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ken-dom · 2 months

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Everything Looks Better When The Sun Goes Down

Driver x afab!reader

3k words

∘₊✧ Summary: Getaways usually come with a strong dose of adrenaline. He can usually deal with it himself, but this time a far more thrilling prospect presents itself.

∘₊✧ Authors notes: I wrote this well over a month ago, and finally decided to dust it off and post, with encouragement from K, with whom the Driver conversation is never-ending and delicious! I would advise caution because he's kinda creepy in this one (compared to how I’ve written him before). Title from Make Me Wanna Die by The Pretty Reckless.

∘₊✧ Warnings/content: NSFW, dubious consent, masturbation, fingering, sex, glove kink, kissing kink, just a dash of sneaky, creepy, stalker-y Driver

∘₊✧─────────────────────✧₊∘

Driver’s leather-covered fingers tightened with a creak of resistance against the steering wheel. He might know the roads like the back of his hand, but being the getaway driver comes with the occupational hazard of not actually being able to control what your chasers will do, no matter how clever and thorough your plan.

Even if you’ve seen every trick in the book. Even if you have something of a sixth sense for predicting their movements.

Surprises can’t always be avoided, and tonight he was doing his best to get out of a surprise.

This had been just a touch more complicated to plot than his usual getaway routine. Locations hadn’t been quite as simple to pin down so timings would be off and he couldn’t have that. The only alternative was to alter his default plan of action only very slightly, yet the risks, apparently, tripled.

Or maybe Driver had just been unlucky.

He had kicked out the two masked men he had been hired to drive, easily getting rid of them en route as part of the plan, sticking to time down to the second, and then embarking on the more unusual part two, which simply required Driver to get himself away and hide the car somewhere different to where he’d hidden them. The route was meticulously added to his map, the hiding spots checked, double and triple checked, ahead of time.

Yet, despite the police radio suggesting they’d lost sight of tonight’s unassuming car of choice, the cops had picked back up, hot on Driver’s trail the moment he pulled back out onto the main streets.

He didn’t bat an eyelid at first. He knew what he was doing, after all; this wasn’t his first car chase by a long stretch. If he wanted to ‘wing it,’ he could. Easily. But he would never. He would simply go about the bulletproof backup plan designed for the event that this unlikely situation would come to fruition. All was fine.

Except that he really couldn’t seem to shake them. Every move he made, it was as though they’d read his mind and were one step ahead. It wouldn’t have been possible, but it was as if they somehow seen his detailed maps. They were only for his eyes though, and if anyone ever did see them… well. He would have to make it so that they remained only for his eyes.

Whatever was going on here, it seemed almost like someone was out to get him personally. His jaw clenched at the thought and his heart began to slam against his chest, breathing fast and ragged.

He tried to refocus. On the road, on the soft interior of his jacket against his arms. On the toothpick almost chewed in two between his teeth.

There were limited options at this point, and he was running out of ideas, running out of streets to slip down before they could predict his next action.

Driver firmly reminded himself to stick to the facts and ignore his physical response. He was still ahead. Just.

Actually, he was nearing your house. Oh…

No.

He shouldn’t distract himself, but it was hard not to notice that he’d pulled onto your street almost by muscle memory alone and he wondered if you’d see him, followed by that one police car that he was sure would soon be two, then three, sirens blazing.

It was darker down here. Residential, with parked cars dotted up and down the road, canopied with large leafy trees that blocked out the moonlight, too. So he killed his headlights and slowed down to avoid attracting any additional unwanted attention.

His ears pricked up as the discussion on the radio started up again in place of relaying the names of the streets they were chasing him down; they’d lost him again.

Just like last time they lost him. But they had found him as soon as he resurfaced, and he couldn’t sit out here on your street all night in plain view, no matter how unsuspecting the car may look to your neighbours.

A little blue Honda rattled by and he flinched.

Come on. Get a grip, he scolded himself.

His head began to pound.

He needed to find somewhere new to hide the car properly, and hide himself while he was at it. Fast. Somewhere he could stay for long enough that they’d really give up this time.

Another thought struck him and he blinked hard. He had to regain some self control. But your house was approaching on the right.

He couldn’t. Could he?

His eyes scanned the street. There were no other Hondas. No other moving vehicles. He couldn’t see anyone peering out of their windows into the dark street.

Then he found the end of your driveway, visible in the near distance. Your garage door was up. No car. You were out. Perfect.

No. He couldn’t.

Fuck. He was going to have to.

Besides, if anything did come of this, he could keep you safe. He was sure of that. No harm would ever come to you on his watch. Ever.

He slowly pulled onto your driveway and rolled the car to a gentle stop inside the garage, winding down the driver side window to punch the button on the wall that controlled the garage door. With a low hum and a light clicking, it swung down and locked into place with a soft clunk.

Complete darkness. The purr of the engine. And then, the crackle of the police radio.

Driver tensed, every bit of focus honed in on the voices coming through the small device.

With a note of three identifiable items: the car colour, model and number plate (two of which could easily be altered), and a reminder of where it was last seen (the next street along from this one), they’d officially given up the chase.

He relaxed into his seat, slumping down and stretching his long legs as far as they could lengthen in the confinement of the footwell, spreading his knees and dropping his head back against the headrest.

He would need to stay here for now, but that was manageable.

He killed the engine, trying to force his breath even and steady himself before he got out.

Although it had been tough, now it was over, he couldn’t deny that it had been exciting. There was rarely a time it wasn’t.

He felt a stirring in his core, the familiar thrill that ran through his trembling body every time he got away, high on adrenaline and filled with self satisfaction.

And he did get away. Every time. But this time? It had been a closer call than any he could remember and he was shaking, excitement coursing through his veins, sending all his blood south to throb between his spread thighs.

He chuckled, smirking and dropping his hands to his lap from where they were still bracing, tight storing the steering wheel. His breath caught in his throat as one palm slowly teased higher up his thigh.

It was becoming painful to sit here in these too-tight jeans, the denim rough against his leaking cock, and he hissed as he dragged his palm over the thrumming bulge that had formed inside them the moment he knew he was safe.

He felt a particularly thick drop of precum leak from his tip, gasping at the short lived relief his wandering hand had provided, gloved fingers now flying to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his jeans and free his aching length, all patience out the window. It didn’t matter how long it took. He just needed the release.

But as the first button popped undone, his ears pricked up at the unmistakable sound of tires rolling onto your driveway behind that garage door. He froze, heart racing, cock twitching, every sense heightened almost painfully.

He relaxed when he heard your car door slam shut, the sound of your shoes on the gravel. He’d know those sounds anywhere. He knew all the sounds you made – he’d studied you enough – and had an entire catalogue of them stored away safely in the back of his mind.

Hastily, he reached for the radio and flipped the switch back on. Nothing. Nothing about him, anyway. Nothing about you. You were safe even with him locked away inside your garage.

He heard your keys jingling against the lock of your front door, knowing you were inside once it had clicked shut and the jingle was muffled.

He breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief.

Seconds later, his personal cell buzzed from inside his jacket pocket.

One hand resting still against the denim covering his aching hard on, he fished his phone out and unlocked it, absentmindedly rubbing his fingertips over his length and whimpering when he saw your name on the screen above the message you’d sent.

‘Hey, babe… you up?’

Another thick pearl of precum.

Fuck. He could hide in here all night, sexting with you from just the next room, or…

He didn’t bother fastening up his belt or that one button he’d opened when he swung the car door open and jumped out, biting back a moan at the friction of his jeans settling, slightly looser and more comfortable, against his cock as he stood.

He knew where you kept your spare key, and the combination on the safety box that kept it hidden, so he retrieved it and let himself in through the internal garage door that led to your kitchen.

Driver was silent. Barely a sound as he crept through the house, knowing every floorboard and the placement of every piece of furniture down to the millimetre.

The house was dark, which made it easy for him. You’d only switched on one lamp since you returned; the one in the hallway where you still stood, hanging up your jacket and waiting for him to reply.

Your phone laid unlocked on the sideboard, opened to the message you’d sent him as you slipped off your shoes, eagerly awaiting his reply.

‘Come on,’ you breathed needily at your screen, ‘start typing!’ — and Driver swallowed hard.

He stuck to the shadows as he watched you, from the kitchen doorway, careful not to let his breathing turn too heavy, and certainly not above stroking himself over his jeans a couple of times just for the thrill of it.

You threw your shoes in the cupboard and picked up your phone again, checking to see if he was typing yet, and upon seeing that he wasn’t even online right now, you heaved a disappointed breath.

He might not have typed a reply, but he was ready to answer you.

‘I’m up,’ he breathed, hot against the back of your neck and you jumped, but his arms wrapped tight around yours, keeping you from fighting back, and he pulled you close as he breathed you in.

The still-gloved fingers of one of his hands hand toyed with the neckline of your shirt, ghosting around your throat as the other thrust unceremoniously into your jeans and dragged through your folds.

Even with his gloves on, he could tell you were already soaked.

It took you a terrifying moment, but your instinctual fear subsided, quickly replaced with burning arousal when you felt his cock pressing into your back, smelled his familiar scent, felt his glove teasing at your throat.

‘You are up,’ you sighed, reaching behind yourself to snake a hand between your flush bodies and drag your palm over his length in time with the fingers so precisely massaging your clit, and you moaned. Loud.

Driver’s knees felt like they might give out.

‘Mmmh-’ he hummed into your ear, ‘s-stop- fuck-’

You grinned, smug as ever about how easy he was to unravel, and at the wet patch you’d felt seeping through his thick jeans.

Despite the heat rapidly pooling at your core, you didn’t think on it for long, because any coherent thought was immediately pushed out of your mind when his hands left your core and throat, instead gripping your shoulders and spinning you to face him, slamming you back against the wall, his lips crashing onto yours with bruising force.

He pushed a thigh between your legs, pressing firmly against your heat and you moaned, muffled by his mouth as his tongue dragged hungrily against yours. Driver was always such a needy kisser, so passionate and intense and it made your head spin. But this was something else.

You gripped him hard, moaning and writhing against him, and he shuddered at your reaction, whining against your lips before fully pulling away to focus on freeing his cock.

Slightly dizzy, you removed your own trousers as fast as you could, hooking a leg around his waist as he shoved his wet jeans down and pushed forward, lifting you in his strong arms to help you clamp your other leg around his waist.

His eyes slid closed as he felt your slick against his cock, trying with all his might not to spill his release before he’d fucked you. The adrenaline was still so fresh, spurred on by breaking in and sneaking up on you, that he could hear his blood pumping in his ears. He felt almost invincible; but he knew that with just one eager and misguided move he would cum, ending it all too soon.

No. He needed to feel you around him. Feel you clench with need. Hear you scream. Fill you up.

He closed his eyes to refocus.

Now you were pinned between him and the wall, he slipped a hand down to guide himself to your entrance, a simultaneous relieved groan from both of you echoing around your entrance hall as he slid himself inside.

He stilled for a moment, composing himself, forehead pressed to yours because he knew that a kiss, even a soft and tender exchange, would break him.

He also knew that right now, one thrust and it would be over for him, so he moved his fingers up, massaging your clit in slow, precise circles, as though this was all designed purely to give you time to adjust.

Your head dropped back and you squirmed, trying to fuck yourself on him as his fingers sent wave after wave of shuddering bliss through your body. The angle was delicious, but balanced around his waist you couldn’t move enough to get what you needed.

‘Please,’ you begged, ‘fuck me- please-’

Driver growled, low and dark, against your throat. He could never resist giving you exactly what you wanted, and he could feel your walls tightening around him already. A low groan tore from his throat. You were close too.

Sicko, he thought. Like it when I break in and sneak up behind you? Shove a hand in your pants to try and get you off before you even realise it’s me?

Keeping his fingers against your throbbing bundle of nerves, he fucked you alright. Hard and fast and unrelenting, hips snapping frantically as he whimpered and gasped weakly into the thick air filling the inch between your mouths.

It was too late to stop his orgasm approaching. He’d been simmering for too long, and the way you’d kissed him, the way you’d begged him, the way you got wet just from him acting like a creep… his head was spinning.

The way he was fucking you, unceasing and intense, had you clawing at his jacket, wishing he’d taken it off so you could feel more of him, but there was no time. You pushed your fingers up to slide through his soft, neat hair instead, and he shuddered against you, biting down on his bottom lip. His blood boiled.

Fuck it. He smashed his lips back onto yours, tears pricking his eyes.

He finally spilled inside you, cock pulsing through his release. He squeezed his eyes shut, painfully aware you hadn’t cum yet, but his fingers on your clit hadn’t ceased, and as his cock began to soften, sensitive with aftershocks, he felt you clench tight around him. Your fingertips scraped against his scalp and your legs tightened around his waist and you cried out, loud and strangled, bucking your hips wildly as you chased your release.

Driver’s eyes welled with the tears he couldn’t bite back, dropping onto your shirt.

As you came down from your high, you stroked his hair back into place and slipped down from your position, standing on wobbly legs, head spinning, and Driver propped himself up with an arm against the wall, caging you in.

Your palm grazed his cheek, a tender thumb wiping his tears away.

He leant into your touch, eyes closed and breath slowing all the while.

‘So it was you who closed my garage door?’ you whispered, and he nodded against your palm. ‘Naughty boy,’ you added, teasing.

He looked up at you through the most stunning, sparkling, wet eyes and you knew you’d never stay mad for long – especially not when he fucked you so good and unravelled for you so easily.

‘Been on a job, baby?’ you cooed.

He nodded against your palm again.

‘Gonna jerk off in my garage until I arrived home and ruined the moment?’

Driver stiffened, eyes wide as he considered you, awed at the way you understood how his mind worked. Against his better judgement, he nodded, slowly.

‘Filthy boy,’ you added with a playful smirk. ‘Glad you found me instead, though.’

‘Yeah?’ he managed, weak and quiet, voice cracking.

‘Yeah. I fucking love it when you try so hard not to cum right away.’

His brow furrowed, but you hooked your fingers under his chin and lifted his gaze back to you, softly pressing your lips to his once again.

He whimpered, feeling weak, but he needed this more than anything after the rush. He was crashing, fast and needed comfort. Safety.

‘Wanna get into bed and make out until we fall asleep?’

Driver’s heart skipped, and he nodded again. It wasn’t always a bad thing to feel like someone was reading his mind.

#not s f w 💀#driver x reader #driver smut #drive 2011 #drive (2011)#ryan gosling x reader #ryan gosling #drive fic #driver x reader fic #drive smut #driver x you #driver x y/n #driver x reader smut #ryan gosling x y/n #ryan gosling x you #ryan gosling fic #ryan gosling smut #ken-dom writes

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verstppism · 18 days

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Boy's Talk (About You) - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 - take me anywhere but home

word count: 1957

masterpost.

synopsis everyone has their secrets, a group chat formed by charles leclerc, pierre gasly, alex albon, lando norris and george russell knows all of them. the 'kill the grid' chat has only one purpose: gossiping about other drivers' lives, romantic and social

or, a casual chat leads to charles confessing a crush on max, who's has been his rival since childhood

If Charles was still half asleep, the iMessage notifications coming from Max definitely woke him up. All the nervousness and anxiety from last night made sense: Max was leaving Brazil and his girlfriend to spend New Years in Monaco. But what were his intentions behind such a sudden decision? If Max really broke up with her, then he wouldn’t be texting the older one on a cold December morning. Or would he? Max Verstappen was a confusing person. One night, he says he’s not happy with his girlfriend, the other he goes on a private padel match with his ex-rival. Things seem to go well between them.

It’s when he posts a photo with his girlfriend after the race that tears everything apart. Still in his racing suit. Messy hair. Still sweating. Everything that belonged to Charles and to him only. In fact, Max was his. Who does she think she is? Charles only thought about how he could talk so casually about Kelly right before calling him “Charlie” and pushing him as far away from Lance as possible in the sprint podium. It was driving him insane — More than he already is. After eternal minutes discussing his own love life and its frustrations, Charles notices he left Max on read, he had accidentally opened the app and his conversation with the other one.

“charlie: good morningg “

“charlie: i am! are u okay? “

Charles was really at a loss at words, so he decided to pretend that he didn’t know where Max was nor that he was a few meters from the blonde’s house.

“maxiee: yeah “

“maxiee: just had a little change of plans and came back to monaco “

“charlie: oh really? “

“charlie: did anything happen or? “

“maxiee: can we talk about this in person? “

“maxiee: we can go to that café you mentioned in the padel match “

He… Remember. Their meeting (date?) was months ago, and he remembers it. Something he slightly mentioned once in a lifetime, and he recalls it in perfect detail. Charles wonders if Max remembers everything that pondered his mind. He asks himself if he recalls their discussions back in their karting days, or when they slowly started to use pet names for the first time. In the end, did Max realize that they were made for each other, even though they were predestined to fight for a whole life?

“charlie: of course! what time? “

“maxiee: im just getting ready, i’ll be there in a couple minutes “

“maxiee: nothing is too far here “

Charles giggles at the last message, like he always did when he exchanged messages with his beloved. After all, it was more of a date orchestrated by Max — he is good at setting up dates so subtly. Or maybe Charles just accepts every invite from the other. — and again, alone together. A more casual reunion this time: without any sport or anyone that could get in their way. It seemed like a dream, Charles hoped it wasn’t.

He didn’t even mind telling his friends of such an important event, just got up from his bed and quickly got ready. Casual clothing and sunglasses to go unnoticed. It wasn’t easy to go on a date in broad daylight in a city as small as Monte Carlo.

—————

It really didn't take long for them to meet. That little cafeteria was one of the secret gems of Monaco, hidden between beautiful historic buildings. As Charles arrived, he already could see Max, stirring coffee and sugar on the delicate little cup. He was looking down, his face with little to no emotion, more like hesitant of… something.

The doorbell ring filled the quiet place when the older entered the place getting the other's attention, which gave a soft and kinda sad smile to him. A smile that wasn't common as the post race ones or those shared in press conferences. ‘This is not the moment to overthink your relationship with him.’ Charles thought.

“I’m not late this time. '' Leclerc broke the awkward silence between them as he sat down. “Yeah… I mean, you live around here, no?” Max sounded somewhat different. Nervous? Sad? Reading his feelings through his face wasn’t Charles’ best ability. “So remember when I told you I would spend New Years in Brazil?”

“Of course! I was also about to ask you about it. Why did you come back home?” He said as he sat down. Home. Not the best wording at the moment, given that he’s actually Dutch and we are somewhere around near South France. It’s what they say: ‘home is where the heart is’. “Like… Did anything happen?”

“Yeah, uh…” Apprehensive. A worried tone filled his voice. “Me and Kelly had a little fight right after Christmas and I thought it would be better for us to part ways. She wasn’t very willing to but… Can I be honest? I was growing tired of being stuck with her.”

Stuck with her. Stuck. Max was tired. Max doesn't like her. At All. Charles felt like his chest was collapsing in the best way possible. How was he supposed to act normally and feel pity for them when butterflies filled his stomach?

“And you know, I only kept the relationship up because of her daughter…” Verstappen smiled while looking at the cup. The older’s intrusive thoughts were telling to adopt a child with that man. He was such a good dad after all! “And PR too. I think our love wasn't reciprocal… I was there for the kid and she was for the status of being a Formula One driver's girlfriend.”

“Oh Max… That's too bad. I’m so sorry for you” A pitiful look surged on Charles’ face, trying to show empathy and not that he was going insane over all of this. “I’m sure you and her will be able to meet again.” A shy smile appeared on the younger’s face when ocean and emerald eyes met. A comfortable silence surrounded them, only the ambient sound and smell of fresh coffee filled the empty café.

“Now that we are on the topic, it may sound rude but I need to get this off my chest. I doubt you two would still be together if you didn't win in 2021.” Still apprehensive, Charles felt safe to talk shit about Max’s ex-girlfriend. When he saw the other’s eyes glitter at the comment, he was sure: the blonde has been waiting forever to do this. “You doubt? I'm 100% sure! After we left RedBull’s party she started talking about marriage, mate. Can you believe that!?”

Minutes that felt like hours passed by. Charles and Max talked about many secrets they've kept for each other for the mere thought of “this is not something you usually tell your best friend, especially when he’s dating a person you don’t really like”. In fact, they would never get to these specific topics – mostly about relationships. Maybe both were scared of oversharing and confessing their true love, ruining it all for once. The older didn't know if delusional thoughts took over, but he felt things were getting intimate, at some point, their feet touched and so their legs proceeded to slightly intertwine.

They didn’t even bother to order food or anything. — and so the waiters did not ask them to. Perhaps it was an obvious date to whoever passed by. When leaving, Max only paid for this coffee cup that was now cold, half drunken and long forgotten on the table. Both got so deep in conversation they forgot the world keeps spinning, and the day goes by, like they always do. Like it always happens. If you didn’t know, you would guess that they were long-distance boyfriends meeting for the first time.

It was almost dusk when they left the café. The orange-ish colors in the sky implied the sun was setting, and so Max and Charles decided to walk home. Staying side by side on a very narrow sidewalk made their shoulders brush at all times.

As they got closer to Leclerc’s house, he noticed that Max started to tense up. Was he scared of something? Scared of leaving Charles? That reaction started to worry him but as soon as they got to the older’s doorstep he spoke up, point blank:

“I… Charlie, the true meaning behind this all-of-a-sudden meeting is that… You are the love of my life. I’m sorry for not noticing it earlier.” Max stuttered, a subtle way to let the other know it was hidden and buried deep inside with fear for years and years. Maybe even his whole life. It drove Charles insane. It’s like he was feeling every single emotion at the same time. He swore he was dying or something. The older man fought every desire to kiss him right here in the middle of an empty sideroad right in front of his house, but he knew it would appear in every headline in worldwide newspapers. “Charles ‘il predestinato’ Leclerc is found kissing Life-long rival Max Verstappen”. That is not the best way to be in the news, probably something that would end their careers or worse: their friendship. With no words left to say, Charles just hugged him tight as if he would disappear at any time. “Je t'aime moi aussi, mon amour” He said as one or two teardrops slid across his cheek.

Feeling something wet hit his shoulder, Max broke the hug but still kept their bodies suspiciously close. He held the other’s face with both big hands as their eyes met once again, but now with much more compassion. After all they’ve gone through, all their ups and downs brought them to this moment. What they’ve been waiting for.

“Wait wait wait.” Charles popped the little bubble they builded to protect themselves from the rest of the world. “Can we get inside first? I mean, it’s very romantic to kiss in the middle of the crosswalk I know but we’re kinda famous so yeah…” Max chuckled at the comment. “Of course we can, schatje”

He unlocked the door and let Verstappen enter as if nothing almost happened a few seconds ago. “Uh… So are-” He’s interrupted by the softest of lips crashing into his own, almost cornering him into a wall like a (ironically) raging bull. For the very first seconds they are both surprised by the feeling but locked in very quickly. This kiss felt like heaven, the way both mouths swayed together felt like they were pieces to a puzzle, just waiting for it to be finally found and placed together. It was definitely not what Charles thought it would be like but it was good nonetheless.

They only broke the kiss when there was no oxygen left in their bodies still, they stayed close, panting and hanging on by a thread of spit. Leclerc hid his face on his lover’s shoulder and started giggling, ending up with a lowkey confused Max.

“Why are you laughing?” He said, with a broad smile on his face. Charles’ laugh was contagious.

“This is so stupid. Why did we take so long to do this?”

It all came down to them snuggling together in Charles’ bed. The moonlight that invaded the room through a slightly opened window shines in their features, giving both an godly look. After a whole day spent with Max, Leclerc seemed to forget about his friends, who might’ve gone insane by his disappearance. So he was right: when checking his phone he’s welcomed with 86 missed calls, – all coming from 4 different people – and at least 300 messages coming from his group chat, Kill the Grid. Charles opens it, doesn’t read any of the past messages and starts typing.

“charlie: guys, youll never know what just happened '' Send it.

taglist: @mrsbrxkkxr , @nyxstice , @thedecalcomania-blog ,@sebastianize <3

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rin-fukuroi · 5 months

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𝐀 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭 [𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐲]

Please do not translate or publish my works without my permission.

The originals of my works can be read here

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Pairings: Wriothesley x fem!reader

Warnings: none, just b-day fluff~

Note: English is not my native language, so I apologize if there are errors in the text qq

I am, as always, very punctual, so I almost made it to the birthday of this hot cryo man (o´ω`o) I'm sorry if there are typos in his name and correct me, please, because I'm posting this at five in the morning and I feel like I'm going to fall asleep at the computer, but I couldn't put it off until the morning anymore XD

You glance nervously at your watch. Another tedious working day at the Palais of Mermonia is about to end, and you are looking forward to visiting your friend. Of course, you didn't need some special day to see Wriothesley, and you didn't need an excuse to just burst into his office and share another cup of tea with him, which, by the way, you did quite often, but today… Today you just have to get him to the surface.

Although you knew perfectly well that your feelings towards the duke would probably never be reciprocated, and you knew that this man was "married to his job," the desire to see him as often as possible still never left you. You rejoiced at the fleeting moments when you could see his sincere, but slightly tired smile, rejoiced at the sound of your name flying off his tongue, rejoiced at every modest gift that Wriothesley handed you after each visit to the Fortress (often, of course, it was cosmetics that Sigewinne left for you when she couldn't give it away personally, but sometimes it was also gifts from the duke himself, who carefully supplied you with tea that you might like during your meeting), but gradually became more and more greedy, wanting to get more.

It's so selfish to think that one day Wriothesley will leave the Fortress and finally break out to Fontaine to see you more often, however, what's wrong with just dreaming about it sometimes?

When the hands of the clock finally move to the cherished eight o'clock in the evening, you happily jump up from your chair, no longer feeling the same fatigue. This happens every time you plan to visit Wriothesley, but today you feel a special surge of strength that you want to direct to ensure that this day goes perfectly. Everything has been planned in your head for a long time, down to the smallest details, although you know that it has rarely happened that your grandiose plans have been fully realized, but you are ready to make every effort to ensure that today goes exactly as you imagined it before going to bed for several weeks in a row.

You cheerfully run out of the Palais, briefly saying goodbye to the melusines who are vigorously waving after you, and go straight to the Fortress, anticipating to see the soft smile of Wriothesley, to whom you will fall in without warning.

A few nods of greeting to the guards at the entrance to Meropid, and here you are already going down in the elevator, nervously fiddling with the strap of your bag slung over your shoulder. This path leading you deep under the water seems especially long today, and you excitedly shift from foot to foot before the doors finally open in front of you, giving you a view of the floor on which the entrance to your friend's office is located.

For some reason, all your resolve melts more and more as you approach his door. Of course, your plans will hardly please the Duke, but isn't it already too late to worry about it?

You slip through the heavy doors, taking a deep breath before finally climbing up the stairs. Your curious gaze immediately catches the slightly disheveled smolny strands of hair and the gaze of a man sitting in his usual place concentrated on the papers on the table. Risley seems to be so immersed in his work that he doesn't even immediately notice that someone has snuck into his office without warning until your figure appears in his field of vision, forcing the man to look up at you with a tired look.

— You're uninvited, as always, — the duke jokes, smiling gently and turning his attention back to the pile of documents stacked on the right side of his hand sliding over the paper.

— And you, as always, are not ready to break away from work even when a friend comes to visit you!

— Y/N, you should have already remembered that you can feel like at home here. I still have to finish… — the man's words are cut off when you audaciously interrupt him, banging your palms on his weighty wooden table.

— Wrio, today we are going out for a walk on the Fontain, and I don't accept a refusal! — your eyes are full of determination when Wriothesley looks up, meeting your gaze.

The duke sighs resignedly, crossing his muscular arms over his chest, as if thinking about something before finally answering.

— As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.

— Come on. You're idle most of the time. I hardly believe that during your long rest you don't have any urgent business, — you raise an eyebrow disapprovingly, taking the same defensive pose as Wriothesley.

— I told you that I don't like to rise to the surface unless absolutely necessary. It costs me a lot of effort to dodge the interview of that journalist from the "Steam Bird", you know. If she sees us…

— She won't see it! And if she does, I'll deal with it, I promise.

Another dissatisfied sigh, and Wriothesley still gives up, reluctantly getting up from his chair.

— Well, you said it yourself, so I'll leave the role of my personal bodyguard to you for today, — the duke chuckles softly before slowly walking towards the stairs.

It's amazing how easy it was to get him to sign up for your adventure, but you're still elated, almost skipping along after Wriothesley.

— Ah, ah! How upset will all your fans be when they find out that your fists and those threatening gloves have lost to the fragile girl you entrusted to protect yourself!

Wriothesley's velvety laugh and your quiet giggle bounce off the metal walls as the two of you go downstairs, casually exchanging jokes before finally the heavy door slams shut behind you.

✧ ✧ ✧

— So… And where do you want to go? — Wriothesley asks, finally coming to the surface of Fontaine. A soft breeze blows the short strands of his hair and the jacket draped over his broad shoulders.

— Mmm … — you smile mysteriously, proudly raising your head. — I have everything planned!

— I'm already scared.

And so your little adventure began.

The first point was the cozy cafe "Lutes", where you had a snack with crepes before going for a leisurely walk through the streets of Fontaine. Wriothesley was confident and unyielding, even when every second resident of Fontaine considered it his duty to cast an alarmed and amazed look after you both. The duke, so casually strolling around the city, really excited the Fontaine people even more than any appearance of judge Neuvillette among the common people, but it didn't seem to bother you particularly, judging by the fact that you were still as relaxed as usual with your friend about everything and nothing at the same time.

Wriothesley looks at the streets and people around with interest, which he usually never had enough time for even when he had to go up to the Fontain. You catch every look of a man, not missing the opportunity to once again examine his features and every scar adorning his face and neck when he turns away to hold his blue eyes on something that attracted his attention. He looks so relaxed, even though he doesn't show that he likes it, and you can't help but feel elated at the realization that, although you had to get him to sign up for your idea, Wriothesley doesn't seem to mind at all just walking with you like this.

After a small snack at Louis's diner, you both visited the fountain, admiring the bright lights of lanterns lit up all over the Fontain when the bright moon rose over the region. The time flew by as quickly as it always did when you managed to share it with the duke. It's so unfair. This evening is really special, and how would you like it to never end, and you just feel the presence of a loved one next to you for at least a few more hours before you are left alone again.

But this is impossible, and the realization that you will soon have to part one way or another settles with bitter sadness in your chest.

— Hey, Wrio… — you suddenly stop when you both gradually complete a circle through the streets of Fontaine, inevitably approaching back to the entrance to the Fortress. The man hears your quiet voice behind his back and also stops, turning around to look at your gloomy figure. Wriothesley wanted to ask what suddenly managed to break your fighting spirit, with which you accompanied him all your walk, but you suddenly smile again, looking up at him. — I want to… go somewhere else.

✧ ✧ ✧

Waves smoothly flow to the shores of the outskirts of Fontaine, caressing the soft sand. The light sound of the water is so soothing, and you take a deep breath before plopping down on the grass under a tree standing alone near the walls of the city. Your gaze immediately clings to the majestic Moon reflected in the crystal clear water when a cool breeze touches the skin of your face. Such quiet, peaceful evenings are usually meant for lonely thoughts or romantic dates, but you are here today for none of these reasons. You hear quiet footsteps and a short sigh from the man behind, who reluctantly sits down next to you, resting his palms on the soft grass and fixing his gaze at the sky.

— It's been a while since I've seen the moon, — Wriothesley breathes in fresh air, closing his eyes for a moment, and you finally turn around, looking at the peaceful expression on his face.

The gaze unconsciously slides down his tense forearm muscles under his black shirt, his chest heaving in time with the measured breathing and his legs stretched out on the grass.

"And I haven't seen you like this for a long time…" — you would like to say out loud, but you swallow your sentimental desire, and straighten up, shifting your bag onto your lap.

— Wrio… — you mumble softly, and the man mumbles back to you, still without opening his eyes and continuing to enjoy the quiet murmur of water and the distant sounds of the Fontain getting ready for bed.

The man feels your hand touching his shoulder, and opens his eyes slightly, noticing how you look at him, awkwardly pursing your lips. Your cheeks are lightly powdered with blush, and the fingers of your other hand are nervously fiddling with the lock of the bag, and Wriothesley also straightens up, paying all his attention only to you.

— In general… here, — you hesitate, but then you hurriedly take out a small box from your bag and hand it to him.

For a moment, the duke's eyes widen while he just looks at the small gift intended for him, lying in your palm, but then he accepts it, without hesitation opening the lid. A silver tie clip, decorated with a small ruby, shimmering in the moonlight, lies neatly on a miniature gray pillow when Wriothesley carefully takes your gift out of the box.

— I'll understand if you don't wear it, but… happy birthday, Wrio, — you look away, blushing even more, while the man just looks at the little thing without saying a word.

You're ready to sink through the ground on this very spot. His silence doesn't mean that he didn't like your gift, does it? Oh, you really could have given him something more useful, but in the end you presented him with what should be on his tie, comforting your selfish desire that your gift be with him every day, glimmering somewhere in the depths of your soul.

You're almost ready to just hurriedly say goodbye and run away to your home to bury your face in the pillow and replay this awkward moment in your head an infinite number of times to drive yourself into even more despondency, but you hear a quiet click and turn back to Wriothesley, noticing that his tie is already decorated with silver jewelry, which he is looking at with a slight thoughtfulness in his gaze before looking at you.

— Mm, I think it's not bad, what do you think?

Your lips open, and the words get stuck somewhere in your throat when you just look at Wriothesley in a discouraged way.

The man grins, amused by your reaction, and lets go of his tie before leaning towards you.

If before it seemed to you that time was so inevitably slipping through your fingers like sand, now for the first time you felt it stop at the moment when you felt the touch of Wriothesley's warm soft lips on your flushed cheek. The scent of his perfume has cut into your nostrils, and you are ready to swear that you will never be able to forget him again, as well as this short kiss, which will now always burn the skin of your face whenever the image of Wriothesley will pop up in your mind.

Your face now seems more like a frightened otter, just frozen in shock when Wriothesley pulls away, barely restraining himself from laughing at your funny reaction.

— Thank you, Y/N.

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #wriothesley #wriothesley x reader #headcanons #genshin x you #genshin drabbles

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runwayrunway · 11 months

Text

No. 1 - Lufthansa

We begin with a large fish even by the standards of the large pond in which we operate. A very intentionally chosen large fish. Deutsche Lufthansa is Germany’s flag carrier and the second largest carrier in all of Europe by passenger volume. In 2018, they unveiled a new standard livery for their fleet of airplanes, and it...well. It’s this.

Even the presentation - good lord, is this an auto show?

My feelings on Lufthansa’s 2018 livery are visceral. There’s no mental evaluation required, no taking it in, thinking about the choices made - I look at the modern Lufthansa livery and immediately, profoundly know that I hate it. And that’s not just because of the specific choices made - which are bad - but because of the space they occupy amidst a creatively barren wasteland within livery design. This is going to be a very long post, which isn’t standard for this blog, but my goal for an introduction is to break down exactly the sort of design that made me feel the need to start doing this to begin with.

But in reality that’s only the beginning. Yes, Lufthansa’s livery is specifically disappointing, but it is so much more than that. It is the purest distillation of the greatest challenge aviation faces today, far weightier than scheduling issues, outdated IT, and runway incursions. It is not the worst example of it, not in the slightest, but it is a large airline which has a very textbook presentation of symptoms and thus feels like a great example to describe exactly what I hate about this sort of design. Let me explain.

Essentially, airlines have found a formula. It goes as such:

Almost entirely white body. (There is a name for this trend: Eurowhite.) In some cases, there may be a colour on the underside, generally either a light grey or whichever secondary shade the airline has committed to. In the case of this Lufthansa livery, it is just white.

Aside from the white body there will be either a single colour (generally some dark blue, or less often some sort of red) or a few colours, usually but not exclusively on flag carriers to match their national branding. (The proliferation of red, white, and blue flags out there means that a disproportionate number of airline liveries are these colours.) Unless it is literally just a white plane meant to be as generic as possible for short turn-overs when leasing, it will at least attempt to have some sort of design, but it will be minimal, and:

All of the detail will be on the tail. There may be coloured winglets or engine nacelles, but other than that it is only at the rear of the plane that you begin to see any interest. Usually this is just a logo, though it may be an abstract design which looks like a default tumblr header. It will often only be on the tail, with nothing at all on the body proper.

The name of the airline written in a sans-serif typeface which is set as default on at least one word processor. Rarely will anything creative be done with this. It will (usually, except in egregious cases) match the impotent attempt at graphic design which has been confined to the empennage and it will have all the charm of a large retail chain’s flyer describing the benefits you’ll definitely totally get if you work for them - sickeningly corporate. Low-cost airlines may slightly vary the theme by putting their website onto the livery, either towards the back or just instead of the airline’s name. The brave will also write it on the ventral fairing, but most don’t even bother with that simple act. Some airlines have their name written in the language spoken in the country they’re based in, usually beside the English text, but most are only in English despite operating in countries where this is not the most widely spoken language.

Not every livery which has these features is badly designed, as seemingly small changes can make all the difference. There is the occasional livery that fits most, if not all of these features that has some clever tweaks or design choices which makes me actually think it’s fine, acceptable, maybe even decent. (I have taken the initiative of making sure a few of these are among my early posts, just to demonstrate that it can be done). And some airlines depart from this entirely and come up with something even more hideous. Yet I somehow find myself respecting even these more than I do Lufthansa.

The Corporate Standard Livery Design (Lufthansesque design, if you will) is - and I do not think I am being dramatic at all here - an epidemic. Taxiing through most airports, you sometimes have to actually try to tell the planes parked around you apart in the sea of red, blue, and mostly white. And I spend a lot of time looking at planes.

These liveries do not only fail to inspire me. They instill in me a profound disgust. They are not trying to be good. They are trying to be what I described earlier - decent, not worth complaining about, because that’s cheaper and easier than designing something good. Graphic design is not anyone’s passion here. They’re just trying to toe the line. They’re so poisoned by the modern minimalist-design brain virus that they don’t realise that to be acceptable a livery this simple needs to do something interesting. There must be a creative decision made somewhere, a compelling feature, or you may as well be flying an MLA-formatted plane. In their striving for adequacy they become not just ambient, but lukewarm. They are a bottle of water which has sat in the sun for so long that when you drink it, even though you’re overheating and parched, it feels only negligibly better than the air you’ve been breathing in.

To be fair, I do not only hate the Lufthansa paintjob because it exemplifies whatever-ness. Even in an industry saturated with gross in-flight nothingburgers served with some stale biscuits and a paper cup of Lipton tea, Lufthansa manages to offend in specific and unique ways.

Throughout its long history Lufthansa has had a handful of different liveries, but from 2018 onwards this has been the situation. They’ve never been brilliant, but it’s only gotten worse over time. I normally would commit to a separate post for historical liveries, but in a move that I don’t foresee becoming particularly common I’d like to talk about the history and evolution of Lufthansa’s liveries from the golden age to now - the fall, if you will.

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

Their early liveries were already pretty much plain white or metal, but they still had a few features that made them seem a bit less like photocopy paper which was meant to be printed plain blue but only got through a tenth of the sheet before ink ran out. To begin with, they used a lighter blue and combined it with a vivid yellow to add some actual visual interest. The layering of the yellow over the blue where it curves around and below the nose and on the ends of the tailplane actually draws the eye. The font choice is nice and legible, spaced apart in the center of the fuselage. I imagine it was easy to read even from far away. (Shame it’s a bit blocked by the wings from some angles, though.)

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

This early 707 design keeps the cheatlines extending past the nose but makes them sharper than the ones on the Connie to match the sleek profile of the jet. Back when this plane was painted adding white to your plane was a choice rather than the thing everybody was doing, which allows me to respect it for the choice it was instead of considering it the factory default. The bottom half, denoted by the cheatline, is left unpainted, which only adds to the sleekness of the overall profile, and the text is clear and plain but still aesthetically pleasing. The 707 is by modern standards pretty antique-looking; you can take one look at one and tell it isn’t particularly streamlined. This paint scheme, though, makes the plane look sharp and aerodynamic, despite not being revolutionary. I would go so far as to say I like this particular livery. This is, unfortunately, as good as it gets.

Oh. Oh no...

Let’s assess the damage here. The cheatlines now simply meet at the front without wrapping down to the belly of the plane and the nose is a simple black tip. I like it when airlines paint their planes’ radomes, and I wouldn’t mind it here if not for what it was replacing. The font has been replaced with a generic sans serif font which is closely spaced and put up into a corner, like the name on a homework assignment - it’s not really part of the total package, just there for administrative purposes. Most upsetting to me is the tail. While I wouldn’t say I love the little section on the old plane, it at least felt like it belonged there, creating a second blue-and-yellow layer above the white. Its placement on the fin above where it begins to taper gives the plane a bit of an aerodynamic feel. It’s certainly not changing the world, but it feels at home in the livery.

The new fin is a sharp downgrade. With nothing to mark the transition the fin abruptly goes from the white of the upper fuselage to a shiny blue which contains an enclave of the only yellow to be found on the entire aircraft. This makes the yellow stand out, as it has nothing to tie it in with the rest of the plane, and the fin itself feels almost like it’s been Frankensteined onto the fuselage from a different plane by a different airline. There’s nothing to mediate the transition from a block of white to a block of blue, like how the cheatline separates white and grey. It just is blue now, stop asking questions. This also means that the only part of the plane that the eye is really drawn to is...the tiny portion of the whole that is the fin, which may as well be floating detached in midair.

This is foreboding. Knowing what I know now, it feels like looking back at when a romantic partner began to act strange years later, after the divorce, as you walk by the house he bought with his mistress.

(image: g najberg)

The most recent, and only, time I flew on Lufthansa was in 2014 and was aboard one of their 747-400s. (Actually, if you’d still like to fly on a passenger 747, Lufthansa is basically your only option.) At the time, they looked like this. This is...just sad. They got rid of the cheatlines, because that’s trendy now, and they painted the whole plane white and made an attempt at lip service to the old metal lower half by painting just a bit of the plane grey, like if a human stepped into a puddle of paint that only covered the very sole of their foot. And I’m being generous by showing a 747, a plane which inherently makes any livery look less boring by being interestingly shaped itself, instead of the classic slightly pointy single-decker tube. Not to mention the double-decker design makes the text vertically centered instead of the default Lufthansa look of awkwardly shoved nearly all the way up the fuselage.

In defense of the modern livery, it’s possible to argue it’s an improvement on this. Honestly, looking at them next to each other, it’s difficult to pick out which one I find less defensible.

But then you see D-AIDV, an A321 painted in a heritage livery, and you feel the immediate, visceral “no!!! no go back!!!” as you remember that this is a false dichotomy and we could have something so much better if they weren’t peer-pressured into generic modern design.

And for what? For this?

(image: hvdfonts)

For the third time, I remind you of what we have been reduced to. We have achieved a state of reductio ad absurdum where this barely qualifies as a design. This plane is more or less a white blot. You can put as many insets as you want and it is still a white blot.

I am relatively sure that the font used is literally Helvetica. EDIT: I have been informed that it is not, in fact, Helvetica, but a custom typeface that happens to look almost exactly like Helvetica. This is, in my own opinion, worse! They did apparently use Helvetica in the past, though. Here is a very detailed description of the design process of the font, which manages to contain a grand total of zero ideas.

I would hate this on its own already, but it’s also so closely spaced and located so far up that it makes me feel like I’m suffocating. In my own experience as a dyslexic person, kerning is the single weightiest feature when it comes to if I can easily read something or not. While Helvetica, ugly though it may be, is generally considered a very legible font, any benefits from that are more than cancelled out by committing to making sure the entire name of the airline fits between the frontmost two doors with room to spare. It feels almost hostile.

Now, all given, I at least somewhat enjoy the shade of blue used for this livery, which is darker than the normal fare. I do miss the way the grey broke up the endless white space, though, and I mourn the yellow even more - in addition to being something to look at, losing it has also lost any visible reference to the flag of Germany, the country for which Lufthansa is the flag carrier. They don’t even have the black part of the German flag despite that being basically free. If they went for black instead of dark blue I would honestly respect this a hell of a lot more. One of the most recognizable flags in the world and instead your airline looks like a discount SAS.

Yeah, I said it. If we want to go even further with comparisons by including airlines that aren’t Lufthansa, this is basically the SAS livery. Except not, because the SAS livery does a lot that this doesn’t.

This is about Lufthansa, not SAS. I’ll look at SAS soon enough, because comparing their look to Lufthansa’s has made me appreciate it in a way I never used to. But I don’t think I need to elaborate too much for it to be clear why SAS’s livery works and Lufthansa’s doesn’t, despite the superficial similarities. SAS took their absolutely horrid previous livery and turned it into something which might not wow anyone but at least feels uniquely theirs, while Lufthansa had something which accomplished much the same and then diluted it into nothingness, Eurowhite writ large. Two washes and you’d wonder if your Lufthansa flight is actually a Smartlynx lease.

The way that the blue slices into the bottom of the fuselage and doesn’t fully cover the tailfin is...something? It’s a design element. It’s not nearly enough to save it, but it’s a design element. However, this presents another issue specific to Lufthansa’s paint job, best demonstrated with a specific plane:

(image: lufthansa)

Lufthansa is the world’s largest operator of the Airbus A340, a somewhat eccentric airplane which is perhaps best thought of as a four-engined A330. I love this airplane, and am delighted seeing it overhead on my walk home from work, because Lufthansa is kind enough to operate a daily service with it to my home airport, but that’s beside the point. The point is this: what I have pictured is specifically the A340-600, which is the world’s second longest in-service airliner. Yes, longer than the A380 and the 747-400, and, in fact, only shorter than the 747-800. With a plane this long, the Lufthansa livery creates an incredible look of rear-heaviness. This plane looks like it should uncontrollably pitch up until it’s perpendicular to the ground every time it takes off. Of course this effect is less pronounced on shorter aircraft, but it’s still there, and I dislike it.

You can barely even tell there’s paint at all on a much smaller plane! And the white bit on the front of the rudder which looks okay on a conventional empennage looks downright horrible when it’s only on the very tip of the t-tail’s forward point.

Oh, and when you take the windows out for a freighter conversion it gets even worse.

This is a generic-brand airplane. It genuinely reminds me of generic branding. There is a specific brand that has this exact appearance and I can’t remember what it is but it’s right there and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it at CVS. I don’t think that’s what you want to go for when designing an airline livery, especially for an airline representing a country, but if Lufthansa wasn’t going for that they’ve failed.

__________________________________________

Overall, Lufthansa’s livery is superbly boring and not terribly well thought out. It’s not worth this absolute dissertation on its own, but I’ve singled it out to complain about general trends, and for that I probably owe it an apology. Said apology is predicated on the fact that it is still a very underwhelming and bad design which could have used a lot more thought. There are a million ways this could have been made decent, and none of them were implemented because that would have taken effort and time and creative vision. I think this post actually required more time and effort than Lufthansa put into designing their planes.

That said, Lufthansa gets a final grade of D. It’s...bad, it definitely is. There’s the vague flavour of the start of something, like the very distant smell from a barbecue happening three blocks away, but is that really even a redeeming factor?

No. The second-largest airline in Europe should be able to do better. If I have to stare at rows upon rows of their planes any time I’m at a German airport, they should have the decency to make them interesting to look at.

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sofoulandfairaday · 8 months

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Do you have any Peter hcs? There's not a lot of content with him so I wondered if you had.

Sorry for the late reply anon(s).

Truth be told... not many. I think Peter is a fascinating character but not one I spend a lot of time thinking about beyond his role in the canon, ergo it's hard for me to have headcanons about him. This is more of a meta post really, or at least a mix of meta & headcanons & general thoughts.

He always had a mean streak. I hate when he's portrayed in the fandom as someone who was super jolly good, a lovable bumbling idiot, or worse a clueless innocent little guy whom Voldemort just happened to bamboozle, or even worse a suave, smooth-talking ladies' man with even one (1) ounce of charisma. Much like Remus, he always feared his position inside their group, unlike Remus he really was the lowest in the pecking order. As such, he would always look for someone weaker than him to make up for it. This is very clear in SWM when he's described as laughing (roaring with laughter) and looking on with a look of avid anticipation and hungrily at Snape's humiliation and sexual harassment by his two popular friends.

He isn't academically brilliant, but that doesn't mean he's stupid. He was called dumb his whole life, by friends and foes alike... There is literally not a single character in the whole book series who doesn't talk to him condescendingly: Voldemort openly mocks him and shows him even less respect than he does to his fellow Death Eaters, Snape treats him like a servant, his own best friends call him dumb:

"How thick are you, Wormtail?" said James impatiently. "You run round with a werewolf once a month-" and "Put that away, will you?" said Sirius [...] "Before Wormtail wets himself from excitement". Wormtail turned slightly pink but James grinned.

And yet, he (1) does manage to become an Animagus, even though we can mostly ascribe this to James and Sirius' help; (2) blows up a street, killing twelve Muggles and framing Sirius for murder; (3) helps revive Voldemort at his weakest - which, I mean, Voldemort was definitely giving the orders and detailing how to make the potion etc, but this is an unusual level of competence, seeing what the standard for the Death Eaters in the second wizarding war is (DoM anyone? Twelve of Voldemort's best Death Eaters vs six Hogwarts fifth years? Pathetic display if you ask me)

Was definitely a bit of an errand boy for Sirius and James.

His best subject was Charms (12 Muggles, you guys) and his worst was Potions. My funny little headcanon is that he was so bad at it that Voldemort had a bad time trying to guide him in brewing that Rebirth Potion - the actual reason it took them a whole year.

Asked the Sorting Hat to be placed in Gryffindor. Peter Pettigrew is canonically a Hatstall between Gryffindor and Slytherin (source). My headcanon is that he asked the Sorting Hat to be placed in Gryffindor. Perhaps it was because the kind boy he had met on the train (Remus Lupin) had already been sorted into Gryffindor before him, or maybe it was because he was always attracted to greatness and Gryffindor is the House of valor after all.

He wasn't forced by Voldemort to give up the Potters' location or become a Death Eater. He went of his own accord. He started feeding Voldemort information a whole year before the Potters' death and he did so because Voldemort was winning the war. He had all but won. In my headcanons, 1979-1980 is his we are on the edge of a golden world moment. It all goes downhill from there. Peter was probably one of those people who fell inside Voldemort's web of charisma/intimidation. He was in equal parts scared and morbidly attracted, just like everyone else on that side.

I like the headcanon that Peter did most of the sketching on the Marauder's Map. It goes along well with my headcanon that he's a talented drawer and he made some mean caricatures of most students and faculty during his time at Hogwarts.

#asks #answered #hp headcanons #marauder's era #peter pettigrew #wormtail

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mixelation · 10 months

Text

more rotating on this post: kakashi dating a civilian OC who has no idea he's a ninja

original proposed concept is they "meet" via icha icha fanzine. i bothered @tozettastone and they suggested that OC be a cosplayer. what does icha icha cosplay even look like? you ever seen IRL naruto coplay that's like "naruko but she wears a miniskirt and fishnets and a lot of makeup." or like fanart of kakashi where he's wearing a bellyshirt for no reason other than to show off his abs. like that, plus some very over-the-top traditional clothing for undercover work and civilian characters. everyone has off the shoulder kimono that show off cleavage and magically stay up, etc

anyway, i can't really see young!kakashi (like 18-19-20?) actively participating in fandom. but maybe he finds a zine somewhere and starts collecting them, like a pre-internet lurker. it's his coping mechanism, okay. he likes fanart. he likes bad fics. and then our lovely OC who's also 19 and fresh to being allowed in the porn section is like: I MADE THE BEETLE WING HAORI HERE'S A PHOTO. there's a note about her sorting through thousands of beetle wings to get the right colors, and also what a nightmare they are to sew, and also what should she try next, mail me here??? and Kakashi is like: oh wow, this person is insane. i have just the challenge. <3

(OC's additional notes on the haori: no one should ever do this again. just don't. you'll regret it)

kakashi is not the only person to write her suggestions, but he IS the only one to suggest something that's actually technically difficult to make, which is what she wanted. so they start swapping letters where she sends him progress updates on this insane thing she is making. he finds this mildly amusing until about a month out from the next con when her letters abruptly turn insane. she WILL premier this cosplay there even if it kills her-- listen if her wig guy isn't up to snuff she'll just LEARN HERSELF--

and listen kakashi isn't going to FALL IN LOVE but this level of commitment is something he can appreciate.

OC sends him a letter about the con (her very first one!!) and going to a con is not something he has any interest in, but like. he is curious to know what they're like, and it's nice to like? have? a friend??

they trade letters for years without actually talking about their personal life much. kakashi is not creative (no writing fic, no fanart, no cosplay, etc) but he IS really good at analysis. you need every detail on naoki's civilian outfit in paradise? he's got you. you don't understand wtf the text is talking about when it describes a weapon? he'll draw you a diagram (and not mention he knows what jiraiya is talking about because it's based on a real thing that was popular for like a month during the third war).

this goes on for years. oc lives in a small town in a little border country with no ninja, and her family runs a clothes shop, and she's deeply bored of making and altering shirts. she has a frustrating life in a very mundane way-- she dates a few guys and doesn't marry any of them and her family gives her grief. she moves to a slightly bigger city and can't get a job doing what she wants (making high-end luxury clothes and/or just insane fashion) and ends up working at a general store and doing minor alterations as a side gig to fund her hobby. she doesn't get to travel around and do cool things as much as she dreamed as a kid. she skips some cons because she doesn't always have the money and also there's a weird guy who'd been low-key stalking her. she tries selling little pre-made costume pieces at a con and doesn't even break even. only a handful of these details make it into her very serious discussion with kakashi about how the many details the icha icha miniseries got wrong

kakashi is.... being kakashi. obviously he doesn't write to her about all the assassinations he's been doing or whatever. but he doesn't mind when OC hints at her own boring problems. it's kind of nice, actually, to know there's people out there having boring problems? anyway one day she complains her landlord won't let her get a dog and he mails her a polaroid of a random dog he met in a park.

i'm thinking around the time of just before canon starts is about when kakashi is at a place where he's like..... okay with sharing some personal details? like he doesn't say a LOT but he realizes it actually feels really nice to write to someone that he's annoyed the store stopped selling his favorite pre-rolled sushi. the letters get sent more frequently and the conversation escalates at a slow, tedious pace. kakashi sends more dog pics. he tells her that he was so exhausted after work that he considered eating dog treats instead of cooking, and this feels like a very big deal to him

her: PLEASE tell me it was at least the fancy kind that look like cookies

him: obviously i would only buy the highest quality treats for my dogs

her: dogS?

kakashi: (ignores this question in the next letter)

kakashi checks his mail everyday now and he's like. oh no my feelings. but also she's in a whole other country and only exists to him in letters and that feels.... safe, somehow.

they met via a club for porn books so they don't "get together" so much as one of their very academic discussions of kink in icha icha violence suddenly turns into deeply sexual letters that have nothing to do with icha icha. there's still their normal conversation but then it's also like "if you were here now, this is what i would do to you--"

OC has been pretty good at not prying into Kakashi's life and she's very understanding of team seven making kakashi's life insane (she's under the impression her got an apprentice for whatever his job is) but she starts bugging him for a photo. kakashi is very against this at first, but then sasuke leaves and naruto leaves and sakura runs off with tsunade and suddenly he has a lot of free time and a big gaping hole in his social life. and like. he DOES really like her. they MIGHT be dating? definitely they have a thing going. so instead he asks if she wants to meet in person

OC agrees but she goes into it VERY nervous. she figures he didn't want to give a photo because he's embarrassed about his appearance, and she doesn't care what he looks like, but what if he lied about other things? what if she walks a whole day to this resort town and he's a weirdo or gross or stood her up?? but she puts on her big girl pants and also her push-up bra and goes

she wasn't actually going to sleep with him for their first meeting but it turns out he is like. hot. and talks just like his letters. and also it's way cheaper to just share one hotel room-- kakashi are you SURE you won't couple cosplay--

#i guess i need a tag for this au #kakashi/cosplay!oc au

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nixthelapin · 3 months

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A bit ago, I made a post (jokingly) complaining about all the Peacock users having blue skin, and also weaved in how Argos looks so visually out of place from the rest of the hero lineup at the end of s5, so I decided I wanted to change him up a bit…

Tada! 🦚

It’s not really a redesign, just a recolor, but I really love this color scheme! I wanted it to feel more like a real peacock rather than the indigo-purple idea they were sticking to in the show.

(And to clarify, I did not draw this- I traced the still from Emotion. I am definitely not that good of an artist 😂)

I kept some dark color still, because peacocks do have very deep blues, but I wanted some brighter parts so he didn’t seem too much like a villain. I know Chat is all black with his costume (so very dark), but the gold of his hair and the bell help brighten it up. Argos wears a hood, which that covers most of his hair, so even changing it back to blond didn’t seem like enough to me. So I used a slightly lighter shade of blue for his coat (which I’m honestly loving). I tried the lighter shade for the whole thing at first, but it wasn’t really for me.

And I did really like how his original suit used green for the inside of the tail and hood, so I just changed that to a different shade (to match the peacock image I swatched from).

I’m kind of surprised I liked the gold on the sides and the hood detail. That was also swatched from the peacock tail, part to the “eyes.” I think it helps to contrast against the deep blue of the pants and goes well with the green to add more warmth. And it matches his hair a bit lol. (The leg by itself is so you can see that “eye” detailing better- the original was very hard to trace)

I’d love to hear all of your thoughts about this! It took a while, but I’m super happy with the outcome! I might play with the colors for other versions later, but for now, I like this 😁🦚

(Suggestions are also very welcome!)

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leaves-and-inks · 1 year

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🌿 Old Bones, Old Souls 🌿

The world of velociraptor is buried deep, deep in time. There is so much we’ve learned about it, yet so much we don’t know, and may never know about this ancient animal.

Hi everyone! It feels good to finally post this!! I’ve been rather swamped, but updating my tumblr is one thing I can check off the list!! This piece has been done for a little while, but I’ve only just had time now to format it. I remember doing the rough sketch of this back in the fall and not being too thrilled, but I can now say that I’m really happy with how it came out! This piece also is next to the dragon “Emerald Mist” and I feel they pair really well together :)

This is the last piece to catch up to my other social media, so things will slow down again after this!! I have some plans in the works for the future, but unfortunately I don’t have much of a time scale on it because it depends on my health and my school work. Regardless of when exactly, I am excited to make some new work!! :D

[ID: Sketchbook page with digital alterations featuring a velociraptor skull, ginkgo and fern leaves, a fossilized velociraptor claw, and a feathered velociraptor. The page is done in various colors of ink, the subjects being in black and sepia liners, while the background is made up of blue and green squares and rectangles, overlapping behind the subjects. In the top right is a velociraptor skull, facing 3/4 right and down. It is made mostly out of black lines, but with shading and details done in sepia ink. Its mouth is slightly open, and it is missing some teeth. It is also missing it bony eye supports. it overlaps the background shapes on the top left of the skull, along with the lower jaw, and bridges the gap between the two top shapes in the middle of the skull. Next to it on the righthand side is the gingko leaves and fern leaf. It is laid out vertically, the fern leaf, drawn in sepia ink and behind the two gingko leaves. The top gingko leaf overlaps the bottom one, pointing in slightly different directions. The leaves are also done in sepia ink, having white outlines to better differentiate them, along with sketchy yellow ink coloring. The leaves break the shape on the top, right side, and bottom, and only overlaps the one square. In the bottom left corner is a shaded study of a velociraptor claw fossil. It is completely done in black in, white a thick black outline. It only overlaps the lower square at its tip, which points left. The final drawing is a mostly full body sketch of a feathered velociraptor, cropped only at its tail, which fades out to the left side of the page. It its a side view of the raptor, who faces right. However, it looks over its shoulder to the left of the page. It is slightly hunched over, its arms lowered. The left arm reaches slightly more out than the right one, and it also steps forward with the left leg. It is mostly drawn in sepia ink, however non feathered areas (mouth, legs) are done with black ink. It also has a back and sepia brindle pattern on its back, along with a black stripe that starts at its eye and goes to its tail. Its body overlaps on top of the two bottom shapes. The sketch and background shapes are on an off-white, paper textured background.

Image 2: Crop featuring the velociraptor skull. It gets the whole skull in the crop, along with the leftmost side of the gingko leaves and fern.

Image 3: Crop focusing on the fossilized velociraptor claw. The whole claw is in frame, along with a portion of the bottom half of the tail.

Image 4: Crop focusing on the feathered velociraptor. It gets its whole body in the frame, minus the tail. In the top left corner, the ends of the upper and lower jaw of the skeleton are visible, along with the end of the fern in the top right.

Image 5: Crop focusing on the gingko leaves and fern. They are entirely in frame, along with a portion if the upper jaw, just after the nostrils. /end ID]

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purity-in-heart · 1 year

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[Please Read] I should not have to explain this

People, if you're going to chat with me, please, for the love of god, tell me your honest age. And don't lie, either, cause that's just worse in some ways.

Ok, so, I wound up chatting with somebody who I will not specify by as much as I can. We were having a cardiophile chat and we decided to take it to video so I can hear her heartbeat with a mic. Now, the thing is, I feel incredibly stupid right now. I mention wanting to see her chest, but only out of the expression of a wish cause I know a lot of people aren't always comfortable. To my surprise, she says yes and, her face, I won't give a single detail about especially of what made me tilt my head a bit but something made me think, 'wait, how old is this girl?' only to settle on the idea of, 'oh, maybe she's older than she looks', and for the love of god, I don't think that lightly, I had a reason to think that. Later she goes brb. She admits her parents caught her.

Jesus- alright, read carefully, yeah? I'm not gonna shift or place any full-on blame. At least by a little bit, this girl was the victim of being young and dumb, however she should not have done anything that would expose her identity or herself. And admittedly, I was stupid for not seeing the first potential sign. Don't ever even slightly think you could be wrong if it could mean the person on the other end is actually under 18. This girl never explicitly gave a sign or hint that she was underage, either, but that's not always a good excuse. Meanwhile, last I had a chat, I unintentionally made somebody uncomfortable as far as I can tell and I felt so guilty that I took a small break to sit on what I had made somebody feel. I finally get back into the swing of things with a new rule of only having a cardio-chat if somebody messages me first and this is what happens. I was really wrestling on how or even if I should post about this, but one thing I realized was that not saying a thing is probably worse.

I won't take another break for being just as foolish but I'm definitely gonna sit on this for a minute. I hate how it took me a minute to accept that she was a minor. I found myself thinking of every possible reason to tell me she was actually an adult at first, including if I should not think about it at all.

Again, for god's sake, be honest, responsible and tell your age first. I will not chat with minors. I will, however, post this under the risk that I'm not relaying my sincerity well enough (That's really one of my biggest fears when making a post like this, that I won't be able to verbally explain and show that I'm legit being serious and not trying to cover my own ass with a fake sense of remorse or something - but it's a fear we all have to face). I don't wanna look like a liar or like I'm shifting the blame or anything. But my final message in this post is about more than about taking responsibility for your actions and to tell me your real age before chatting with me or frankly, anybody: People who are growing up need to know that it's ok to explore and experiment, it's part of growing up, and of course it's fun - Hell, even I did it a little, I wasn't always an adult, you know, it's how I found the rest of my rhythm as a cardiophile - but Jesus H. Christ, we need to educate and teach them that there are lines to draw, like, don't chat with strangers - especially on anything sexual, be careful, make sure they know which lines not to cross or cross yet, and seriously: DO. NOT. SHOW. YOUR. FACE. The internet isn't the safest place yet. What's more important? How hard you drive the message home or what you relay and how you do it?

#cardiophilia #cardiophile

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 29 days

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hi! I want to familiarise myself with John Robins's work, I was wondering if you could recommend a good starting point? the radio show? standup? just thought to ask you, my favourite comedy connoisseur! thanks :)

Oh wow, I thought you’d never ask! By which I mean, when you spend as much time as I do putting completely unsolicited screeds into the internet that I’m pretty sure are of interest only to me, it is rather fun to write one for someone who has specifically said they want to read it. Though I don’t know if you’ll feel the same way by the end of the post, given my penchant for detail and the multiple unnecessary caveats that I’m already planning for this. I will add a cut to spare everyone else the unnecessary detail.

Okay, so. Weird thing about me, given the current state of my blog, I actually disliked John Robins for the first few years that I knew who he was. That is because the first time I saw him was on Mock the Week, where he appeared alongside Sara Pascoe just as their relationship was about to collapse, and he was an absolute dick about it. So definitely don’t start with that. I mean, Sara Pascoe also wasn’t great in that episode, but I already knew and liked her, so I forgave her. I had no such goodwill toward John Robins, and it completely turned me off him for a long time. After that I saw him pop up on other shows once in a blue moon, but found him annoying because I’d already decided I didn’t like him based on Mock the Week. Definitely do not watch him on Mock the Week.

What turned me around was in November 2022, when I came across a copy of The Darkness of Robins, his 2017 stand-up show that won the big Edinburgh award and was made into a Netflix special. I really, really loved it. I remember making a post at the time when I said this is the fastest I’ve ever turned around on any famous person, the biggest swing from disliking them to thinking they’ve made one of my favourite stand-up shows ever.

After that, I did exactly what you’ve done here, which was ask around on Tumblr for where you can go if you’ve just decided you want more John Robins if your life. Because I knew he had a radio show on one station and then another station with that guy who’s (not) married to Isy Suttie, but I also knew those had about 150,000 hours (slightly exaggeration) worth of episodes and obviously no one has time to listen to all that, that would be absolutely ridiculous, what sort of fool would take that on? Obviously I could have just jumped in at the most recent episodes of their radio show, which is something you could do as well if you want, but my brain’s relentlessly completist nature wouldn’t let me do that. I needed something I could watch/hear all of, but have that be under 150,000 hours.

I asked Tumblr about this, and the best recommendation I got was to check out A Robins Amongst the Pigeons. This started as a feature on his radio show in which he read out loud from the autobiography of broadcaster Tony Blackburn, which was meant to be a serious book, but it’s so self-important and unintentionally hilarious that John got quite a few good weeks worth of content from reading out bits to make fun of them (if this seems mean, it helps to know that one of the passages he read said women working outside the home is bad for children, so I don’t feel bad for the guy). Later on, John Robins mentioned that he’d learned the writers of the Alan Partridge autobiography – I, Partridge – had based it partly on Tony Blackburn’s book.

After he finished reading the Blackburn autobiography, John Robins started to write his own autobiography, “in the style of Tony Blackburn”, and read out a chapter each week on the radio. Basically, John Robins is a huge Partridge fan and took the opportunity to write out his own life story the way Alan Partridge would tell that life story, and it’s really, really funny. It’s a good introduction to John because it goes through his life and lets you know what he’s like, and that gives you an idea of what sort of things he’ll say if you get into the rest of his work. And it’s also a good introduction to John because it’s really, really funny. If you listen to that and don’t find it funny, you probably won’t like the rest of his stuff.

Someone on YouTube compiled all the clips of John reading chapters from A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, and put them on YouTube so you can hear the all as one long string:

youtube

I downloaded that YouTube video, converted it to mp3, put it on my phone and listened to it like an audiobook. My biggest recommendation for someone who wants an introduction to John Robins would be that you do the same. He’s also released it as a paperback book, and did a few live performances where he read it out loud to an audience back when he first wrote it (2015), which is good because it’s too funny to have remained just a feature on a weekly radio show.

The next thing I did when getting into John Robins was go to his Bandcamp page, where he’s released three of his old stand-up shows:

They’re his 2013, 2014, and 2015 Edinburgh shows, with the dates listed on Bandcamp all being from a year later because they were recorded on tours the following years. I think they noticeably get better with each year, and his writing and delivery skills improve. Speakeasy is objectively the best one, Where Is My Mind not quite as good but still made me laugh more than a lot of stand-up hours do. This Tornado Loves You is, I think, not quite objectively as good as Speakeasy. But might edge Speakeasy out as my favourite of the three because it hits some things that I subjectively really love in stand-up.

He did a stand-up show in 2019 called Hot Shame, which I'd really really love to hear, but he's said he never recorded a version that was far enough along, with high enough audio quality to publish (though personally, I would happily take a version with shit audio quality and/or early WIP). In 2023, he did a stand-up show called Howl, which he's recently said he has on audio recording and is planning to publish on Bandcamp at some point, but it's not there yet. I am very much looking forward to hearing that one when it come out.

(Disclaimer: This Tornado Loves You has a routine about PMT/PMS where I see what he was trying to do, it’s not just an average “women be crazy on their periods” routine, he says it with an understanding that the victim here is the woman suffering from painful symptoms, and has said similar things at other times. However, I don’t think the stand-up routine does enough of that to make up for the inherent shitty-ness of a cis man making a joke about his girlfriend getting disproportionately emotional on her period, and I just want to clarify that, because I don’t want anyone to listen to that stand-up show, hear that routine, remember that I said that stand-up show is my favourite of all the Bandcamp releases by one of my favourite comedians, and therefore, I must think cis men telling jokes like that is a good idea. I don’t, I think that was a misstep in an otherwise great show.

The reason I add this caveat is because in the last months, I’ve had three different people watch The Darkness of Robins at my recommendation, and all of them came back with the comment… so this thing that you’ve been calling one of your favourite shows ever – did you mean to go so hard on endorsing a show that ends with a really inappropriate amount of sexual detail about Sara Pascoe, a woman whose name the audience knows, and it’s probably not cool for him to be saying that about her in public? Because this has happened before, I feel the need to say, again, in case anyone watching Darkness of Robins as a result of this post: I don’t love the part at the end where he describes sex with a person the audience can identify in an inappropriate amount of detail. When I endorse the show, I do not endorse that. I hope he asked her if it was cool to talk about that on stage before he did so, but I don’t know if he did, and I have a feeling he probably didn’t. Having said that, I recently watched a bunch of Sara Pascoe’s stand-up from across the years, and I hugely enjoyed it because she’s very funny, but I also learned more sexual details than I wanted to know about John Robins from her stand-up, so I would argue that they are, at best, even in terms of inappropriate talking about each other on stage. Also, for anyone who’s reading this but hasn’t seen the show, I’d like to clarify that it’s not like he goes on some misogynistic rant about her, he just describes sex with her in detail that gets a bit graphic for a couple of minutes.

While I’m caveating, I’ll just throw all my disclaimers in together, I did also have someone watch Darkness of Robins and say they were surprised I liked it so much because the stuff near the beginning, where he talks about how his relationship fell apart, feels a bit like the misogynistic stand-up trope of Man Complains About His Girlfriend For Being Less Logical And Rational Than Him. I’d like to say I actually stand by that routine, he’s built quite a bit of his comedy on talking about how he is compulsively and maladaptively meticulous about everything and is therefore more logical than everyone, he spends half his radio show complaining about how Elis James isn’t logical enough and doesn’t put enough thought into planning and organizing and getting everything right, that’s not a gender thing, that’s just his thing. A lot of his comedy is about his obsession with being precise about everything to the point of overthinking that ruins his life, and if you are reading this post in which I’ve just spent three paragraphs adding unnecessary caveats because I get paranoid about anything I say being misinterpreted, you might understand why that appeals to me so much.

Summary: I do not endorse the menstruation routine of 2014 or some of the sex details of 2017, but I do endorse the many parts of his comedy in which he comes off as an exhausting nightmare, that is very much part of the appeal, though it may not appeal to everyone.)

Besides his stand-up, he’s done some guest appearances on TV, radio, and podcasts. I was about to start listing the ones I’ve found, though it’s probably easier to just give you a screenshot of my folders of his audio guest spots:

and TV guest spots:

I've watched/listened to everything in those folders up to October 2018, since I'm currently working through the radio shows and going through all those other things chronologically alongside it, so I haven't seen the things past 2018 and can't speak to what's in them. Technically, it's possible that he became a flat Earther. So there's another disclaimer: any views expressed by John Robins after October 2018, I haven't heard and cannot endorse. But there's definitely some good stuff in the earlier years.

If any of the shows in the above screenshots are one you already like, then tracking down John Robins' episodes of them is probably a good intro to John Robins (or send me a message if you want a link). Except that second Mock the Week one - don't watch that no matter how much you normally like Mock the Week.

Of his guest spots on TV and audio, a lot of the best ones are better if you're already familiar with John from his radio show or at least from his stand-up, but some hold up pretty well even without that context. His Live From The BBC episode is a shortened (half an hour instead of an hour) version of his Speakeasy show, if you want to see a (shortened) video version of that instead of hearing the audio (and if you are a completist like me, it has a bit of material that's not in the Bandcamp version so it's worth watching). His other TV stand-up guest spots are mainly just little repeats of stuff that's in his longer published shows, except the Russell Howard's Good News extra, which has an older routine that's not in his Bandcamp shows.

I'd say his episodes of Alan Davies' show are particularly fun, though warning that there is a story in the episode he did with Russell Howard that's really weird. There's also another story that he either stole from Adam and Joe, or he was the person who sent that story into Adam and Joe, and I fear it was probably the former, but he wouldn't be the first to steal someone else's story on As Yet Untitled.

On the subject of people who steal other people's stories on As Yet Untitled, I found him very very funny on Isy Suttie's podcast, though he was quite drunk and I can imagine a person with less tolerance for drunken shoutiness could find it annoying. He's good value on Pappy's, a lot of fun and usually drunk (pre-2023, at least). He has a nice rapport with Richard Herring. He played a really weird song on Jon Richardson's old radio show. He told us about a sex dream he had on The Horne Section podcast. And he bickered with his girlfriend on Do the Right Thing. I also thought the Robins/James episode of Comedian's Comedian was excellent (Robins and James both did individual ones that were also both good, but the one they did together is one of my favourites out of the 76 episodes of that podcast that I've heard (I almost wrote ~75 there so I could pretend I don't have a spreadsheet to know the exact number, but why pretend that at this point?)), but it gets pretty deep into stuff from their radio show, so probably isn't worth a listen unless you've heard that show.

John Robins also released a book in 2018, called The Holy Vible, co-written with his radio buddy Elis James. I'm currently nearly done listening to the audiobook of that, and to be honest, there's a lot of filler that will be of interest only to someone who's already very, very interested in whatever John and Elis have to say. Which I am, so I'm enjoying the book, but I definitely don't recommend it to anyone who's not already very much into the radio show.

And that brings me to the 150,000 hours of their radio show, since that's pretty much the only place left to go. It was early 2023 when I listened to his Bandcamp stand-up shows, said I love these and I loved Darkness of Robins and I loved A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, I guess the next step would have to be the radio. But I don't have 150,000 hours to spare to listen to all that. So I guess that's as far as I'm going with the Robins fandom. I even made a post in which I said "John Robins is dangerous - not in general, but to me", because I like him so much that at any moment I could slip down the radio rabbit hole, and then I'd lose 150,000 hours of my life. I held out for nearly a year after I wrote that post, but here I am now.

The radio show with John Robins and Elis James started out in February 2014 on the indie music radio station XFM. XFM rebranded as Radio X in 2015, and they continued to make the same show on Radio X until they left in February 2019. In May 2019, they began broadcasting pretty much the same show (I think, haven't heard it yet, he might be a flat Earther) on BBC Five Live. They continued to do that until the end of 2023, and in 2024, they started doing some other thing that I don't understand. They record it as a podcast first (as opposed to live radio that gets edited and released as a podcast, which is what they did from 2014 to 2023), and then highlights from the podcast get broadcast on the radio, and it's released twice a week, also there are videos, I don't know, I haven't got that far in the chronology. I'm still on October 2018.

I can say that the XFM/Radio X episodes they did between February 2014 and October 2018 are fun, engaging, very funny, often interesting, and I think have been worth the several months of my life it's taken me to listen to them. They go up and down, like anything else that's produced that many hours - there have been a few times when I've thought the show was in a bit of a slump and hasn't been that funny for a couple of months, but just as I'm thinking that, they'll pick it up and do a run of like eight great episodes in a row. Overall, in my subjective opinion, they've had far more strong periods than weak ones. They have a great dynamic with each other and with the features. They spend too much time reading out emails but that's going to happen on a radio show. I'm not particularly into their food tasting segments but that's just because food shows don't generally appeal to me, I love their running quiz segments because competitive features do appeal to me. Your mileage may vary. Also, you don't have to do the relentless completist thing that I do. You could just jump in now at the latest episodes of whatever the hell their BBC show is now.

Oh, and he plays golf on YouTube with Alex Horne. I haven't watched that because I dislike golf and I haven't got there in the chronology yet, but I'll probably end up watching it at some point. A lot of people like it and I think it's probably funny, but I haven't seen it myself so I can't speak to that. It's called Bad Golf and you can find it on the internet.

To give a proper shot at answering the original question, which I now feel like was asked 100 years ago: I think the best introduction to John Robins is a Robins Amongst the Pigeons, linked above, that I recommend listening to like an audiobook. I did Darkness of Robins first, but I think the best order for a good introduction would be Robin Amongst the Pigeons first, to get a good overview of what he's like and what you're getting into with him, and you'll get that overview via 100 minutes that you'll either find very entertaining, or you won't and you'll know not to bother with the rest of his stuff.

After that, I'd say, if you have any completist tendencies, or tendencies like mine toward doing things in chronological order because I think everything is better if you have all the context for it first, then I would recommend listening to his Bandcamp shows in order (Where Is My Mind, then This Tornado Loves You, then Speakeasy), and then watching Darkness of Robins. If you're not bothered about that, just skip to Darkness of Robins because it's the best one. If you do all that and are still interested in finding more John Robins content, then I'm afraid you may have to set off on a journey to give up 150,000 hours of your life the way I have.

Well, there might be one other option. There are other clips and clip compilations from their radio shows, and while I personally have difficulty doing anything in clip form if I haven't gone through the full-length version first (Robins Amongst the Pigeons was an exception because that was its own thing, it was a collection of radio clips but they've also been released as their own book), some of those may be fun in isolation. You can flip through this playlist to find some of them (you can CTRL+F the word "complete" on that page to find compilations of their features and running topics):

One time, in a fairly early XFM episode, Elis informed the listeners that someone had written an email to the show that asked what their five favourite albums were, and John had written a reply that was an essay of several thousand words, and then apologized on the radio by saying there was no way this person wanted their inbox taken up by that much rambling. That may be what's happened here, the difference being that I don't have the status of a (then-future) Perrier-winning comedian to justify why anyone wants to read this many of my words. But still, I'm glad you asked.

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alwaysxlarrie · 9 months

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i never thought i’d say it’s been a while since i’ve posted a snippet but i also never thought i’d write a cult leader louis fic, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but here it is !!

“The moment he’d heard about the event, he signed up. Harry loved his college, but unfortunately they didn’t prioritize the music department the way he wished they would, which made being a music major a slightly more lonely experience than he would’ve liked. So, while he’d never heard of Louis Tomlinson or his organization before this, that was okay. Those were just mere details. What mattered was that there was an event. For music. In all his nineteen years, he’s never been so excited for a school event.

“Harmonic Haven is my most important life mission. Bringing people in, instilling confidence in them, encouraging them to be their best, always readily available lessons, improving your skills — all of it is essential to the heart of this organization.” Louis saunters around the stage, confident and raspy voice booming smoothly from his microphone.

Harry watches raptly as Louis makes eye contact with people in the crowd and sends an alluring grin their way, enticing them to continue listening. His eyes are hypnotizingly sparkly; a unique blue that Harry could spend days writing songs about. They draw you in and make you constantly want their undivided attention; Harry has had them on him twice now and has been actively fighting the urge to do something ridiculous to get his attention again. He can tell that even just having a single conversation with Louis about their passion for music would reignite the spark in him.

His fingers are itching to take notes, but he doesn’t dare to look away for too long — it’s too much of an risk to miss anything Louis' saying, let alone miss the chance of Louis' eyes on him again.

But Harry knows he needs to do something memorable before Louis' presentation is over, needs Louis to recognize him when Harry goes down to talk to him afterward. There will be tens — likely hundreds, really — of students lined up to talk to Louis and Harry can’t risk not getting a chance. He needs to do something now that will make Louis remember him. And quickly.”

i am nothing if not consistent with long-ish snippets, no matter how long it's been lol. anyway i've edited this to absolute smithereens so hopefully it's decent!! not entirely sure who’s working on a fic at the moment so i’ll just tag a few people lol @loveislarryislove @allwaswell16 @lululawrence @londonfoginacup @jacaranda-bloom @kingonafiftymetreroad @crinkle-eyed-boo @greenblueish @beelou @disgruntledkittenface

#snippet saturday #saturday snippets #my fic snippets #cult leader louis #after seeing how louis and the crowd interacted at my concert #i just couldn’t NOT write this #y’all feel me #mans could lead a whole ass cult if he wanted to if we're being honest lol #i am ALSO in the midst of making gifs from my concert #i took videos of every song i'm so proud of myself #and of my phone tbh lol

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granulesofsand · 2 months

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Good gay/night/else, Dune! Never wrote you (probably, I don't remember) but now I have a question and wander if you guys can know answer. Do not answer if what is inside makes you feel uneasy or bad or smth else, take care of yourselves, you are one of my favourite blogs to follow

TW for programming, brief mention of torture, sex and missing limbs (nothing detailed, not real gore)

So.

1) our whole life (as we remember it) our legs sometimes just deactivate randomly during day. We always needed to spend some time to make them work again

2) as we understood more about being system, we noticed that "no-no legs" is actually switching to somebody

3) it's nonhuman alter that "smells" like somebody related to sex, thinking about itself as thing made for sex

4) we probably have programming and do wander if it's programmed alter or smth like this

We have bad feelings about it. It feels very wrong. We wonder if you have ever seen something like this or expiriensed it. We heared only about hc-did systems being tortured aka programmed to think that body misses limbs, but we don't remember anything like this and we never had even big bruises in childhood, our parents would notice

🗝️🏷️ programming/torture and deprogramming details, sex and sexuality, RAMCOA in general

We’ve heard of a few similar experiences, and I’m fairly certain all of the ones I’m thinking of were from RAMCOA systems. I’m going to respond to each of the numbers as best I can, and we’ll see how that goes.

1) That sounds like dissociative paralysis (assuming y’all don’t have a physical condition causing it), which I’ve seen in both system members who thought that body part was absent or who had to hold the body in a certain position.

The main thing is that whoever is paralyzed doesn’t know they can move the body part that isn’t working. I have read about system members coming to this conclusion on their own, but even then it was usually because they were conditioned into it while forming.

Programs that can have this effect on legs include: doll/puppet, animal (especially snakes or those whose limbs don’t work like humans’), statue, and any punishments that were targeting that body part.

2) It could be switching, passive influence (especially if the one doing it is less elaborated) or someone whose job it is to turn on that paralysis (it can look like a button, a switch, a lever, a book, anything). The best way to find out (if you can’t observe them do the thing) is by asking.

We’ve seen some of your posts about conflict between alters, and, from experience, people who don’t trust you don’t tend to answer. Building rapport has to come first, otherwise you risk punishment and retaliation.

Reassuring them that there won’t be consequences (only if it’s true) and writing it out somewhere the others won’t stumble upon it can help, because there’s less chance of someone hurting them and it might get around don’t-talk rhetoric if they’ve been taught it.

3) The non-humanness of the alter doesn’t necessarily imply they’re programmed, but smelling like a perp (or anyone, really) is something I’ve never heard for by-chance alters. The believing they’re made for sex can be tended to the same regardless of origin, and looking to programmed survivors might help kick-start the healing process purely because it’s a common belief for programmed alters.

We usually start the same for anyone who has strict self-concepts like this, which is by giving them choices wherever possible. Simple things, yes-no questions like if they want ketchup with fries (and giving them space to choose outside the yes-no as long as it isn’t causing harm), then open-ended questions like what their favorite fruit is, then slightly more abstract ones like what their favorite color is.

You& can skip the orange paragraph, it has to do with sex and sexuality.

If that doesn’t work, we move to treating it as a sexual problem. Sometimes we have to get their attention by putting on (ideally non-harmful, or fictional is the next step) porn or using the kind of touch they’re used to (but let them do it or keep it to your most trusted systemmates, then move to your& most trusted outside people) and then packing in as much information as they can hold while you’re around them.

A harm reduction approach helps to make progress without immediately demanding perfection. Decide what the end goal is for this person and set incremental targets. Celebrate every target met, even if it’s not how you envisioned it happening.

4) If it is programmed, there are a lot of ways for perps to get this reaction without causing marks. Holding the position, for example, or limiting the amount of space that person had to move around could have them maintaining that behavior when they no longer need to. Hiding their legs or a larger impact could have them believing their legs aren’t usable without damaging the skin.

Our system consensus is that programming is the intention and the effect, and if the conditioning had both, it counts. You& don’t have to agree with that, and labels are always optional. You& can address the symptoms without naming the cause, or you can give it another name if ‘programming’ isn’t helpful.

The discomfort (or other bad feeling, if that’s too mildly connotated for you&) could be leaking over from those who do remember, or it could be that you’re recognizing something is strange about the situation. Human brains are very good at picking up on subtle details, and trusting that something is up because of those alarms is generally healthy.

Still do try to treat everyone with dignity and respect, including if they feel wrong, but have plans for going forward in both cases, whether the feeling is correct or not. Especially with trauma, it’s easy to decide someone isn’t worth helping, and that’s not conducive to healing whatever wounds are present here.

I’m glad you’re& noticing members in pain, even if you& can’t or aren’t ready to help them yet. Creating bonds and strengthening them will keep your system on a different path from whatever your& perps intended, and spite is a hell of a motivator. I believe in your& ability to heal, pitfalls and lapses included.

#ramcoa #cdd system #adaptive system #ec did #hc did #pg did #tw ramcoa #ramcoa programming

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littledreamling · 1 year

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★ - sad headcanon for Dream!

(playing to the strengths of the angst king, perhaps >:) )

Ohohoho you picked a good one for me lmao

I could reiterate the headcanon I sent in the server a few days ago (about Dream having trauma from being watched and never being able to feel like he's really alone, even in the Dreaming) but you've already heard that, so I'll pick a new (ish) one. Adding a cut and warning for graphic depictions of violence, major character death, heavy angst, comic spoilers, and my late-night attempt to make the comics worse than they already were in terms of... well, everything lmao. Proceed with caution!

Sad Headcanon:

This isn’t a sad headcanon about Dream specifically, more of a Dreamling sad headcanon, and I’ve made a post about this specific idea before (which can be found here!) so you’ll have to forgive me for bending the rules slightly but here goes:

There is something off, Dream thinks, walking next to his sister. Her usually cheery demeanor is subdued slightly, as if viewing her through a screen door; the outline of her is there, but the details feel fuzzy. When he asks her how she is keeping, he means it. He is concerned. She assures him that she is keeping well, or as well as she can, given her function, and he accepts it. He expects the conversation to be dropped. Or, at the very least, he expects the conversation to move on, and her odd mood with it. Sunlight and humanity have always cheered her up and he does not think today will be any different.

And then he asks about his pet project, Hob Gadling. He is curious, after all, to see how Hob is keeping, especially after their missed meeting. Have you seen him? He asks, and does not miss the way Death has tensed beside him, nor the way her step falters, a minute and monumental waver. He feels his brow crease.

I have, she says, and there is something in her voice that does not sit well, in a way even a century of imprisonment could not match. He can feel his fingers twitch at his sides, the full extent of human reaction he will allow himself, and waits for elaboration.

He asked to see me, she says, and Dream stops short. In the middle of the street, bright sun glaring down through overarching leaves, surrounded and untouched by humanity, the meaning of her words dawn on him like a waxing moon. Dream stops short. His breath, unnecessary and painful, comes in short bursts and Death's mournful eyes scrape like twin razors against his raw heart.

It was my fault, he says, somehow. He forces the words from between numb lips, somehow. Death's eyes soften, somehow. Somehow, it is worse. Just another thing he has lost while imprisoned. Just another thing crumbling in his hands, crushed under the weight of his pride and stupidity.

It wasn't just you, she says, and he does not believe her. Had he asked for help, had he plucked up the courage to be able to trust again, this would not have happened. If he had been able to place faith in Death, or in Alex, or in Burgess, Hob would still be alive. The thought almost sends him to his knees and he realizes that the keening noise in his ears is escaping from behind his own teeth.

Oh, Dream, I'm so sorry, she says, and he believes her. It does not help. How could she? How could she do that to him, knowing their history? How could she have submitted so easily to the whims of a simple, stupid human? He does not realize he is speaking aloud until she answers.

I am as bound to my function as you are, brother, she says, and her voice is soft, understanding. I could no more deny him my gift than you could deny him yours. Nor any human. She is nicer than he is. He has always known that. He suddenly wishes, selfishly, that she were not. If she had been as cruel as some had accused Dream of being, Hob would still be alive. The thought is no less agonizing the second time.

A raven, he gasps, desperation coloring his essence. He should've become my raven. They were mortals, once. Tell me you left him in my realm. He was mine in life, surely you have bestowed him upon me in death as well. He knows it is hopeless even as he says it. The ache in her eyes is answer enough. The anguish infused in every line of her body as she sinks down in front of him (when had he collapsed? He cannot remember) is a needless confirmation.

You are the Dreaming, and the Dreaming is you, she says, and he wishes he could close his ears, wishes he could block out the words he knows to be true, wishes he could stop her from speaking the truth he knows she will speak, she will always speak. With you gone, there was no realm to leave him in. He has crossed to the Sunless Lands, Dream. I'm sorry.

If she suddenly finds herself kneeling next to a pile of sand, she is kind enough not to mention it the next time she sees him. Indeed, the next time they find each other, she simply sits by his side, a comforting presence in the middle of one of the Dreaming's most comforting dreams. Fiddler's Green, newly restored, seems to tremble at the sight of her, of them, sitting together, nearly touching. Dream's gaze is held by his hands, bloody up to the elbows. It would make him sick to his stomach if he could feel anything, but he can't. There is only a numbness, deep in his soul, an exhaustion that all the rest in the world would not be able to touch.

What happened, Dream? She asks, without a shred of judgement. As if she does not know. As if she wants to hear it from his lips. They sit in silence; he does not know for how long. Too long, perhaps, but she has always indulged him. She has always made special exceptions for him.

I killed her, he says, quiet and sullen. I spilled family blood. Even when Lucienne tried to stop me, even when Unity revealed her bloodline. It did not matter. Or perhaps it did. I killed her anyway.

Just a few paces away, the body of Rose Walker is sprawled on the grass, staining the blades underneath her a tacky, child's-mind red. Where her chest had been now sits a cavity, caved in and empty, her very heart torn, still beating, from her breast. Her blood stains his fingernails because he lets it. He does not care to clean himself. He does not care to tidy his realm. He does not care.

You know what the Kindly Ones will do, Death says. It is a statement of fact. It is as immutable as Destiny's own book. He knows this. He had known this. He had not cared. He still does not.

Yes, he says, because he thinks he should respond. There is nothing more to be said. They sit in silence, listening to the last somber notes of his realm ring out, the easy swish of leaves, the gentle rushing of water, the birdsong from the trees. The air is still around them; he is not sure he could stand, or walk, or even move, even if he tried. He does not try. He simply sits. He simply waits.

Dream? Give me your hand, she says, and with a minute and monumental waver, he does. The last thing he feels in the warmth of her skin against his, a familiar presence at his side, and a warm smile. The very gifts that had been offered to Hob Gadling a decade before. Gifts given, gifts accepted. And with a flash of light, Dream of the Endless accepts.

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annah-kitathryne · 10 months

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Batman Stays Dead AU

I want to preface this by saying that this is not completely based in canon yet, and it floating in the weird space between fanon and canon, as I will read the comics that directly lead up to how this idea could exist and the comics at the time this story would branch out. However, I was hit by brain worms that I could not ignore. That being said. This is an outline and by no means should be taken as the final product. That means that some stuff is vague, and some stuff is in detail. And a lot is subject to change as I read more, and expand the idea. If you don’t like please don’t send hate comments. Instead, create your version back on the original post so that others can see it. Thank you and enjoy reading

The original Idea can be found [here]

It was created by this person: @analviel

Word count: 8,000+

Warnings: Canon Batman, dysfunctional implied and stated relationships, underage use of substances, and discussions of health, conspiracy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life for Timothy Drake had gone up in flames multiple times. At this point, he questioned what was left to burn considering the foundation in which his life had become was more than cracked, it was rubble. He was now down three parents, up a murderous adopted older brother, a murderous adopted younger brother, and two dead best friends, and had just been fired from his life’s work by his eldest adopted brother. To say he was probably the only person on earth going through this exact situation said a lot about how much everything had gone to shit. So yes, his life had been more than upended.

This was why, later when he had sorted through some things and finally gotten his bearings in the new normal, he would claim his breakdown was warranted, and looking back seemed like an underreaction to the whole situation. However, at the moment he wasn’t thinking. He was just doing.

The sound of glass breaking was when Tim finally started to become fully aware of what was happening around him, and what he was doing. Looking around there was overturned furniture, the sheets had been ripped, and the clothes in the dresser and the closet were in misshaped piles. Some of them were damp from what Tim was sure was a days-old water bottle he brought to his room during one of his research spirals. The glass was from a picture frame he must have recently thrown, considering it had just barely missed a pile of what were supposed to be the curtains on the window, and it was the only object that he could see that would have made the sound.

He gulps some air while tasting something salty. Tears. His hands are shaking and his body feels numb.

Giving himself a moment he goes and grabs the picture frame. Making sure to avoid the broken glass, because he doesn’t want to have to go downstairs and deal with a cut. Flipping it over he sees the picture of him and Bruce the day he was officially adopted.

Was it strange that it felt like decades ago?

Tim sighs as he looks around. He stands back up, places the broken picture onto a desk that wasn't supposed to be empty and starts surveying the room, looking for where to start. He saw what used to be the contents of his desk on the top of his torn mattress.

This was going to be a long evening? Morning? Did it matter at this point? Not really. This was just something better to do than allowing himself to think about everything that had happened recently.

He picks up piles of clothes and heads down the hallway to the clothing shute, slowly stuffing handful after handful of clothes as he counts the varying amount of words he saw on them. He would go down later and start the laundry. This was his mess, and there was no way Alfred would let him get away with the mess he created.

After cleaning the clothes and sheets out of his room, it felt less stuffy. The room seemed to have grown slightly. It was easier to breathe. Though logically he understood that it was because he could see the floor, and not because magic had suddenly expanded the room a couple of feet.

Continuing on he cleaned up the trash and the glass. Torn papers, a couple of old letters, and a piece of scratch paper that had a list of numbers he no longer needed. Putting them in the waste bin he would take them down to a main garbage bin later. After that, he put the pencil, pens, notebooks, and folders back into the drawers they had come from. Colour coding them as he went.

He never did that, but it was another task he could do to keep his mind occupied away from the breakdown it wanted to continue. He debated over the varying shades of purple, starting to think about Steph, when he huffed, clamped his hand over the offending pencil, and had to take a deep breath to remind himself that he has to finish cleaning up the mess he made.

The pencils had been lined up, and the books had been shelved by the subject. Something Tim hadn’t cared for, but was just another bit of time he could chip away at doing anything but working through his thoughts.

He then grabbed the trash bag he had collected and took it down to the larger bin. He turned down the hall and made it to the large washing room. He had at least two more hours before Alfred would notice anything, so he started the process of cleaning all of the clothes. Only now realizing the stains that some of them had collected since he got them.

When back in the hall he grabbed some generic sheets from the hall closet and made his way back into his room, the door clicking shut softly. He may be an absolute mess but he doesn’t want to have to deal with anyone’s ire for waking them up if they had slept through the breakdown he had just been having. Looking at the mattress he counted the holes. Three that wouldn’t impact the functionality of the mattress, so he flipped it over and made his bed. He could worry about the whole situation later when he figured out what to do with everything else.

By the time everything else was cleaned up, and all the laundry was done he felt worn down enough that he might be able to knock himself out and get some rest.

The next couple of days are a blur for Tim. He’s lethargic and he can’t do more than wrap the sheets around him any more. He looks at his computer screen and absently scrolls documents he doesn’t even really read. Even though he has done a total sum of nothing, he feels exhausted to his soul and bones.

Tim had been struggling with sleep for the last couple of days. Having become a creature of nocturnal habit for years going to sleep at a regular time seemed to be as foreign as a stranger. However, he finds that he ends up sleeping at a normal time, albeit a restless sleep.

It meant that when he woke up, the light of his alarm showed brightly enough that once the world stopped being blurred, it readout three twenty-four. It was well into the time that any patrol would be done for the night, and a couple of hours before anyone would be up and about. It was the perfect sweet spot when one could be alone with their thoughts.

Exactly the thing that Tim had been avoiding. However, it seemed that he didn’t need the odd hours to start thinking because the second Tim had knocked the rest of sleep away from his system he felt a sudden sense of wrongness.

He found himself looking around at the darkest corners, at the slightly open closet door, at the window that was still curtainless. He didn’t realize what he was doing until he finished checking everything. He was looking for Bruce, Batman, in those dark corners. As if the points from the cowl or the shine of a wristwatch would appear out of nothing.

Once he started thinking about Bruce he couldn’t stop.

He thought about how the cases that were being worked on, the rebuilding that would have been done, the training he was missing out on, and to go on with everything else, he felt the need to go down to the cave and start working on cases that weren’t his.

He reigned in those thoughts. He wasn’t Robin. Damian the little brat was in the colours. Bruce wasn’t Batman. Dick was The Bat now. He was working on cold cases that had been thrown to the wayside in all the chaos, and helping with research on current cases. He reined in the urge to go and put his Robin suit on, and made his way over to his desk, grabbing his computer and opening up a couple of case files to get his mind off everything.

Maybe he would be able to solve the Tresent case now that some time had passed.

It seemed that this wasn’t going to be the case because he realized he pulled up the information on the Omega Beam and the file that had been created on the whole ordeal. Maybe it was his poor impulse control or the fact that he had held the floodgates for too long, but he ended up reading the whole file, and the connecting files like they were a scripture that held the knowledge of a long-forgotten civilization.

The more he read, the more everything felt off. It just didn’t feel right. Especially everything surrounding Bruce. It just didn’t feel right. The Omega Beam, the casket lowered for Batman. It just wasn’t adding up to Tim. No one knew what the Omega Beam was, or what it did. They just knew that whoever it was appeared to be dead. For all, they knew it could move someone’s soul into some weird pseudoscience/magic containment cell, or be a cloning transport machine. Honestly, the sky had stopped being the limit years ago. Two of his best friends had been a speedster from the future, and a partial clone of Superman. Two things that just didn’t feel possible sometimes.

So really, the idea that Bruce could be out there somewhere wasn’t farfetched.

For a brief small moment, he considered how this could fix everything, how he could go running down the hall and exclaim to Dick what he thought. How he could shove all the cold cases to the side, and bring back Batman. How the city would go back to a sense of normal. But just as he was about to get up and go through with it he stopped.

He had no proof, he had nothing but a hunch and a bad feeling. While as vigilantes they had worked with bad feelings and hunches, most of the time it was small things. Checking an alley again, looking for closed feed cameras, or even investigating a random warehouse. This was not any of these situations. This was exclaiming that someone who people had seen die, was alive, with nothing but a bad feeling.

If he was wrong, and even if for a brief moment he brought everyone’s hope up again, it would ruin everything all over again.

He doesn’t tell anyone. Not in the following days. Not as he looks at places that have experienced unusual amounts of energy lately. Not since he had been cataloguing a web of places with old and new energy signatures across the planet. He doesn’t think about how deep it is. He doesn’t bother to realize what he could be sitting on. Not the possibility, not the high chance of disappointment.

This is the first time in a couple of weeks that he has had the energy to do anything. He is going to ride this motivation, and maybe take it down the halfpipe.

For everyone else, he locked it up away where it couldn’t be found. This was confidential information, and it was information that he needed to have airtight proof for if he was ever going to do anything about it.

The more he researched the more everything felt wrong. Like he knew he was walking on an old minefield and was just waiting for one of them to go off. He was waiting for the misstep to come.

He didn’t like the feeling, and he just seemed to be marching further and further into the field and not away from it.

He would deal with it later.

Tim buys a plane ticket to France. He just wants to check something out, get this all out of his system so that maybe he can move on, or find evidence.

So he packs a civilian suitcase and a more private vigilante case. He makes up some excuse about how he just needs a moment to get away from everything. Spins a story to Dick about he needs a week for himself, but that he isn’t leaving. He needs to be subtle about this trip, he can’t leave with people being suspicious about what he is going to do.

Dick is still suspicious, but everything has been so crazy that if his younger brother needs this, then he should go do it.

The next couple of days are filled with working on case backlogs, helping Alfred where he can, and pretending to be working on a new vigilante name. (Something that he does have to work on, but not right now)

Only a couple of hours before he leaves the Arkham alarm goes off, and it’s all hands on deck when the report comes in that Scarecrow has more or less fumed the whole city in fear toxin. People are fighting each other, buildings are being burnt, and more than half of emergency services are down.

He doesn’t have a suit, but he needs to be out there, so he takes his Robin suit, doesn’t listen to Damian’s protests exclaiming that he can’t wear the red and black suit, and ruses into the private changing areas.

The fact that the city is in chaos once again shouldn’t be the worst part, but the worst part is that no one had any sense of teamwork, and the leadership has been changed around.

Dick is now calling the shots while working with his current Robin, Damian, who is still working with the whole stab now, ask questions later mentality, the previous Robin, Tim, is one bad moment from a breakdown, and sitting on possibly the biggest discovery. This would be enough of chaos as is, but then adding in Barbra and Steph and the whole teamwork thing is more of a ‘we have the same goals, therefore we will all tolerate each other’.

Through investigation, they discover that there are at least fifteen different versions of the fear toxin on the streets, and they also discovered that it was being emitted from multiple forms of air conditioner filters, and multiple local brands of air fresheners.

While Oracle is tracking down the legal connections to hand over to the Commissioner, Batgirl is working with the hospitals to help move cures around Gotham, Batman and the New Robin are working on tracking down the main cell of Scarecrow and apprehending the rogue. Tim is in charge of tracking down and taking down the side cells, and making sure that there is nothing for them to fall back to and regroup.

It takes two weeks, and there are multiple fights and scream matches, but they all eventually get the job done. The hospitals are full, but each hour more people are being cured and sent home, the whole operation is busted, and Tim didn’t have time to think about Bruce.

Over comms, they took to calling him Red Robin, because of the colours of his suit. He doesn’t like it, but it will do for now.

They end up passed out in one of the least used safehouses in the network. A small apartment that has neighbours and was the last to always be upgraded. That wasn’t to say that it was rundown, but it was the most normal safehouse that could pass it off as a civilian place of living. However, for tonight there were four vigilantes in various states of delirium.

Tim was passed out on the couch in the living room, Steph had taken the coat in the second room, and Damian and Dick had taken the two beds in the main bedroom. It didn’t matter that no one wanted to talk to each other, that all of them were in various states of fighting, because they were too tired to care.

In the morning, Dick and Steph end up in the small galley kitchen looking at the contents in the fridge and freezer. They find some condiments, and several mouldy vegetables from whoever used the place last, and in the freezer, they find two full boxes of eggos.

The toaster in the kitchen was ancient but functional, and Steph was looking around for anything to add to it when she looked out the window and saw a corner store across the street. Quickly putting on a slightly too large pair of boots and grabbing twenty dollars from an emergency pouch in her belt she rushes over to the store.

She grabs an overly sugary fruit juice, a bottle of syrup, a small bar of butter, and the ripest berries she can find, and heads back over to the apartment.

Later that morning they find themselves sitting at the small table that had one end shoved against the wall. Dick to the head of the table that faced the wall, Domain took the chair that was between another wall and the table, and Tim and Steph ended up on the other.

There were three larger plates of waffles, a small bowl of berries, and butter and syrup also present. It was the most nuclear-type breakfast any of them had all together.

It was silent. Damian wasn’t complaining about the cheap cardboard-like food, Tim wasn’t head slumped over a table in whatever slump of mood he has been in recently, Steph wasn’t talking about something to fill the space, and Dick wasn’t trying to get anyone to do anything other than eat food.

It was nice. In the weirdest way possible.

The scraping of forks and knives could be heard along with the early morning noises of the city outside. The upstairs neighbours were arguing about something or another. Muffled enough that they could tell the tone, but muffled enough that they would have to concentrate to get the actual words to get the conversation.

The silence wasn’t something that they had all agreed upon, not something that they had preestablished before sitting down. It was being held down by the sticky syrup and the sleep deprivation they were all suffering from.

Tim took a bite of his eggo, it was soggy on one side and burnt on the other.

If he was actually in school and was being hounded by an English teacher that was exclaiming the deep metaphors and connections the small things made to the overall narrative of the story, he would be under the impression that said, teacher would have a field day with the possible connections an eggo had with his life story and current mental state.

However, seeing as he wasn’t in school, and didn’t have to think about English teachers outside of when he teamed up with Huntress, this wasn’t what he was thinking about.

He wasn’t even thinking, he was just eating an eggo.

If Tim were to do anything at all in these moments he would want to start yelling at every single one of them for various grievances, and issues. Instead, he just eats breakfast and basks in relative silence.

In the future when they sit down again for a similar breakfast, in the same safe house, they will talk about how this first breakfast was possible in the first place because Bruce wasn’t there.

Bruce hadn’t been there to make Damina feel like he had to measure up to everyone else, he wasn’t there to make Dick feel like he was a disappointment, he wasn’t there to make Steph feel like she was less than the other vigilantes, and he wasn’t there to make Tim feel like he was being graded for every action that he took.

It was a breath of fresh air that they needed, and this moment would set the first bit of groundwork that would build the family later.

The next couple of months sucked. There was no way around it. Tim still didn’t have a new call sign and was being regulated to work consisting of stealth missions, undercover, and receive for if anything went wrong.

One good thing that came out of the whole ordeal was the last of the backlog of files in the Batcave had been uploaded to the computer, put in special storage, and the number of cold cases had gone down significantly.

It was all good things that might not have been done, and in the end, they had found twenty-six serial killers and twelve serial arsonists, and some of the information finally moved to the computer came in handy with a recent case.

It was a net good, so Tim couldn’t find it in himself to hate it all that much.

What it also meant was that Tim was now going back to high school full-time. There was no No Man’s Land, no Alien Invasion, and to the public Bruce Wayne was alive. So he started going to school, and while he wanted to get it over and done with, after everything it was kind of nice just to be a kid for a bit, someone who shouldn’t have the fate of the world resting in their hands.

Dick was now an established Batman, and Damian was finally settling into Robin. He still had a long way to go, but without some of the pressure from Bruce, things started to settle down. Tim and Damian could now be left in a room alone, and not start fights with each other. Sure Tim still sometimes wished he could be the Robin to Dick’s Batman, but he’s starting to understand what Dick meant when he said it just wouldn’t work.

Sure they were all still making mistakes, with each other, their friends, the teams, and on and off the field, but that was just normal when a whole system had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Tim hadn’t thought about the possibility of Bruce being around in months. He would later understand that it was because things were going well, and that despite some dysfunctional issues, this was a real family.

He and Steph started over. They never got to know each other properly, and they needed to start working through their issues. They were finally friends.

He and Steph start working on missions and cases together. Putting together their combined knowledge and talents. They make an effective team. A team that should have worked together more often far earlier. Batgirl and whatever name Tim will eventually take make a formidable team. One that operates beside and separate from Batman and Robin.

It wasn’t long after this that Tim stumbled upon the clue to what Bruce has been doing this whole time.

He’s moving some boxes full of old stuff around, as they start to reorganize the mansion and downsize the amount of stuff they have lying around when he passes several portraits. Portraits that he hasn’t looked at since the last time they had to move stuff around after No Man’s Land.

He passes an old oil painting which had to be dated back to the pre-revolution era of the American colonies when he does a double take. He sets the box he had down and analyzes the painting in front of him. That was a painting of Bruce. Except it had to be at least three hundred years before Bruce was ever even thought of.

He stood there trying to make sense of it all when he remembered the conclusions that he had come to months ago had been right. Except he hadn’t considered the idea of a time travel device.

He was right.

Bruce was still out there and he was displaced in time.

He could do something about it.

Except when he caught himself thinking about that his head turned to look at the box he was moving. A box of decorations that Bruce loved, but no one else was partial to having out. The decision to move them had been a group choice. Something that everyone had sat down and talked about. They had set up a monitor to include Cass in the discussion.

It was something that wouldn’t have happened if Bruce had been there. It was something that would have been impossible with Bruce there.

Tim quickly turned back to the task he had been asked to do, and on his way back he removed the painting, putting it in one of the many unused rooms. This part of the manor wouldn’t be rotated until two weeks from now. He had time to figure out what to do, but for now, no one else could know. He didn’t know what they would do, and he didn’t want the pros and cons to not be compared before then.

He might have been slightly distracted the rest of the day Though everyone else checked it up to how everything seemed to be changing around the manor.

Later that night while everyone else was out on regular patrol and Tim had been relegated to cold cases again, he made his way to the portrait with a notebook and a bowl of chips. He sat in front of the painting that was leaning against the wall and just started thinking about what he should do.

He finds in the end that he knew what he was going to do the moment he walked into that room.

Tim sets up undercover work at the docks over the next couple of days, and throughout the next couple of days he brings over everything he needs, and at the end of the week, he sets up a bonfire.

He burns the oil painting, the notebook, and several other items that he doesn’t want anymore, and needs to get rid of. As the fire burns for the first time in months he feels a bone-deep sense of relief, as if the weights on his shoulders have disappeared.

It was the right thing to do. Things had finally started to become better. Everyone was working as a team, and they felt like a proper family. Gotham was under control, and things were looking up.

Things aren’t perfect but there is only room for upward improvement.

Ra’s al Ghul makes a move against Gotham, and what's left of the Bats, but it doesn’t work. They all work together, this time with Tim leading them. He helps set everyone into teams and has them all ready to fight back. They come up on top even better, and send Ra’s al Ghul back into the dark corner he came from.

They come out the other side a true family with all limbs and Organs in tack.

After everything had been cleaned up from the fight, Dick Tim and Steph end up with a bottle of whatever thousand-dollar bottle of alcohol they found in the manor. Never mind the fact that Tim and Steph shouldn’t be drinking and Dick should be stopping them. But they needed this, and they were safe in the manor to allow themselves to let go for a while.

They start talking about the past and what they wished they could change, how they were stupid kids in over their heads sometimes, and how they thought they could fight the whole world.

They talk about memories they had as Robin, before Robin, and the times they weren’t Robin but just Dick, Tim, and Steph.

They laugh and they cry. They share stories they haven’t told anyone in years, and for the first time, they all talk about Bruce, about the good times, the normal, and the bad. They talk about the things that they have kept to themselves for months, years, and what sometimes felt like lifetimes.

They all cry. If not for the past, but for what they wished it could be.

They all realize just how good things have been since Bruce left.

Cass comes back from Hong Kong two weeks later. She has news about what has been happening and is requesting some help.

Tim offers to go, but he doesn’t have a name yet, Cass says that it doesn’t matter and that she would be happy for him to come and visit. Steph comes along as well and the three of them leave Gotham in the hands of Batman, Robin, Huntress, and Oracle.

There is no fighting from each other. They are working as an amazing team.

They end up taking down a growing organization that was going to start shipping out supplies to multiple other villain groups around the world. They follow through with a report to the heroes in charge of the other villain groups.

During the trip, Tim and Steph come across another clue to Bruce being stuck in time. This time it's an old scroll that holds the account of a rogue fighter that was going around causing issues for the local authorities. It is the description of the fighter that tips both him and Steph off about the situation.

Steph had always been good at that sort of thing. Puzzles and Riddles and connecting pieces of things to see the greater picture.

She asks if Tim knew, and he replies that he did. He knew, and he had already destroyed a piece of evidence before.

They might have started a fight with each other that Cass becomes a part of. Soon they all give their piece on what they should do, but they all eventually agree to destroy it.

They burn the piece of history over a small fire in Cass’s apartment and share some food as they toast to a new future. Even if they all feel a little uneasy knowing that there must be more out there and they still deep down have the urge to get Bruce back, if not for varying reasons, they all know that this is right and that things will only continue to get better,

On their way back, Tim finds the name that he wants to go by Tanager.

There will be no more referring to him as the Red Robin, and there will be no more being held back as a backup. He is now back to being his vigilante, and his person.

Things continue from there. Tim is still in high school, and still makes it for Thursday game nights with his friends, and keeps grades that he hasn’t had since before he was Robin. Everything is going well.

He and Steph discover another clue while they are teaming up with a couple of other heroes on the west coast. It is an old gold rush town, and one of the houses is set up exactly how Bruce would set up a safe house with little resources. They move things around and generally remove any notion that it was Bruce who owned the house.

If they spend an extra day just exploring, no one was going to tell them no, Bruce wasn’t there to tell them that they were wasting time.

It has been a year since Bruce has been dead. They all gather together for a family meal. Dick, Tim, Damian, Stephanie, Cass, Barbra and the several animals that they have gotten since then. It’s great and they have an old memorial for him. They won’t speak ill of the dead today, but if the next weekend several pairs can be found bitching about how Bruce was, no one was going to be mad.

Within the next month, they move their base of operations out of the cave and the manor. That was Bruce, but as they were all aware they would all be more effective if they were in the centre of Gotham.

They do just that with one of the old buildings that Bruce owned. They fix it up, and they make it the head of operations on the main island of Gotham while using the Clocktower on the South Island as a secondary base, and they are in the process of setting up a base on the northern Island, but that is where Jason is holed up and none of them wants to have to deal with him right now.

They also don’t sleep in the same base they work in. They separate the two, and it does all of them well for their mental health.

It is also around this time that they all start seeing therapists start working through their problems. It was something that they needed earlier but that Bruce had refused to let them do. It makes things easier, and they are better heroes and people for it.

The shadows don’t feel so heavy anymore, and they all gradually stop looking in those shadows for Bruce. Instead, they see nothing but a shadow and a possible vantage point if needed. Not something that was going to breathe down their necks about their mistakes and how they could be doing better.

Tim starts being a full-time mentor to SDamian and takes him to the next mission of the Teen Titans.

Damian has calmed down a lot and has learned some of the joys of being a kid.

The mission was nothing world-shattering or extremely dangerous, but was something to show Damian how they worked as a team, and how working with a diverse team worked. He won’t be joining anytime soon, with him not being a teenager, but he confides in Tim later that he doesn’t want that responsibility right now. That he is still getting used to everything back in Gotham, and he isn’t ready for a complete change yet.

During the last couple of days of the mission he and Damian come across a crude version of the Cowl and Cape that Batman uses and Damian finds out about the whole Timestream issue because Tim actually tells him. Damian holds the cowl in his hands shaking with silent tears. Time is worried that Damian is going to want to bring Bruce back, but Damian asks what they can use to destroy it so that no one can find it.

They use one of the chemical acids on hand with the mission, and Damian can be found hugging Tim as Damian seems to come to terms with what is happening. When Tim later asks if Damian ever wanted to bring Bruce back, Damian answers with an honest no. He explains how he finally feels safe with everyone, and he felt like he was always being put under a microscope by his father.

He states that he might not have seen Tim as a brother if Bruce was still around, because Tim was Bruce’s Robin, but Tim was Dick’s brother which made them brothers.

Damian now has connections to outside heroes and has the beginning of a larger support system which is what he needed. People outside the family that he can trust.

Tim and Steph after months of getting professional help, working on themselves outside of each other, and a bit of maturing finally have their official start over. Not dating, but finally being people again without Bruce pushing the toxicity to a different level.

The first person that Tim tells about the whole situation, and not just letting the situation come up when it does is Helena, because he thinks she will give the most straightforward response on it.

Tim explains how everyone is doing so much better without Bruce, how Gotham has been doing so much better without Bruce, how he finally has a family, and things are finally starting to look up. How for the first time in a long time it feels like he isn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Helena lets Tim rant for a bit before stating that it sounded like Bruce wasn’t a good dad, that even though at points he might not have meant it, he was being abusive.

This is the moment where someone finally puts Bruce and abusive together and it just kind of clicks. Every wrong feeling, and every right feeling. The dread, and the holding breath and waiting for disaster.

It’s a growing moment, and Tim finally has the words to put to the feelings.

Helena lets the kid cry on her couch for a bit while she grades some papers, and when Tim eventually calms down he thanks Helena for sticking around because they all needed her, and it had just taken most of them far too long to realize that.

Helena promises not to talk about the Bruce situation until he knows that no one is a flight risk.

The next, and final person to find out was Dick.

Tim and Dick don’t work together all that often in a set-up pairing. Sure they worked well together, and they were close, it was just that time undercover and working with Steph that made it so there was a bit of separation between the two that didn’t exist until now.

They are working on a case that brought them to Australia where on the investigation they found a Batcave that Bruce had set up back in time. When Tim explains everything to Dick they both feel like they are walking on eggshells and are waiting for the other one to say something.

Dick then asks how many other clues Tim has found, and Tim confesses to the whole thing.

Dick is mad because he wanted to know why Tim didn’t tell him. Tim states that he didn’t know if Dick would bring Bruce back, and if everything that had become good would disappear. Dick exclaims that if anyone would understand it would be him, and sure in the beginning he would have wanted Bruce back, but he too knows how good things have been going.

So Dick ends up having the cave upgraded to a base parameters that had been set up and it is now a location that an international team can use as a base when needed.

When they all get back and meet up for a family meal they finally all hold a discussion about the situation, and they all come to the consensus that Bruce Wayne needs to be laid to rest, and it is time for the world to move on.

They talk about how they should go about the whole thing, and how it needs to be airtight and conclusive, but not so conclusive that it looks like a cover up.

In the end they decide on having him die from an accident while on one of his benders abroad. Doing some stupid stunt that would have been ill adviced, and there was already warnings of. Bruce would be labeled as another stupid rich man that didn’t listen to the warnings of those around him and would suffer the consequences of his actions.

The media would have a field day about it, the public wouldn’t question it, and the family could get by having odd reactions because they themselves would build up the trip and say things about how dangerous it was.

The plan goes off without a hitch. A couple of weeks before the planned date of death, Tim says some things to his friends, Dick is caught having a loud phone conversation, and the media tracks down the records that have been set up about the trip. Have a couple of convincing fake IDs, a few stand-in people for some pictures and nothing is suspicious at all.

Set the trip to last a couple of weeks, and have everything go normally except for some weird weather reports and some chatter from the area. Then when teh couple of weeks are over, and Bruce doesn’t show back up everyone starts getting antsy.

At that point have Tim get picked up early from school during the middle of the day when the press is already on edge, and have a teary moment of realization, and hock line and sinker.

Only one of the fake IDS makes it barely alive out of the trip and suddenly Bruce is dead on an ill-advised trip, and there is nobody to bring back, but have a funeral anyway.

During the funeral, they do actually cry, and not just for the press that is hounding their backs but because they are finally closing that chapter of their lives, and can properly move into something better.

Bruce is now dead to the world, and he is no longer a shadow hanging over everyone else.

In the will left behind, they find that a lot of the money was being donated to Wayne charities, with a significant amount still being put in personal accounts for Dick, Tim, Damian, and Cass. That the manor and all other Wayne properties were not to be sold.

They decide as a family that they can do more for Gotham than what Bruce was doing, and they start renovating a lot of the other properties for new housing, and public spaces that people could use. They open up new shelters for people that will be safe, and centres where people can take free classes to help them on the path to GEDs or training for skilled jobs.

They start putting Wayne's name behind people in the city government and making reforms on a city level.

Because yes busting up a frug trade and saving kidnap victims work, but it will only continue to happen if people are not given teh opportunities to move up in life.

The company goes international and starts making waves all around the world by helping many other people. It also serves as a source of information that they would not normally be able to get.

Everything is getting better.

Tim graduates high school, something that Tim hadn’t even thought he would do for the longest time. Not because he struggled with school, but compared to everything else that was going on it didn’t seem all that important. True he still didn’t see it as all that important, but he was learning to live his life. Something that he hadn’t been doing for a very long time.

Sure his grades would never recover from what the classes he missed, the switching of schools, and the effect that No Man’s Land has on someone’s schooling. So to say that Tim wasn’t going to be a Valedictorian was an understatement. However, he pulled through since things have been getting better and he had a decent report card now. Not that it would matter as Tim still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do after this, but it was nice to be a kid and just have to worry about grades and friends sometimes. Something he didn’t really allow himself to do.

It’s his graduation. The whole family, his friends, and other people who are important to him show up. When his name gets called he shakes hands with the principal and later throws his hat up into the sky, he can’t help but wish that Bruce was there to congratulate him. Wish that he was there to say how proud of him he was, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

He pushes aside the thought and goes to meet up with his family, his significant other, and his friends.

He takes pictures with multiple different groups of them as they all laugh. Afterwards, it's just the small family group as they make their way to a local family diner and have a good family meal together.

Two weeks down the line Jason shows up at one of the cases where multiple Bats are working and helps them with the information that he has collected.

This is the start of Jason coming back.

It is slow going, and for many of them they aren’t ready to forgive, but Bruce isn’t here to tell any of them that they are doing anything wrong, and because Bruce isn’t here they will all work together to get things done with this case.

The case takes a while, but Jason is slowly being folded back into the group.

During that time the manor is finally sold. None of them holds anything with the manor. The original was rebuilt from the quake, and they are ready to move on. The cave has been hidden away and cleaned of anything that would show people were there. The land is turned into a large nature area.

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn show up and they can now be found frequenting the area. It is the start of many green and nature building projects that will be soon put into effect around Gotham. Ones that soon start to change the communities for the better.

Tim and Jason don’t interact much. Mostly because Tim and his therapist have talked and he isn’t mentally ready for that yet, but also because things aren’t stable enough right now for things to go wrong.

However, they sometimes work together on larger cases, mostly with a third person to be the middle ground just in case something goes wrong. In one of these cases, they come across another thing Bruce has left behind in the Timestream. It’s Stephanie with them this time so he hopes that things don’t go too wrong.

Jason is mad at first, but they soon start having a discussion that is the most level-headed and emotional in a while. Jason comes to understand the situation and they become brothers.

Jason is the next one to hang up a mantle that was just prolonging his pain. Red Hood goes into the box, and a new vigilante can be seen on the streets.

It’s finally a whole family again. It isn’t perfect but they are growing closer and better with every passing day. It isn’t always a good day though.

There are still nights when they will wake up in the med bay, in their apartment, in a safe house, in the Belfry, in the main house. There are times when they wake up that they cry and look around for Bruce, for Batman. Whether it be as a threat or to look for any form of comfort.

Sometimes they cry into their hands, the sheets, a pillow, a stuffed animal, and the sleeves of their clothes, and just want things to go back to the way they were. Sometimes they remember that things could go back to the way they were. They know clues are out there waiting to be found.

But they soon calm down and know they don’t want to. That they have healed, grown, and become better people because of Bruce not being there. As hard as it can be to admit some days.

So they keep hiding the clues, keep doing family dinners, and inviting friends and their teams over, and Gotham is slowly healing too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Side Stories:

A side story on Stephanie and her growth into being the new Batgirl, becoming family with her mom again, interacting with the new normal, and growing up without toxic fathers and mentors holding her back.

A side story on Jason and what he was doing between the time he was finished with his Batman rampage, his coming back to the family, and his growth as a character and realizing that things are changing. Also Jason’s perspective on the announcement of Bruce Wayne’s death, and the final realization that Bruce won’t be coming back.

A side story on Damain and adapting to a new culture and place with people he slowly grows to see as family. It would focus on him learning to be a kid and learning to accept the grief he has for the family he won’t get to have, but also growing to love the family that he does have.

A side story on Cass, and her experiences with the grief of losing Bruce, her time in Hong Kong, and eventually coming back into the family. (I need to do more research before I decide what I want to do with Cass)

A side story on just the way that the media has been handling everything and the articles and news segments that have been coming out on the whole thing. This would focus more on how life in Gotham has changed from an outside perspective. It would cover some of the major events and even have some exclusive stuff like an interview or two that other characters did.

A side story on Cass and Helena finally having a talk about things when they are forced to team up during their separate cases/missions. Includes a lot of discussion on the morality of killing or letting someone be killed, and the legacy of the Batgirl that was not meant to be and the Batgirl that was chosen to be.

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