As a writer, I’ve made art for my fics before, but I’ve never put any in the fic itself, partly because I don’t always like my art very much and am self-conscious about showing it to others, partly because I’m worried it will bother people the way it sometimes bothers me. 2/3
I’ve recently drawn something I like more than usual for a new fic, and I’m considering taking the plunge and including it when I post the chapter it goes with, but…idk, I was just curious what people think about it. Like it, dislike it, better to just give a link, don’t care either way…? 3/3
I enjoy art with fic, but given previous asks, I recommend putting it at the end of the fic and also adding a link in your author’s note. If you’re worried about that jarring feeling the link might be the better option? I’ve also seen authors post the fanart as a separate chapter at the same time as the text, with a note at the bottom / chapter summary indicating that.
What does everyone else think?
(also: congrats on making awesome art! 🙂 )
I’m not a very visual person, so pictures don’t usually add to the story too much. (Why am I a comic book fan??) I don’t care either way. I’m sure it add to the experience for more visual learners?
I don’t see how anything could cheapen a comment? You’re sharing a reaction with me. No matter what, that’s genuine. Making them rare doesn’t make them any more valuable, I don’t think. I could be wrong there – we’ll see what people say.
I’m in favour of commenting any time you have something you want to say to the author. Whether that’s “extra kudos” or “<3″ or a long detailed analysis of the chapter, or a quote that you liked or a pun or anything else. If the spirit moves you, go ahead and share.
I have been blessed with readers who comment on every fic and every chapter and each one of their comments is as valuable to me as any other. Perhaps even more, just because we’ve established a relationship. It gives me an extra warm glow when I read them 🙂
I agree 100% that if commenting often does anything for the value of your comments, it makes it go up. The writer doesn’t just get “a” comment, they get “your” comments; apart from the purely emotional attachement (which is worth a lot, by the way), there’s the craft side of “Oh, I managed to make them like several things I wrote – so it wasn’t just luck that one time!”
So, yeah. Comment often. It’s awesome.
Yeah, wanting fewer comments is something I have never seen an author say. Comments are life!
Right? Maybe if you want to spin a worst case scenario, there could be a problem of “oh no, how do I reply to all these comments” which seems a lot like “oh no, how am I going to eat all of this excellent cake?”
I think there are some authours that feel that kudos might be cheapened if you use them on every story. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t carry over to comments. The contents of a comment usually gives the authour a pretty good idea of how the commentor feels, so they’re unlikely to think that you don’t mean anything by it.
It’s not that strange, anon. It happens to lots of people. I don’t really know why, but it does.
My favourite theory is that it’s the same reason why I waited almost a year to watch the final Doctor Who specials with David Tennant. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the story and so I put off watching it. As long as I hadn’t seen it yet, it wasn’t really over.
Maybe your readers just don’t want your story to end?
Yeah, I have trouble commenting at the end. Some of it is not wanting the story to end. Saving it for the perfect day.
Some of it is that resolution makes me calm, instead of impassioned and full of emotions I NEED TO SHARE. I love the feeling, but I’m less driven to write.
Some of it is personal to me – I don’t ship, and resolutions of shippy fic often focus on that, instead of the side material I’m reading for. So the final chapter is often less interesting for me.
And a little bit of it is that endings are hard, and not everyone manages to tie everything up neatly. I like most Disney movies until the end, but their climaxes and ending I generally fast foward through. And mysteries – all the build up usually means the ending has too much to live up to. So sometimes it’s hard to comment because I don’t love the ending.
“So the bird boy’s all grown up! Left the nest. New plumage and everything. Nightwing now, is it? Well, you’ve stuck your beak in the wrong place once too many times! Prepare to get your feathers plucked!”
“Okay. I’m going to kick your ass in a minute, but I want to clear something up first. I appreciate the bird jokes, and I know I have a nighthawk symbol on my chest now, but Robin was never meant to be a bird thing. I know! It sounds crazy! Over the years I just kind of rolled with it, but my theme was supposed to be Robin Hood. You know those hot pants everyone likes to make fun of? In retrospect, they were a mistake, but my whole look with the tunic and the boots was based on medieval fashions. That’s why my costume had so much green in it! I thought I was cool in the 1940’s, before Green Arrow made Robin Hood his schtick. If I had intended for Robin to be a bird thing, I would have worn wings or a beak or something, not a Shakespearean-inspired leotard. Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest after seventy years. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! I’m going to break your face now.”
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
MY EYES
THEY’VE BEEN OPENED
AND THEY CAN’T BE CLOSED
“Alright, thanks for making that easy. Don’t bother trying to pick those cuffs. Do you mind if I wait here until the police arrive? It’s a slow night, and now that I have a captive audience… well. Where was I? Right. Historical costumery. I know I’m supposed to be ‘the nice Robin’, not ‘the nerdy Robin’, but my original costume has been the source of derision for three quarters of a century of publication history. I brought photos. ‘Oh, but Nightwing, your costume doesn’t have a utility belt! Where do you keep a photo album?!’ Heh. That’s my secret.
Aaaanyway. Let’s start with Jules Leotard, inventor of the flying trapeze, AND of the garment that still bears his name.
Looking good, Jules! That mustache is very 1867. Notice anything familiar about his costume? The gloves, the leotard, the bare legs, the boots, the belted waist…? Aerialists also often wore capes to make a dramatic entrance, only to shed them before performing. Not that this is relevant to my secret identity and backstory in any way or anything, of course.
Back in the day, Robin Hood was usually depicted wearing red and green. Here’s the cover illustration of a book published in 1900…
‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ starring Errol Flynn came out in 1938. Batman was created the following year, and I came along in 1940! Robin Hood was hot shit at the time, so it was probably more obvious that ‘Robin’ was a shout out to the hero of legend rather than the songbird. Check out the cut of their tunics:
And speaking of red and green! Did you know they weren’t always associated so strongly with Christmas? Coca Cola’s advertising campaign that began in 1931 may be responsible for that. Back in Ye Olde Days, folks were rocking the ‘red and green layered short tunics’ and ‘hose-as-pants’ look long before I was. Check out this illustration from the 15th century:
And also these fashionable dudes wearing poulaines:
Now, if I were meant to be a bird-themed hero right off the bat – don’t groan, that was a good one – it would not have been subtle. Batman has ears and a picture of a bat on his suit. Catwoman’s first costume was just a dress with a damn hyperrealistic cat mask over her head! Yeah, of course I’ve got a picture, but don’t tell her I showed you.
And there you go! Bet you didn’t think you’d be getting a history lesson AND an asskicking tonight, did you?”
“Robin” doesn’t even mean “bird”. I have discoursed boringly on this before. In sum, “Robin” is just a nickname for “Robert.” It doesn’t have anything to do with birds, really – it just means “Bob.”
The bird in England was historically called the Redbreast. There was an Olden Days trend for calling animals by people names, especially to denote their gender – in England it was considered a cute and funny meme around the 1600s. The animal would get a “Christian” first name, and its species would be its last name: Tom Cat. Jack Ass.
Some of these have stuck and become the actual names of the birds: Jack Daw, Jenny Wren, Mag(gie) Pie, Robin Redbreast. These days, those are all legitimate species, but before the meme, they were called Daws and Pies and Redbreasts.
When English colonizers invaded North America, they looked at a completely unrelated red-chested bird and thought they’d call it Robin Redbreast. This was shortened to Robin.
And that was that.
Thus:
basically Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow, Robin from Batman, and American/European robins are all just named after that one guy.
Robert.
What a legend
So, like, I don’t follow Batman at all but I guess a grown-up Robin might start to stuffily refer to himself as “It’s Robert. Actually.”
I started out skimming over this but then the history shit started and I had to go back and read
I just want to come in here and note that this isn’t just historical guesswork – in Dick’s introduction issue, Detective Comics #38, they were very emphatic about the name being a reference to Robin Hood:
To those who can’t read that little description box, it describes Dick as “a laughing, fighting young daredevil who scoffs at danger like the legendary Robin Hood whose name and spirit he has adopted…” (emphasis mine), which not only makes it clear that Dick took the name as a reference to Robin Hood, but also suggests that his adventurous, fun-loving personality was to some degree modeled on Robin Hood as well.
And just in case anyone managed to miss that, it’s referenced again in the issue itself:
“Dick Grayson, by the hand of fate, is transformed into that astonishing phenomenon that young Robin Hood of today – Robin the Boy Wonder!”
Note that no references are made to robin the bird whatsoever. I’m not sure when exactly Robin the superhero began to be associated with the bird that shares his name. There were some references to it in the Golden Age, like this one from Batman #11 (1942):
Dick: Oh, yeah! Well, what about me? I’m a bird, too! You people seem to forget that I’m a Robin!
And in Detective Comics #67 (also 1942):
Dick: Look, Bruce… the first robin I’ve seen this year. We Robins are early birds, all right!
Bruce: You’re certainly no early bird when it comes to getting up for school!
But of course, none of this implies that the bird was supposed to be the source of Dick’s superhero identity. I think at this time the writers were very much thinking of him as a Robin Hood-themed hero, and just making punning references to the fact that there was also a bird with the same name. (Golden Age comics do love their puns, after all.) But Dick was created in 1940 and these scenes are from just two years later, so it is worth noting that Dick was associated with robins the birds from very early on.
I do know that by the time we get to Dick’s post-Crisis origin retelling, in Secret Origins #13 (1987), the story has both associations of the name referenced as inspiration for the Robin persona:
Bruce: Tell me, Dick: How do you like the name… Robin!
Dick: It’s perfect! We’ll be birds of a feather! And Robin Hood was always one of my favorite heroes!
Dick jokes that he and Bruce will be “birds of a feather” (oh, my punny boy), but he also says that Robin Hood is a favorite hero of his, so you’ve kind of got both interpretations going on there.
Robin Annual #4 (1995) is as far as I know where we get the current canon for the origin of Dick’s name, that Mary Grayson called him her “Little Robin” because he was born on the first day of spring:
Mary: I call you Robin because you came to us on the first day of spring. I didn’t know you’d want to be a little bird…
(Note that pre-Crisis Dick Grayson’s birthday was November 11.)
In addition to adding the whole “first day of spring” element, this scene also really emphasizes the connection between Dick’s bird nickname and his aerialist background (with Mary joking that “our little Robin tried to take off” and “You were trying to fly so high like Mommy and Daddy, huh?”), which does seem like a pretty logical connection to make.
Another thing I like about this version is that rather than Bruce presenting Dick with the costume and suggesting the name (as in Secret Origins #13), Robin Annual #4 has the Robin persona be entirely Dick’s creation:
Dick: And these names. “Bat-Boy.” “Bat-Teen.” “Bat-Mite”? Uck.
Alfred: Master Bruce and yourself insist on gallivanting about in masks and boots but you’re concerned about looking ridiculous.
Dick: I think I know what’s bothering me. There should only be one Batman.
Alfred: Are you saying you’d prefer adopting a different persona?
Dick: Yeah… but not a bat.
Alfred: Then what?
Dick: Something I barely remember… uh huh. She’d like that.
Obviously it adds a poignant touch to have the name be in remembrance of what Dick’s mother used to call him, and I also like him having more agency and autonomy in the creation of the Robin role. But I also think it just flat-out makes sense from a character perspective: Everything about the Robin persona, from the name to the costume, feels like something Dick would have come up with rather than Bruce.
Anyway the idea that “Robin” was Mary’s nickname for Dick seems to have stuck, since Batman: Dark Victory (2000) gives a similar explanation, albeit with a slight twist.
Bruce: Don’t you ever stay still?
Dick: You tell me. My mom used to call me “Robin” ‘cause I was always “Bobbin’ Along”.
This explanation is definitely an outlier, which is probably why later retellings ditched it. We already have two well-established explanations for the Robin name, there’s really no need to throw a third one into the mix. (It also doesn’t entirely make sense… surely in that case Mary would have called him “Bobbin”, or maybe “Bobbin Robin” rather than just “Robin”?)
Nightwing #0 (2012) goes back to the idea that she called him Robin in reference to the bird, although no particular explanation for that is given other than that she apparently “loves robins”:
Dick: I know how much you love robins, Mom… so I made sure it had two of them. Happy birthday.
Mary: Oh, Dick… it’s beautiful. Robins from my Robin… thank you. But you’re still grounded.
But, lest you think that the Robin Hood explanation was totally forgotten, 2012 also gave us World’s Finest #0 where the Helena Wayne version of Robin (from Earth-2) says this:
Helena: It’s going to be safer around Gotham now. Tell your friends… Robin’s in town. Like Robin Hood.
Selina:Nice, kitten.
There’s something very fitting about the Helena version of Robin in particular – Bruce and Selina’s daughter – being inspired by Robin Hood, since Selina is (in her more heroic incarnations, anyway) something of a Robin Hood figure herself, as a heroic thief who protects the marginalized and oppressed. And I think the story wants you to draw that connection, since it’s Selina standing next to Helena here (and approving her name choice) and not Bruce.
More recently the Rebirth Nightwing comics referenced it in Nightwing #10 when Dick is trying to catch up on his hobbies, and he’s shown reading a bunch of Robin Hood books:
(I’m assuming that’s an intentional reference, anyway. In any case, it would go along with the previous canon of Robin Hood having always been a favorite hero of Dick’s.)
(Also, the gag with Dick looking way less jazzed about the “Robin Hood Rebirth” comic he’s reading than he did with the original stories is either amusingly self-aware or obnoxiously trying to be self-aware while failing to actually understand any of the problems fans had with The New 52/Rebirth, depending on your perspective.)
There’s probably more canon material to discuss here, but these are the ones that come to mind easily and this post is overly long already, so I’ll leave off with the historical overview here.
Personally, I’m fond of the addition of “Robin” having been Mary’s nickname for Dick, and I like the idea that it was a reference to the bird because he was born on the first day of spring. Associating Dick with birds does also make sense when you consider how much flying is associated with his character (he literally came from a family called the Flying Graysons, and his stories continually reference imagery about flying and falling).
But, with that said, the Robin Hood explanation was definitely what the creators originally intended, and definitely makes a lot more sense with the costume. And I do think that makes sense for Dick’s character in a different way – it makes total sense to me that bb!Dick would have loved Robin Hood stories, and the way his character has a seemingly lighthearted and devil-may-care attitude while also caring deeply about protecting the downtrodden (something all the other Robins also reflect, in different ways) definitely does emulate the original Robin Hood.
I do think the current canon could combine both explanations the way Secret Origins #13 did, if they wanted to. There’s no reason you couldn’t have Dick be inspired by Robin Hood and be referencing a nickname his mother called him, after all. Heck, you could even say bb!Dick’s love for Robin Hood stories was part of what made Mary give him that nickname. But it would definitely make sense to incorporate the Robin Hood explanation back in there somehow.
“if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention” used to be such a powerful phrase but now it’s more accurate to say “if you’re not angry you’re probably exhausted by 5+ years of Panic Outrage Mode and are nearing the limit of your emotional range for reacting to this shit”
I know I just reblogged this, but sometimes I think, “if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” is an anthem for young people. For those of us well out of our twenties, it’s not even a question of whether we have achieved Panic Outrage Mode. Panic Outrage Mode is fun, but unsustainable; I’ve been there and bought the refrigerator magnet. But political awareness is a lifelong state.
I am 36, and I have voted in literally every election I have ever been eligible to vote since I turned 18. Including all the local ones. State senators, county judges, school boards. I have done a lot of research (sometimes, I admit, at the last minute, for apparently low-stakes local races or ballots that weren’t on my radar much before I went to vote). Sometimes, I have had to skip entries on a ballot (that’s legal where I live; my ballot still gets counted here) because I could not find any information whatsoever about a candidate for a judicial race. But I still voted in those elections, because there were races where I DID know who I wanted to vote for, and I knew it mattered. There has never been an election I have been eligible to vote in where I believed it didn’t matter, or that my vote wouldn’t count. (Caveat: I’ve never lived, to my knowledge, in a severely gerrymandered district.)
I no longer live in a constant state of high dudgeon. You can’t. Well, I can’t, anyway. I tried, and it almost killed me, and I really mean that, probably more than anyone knows. I now reserve that kind of anger and fear and passion for emergencies. I can’t continue to live as if the whole world was an emergency. Even if it is kind of is one. I can’t fix everything that’s wrong in the world by being angry all the time. I have a human brain, and it can’t handle being angry as the default, not without hurting me in terrible ways that I don’t think I can fix.
While I’m managing my anger at the world—and I admit, it’s been very hard, lately—I’m going to keep voting. And calling my reps and my senators. And when I can spare the cash, I’m going to keep donating to Planned Parenthood and the SPLC and the ACLU, and yeah, while I’m at it, the Democratic party, because no matter how much they piss me off and have let me down, they’re still the best shot the US has against the gangrenous rot that is the modern GOP.
Yeah.
ADD and mental illness makes it hard for me to regulate my emotions. Now that I’m in my early 30s, I’m finally healthy enough that I CAN get angry again, every once in a while.
I burnt myself out during a period where a lot of people thought the world was in pretty good shape. My anger burned too bright, and my empathy was too strong. I needed more voices telling me to temper my emotions. Distance can help.
It took me until my late 20s to realize that people feel with different intensities. That people yelling at you for ignoring things and not caring enough are often the ones who don’t feel deeply. (Not an insult. Less intense emotions don’t mean you care less, are less human, etc.) People who feel with less intensity often hype themselves up to act. They learn about every injustice. More intensely emotional people can do better focusing on smaller things, channeling their passion into a few goals that don’t overwhelm.
If you ever feel sick with anger, or hurt so bad for others that you want crawl out of your own body – that isn’t healthy. There’s so much going on right now, and so much pressure to care about absolutely everything. But you need to have boundaries.
Give yourself limits – X number of news stories a day, only politics for your own country this week, if something makes you cry then you’re done for the day – whatever works.
If we do nothing, nothing changes. But hurting yourself to protect the world eventually leads to Pyrrhic victories – a generation too damaged to protect what it won.
I like to use images in my fanfic, but I didn’t think about screen readers. For people who need to use “text-to-speech” apps to read fanfic, these are wonderful tools that help them access our stories. Those tools can’t see images and describe them, though. It’s my responsibility as an author to make my fics accessible to anyone who wants to read them by adding those descriptions myself.
once at dinner this lil kid was sitting in the booth attached to ours and she kept standing up and looking over the back of the bench and I made faces at her and she’d start jumping up and down and laughing and so I’d bob my head up and down and she’d jump more and lose it and her mom would have her sit down but she’d pop back up every few minutes and this went on for like 45 minutes and when they were leaving her mom told us “thanks for being so patient with her jumping around and looking over at you” and I was like “haha I was making faces at her the whole time” and her mom was like “OH THAT’S WHY”
Making faces at small children in public is one of the great joys on earth.
“We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the
recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,” the
petition reads in French.
The physicians group said it could not
in good conscience accept pay raises when working conditions remained
difficult for others in their profession — including nurses and clerks —
and while patients “live with the lack of access to required services
because of drastic cuts in recent years.”
A nurses union in Quebec has in recent months pushed the government to address a nursing shortage,
seeking a law that would cap the number of patients a nurse could see.
The union said its members were increasingly being overworked, and
nurses across the province have held several sit-ins in recent months to push for better working conditions.
In
January, the situation was encapsulated in a viral Facebook post by a
nurse in Quebec named Émilie Ricard, who posted a photo of herself,
teary-eyed, after what she said had been an exhausting night shift.
Ricard said she had been the only nurse to care for more than 70
patients on her floor; she was so stressed that she had cramps that
prevented her from sleeping, she added.
“This is the face of
nursing,” Ricard wrote, criticizing Quebec Health Minister Gaétan
Barrette, who had deemed recent health-care system changes a success.
“I
don’t know where you’re going to get your information, but it’s not in
the reality of nursing,” the nurse wrote. She later added: “I am broken
by my profession, I am ashamed of the poverty of the care that I provide
as far as possible. My Health system is sick and dying.”
kiragecko 