songs for you, truths for me

But anyway my mom wanted me to clear my childhood bedroom out so I was doing that and thinking I should clean out the boxes for my kotobukiya artfx figures. As I took those out…

Yay! Batman’s favourite twink (because Capullo drew him with big twink energy let’s be fucking real here) has been recovered!!!

I’m pretty sure I repacked him when I had to change display cabinets because the old one had a case of degradation.

But man o man I was having a time trying to get him out of the box again. Both escrima sticks went flying, thankfully not out of the balcony and 19 stories below to the ground (eeks).

And then getting the escrima sticks into his hands… omfg..

One hand fully broke off. 🫠🤣🫣

It’s an action figure, and a small fiddly piece of it, I think it’s just natural plastic degradation. The plastic joint did not come off with his wrist. And a bit of it broke off.

I guess I’ll try gluing his hand back with cryanoacrylate glue..? And then perhaps bandage it with washi tape to be safe lol.

When I first got on Tumblr and early in my Batfandom days, she was like. In the milieu here. Literally, she had a Tumblr and she would randomly reblog posts (because replies didn’t exist then). I’d see it in between all the unhinged BruDick & Batfam comics posts.

So Taylor Swift and Batfandom are super intertwined in a very specific 2010s Tumblr way but it’s bittersweet posting this here now because most of my buddies and mutuals from that time have moved on (and off tumblr). Some people have fully disappeared, and are hopefully doing well. Life goes on, and so does fandom (but somehow I’m back here at the restaurant, sitting in a corner I haunt).

So in my time in MDZS fandom, there are two strands of reincarnation fic I’ve encountered:

it’s actually a new character with the soul of the old one and some similarities - perhaps looks? Eyes? Some personality traits? But a different name

It’s the same character virtually, down to the name, just reborn eons later. This works more with your xianxia period pieces (or perhaps you could do it in the Tolkien-verse too since the Silm etc are all technically written as histories of a version of our modern world).

First strand is generally less interesting to me because I wanna read OTP not “One half of OTP with improved version of the other half”. (In this specific scenario I also will defend Bruce doesn’t need improving per se, he is a terribly flawed man but so are all humans and Dick Grayson doesn’t just love Bruce because Bruce saved him; he admires all of Bruce’s positive qualities that lead him to dedicate his life to justice and helping people/his community in his own specific weird way).

But. If you’re gonna do Bruce reincarnated immediately after dying, the latter would be — difficult but I suppose possible because lbr what isn’t possible in the DCU…

He could just be a Bruce born in a different, more sheltered part of the US with all the personality traits of his other counterpart/

Anyway Dick, years on from Bruce’s death, somehow finding a groove as his own version of Batman - the cape and cowl are his own widower’s weeds - but mostly feeling hollow and meaningless about life. Helping the child that Talia suddenly brings to their doorstep gives him some purpose, as is maybe working with Tim and Babs and Cass and Steph and Helena and all those other people who came around to orbit around Bruce.

But then he meets this kid (who, idk, maybe moves to Gotham to attend Gotham Academy’s program for gifted teenagers, perhaps under a Wayne Foundation scholarship) and he’s also named Bruce, which doesn’t really mean anything immediately except that, well, it’s an old-fashioned name you don’t hear much around these days.

But then he also has these intense blue eyes that feel so familiar and leaves Dick having weird, inappropriate vibes towards this 16/17 year old.

(and yeah I guess somehow he is on-planet and gets to Ethiopia)

I found one WIP like this but. In this WIP, Bruce seems sad about Dick’s death, but there’s maybe a hundred words or so of lip service “how sad for this life to be cut short” before Bruce decides to mentally/emotionally move on.

And in fact, soon after, Bruce decides to take Tim on as a sidekick.

It’s Jason who is the only one who is like “am I the only one who cares that Dick Grayson is dead?”

It takes being utterly hammered on a Friday night out with his new college friends for Dick to finally make any kind of move. More specifically, it's right after their third round of sambuca shots that Dick finds himself blurting out: “I hooked up with the hottest man in Gotham.” 

Three heads swivel towards him. Dick bites his lip and downs more of his alcopop. 

I don’t even usually enjoy dark grisly media but the first comic I read way back when was Morrison’s Batman & Robin so like. That’s just how Dick Grayson is supposed to be to me?

I’m still enjoying the Watters/Cowan arc. There’s a character in the new issue, 139, that’s really emphasising the idea of this as the Nightwing take on Batman: Dark Patterns.

But when Damian asks, Bruce goes on this long tangent about like… the blue bird of paradise. And so they’re all googling it like what is this animal that has Bruce waxing so lyrical???

Weeeeeellllll: