AU were instead of like, yeeting him off the moon or whatever, Lucretia’s holy symbol was only just powerful enough to keep Barry from fully manifesting, so he ends up kinda like…haunting the Bureau.
And like, he’s still Lich Barry, trying to go for the dramatics and all, but keeping up the charade when he’s just barely managing to even be there’s a little tricky and sometimes he forgets to be spooky. So some days everyone wakes up to ＴＨＥ ＨＵＮＧＥＲ ＡＰＰＲＯＡＣＨＥＳ burned into the quad, and other days Taako leaves the shower to find ＴＨＥＲＥ ＷＡＳ ＡＮ ＥＡＲＲＩＮＧ ＢＡＣＫ ＯＮ ＴＨＥ ＦＬＯＯＲ,Ｉ ＰＵＴ ＩＴ ＯＮ ＴＨＥ ＤＲＥＳＳＥＲ ＦＯＲ ＹＯＵ scrawled into the steam.
In between spontaneously combusting paper work and the occasional broken mug, Barry is actually pretty helpful. He opens doors for people who are carrying stuff. He makes bloody massages appear reminding Merle to take his meds. He had a whole long ass conversation with Carey about relationships through Thieves Cant. The members of the B.O.B. start to get pretty attached to their erratic but friendly poltergeist. Because he’s never fully manifested, and therefore not visible, most people assume he’s one of their dead comrades (There’s a betting pool on who it actually is. People hold out hope for Boyland, but a lot of people strongly suspect Lucas Miller) and Lucretia doesn’t know how to explain that it’s actually a Red Robethat we really need to get rid of guys without explaining why a Red Robe would scratch ＬＵＣＲＥＴＩＡ ＨＡＶＥ ＹＯＵ ＲＥＡＤ ＴＨＥＳＥ ＤＥＴＥＣＴＩＶＥ ＮＯＶＥＬＳ ＴＨＥＹ’ＲＥ ＡＣＴＵＡＬＬＹ ＲＥＡＬＬＹ ＧＯＯＤ Ｉ ＴＨＩＮＫ ＹＯＵ’Ｄ ＬＩＫＷＡＩＴ ＦＵＣＫ ＮＯ Ｉ’Ｍ ＭＡＤ ＡＴ ＹＯＵ ＮＥＶＥＲ ＭＩＮＤ into her office door.
it’s really wild to see how batman has evolved over time as a consequence of writers wanting to change everything while also changing nothing because any comic that lives that long is a shambling stitched-together corpse
early batman is a swashbuckler and he’s having a good-ass time beating up these bad guys, because he existed in the context of organized crime being a big fucking problem. they were coming out of the 1930s. that’s the era of al capone, you know? john dillinger only died five years ago and he was a fucking celebrity. and batman shows up to be like YOU KNOW WHAT’S COOLER THAN SHOOTING PEOPLE AND BRIBING GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS? BEING BATMAN.
early batman could not have been more clearly edutainment, pulpy enough to make kids feel like they were reading That Good Shit but always with a really obvious message (the message was DON’T DO A CRIME). he fights a lot of giants because having to protect yourself from people twice your size is very #relatable to children.
when he adopts robin it’s very clearly to give kids a character to relate to more strongly than they can bruce wayne–FIGHTING CRIMES ISN’T JUST FOR RICH MEN, IT’S ALSO FOR COOL KIDS LIKE YOU. see how cool robin is, kicking the shit out of these dudes? don’t you wanna be cool, like robin? he’s from the circus, that thing you wanted to run away to because that’s a viable life choice in this era!
bruce wayne was rich but his whole cover was that rich people are fucking useless. a man who inherited money? a fucking useless, lazy shit, no question. this was just accepted by everyone, that obviously an heir would never be suspected of doing anything that might take effort. the difference in attitude on a fundamental level toward the idle rich is staggering.
his wealth is also MONUMENTALLY downplayed, in the same way you see in old movies. they deliberately did not film the philadelphia story in an actual mansion because they didn’t think anyone would believe that the rich got to live like that. so bruce wayne ends up looking like he lives in a tract home in a suburb. “is this how rich people live? yeah, sure, probably. who cares, let’s fight crimes.”
they only introduce a backstory after the comic has been going for a while, because at first it’s like? why would he need a reason to fight crime? it’s fun? but i guess they figured they had to create SOME reason for bruce wayne to not be completely useless, as all rich men are. why is bruce wayne the only rich man capable of doing cool shit? because his parents died, that’s why. check out robin kicking this dude in the head. fucking sweet, right?
there’s a whole storyline where batman fights a whole fucking town because it’s corrupt and the cops are corrupt and THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS CORRUPT so he’s gonna FIGHT THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IF HE HAS TO, FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR COCAINE.
then the comics code happens and fucks everything. batman can’t fight, like, systemic corruption and dudes with tommy guns anymore. all the crimes get CARTOONY AS SHIT. the joker isn’t just a murderous jewel thief with a weird face, he’s a fucking clown. he’s a weird clown man committing clown crimes. puns everywhere. suddenly batman is fighting Supervillains, and they’re all insane. but they aren’t, really? they are a cartoon’s idea of insanity, like a wolf in a straitjacket getting hit on the head with a mallet. when a character is insane what that actually means is they’re wacky, they do weird shit, they have no meaningful motivation and do crimes for no reason because the alternative is having them commit real crimes for good reasons and that’s not good for the kiddos. the fact that batman changed so much after the code is fucking WILD because, remember, it was ALWAYS for the kids. it was BLATANTLY for the kids. the code still managed to fuck it just through the culture shift it created.
then later there’s this shift, again, away from the code and away from kids entirely. late seventies, i think? fuck if i know, i don’t know shit about damn. suddenly they want to be more GRITTY and REAL and DARK. they want REAL CRIME. batman is PUNCHING RAPISTS IN ALLEYS. but this isn’t the era of dillinger anymore. as a society, collectively, we understand more about crime and the societal forces that drive people to crime and so on. there are a lot of alley rapists in this era of comics tbh and this is probably why. rapists always deserve to get punched regardless of class struggle. also at this point we understand more about violence, and people who are violent, who commit acts of violence and solve problems with violence and enjoy being violent. a rich guy having a blast kicking a guy in the head for robbing a bank is no longer great optics.
so batman stops having fun. this is now his dark mission, his grim assignment. he doesn’t like this job, but someone’s gotta do it. he will not smile as he punches a rapist in the head. this is serious business. i don’t necessarily have a problem with this decision, because i think it’s a legitimate course of action to say “in a modern context, these behaviors become unacceptable, and so we will change his behaviors so that he can continue to be a heroic figure”. that’s valid as a motherfucker and i wish more people would remember that the whole point of making batman a grump was so that he could continue to be a good guy, as opposed to the alternative of gleeful violence.
(getting rid of most of the violence is also good–he’s a detective–but these are comics we’re talking about here so lol)
and then there’s the villains. you’d think this would be the point where they say “hey, maybe let’s go back to the way some of our villains were before the code”. you’d think that if they hated the goofy villains so much they’d just move on. but it’s comics so nothing ever goes in the trash for good. and that’s when you have writers who look at a cartoon wolf in a straitjacket and they say “that’s not what insanity looks like! we should make him a sociopath.”
i mean you could have just said “let’s stop calling him crazy and try to find a better motivation for these crimes, like being an asshole” but instead now batman has all these villains with sociopathy and OCD and DID and schizophrenia, because that makes it REAL, because now instead of being cartoon crazy people committing cartoon crimes they are real crazy people committing real crimes!! OH BOY
and at some point someone looks at this and goes “you know i feel like this might be ableist as shit” and writers could have said “yeah in retrospect the only evil clown i’m aware of was legally deemed sane and didn’t actually commit thematically appropriate crimes, so maybe mental health isn’t the issue here” but instead they said “yes, batman is kind of an asshole to be punching these sick people, but he’s a necessary asshole because without him there would be Crazy Crimes and we all just have to come to terms with that i guess”
now we’re at this place where we’re trying to reconcile about eighty years of nonsensical horseshit and all of these decisions that were made because of shifting cultural attitudes or to sell comics or because one writer in particular assumed everyone would love his cool OC as much as he did, and there are writers going “you know, bruce wayne probably has pretty severe ptsd” and there are writers going “what if batman was the REAL villain all along” and there are writers going “lol rich man wears bat costume to punch the mentally ill and poors, did u ever think about that” and there are writers going “hey have you heard of this ayn rand chick because boy howdy i just did and now i’ve got ideas”
but the reality is that heroism and goodness are not static concepts that look the same to all people even within the same era and trying to reconcile every different version of what the popular conception of heroism has looked like for almost a century is dumb as hell and batman should have entered the public domain in 2014
I know no one pays attention to Charlie Weasley’s date of birth and this is an incredibly nitpicky timeline complaint, but according to the wiki, Charlie graduated Hogwarts in June of 1991. (Harry and Ron show up for their first year of Hogwarts in September of 1991.)
I thought it was implied (or perhaps outright stated) that the Gryffindor Quidditch team was dismal the year before Harry became Seeker? McGonagall says outright to Wood that they were flattened in their last match with Slytherin and that she couldn’t look Snape in the eye for weeks.
So… did Charlie not play Quidditch in his last year? Did he get injured in Care of Magical Creatures class or something? McGonagall and Wood are absolutely the sort to get overly dramatic about the state of the Gryffindor Quidditch team due to one match where Charlie Weasley couldn’t make it (maybe he had a job interview that weekend), but it really makes more sense to me if Charlie was just one year older and Gryffindor went through a “Great Year of Shame”.
I think for my upcoming fic, it’s either going to be “universe alteration: Charlie Weasley is one year older” or I’m going to have to make sure that Minerva McGonagall and Oliver Wood take every opportunity to passive-aggressively complain about Charlie Weasley’s “Betrayal” of the Gryffindor Team to Ron.
(Ron: “???He was in the hospital???”)
Oliver Wood, when Harry starts ending up in the Hospital Wing due to his adventures, wide-eyed with horror: “Oh, no. It’s happening again.”
I just assumed that Charlie pulled a F&G and left after getting his OWLs. Maybe he had a six year, maybe not, but that he didn’t do seventh or bother with NEWTs at all. It’s not like we know what the required qualifications are at the dragon reserve.
Oliver Wood and Professor McGonagall being Gryffindover Dramatic about missing one match is amazing and perfect, though.
Oh, I like that idea. I could totally see Charlie speedrunning his last couple years at Hogwarts, taking his NEWTs at the end of his sixth, then running away to Romania now that he’s seventeen and officially An Adult.
I figure Molly would be out for blood if Charlie just ditched his NEWTs altogether, but Charlie countered that by getting the absolute minimum number of NEWTs (he did well, though) needed for his job (or to later get promoted at the reserve into a job that did require qualifications) and to graduate Hogwarts. (I don’t know how wizards do post-secondary education and the field of magizoology is obvious a hot mess, but Charlie is the Weasley I can most see doing an apprenticeship or some magical university / college program.)
So, Molly is… proud… of him, but I imagine Charlie also countered that by just straight-up not telling anyone he was going to pull this. Like, he studied himself (using Bill’s books), he signed up for the exams himself (maybe Bill also took a NEWT early), and then he went out and got the job himself. (Initially failing to get his Apparition License was a bit of a setback, but it was a good diversion for his family while he was stressing out over his NEWTs.)
Like, no one really had time to be proud of Charlie? Because, like, he just dropped it all on them and then left for his New Adult Job a week later (max).
(Charlie, I imagine, is a very steady dude, which lulls people into a sense of complacency, but he’s interspersed with Big Exciting Moments. Like when he was eight, he went out and caught a toad, put the toad on a chicken’s egg, took careful notes, and almost succeeded in making a basilisk. Every once a while the older Weasleys are still overcome with the urge to “Check On What Charlie Is Doing Now”, but when they checked on him over the past year, they mistakenly passed it off as “oh, just school stress” and didn’t look closer.)
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Charlie says, reassuring, in the same not-actually-reassuring way he talks about Quidditch accidents or COMC projects. “What if I’d failed? That would have been embarrassing. Don’t worry, Mum, I know this guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who works at the reserve, and he says he’s got a spare couch for me to live on. Everything’s taken care of.”
Fred and George were very impressed. Ron and Ginny were too young to really understand or care, save that they were losing their big brother. Percy was also vaguely impressed (Percy is the guy who would go on to take 12 OWLs, he thinks Charlie could have done better) but mostly distraught, because Charlie ditching 7th year leaves Percy alone with Fred and George at Hogwarts. (So, when it comes down to who feels more Betrayed by Charlie Weasley, between Percy and Oliver, it honestly just depends on what happened that day (what F&G did that day, actually, since Percy and Oliver both deal with them).)
Molly wrote Bill like, “DID YOU KNOW?!” To which Bill was like, “No??? But good for him. It sounds like he’s got everything taken care of.” (Bill doesn’t touch on how that Charlie doesn’t speak Romanian or is moving out to live on some random person’s couch, because he’s not going to bat that hard for his little brother.) “Honestly, Mum, it could have been way worse.”
hi i’m kitty i don’t know anything about star wars whoops
“What am I looking at?”
Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. “My taxes.” He paused, then gestured to Han. “Our taxes,” he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.
Leia squinted at the datapad. “Tax fraud.”
“Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she said. “He’s a smuggler.”
“Hey,” Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.
“Legally, he’s a long-haul transport navigator,” Lando said, and Leia snorted. “Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession.”
“Wait, credits?” Han asked.
“Because he’s my dependent,” Lando continued, ignoring him.
“The hell I am.”
“That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that’s able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have.”
“But his transport isn’t legal,” Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren’t already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando’s shelves.
“It’s art.”
“What?”
“As far as my taxes are concerned,” Lando said, “Han transports art. They can’t prove that it isn’t. And I’m always careful to get the valuation right.”
“How do you know what I transport?” Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.
“They call me,” Lando said.
“No,” Leia gasped, delighted.
“Yes,” Lando said, grinning again. “They know I’m his partner. They know I can’t be sure I’m getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he’s getting. So they call me.”
“What!” Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.
“They might have been able to catch him smuggling,” Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.
“They would never,” Han sneered.
“But they’re never going to get him on tax evasion. There’s no way he would have been paying taxes on his own.”
“It never even occurred to me that he would,” Leia said.
“I’m right here,” Han reminded them.
“So you can see why I can’t divorce him,” Lando said.
“I don’t follow,” Leia said.
“My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this,” he said, pointing to the datapad. “I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses.”
“Collapses how?” Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Cloud City goes bankrupt.”
Han choked.
“How many people have you married?” Leia demanded.
“Leia, you know that you’re my favorite wife-in-law,” Lando said, “but I don’t think I’m comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life.”
The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.
blackash26 