jason there, dressed as Robin – mask and everything. Y/N gave him a dirty look and tried to ignore him, but Jason persisted.

“Come on, Y/N, please. I wanna talk,” he called through the glass door.

“Go away, Jason,” Y/N called back. Jason then knocked on the door harder – that caused Y/N to panic that her parents would wake up and discover her secret, so she leapt from her bed and threw open the doors, folding her arms across her chest.

“Please, Y/N…”

“You know you don’t need the mask now, right?” Y/N spat. Jason looked sheepishly as he removed the mask from his face and met her gaze. The act of Jason finally taking his mask off in front of Y/N, despite her knowing now, faltered Y/N for a second as she saw how vulnerable he looked in the suit without his mask. Jason looked like he truly was – scared of being rejected.

“I’m so sorry, really,” Jason insisted, stepping forward to Y/N, who instinctively stepped backwards. The look of hurt on his face killed her.

“Sorry doesn’t change that it happened, Jason.”

“Damsel, please.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Y/N-” “Jason, I know you were trying to protect me, truly I do, but…” Y/N inhaled deeply, “you listened to me talk about how I was so upset when you stopped hanging with me and tried to cut me from your life but you did nothing about it, and if anything you prolonged my pain.”

“I was scared,” Jason said, “and I wanted to tell you, I did. I had this whole thing planned about how I was going to tell you – it was perfect too. I never meant for it to go this way.”

“Be honest with me Jason,” Y/N sighed, “how did you think I was going to react?”

“I thought you loved me enough to accept it, that you liked me for me and not who was under the mask,” Jason whispered close to tears. Y/N could see what she was saying was hurting Jason, and she would never want to hurt him, but she had to say her peace, tell him the truth.

“I do love you, Jason, I could never stop that.” Y/N assured Jason. She placed her hands on his cheeks and looked into his beautiful brown eyes, “don’t ever think that I don’t, but I just… I need you to understand that I shared so much with you in private – personal things – I shared myself with you in many ways, my thoughts, my emotions… my body, and then this happens…”

“Do you regret it?”

“Never in a million years,” she said, “but you have to understand, Jason, you’ve hurt my trust.” Y/N sighed, “I won’t tell anyone your secret.”

“I know, I never doubted you. I know you would never tell.” Jason nodded, “But I just feel so bad about hurting you. I never wanted to hurt you. I never meant for this to happen. I want to make things right between us, Damsel.” With every sentence, Jason pressed a kiss on Y/N’s face. Her forehead. Her cheek. Her other cheek. Her nose. Her neck. “Please, let me make this right.”

“I know you want to, Jason,” Y/N whispered as they rested their foreheads together, “but I think its best that we don’t see each other for a while.”

Those words brought Jason over the edge as the tears slipped from his eyes. He wrapped Y/N in his arms and pulled her close to him, almost snivelling. Constantly repeating her name and ‘please’, Jason buried his head into her neck, begging her. Y/N gently coaxed his head from her neck and rested her forehead against his once more.

“Y/N…” Jason murmured as Y/N kissed away stray tears from his face, “please.”

“Not forever, just a little while.” Y/N ran her hands up and down his arms, “I need space to think about what I want, how I feel, all that stuff. Please, try to understand.”

“I do,” he nodded sadly. “I’m so sorry, Damsel.”

Hearing him call her that pet-name broke Y/N’s heart; it reminded her of all the good times, the moments spent sitting on the balcony, sharing feelings and holding each other. The necklace on her started to feel as though it was weighing her down, she couldn’t take it anymore, just feeling the chain against her neck felt too much, like a burden, a reminder of what had happened between them. Y/N stepped back and unclasped the chain that Jason gave her and handed it back to him, dropping it in his gloved hand.

“Just a few weeks,” she told him.

“Just a few weeks,” he repeated with a solemn face. Jason then walked up to Y/N and kissed her passionately as though it were the last time – for all he knew it was. Y/N kissed back, feeling his hair between her fingers. Both were crying through the kiss, tears falling from their eyes, which they wiped away when they pulled back.

“Goodbye, for now, Jason Todd,” Y/N said, her voice cracking as she tried to hold herself together.

“Goodbye, for now, Y/N Y/L/N,” Jason said, carefully putting the necklace away in one of his pockets before placing his mask back on and climbing up onto her roof, then leaping onto the roof onto the next building. Y/N watched as he vanished from sight.

“I love you…” she said to the empty air.

________________________________________________________________

Jason didn’t know what possessed him when he called Dick Grayson. Of all people to talk to about this problem, Dick should not be on the list, but Alfred was busy and there was no way Bruce was going to be helpful at this point.

“Yes?”

“Dick? It’s Jason.”

“Jason? What are you calling about? Is it Bruce? Cause if it is, I’m not interested.”

“No. Nothing about Bruce.”

“Then what is it?”

“I need some advice…” Jason mumbled down the phone.

“Can’t Bruce or Alfred help?”

“It’s a girl problem, and a Robin one too,” Jason admitted. He heard Dick’s breathing change from something calm to something tenser and perhaps angry. Did he make a mistake going to Dick? Well, if he had then Jason knew one thing, it still wouldn’t get back to Bruce.

“Can you get to me?” Dick asked in a monotone voice, “probably best to talk in person. I’ll send you the location.”

“Yeah, and Dick?”

“Yes, Jason?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, let’s talk first.”

________________________________________________________________

Jason awkwardly stood on the balcony of the place where Dick was staying. Being in Bruce’s care had its benefit, one being fast travel, Jason was standing next to Dick on the balcony before the sun had risen. On the railing was two beer bottles, one for Jason and one for Dick. Dick grabbed his beer and took the cap off, drinking it slowly. Jason has changed from his Robin suit to his civilian clothing.

“Girl trouble and Robin trouble?” Dick stated.

“You have no idea…”

“Come on then,” Dick sighed, handing Jason a beer, “what is it? You want my advice?”

“Yes.”

“What about?” Dick asked. Jason realized that while Dick was more than willing to give him the advice needed, he had no clue what that advice was.

“How’d you do it? Balance Robin and You?” Jason asked quietly. The young man sighed and shifted on the balcony, glancing to his left of him to look at Dick. Dick looked at Jason for a moment, clearly contemplating what to say. It was a sensitive topic, a serious one, and Dick had to think about what to say and how to phrase it.

“It’s very hard,” Dick began carefully, “I found it difficult, balancing all this is possible, I’ve seen it with others, but I struggled. I’m not going to lie about that, and honestly, I don’t know what advice I can give you. Spend too much time as Jason and you lose Robin, spend too much time as Robin and you lose Jason. I think it’s different for everyone but at the end of the day… I guess the only thing I can tell you is… find something to keep you grounded, but have that be something positive. For me, it was the idea of getting revenge for my parents, and after I had that there was nothing to ground me and I didn’t like who I was because my grounding was anger.” Dick confessed, it was a hard thing for him to say, but he said it, “You have the opportunity to be better than me as Robin, Jason, take it, don’t let kicking the cops' asses be your grounding.”

“It hasn’t been for a long time,” Jason said, “not since Y/N, and now I’ve lost her.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a girl in Gotham… Y/N Y/L/N…” Jason mumbled. Dick nearly choked on his beer.

“As in the Y/L/N family?”

“Exactly that Y/L/N,” Jason nodded.

“How’d that happen?”

“She’s in my Physics class. I saved her one night as Robin, and it sort of grew from there,” Jason explained, “I kept going to visit her as Robin at night and I… hung out with her as Jason in the day. Things got complicated and I…”

“You fell in love with her, didn’t you?”

“Hard,” Jason sighed, “and I somehow managed to keep it going for months, and then I screwed it all up.”

“What did you do?”

“I was getting closer with her as Robin, so I distanced myself from her as Jason – it was painful but I had to so I didn’t slip up, but I slipped up anyway.” Jason swigged his beer and sighed as he looked out over the city. “Fuck…” Jason huffed and leaned against the wall. “It was just a slip of the tongue; I called her the pet-name I only used as Robin.”

“And she figured it all out?”

“Within seconds.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, I know she won’t tell I’m Robin,” Jason assured Dick, who nodded silently, “but Y/N said we should have a few weeks apart, to sort things out… emotionally.”

“How close did you get?” Dick asked quietly. It was a question that had clearly been playing on his mind since Jason called him – even a moron could figure out what Jason meant when he called her.

“Saying we love each other, even calling each other the love of each other’s life…” Jason confessed, then he hesitated “we’ve had sex…”

“How’d you manage that without letting her know who you were?”

“The mask stayed on…” Jason turned to see Dick looking at him with a cocked eyebrow. Jason felt his face flush as he thought back to that night. “Don’t judge me for that.”

“I’m not judging, a little impressed, maybe, but not judging.” Dick smiled, “I’m not going to act like there wasn’t a girl who liked when I wore the mask.”

“You mean Dawn?”

“You know about that?”

“Everyone knows, Dick. You’re both so obvious.”

“Anyway…” Dick coughed, “having Y/N as your grounding is good.”

“Did you hear me? I screwed it all up,” Jason said, “I hurt her, I broke her trust. She will never want to be with me again.”

Dick sighed and brushed the hair out of his eyes as he looked at Jason. At times Dick saw part of himself in the second Robin and saw what he wished he could be. Happy. To see Jason kicking himself over this was almost painful. Jason made a mistake, yes costly, but still a mistake, and mistakes can be learnt from.

“Give her a few weeks to herself, like she asked,” Dick said quietly.

“Of course, I respect her.”

“Good.” Dick nodded.

“Then what?” Jason asked.

“Bare yourself to her.”

________________________________________________________________

“What’s up with you lately?” Jessica asked Y/N as they sat at their usual spot in the café with their drinks.

“What’d you mean?”

“You’re off.”

“Off?”

“Distracted,” Jessica sighed, “I don’t get it. Last week you were perky and happy and now you’re so gloomy. What happened? And where’s that necklace you refused to take off?”

“The chain broke,” Y/N lied with a shrug, “anyway, I haven’t been sleeping well lately so I’m just tired.”

“Alright…” Jessica said unconvinced. “Well, you know if anything is bothering you that you can talk to me.”

“I know.”

“Honestly, I thought it was all about the date.”

“Huh?”

“It’s been a year since Robin rescued you,” Jessica reminded her, “I was worried you were having a bad time because you were thinking about that.”

“No,” Y/N shook her head, “I had completely forgotten that.”

“Really?” Jessica frowned.

“Really,” Y/N nodded. After everything that had happened lately, the date and times had completely slipped from her mind. Ironically, two weeks before, when Y/N didn’t know that Jason was Robin, she had been planning on doing a little thing for the anniversary of the night they met. She had thought about making a nice dinner for them, something that they could enjoy on the balcony.

After all, he had been so good to her.

To think it had been a year, and she thought about how different everything was a year ago. Y/N didn’t even like Jason then, and now he had broken her heart. Part of Y/N wished she could go back to the moment it all began and warn her past self about what the future would hold. Another part of her wouldn’t change what happened for anything, because, regardless of how Jason broke her heart, she still loved him.

Y/N just wished she had told him that before he left. What was to happen now?

#Jason Todd #Jason Todd Titans #Jason Todd imagine #Jason Todd x Reader #jason todd x y/n #Robin imagine #robin x reader #Jason Todd Robin #Robin Jason Todd #Titans #Titans DC #Fanfiction #one shot #jason todd one shot #robin one shot #imagine

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iamwhelmed · 5 years

Text

Homesick: Chapter 7

Aaaand it’s finally here! Sorry this took so long, ladies and gents!

Summary: Raven finds herself carrying Beast Boy's child and struggles with the fear of losing him and the impending responsibility of being a mother; Starfire finds Robin in a precarious position with another woman. The two leave the tower to live on their own for awhile, just to figure things out. Beast Boy and Robin may be losing their minds, and Cyborg tries to keep everyone together.

Read it on AO3

Read it on Fanfiction.net

Her brain was splitting before she opened her eyes, like the darkness she was accustomed to taking comfort in had taken instead to hammering at her head with Robin's bo staff. She winced and raised one hand to her head, only to have it meet some resistance. She cracked an eye open and found an IV taped to her hand. She glanced at the bag, hoping against all hope that those weren't painkillers because no, had Starfire not told them she was pregnant? Then again, she hadn't remembered it being Starfire who'd handed her off, though she recalled the light consoling brush of her fingers, sweeping the hair out of her eyes. Actually, she didn't remember much at all of the trip to the hospital. Red X attacked, she ran to tell a guard (so the guard could call on the Titans, neither her nor Starfire were fit to fight), and she'd come back to hoist Red X off of the compromising position she'd found him in with Starfire. There'd been a sharp, yet dull pain, like a jagged knife grazing the inside of her womb, and then she'd passed out.

Dread, thick and heavy and so very, very there, lurched in her as she shot upward, one hand at her swollen stomach. Oh Azar, please oh please have let the baby make it, please tell her she hadn't-

"The baby's okay."

Her hand dropped from her stomach; Happy sang in her mind for the first time in months. She turned to see Beast Boy, standing at the door, one hand awkwardly rubbing at his other behind his back. He smiled shyly at her, one pointed tooth jutting out at the corner of his lip. Her mouth fell open despite her inability to speak. Something, probably a cheap flower vase, exploded behind her on the windowsill. Beast Boy laughed, not his usual laugh, something lower. "Yeah, Doctor said you shouldn't do that anymore, at least until you have the baby."

"B-Beast Boy I- I-"

"Raven," He raised one hand, approaching her slowly, considerately... He was still smiling, and Affection tittered at the sight. "Why didn't you tell me?" Ah, of course he wanted to know. Why wouldn't he? She tried to grimace, but she wasn't very convincing, so she turned her head to her lap and folded her hands silently in front of her. Beast Boy drew closer. "Why'd you have to do all of this? Why'd you hide it from me?"

"Because you weren't ready to be a father."

He gripped her wrist, she looked at him. His lips were a straight thin line, but there wasn't anger in his eyes, not in the way his brows furrowed or the drop of his eyes. No, he looked sad. She'd made him sad. "Rae, we both know that's a lie."

She blinked, turned her head to her lap again and prayed that the tears firing against her eyes wouldn't fall. "Beast Boy… I grew up knowing I was nothing to my father, nothing but a portal for him to destroy my world- my friends. I tried…" she choked, and she loathed how weak she felt "so hard… to make him care about me, to be his daughter. But I never got there. I'd never known support and trust and everything else Robin and Starfire are always going on about. I'd never felt…" Raven grit her teeth as the first tear slithered down her cheek "...loved." She raised her other hand to her stomach, rubbing the swell back and forth. She breathed in, then the breath shuddered out. "I didn't want that for my child."

There was a warm hand on hers, and the thumb trailed her stomach, tracing her path. "Our child, Raven. You're not doing this alone." He sounded confused, but it wasn't a question; she just knew he wanted to ask a million of them.

"Beast Boy, I-" She whimpered. Azar, she hated herself right now, hissed internally for Reason to rein Sorrow and Affection in, but she didn't. She didn't have that power anymore. Beast Boy had changed Nevermore, maybe permanently, maybe for the better, but at the moment it felt for the worse. "I can't ask you to do that."

"You might be asking. I'm not."

She opened her eyes again and looked at Beast Boy, and he stood there the same as he had before, though he'd moved to hold her and their maturing child between his arms. He looked back at her, and she didn't need her empathic ability to tell his version of Affection was well in control, that the Reason of his mind, though monumentally weaker than her own, had taken a backseat to sentimentality. It made her heart swing; Happy was dancing on her strings and Affection gifted her the song. But Reason had returned, nagging at them with a stern finger- He feels this way now, but what of Terra? He can father our child and love another woman.

Sorrow tripped Happy off her feet, and Affection's music grew to a hush. "Beast Boy, I don't want you to think that because I'm giving you a child that it means you have to…" she trailed off, but Beast Boy pressed on.

"Doesn't mean I have to what, Rae?"

She breathed in, and breathed out "... You don't have to stay with me if there's somebody else."

He recoiled, and immediately she missed the heat. Doubt crept in, like she had been, constantly, for months- Why'd you have to remind him? We could have stayed like that, now he's changed his mind-

"Okay, you're gonna have to catch me up here, 'cause I'm suuuper confused."

Raven nearly smiled. He was such an idiot, and Azar she loved him. "You talk in your sleep sometimes, ya know."

"Huh?"

Raven shifted, and she could feel him watching her. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands. "You said her name, Beast Boy. You were calling for her, and I just couldn't…" play her role. "I didn't want to place that responsibility on you, make you feel trapped. You'd just end up hating me and" she rubbed her stomach "resenting them. That's why I hid. I had to-"

"Wait wait wait- hold on a second here!" She looked at him and, true to his nature, he looked lost. The kind of lost he was trying to make the connection between video game sequels. His eyes bulged as his hands spoke for him, though it was a different language, and not even he understood it. "Who are we talking about? What does this have to do with our kid?" He ran his hands down his face. "I'm so confused!" He tugged at his hair, making more of a mess of it than it already had been. "It feels like alien monkeys are in my brain and they're trying to make it explode!"

She raised an eyebrow. "I sincerely doubt foreign chimps have anything to do with your brain malfunctioning." She was almost proud of the usual dry monotone she'd managed, but it faded. "Terra, Beast Boy. You were calling out for Terra." She saw him pause with his back turned, going stiff at the mention. Sorrow had taken a pickaxe to her heart now, she could feel her chiseling away. "And I know she's back. I wouldn't want to get in the way of that." You weren't meant for me, Beast Boy. I accepted that a long time ago. It's time I set you free, you weren't supposed to be in my cage to begin with.

He turned to her, but she looked away so she couldn't see his face. She wasn't sure she wanted to. He got closer again, and she forced herself to look out the window, where she could only see his outline in the mugginess of morning dew, squeezing her eyes shut because even the shadow of him was too much right then. She couldn't, wouldn't look for reassurance. She was too scared she'd find nothing, or worse, trick herself into seeing something that wasn't there. Her hands turned to fists in her blankets. "Raven…"

"Don't."

He grew quiet, and that must have meant that he'd processed what she'd said, understood, accepted it. Her heart sank.

He moved, brushed against her arm, trespassed into her personal bubble. "Ya know, you talk in your sleep, too." She hadn't meant to turn her head, and she hadn't even thought about opening her eyes, but his fingers were under her chin, and emerald green as big as his heart was peering into her with such abandon that it must have brushed off. She gasped, she didn't even mean to. His eyes shifted from playful to sultry, and part of her stomach (probably not the baby, though relating to the baby as it'd been made) flipped. "You said some things about Aqualad like a year ago, and I didn't freak out."

He leaned in and kissed her, and all at once Nevermore rejoiced. The pain that'd lingered in her stomach, the faint nausea she'd felt, it dissipated in a snap of a finger. His lips pressed gently to hers, no demand or desperation, but he once again was not asking. She shut her eyes, leaned in, fingers reaching up and dancing across his chest before they twisted around the fabric of his suit and tugged, pulling him closer. He followed, cupping her jaw in his hands, cradling her head to him like a treasure, thumbs brushing over her cheeks. It felt like the first time, all anticipation, joy, uncertainty, but she pulled away and he followed and she knew there was nothing left to be uncertain about. They didn't part until he had to come back for air, and even then he moved so shortly that her lips still tasted the air he breathed, and their noses brushed as two sets of heavy-lidded eyes stared back at each other. His lips brushed hers again, light as a feather, there and yet not, and she huffed. "I was never in love with Aqualad."

"And I've never loved anyone the way I love you," he grinned. "So we're even." She huffed again, but it was more of a laugh. His eyes got bright. "See? I will spend the rest of my life trying to get you to make that sound, wet dreams about exes or not." She smacked him, and he yelped, but snickered and rubbed his sore head nevertheless.

The door slammed open again, and both jumped to see Starfire, alight with her feet off the ground, followed closely by the rest of the team. Her green eyes grew three sizes. "Raven! You are awake!" She dove into her arms, and Raven grunted at the impact. Starfire leaped up and down and squeezed her, giggling with a smile as wide as her eyes. "Oh, thank goodness! I was so worried! You and the snarglpref are both unharmed!"

"We won't be if you keep this up."

Starfire released her, pulling away with orange-tinted cheeks. "Hee hee! Apologies!"

Raven glanced up and down, eyebrow raising. She mumbled to Starfire so that the rest of the room couldn't hear (aside from Beast Boy, but she'd explain everything to him later). "You got your powers back?"

Starfire blinked, as if only now realizing that she'd regained flight before she slowly eased herself to the ground, eyes becoming bashful. "I was relieved that you and your child were all right." She wanted to ask more, but Starfire shook her head. Not here.

Starfire stepped to the side to stand next to Beast Boy, and Robin stepped into the room, the other three following. She and Terra made eye-contact, and Terra gave her a smile and waved. Raven blinked, but smiled back after a moment. She turned to Robin, who looked just as concerned as she would have imagined he'd have been had she and Starfire actually woken him up the night they left. He understood her like few others did, and she'd felt his comfort's absence. "Raven, why did you hide that you were pregnant from us?"

"Yeah!" Cyborg piped up. "I woulda made a killer nursery!"

Starfire's eyes lit up, and her flight had returned to her once more as she squeezed her hands at her chest, as if barely containing her excitement. "Oh! Raven, I had almost forgotten the tradition of the showering of the infant! This will be marvelous!" Robin acknowledged her with his signature half-smirk.

Raven winced, a bead of sweat seeping down her head. "Uhh, maybe we could wait until I'm a little further along to do that?" She pressed a hand to her stomach. "After tonight, I think I need to watch how much excitement I'm involved in."

"Oh don't worry," Robin crossed his arms, still grinning, just at her now. "I'm confining you to three week's bedrest. We can't risk a repeat of what happened tonight."

"Doctor says you're fine, though," Cyborg approached the bed then, holding his arm out for her to see the test results on his arm. She leaned over, into his shoulder, and all at once felt like a little sister to a very concerned, capable big brother. He smiled at her, the way only Cyborg smiled, the way he always had, the way she'd missed. "What set you off was using your powers too near to full capacity. It's not just your mind that takes a toll, your body does, too."

"So…" She raised an eyebrow and glanced at the room full of titans, each smiling at her in some variation. "I'm benched for six months, aren't I?" They all nodded, and she groaned.

Beast Boy and Cyborg had taken Raven home the next morning, after Doctor Thompkins signed the papers, of course. Beast Boy had offered her an arm, and Raven had taken it with a small smile on her lips, though she'd have denied it had any of them asked. Robin asked Starfire where they'd been hiding, offered to follow her back to the motel to collect their things (because they weren't staying another night outside of the tower, he wasn't having it, it was an order). Starfire had smiled at him, waved him off, said, as politely as she could: "I would prefer if Friend Terra assisted me instead."

That'd hurt, Terra could tell, but he'd let her go.

He and Batgirl returned to the tower on his R-Cycle, leaving Starfire and Terra to walk their way back to the motel. Both could fly faster than the T-car could drive, it was fine, but he'd argued that he could send Batgirl back on his bike alone- it didn't work, she refused his help; it upset Starfire more that he'd been willing to let this other woman ride his bike when he never let any of them touch it. He'd waved to them, and Starfire and Terra waved back as they sped off (he'd seen Starfire's face as Batgirl's arms wrapped around his waist, as her head rested on his shoulder. He tried to erase the way her eyes dimmed in his mind, but the more he buried it, the deeper the hole in the pit of him dug).

Starfire and Terra passed the motel's front door, Starfire offering a quick wave to the grumpy waddling man who owned the place, who brushed her off with a disgruntled hand and a sigh. He rolled around at his front desk, rolling chair looking pressed to keep him upright as he leaned back. Terra followed Starfire to the sliding door on the other side of the room, glancing back at the old man with a cocked eyebrow. They set their sights on the rows and rows of motel rooms, and Terra gestured to the lot of them. "So, which one's yours?"

Starfire shrugged at one on the third floor, to which Terra grumbled ("of course it's that one").

They climbed the stairs, spirals, thin and so claustrophobic they had to walk in line and not together. Odd men peered at them from the windows of their dens, between blinds and smoky rooms. Terra pretended not to see them, but she wondered how Raven and Starfire had managed, if they'd ever had any problems here. They could handle themselves, she knew that, but she had a feeling Robin would wanna do a background check on the shady characters on the other side of those blinds; he'd probably find something for the JCPD.

"So this is the place you've been staying?"

"Yes, it is not to your liking?"

Terra took one look at the dirty window and the air conditioning unit attached that was falling apart, then shrugged. "Better than the caves I used t' crash in."

The room was tidy, for the most part, aside from shopping bags that were haphazardly thrown at the end of either bed. Terra could see bras peeking out of the corner of it- dark, purple, lacey. She hadn't pegged Raven as the lace type, but hey, she hadn't known Raven when she was actively having sex! She felt a shiver run down her grossed-out spine, and decided to table the thought for awhile, maybe forever. There were some stray feathers on the floor, as if somebody had torn a pillow in half and cleaned it up, but had missed a few stragglers. A broken lamp sat between the beds in a trashcan; Terra looked to Starfire, then back at it. "Uhh, what happened?"

Starfire paused in her raid of the nightstand drawer, stuffing anything that had been theirs into one of the tote bags she'd bought on a whim. She glanced at the mess of glass and, to Terra's surprise, didn't have much of a response. "Oh, towards the beginning of her pregnancy, Friend Raven had the mood swing, and loss of control over her powers caused her to-"

"- to break your lamp."

"Yes."

Terra stared at it.

"Yeah, I'm gonna give BB a heads up when we get back."

The two continued to pick up belongings- purses, clothing (Starfire took care of the dirty laundry), soaps, and especially the jar labeled "Savings" filled with dollar bills and coins. Terra asked what they were saving up for, and Starfire giggled and said she'd planned on getting a puppy. Terra asked if that's what Raven was saving for, to which Starfire answered: "I do not know." They'd assume the baby.

Starfire had taken to making the beds ("You spent WHAT on this room? We better clean up here, we are NOT paying extra!") and Terra had taken to tossing the food from the mini fridge into a plastic bag. She pulled out some mustard, some rice in a tupperware container, a leftover smoothie… she tossed it all into the plastic bag and wrapped it up. "All right, Star, I think we're good to go."

Starfire nodded.

They grabbed the bags, full to the zipper with everything, everything that had made this space their own for three long months, and carried it to the door. Starfire pulled the key out of her wallet- not something she'd carried before, key nor pocketbook- and took one final look at the room. It looked clean, empty, the way it had been when she and Raven first opened the door at six in the morning one terrible, godforsaken night. She and Raven had warmed it up, thrown blankets over the cheap and thin comforters, filled the drawers with their clothes and underwear and socks, even took the shower curtain down and replaced it with one they'd both settled on. Anything had been better than the semi-transparency of the other curtain. She could still see the smudges from where she'd leave little notes on the fogged up bathroom mirror for Raven before she'd head off to work, and she wondered if she could continue a similar tradition in the tower's bathroom; there'd just be more people to see it, now.

"Uh...Star?" Terra awkwardly shifted from foot to foot, hands not quite sure what to do or where to go. She winced, and set a slow hand on Starfire's shoulder.

Starfire blinked, and Terra drew her hand back, face heavy with concern despite her clumsy comfort. "Sorry, didn't mean to… Starfire, why are you crying?"

Was she? Starfire raised one hand to her cheek. Sure enough, her fingers came away slick, and she frowned. "Apologies," she wiped her eyes with her arm "I am… the correct term is feeling nostalgic, yes?"

Terra smiled at her, set a warm hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, Star, that's right. Do you need a few more minutes?"

Starfire glanced back to the empty room, and she could see everything despite the lights having already been turned off because the sun was rising, and the light was creeping into the shadows of the place Starfire had learned to call home. Or rather, a home away from home. Raven was at their old home, their new home, and they would face whatever came after this together; this motel room, with all its cheap idiosyncrasies and poor plumbing, was a testament to that. She need not fear the next day, because they'd seen plenty together and tackled each like the one before.

Starfire shook her head and smiled, really smiled. "No, Terra, I am quite ready."

They shut the door and locked it, and set forth to return the key.

#Teen Titans #RobStar #BBRae #Robin #Starfire #Beast Boy #Raven #Cyborg #Terra #barbara gordon #Batgirl #DickBabs #Dick Grayson

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lookbackmachine · 5 years

Text

Disney Afternoon History Part 1

Disney Afternoon Part 1

Transcript of: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

[music]

0:00:06 Speaker 1: Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, The Fonz, was the pinnacle of cool for a generation. The leather jacket, the jukebox and "Ayyy". And in 1981, he hit the cultural height of fame with his own Saturday morning cartoon show. Unlike, say, Mork & Mindy in which Robin Williams was limited by the constraints of reality, there's nothing inherently animated about Happy Days, but that wasn't a deterrent for the Academy Award winning studio Hanna-Barbera, when they created this.

[music]

[video playback]

[music]

0:01:19 S1: The animated Fonz didn't just jump the shark, he time traveled so he could ride a brontosaurus. Jumping the shark seemed baked into the premise of many of the cartoons from this period, because they started as a gimmick and only kept gimmicking. Besides a big hit with The Smurfs, this period, for Hanna-Barbera, was littered with Scooby-Doo knockoffs.

[video playback]

0:01:49 S1: The studio that once produced The Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi, Snagglepuss and The Jetsons was producing uninspired paint by numbers replicas. The parity was at its peak when the animated Fonz had a supporting role in Laverne & Shirley in the Army. The cartoons essentially amounted to barely animated fan fiction. For years, art and commerce clashed on Saturday mornings and commerce had a far better record. And yet, only four years later, a cartoon would raise the artistic bar for the medium, and strangely, it would be based on the currency of kid commerce, candy.

[music]

0:02:34 S1: Animated television started in 1949, as it should, a talking rabbit wearing a suit of armour, riding a horse toward camera. It was the spectacular opening of Crusader Rabbit, whose other animation wasn't nearly as good as the opening. It was designed, with little to no movement, by Alex Anderson, who was inspired by Baby Weems, from Disney's behind the curtain feature, The Reluctant Dragon. In the Baby Weems segment, there are story boards with a tiny bit of motion included to keep it from being entirely static. There are quick cuts, camera movements, and narration to carry the short all the way to the end. After seeing this, Anderson believed he could use this barebones style to have notoriously expensive animation make financial sense for television. He partnered with Jay Ward and the two created The Crusader Rabbit shorts for NBC. The shorts were successful and ran for several years, which sparked Anderson and Ward to create the cartoons that they were famous for, Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right. Despite their massive success, their partnership didn't end well. In fact, it got worse, even though Ward was already dead. Alex Anderson, animator.

0:03:45 Speaker 2: I was surprised that... To discover that my 50% equity in the characters had disappeared and was not being honored. Yeah, I went to court, sued, got them to acknowledge that I was the creator. I learned about it at his funeral, when I was doing a eulogy and the names of several of us who were doing a eulogy were indicated, and it said Alex Anderson, creator of Bullwinkle and Rocky. And somebody had scratched it out and said, "An artist who worked for Jay Ward." And I thought, "Well, what's this? Why is this in?" Then I started checking and I found that, indeed, Jay had registered the characters in his name.

0:04:31 S1: The show's limited animation technique was taken by Hanna-Barbera and updated with better animation to produce several hits like Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, and eventually the Flintstones, a primetime hit for ABC in 1960. Hanna-Barbera went on to an unprecedented run of hits and non-hits, but when it came to television animation, Hanna-Barbera was in a class of their own. However, things fell off in the 1980s. In those years, The Smurfs were their only big hit. This left a gaping hole in the market that was filled by cartoons based on toys, like GI Joe and He-Man. But their ratings were drooping as well. And then something happened that had never happened before. During the entire history of television animation, from 1949 to 1984, the most famous animation company in the world never produced a single animated television cartoon. That was about to change with a single brunch, but the events leading up to that brunch showed an American titan in peril.

0:05:36 S1: Walt Disney was dead, to begin with, he died in 1966. But he was still running the company from his grave. After all the company's internal motto was, "What would Walt do?" But hypothesizing about what a genius would do is not the same as having the genius actually there. Because when it came to the question of "What would Walt do?" the company wasn't guessing correctly. Even though it was 1984, its last motion picture hit had been The Love Bug, in 1968. And so, because the company no longer had Walt, it figured the next best thing was Ron Miller, an ex Ram quarterback and Walt's son-in-law, who became CEO in 1978.

0:06:16 S1: The best quote to describe Miller's tenure was his own, "Because of Walt, because of his influence, I second-guess myself all the time." Miller wasn't only contending with Walt's legacy, he was also dueling with E. Cardon Walker, who was the chairman of the board. Walker had been one of Walt's right-hand men. He was in charge of advertising and public relations. And in his tenure, Walker launched the Disney Channel, opened Epcot and Disneyland Tokyo, but he also had peccadilloes that were killing the company. Walker was not in favor of a $1 parking fee. "The parking lot is the first thing the guests see. We have to keep our prices low." And despite having been in charge of advertising, Walker did not believe in advertising or marketing. The Disney parks did not run ads or commercials. For some perspective, the first American newspaper advertisement was in 1704. In 1922, Queensboro Corp buys airtime from AT&T to create the first radio commercials in advertising history. The first TV ad was aired for Bulova watches in 1941, which cost $9. Advertising was not new, and yet, E. Cardon Walker wouldn't do it.

0:07:26 S1: In fact, Walker was even stingy on advertising when it came to the motion picture division. Budgets for advertising were growing since the big blockbuster Jaws. ET had cost $10 million in ads alone, but when Disney's TRON came out, they gave it such a minuscule advertising budget that no one knew the film was even out. The film took a $17 million write-down. While all this was going on, there was another heir to the Disney throne who was dubbed the idiot nephew by Uncle Walt himself, who once said, "My nephew will never amount to anything." Thanks to Walt-think inside the studio, Roy Disney was considered the village idiot. It didn't help that he wasn't the most charismatic individual. John Sanford, director, Home On The Range.

0:08:11 Speaker 3: He had this legacy kinda handed to him, and I think he really took it seriously. But on the other hand, he was just a normal guy who happened to have a ton of money. We were in La Verne, California, I think it was, at this movie theater. Doing a preview for Home On The Range, and there was a Bed Bath & Beyond, and Patty suddenly turns to Roy and says, "Oh, Roy, they've got glasses on sale. Do you mind if I go looking?" "Eh, go ahead, Patty." And Patty runs into the Bed Bath & Beyond and he says, "You know, we need to get new glasses. You know, you've got kids and they break all the glasses. And suddenly, it's 20 years later, and you don't have one glass that matches. So Patty wants new glasses." And he's just talking very frankly like that. And I said, "Yeah, I know that. I know how that goes." And then Patty comes running up. "Oh, Roy. They've got a wonderful set of glasses that are on sale. Let's go in and get them." And Roy goes, "Well, I don't wanna carry them all over the goddamn mall." And she goes, "Okay. I guess we'll get them later." [chuckle] It was just fun to watch them, 'cause it was like... Reminded me of watching my grandparents bicker.

0:09:12 S1: Roy didn't like his role at the company, nor constantly being at odds with Miller, so Roy left in 1977, but remained on the board. From afar, he watched the animation division go to hell, which was once the company's crown jewel. On Miller's watch, the Fox and the Hound was almost torpedoed, when soon-to-be-legendary animator Don Bluth left the studio after run-ins with Miller and the executives, and Bluth didn't leave alone, he took 15 animators with him. At the time, Ed Hansen, the head of the animation department, said this, "The whole animation department could have gone under at that time. As it was, we made it, but the release of the film has been delayed, and we lost half of our creative staff." Bluth had his own thoughts. "The thing that would help Disney the most is to have a living profit, not a committee. They need somebody who knows and cares about animation. They won't roll up their sleeves and plunge in like Walt did. They wanna hire somebody to do it. It just doesn't work that way. I think they've found that out now. It was a matter of constantly bumping up against Ron Miller and the older guys, people who wouldn't relinquish authority and who wouldn't make a decision except by committee. It just doesn't work that way. They had some of the best talent in the world there. But if a production head doesn't have talent or push, you won't make it."

0:10:29 S1: In spite of everything, the company did have some good news. Miller had gone against the Disney Brain Trust and was making adult fare with his newly-created Touchstone Pictures, and he had a huge hit on his hands with Ron Howard's Splash, on March 9th, 1984. It just also happened to be the same day that Roy Disney decided to resign from the board. Roy Disney's resignation set off a chain reaction. Corporate raiders tried to take over the company. Miller was forced out. Walker retired. Roy took a vice-chairman and chairman of animation role. Michael Eisner became CEO and Chairman of the Board. Frank Wells became President, and Jeffrey Katzenberg took the role of Walt Disney Studios chairman, and the corporate raiders were turned away. Eisner and Katzenberg had blazed a trail at Paramount and became the talk of the town for their track record and by throwing their names into the press as much as humanly possible. Meanwhile, Frank Wells had been vice chairman of Warner Brothers. They set about using their industry experience to transform a company that was run like a mom-and-pop shop.

0:11:33 S1: The fourth member of their team was assets, and there were assets galore that Disney simply wasn't utilizing to their full potential, or at all. The Walt Disney Company was like the drowning man in the flood who doesn't accept help from a rowboat, motorboat, or helicopter because he believes God will save him. The man dies, and he meets God and asks, "Why didn't you come to my rescue?" God says, "I sent you a rowboat, motorboat and a helicopter. What do you want from me?" Now, Eisner, Wells and Katzenberg would take the rowboat, motorboat and helicopter to the promised land. Under their leadership, the company began advertising its parks. Attendance rose 10%. They raised the price of admission, which led to hundreds of millions of dollars into the company's coffers. Eisner releases Disney classics on home video. It was initially sacrilegious in the company, but money talks. Cinderella alone made $180 million in revenue. Animation was losing money, so they thought about shutting it down. But Eisner didn't wanna piss off Roy, so they kept it around. It was a smart choice because Roy was a little bit more cunning than he seemed. He was no Richard III but he'd just usurped his own brother-in-law. And because Eisner would later fail to keep him happy, Roy would take out Eisner decades later. Roy might have been treated like Fredo, but he was secretly Michael Corleone.

0:12:57 S1: But that was a long way off, now Eisner was simply basking in his good fortune. "Such a bounty has fallen in my lap. Every day a new asset falls out of the sky. The real estate is just gravy, there are 40 unused acres next to Disneyland planted in strawberries." To re-emphasize his life on easy street, he was drinking a milkshake when he said that. And of course, there was another blue-ocean opportunity for Eisner to slurp up, animated television. On Eisner's first day at the studio, he announced he wanted to have a Disney TV cartoon on the air in 10 months.

[music]

0:13:35 S1: Willie Ito, animator.

0:13:41 Speaker 4: We knew internally at Disney that things are gonna start happening. And so, one day, they had all of the Burbank employees meet in the backstage set, we had a big open set area and everyone from the studio was there. And Michael Eisner was introduced and the whole bit. Then he gave us the overall picture as to what to expect in the future now that the new regime is here. And one of the things he commented on was we're going to alt Hanna-Barbera, Hanna-Barbera.

0:14:20 S1: According to the New York Times, he asked someone to find them the six most creative people at Disney to figure out how to make Disney TV animation work, which leads to the aforementioned brunch that started it all. One of the creatives brought to the table was Jymn Magon. Magon had produced story records for Disney music for eight years. Why bring a record producer, with no animation experience, to the table?

0:14:41 Speaker 5: I ask myself that every morning when I wake up, [chuckle] it's a bit amazing. Well, one of the things that Michael Eisner did before he was at Paramount was... I think he was head of ABC children's programming, I think he told me that he was the guy who actually bought the Scooby-Doo franchise from Hanna-Barbera, which of course, is still running after all these years. So, that was very successful, and I think he always had a soft spot for TV animation, and so when he took over the company in '84, one of the first things he wanted to do was to start a TV animation department. So, being new to the company, I think he just looked at different departments and said, 'I wanna meet some of the bright people that are doing things here at the company.' And we had just made a lot of money off of Mickey Mouse disco and a lot of projects that were new at the time in the record business. And so Gary Krisel, who was the president of Disneyland records, and myself, were invited over to Michael Eisner's house on a Sunday morning. Michael Eisner invited a bunch of people... Not a lot, I think there were about 12, in all, that were at this meeting in his living room on a Sunday morning in Bel-Air. And I had never been to Bel-Air, never been invited to someone's house up there, [chuckle] so, it was very fancy-shmancy for me.

0:16:01 S1: And there was also Tad Stones, who began his work at Disney in 1974. He was an uncredited animator on the Fox and the Hound as late as 1981. Now, he too was at the brunch.

0:16:13 Speaker 6: I was in Features, I eventually moved into Story, went to Imagineering and help design rides for Epcot Center, and back in charge of some Epcot Center documentaries that then never happened. Eventually ended up back in Features, I'm not sure they knew what to do with me. And that's about the time management changed, with Michael Eisner coming in and Jeffrey Katzenberg and those guys. And I was... Along my trials through the company, I had done some animation development for the guys over in the merchandising side of things 'cause they felt like the only way to really sell toys is to have some cartoons on TV. You can't wait for these features that come out every four years, or so, 'cause that's what it was at the time. Anyway, those same guys were pitching TV animation to Michael Eisner. I was actually on vacation, but I got a call that said, "We know you're on vacation, we know it's gonna be Sunday, but would you mind coming to Michael Eisner's house to talk about television animation?" So I was like "Yeah [chuckle], I think I can make time." Went there with like 10 people. These were the guys who basically I had worked with before and they were impressed with what I had done. And from the beginning, Michael Eisner felt like Disney is the top in animation, and it should be in every area that animation is in, it doesn't mean that television animation is going to look like feature animation, but it should be the best TV shows in animation on TV.

0:17:39 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:17:40 Speaker 7: Michael revealed that he wanted to start this new department, he wanted us to come up with some ideas and whatnot, and he actually came up with an idea himself, which was his kids who were in the other room eating cereal in the kitchen, in their pajamas [chuckle] on Sunday morning, had just come back from camp and I guess they had told him that they were eating these really cool candies called Gummi bears. And he said, "I just like the sound of that." And he looked at me, which was really weird, 'cause he didn't know me at all, and he said, "Make me a show called Gummi Bears." And I thought, "Why'd he pick me out?" [laughter] And I said, "Oh yeah, cool, great."

0:18:20 S6: So I pitched an old project, Mickey and the Space Pirates, they liked it a lot, but then they said, "No Mickey... We wanna make sure we can pull this off. Mickey is too precious." So there was a lot of respect there going in. No one was prepared to actually pitch shows. I had that artwork left over from stuff I had pitched to the merchandising guys, who were in the room, but it was kind of more feeling what Eisner wanted.

0:18:43 S7: But Tad was at that meeting, and he didn't come over for probably a full season to TV animation, but he eventually did, and thank God he did, because we worked on so many shows over there. But yeah, he was at that initial meeting, and he had a lot of great ideas. But he didn't come join us right away. And afterwards, we all met at a coffee shop, in Brentwood, and I remember us all kind of looking at each other, like, "This guy's crazy. Who wants to do a show about characters that get eaten every week?" [chuckle]

0:19:15 S6: And I remember saying, "Well, he seemed pretty sharp and respectful of animation, except for that idea about Gummi bears, that's like doing pepperoni people, or something. I don't know how to do that".

0:19:25 S7: So I think we all kind of felt like, "He's a busy man. This will all go away". It was about two weeks later I got a call, "So where's my show?" "Well, I'm writing it now", [chuckle] and I typed up something and it was horrendous, but it was the beginnings of development. And so I ended up, at one point, doing two jobs, I was still doing my record producing, but I was also developing two shows, both Wuzzles and Gummi Bears for Disney. And we didn't even have offices for the department back then. I remember we went over to a fellow named Lenny Ripps. Lenny Ripps was responsible for creating Full House and he was under contract at Disney for the time, and Lenny said, "Come on over, let's talk about this." And so there was Gary Krisel, who was going to be the president of the new division. So he was doing double duty at the same time, with records and TV animation. And Michael Webster turned out to be our office manager, and there was me. And that was the four of us sitting there around a card table in Lenny's office kicking ideas around. And that's how that department started, very bizarre and very humble.

0:20:47 S7: I remember having to take pitches from people and we were discouraged from doing that, because Disney became a big company and had deep pockets, and of course, people would come in and pitch, and then say, "You stole my ideas." And so pretty much kept to ourselves and almost all the development was from inside, from people on staff. So we didn't... It was in the time of [0:21:10] ____ and other people pitching their ideas from outside. There was a travel office for Disney across the street from the studio in Buena Vista and it was just a crummy old office building. And I think that's where we put Art Vitello when they brought him in to run Gummi Bears. And they were just sort of makeshift offices, they put some of the artists on the back lots, above the tea room. We were just spread all over. So we all became sort of bastard children.

0:21:41 Speaker 8: This is the great book of Gummi.

0:21:45 Speaker 9: What's in it?

0:21:46 S8: Well, we really don't know.

0:21:49 S6: Well, they actually developed Gummi bears kind of on a candy basis with a villain called Licorice Whip, I think. And they were actually gonna have the Gummi bears give dental hygiene messages at the end of every show. That went nowhere, and they threw it all out and came up with what was on the air.

0:22:06 S1: Instead of candy, the show got a complicated 500-year-old plus mythos. The Gummi bears were descendants of the great gummies, tasked with protecting all things Gummi from human greed and exploitation.

0:22:18 S7: I was very fortune that I got to work with two of my childhood heroes, which were Rocky and Bullwinkle. I found myself staring at Bill Scott a lot because besides doing all the voices of George of the Jungle and Tom Slick and Bullwinkle, he was a fantastic writer, and he had written all of these commercials for Quaker Oats, Quisp and Quake and Cap'n Crunch, and stuff like that. He once said to me, "You know the old story, Jymn, about how do you make a statue of an elephant? Well, you start with a block of granite and you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant". He says, but writing a script is different. You start with nothing, and you chip away until you have a story. [chuckle] And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. You don't even have the rock to work with." [laughter] And I just thought he was a delight. He died after the first season of Gummi Bears and that was just devastating for us.

0:23:16 Speaker 10: Welcome to the land of Wuz, where nobody is like anybody you've seen before. The people who live in Wuz are called Wuzzle, naturally. And as you've probably guessed, Wuzzles are a little bit, you know, different.

0:23:33 S7: I didn't stay on Wuzzles. Once we got the two shows sold, I stayed exclusively on Gummi Bears. But in the early days, we were trying to put together these shows to pitch to the networks. And we had a show called Jumble Isle, the idea was that there were these animals that were jumbled up, and there were two of each animal. And, lo and behold, it turns out Hasbro has... Already has a project called The Wuzzles, which they had plush animals at the time. And, again, I don't know the ins and outs of the business side, but it was decided, "Well, why create these things when they already exist and let's just do a deal with Hasbro to take our development and put it with their characters." which I'm not even sure they had much of a back story. But once the deal was made, then we'd develop them into talking, breathing, and living characters. [chuckle] And so what happened was that Wuzzles then went on to have its own production department, just like Gummi Bears had, but like I said, my involvement at that point, I had dropped out after it sold to CBS.

0:24:39 S1: Besides Wuzzles and Gummi Bears, Disney television animation had one more venture in its early years. Fluppy Dogs was the first animated Disney feature for television. The show revolved around the Fluppy Dogs going through an interdimensional portal to Earth. It got a 5.3 rating on November 27th, 1986. The numbers were so low that it killed off the idea for a television series based on the special, and with that, Fluppy Dogs was over before it even really got started.

0:25:08 S7: Fluppy Dogs was sort of the... I kinda call it the albatross around the neck. [chuckle] It was a cross to bear. And I think everybody in the department worked on it at one time or another. And so what happened was that we were gonna do this Fluppy special and it was going to be the kickoff for a series and it just never took off, it never... It just never happened, and I think we were all kind of glad it didn't go any further. I mean, they were cute, but I just remember it being like, "Oh crap, I don't wanna go on another meeting about Fluppy Dogs." [chuckle]

0:25:49 Speaker 11: We've been to so many worlds. I don't know how long it's been since I've seen my family.

0:25:55 Speaker 12: You can talk!

0:25:56 S1: I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, I've been talking since I was 3.

0:26:00 S1: I'm sorry, but I mean, talking dog? Fluppy, and doorways to other worlds? I just wanna find one world, my world.

0:26:12 S1: Disney was going in cheap in terms of the price for pristine Disney Animation. Disney knew they couldn't afford movie quality animation and expect to make a profit. But Disney still spent $285,000 on each episode of Wuzzles. That was double what Hanna-Barbera would spend. It was so much, in fact, that it was $35,000 more than it was being paid by CBS. Why spend so much? The reasoning was simple, if it looked better than everything else on TV, then the characters could become part of the parks, and because of the success rate of their recent films, Disney needed characters more than ever. Willie Ito, animator.

0:26:51 S4: When I was at Hanna-Barbera, Michael Eisner was the VP of Children Programming at ABC. So when we were doing presentations and they would fly out here to review what we were working on, Joe would ask us to come in on a Saturday, sit at our desk as if we're busy bees and then bring Michael Eisner and his people through, and says, "Hey, here, look, they're all working on the new show idea," and then see the presentation. So I knew of Michael Eisner. And so, when he says he's gonna hop Hanna-Barbera Hanna-Barbera, I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I came back to Disney to get away from this rat race, and I hope we're not gonna be all caught up in the middle of it." Well, to make a long story short, a few months later, a fellow named Michael Webster, who I worked with in animation, was hired on to be production coordinator for the newly forming Disney TV Animation. Michael got with me and says, "How would you like to come back to animation?" I said, "Michael. No, please don't, don't do this to me. I'm perfectly happy. I'm actually in my new career back at Disney." And he says, "Well, we're gonna have a little boutique operation. All we're gonna do is be responsible for the scripts and we'll do story boards and maybe character design, but otherwise, everything is going to be farmed off to a production house. So we're just gonna have a little boutique operation and let me dangle this carrot in front of their view."

0:28:29 S4: What it was is, he says, "I know you used to make a lot of trips to Japan and Asia, and you know a lot of the production houses over there. So I wanna send you there and meet with these different companies and talk business." And he says, "Well, we'll be sending you first class. You'd stay at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo." And then all that. How could I resist? Plus, the fact that there was a handsome increase because of my position, would be like an executive thing. "Michael, I'm gonna give you three months. That's what I could promise you." So, "Okay, that's a deal." I did the pilot storyboard for a two-minute pilot. The soundtrack was recorded. They cut the exposure sheets, and the whole bit, and with those two copies under my arm, I flew to Tokyo. As I was registering, this American gentleman approaches me, "So are you Mr Ito?" I say, "Yeah." And he says, "Oh, hey. I understand you're here to make pilot films for your fledging Disney TV animation." I said, "Yeah, I am. You could talk to me initially, but the decision will be Michael Webster, who will be arriving here in about half an hour."

0:29:50 S4: So we sat in the lobby, having a cocktail, and then Michael shows up and he's at the desk and I said, "Well, there's Michael now." So, well, we flag him over and he says... The fellow talking to us says, "What we wanna do is we wanna throw our hat in the ring. I understand you're gonna be talking to people at Toei Animation in Tokyo, then you're gonna be flying to Korea, and you're gonna be meeting with Steve Hahn at the Korean studio." I said, "Well, we only have two sets of soundtrack, exposure sheets and copies of the layouts and storyboards." He said, "No problem, they can make copies of all that." "So, okay, what do you think, Michael?" And Michael said, "Yeah, sure, why not?" So we awarded them to also do a pilot. Three months later, the three studios submitted their two-minute pilot. So the three pilots came in. We all go in the sweat box, all the executives are there, I think even Roy Disney Jr was sitting in on it, and all of the newly-appointed executives of the newly-formed Disney TV Animation.

0:31:02 S4: So we sit there and, number one, okay, number two, then number three, then the lights go on, and then now we have to say which one we liked, and it was unanimous. We liked this one, say, number two. Well, it turned out that that was produced by a company named Tokyo Movie Shinsha. It had nothing to do with the other two that we submitted, but this one had the rich, full animation and all that. So they got the contracts. So TMS is the producing company. TMS, they later did the Little Nemo in Slumberland feature also, and so they had access to a lot of young Disney animators with full animation training to work on their project. As a matter of fact, even that two-minute pilot, they sort of farmed out some of the animation to Disney animators, that's why it showed such quality and it beat out the Koreans and the Japanese studio.

0:32:08 S4: They cheated, but, in essence, they... Disney kept striving to get the utmost in animation quality, which is good, because that was one of my concerns. If Disney gets into TV animation, are they gonna lose their integrity by just schlocking it on, doing limited animation, and all that, but the quality is there.

0:32:34 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:32:35 S7: I remember we did a lot of tests with other studios. We ended up with... At least for Gummi Bears, we ended up with TMS, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, and I had to remember, when I was really used to looking at hamburger sort of animation, which is you move across the proscenium left to right, the background that keeps repeating, and that's sort of what we grew up with and were used to. And I remember the first episode of Gummi Bears, I saw Sir Tuxford ride his horse into camera. The horse came to camera, he did a full turn around, which you'd never saw in TV animation, it was like, "Holy cow! Look at what just happened!" And it was a real leap in the animation quality, and I remember talking to Karl Geurs, who was working over at, I think he was at FilmNation at the time, and he eventually came over to Disney to do the Winnie the Pooh show. And he said everyone in other studios was talking about, "Did you see what Disney did on Saturday morning? Oh, my God!"

0:33:38 S7: So the quality really raised the bar. Now, true, it wasn't feature animation, but it was a big jump in quality. Finally, they put us all together over at the Cahuenga Building, which was on Cahuenga, near Universal Studios, and it just got bigger and bigger as we added more and more people. So, on the one hand, we weren't on the lot anymore. The sort of good news was, nobody was looking over our shoulders, so that department started and grew and made its success sort of off by itself. Nobody was actually sitting down reading, our scripts, and saying, "Gee, I don't think this is very Disney, or I don't think... " There just wasn't any interference because they had other and bigger fish to fry. We went off and sold our first two shows, Wuzzles and Gummi Bears, to CBS and NBC respectively. And it just took off from there.

0:34:29 S1: Willie Ito.

0:34:30 S4: We had our own growing pains within the studio, getting people together, finding a crew, a good animator, story, bit people. And before that three months was up, I could see the frenetic pace. We were moving from office to office because it was like we move in and then they say, "You know, it's not enough room because we're expanding our staff." And I'm thinking, "What happened to the boutique operation? Now we're gonna have a whole staff. And then am I gonna have to do what I did at Sanrio, is manage this crew of people and all that." So I started feeling the pressure of that position, but in the meanwhile, I went back to Carson. And Carson van Osten, who was my boss in consumer products, and I said, "Oh, Jesus, it's the same old thing. Before I get too caught up into it, can I come back?" So he said, "Oh, yeah, there's always an opening for you to come back." So I came back to consumer products, but I stayed with the Disney TV, as far as merchandise and by-products and whatever else, but I was now out of the production rat race.

0:35:55 S1: Tad Stones.

0:35:56 S6: Anyway, I went back to Features, and pitched some stuff, and actually was considering leaving the company, and maybe just freelancing and then going into more, actually, science fiction short stories and novels. I met one of the guys who was then the head of the TV department that was just starting, and mentioned, "Hey, do you have any freelance opportunities?" And he said, "Oh, I don't know if you wanna do that, why don't you come and visit?" And I came to visit their very small building and he introduced me around, he said, "Yeah, Tad may be coming over here." Actually, he said, "Tad would be coming over here." And I just was quiet. I didn't know what he was talking about, but they ultimately brought me over to be the creative manager of the department, in which I was supposed to take pitches and come up with stories, and actually, I was supposed to take pitches more than come up with stuff, but I wasn't geared that way.

0:36:50 S6: And we had a gong show coming up with Michael and Jeffrey, which is you do like a two cents description of a show and they either like it or not. And I think we pitched 22 ideas. I think 18 of them were mine. And it's not like they were fully developed, it was like, "Hey, Trojan Birds and Legionnaire Cats, the city of Troy is up in trees, like Roadrunner and Coyote," and they gong. Anyway, Gummi Bears had been through two seasons, it was run by Art Vitello and created by Art Vitello and Jymn Magon. And Jymn had had no animation experience before that, Disney just said, "Hey, if you want the show, this is the guy who's gonna do it." So there was always a contentious relationship there. And by the third season, NBC said, "We want to change," and they tapped me and Jymn went on to, I think, DuckTales development at that point. Anyway, so that's how I got to Gummi Bears, it was just kind of like, "Hey, you, over here". And that started me story editing and producing.

0:37:51 S1: Willie Ito.

0:37:52 S4: But the question always was, "Well, how come Wuzzles and Gummi Bears, when Disney has such a stable of great characters that they could work from?" But I think initially, they says, "Well, we're gonna be making cartoons for Saturday morning, and that's a lesser market quality-wise, and we don't want to ruin Disney's image by turning out the limited animation with Mickey Mouse and all that, so let's go with new characters." But then the shows were a hit and it started to see that Disney TV was getting some recognition, and so Roy Disney said, "Well, come on, let's... Let's use some of our own characters, that way the market and the kids will gravitate to it knowing it's a known Disney character." So we did DuckTales.

0:38:52 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:38:53 S7: After two seasons of Gummi Bears, I moved over to work on DuckTales, which was a big deal at the time, we were doing this as a syndicated program as opposed to a network program, and it had already been developed, Tedd Anasti and Patsy Cameron were always creating episodes.

0:39:10 S1: Patsy Cameron-Anasti and Tedd Anasti, writers.

0:39:14 Speaker 13: My career in writing really started when I met my future husband, Tedd.

0:39:19 Speaker 14: That would be me.

0:39:20 S1: I was 18 and I auditioned for Walt Disney's new Mickey Mouse Club as a performer, and Tedd was a writer for Walt Disney and chose me at an audition, and I appeared on the new Mickey Mouse Club singing and performing sign language, and then I fell madly in love with him, Tedd, and started writing him love letters...

0:39:42 S1: Didn't spell my name right, though. So, during a union break, I'm sitting on a bench back when I did smoke cigarettes and the guy from the mail room comes by and goes, "Is your name Ashy?" I went, "No, no, it's Anasti." He goes, "Well, I think somebody's been writing you a bunch of letters, we've got in the mail room, didn't know where to deliver them." I discovered that she has an interest in me.

0:40:08 S1: Yeah, and he said... When he called me, he said, "You're really funny." He thought my love letters were funny, and he said, "I think you could be a writer." And Tedd showed me Micky Mouse Club scripts and taught me how to write scripts, and then I moved up here to Los Angeles and my first job was a freelance for Hanna-Barbera on a show called Casper and the Space Angels, and I freelanced for a couple of years and then became a staff writer on The Smurfs, and I was the first woman staff writer at Hanna-Barbera, as well as their youngest at the time at age 23. And then a little bit later, Tedd started writing for The Smurfs and we became story editors together. Margaret Lush, who approved my very first cartoon episode on Casper and the Space Angels, Margaret Lush, noticed that we had fun together when we wrote, not knowing we were dating or anything. And Margaret, she teamed us up as story editors on The Smurfs and then Tedd and I wrote on The Smurfs for three years, in which it won one Emmy. And then the next show that we did was DuckTales for Walt Disney.

0:41:16 S1: DuckTales was based on the Carl Barks comic book stories about the world adventurer ducks of Duckburg, Scrooge McDuck and his nephews. The comics were a hit back in the 1940s and '50s, and their comic adventure styling seemed a perfect fit for what Disney envisioned for its television programs. Barks was never really consulted, said Tom Ruzicka, associate producer on DuckTales. He continued, "Although the show was initially based on the concept of doing Scrooge McDuck and the nephews, we discovered that a lot of stuff that made wonderful comics wouldn't translate into the '80s, or into animation. So we started evolving new characters and other things to contemporize the show. As we did that, the stories got further and further away from the comics, although a few episodes are lifted right out of them."

0:42:03 S1: We had a meeting with Gary Krisel, where he showed us two projects, DuckTales and a special called Fluppy Dogs, and we chose DuckTales. That was a good choice.

0:42:16 S1: They hired us because they knew it would be a big show with lots of episodes. We got known as people who could do 65 half hours in a season and stuff like that.

0:42:25 S1: Or 90 minutes on The Smurfs. Our first year as story editors, we'd never story-edited before, it was 90 minutes, because it was such a hit, or on DuckTales, it was 65 half hours. People would say, "How come you're not freaking out?" Well, I just knew we would get it done, but Tedd, his energy and his dedication, I credit a lot of it to him.

[video playback]

0:43:18 S1: They were definitely based on the Carl Barks books, but the main thing we had to do was, again, bring the heart, bring heart out.

0:43:26 S1: Well, one day, certain executives said, "You're not following the books very closely." And we said, "We have 65 episodes to do and Carl Barks only wrote 16, and they're not that different from one another."

0:43:41 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:43:42 S7: The idea came up, "Why don't we do a mini-series that we can cut into a movie we can then show as a pilot, a kick off to the series?" So what was really fascinating, for me, anyway, was, even though the show was already in production, was to do the episodes that set the tone for the series. So the first thing that the public was gonna see was this five-parter, and we just had so much fun putting that together, because they had to work as five separate episodes, but it had to work as an overarching big story as well, so that it could be shown as a movie. And I have a picture of Mark Zaslove and Bruce Talkington and I standing in front of this chalkboard, we have this gigantic story outline in front of it of all five episodes. It was like, "Are we gonna be able to do that?" And it turned out spectacular, I was very happy with it.

0:44:32 S1: A lot of the episode went to Japan, the earlier ones, and the animation was just exquisite. It was so exciting to have the films come back, especially the earliest episodes. Wow, dazzling animation, like A-team animation. They had a party and they showed one of the fully realized episodes, it was called Duckman of Alcatraz, it was really, really sensational. But I remember even Tedd saying, "I didn't really realize how good this was." I think that no one really understood that, I don't think I did until the episodes started to come back with all the music, fully-animated, everything, and then when it debuted, it was a really, really big smash.

0:45:16 S1: Meanwhile, the LA Times' Charles Solomon was not impressed by DuckTales. In fact, he found it rather distasteful. "Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other Disney cartoon stars owe their popularity and longevity to the fact that they were so well-animated, they ceased to exist as drawings on screen and emerged as clearly recognizable characters. By breaking with that tradition in DuckTales, the new management at Disney Studio is risking far more than the $20 million it has invested into the series. At stake is a name that has been synonymous with the best in animation for 60 years." But the risk of ruining their name in animation was well worth it, because the show was gigantic. DuckTales was big, really big. The series was in 56 countries and seen by 25 million kids each day. It went so far that it doubled the ratings of kids shows that it was in competition with. Even though each episode cost $275,000, Disney more than made its money back, and Disney television animation had finally truly arrived. Tad Stones.

0:46:20 S6: Well, DuckTales was a huge thing, because a Saturday morning show is just... Your first order is 13, and then maybe 10 the second season, and eight, and eight, and then you're lucky if you're still on. DuckTales, suddenly, it was like, "No, we're doing 65 episodes." George Lucas told us once that DuckTales was to syndication as Star Wars was to movies, I mean, it was huge.

0:46:43 S1: Patsy Cameron-Anasti and Tedd Anasti.

0:46:46 S1: We finished DuckTales and they didn't pick up our contract. The figured, find somebody cheaper, I guess, I don't know.

0:46:53 S1: Well, actually no, let me... I would like to differ with that. It was a smash and that was a wonderful thing for our career. They offered us Aladdin, actually, and we... I think we had always wanted to develop, like kind of be in developing new shows, and when Nelvana offered us vice president of development, we took that, and they were just starting out, kind of, they had done some things, but Beetlejuice really was their first big blockbuster. So I think they did offer us Aladdin after that, and then later, The Little Mermaid.

0:47:28 S1: I was sitting in a restaurant and here are the guys from Disney, the executives, end up sitting behind us, and we were with ABC at the time. When the girls from ABC went to the ladies room, the guys from Disney leaned over and said, "We need you back. We need you back on our show 'cause we can't get anybody that's doing a good job." So we went back and...

0:47:49 S1: Yeah, we spent three years on The Little Mermaid, which was, again, a very, very wonderful experience.

0:47:55 S1: They wanted us for five years, but we said, "Well, maybe just one year at a time." So we stayed there for 14 years, just one year at a time.

0:48:02 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:48:03 S7: I know that I was a big Carl Barks fan growing up, just as a kid, reading the comic book, and so we owed so much to Carl Barks, creating the Beagle Boys and Gyro Gearloose and Magica de Spell, and all these characters. And I felt bad that he never got any credit on the series. So one of the episodes I wrote was based on one of his comic book stories, I actually gave him credit as "Story by Carl Barks, script by Jymn Magon." Because I wanted his name in there somewhere on the series. There were two things that were key to DuckTales. One was Scrooge McDuck was torn between the cold, hard cash and the warmth of his heart for his family, his nephews, that's what was always driving the series, was this man caught between the cold and the heat. The second thing was, young children don't understand money, it's just like the coins, built different sizes, and paper, and they honestly don't have a concept of how money works. But Carl Barks was a genius when it came to, "Well, what do kids understand?" Well, they understand the tactile quality of coins. And so to have a money bin full of coins that you were able to dive into and just swim through like a porpoise, just that's what kids could understand and appreciate. And the fact that he gave Scrooge McDuck that childlike quality to be able to enjoy his money in a very tactile way, I think, was a real breakthrough for the character.

0:49:31 S1: Carl Barks, an except from The Duck Man, an interview with Carl Barks, 1975.

0:49:37 Speaker 15: The office, I think, wanted me to do a Christmas story and so I'm casting around for Christmas stories. I began to think of the great Dickens Christmas story, about Scrooge. It is the classic of all Christmas story. All I did was just peep enough to sort of steal some of the idea and have a rich uncle for Donald. Well, he had turned out to be kind of an interesting character in that first story, and so I began thinking of how to use him again. I guess the fact that he was rich was the thing that triggered all further developments, is just how rich, and the showing of his wealth. I found that that was quite a fascinating subject, just piles of money. It seemed to appeal to a lot of people.

0:50:33 S1: And I just gradually made him richer and richer and then I had to develop a place where he could store the money and all the time, there were the Beagle Boys trying to steal it from him. Those things just grew like building brick walls, you just lay one brick on top of another, and finally, you've got a whole thing built. You can't dive into a pile of money like you would into a snowdrift, so he had to have a trick by which he did. And I don't explain that trick because I don't understand it myself. And he can go out in the desert, and he can smell the presence of gold. Other prospectors would have to dig mountains of dirt before they could find any nuggets, but he can smell them. I think he represents something that nearly everybody wishes they could be, some time in their life, just a little bit too rich.

[music]

0:51:25 S1: Disney had another project that was budding at ABC. Disney had a long, strange history with this character, with lawsuit after lawsuit, but the character was about to become part of Saturday mornings in 1988, with an unlikely candidate to help lead it. Mark Zaslove, writer.

0:51:53 Speaker 16: What happened was I went to Cal Berkeley as a eventually theoretical astrophysics person, but I was also writing at the time, and I had a buddy, we were doing live action. So every summer, he was in UCLA, I was at Cal, we'd come back and we'd write a script or something. And then I wrote my first novel over there, and then it was like, "Well, what am I gonna do also for money?" I was doing magazine work, I worked for Larry Flynt for about seven months, meteoric rise and fall on Hustler and a couple of magazines like that, which was fun.

0:52:25 S1: I used to say, though, I was karmically balanced 'cause I did Pooh and Hustler. By the time anybody even asked about it, it was never a big deal, no one cared, I mean, it wasn't like I was posing or anything, or it was gonna come back and bite them. Not that I couldn't have. Oh, sorry. [chuckle] And I got my first gig in animation while I was there as well. But basically, I went, "I got to make some money." It's like, "Oh, yeah, animation. They need writers." My dad said, "Yeah, maybe try that." And it's like... So I went in, not thinking anything of it, really, and it was very easy to do, and so I was doing some freelance work and I had sent in something... Oh, GoBot, a GoBot script to Jymn Magon, and he went, "Oh, my God, it's the only funny GoBot script I ever read." So I went in, and he'd probably tell you better.

0:53:12 S1: I just had this sort of full of himself attitude, not in a bad way, according to him, but I just look back and it was just kind of funny, 'cause he saw it and he went, "This is really good writing." And I was kind of like, "Well, yeah, of course it is." It was like, "Well, it's animation." I never thought much about it. I learned to very much respect it. I always liked the product, but I was never like a fan of animation because I grew up around it, so it was always the discipline. But you have to understand, my dad was an animator/producer/director, so when I was growing up, animators were guys who were drunk on my living room floor. So I get to Disney and they're all teetotallers, except for a few people. I'm like, "You're not animators. I know what animators look like, and none of you are animators." I had gotten some bad raps there that I didn't do, I was always upset later when people say blah, blah, blah, and you were being blah, blah, blah, and I went, "I didn't do that. If I'd just known, I would have done that." I would have been much more obnoxious. I would have actually caused these problems.

0:54:10 S1: I think I could rub certain people the wrong way, although everybody could. But there was one day where, I don't know why, it was just one of those things where maybe we'd been working too hard, too long, and you're near the end of something, and I started taking tape and I started taping across the hallway. And then somebody threw something on it. It became like a giant spiderweb that stopped the hallway up. And then people started throwing items onto it, so it stuck. And so suddenly there's this whole blockade hallway, and people have thrown knickknacks and this and that. And suddenly, Michael Webster or Tom Ruzicka came by and they just look at me, like, "This is your doing, right?" It's like, "Ah, leave it." And then they walked off, 'cause they knew it was a way to blow off steam. But it was one of those almost MASH moments where you start off doing something silly, and the next thing, the entire place is sort of doing it. But I got nailed for things that other people did a lot. Where they were nicer, and I was more like, "Ah, whatever." I was certainly tolerant.

[music]

0:55:08 S1: And I think ABC wanted a Disney show. And then it became, "What do we give them?" And then Pooh, because they had mechanical rights, I guess, was a safe thing to do. So it was above my pay grade, but I remember that it was ABC wanting, but I think the machinations were, "What can we do that's very Disney that we have?" And then it became Pooh, and then it came down to us. It was funny. I knew it could be really good if we didn't screw it up, and they didn't think I should do it, 'cause I was young and I wore long leather jackets before Matrix. I was, theoretically, a dark character. And so they were questioning me. And I remember sitting at a table. I had to do the entire Bible premise pitch in a three-day weekend, and then go have lunch with Gary Krisel and some other people and explain why this show would be great.

0:55:53 S1: I remember going, "Look, I will bet you a year's salary," and fortunately, they didn't do it. "We will win our time slot, be number one, we'll win an Emmy, I guarantee it. I bet you my whole year's salary." And we did. We were the only show to do that at that time. But it was one of those where you just go, "If you don't screw it up, how can you miss?" The designs are good, great characters. Just don't be stupid. Write really well, and it'll be a good show. I never used anything from the books, because it wouldn't have worked for me. It was always, "How can I become Mill?" And then, "How do I expand that?" For whatever reason, they previewed it on the Disney Channel and then it went to ABC. And then ABC changed their order from 13 to 20-something for the first season. So we were all kinda cranking. That was actually a lot of fun. I loved that show.

0:56:41 Speaker 17: Why thank you, Piglet. It's perfect. What is it?

0:56:47 S1: That was the first time I was in charge of anything, and actually had to have responsibility, and scheduling everything. And Karl Geurs, he was very much pro-what I was bringing to the table. And that was a great learning experience. And it was about professionalism, and a way of looking at things that Karl had without being blighted or too jaded about it. Karl was Winnie The Pooh, just had that sort of attitude. As much as people used to say that he'd walk by and we'd be shouting at each other, I don't think we were ever ever ever angry. We were just loud. We'd circle, "What about this? No, this!" And then suddenly, I guess our voices went up. And people would go, "We walk by Karl's office," and it'd be like, "We hear you guys shouting. Is everything okay?" And I'm like, "Yeah, why? What's going on?" But you couldn't ask for a better person to take you in on your first day. We fell through the cracks at that time. They didn't know we were there, really, 'cause DuckTales was getting up to speed, and I remember, Karl telling me vividly, he goes, "You know, if we're a hit, they're gonna suddenly start caring about what we do, and give us all sorts of terrible notes".

0:57:49 S1: And he was right. Suddenly everybody wanted a finger in it the second season, and we got a ton more notes. "Well, we gotta do this. Is this good? Should we do that? We don't understand this." Anytime you try to do something, whether it's cutting edge, or just very truthful, and I thought the Pooh characters we handled extremely truthfully, they weren't just saying gag-lines. They were saying a line because that's what Pooh would say, or that's what Tigger would say, which is the essence of any kind of good writing, is, "Are you telling the truth?" And so we get people who wouldn't necessarily understand that, so we get notes, and then you'd have to explain it. And then that wouldn't necessarily work. And then it would be weird. I always had a really good relationship with standards and practices, but I remember I wanted Gopher to have a huge cask of black powder, 'cause he's a miner, and he digs, and I wanted to blow the side off of a mountain.

0:58:44 S1: And of course, ABC standards and practices says, "No, you can't do that." And I try to explain why, it's like this, and then kids'll do that. And I go, "I don't think they can get all the dynamite, or black powder." And they're like, "Well, you can do it in fire." And so I thought for a while, and just as a joke, I said, "Well, could you use a thermonuclear device?" And they thought for a while, and they go, "Yeah, that's okay." And so then I brought it to Karl, and Karl thought for a while. And he went, "You know we can't make the bomb look Pooh-ish, so we can't use it." But at least I feel like, "Okay, I got a thermonuclear device approved of for Winnie The Pooh."

0:59:15 S1: There's only one thing left to do.

0:59:18 Speaker 18: You mean?

0:59:20 S1: Yes, Rabbit. We must give Piglet a "staying inside" party. It's like a going away party, only different.

0:59:31 S1: While Pooh was doing well at ABC, DuckTales remained the number one kids show for two years. Luckily for Disney, when the show was finally toppled, it was by Disney's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

0:59:44 S5: We didn't know this at the time, but I think in Eisner's mind, or whoever was in charge of that, felt like, "Let's see how the department goes first, before we start putting our flagship characters on the television." Because when you look at characters like Mickey, and Donald, and Pluto, and Chip and Dale, and whatnot, they were always on the big screen. So to suddenly take them and put them on the small screen, I think it's, you know, "Woah, we've got a big star. Let's not put them on TV, let's put them in movies," kind of thing. So yeah, we needed papal dispensation just to put Donald into DuckTales as a cameo to explain why he wasn't in the series, [chuckle] because he went off to join the Navy and left the nephews with his uncle. I remember we had to get permission to put him in to explain that.

1:00:29 S1: Tad Stones.

1:00:30 S6: I pitched Miami Mice 'cause Miami Vice was on the air. They liked that a lot because of the name. We called it Metro Mice and did a script for it, never went past that, although the villain of the script was a character called Fat Cat. We brought back and the idea of mice detectives came back as Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers.

1:00:49 S5: We had two characters, two little mice called Kit Colby and Colt Chedderson. They were the original rescue rangers. And every time we would meet with Eisner and Katzenberg, they'd say, "That just is not a home run yet."

1:01:01 S6: And then later on, it was like, "Okay. DuckTales is a huge success. Are there any other Disney classic characters that we should be developing for?" And Mickey was still too precious. Donald made an appearance in DuckTales, he's very hard to animate. Goofy, yes, Goofy has always been the every man, definitely develop a bunch of things for Goofy." And then when they got to Chip 'n Dale, it was Michael Eisner who said, "Put those guys in that show," and Jeffrey said, "Home run." And that was Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers.

1:01:29 S5: And that sort of broke the ice for, "Oh, now we can start to put other characters."

1:01:35 Speaker 19: I guess there's only one thing to say then. Rescue Rangers, away!

1:01:41 S6: I felt like, on Rescue Rangers, we lost a lot from script to screen because, one, we were working way too fast, throwing things together and not being able to follow up on stuff. The schedule was the same. The problem was, on the story side, there was just two of us editing. I literally was working 13, 14-hour days, except for Saturday, it was an eight-hour day, and then Sunday, my day off, was four hours. Those hours were at the studio. It wasn't like working at home.

1:02:10 S6: There was this particular point of contention that when it came time to do the multi-part pilot, we were told that we had slipped the schedule in some way, that we had less time to do the four episodes that were supposed to kick off the show than doing any given four episodes, which made no sense to me. It means we were rushing through the most important thing. So we took our shot at it, and we did what we could. And then they took me off the show and I said, "You know what? That's fine. There's only 15 episodes to go. I got to do the pilot, to set things up, so that's good." But then it turned out they were having people rework the pilot, rewrite it, and they were being given more time to rewrite the pilot than we were given to write it the first time, and that was too much for me, and I was out the door. [chuckle] Disney had certain landmarks in your career, give you a plaque or a ring or a statue. And the two statues I really wanted were Mickey as the Sorcerer's Apprentice and Tinkerbell. And Mickey was at... Hold on, I have it right here... I wanna say 15 years. Yes, I was about to get that. I was two months away from it, and it was like, that was somehow stupidly enough to make me calm down, and went back to work.

1:03:29 S1: Jymn Magon.

1:03:30 S7: It was a very strange time. I was busy trying to develop TaleSpin and we got this call that Buena Vista Television wanted someone to look at the pilot show that he had done. I think it was a four or five parter, just like what we'd done on DuckTales. I think they wanted someone to come in with fresh eyes and punch it up or do whatever, and it was like, "Well, I'm in the middle of doing TaleSpin and whatnot." Okay. So I said to Mark, "Look, I'm not gonna be here to help with TaleSpin. This'll go a lot faster if you help me." So he and I both jumped in and kinda reedited the pilot movie. And then I think we edited a couple of individual episodes that had been in the works during that time. And finally, just threw our hands up and said, "Look, we gotta get back on our project." And I think it went to Ken Koonce and David Wiemers next. So our time on Rescue Rangers was very brief. But, again, I never understood why Tad didn't follow through on that. I think it was some decision high above our heads, and I'm not sure why, so it was just like, shrug, "Okay."

1:04:32 S1: By the year 1990, Disney had invested $150 million in television animation, and by 1995, had plans to invest $400 million more. At this point, the output of television animation was prolific. Katzenberg was quoted as saying, "Each year, we are now producing as much animation as was done in the years 1920-1950 when all the classic Disney cartoons were made." These television animation shows had 22,000 full-painted cels per episode. Other shows at the time, of good quality, were averaging 15,000. Once Chip 'n Dale was another bona fide hit, Disney put plans in motion for television domination. And that plan was simple. It would have a two-hour block of cartoons when kids got home from school. Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and their newest offering, TaleSpin. The shows were expensive, and yet, Disney wasn't even charging the networks for the shows. Instead, the deal was that Disney would retain the six minutes of advertisements to sell themselves. And this worked like Gang Busters. Despite the cost of production and advertising, the Disney Afternoon earned the company $40 million a year for a period of time. But this incredible run almost didn't happen because of one pitch. Jymn Magon.

1:05:46 S7: It didn't last long, but we had a process by which Tad would be developing a show and I'd be producing the show. And then I'd be done, so I'd go into development and he would go into production, and we would sort of flip flop as to what our duties were at TV animation. I was at a point of development, and we were creating this show called B players, and B players, I thought was kind of a clever idea. Came out at the time of Roger Rabbit. So the idea of all these cartoon characters mingling with live action people was popular at the time, so we said, "Well, who's the one character who is a star in motion pictures and then never worked again?" It was Baloo, so he said, "Oh, here's a guy who should be doing more movies, and he's not, he's stuck on the back lot. And along with him, is this kid who turns out to be a nephew, I think, of Mickey Mouse, his name was Ricky Rat, and Ricky had stars in his eyes, he wanted to be as big as his cousin or his uncle, whatever it was. And so the stories were all about Baloo and Ricky trying to convince the powers to be, specifically Michael Eisner, as a character in the show. "But it's too Western. Hey, let us do a space show. Hey, let us... " And then every week, they would be... Try in some way to get into the next gig, in that part of the cast, where all of these other people that weren't working anymore, like Horace Horsecollar, and Clarabelle Cow, and whatnot.

1:07:07 S7: Everytime we pitched it, it just never seemed to stick. And, at one point, Kaztenberg said to me, "If you say B players one more time, I'm gonna throw you out the window."

[chuckle]

1:07:18 S7: Well, it's like, "Well, I guess that project's dead." Everything I'd pitched there had pretty much gone. And so we were thinking, "This is gonna go", but it didn't, we'd stopped dead, and we were stuck, as we had to pitch the next series to all the department heads in Florida, and we had no show. And we had to get into production for the next 65 episodes. And on top of which, it was going to be the linchpin of the Disney Afternoon. And I remember Michael Webster, who was not a fan of mine, poked his head in my room and he said, "You better come up with a new show real quick or it's gonna be Tumbleweed City around here," meaning, we're gonna fire everyone."

[music]

1:08:01 S7: And I thought, "How did this fall on my shoulders, that everyone's future depends on me? Am I that important? And if so, let's see a bigger paycheck, [chuckle] if I'm that important." So it was like, "Oh, scratch head, scratch head, what am I gonna do?" And one of the guys that I had hired at TV animation was Mark Zaslove, and Mark had gone onto fame and fortune by story-editing the Winnie The Pooh Show. And so Mark and I did a lot of talking, a lot of collaboration on ideas and whatnot, and I said "Mark, come in here, I have an idea that I wanna chat with you, I wanna use you as a sounding board. "So what had happened was during DuckTales, one of the early ideas about Launchpad McQuack was that he had a courier service, and that he would fly anything anywhere overnight, or something like that, was his slogan, and so, Scrooge McDuck would use him to send things to crazy places like, 'I need a whale sent to Sea World', [chuckle] in Dubai, or something.

1:09:01 S7: And that never went anywhere, because, eventually, Launchpad became Scrooge's private pilot. So I said, "What if we took Baloo from B players, who's a really good character, I believe in him, and we took this air cargo service of Launchpad McQuack's and kind of glued them together so that Baloo is the pilot and he's got this company, and it's failing because he's a jungle bum bear, and he's got this kid, the typical Disney orphan, like Mowgli, who he's gotta look out for." I said "Now, we're starting to get the dynamic of what drove Jungle Book so well, which was here's a guy who is torn between being a big kid himself, and being a father figure." And I said, "I think there's something there." And so Mark and I kicked it around and we had some drawings made up. And in three days, we had TaleSpin. And we went and pitched it, and it was like home run. [chuckle] So whereas we could pull our hair out over B players for weeks and months, TaleSpin came together really very quickly. And so Mark and I ended up as the producers on that show.

[music]

1:10:12 S1: Mark Zaslove.

1:10:13 S1: He had pitched B players and that got shot down and they didn't have that fourth show to put on, which became The Disney Afternoon. I gather it was a $2 billion pitch, eventually, that's what they made off of it, off of TaleSpin. I remember walking in sort of in the middle of something, on Pooh, or on a break or something, and it was like, "Yeah, try this. What can we do with these characters?" And then, three days later, we had TaleSpin.

1:10:35 S1: Tad Stones.

1:10:36 S6: Gummi Bears, it was just... I mean, it was cool. We were a very small team, we were still trying to figure out things. It was just a lot of camaraderie in the studio, there was only... I wanna say like, two shows going, or on a special like, Fluppy Dogs and gummies and Wuzzles had just one season, and development was going on, so it was a very small group and a lot of energy. It was a lot of fun. And then when we got into the Disney Afternoon, it was even better because we didn't have to have network approval for anything, it was basically, if we could sell Michael and Jeffrey on an idea, we then did it. [chuckle] Buena Vista Distribution had to take it, they didn't have any input, and we got a lot of close scrutiny for the first three scripts from our president, who was Gary Krisel, of TV animation, and then he had stuff to do. So you were on your own. You'd come up with anything and then when first footage came back, there was kind of like a little more scrutiny, 'cause is it going the way we expected? How is it looking? What adjustments do we have to do? You went back to doing whatever you wanted, until it's about time to go on the air.

1:11:41 S6: At which time, it'd either be good times or panic, depending on what they thought of your show. I couldn't have done Darkwing Duck and had the show we ended up with under any other situation, because I was just trying all sorts of crazy, goofy things.

1:11:57 Speaker 20: I've just gone crazy!

1:11:58 Speaker 21: Come on, dad! It's not that complicated. Cabbages from outer space are duplicating everybody in the world, so they can take over the planet. And this cow, who's really an alien, has come here to recapture them. Just deal with it.

1:12:13 S6: It started as Jeffrey saying, "Hey, you did this episode of DuckTales called Double-O-Ducks. I want a show called Double-O-Duck." Again, I thought it's just a spy parody, there's no Disney heart to it, but boss said I gotta do it, and that's all I presented to him, and he said the same thing, he says, "There's no Disney heart to this. Do it over. Thank goodness. [chuckle] He should have said, "Get me somebody else, " but instead, I went into, "Okay, what about the Shadow and Doc Savage had a team of guys who worked in secret?" And ideas like that bubbled around Silver Age of comics and he really turned into more of a superhero, a non-super superhero than a spy, but you could look at that pitch and really do a normal show, [chuckle] I guess. And then, as we got into it, it was like, "No, I'm pitching, what if you take Warner Brother shorts and gave them heart in 22 minutes instead of seven minutes of just gags?" And that's what I was chasing, and some hit it better than others.

1:13:10 S6: When I was doing development, they wanted a new character, so I came up with Double-O-Duck, who, at the time, wasn't much more than... Visually, was Donald Duck, white tuxedo mask and a little hat. But, anyway, when we were developing him, Launchpad was not in it. In my head, was Doc Savage, who had a team of guys who worked with him, who were specialists, and then that shrunk 'cause it was like too many people. And for a while, he had a sidekick who was a little guy who wore derby, so it wasn't until Gosalyn entered the picture that we really had a show based on the idea that what if Batman had a little girl who refused to stay at home? Although I don't think we said it that concisely at the time. And we still felt like we needed a guy for Darkwing to talk to. And Launchpad, because he had been there in the beginning, and we knew him, just seemed like that personality is great. So we brought him on to Darkwing, but really changed his design and subtracted many an IQ point from him. [chuckle] So he's a lot dumber in our show.

1:14:10 Speaker 22: I got a whole scrapbook, a few newspaper clippings. Of course, it's not a very big scrapbook.

1:14:16 Speaker 23: Wouldn't it be easier to fly if we were facing the other way?

1:14:20 S2: Oh, yeah, sorry. [chuckle] I sometimes have trouble with that.

1:14:25 S6: The real pilot for Darkwing Duck is an episode I wrote called, "That Sinking Feeling", with Moliarty as the villain, this guy who is based on the mole man, basically, except he really was a mole, stealing objects from the surface, bringing him down to the center of the Earth where he'd reconstruct them into this giant ray that was going to pull the moon out of orbit to block the sun so it would be darker on the surface, and Moliarty and his minions could all live on the surface. That was the first one written, and the first one boarded that we went into and act three of that, for no reason at all, they're in a baseball stadium, and suddenly, everybody's in... Except for the villain, is in baseball outfits. It was that thing where Bugs Bunny would go off screen, come back with a whole new costume.

1:15:07 S6: We actually didn't get that level of breaking reality in the show a lot, although we went crazy in different ways, but that was the one that was testing out everything, it really set up Gosalyn's relationship with Darkwing Duck and how close they were and her relationship to Honker. So that was our pilot. That's the first thing through. Then what everybody considers the pilot, which is the four part, Darkly Dawns the Duck, that story, again, became a little straighter. But the main thing is, everybody always asked about the origin of Darkwing Duck, and I said, "You know, he's basically a Batman, what am I gonna do? Have him sitting in his mansion and a duck breaks through a window and he goes, 'That's it, an omen, I shall become a duck'"? Wait. There was nothing to tell there. I certainly wasn't gonna kill his parents, and have him have this life of seeking revenge. So, I said, "No. Let's address the heart, let's bring Gosalyn." This is the story of how he adopted Gosalyn, and then that story got a little darker, dealing with what happened to her parents. But that's what made you really care about her, so... And care about her predicament.

1:16:17 S2: Yeah, once again, saved by my buzzsaw cufflinks.

1:16:21 S6: Some of the things with Darkwing were very not formulaic, but I had orders for my editors, and I said, "Every show, he has to say, 'Let's get dangerous'". The secondary thing was, "Suck gas, evildoers" when he used his gas gun, and too many people didn't hear the G, and it just didn't come up as much, that one kinda fell away. Originally, he just had one thing that he said, he said, "I'm the terror that flaps in the night." And I, frankly, forget the second line, it was like the third script in, it was an episode where Launchpad had to play the part of Darkwing, and he could never get the line right. He said, "I am the road salt that rusts the underside of your car." He continually screwed up throughout the episode, and we all thought it was hilarious. And I said, "You know what? Rewrite the scripts we've already got done. Let's give that to Darkwing. That's too good to just leave on this one episode," and that became his ongoing thing.

1:17:15 S2: I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the jailer who throws away the key. I am feeling really stupid. Boy, I hate it when I'm early. You'd think criminal masterminds would be more punctual.

1:17:35 S1: Dean Stefan, writer.

1:17:37 Speaker 24: So, throughout the entire office, everyone from secretaries to producers and everything, they ran a contest. "Name this character", "Name this star" "Name this guy", and out of all the names, out of all... You know, we each put in dozens. They picked Darkwing Duck, and of course, it was Alan Burnett, who came up with the name and he got the 500 bucks. I would never conceive the name "Darkwing Duck", it just doesn't make sense. But now, how could it be anything else. Actually, Wiemers and Koonce, who were my story editors, who by now, had left Disney to seek their fortune in sitcoms, they sued Disney because they said they had written that Double-O-Duck episode of DuckTales and they thought they should be recompensed or whatever the word is.

1:18:19 S2: Of course, anything to do with Disney, they own anyway, but they did see some kind of settlement, I believe. I don't think it was huge. Then they later came back to Disney, so I guess there's no huge bad blood, or maybe that was part of the deal. Tad really had the whole thing down first, he was really into Twin Peaks at the time. I remember our first meeting, where we all go in to pitch stories and stuff, he had two bagels or donuts in front of everyone, which was like a thing from Twin Peaks. I wasn't a fan, so I didn't really know, but I knew it was sort of an iconic thing and he was very into the whole Twin Peaks thing, and very artsy stuff. And I would later make fun of him, because he would... I guess, it became such a big deal, the show, that he would start giving notes.

1:19:05 S2: Everybody would write out notes and give it to the story editors and stuff, like, he would start cassette-taping his notes like from some undisclosed location, like Howard Hughes, or something, and then the cassette would arrive at the story editors, and then they would play the cassette for you, and I would put this cover under... A lot of that may have been because of his hours, he liked to get there like five in the morning and leave at two or three in the afternoon, 'cause he had kids, and he was an early guy. Most people like me, I'm probably the worst case, but before 10:00 AM, forget it. So I never worked directly under him, where I had to report to him directly as a story editor, but he liked to run a tight ship, I think. But the cassette notes were a bit much.

1:19:49 S2: I am the thing that goes bump in the night. I'm the neuroses that requires a $500 an hour shrink!

1:19:55 S6: I know, when we started Darkwing, they wanted to do a Darkwing Duck movie, and the studio in Paris, that later went on to work on features, they did a bunch of development that was totally ignoring what the show was. I took one stab at it. Again, this is the opposite of being left to do whatever you want. I had to pitch this, and it didn't go, and I just said, "You know, I can't do both. I can't do a movie and get this show up and running. So I'm just gonna do the show". I only found this out recently, they thought that maybe that should be a musical. Jymn Magon was actually gonna have meetings with Barry Manilow, ended up having meeting with another big music guy, not a name you would know as a star, but that was just crazy. And that really showed that, man, they don't understand what Darkwing Duck is, so thank goodness that didn't happen.

1:20:41 S2: I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the weirdo who sits next to you on the bus. I am the swan prince?

1:20:52 S1: With the Disney Afternoon well on its way, it was time for the first of the fab five to get his own vehicle.

[music]

1:21:02 S5: I think they were going to originally do it as a scout troop to the show, and that's why it's called Goof Troop. I was not there for that development, but when it finally came around who... Goofy's gotta live in Spoonerville, and have a next door neighbor, Pete, that's when we developed the show in earnest. We looked at those old cartoons of Mr. Geef or Goof, or whatever his last thing was supposed to be, and he was always... Lived in the suburbs and would wave bye-bye to his wife, as she would get in a car and drive off, and he was in charge of the kid for the day. Goofy would make mistakes, and the son would just go along with it, and I remember thinking, "Well, we've gotta kinda make it more interesting than that." And you look for the key to the series. And the key to Goof Troop, for me, was, "I don't wanna grow up to be my dad," and I think we felt like, "Yeah, that's what we want. We want this guy who's a single dad trying to raise his kid right, and was next door to this bad influence, Pete and his family." That, to us, was where all the comedy gold was to mine, skateboards and school and working in town, and commuting, and stuff like that.

1:22:11 S5: My forte was always in the comedy [1:22:15] ____ is in Rescue Rangers and TaleSpin kinda thing. Goof Troop was more of a sitcom, [chuckle] more Laverne & Shirley, that kind of thing. Feels like adventure to me because Goofy found a way to mess everything up.

1:22:30 S1: Michael Spooner, artist.

1:22:32 Speaker 25: I was a principal layout designer on the project. We decided to go with the style of 101 Dalmatians, where it was line art, the painter would actually do a watercolor under a cell line, so my line art would be transferred to Xerox to cel, like traditional animation was, and then they would do a watercolor. I had done so much design on the town in which he lived. The studio decided to name it Spooner though.

1:23:00 S1: Jymn Magon, original pitch for syndicators to buy Goof Troop.

1:23:05 S7: So, I wanna introduce you to Goof Troop. And, in it, Goofy is now a man of the 90s. He's a single dad living in suburbia, with his three phones, two TVs, one cat, and a very contrary 11-year old son. Let me take you through a day in the life. An alarm fire goes off. It belongs to good old Goofy, that good-natured klutz whose motto is, "A day without sunshine is like night!" Goofy embraces the dawn like every other obstacle in his life, with boundless and fondling enthusiasm. Now I wanna show you the difference, here is his son Goofy Jr, or Max, as he likes to be called, because he hates being silent with an adjective, like his father. Anyway, as you can tell from Max's enthusiasm, this is a school day. Now, Max loves Bo Jackson, Goofy thinks he's one of the Jackson Five.

[laughter]

1:23:50 S7: Max loves Mario Brothers, Goofy's pretty sure they'd beat him off in the third grade. Max loves his VCR. Goofy can't spell VCR.

[laughter]

1:23:58 S7: Anyway, Goofy heads downstairs to make a nutritious breakfast, or more to the point, a nutritious mess. "Junior, food's on!" Well, Max heads downstairs, shaking his head, wondering, "How does such a radical kid like me end up with such a goof for a father?" And so it would appear that the fruit seldom falls far from the tree. However, this is a curse that Max is determined to break. He desperately wants to swim out of the deep end of his father's gene pool. But you know, through all these crazy escapades, the one thing that Max learns is, "Just when you're convinced your folks are totally useless, they're there for you when you're totally useless." So relax, Max, your father ain't so bad. He's just Goofy. Hell, let's face it, kid, you're a little goofy. Welcome to the Goof Troop, kid.

1:24:47 S7: Yeah, I had done an episode called 'Have Yourself A Goofy Little Christmas', which the idea of the father-son going off and father wants to do one thing that's traditional and the son wants to do something different. That, to me, felt the most like a booby, and kind of set the tone. And, at one point, we were gonna do, I think, a two-parter, that was Goofy and his son on vacation, and somehow, that two-parter turned into the idea to do another... Well, it was called "Movie Tunes" at the time, when we did the DuckTales movie, and that was driven pretty much by Mr. Katzenberg, who told us a really interesting story about how he was losing touch with his daughter, and he decided "We're just gonna take time off and she and I are gonna get the car and just go somewhere." And he says, "I don't know where it happened or how it happened, but we connected on that trip, being trapped in a car together. That became the gist of The Goofy movie, which was father wants it the one way, the son wants it another way, then they finally find each other along the way. That was very rewarding for me, to be able to move from the TV show into a feature film.

1:25:57 S7: Well, I sat by myself for a long time, and then they finally brought in Kevin Lima. Kevin just had a whole plethora of people he trusted, and they were great. The film took off from there, and I think, of all my experiences in animation, that was the most... I want to make sure I say this right, kind of the most disconcerning, because it was so different from writing for episodic television, 'cause in episodic television, the writer becomes king. I'm not sure that that's the correct position for the writer, but just because of the time limitations, you had to have something written and, basically, directed on paper, and then everybody followed it. That's whether you could get it done in time. But when it came to a movie, it was a very flexible thing, and lots of people are involved, and they're changing their sequence, and that sequence is so powerful that it changes that sequence. And suddenly, the writer's, "Huh? I think I recognize one of my lines in here." [chuckle] I think Moss Hart said that. I would come into work and I had written a sequence and then it would be storyboarded, and I look at this and say, "This is genius! I wish I had written this!" [chuckle]

1:27:05 S7: It was terrific. It was such a new way of working for me. So it was disconcerning from the standpoint that, gee, I don't have the kind of control over the project that I used to have on TV, but that's not to say that they weren't doing spectacular work and that I was such a lucky guy to be a part of it. While I feel like I brought the essence of 'I don't wanna grow up to be my dad', I really feel like so much of all the clever little things and the sort of Kelly moments, that was Kevin and his team coming in there with their stuff, and it was just such a delight to work with them, and that's why I think I was upset, because I didn't get to follow through on the movie. I was told in... Go over here and work on DuckTales. We went to lunch as I was leaving the series, we went to Sizzler, of all places, and I just said, "I feel so bad, Kevin, because I wanted to be so helpful and such an important part of this and I feel like so much of what I did didn't end up on the screen." And he said, "But Jymn, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing, if we weren't standing on your shoulders", and it was like, "Oh yeah, I guess so" [chuckle] Made me feel better. That's just a part of the creative process. The first link in the chain sometimes doesn't look like the last link in the chain [chuckle], it's painted a different color along the way.

1:28:33 S1: After the company had dabbled in its most famous IPs, the next show would be a wholly original character, well, sort of. Bonkers was loosely based on the idea of Roger Rabbit, he was a former cartoon star who had fallen on tough times after his show had been cancelled, and became a cop, teamed with a human partner. But its production was mired in reboots and dissatisfaction. Greg Weisman, creator, Gargoyles.

1:29:00 Speaker 26: Well, I mean, Bonkers is complicated. Bonkers was a show that I developed, and got Duane Capizzi, the producer, story editor, Bob Hathcock was chosen to be the director, producer on it. We had real high hopes for it, but, unlike Gargoyles, that was a show where I got it up and running and then I walked away from it, and other people were supposed to be paying attention to it, and the very first two or three episodes that came back didn't look very good, from an animation standpoint, not sure that, initially, the show's art directed very well. We had humans and quote unquote "toons", even though the whole thing was animated.

1:29:37 S2: And I think there should have been a distinct, more kind of realistic art style, not Gargoyles, necessarily, but something, even from a color palette standpoint, that felt a little less cartoony, so that the quote unquote "toons" on the show, like Roger Rabbit, and Jitters Dog really pop, because they were toons in a human world, and I don't think that art direction ever quite came off, but I think we had a really smart show which featured Bonkers partnered with Miranda Wright as a cop. Bonkers drove her crazy but he was her partner, so she'd back him no matter what, and ultimately, they were friends, and we did a lot of smart sort of clever things about what it would be like in a Roger Rabbit vein to live in a world with toons and humans.

1:30:25 S2: And then I think, honestly, that some of the executives, when the first stuff came back and didn't look very good, overreacted. There were certainly problems, maybe even some problems with the writing, but I don't think the problems were quite as problematic as some people thought, and I think, frankly, most of it could have been fixed by fine-tuning the art direction. But I wasn't in charge and I was also in the process of trying to move over to Gargoyles and all this stuff is sort of happening simultaneously. I did get dragged back into it, and at some point, it became clear that... To Gary, that he wanted some real wholesale changes here and neither Duane nor Bob were giving him that, so both of them wound up getting booted off the show, and a guy named Bob Taylor, who had done Goof Troop, was brought in, and Bob made some very drastic and, I think, unnecessary changes to the show.

1:31:19 S2: He did get the art direction better, but Bob didn't think girls were funny, so he ditched Miranda and put in a character who, in essence, was Pete from Goof Troop, and was voiced with Pete's voice by Jim Cummings, and Jim is great. Jim voiced Bonkers. I love Jim. But it was just a dynamic that we had seen before. The story lines were, I thought, way less interesting, and I was really not happy with the change in direction on the show. And then, of course, they wanted this stuff first, so it all got very rushed and they couldn't throw away the dozen or so episodes that featured Miranda, so even though that stuff was made first, it aired last, and they actually created an episode where Piquel joins the FBI and moves away, and Bonkers is partnered with Miranda for the last dozen episodes, which again, were the dozen or so that were made first. But they created a new pilot and basically played it as if the Piquel stuff was first, and the Miranda stuff was second, when it was really the other way around. And so, it became a show of...

1:32:31 S2: It makes me sad, [chuckle] but... 'Cause I think a lot of potential was squandered there, and I think a lot of the changes were unnecessary, and, to be fair, Taylor and I didn't really see eye to eye on anything, and I finally just begged off, and asked Gary to take me off the project, 'cause I didn't think I was helping Bob, 'cause we agreed on almost nothing. And so I was just in his way, and Gary had gone with Taylor, and it was his show now, so I had to let it go, and so Gary said, "Okay." And I sort of stepped away from the project, and had very little involvement with all but the first couple Piquel episodes, which I didn't care for, which doesn't mean they're bad, it just wasn't the show I had developed, and wasn't the show that I wanted to make.

1:33:30 S1: Bonkers hit the air in 1993. It had almost been a decade since the brunch that started it all. In that time, Disney television had gone from nonexistent to the standard that everyone else had to chase. The problem was, by the time Bonkers hit the air, other networks had already caught up and would even take the lead, and now Disney television animation would have to decide if they were going to chase by rebranding, or stick with the girl who brought them to the days.

1:34:00 S2: Here were all these people from different studios, there were people like me that had never worked for any studio, in animation. I was a record producer. So I think it was [1:34:09] ____ and I, we're talking, and we said, "Are we doing this right? Are we doing a Disney TV show correctly?" And then we realize, there's never been a Disney TV show, at least a Saturday morning style TV show. And therefore, because we work for Disney, and we're making these shows, we are Disney [chuckle], what we're doing is Disney. And that, whatever we were doing, whether it was right or wrong, would be a Disney show.

[music]

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