#and its never the butt of a joke or some sort of plot device . its just the way he is i love it so much it makes me so happy

[rae-gar-targaryen]

only as alone as i wanna be | [bh]

A/N: Well instead of working on my Peter Parker writing challenge fic, Billy Hargrove won’t leave my brain alone. So here we go. 

I’ve retconned the Billy & Max relationship a bit for this, so it’s a lil au. Sorry!

Please let me know if you think I should continue!

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x fem!Reader (I’m still trying to get the hang of writing for the “reader.” Hopefully this is vague enough that you can imagine yourself. If not, send me feedback so I can get better!) 

Warnings: Language. Passing, vague mentions of sex. Some Billy Hargrove chain-smoking. Bad writing with a jumpy plot. Seriously, I think I’m way too abrupt. Please send feedback. This one is probably doomed for a re-write. 

Word Count: 2.4k of nonsensical, self-important musical references and haphazard, fleeting feelings.

Summary: The snarky record store girl does not like Billy Hargrove. Not at all. 

**NOT MY GIF!** 

—

Winter, 1984

The bell dinged above the door, a jarring interval between the wistful tones of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Take Me Back. Prompting you to look up from your stack of records in mild annoyance. It had been such a productive day until now, and the vinyl wasn’t going to restock itself. 

Well. 

Had you known Mr. Born-In-The-USA-Bruce-Springsteen himself was going to walk in, you would’ve played something far less his taste than Siouxsie. Just to annoy him. Serves him right, right? 

He paused in the doorway of the shop, wrinkling his nose almost imperceptibly as the sound hit his ears, before striding on toward the “Pop/Rock” section of the store, thumbing his way through Motley Crue’s latest.

Figures, you thought. A man who douses himself with as much commercial-ass hairspray and cologne would like some commercial-ass garbage “metal.” Besides, you’d walked past the blue Camaro enough times in the school parking lot to hear the dulcet tones of whatever bland-ass hair metal he was currently into trying its best to blast the doors off of his beloved metal steed. 

You felt a twinge of guilt. You shouldn’t judge the customers for their musical taste so quickly– but between the old church ladies who came in for Handel’s Messiah or whatever they had heard over public radio that week, and the girls from your class riffing on Madonna, you had had just about enough. 

Hadn’t anyone experienced the true depth of Queen? Keep Yourself Alive, man!

You had been working at Hawkins’ local record store during the summers since childhood – Old Mr. Cohen who owned the place used to let you sort tapes into piles for cents on the hour until you were old enough for a real job. Immersed in the music since a young age, you appreciated the breadth and depth the shop had to offer– your favorites developing into pieces heavy on synth. Bonus points if the lyrics made you feel especially existential. You loved that moody shit. 

Now, at 17, you practically ran the place, Mr. Cohen comfortable with leaving you to your devices at the store, so long as the till was counted and inventory was properly stocked. You were grateful for the freedom– squeezing homework into slow nights and chatting about deeper portions of discography with regulars.

Billy Hargrove was not a regular. Neither did he promise a slow night, if the rumors amongst your female classmates were to be believed. Not that you partook in the Hawkins High rumor mill. 

He was a recent, but obtrusive, arrival in your high school’s social scene. Mere months into his appearance in your town and the age-in-kind female population had seemingly lost their brain cells faster than inhaling their usual clouds of hairspray could do it for them. 

Still, you had to admit, he was good-looking. The Springsteen comparison was apt. Billy Hargrove wore jeans like he was doing the denim a favor. His shirts usually two-thirds of the way unbuttoned, even in winter, which was not an unkind sight. His sun-kissed, California boy skin stood a stark contrast to the pallor of the Indiana natives you grew up with. His eyes were crystalline and swam like oceans of trouble and broken promises. 

My god. You were a moody-ass bitch. Waxing poetic about this jock-strap of a human being who you’d heard pummelled Steve Harrington and nearly drowned himself in beer and barely-legal pussy. Come on, babe. Get it together.

He strode up to you at the counter, his boots clunking against the store’s tiled floor. Shout at the Devil was clutched in his fist. 

He dropped the vinyl on the counter, eyes cast down and swiping a cigarette out of the packet in his jacket pocket and lighting up, the clink-thwip of his lighter meeting your ears before you could tell him to put it out. 

“You can’t do that in here,” you told him. 

He hummed in not-acknowledgment-acknowledgment, choosing to ignore you as he inhaled deeply.

“Seriously, dude. Old man Cohen hates that shit. Put it out or go outside and finish it. If your tits don’t freeze off. Since they’re, you know, halfway out of your shirt like that? You do know it’s December. In Indiana. Right?” You pressed, knowing full well you were being obnoxious. If only to make a point. Game recognize game, right? 

He looked up, ocean eyes meeting your own. His frown was instantaneous. 

“Fine,” he huffed. Before promptly stubbing out his cigarette on your freshly wiped counter, dropping the butt to the floor and twisting it under his booted heel.

“Ugh. Come on, man. I have to clean that now.” 

“You were so adamant about it before.” 

“Whatever man. Just the Motley Crue for you today?” You pressed. Why is he prolonging this interaction?

He rolled his eyes, his line of sight catching on the promotional sign above the counter. 

“Well, now, that says new vinyl is two for one. Which one can I get with this?” 

You dropped your head and exhaled deeply– So this was how this evening was going to go. You gestured at the New Release wall to the left of the front counter. 

“Anything from here, Pretty Boy. New vinyl.” 

Cool as you please, if you please.

Billy glanced at you, sensing your annoyance. A smirk graced his lips. He knew if he prolonged this interaction it would surely get a rise out of you.  

He held up Burning From the Inside, Bauhaus’s latest release. New, but not new.

“What about this one? Cover art is alright.” He gestured at the gothica aesthetic adorning the front jacket.

“That’s Bauhaus,” you informed him, as though that would explain everything.

“Bauhaus? What is that?” 

You snorted. 

“No, seriously. What is that? Is that like … a sex thing?” he asked, derisively. 

“It’s not a sex thing. It’s more of a not-your-kind-of-thing thing,” you stated primly. 

“And how would you know what my thing is, princess? I’m guessing by the black-on-black and torn fishnets you’d be all to familiar with whatever a Bauhaus is,” he retorted.

“Well….” You went to the used pile and grabbed Press Eject and Give Me the Tape, before putting it over the speakers. As Bela Lugosi’s Dead started to play throughout the store, Billy looked unamused. 

“They broke up last year. Gone too soon,” you explained, wistfully. You put your hand over your heart as though in mourning. 

He leaned one arm on the counter, Motley Crue seemingly long forgotten. 

“So, what is this song?”

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead? Like, Stairway to Heaven, but for goths, I guess,” you reasoned. “I’m guessing you’re more of a Scorpions kind of guy? We have Love At First Sting,” you gestured vaguely toward the wall. 

Billy quirked an eyebrow at you. 

“And how would you know what kind of guy I am, princess?” His voice lowering as he leans even further over the counter.

“Um. If the female population at our school is to be believed? Well, you get it…” you trailed off. “Plus, I don’t know, have you looked in a mirror lately? Scratch that. You probably don’t stop looking in mirrors. Should I cover the reflective surfaces in the store, lest you get distracted?” 

Billy at least had the decency to look shocked at your barb. 

But not before recovering quickly. 

“Maybe you just cover the reflective surfaces in here to hide the fact that you don’t have a reflection,” he quipped.

You were stunned. Your eyes widened.

“Was that a– vampire joke, Hargrove?”

Billy shrugged. “Well, If the post-punk bullshit shoe fits… I mean, what even is playing over the speakers right now? I’m in here enough to know Cohen lets his employees pick the music from the Used pile during their shifts. Though clearly I don’t come in often enough during your shifts.”

“Thank God for that,” you sighed. 

Deciding he’d had enough of the banter, Billy snagged Black Flag’s latest off of the New Release wall. 

“Two for one, right?” he snarked, slapping down enough cash for one album before grabbing his findings off of the counter and striding out into the wintery evening– the bell over the door clanging after him for good measure. Like an exclamation point on whatever the ever loving fuck that conversation was. Did you— offend him??

You decided, sweeping up the not-forgotten ash from his cigarette off the floor that you didn’t ever need to have an interaction with Billy Hargrove again. You were most decidedly not post-punk bullshit.

–

Billy Hargrove had never been so ruffled in all of his life. 

Throwing the two vinyl sleeves down in the passenger seat of his beloved Camaro, he slammed the door behind him.

Clink-Thwip.

Billy lit up, the chemical rush of his deep inhale-exhale instantly soothing his frazzled nerves. 

He flicked the lid of his lighter a few more times, for good measure. A nervous habit. Clink-Thunk. Clink-Thunk. Clink-Thunk. 

“ ‘Never stop looking in a mirror,’ my ass,” he grumbled, meeting his eyes in the rear-view before realizing what he was doing and looking away. 

He’d seen that girl before. She sat alone in the cafeteria most times, headphones on, reading a book. She seemed like the type to enjoy Slyvia Plath. Not that he knew enough about Slyvia Plath to really know what that type of girl was. He swore his mom owned a coverworn copy of some novel or another with that name on it. 

He drove away, tires squealing behind him, hair metal blasting from his speakers. Okay, so maybe you’d been right about his musical taste. It’s not like he’d give you the satisfaction. Besides, he’d bought BLACK FLAG, for Christ’s sake. You didn’t know him. 

But still, he couldn’t deny, there was something about your demeanor. Your witticism. Your bad type. And yeah, maybe he’d sneaked a peek at your ass when you came around from the counter to scold him for smoking. Sue him, he was only human. 

He knew there was more to you. A sweet undertone– like peaches and cream. Also maybe he liked ruffling your proverbial feathers. Just maybe. 

He had asked Tommy about you at school the next day. 

Tommy shrugged, but not before looking over at the corner of the cafeteria where you sat. 

“I don’t know man. She’s hot. But, like, in the way weird girls are hot. You can look, but touching may cost you.” 

Billy didn’t know what that meant. But Tommy was literally too stupid to insult. So he bit back a comment effectuating that he didn’t care and slammed the rest of his can of Coke. 

–

You had seen him before. From his tire-squealing entry into your town, you were certain you’d had him pegged from Jump Street. The chain-smoking, that infernal clink-twhip of his American Flag lighter. The keg stands. The raucous screaming in Steve Harrington’s face.

“Plant your feet, Harrington!”

Plant your feet indeed. Lest you be bowled over with unwanted, obtrusive thoughts of the potential depths of Billy Hargrove’s soul. If such a thing existed.

Seriously, though. Why would he buy a Black Flag album? If there was one thing Billy Hargrove was not, you decided, it was punk rock. 

You’d seen him take his sister to the arcade, and wait for her after school. Was it brotherly affection that motivated these little Babysitter’s Club moments, or was he forced to? Still, you saw the way that girl on the skateboard looked up at her seemingly cool older brother. Like he hung the stars. 

He did brush off Tina after the basketball game last week. And, he bought Black Flag. That man had never listened to Black Flag in all of his life. You were sure of it.

Could he really be all bad? 

–

The semester pressed on. Billy Hargrove at the fringe of your thoughts and your eye-line. Was he trying to talk to you in school?

You had the closing shift at the store again on Saturday. You were in the midst of carrying a box of tapes up the stairs from the storage room when you heard the ding of the bell above the door. You sighed, put the box down, and made your way toward the front to greet the customer. Upon seeing the back of Billy Hargrove’s perfectly coiffed, curly head, you were ready to turn back around and act like you hadn’t seen him. Too late. He clearly knew you were working. 

“Please don’t let it be you,” you groaned. 

“No promises, dollface.” 

You stood in front of him, hands on your hips. 

“So? What can I do for you?”

Billy smirked. “I can think of a few things, sweetheart,” he drawled, quirking a perfectly arched brow just so. You hated that you now noticed these things about Billy Hargrove’s perfectly stupid and stupidly perfect face. 

“I don’t have time for this, Pretty Boy.” 

“When are you off?” He asked.

“After close,” you said. 

“Go out with me.” Billy Hargrove said, now surely unsure of himself.

“And why in the ever-loving-fuck would I do that?” You had to hand it to yourself. You were doing a damn good job of looking like you didn’t care. Meanwhile, your insides were pudding and you were just sure he knew it, too.

“Because you want to. Because I want you to. Because– Because I want to. Because I listened to Black Flag. Because I get your whole thing, plaid skirt and all,” he stated, gesturing vaguely over your person. 

You rolled your eyes, choosing not to answer him. Instead, you diverted. Diversion is good, right?

“Where’s your usual crowd of hairsprayed hangers-on? Or are you always alone after school?”

“Only as alone as I wanna be, doll,” He drawled. 

You’d had to hand it to Billy Hargrove. He could definitely turn a phrase when he wanted to. His crystalline eyes could definitely see right through you. As the flush travelled through your body, taking in his artful smirk and powerful visage, you knew:

Billy Hargrove was going to be the death of you. Like the satisfyingly sweet pour of languid waves of syrup cascading over waffles, drowning you in a beautiful, thick avalanche of a saccharine dream. A powdered sugar kiss dusting over your better senses, coating them in the flush of dripping endearment. 

Surely you could be alone together? The crystal ball and the odyssey. 

Would you go?

tagging bc you inspire me:

@nappingtopknot @ayeayecaptaingally @hey-its-grey @tigerlilynoh @andallthatmishigas @oh-star-how-the-mighty-fall @youngmoneymilla @noturjacky  (If you don’t want to be tagged, feel free to ignore, or tell me firmly -- but possibly politely?? to fuck off) 

#billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove x y/n #billy hargrove imagine #stranger things fic #stranger things #billy hargrove x you #billy hargrove x female reader #billy hargrove x oc #bad poetry #stranger things imagine #please be gentle #billy hargrove fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #billy hargrove oneshot #billy hargrove one shot #billy hargrove fluff #stranger things s2 #stranger things s3 #dacre montgomery #dacre montgomery fic #dacre montgomery x reader #dacre montgomery imagine #dacre montgomery oneshot #only as alone is I wanna be

[bigskydreaming]

To me the most strange thing about the Dick is a manchild take is that often the same people that say this are the same people that say that Dick's primary characterization should always be as a pillar of support for Bruce and the others. So, basically that Bruce and the others are so helpless that they should be mothered by a manchild. As a preference, I find it it kinda ???

Exactly! There’s no consistency to it, and the thing is, I feel like a lot of people tend to treat Dick as a plot device rather than an actual character in his own right. What I mean is, even in big ensemble fics that feature almost the entire family, when most everyone has their own little storylines, Dick’s sole storyline is acting as a supporting character in everyone else’s storyline. Essentially, its like rather than people going into writing a fic with a specific characterization of Dick in mind already, like they do for most characters, I feel like a lot of the stories out there start with the author figuring out what their plot is, what their preferred characters are doing….and then Dick’s characterization within their fic tends to end up being almost completely determined by what role they want him to play.

Like……as you said, a huge facet of his core characterization is that he almost always prioritizes being a pillar of support for Bruce and the others….but in fanfics, he’s just as likely to be the antagonistic foil that’s causing drama within the family by not understanding Jason or favoring Damian over Tim or whatever…..and its like he ends up that way purely because writers want some internal strife within the Batfam, but they want Tim and Jason to get along, and they want Bruce to interact with Jason as a son and Damian’s too young to cause the kinds of disruptions within the family from internal/ideological disagreements that authors are usually after….so Dick ends up shoehorned into the role of obstinate last holdout getting in the way of the whole family getting along because he just can’t get over himself or whatever.

But then go two fics down from that one and its a whole other ballgame, because in this fic now, Dick gets along with everyone, everyone loves him, but ultimately in the end his lack of contributing to family drama comes from the fact that as far as that fic is concerned, he’s too ineffectual to ever actually be a problem for the family. He’s just kinda there, solely because he was the first kid Bruce took in, but no attention is paid to the fact that he created Robin, DEFINED Robin. And instead the fact that he’s still alive at all is basically implied to be a fluke because he’s not really that bright compared to the others, not really exceptionally talented compared to the others, the only thing he has going for him is he has seniority, and he’s just too gosh-darned happy and perky and nice for anyone to stay mad at for long……so Dick ends up shoehorned here into the role of comic relief, either by cracking jokes constantly and never taking anything seriously for the sake of ‘family morale,’ or just by being the butt of the rest of the family’s constant jokes. With these fics, you get 50/50 odds of it going either way.

And then on the very next page of fics you’re likely to run into one where he’s supportive of all the others rather than antagonistic, yes, and he’s considered competent and effective at what he does, sure, but now with these fics, he’s basically relegated to the role of wallpaper, because the story’s not supposed to be about HIM and the authors don’t want him drawing focus away from their preferred characters. He’s not the character people should be hoping or expecting to see in a starring or even a major role, when reading their fics, is basically what the sentiment feels like there. 

Like, he’s there, he’s present, he’s competent and helpful, but it largely ends up feeling like all of that is because ironically, having him NOT be there and coming up with reasons and justifications for that….would draw or require more focus on him than they want to spend. So instead he’s present in the story, but that’s about it. 

He largely just….exists, within these types of stories. At best he’s there to be a glorified bodyguard to his various siblings, and be hanging around so that he can swoop in and save them from any major danger that isn’t the direct focus of the plot…..but he has little to no scenes other than ones where he’s directly acting to save, rescue, emotionally support or offer sage wisdom or a shoulder to lean on, for any of his siblings or Bruce himself. 

He has no problems of his own, as far as the fic ever mentions, no priorities or personal ambitions beyond ‘always be available for whatever his family needs, whenever his family needs it’ and everything you learn about him in the first couple chapters of that story, when establishing his place/status quo within that particular fic….like, who and what he is and cares about and prioritizes and even just talks about in the first couple chapters will basically still be the exact same things in the final chapters of the fic….because absolutely nothing throughout the fic has actually affected HIM, changed HIM, impacted HIM in any kind of meaningful way that would lead to actual character development or even just….change.

…wait, hang on, I take that back. There is one sizable exception in these types of fics, where there is focus on Dick’s POV and him being impacted by the plot and ‘changing’…..but that exception comes in one form, and one form only: Scenes Where Dick Self-Flagellates and Regrets Being the Worst Brother/Son Ever to Jason, Tim, Bruce, etc. And reflects on how massively he’s failed or let those members of his family down at one point or another in the past, when they have only ever been there for him, consistently, without fail, and thus they deserve better than his previous fuck-ups with them and he staunchly vows to Make It Right and from this day forward, Do Better and dedicate himself to being the best brother, son, blah blah blah that ever lived. 

(With the problem being - or well, my problem at least, lol - like…..rarely if ever are these things Dick is beating himself up over, like…actually his fault or things he should feel like a terrible human being for. And granted, Dick has a definite canon tendency towards self-blame and assuming the worst of his own actions and the fallout from his actions, so its not like its out of character for him to be an unreliable narrator in this regard…..BUT like….when you’re using an unreliable narrator to like, beat himself up for being just the worst ever, you kiiiiiiinda need to balance that out with the narrative or someone else in the narrative at some point contesting that unreliable narration…..and being like….what? No??? Omg enough with the Catholic guilt Dick, you’re not even Catholic, and you definitely aren’t responsible for me dying in Ethiopia at the exact same time you were light years away on an entirely different planet, dumbass.” ANYWAY).

So I mean….there are all these various roles Dick plays in different kinds of almost….I wanna say like ‘genres of Batfam fanfiction’……and IMO that’s how large parts of fandom manage to juggle all these completely contradictory views of Dick without ever finding it odd or illogical that he can be considered to be both the Batfamily’s primary source of emotional support one second, and the thorn in everyone’s side the next. Because many people, I feel, just aren’t approaching his character in terms of how his characterization, and thus his presence, would affect their plot, result in specific kinds of dynamics, interactions etc…..rather, they’re looking at it from the complete opposite direction. They do all that with the characters they’re more interested in writing, and then when they have most of it figured out, they basically just pigeon hole him into whatever gaps in the plot need filling, and go with whatever popular take on him is most convenient for what their story still needs or is lacking.

And it all kinda loops back around, I think, to make it this sort of self-perpetuating cycle…..writers aren’t as interested in writing Dick as they are the other siblings because they don’t find him all that compelling, except what they actually don’t find all that compelling is probably more accurately labeled various fanon views of him that have at most just a superficial relationship with his more developed canon characterizations. 

But regardless, they’re not that interested in him as a character, due to mostly equating him with fanon takes that prioritize his usefulness as a plot device with ready made connections to most anyone else a fic needs to bring in, rather than trying to view him, understand him and relate to him as an actual character in his own right…..so they too end up also just using him as a plot device rather than try and even just give him some more development themselves. 

And it all feeds back into itself, forming this constant feedback loop that’s ironically mostly just fueled by itself, rather than anything outside that loop of perception and perpetuation….like, y’know, his actual stories and his actual well-established dynamics with various other characters.

Its like….you know how sometimes people are like “how would you describe yourself/this person/this character in just three words, like what are the three words that best encompass them in your mind?” Like…..that’s not SUPPOSED to be an easy thing to do. That’s SUPPOSED to be a hard - and revealing  - question, because three words is a very very limited frame to try and condense entire personalities into in a way that’s in any way actually specific to them as an individual rather than just a list of generic traits that could equally apply to any number of people.

And yet….I do not think a lot of Batfam fans would consider that a hard question to answer about Dick Grayson, and therein lies my eternal frustration. Like I’m pretty sure we can all predict what a lot of those answers would be: “funny,” “angry,” “cheerful,” “supportive,” “moody,” “hopeful” and various other things related to either 1) Dick the Emotional Support Non-Entity, 2) Dick the Unattainable and Impossible to Match or Even Relate to Standard or 3) Dick the Antagonistic Foil, etc. 

But my point is……I do not think a lot of fans would find it difficult to reduce Dick down to just a short list of generic character traits….because that’s the pattern I’m talking about in fics. A huge amount of his depictions in fic could be summed up with just two or three adjectives….because whatever role he’s been designated in a particular fic……that’s it for him, most of the time. As in…..he doesn’t at any point break out of that very specific and definitive box the fic puts him in because its been slated as the role/place/designation he’s most ‘useful’ to the plot and the other characters and the story over all. So whatever he is in that fic….he’s usually JUST that one thing. His actions are usually perfectly in sync with whatever the other characters expect those actions to be, his mood is fairly consistent throughout with very little variation, and his motivations are usually fairly superficial and don’t require a lot of digging under the hood to see what’s really going on deep down beneath his surface level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s my take on all that, and the various contradictions that all conversations about him are practically immersed in, all at the same time. Granted, I’m biased as hell and who can say if I’m actually on to anything there or not, but for me the most telling and pertinent question about fandom’s perception of Dick Grayson is:

When one of the few things everyone can agree on about him is that he’s a natural performer and the face he presents to people around him is often just a mask hiding his true thoughts and feelings….

Why on earth aren’t more writers interested in pulling back the mask and seeing, writing, revealing or expanding upon whatever might be underneath?

Cuz the way Dick’s primarily used in fics literally only makes sense to me if you’re prioritizing his role in fics based on what the plot or other characters require.

Looking at him purely on a character level, in terms of archetypes? “Eternal secret keeper who even (successfully) keeps secrets from the rest of a family made up entirely of people who are both adept secret keepers themselves and adept detectives”…..

Like how the hell do you tell me that archetype’s only narrative appeal lies in advancing everyone else’s plots? For all intents and purposes, Dick is essentially the trickster archetype within the Batfam, innately predisposed to constantly come into conflict with his chosen father figure, given that Bruce in contrast embodies a stern lawful judge type archetype. Thus with the two of them operating off of entirely different world views that nevertheless can overlap just often enough to make that not quite a given….given that trickster archetypes, by their very nature, have flexible alignments and can go in entirely different directions from one story to the next, all while still being true to themselves and their core archetype. 

Then you have Jason, with it being hilarious to me that people so often write Jason as being convinced Bruce will never understand him the way he does Dick, that they could never have the kind of bond Bruce and Dick had in his eyes…..with the funny part about this IMO being that Jason is one of the Batfam MOST similar to Bruce, archetype wise. Because Jason also operates almost entirely off of his own convictions, based entirely off his own moral code….WHICH IS THE EXACT SAME THING BRUCE DOES….the only part they actually disagree on is the precise specifics of their two differing moral codes. 

Jason has always had FAR more in common with Bruce than he realizes or cares to admit to, and if you look at Dick as a trickster archetype forced reluctantly into the role of arbitrator or peace-keeper purely because there’s no one else stepping up to do the job, even though its not a role he’s ideally suited for because of how it constantly forces him into shapes and actions that are contrary to his own nature and thus result in so much of Dick’s personal conflicts ultimately being with HIMSELF….

….eternally torn between trying to be true to himself and who he wants to be, while at the same time trying to be what his family needs him to be because he’s the only one of them with a track record showing he at least is willing to bend to try and accommodate all their conflicting viewpoints, whereas they all tend to try and just bulldoze each other into submission instead….which never works because they’re all equal parts Immovable Objects AND Unstoppable Forces at the same time…and each too stubborn to admit that their siblings/father/children are just as stubborn and willful as them so they could easily stalemate each other indefinitely, if they didn’t have a mediator present, who has enough flexibility to contort himself into whatever configuration is needed to find some kind of bridge or common ground between two conflicting family members who each refuse to budge even an inch….

Well anyway, my point with that little random offshoot was just that personally, I think Dick gets fed the fuck up with both Bruce and Jason at times and just wants to knock their heads together because its so frustrating to him that neither of them can see how alike they are and thus how they’re always THIS CLOSE to finding common ground, they literally just need to like….each move an inch to the right and maybe pivot like five degrees or less…..lolol.

Anyway. I kinda got carried away there with unnecessary narrative analysis and archetypes and whatnot that literally nobody asked, but umm, in response to your actual message itself….err…yes. Agreed. As a preference, I too find bwuh????? to be the most accurate response to the frigidly cold take that ‘Dick is the emotional support pillar for the Batfam but also Dick is massively dysfunctional and a disaster baby who is literally the worst of the Batfam at taking care of himself and not just dying because his favorite pizza place doesn’t deliver on a Tuesday and he doesn’t know how to get food another way so he’ll probably just starve I guess.’

Oh well.

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : Wicdiv #32 & #33

Work work work work work. I’ve never worked so much in my life. The college student easy life is a lie, kids. So I’m doing a 2-in-1 type of thing on the last two issues. I didn’t have much material on issue 32 alone anyway and I think these two issues make more sense as a two-parter finale, so I guess it works well. Thoughts and opinions under the cut, spoilers of course. And fuck Woden.

 THE LAST LAUGH

 “Well this looks ridiculous”

This was my - and I assume an unneglectable number of people’s – first reaction to the last page of issue #33 in which we see the severed heads of Lucifer, Inanna and Tara displayed on an altar. This scene was probably effective on some, but for me it immediately called back to Disney’s Haunted Mansion and Futurama, and I was effectively done for : there was no way I could take this visual seriously.

There’s no two ways around it : this scene is silly. First we have what should be one of the biggest reveal of the entire series casually thrown at us by a character who’s not even looking at the audience, Then the camera cuts to this grotesque display of living heads, and the scene is complete with a classic Luci one-liner that seems aware of how out-of-place this entire sequence is. Really, all that’s missing is the laugh track.

You could say anticlimactic ; but really should it be called that when it’s the creators themselves who intentionally destroy the dramatic potential of their own scene ? If you’re not convinced this was intentional, try a little thought experiment and imagine rewriting this scene to amplify its dramatic intensity. By doing so, my conclusion is that this ending had every chance of being a huge finisher like the ones we saw in Fandemonium and Rising Action, but every writing and artistic decision was deliberately made to be as wrong as possible, to ruin every emotional weight this scene could have had.

 This is not an anomaly : in these last two issues, the creators seem to have engaged in the systematic destruction of every dramatic beat by way of grotesque and ridicule. It’s an undercurrent that ran through the entire second part of Imperial Phase, but only reached its full potential toward the end.

It started on the very first page of issue #32, trivializing Amaterasu’s death when the issue before that still gave it all the gravity fitting to the first death of a Wicdiv arc. Then Dio’s last moments of bravery reveal themselves to be a total waste, on top of ruining One More Time forever. Even Woden’s bad guy monologue is sort of too shitty to really muster the kind of epic hatred you’d want to direct at this character. Then we have Sakhmet’s death, caused not by her lover or her sort-of-nemesis Baal, but by a thirteen year old on her first kill. And that’s not even touching on the awful reminder of her fate we get at the end of issue #33. Then there’s of course the beep machine, and issue #32’s hilarious finish, which I think call for no commentary. Issue #33 is divided in two big reveals, the first one forcing on the us the awful visual of David Blake’s head on Woden’s suit and one of the most fist-curling yet somehow pathetic bad guy monologues in history, and the second one being that ridiculous finish scene. The two are even separated by an intimate scene between Cass and Laura that literally gets cut because there’s a stranger tied up two feet from them.

 So if these issues somewhat feel like they’re played all wrong, we know where it comes from. They feel like a multipart climax that got flipped on its head, so not a punch would land or beat would work. That’s not to say there aren’t some really impressive character moments in there ; but for each of them, there’s an inversely proportionally bad joke or ironic twist sweeping right in to undercut the whole thing.

And that’s something worth examining, not as a mistake but as a creative direction. Humour used to be a respite in Wicdiv, a welcome break from all the bleakness and emotional scorching of the characters. Each of them had their own wit, from Luci’s cool girl referencing to Baphomet’s failed swagger, to even Cass’ dry deliveries. But now, humour is just another weapon to hurt us. It prevents us from caring about our characters, from connecting with their emotions, from taking the story seriously. As I was reading through what I knew were Dio’s last moments, all I could focus on was Woden’s villain’s speech and the fact that he was right, and that Dio’s death was probably going to be a complete waste, because that’s how Wicdiv works now. Just compare the weight of Amaterasu’s and Dio’s respective death scenes : they’re not even separated by a full issue, yet the light that’s shone on them is completely different. No matter how much dignity went into crafting Dio’s last scene, it doesn’t matter when it’s put back to back with the textual affirmation of its uselessness, the fact that we don’t even get to give him a proper goodbye, and even after that, Laura’s awful line about his life support. In 2017, I don’t think I need to explain anyone the power of humour in trivializing the most terrible situations and undercutting people’s empathy for each other. This is what Wicdiv has been doing to us these past two issues, against our will. Stopping us from caring. Keeping us at bay even when we’re trying to connect and get involved in the story and characters.

 What does this change in the use of humour mean ? Personally, I link it to the change of our purported hopes as an audience. At the beginning of the comic and up until Imperial phase, we were still allowed to believe, like Luci, that a solution could be found, that the 2-year sentence wasn’t real, nor was the great Darkness. That it was going to be okay. But right at the moment when the characters allowed themselves to think that there could indeed be a solution, we, as an audience, started to know better : there was no loophole, no escape, no way to prevent the inevitable, whatever that was. We could no longer hope that things were going to be okay. So what do you hope for when things cannot be okay ? You hope that they’ll be worth it. If you have to die, let it be a worthy death. A beautiful one. If you have to go, go in a blaze of glory. If you have to fail, let it be at the hand of a worthy foe. Let it be worth it.

But it isn’t. And that’s what humour’s there to prove. When our hopes were that things would be okay, the comic responded with tragedy ; now that we simply want them to be worth it, its weapon of choice is ridicule. As such, it’s definitely not a coincidence that the 455AD special preceded Imperial Phase part II, as it sets the tone for the entire arc, up to its back quote : when it’s clear Lucifer won’t be able to outlive his death sentence, all he want is to be allowed to burn. But he won’t be. He will bleed out and his body will be dragged across and city and cut to pieces by an old lady then fed to the river. Such is the fate that awaits our character. Pathetic and grotesque in equal parts, useless unless it serves someone else’s purpose, following rules you do not understand.

If Imperial Phase is the arc in which the gods are allowed to think themselves kings and queens, then the creators are the King’s fools, the ones allowed to tell them their real value because they do it through jokes and flip-overs.

This arc is a constant battle between the story the characters wish they were in and the one they’re actually in. That’s why it would be wrong, for example, to think of the beep machine as a McGuffin : its thematic utility goes beyond a plot device. When just last arc, it was the subject of a joke to relieve the tension between two characters, now it knocks them back to their actual scope. Something so small and silly is the kind of device they deserve. The big, ugly, scary machine ? It does nothing. Did you think you’d be handed a huge plot revelation as the crowning achievement of this arc ? Of course not. Instead, what we get is a sad, banal story of parental abuse from a man who’s not over leaving his youth behind.

Yes, even the David/Jon Blake storyline, arguably the one preserving most of its dramatic intensity over these two issues, cannot help but feel like a sad joke when you consider that David Blake’s motivations are basically the evil queen from Snow White’s. This is what caused all this. This, an old wrinkled lady, and a thirteen year old on a mission from God. Those are our villains, everybody. As for dying a worthy death, our heroes’ options are a pool of blood or a mounted head on an altar.

 None of this is worth it. At this point, it’s even hard remember why “this” sounded so appealing in the first place. And all this goes to contextualize even more Laura’s breakdown speech halfway through issue #33 : she wanted everything they had, and she’d have given anything for it. For power, for glamour, for this. For this joke of a fate that’s not even that funny. That’s what cost her the death of her family, multiple friends, and the rest of her life.

It’s also fitting that Jon finally voices something that has been on my mind for a long time : just how little do you have to think of yourself to think two years of superpowers would be worthier than a fully-lived life ? Through this character who, just like the other gods, is too good for this deal, but unlike them, seems to realize it, it’s yet again the sheer impossibility to make this deal worth it that’s shown to us. Because what becomes clear after this reveal is that if Ananke allowed you to become a god, it’s so she could see that you’d waste away your potential. House always wins, and when you burn the House down, another opens up next door.

 So this is where we are : our hopes of seeing any of it be worth it have been ridiculed, and all that’s left to uncover is precisely which joke our heroes have been the butt of. Cruel ? Maybe. But if fiction so often serves as a way to quench our thirst for grand emotions and epic stories, it’s precisely because outside of it, it feels much more often like one big joke than a sweeping tragedy. After all, Henri Bergson said it best : comedy is much truer to real life than drama.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUES

 I KNEW IT IT WAS ME I FIGURED IT OUT I KNEW IT WAS DAVID BLAKE I AM THE GODDESS OF FATE BOW TO ME MERE MORTALS !

Alright, I’ll stop.

But while seeing yourself being right is immensely satisfying, it cannot help but damage your read a little ; like I said many times before, I want writers to be smarter than me, to be able to take me by surprise. So if I’ve managed to guess something, that’s great for my ego, but it also makes me a bit sad : that’s just another plotpoint that won’t reach full impact with me because I had so much time interiorizing its potential.

And that’s sort of my problem with these two issues : they revolve around two kinds of plotpoints, some that didn’t surprise me (Dio and Sakhmet’s death, Woden’s identity, the reason for Laura’s attitude) and other that were impossible to guess (the beep machine, Minerva’s “identity”, the talking heads). Meaning that while reading those, I was pretty much letting the plot carry me without being able to pause and care. As I’ve said above, part of it is intentional, but it also means that there aren’t many punches in these issues that landed for me. I’ll definitely count Laura and Sakhmet’s last conversation as well as Cass and Laura’s fight as a success, but the “big” intimate moment of issue #33, the conversation between Cass and Laura, didn’t do much for me, probably because it seems to me that anyone with a functioning brain and ears knew exactly why Laura wasn’t her best self since she had become Persephone. I understand why Cass didn’t see it – as we’re discussed before, she is a factual thinker, meaning she can’t grasp with Laura’s guilt when it is so obviously unfounded – but I still don’t understand the decision to make this a big character moment when literally every sentence Laura had pronounced since the beginning of Imperial Phase revealed what she was going through. There’s nothing more infuriating that being fed information you already think of as canon. If you ask me, this moment is much more important and interesting for what it isn’t, that’s to say a romantic scene, than for what it is. Seeing Laura being rejected by Cass, and therefore breaking the pattern  of dragging people in her self-destroying orbit, is much more defining than her whole speech on guilt.

The problem is that most of the work these issues do is retrospective : if the Jon/David scene on its own has limited impact, the new depth it gives to all the Woden scenes we’ve already been through is vertiginous. Like I said, I did consider what the meaning of David Blake being Woden would be, but that’s another thing to be confronted with the actual fact. When you consider that David is talking to his decapitated, imprisoned son when he’s pouring out his thoughts make issue #14 go from merely quite repulsive to one of the most skin-crawlingly nauseating pieces of media ever written. I can’t imagine what the creators went through crafting this issue while knowing the entire story.

 As for the rest of the reveals, it’s a little hard to weigh on them without devolving into hardcore theorizing. We’re basically at the last stop before the comic has to lay out its hand ; it already managed to delay it through two entire arcs whose very point was to see how long they could get this blind game going. But for me as a reader, it also means I’m at the point in the story that’s the least interesting to me : the one where I have no choice than to follow the train as it’s well on its tracks, without any possibility to pause or jump ahead. I have to wait for the full story to know whether any of these twists paid out or not ; at this stage, I have both too much and too little to really be able to do something with it emotionally or intellectually.

 So as a final verdict because I have to go back to cramming for administrative litigation, I’d say these are two issues I’ll have to revisit once the comic is over, because I suspect they’ll be a lot better with the full story in hand. Most of its impact is on the issues before them and in the groundwork they lay out for the final year. So as a stop point, they may not hold much interest, but I can definitely see them be one of the comic’s most astute cogs once it’s done and over. As a two-parter finale, I like it more than the Imperial Phase (part I) finale : it’s more coherent in its construction and doesn’t try to bite off more than it can chew. It’s mostly plotpoints and twists, meaning it’s my least favourite kind of read, but once I’m able to put that aside to see it instead as a character work thread in a bigger design, it’ll probably hold my interest much more. But as of right now, I can at least commend it for how much it makes me want to reread everything from the beginning. Which I definitely do not have the time for right now. Damn you. Damn you all.

#wicdiv #seeds of thought #suprise fellow fans i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

[askmerriauthor]

I remember you railing against BvS pretty hard before. Have you seen Justice League yet?

I actually did get to see it just the other evening, yes.  Movie review and writing talk after the jump, because spoilers.

To its credit, JL is a far better movie than BvS.  That’s a very low bar to set, I admit, but the point stands.  That doesn’t mean it was a good movie though.

When I saw BvS I walked out of the theater thinking “Meh, it was boring but whatever”, only to become more and more angry about it from a writing standpoint as I mulled it over in my head in the following days.  JL garnered the same initial response but - despite my dwelling and pondering and scrutinizing - has not advanced any further than that same “meh”.  It’s a passable movie with plenty of problems (both in production and in performance) at best and just plain ol’ boring at worst.  The most generous I can be with the movie is to say that it had a lot of good ideas with very poor execution.

The basic thrust of the movie is that Batman feels guilty about the shenanigans he was up to in BvS and wants to make good by forming the Justice League to deal with threats now that Supes is dead.  The world has been getting progressively shittier since that event as society falls into a sort of existential dread afterward, contributed wholly to their iconic hero biting it.  Which is somehow what the baddie of the film - a shmoe named Steppenwolf - needs to enact his evil plan of evil bad death doom nasty bad.

Y’know, completely ignoring the fact that Supes was depicted as a severely divisive public figure in BvS that a bulk of the population actively hated, including the US government at large.

Anyway.  There’s a nonsense non-story about Steppenwolf needing to collect the three magical macguffins to destroy the world and the heroes need to join forces to stop him.  Honestly though?  Steppenwolf, as a villain, was utterly pointless.  He had no character, no involvement with the heroes, and spent the bulk of his time on screen only briefly popping in via teleportation and back out again.  He goes through the film collecting the magical macguffins, but for all the difference he makes himself, they could have just spared the character animation budget and made the macguffins naturally gravitate toward one another on their own.

Also - really movie?  Steppenwolf?  Really?  Of all the characters associated with Darkseid, we’re starting with freakin’ STEPPENWOLF?  I admit someone like Granny Goodness would have been a bit much for this movie, but we couldn’t have at least gotten Kalibak?

ANYWAY.  So the Justice League is put together from a ragtag bunch of misfits who overcome staggering odds, learning to be a team in the process.  Superman is brought back from the dead (because of course he is), Steppenwolf is defeated, and everything is hunky dory until the next movie.  Which apparently is going to involve the Legion of Doom rather than Darkseid if the after-credit stinger is to be believed, which just goes to show DC has absolutely not learned their lesson about trying to retroactively introduce characters in a big franchise.

I mean, seriously, who are we going to get in that movie?  Deathstroke apparently.  Solomon Grundy?  Cheetah?  Captain Cold?  Gorilla Grodd?  The general viewing public doesn’t know who the usual array of Legion of Doom’ers are and aren’t going to give one flying flip about seeing them shoe-horned together.  Especially not after the cluster that was Suicide Squad doing the exact same damn thing.

AN-NEE-WAY.  Justice League has a lot of trouble with its pacing and tone, with a clear breaking point happening halfway through the film when Superman is brought back to life.  In reviewing my thoughts on the movie, I keep coming back to that spot being where things really begin to unravel on the whole.  Writing wise, the movie has a hard time keeping itself steady as it constantly waffles between trying to be gritty and dour one moment, then playful and slapstick the next.  Apparently the film was handed over from Zack Snyder to Joss Whedon halfway through production which would certainly explain quite a lot, but doesn’t do much to excuse the final product.

We have a big ensemble cast to work with that the movie makes no effort to endear us to, on top of them being very contrary to previous depictions where the big three are concerned.  Bats, Supes, and Diana don’t act like they did in their previous movies at all.  Bats bounces between being  grim to actually cracking jokes and being the butt of a few himself, Supes spends half his time just sort of being there looking bewildered and the other half being incredibly smarmy, and Diana (along with the Amazons as a whole) had any-and-all character granted by her own movie violently siphoned out of her until she was a bland cardboard cutout.

Given that we just had such a great Wonder Woman standalone movie, this version of Diana really grates on my by comparison.  She’s dull, isn’t proactive, and spends the film needing to be goaded into being a hero by Batman of all people.  Bats is constantly lecturing and advising her on how to be a hero, a leader, how to not lock herself away from the world and others… y’know, stuff that Batman classically has trouble with himself and it REALLY SHOULD BE DIANA TEACHING HIM THAT SHIT SINCE SHE ALREADY DID ALL THAT IN HER OWN DAMN MOVIE AND BEING A RECLUSIVE UNTRUSTWORTHY ASS IS LITERALLY BATMAN’S ENTIRE M.O. IN THIS FRANCHISE.

Flash was fun though.  I enjoyed his presence and jokes, which felt a bit more natural since he is such a young character compared to the rest.  Cyborg was just sort of there as a plot device - dude literally just grows new powers and plucks meta-information out of nowhere whenever the plot needs him to.  Thor - I mean Drax - I mean Aquaman was… well, he was there.  Yep.  He sure did take up screen real estate without actually having any useful contributions to the story, setting, theme, or conflict resolution.

This may just be my own personal sense of humor at play, but there was a gag I really wish they’d gone for with Flash.  After he’s first introduced and the movie is half-assedly explaining his powers, he points out that using his superspeed burns tons of calories, so he’s always famished and is constantly snacking.  “I’m like a blackhole for snacks.  A snack-hole.” he says, while chowing down on an entire pizza himself as he walks.  It’s a fun notion that is never used in the movie beyond that.  At most he says “I’m hungry” about 45 minutes later and is told to go have nosh off-screen, but that’s it.  Since Flash is constantly zipping around from moment to moment, I really wanted to see him always eating whenever he’s not doing something important.  Like, every scene should have him munching on something different.  He’ll be chowing down on this big burrito in the background as the camera slightly pans away to someone talking, and then when it pans back he’s got a tub of Ben & Jerry’s under his arm.  Or in any scene where he has to stand still for more than 10 seconds, each time the camera cuts back to him, there’s increasingly large and varied stacks of discarded food containers scattered around him.

Or, hell, just have him share his snacks with the others.  It would’ve been super cute for him to offer Diana some ice cream and have her be genuinely delighted in return.

Except, y’know, that would require Diana to actually have character in this movie…

The strongest scene in the entire movie to me (and certainly to a bulk of the audience for how vocal a reaction it got in the theater) was right after Supes is resurrected.  He’s all addle-brained and violent because he’s still grave-groggy, so he starts fighting the League members.  As he’s being dogpiled by the rest, Flash kicks into superspeed and starts running around him.  The movie shows the rest of the world freezing in place from Flash’s point of view… until Supes’ eyes start tracking Flash’s movement ever so slowly.  That single point made for a fantastic “OH SHIT” moment that nothing else in the film managed to hit quite as well.  Unfortunate on the whole, but I will give points for that one, if nothing else.

Supes actually tries to fight Flash with both of them going at superspeed, which is a neat bit as well.  It’s clear in watching how they’re moving that Supes is indeed slower, but only just, and it’s more because Flash is so startled that anyone can begin to keep up with him - along with his own inexperience - that Supes takes him out pretty quickly.  The same can’t be said for the big bad of the film.  Steppenwolf is effectively invincible to everything the entire movie, including the heroes.  Attacks literally bounce off him without him even realizing they landed in the first place.  The League members do their best to fight him and will, from time to time, manage to put him through a wall or stagger him before he knocks them through several buildings himself.  But because everyone is pretty much the same level of invulnerable, the fights become pointless because they’re just knocking each other around through papier-mâché set pieces without effect.

But then Supes shows up and instantly trivializes whatever threat Steppenwolf was supposed to have.  It’s played like Awakened Neo verses the Agents in the first Matrix movie, right down to the whole “leaning casually away from a mega-punch” move.  Supes casually walks all over this villain without any effort whatsoever, actually leaves the fight entirely for a few minutes to go save a building full of civilians (by literally picking up the entire apartment complex over his head and flying away with it, because all effort at gritty realism is long gone), and then comes back to derisively snark “Is this guy still bothering you?” at the rest of the group.  And y’know what?  Even with all that, the heroes don’t even kill off the bad guy.  He gets swarmed by his own mindless Parademons for absolutely no good reason, because apparently suddenly a bunch of canon fodder minions that even Batman can take out in a toe-to-toe fight are powerful enough to overwhelm Steppenwolf?

The movie’s writing falls prey to two very common problems the comics suffer from, and it is purely a fault of the writers.  You’ll often hear people say “Superman is a boring character - he’s got unlimited power so he’s impossible to write good stories for”, which is the hallmark of an unimaginative writer.  The other common problem is many writers’ fondness for hoisting Batman up on a pedestal as this amazing genius who can do no wrong.  We get both here.  Batman is the driving force behind everything that happens and all other characters’ motivations, and yet is so vastly outclassed by their power at the same time that the movie struggles to find anything for him to do.  Superman is so beyond powerful that he makes the rest of the movie and its entire cast obsolete - he can do anything in this version through brute force alone, so how is there any danger or conflict?  He literally stops the destruction of the world by using brute strength to pull apart the three macguffins with his bare hands.

So… yeah.  Justice League has a lot of problems if you look at it any harder than just “open eyes, turn off brain, eat popcorn”.  If you can do those steps, it’s a passable bit of brainless fluff and flashy special effects.  And it’s still a superior film to BvS by a vast margin.

#justice league #batman v superman #wonder woman