How people talk about Crime Alley shows off their classism. The poorest neighborhood in Gotham would have more kinds of people than gang members (goons), sex workers, drug dealers, muggers, and rapists.
There would be cashiers, hairdressers, receptionists, nurses, construction workers, teachers, gardeners, everything.
Crime Alley is a poor neighborhood. Not a gutter filled with nothing but violence and victims.
Adorable
Fated meeting
(I’m sure we’ll meet again)
5 Times Tony Had Steve's Back, and 1 Time Steve had Tony's (ao3) - itsallAvengers T, 25k
Summary: As it turns out, Steve gets himself into a lot more shit than you would think. And for some reason, it's always Tony who ends up saving his sorry ass.
and you're out (ao3) - Zekkass M, 4k
Summary: A villain kidnaps Tony and removes his arc reactor and Steve's the one to rescue him. Tony proceeds to try and deal with this. Steve tries not to think about the gaping hole he saw in Tony's chest.
Breaking Point (ao3) - itsallAvengers M, 6k
Summary: They torture Tony to try and get information out of Steve
Happiness Is Homemade (ao3) - Icylightning T, 40k
Summary: Tony and Steve are married for fifteen years now. Their life is simple and good until they decide to adopt a teenager named Peter Parker who’s going to turn their life upside down.
Happy Again (ao3) - Legends_Never_Die T, 31k
Summary: Peter can’t take this dads’ fighting anymore. He can’t take the arguing. He finds comfort with his secret new found friend Bucky. Bucky looks a lot like his Pop’s old friend Bucky Barnes from back in the 40s. But it wasn’t him. He was dead. Right?
Have I told you (That I'm Glad You're Here?) (ao3) - RedpathArcade N/R, 1k
Summary: "What the hell was that Stark?" Steve barked, storming into Tony's workshop. The blond was still in his Captain America outfit, shield strapped to his back. Tony also still had his suit on. Face-plate up and Steve took in the pained expression on the Brunets face. And maybe given the situation he should be gentle, but he was simply too furious.
Helpless (ao3) - Crematosis T, 6k
Summary: When Tony is attacked by voodoo spells, Steve wishes he could do more to protect him.
hold the things you wanna say (ao3) - SailorChibi T, 6k
Summary: Tony is still a consultant, and between SI, the team and SHIELD he’s overworked and exhausted. That’s okay.
He and Steve have been having sex for weeks but that’s all it is, just sex, and Tony wants more but he’ll never get it and that’s okay. Really.
What’s not okay is the fact that Howard Stark has somehow appeared in the future and is the same as always.
This is definitely going to fuck up his schedule.
Insomnia (ao3) - Scavenge4Dreams E, 10k
Summary: Its 3am. Do you know where your Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist is?
In Which Steve Doesn't Take Kindly to Shovel Talk (ao3) - love_in_the_stars T, 1k
Summary: When warning Tony Stark not to break Steve's heart, Bucky probably shouldn't have threatened to remove the arc reactor.
It Takes a Village (or a team of superheroes) (ao3) - aven_garde steve/tony, clint/phil T, 33k
Summary: Three months after the Chitauri attack, Tony received a phone call that changed his life. (Or, the one in which a group of remarkable people come together and balance battling villains and raising a child).
Love Is A Battlefield (ao3) - crumbcrash2000 steve/tony, tony/tiberius E, 53k
Summary: In Siberia, Steve looks on in horror as Tony watches the video of his parents’ murder. Expecting the worst, he is prepared to fight to defend Bucky, even through the shock of his own betrayal.
But Tony doesn’t lash out.
Instead, Tony cries, and Steve’s whole life falls apart.
Loving Tony Stark (ao3) - Gothic_Lolita M, 1k
Summary: Tony doubts himself, and Steve is determined to make sure Tony knows how perfect he is, and that he will always be there for Tony.
Minefields (ao3) - arianapeterson19 pepper/tony, bucky/steve/tony T, 34k
Summary: Being in an abusive relationship was a bit like needing glasses. He didn’t realize it until the damage was done.
Funny how people assume only men can be abusive.
Pieces of Echoes (ao3) - geekymoviemom steve/tony T, 334k
Summary: When weapons designer and SHIELD consultant Tony Stark and his son are kidnapped following a routine weapons demonstration, newly defrosted World War II hero Steve Rogers is sent to find them.
But what begins as just another mission, a way for Captain America to reintegrate back into society, quickly warps into something more as betrayals are discovered, harsh, long-buried truths are finally brought to light, and Tony and Steve come to realise that their biggest allies are each other.
I wasn’t crazy about this piece so I wasn’t intending on publicly posting it again, but it keeps getting stolen every five minutes so I figured I’d put it here so people at least know who to attribute the original thing to lmao
[Digital illustration, Procreate App, 2020]
Conditioned myself to spend like 70% of my time in my room now anything less feels like being a gecko in antartica
that post thats like “you’re not unlovable you’ve just been spending a lot of time alone in your room” is true for everyone but me. i’m unlovable i’ve just coincidentally been spending a lot of time alone in my room
an unfriendly reminder ☺️
So badly do I want to grow old, not as who I’m perceived to be but as the crooked queer authentic version of myself
emotional neglect didnt even affect me that much. it was the being born inherently without value that did most of the work
some steph sketches bc she's my fave girl
Autism
stick it in a pot, cook it up, schlorp it up
Midoriya when he said that his idea of victory was bakugo and that he couldn’t help but imitate him
you guys ever hear a character say something so gay you sitting there trying to figure out how you were supposed to interpret that platonically?!
I adore stray au’s
[stray! au] the cat and the bat but they're gay
no matter what your most embarrassing moment in life is, at least it’s not having fucking chat gpt write fanfic for you bc you’re too lazy to do it yourself
“do you think you’ll still be writing fanfic when you’re 90?” yes, I do, and I hope AO3 is still here with me when I’m a 90 year old childless fanfic writer who writes slow burn dead dove do not eat dubcon gay sex enemies to lovers. next
I wish boobs were detachable. Because sometimes I want to look like a genderless being, other times the outfit needs boobs.
I got a bee in my bonnet and spent last night crunching these numbers to confirm a long-held suspicion of mine, and now I'm going to do something with them even if it's only interesting to me. So.
I went through and tallied up all of the fics AO3 currently (as of 3/27/24) has under the tags "Trans Tim Drake," "Nonbinary Tim Drake," "Genderfluid Tim Drake" and "Genderqueer Tim Drake," since I figured that cast a wide enough net without committing myself to reading every fic vaguely tagged Trans Character to figure out which character they were talking about.
I then did the same for Dick, Jason, Damian and Bruce and, after comparing those numbers against each other and against the total number of fics each character has under their general tag, followed up with Duke, Babs, Cass, Steph and Kate, and then Kon, Cassie, and Bart for good measure.
The results confirm the suspicions I was going into check and are really interesting, to me at least:
Despite having far fewer stories overall than Jason, Bruce or Dick, Tim has by far the most stories tagging him under the trans umbrella (653 out of 58,395) and is the only member of the Bats for whom at least one full percent of his stories fall under that category (1.12% to be exact.) He actually has more total trans stories than Jason and Damian combined (308 out of 71,120 and 255 out of 42,607, equaling 0.43% and 0.59%, respectively) and outstretches the 2nd place ranker, Dick, by over a hundred (who clocks in at 438 out of 79,057 -- 0.55%). Bruce amusingly has by far the most stories overall (90,305) but the fewest trans stories (185) for the lowest percentage among the boys (0.2%).
The only one who comes anywhere close to matching Tim percentage-wise is Bart, who has far fewer stories to his name but a ratio of 62 out of 5,717 for 1.08%. I was thinking maybe Young Justice might have a higher percentage than the Bats due to their strong queer fandom but that only really proved true for Bart, with both Cassie and Kon coming in at only 0.2% and 0.28% trans umbrella percentage respectively (actual count 6 out of 2,874 and 39 out of 13,746).
Cassie's numbers correspond with the fact that women just, do not get a lot of these stories, at all, even compared to the general lack of attention they're paid by fanfiction spheres in general. Steph and Kate both clocked in at falling 0.17% under the trans umbrella (29 out of 16,638 for Steph, 5 out of 2,897 for Kate); Cass got 0.13% (21 out of 15,769) and Babs only 0.07%, the lowest percentage out of anyone I calculated for (11 out of 15,785). Duke's showing was a respectable 0.55% (34 out of 6,166) which puts him about even with the rest of the boys.
All of which I just went through to confirm a gut instinct I've had for a while: even in light of the noticeable trend in fandom towards increased visibility for trans and other queer-gendered people over the last decade and a half or so, it's a notable Thing for the DC comics fandom to explore with Tim Drake in specific.
And that doesn't even take into account things like the over 200 "Tim Drake is Catlad | Stray" fics, which almost always have some element of queered gender or at least femme'd sexuality to them, far outstripping any of the other Robin boys' spins in that AU (those counts stand at, respectively: Damian - 11, Dick - 33, Jason - 79, Tim - 242). Or the 11 fics logged under the "Tim Drake is Batgirl" tag, a category that doesn't even exist for any of the other male Robins.
(What makes that last one extra hilarious to me that most people don't know one canonical version of Tim has been a member of the Batgirls.) Part of me wants to use that parenthetic detail as a segway to ramble about the various canon snippets I think probably contributed to this, from Tim being presented as "the pretty one" who most often gets the "looks like his mother" comments to the fact that he is the only male Robin who's ever cross-dressed for an undercover mission and even though it only happened once the Internet will never forget Caroline Hill.
But this post is long enough as it is and I don't really have a point beyond I think this is interesting and cool so I'm going to leave off here for now and put my numbers under a cut so people have the raw data to look at if they'd like to.
TL;DR - Based on the numbers, the internet believes Tim Drake is more likely to be trans than any other member of the Bat-family or Young Justice, and I think that has interesting implications about his character and fandom. It's neat.
Data Taken: 3/27/24
Tim Drake: 58,395 Trans Tim Drake: 513 Nonbinary Tim Drake: 46 Genderfluid Tim Drake: 89 Genderqueer Tim Drake: 5
Dick Grayson: 79,057 Trans Dick Grayson: 399 Nonbinary Dick Grayson: 15 Genderfluid Dick Grayson: 23 Genderqueer Dick Grayson: 1
Jason Todd: 71,120 Trans Jason Todd: 286 Nonbinary Jason Todd: 17 Genderqueer/Genderfluid Jason Todd: 5 (4 have both tags and are the only ones tagged Genderqueer Jason Todd)
Damian Wayne: 42,607 Trans Damian Wayne: 215 Nonbinary Damian Wayne: 37 Genderfluid Damian Wayne: 3 Genderqueer Damian Wayne: 0
Bruce Wayne: 90,305 Trans Bruce Wayne: 180 Nonbinary Bruce Wayne: 5 (2 also tagged Trans Bruce Wayne) Genderfluid Bruce Wayne: 1 Genderqueer Bruce Wayne: 1
-
Total Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 653 Total Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 438 Total Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 308 (313 if you count the GQ tag separately) Total Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 255 Total Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 185 (187)
Percentage Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 1.12% (1.11825) Percentage Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 0.55% (0.55403) Percentage Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 0.43% (0.43307 or 0.44010) Percentage Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 0.59% (0.59849) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 0.2% (0.20466)
----
Duke Thomas: 6,166 Trans Duke Thomas: 20 Nonbinary Duke Thomas: 14 Genderfluid Duke Thomas: 0 Genderqueer Duke Thomas: 0
Barbara Gordon: 15,785 Trans Barbara Gordon: 11 Nonbinary Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderfluid Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderqueer Barbara Gordon: 0
Cassandra Cain: 15,769 Trans Cassandra Cain: 15 Nonbinary Cassandra Cain: 6 Genderfluid Cassandra Cain: 0 Genderqueer Cassandra Cain: 0
Stephanie Brown: 16,638 Trans Stephanie Brown: 27 Nonbinary Stephanie Brown: 2 Genderfluid Stephanie Brown: 0 Genderqueer Stephanie Brown: 0
Kate Kane (DCU): 2,897 Trans Kate Kane: 4 Nonbinary Kate Kane: 0 Genderfluid Kate Kane: 1 Genderqueer Kate Kane: 0
-
Total Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 34 Total Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 11 Total Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 21 Total Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 29 Total Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 5
Percentage Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 0.55% (0.55141) Percentage Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 0.07% (0.06968) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 0.13% (0.13317) Percentage Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 0.17% (0.17429) Percentage Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 0.17% (0.17259)
----
Kon-El | Conner Kent: 13,746 Trans Kon-El | Conner Kent: 19 Nonbinary Kon-El | Conner Kent: 19 Genderfluid Kon-El | Conner Kent: 1 Genderqueer Kon-El | Conner Kent: 0
Bart Allen: 5,717 Trans Bart Allen: 40 Nonbinary Bart Allen: 20 Genderfluid Bart Allen: 1 Genderqueer Bart Allen: 1
Cassie Sandsmark: 2,874 Trans Cassie Sandsmark: 4 Nonbinary Cassie Sandsmark: 2 Genderfluid Cassie Sandsmark: 0 Genderqueer Cassie Sandsmark: 0
-
Total Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 39 Total Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 62 Total Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 6
Percentage Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 0.28% (0.28371) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 1.08% (1.08448) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 0.2% (0.20876)
Gonna use this forever 😌
He does NOT approve
he supports this
I lied. Put your clothes back on. I'm going to tell you all about four gay dead wizards from the 70s and why I actually know them better than the og author.
in a constant state of suffering knowing that i'll never be as cool as sirius black
every single day i am reminded that love is blind
Having your main anxiety response be Avoidance is crazy cause you'll think you're chillin and then one day you're like waitttt I've been paralyzed with fear this whole time. Damn
Constable duckable and ducktective meet....
James: Regulus is playing hard to get.
James: Little does he know, I'm a master at playing hard to get rid of.
Anyone else listen to “see I’m smiling” and think of civil war-stony?
Specifically in which Steve had feelings for Bucky in the 40’s but when he woke up from the ice he fell in love with Tony? Even though he still had feelings for Bucky and always would in some way? But then Bucky comes back and he runs off to rescue him, because he can’t move on from the past and it manifests in him desperately needing to save his first love? And Tony’s totally okay with that at first, but it puts a strain on their relationship. After everything, they finally meet up again and Tony just wants to fix things and Steve does to but he’s so blindsided and emotionally invested in helping Bucky that he can’t take the steps to mend his and Tony’s relationship. Which is proven when he has to leave for a Bucky related reason mid way through Tony’s b-day date. Tony tries being understanding but he’s so tired of being placed below Bucky and so tired of Steve (unintentionally or not) being an ass to him that he lashes out?
Yeah me too :)