Idk about you but I'm struggling with the fandom atm babes.

roma★
wallacepolsom
Stranger Things

blake kathryn
Not today Justin

izzy's playlists!

titsay
Sweet Seals For You, Always

Product Placement
styofa doing anything

PR's Tumblrdome
trying on a metaphor

@theartofmadeline
art blog(derogatory)
Mike Driver

tannertan36
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
AnasAbdin

Andulka

ellievsbear
seen from United States

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@farshootergotme
Idk about you but I'm struggling with the fandom atm babes.
Clark being a gold certified wife guy inside his own public column Action Comics 787
Evidently a large number of fanon enjoyers are now upset and claim that even calling out racism on a joke post, no matter how gracious and civil, is bullying and violent behavior that makes fandom unenjoyable.
You know what makes fandom actively violent?
Racism.
Not calling it out.
accidentally predicted the funniest thing ever a few days ago
maybe dumb question, but why does dick have blue eyes if he’s Romani?
His Romani parentage is a retcon from about 2000. Dick have always been blue eyed and fair-skinned. He’s never been fluent in a Romani language, he’s an American citizen with English as his first language.
And it’s one Romani parent, which one has varied between writers. Currently it’s his mom, who grew up in France. The court of owls storyline introduced that his dad’s grandmother was from one of Gotham’s richest families.
Hi, Angloromani gal here (as you may have guessed from the url). Just a couple of things:
Light skinned, blue eyed, even blonde fully Romani people exist, especially in Northern Europe (and current canon suggests Dick’s mom was French). I myself have lighter brown hair and blue eyes, and I’m very pale, even whilst most of my family is quite dark.
As for blue eyes, in the North of Europe, the stereotypical Romani look (even amongst us) is usually considered to be dark curly hair, olive skin, and blue eyes. Blue eyes are a really common feature in Romani people.
Also in the north of Europe, it’s very rare for any of us to have true fluency in Romani. It’s just not how the language works here anymore. English is my first language too. (This is apparently different in Romania, but even there, not everyone is completely fluent either, and it’s increasingly common for people to learn more than the basics we’re mostly taught as children once they reach adulthood.)
And whilst his being Romani is a retcon, it’s not exactly one which came out of nowhere. Gypsies have long been associated with fairgrounds and circuses to the point where there is a whole cultural group called Showmen who are gypsies from the fairground/circus (fun fact: I am one). So whilst it’s only been official for a couple of decades, it’s definitely possible to read a gypsy identity in Dick from day one - especially since a lot of Dick’s moral hang ups are very in line with gypsy culture.
This one’s just my opinion, but I really think we need to stop the stigma against retcons. No one really questions the validity of retcons such as Jason Todd being from Crime Alley, and other retcons (e.g. Talia and Damian’s conception) are surely an improvement. Whilst not all of them are great, I don’t really see the harm in using them to add more depth to characters. Whilst it is annoying that writers can’t seem to decide which parent is Romani (honestly, I don’t even think that current canon wherein Dick’s paternal grandfather is ethnically a gorja really stops him from having Romani heritage on both sides - who’s to say that Dick’s paternal grandmother wasn’t Romani, making John a diddakoi?), I personally will take any rep we can get. In all honesty, Dick Grayson is one of the best examples of Showman rep we have.
Chuck Dixon I will fight you in A dennys parking lot
I know you created her but never talk about her again.
CHUCK!!! come to the denny's parking lot I just wanna talk, i was kidding before, i'm not gonna fight you with my bare hands or anything, come ooooon chuckie d it'll be fine.
You know what’s a super-interesting thought I just had?
(I mean, unless its not super-interesting thought at all and is actually quite mundane, in which case, lol, can’t believe you suckers fell for that. Wow. How embarrassing.)
But no, I’m just kidding, its actually super-interesting, I might be a genius, waiting on confirmation. So the thing is, there’s one really specific trope that I’ve probably seen used in fic for pretty much every fandom I’ve ever been in…..but that I’ve never seen used in a Dick Grayson fic.
The trope of which I speak is ye olde time travel fix-it trope. Wherein the main character wakes up in their ten or fifteen years younger body or whatever, and like, uses foreknowledge to avert personal tragedies or losses of loved ones.
Now first off, I think there’s something intriguing about the relative lack of this trope in a fandom where things like time travel are literally canon and things the characters are aware of being like ‘so this is a thing that happens, and if my friend/relative woke me up one day and said hey you’re not gonna believe this but I actually have all the memories of me from fifteen years in the future, I would be like no for sure, I totally believe you dude, that happens all the time.’
That right there is already a twist on the usual time-travel fix-it stories, which tend to take place in fandoms where that ISN’T the norm and so the protag is like I must make with the hush-hush and keep the vault of my secret knowledge zipped up tight lest someone book me a nice staycation at the nearest fandom-specific equivalent of Arkham.
But then I ALSO started thinking hmmm, were one TO apply this trope to Dick Grayson in particular, like…..what point in his past would you even PICK as the point in time he returns to, hoping to use his foreknowledge to make play out differently?
Like….would you go all the way back to his parents being killed, and make them check the ropes again? How about before Bruce fired him from being Robin and the estrangement that led to between them? Or before Jason dies? Or maybe before Brother Blood brainwashed Dick that first time, or before Terra betrayed the team, or before Mirage, or before Joey got possessed and the events of Titans Hunt……how about before Blockbuster, or before Donna and Lilith died in Graduation Day or when Bruce was thought dead in Final Crisis, or when Damian was killed by Heretic or before the events of Forever Evil?
THERE’S TOO MANY FIX-IT POINTS HOW DO YOU EVEN PICK?!?!?
But THEN I got to thinking, well…..one of the other things particular to Dick Grayson’s tragedies is how often they’re inextricably tied to later things he doesn’t view as tragic or something he regrets or wants to avert. So its like…..how CAN he go back and avert his parents’ deaths, without giving up the family he later goes on to build with Bruce and all his siblings? If he travels back and repairs his fractured bond with Bruce before being fired as Robin, is it going to be a given that Bruce still meets Jason or feels compelled to take him in? If Jason never dies, does Tim ever join the family? Does Joey ever even join the Titans if Terra never betrays them? Without that time Bruce is thought lost and dead, do Dick and Damian ever form the bond they have in canon? Etc, etc.
So that narrowed it down considerably for me, and I ended up with just a couple key points where I’m like, okay, I could see Dick still ending up back at this time and thinking yeah there are things I want to change and feel safe about changing without undoing other key parts of my life.
1) Blockbuster - This era is I think one of the biggest tragedies of Dick’s life, and because of how….scattered the aftermath and fallout of it was, and the in-story examinations of it, it remains fairly disconnected from the rest of Dick’s life and thus something that he can alter to fairly sizable degree without like…..altering the overall shape of his life after that point in ways he would be averse to. The lives Blockbuster took when blowing up his apartment building, Tarantula, the destruction of Bludhaven as a whole…..all of these are things that Dick, armed with foreknowledge and also strengthened by his growth and development in years long after all this, could tackle and change all on his own.
And one of the key things about this for me, and the appeal of this flux-point as an area of focus…..is that it would be an opportunity for Dick to change things for the better for HIMSELF. Where the focus would be on yeah, saving all those other lives, but just as much like…saving himself, averting a tragic period of his life for his OWN sake rather than just….because of how it’ll change or improve the lives of friends or loved ones of his. Self-sacrifice is kinda built into so many of his stories and dynamics, that its just like…..very appealing to not deny that this is the case, but rather just hone in on a time and place where he gets to put himself first and be like, I am changing things, I am making things better for ME, because *I* will benefit from this and I deserve to.
I think that’s a neat premise for him, personally. You do you, boo. Get that healing.
2) The Last Laugh - Okay, because I am me and I can’t just like, NOT be obsessed with this story and the implications for Bruce, Dick and Jason, ugh, how OOC would THAT be, like excuse me but I am no Scott Lobdell, I choose to stick with established characterization THANK YOU, next…..
Soooooo, I also got to thinking, what if future Dick were to wake up the morning of Last Laugh’s events and be like, wait why am I here back on THIS day and then also with his knowledge of how things like Jason’s return played out and how much the Joker being alive played into that…..what if he’s like…..y’know what, now that I actually KNOW that whatever else happened if I killed the Joker, at least one person would actually be really fucking beneficially impacted, with potentially large ripples on the rest of the family (like Jason never going full crime lord or attacking Tim in Titans Tower if he were less inclined to avoid his family before all that)….and of course add to that all his awareness of later shit the Joker definitely very much did do and that are not hypotheticals for him (bonus points if this is a Rebirth/pre-Flashpoint continuity mashup and thus Duke’s in the mix here too and Dick’s like, hmmm, one dead Joker means two less Joker-ized Duke parents)…..
And so the end result is Dick is like, hmmm yeah, I think actually I’m just gonna kill the Joker again, but like, with intent this time. And Just Say No to Bruce making with the CPR like this is a D.A.R.E. infomercial or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
(Because I’ve always maintained that Dick never actually regretted killing the Joker per se, what he regretted was that in losing control and just reacting to the Joker’s taunts and going full pell-mell with the fists of fury, like, he gave the Joker exactly what he wanted and let him ‘win.’ But what kind of quandary is afoot when you have Dick be like….actually, I’m NOT sad about it and I DON’T want Bruce to ‘fix’ this since it doesn’t actually fix what it breaks between them in the first place, and they didn’t ever get past it so much as they just never even talked about it again, so IS it really that much worse if you have Bruce be like GASP, Dick no! You can’t just be OKAY with killing the Joker! and Dick be like GASP, Dick yes! I can, I will, I AM okay with killing the Joker on account of duh, its the JOKER.
And thus you set the stage for all kinds of DIFFERENT fallout than the first time around, Dick deadset on believing he made the right choice, and Bruce not able to reconcile WHY, and then even if and when Jason DOES return in a much, hmm…’softer’ way than in canon and like, never makes with the attempted fratricide or patricide or any kind of -cide, really, and Dick - who let’s be real, can count as one of his more obnoxious qualities his tendency to be a V. Smug Bitch when he’s feeling particularly ‘I told you so’ about stuff - is like Hah! I told you so! and feels all vindicated and validated about his particular choice of….choices, back then, and Bruce would be like What are you talking about you told me NOTHING, and Dick’s like oh right, I did do that. Vault of secrets thing. Hmm. Well if you’d just TRUST ME that I know what I’m doing which you never do…..
And blah blah blah you get it.
But yeah. That’s my interesting thought. Please feel free to sound off with past-points you’d pick for Dick to return to and try and change things, and perhaps why.
Or, y’know. Don’t. That’s cool too. The power is yours.
"Devin Grayson wrote some things that were problematic and racist", "She has written some actually good runs and is one of the best writers for Roy" and "The way the fandom reacts to her like she is a literal monster when male writers did the same thing or worse (Tom King was part of the CIA !! Wolfman actually created a self-insert and married him to a 19 year old Donna and was responsible for Liu and Mirage when Tarantula being a self-insert is false) is extremely sexist" are three statements that are not mutually exclusive.
Let it be known that Dick has always offered to help his siblings or to be a listening ear to their problems.
"If you need someone to talk to, let me know. I've been there."
Batman Family #7
"If you need any help, any time--"
Batman #455
"There's going to be times when you're going to want to talk to someone. Call me at this number. I've been where you're at and I'm a good listener."
Batman #416
"How can I help?"
Batman #33
Actually so devastating to me that in almost every single instance Dick says, “I’ve been there”. And he really has, regardless of situation or event it’s most likely it has happened to him. Whether it’s death, resurrection, betrayal, lost love, or an entire list of traumas. Dick Grayson has been through something like that.
Let it be known that Dick has always offered to help his siblings or to be a listening ear to their problems.
"If you need someone to talk to, let me know. I've been there."
Batman Family #7
"If you need any help, any time--"
Batman #455
"There's going to be times when you're going to want to talk to someone. Call me at this number. I've been where you're at and I'm a good listener."
Batman #416
"How can I help?"
Batman #33
I can’t remember if I’ve said this before but I think that if you make a Batman 1920s AU then you have to take into account that Bertie Wooster often spent time living in New York and Gotham City is just New York Noir and Bruce Wayne would probably cultivate the acquaintance of Bertie Wooster because Bertie is exactly the sort of person Bruce wants people to think he is, so it’s both birds of a feather camouflage and because he wants to observe Bertie for behavioural ideas.
Bertie, ray of sunshine that he is, thinks Bruce is jolly good fun and really quite barmy, but he already has a friend called Barmy and he can’t manage two Barmies so he affectionately dubs him Batty.
Consequently Bruce exists in a state of nagging uncertainty as to whether Bertie is the golden-hearted silly ass he so transparently appears to be, or is in fact one of his villains, knowing who he is and taunting him.
Jeeves would get to feel a little smug toward Alfred. He's not judging the violent vigilante justice or the obvious need for therapy (much). But he thinks the batsuit is ugly af and the fact that Alfred let's him go out in public like that is rather embarrassing. Alfred agrees.
get peer reviewed @strangetikigod
Ok so might accidentally end up doxxing myself with this one but here we go…
The Himboification of Dick Grayson, and Why It Sucks From A Gypsy Perspective
Warning: this is a long one! Also tw for brief mentions of Dick’s canonical SA/rapes, and discussions of purity cultures.
And disclaimer: none of this is intended to slut-shame anyone, so hopefully it doesn’t come across like that. I’m just hoping to explain the weird sexualisation of gypsies in the media, vs our more conservative attitude to sex. This also isn’t meant to shame anyone or tell you how you must imagine Dick Grayson - if you like dark skinned, more-fem Dick, then you keep on enjoying that! This is just what I’ve noticed as someone who is a gypsy, and some patterns I’ve seen in how Dick is portrayed and received.
here, have a timkon
on my superboy era
remember when they made him go to school…. how horrible!!
it’s all out of control :-(