WIP Wednesday: baby edition
This week I present my first attempt at writing DC fic for a pairing other than superbat - but, you know, only barely because this is for superbat mini, aka jondami. This is the start of a fic I'm planning out about Jon and Damian through the years (ignoring Bendis' timeskip because I can) in a coming of age story, in which Jon tries to deal with figuring out he's bi and having a crush on his cool(-ish) older best friend. Working title: Puberty Fucking Sucks because like. It just does.
It started when Jon was 12.
There wasn’t anything special about the day itself. In fact, it was pretty ordinary: a normal Thursday afternoon where he and Damian were passing the time between school and patrol in their base, as they did every week. Damian was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, curled over his sketchbook, doing… Well, Jon didn’t know what Damian put in his sketchbook, since he’d made Jon promise not to look. Jon was nice and a good friend – and maybe a little scared of what Damian might consider fair retribution – so he always humored him.
Meanwhile, Jon was slumped on the couch, putting off doing his homework by half-reading a manga that Damian had recommended. A…shujo? Shogo? Some kind of romance thing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t really enough to capture Jon’s attention. So instead, he found himself watching Damian.
They’d been best friends for most of the last 2 years at this point, so Damian was very familiar to him at this point. But in his boredom, Jon found himself focusing on the details of his face in a way he hadn't before, looking at the parts and not the whole. His eyes were slanted and striking, piercingly and vividly green even hidden below the thick, dark sweep of his lashes. His nose had a little bump at the bridge, and his mouth was small and turned down at the corners, so he always looked a little grumpy even when he was in a good mood. His hair was dark and crazy thick (it was an Arab thing apparently, or so Damian had told him when he’d mentioned it one time) and it was surprisingly soft when he didn’t style it. Jon knew that from personal experience, because once Damian had let Jon hug him during a sleepover when he’d had a nightmare, and Jon couldn’t help but rub his face into it a little, like a cat. Damian had grumbled a little but hadn’t pulled away
Damian was really pretty, Jon thought. It wasn’t a new thought. Damian had always been pretty – though not pretty like girls were pretty, just…attractive. It was just a fact of life, in the way that most actors and pop stars and even Damian’s own parents were just obviously, objectively nice to look at.
But still, something about this Damian was different from the version that lived in Jon’s head. He was still shorter than Jon, although not by much. But even though Damian was smaller than him, he somehow looked…more. Older. His hands had always been long and kinda elegant, but now they looked as strong as Jon knew they were. And his jaw was no longer round and soft like Jon’s, but sharp and defined. Masculine. There was a breadth to his shoulders that felt new, even though logically it couldn’t be since he saw Damian most days, but…but somehow he hadn’t really noticed it before. It made his uniform blazer hang differently, in a way that felt weirdly distracting.
Damian wasn’t just pretty anymore, he realized. Damian was handsome. And Jon wasn’t sure why, but something about that thought got to him, made him feel weirdly hot and squirmy inside.
He quickly buried his face in the pages of the manga he wasn’t reading. He’d felt like this before, months ago. He was watching a commercial break with his parents and the pretty actress on screen had really enjoyed her branded yoghurt. Jon had gone very quiet and very red, and his dad had shot him a knowing look. Which was pretty much the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to anyone ever.
Jon had mumbled something about finishing his homework and fled upstairs. He spent most of that evening typing a bunch of awkward questions into google in private browsing mode. And then after that, he’d guiltily rewatched that yoghurt commercial a few dozen times – but on mute, so his dad couldn’t hear. His attempt at secrecy didn't really pay off, because a week later his dad had come into his room and sat him down for a Talk, as in the Talk, which had firmly pushed the yoghurt incident itself to second place in the ranking of Most Embarrassing Things.
But…but this didn’t make sense, Jon thought to himself. Why would Jon be having yoghurt commercial feelings about Damian? Damian was his best friend!
He chanced a peek at Damian over the top of his manga. It was still just Damian, familiar and sulky and way lamer than he liked to pretend he was. His best friend, Damian. He had his head bowed, pink tongue poking out between his lips like it did when he was intensely focused, and for some reason Jon couldn’t stop staring—
He forcibly ripped his gaze away, mortified. Oh no, this was weird. This was so weird. The yoghurt commercial was rapidly being pushed to third place in the rankings. He needed to leave right now.
He stood abruptly. “Hey, so I’m gonna go.”
Damian turned his head to look at him sharply. His habitual scowl was tinged with confusion. “What? Go where? We’re supposed to patrol in an hour.”
“Just training,” Jon said, false-bright. “I’m gonna work on some stuff. Training stuff.”
The confusion was very much still present. “Oookay?” Damian said. He flipped his sketchbook closed. “Did you want to spar? I could—”
“Nope,” Jon chirped, already edging towards the door. He was trying very hard to look at anything but Damian, which was probably super suspicious, but. Looking at Damian just felt like a lot, okay?
“It’s just some dumb superpower training my dad told me to do,” he continued. “It wouldn’t interest you, trust me. So you can just stay right here, while I go…away from here.” He winced. “Anyway, see you at patrol!”
He didn’t wait for Damian to respond before he turned and marched out of the room, well aware that he was acting absolutely insane but completely powerless to stop it. Thankfully, even though Jon knew Damian was incredibly suspicious of his behavior, he didn’t follow him.
Jon spent the rest of the time before patrol carefully carving patterns into wooden blocks with his heat vision and trying not to think about Damian’s opinions on Activia.
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I don’t speak Japanese so I’d LOVE to hear more about the differences between the English and Japanese Re:Zero fandoms
yeah sure its very interesting to me now that ive noticed it more lately :o !! though ok disclaimer - i dont speak japanese either hah so if anyone is seeing this and does speak japanese + is familiar with the japanese speaking side of this fandom please add info if youd like!! and of course ill be mainly speaking from the english side of things bc im more familiar with that yes (sorry anon again im not a japanese speaker T^TT so sorry if i tread on info you already know!!). but yeah im speaking from my own experiences given the Topic at hand. ive been in this fandom since... 2019?? which is so wild to me aljsdfljsd.
anyway so - i think the big difference is mainly that the english fandom and many english speaking people that engage with rezero are. to put it bluntly, misconception runs Rampant to a very Interesting degree. to the point where it seems like the english speaking side of the fandom is More. Aggressive. than the japanese fandom. not that the japanese speaking side of the fandom is perfect - also bc what fandom is ever perfect 100% of the time, tbh - but that the louder people in the english rezero fandom are. well its a Very low bar. Very low. and from what little ive seen and heard so far, the japanese fandom tends to understand rezero and its characters better than the english fandom. which ig makes sense bc you know, rezero is japanese media, and also im sure cultural differences come into play here as well (im not familiar enough on this to speak about it in depth but the cultural differences feel Pretty Clear even though i cant 100% put my finger on what they specifically are).
but also bc yeah. its not That hard to beat some of the english fandom when it comes to media comprehension. misreading rezero is unfortunately Extremely common, both in and out of the rezero community. its Everywhere - youtube, myanimelist, ao3, ff.net, reddit, twitter, various rezero discords - and from what ive experienced, rezero tumblr basically kind of feels like finding an oasis after crawling through the desert for days on end lajdslfjs. which is probs bc rezero tumblr is Smaller and also a lot of us seem to be lgbtq+ in some way or be allies, so you dodge a lot of the misogyny and homophobia that happens in other rezero english circles. its why you see a lot of openly queer rezero-related posts on here while its a bit more. barren. in other rezero english places yes. bc its more safe to post queer rezero things on rezero tumblr rather than rezero reddit for Sure.
im not sure how the japanese fandom is with that exactly but theres some interesting differences between whats popular in the english fandom vs the japanese fandom. i mean as an otto fan ive been noticing how hes more popular with the japanese fandom—and on top of that, ottosuba is Way More popular in the japanese fandom too. reinsuba and julisuba seem to usually be the most popular mlm subaru ships in both fandoms but ottosuba is like A Little Up There in the japanese fandom. not sure if its on the same level as a ship like reinsuba but ottosubas Definitely loved as a ship. from what little ive seen it also seems like ships like vichisha are more acknowledged by the japanese fandom? im not entirely sure on like—Complete differences regarding what the japanese fandom finds interesting that may differ from english fandom, so ill really have to look more into the japanese fandoms fanart and fanfic when i can bc im pretty curious too. in general though, it seems like the japanese fandom has a bit more variety…. you can find fanart on So Many characters in rezero (which already has a very Massive cast full of very fleshed out characters) there. not that you cant in the english fandom bc theres a Bit of variety too, but id more so contribute that a little more to the Big Cast and less to having actual variety in fancontent. and of course im not saying that the japanese fandom may be a bit barren in some areas of fancontent—bc inevitably when u have a big cast of characters, side character content is gonna be more sparse compared to the main characters, but to me it does feel like the english fandom lacks variety in comparison. (and also yeah. seems like the japanese fandom acknowledges gay ships more in general tbh.)
whats focused in fancontent makes it easy to tell what may be popular in a fandom in terms of how fans perceive the source material and what fandoms want to do with the source material, if that makes sense. and its very easy to tell that with the english fandom if you just hop on rezero ao3–or even better, rezero reddit given theres a fanfic ideas thread thats usually pinned right at the top of the site. again i havent looked at japanese fanfic for rezero yet (bc i dont know where to look oops ajdndn) but when it comes to the english fandom you can tell that theyre generally more focused on the female cast both in fanart and in fanfic bc. theyre women and many fans on say, reddit or various rezero discords, are cis straight men, so inevitably… well lets just say you can tell when a man makes content for this fandom o.o theres also the. very weird reaction fic trends and trends following popular fics in the fandom, the two biggest being the watching him die again and again react fic and re:forgotten, the former of which includes a harem plot with subaru and the main girls of rezero while the latter is one of those subaru gets tortured by his ooc friends and then he gets revenge on them fics. which i suppose says something about the english fandom too.
of course on ao3 its dominated mainly by english fics (of course not all fics on there for rezero are in english— big shoutout to all the non english fics on rezero ao3 ur doing great <3 — but the majority are in english). and while yeah ur occasionally gonna find stuff like queer content or side character content or rarepair content, its definitely not that big in amount and also comes with the risk of. Hate. if anyones reading this and remembers the lone star stuff. (if u dont know—lone star was a julius x emilia fic where they NTR subaru or some shit and then it got bombed with hate bc of the ship? yeah.) so yeah english fandom is very cis straight oriented, ironically with the nastiest people being the very people that rezero criticizes. though this is also my personal experience, i do know several people personally whove been in this fandom for a while or were here for a while and yeah english fandom isnt very welcoming at times???? and it seems like at the very least the japanese fandom is A Little Less Aggressive than the english fandom is.
otherwise. yeah im very very curious about more of the differences in popular content between the japanese vs english fandom. i mean the english fandom’s main focus on the female cast for. Interesting Reasons other than their actual character depth is… interesting. and the astreas being popular in general vs otto + ottosubas popularity fluctuating is also very interesting to me (but i have several guesses as to Why that is), among other things. yeah id love to know what else the japanese fandom likes about rezero and see more of their content. i also have to wonder if characters like emilia and subaru are hated less by the japanese fandom…. T^T well that and the english fandom and many english speaking people engaging in rezero have this interesting pattern of either hating subaru No Matter What, wanting subaru to Not Be Subaru (ie using him as a self insert almost or attempting to change him into virtually another character), or putting subaru on a pedestal and ignoring his flaws and mistakes and that he Can do wrong. like theres Really not a lot of nuance there. so i wonder if the japanese fandom is. A Little more chill when it comes to character opinions like this too.
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