For the character ask: Natasha, Dick and Talia, please?
Favorite thing: the consistency with which she defends abused women and girls. I have a very bad persona poem somewhere about it, it’s such a well done character beat and it makes me really happy
Least favorite thing: Every time Marvel tries to play up the “sexy assassin femme fatale” aspect of her character. I tried to read one of the Secret Avengers recently and it got Rough, whatever happened in the widowmaker run which took place after the Liu run, every time her zipper is drawn below her cleavage even on covers for books that otherwise handle her well.
OTP: the thing about Natasha is that there's a strain of almost poetic wording that crops up in the way she describes people, and I tend to ship her with people who match her energy - primarily Bucky, Elektra, Yelena. Maria Hill gets close sometimes but that could just be my soft spot for Blackhill. Matt can do it but frequently chooses not to because he's Matthew goddamn Murdock and his specific issues are shaped very differently than the spy/assassin ones that characterize everyone else she's involved with.
Buckynat are each other’s homes in the darkness and I adore them for it. Aro4aro bi4bi cat4cat couple. What remains in the absence of memory is love. Like. They understand each other on such a deep level.
Yelenat are *so* compelling to me. I think actually fucking would be less intimate than whatever they’re doing in comics but also they absolutely should. "Little one"/ "Rooskaya"/ "her blood is my favorite blood to shed"
(I also have a lot of thoughts about one of the semi-recent Thunderbolts comics referring to Bucky/Yelena/Natasha as "throuple")
NatElektra..."girls with sharp teeth”. They should do other things with those teeth is all I’m saying.
I don’t exactly ship her with Matt but I don’t not ship it either. I think that relationship is important to both of their development and one day I will actually write that Natasha/Elektra/transfem!Matt fic
I have a soft spot for mcu specific romanogers on occasion, and I’ve actually written mcu wandanat darkfic, it’s still one of my top rated fics on AO3. Also roguenat is fun “spy secrets”
Brotp: Natasha and Laura Kinney (circa bw2014, I’m not caught up on New Avengers), I love how good Natasha is about the shape of Laura’s grief/anger. Natasha and Nadia Van Dyne and Ying Liu should interact more given the shared Red Room connection and also secret empire fallout. Natasha and LIHO AMEN I love that she has a cat (or two cats according to bw2020) I love the slow building trust between her and Liho. Oh! I think pre-moon knight mercenary Marc should cross paths with Natasha on a mission. I also really want to write both a Gotham crossover and a Ballerina 2025 one.
Notp: Clintasha lmao every time they do Clintasha stuffs in the comics it ends up propping up Clint’s character at Natasha’s expense and it’s infinitely frustrating to me. If I’m truly honest this extends to winterwidowhawk - I can generally tell when it’s just an excuse to pair the boys together with Nat as a secondary character, Tales of Suspense makes me want to ship it but fandom’s everything frustrates me enough that I just can’t. My clintasha issues unfortunately extend to bobbinat although that one comes with a side of “is this blatant queerbait or is it for the male gaze”
Unpopular opinion: well, my opinion on Clintasha/Clint and Natasha is definitely an unpopular one. I also tend to write her with carefully managed dissociative tendencies.
Random headcanon: Natasha once infiltrated the Hellfire Club while Tessa/Sage was undercover there and became a rare person who actually tried to get Sage out. Sage’s misplaced loyalty to Charles Xavier wouldn’t allow her to take Natasha up on the offer but I think it matters that she tried.
Natasha is banned from the SHIELD helicarrier poker game - she didn’t cheat at cards, although she could have. She’s just that good at bluffing.
Song I associate with them: the Natasha (and Yelena) amv that exists in my head to Russian Girls by Kombinaciya is so good trust me. The song has this perfect post-Soviet vibe that really fits the energy of Black Widow Breakdown to me.
favorite thing: he's a fucking mess of emotional issues and I think it's great. his life should be a mess forever and he should make it worse on purpose.
least favorite thing: um. the golden boy thing is a facade guys. I thought we all understood that but a lot of writers/fandom takes it at face value and doesn't understand that.
Wally: I think they dated briefly when they were teens on the Titans, I like them as a lot of firsts for each other, I think they broke up amicably when Wally left the team and then of course Wally met Linda and the rest was history but they’re still such great friends, no jealousy or animosity.
Kory: I reblog so much DickKory. It’s pretty and they have great chemistry, but Dick doesn’t always treat her all that well in the initial NTT run and I wish that got acknowledged more, and I don’t mean by fandom. I mean that there’s things like the DickKory heart to heart in this week’s New Titans where he’s being emotionally open with her and she’s calling him Boy Wonder and it’s not strictly out of character for her but so many of the issues in their relationship were him *not* being emotionally open with her? And I realize this is current DC where everyone is emotionally open and in their healing era lol but still.
Roy: I tend to see them getting together much later but they have great chemistry from at least the 80s action comics arcs on through the end of post-crisis.
Slade: I don’t consider my Sladick fics shipfic in the strictest sense because it’s not endgame in any of them, but they have an exceedingly weird dynamic and it fascinates me to no end. I am putting them in the microwave *with* aluminum foil and filming the inevitable explosion from a safe distance.
Bea Bennett: Justice for Bea Bennett! She was actually interesting in her pre-Taylor retcons iteration and I wish she’d gotten to stick around as a bartender/information broker ex instead of whatever Taylor threw together with the Spyral pirate royalty.
Honorable mention: Joey Wilson, Tara Markov (in specific AUs)
NOTP: I don't get endgame/non-problematic Sladick, where’s the seasoning? Even going exclusively by comics canon not the cartoon it should still be problematic and dark.
Oh and I used to ship DickBabs a decade ago when I was getting into comics but I just don’t find them interesting romantically at this point. There are comics where I do enjoy their relationship (okay mostly just BoP 1999 8) but I just don’t think I’ll ever write them.
Brotp: the next chapter of Shore Leave is Dick and Donna fic where she’s got a migraine and it’s the anniversary of her family’s death and also he’s injured, so probably that. Also Dick and the rest of the Titans, Dick and the rest of the Bats but especially Jason and Damian.
unpopular opinion: I frequently write Dick as nonbinary transmasc which definitely counts. And I understand why people take issue with transporting the apprentice arc from the cartoon into comics canon the way I frequently do, I really do, but something about it compels me just the same. Hmmm. I also think the thing people are trying to articulate with the phrase “eldest daughter syndrome” is a mixture of parentification and enmeshment (or emotional incest), all of which can happen with any gender.
A random headcanon: Dick is a nonfiction audiobooks/podcasts guy. He listens to them at work at 1.5x speed. I wish I could come up with a “his most recent listen was” but I don’t think we’d have a lot of nonfiction overlap because mine is mostly about trauma or deconstructing evangelicalism and I can’t see Dick being invested in either. MOX by Jon Moxley, maybe?
Using my preferred timeline for Jason’s death, the last call he and Dick had before Ethiopia was just after Jason got his learner’s permit. Jason was trying to argue that now Dick *had* to let him drive the spaceship, Dick kept saying no. He’s haunted by that “no” and he can’t help feeling like, if he’d just said yes, his brother would still be alive. He never says this to anyone.
Song I associate with them: The Great Impersonator title track by Halsey, for the continuous performance of it all.