i cant read

yes! i ran into an unfortunate series of obstacles (contributing to society, maintaining a career, briefly falling out of love with writing) but i have somehow found myself back here. i’m a salmon inexplicably returning to the place of my birth.

you can use it against me in court for all i care. i think it’s an overdone and unremarkable character reference.

12 year old jason todd was scaring himself shitless with the 80s cocaine-infused stephen king paperbacks going unmonitored at the local library. he was keeping himself up at night reading about dead danny knocking on mark’s window in the middle of the night in salem’s lot and hanratty the bull coming back from the dead in pet semetary (which also directly influenced his taste in music— “hey ho! let’s go!”)

this was a kid from below the poverty line living in the most dangerous neighborhood in gotham left unmonitored after school. he was getting kicked out of his local underfunded library before closing each day because he was hiding from his abusive asshole father and addict mother. my boy was NOT perusing the romance shelf for 18th century english novelists.

this was a kid reading jack ketchum, ray bradbury, philip k dick and having a blast doing it. he couldn’t get enough of the pulpy and provocative garbage richard matheson put out between writing twilight zone episodes. hell house kept him up for weeks. he was sneaking chapters of a clockwork orange in between classes. the haunted carrousel that turns mr. dark into a corpse at the end of something wicked this way comes instilled a fear of things that spin too quickly and of growing up. he was reading through frank herbert’s dune series during stakeouts with bruce and trying to explain that leto II’s transformation into a sandworm in god emperor of dune was not only an allegory of human society but also just real fucking gross. he got halfway through anne rice’s vampire chronicles before tapping out at memnoch the devil; ghosts, televangelists, and the weird depictions of heaven and hell just weren’t sitting right with a catholic kid, but lestat’s triumphant leather pants and altruistic nature were entertaining. Jason named his 6th grade goldfish after claudia, who, in a spirit of irony, died a year in.

i’m just not convinced that an asshole kid raised by absentee flea-bitten parents and the theological horrors of the catholic church was looking to read 18th century romances. even if you want to argue that he was a savant of high literature, my boy was reading dracula, the count of monte cristo, we have always lived in the castle, the hunchback of notre dame— the type of gothic-horror and sci-fi my asshole older brothers were reading as teens. they used to write down the words they didn’t know on a piece of paper (lugubrious, chicanery, refulgent) and google the definitions. sometimes they’d make me guess what each word meant and erupt into hysterics when i guessed wrong (heavy? a type of chicken? the pump thingy at the gas station?)

when i said i needed someone to hype me up, i didn’t mean you. you actually have the power to make me do it. sometimes i lay awake at night and wonder if likerubies knows that i dip my quill into my ink pot before the fire and transcribe my batman fics like a medieval scribe scratching out religious tomes with the conviction of having just been visited by the haunting aura of an angel. i am but a pathetic author. you are my personal seraphim.

in all seriousness, timjay is unfairly daunting. is it embarrassing to admit defeat? probably. am i too proud to give into defeat? unfortunately. i’ve already spent this morning writing 500 words of timjay. your name and influence is all over it.

for a second time?? god you are a damn hero.

writing dick’s backstory started out as just a fun little character study, but it’s definitely grown into its own beast. he has some complex intricacies that get overlooked a lot by comic writers, so i very much feel like fic writers are doing god’s work by exploring his backstory and giving him some more substance. sexual urges, anger issues, failing self-worth, etc. he’s like a bucket. we can fill this fucker to the top with so many issues.

i could talk about dick grayson for an eternity. we don’t need that.

thank you!!! i am weepy and lousy with gratitude!! dickjay is my lantern and i am a moth beating myself senseless against it.

god thank you so much!! i would love to kiss you gently on the back of the hand, but alas, we are two ships in the night.

oh wow damn thank you so much, genuinely. you yourself write beautifully judging by this ask.

i love to scare people. i want to write fear in excess until it’s soaking the story. it’s like slathering grotesque amounts of butter onto a slice of hot toast. is it necessary? no. is it possibly a disservice to the bread to hide its vibes and own attributes under the overwhelming spotlight given to the butter? yes.

what am i talking about.

i want a gotham that’s scary and laden with corners. i want the atmosphere itself to crackle and boom with ozone and smog and electricity.

i want a jason todd that toes the line between born-right and died-wrong. i want a jason todd that licks his teeth and cringes at how sharp they’ve become. i want a jason todd who can’t recognize his fingers, who still has dreams of being 5’6” and cant reconcile with it when he wakes up, who is so hungry and hurt and afraid that he snaps his jowls at the only hands that ever loved him.

i want a dick grayson who can’t figure things out and it makes him dangerous. i want a dick grayson who pries open his chest and unplugs his heart from the arteries and veins around it just to offer it to the first person he decides deserves it most. i want a dick grayson who bucks and kicks and chafes, only to come crawling back angrier and sadder and less.