Birthday fic for monkeycrackmary!

[buggery]

Happy birthday to the Keeper of the Shrines to the Even-Numbered Robins! May your day be (or have been, considering it's almost over already Down Under) full of fun and squee.

I wrote you a story. I'd say you could archve it at the oscillating domain, but this is a Robin you haven't made a site for ...yet. ::grins::

Story notes: Carrie Kelley, 250 words. Will make little sense to those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again.


Robin For, Robin To, Robin Aye


Carrie has a plan. All she's waiting for is the right moment.

In the meantime, she trains hard. Not just because Batman demands it of her or because *she* wants to be the best she can be. There's also that she doesn't want to wind up another dead Robin.

It's a risk she runs, a risk they *both* run, every time they go out in uniform, sure. Part of being in a war, part of being a good soldier.

He's never (quite) treated her like she has anything to prove just because she's not a dark-haired boy, but she has things to prove to herself. Like that she's worthy of fighting on this side of the war even though her parents weren't murdered. Even though they're on the other *side* of Batman's war, and the fact that they're not bad enough to be worth his bothering to stop them doesn't matter.

She's going to prove to him, and to herself, that she's good enough. She's going to track down the other Robin, the one who left (she can imagine being killed doing this, but she can't imagine giving it up, can't imagine ever *wanting* to). It's nothing Batman *expects* of her, nothing he's ever even talked about. But she's done enough digging around in the computers, and she knows all she needs to.

She knows how to find Grayson, and she *believes* she can convince him to come back. She has it all planned out, right down to what she'll say. Batman needs his Robins.

[end]


You and Te were right all along, Mary: When life hands you DKSA, make lemonade.

Sorry the title's so lame, but I'm a hopeless paronomaniac.


other DCU fiction
other flashfiction
all fiction by Jack

Comments

[petronelle.livejournal.com]

Now I want to give Carrie a big hug. Darn this Robin fetish.

Thank you for making her really Robin, which Miller only sort of did. I like her better, real.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I know! I used to really dislike Carrie... largely, I think, because as you pointed out, Millerfucktard didn't really make her Robin in anything more than name. Unlike him, though, I like Robins.

Glad it worked for you!!

[brownbetty]

So... Carrie=Steph? I hadn't considered that.

DKSA never really showed it to us, but we can all recognise the signs of a doomed, doomed Robin. I don't think popping her in a cat suit is enough to keep her safe. This really made me wanna go, "Carrie! No!!!!!"

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I didn't mean to suggest a 1:1 relationship between Carrie and Steph, which I don't think is valid. But I did deliberately evoke similarities between her and Steph as well as between her and Tim, because what I wanted to do was portray her as more fully and truly Robin, and worthy of the name.

This is kind of a Schroedinger's story: you can't tell from looking at it whether Carrie's plan would avert the horrible ending of DKSA, or actually hasten it along. As Mary says, sometimes the key to a happy ending is knowing when to fade to black...

[kkglinka.livejournal.com]

popping her in a cat suit is enough to keep her safe

*dies* But it's true, isn't it? The magic catsuit of smuttiness keeps a girl safe, in Gotham. It's like a voodoo ritual.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, except that the cat-suit didn't keep Carrie safe, at all.

[kkglinka.livejournal.com]

*snicker* And if she'd done her research, she'd have known what horrible bad luck it actually was. Heehee.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

EEEEEE. Oh, man. This works as fanwank and as simple *correctness*. Because the underlying creep of Millerverse Bruce is *right* there, and the sense of Carrie as cannon (canon) fodder for an older's man's issues. *SIIIIGH*

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Hunh. You saw DKR tones in the way I referred to Bruce, here? Interesting. I wasn't trying to excise that, necessarily, but I wasn't trying to evoke it, either.

Delighted it worked for you, anyway. Since it's all your fault that I wrote it. ::wink::

[thete1.livejournal.com]

*laughs* It's in the sense that Carrie's being *used* for, well, Miller's Bruce's Robin issues. She's okay with it, because that's what she's *there* for, but it's still freaking CREE PEE.

*pets Carrie*

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It did not escape my notice, when I first began to contemplate writing a Carrie story, that, in Millerfucktardverse, she is Robin III.

They all totally live happily ever after.

That's what I keep telling myself. With my fingers in my ears eyes while I chant LA LA LA LA LA LA LA.

[mirth-fell.livejournal.com]

Mm. That was cool. I always felt Carrie was more of a...prop/story device (or some such thing) for Miller. But this made *sense*.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I don't want to try to figure out what Millerfucktard was thinking. Clearly, that way lies madness.

But this made *sense*.

Thank you! That may be the best possible praise for a story based on DKR and DKSA.

[sharpest_rose.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! Now I have something to link to when I'm trying to explain to people how I can dislike Frank Miller's work and yet like Carrie. (Because, really, it's no different from the way in which I dislike Jim Starlin's work and yet feel a certain obsessive obsession fondness for the boy Jason Todd became under Starlin's pen. It's not the character's fault that their writer's a jerk. )

Thank you so much for this. As I said, this is exactly what I've wanted to see done with Carrie. Because, the thing is, I fell into character-affection for her when she quietly corrected herself and told Bruce her name was, in fact, Robin. That's the kind of terrifying beautiful meta I want to eat with a spoon.

Problem: the legacy of Robin, as written by Miller, pretty much means sweet fuck-all. Nothing good, anyway.

You gave Carrie the red-green-gold power/legacy/doom/magic/fate thing that she knew she was giving herself over to, but that Miller has never come close to understanding.

Which is to say, in short, you rock like a rocking thing full of rocks which is playing rock'n'roll.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

::dances happy dance of having made Mary happy::

this is exactly what I've wanted to see done with Carrie.

I'm so relieved to hear that. It did, of course, take me awhile to *listen* to you and Te telling me that I should set Millerfucktard aside and like or dislike Carrie on her own merits, but if I'm told something enough times, eventually it does sink in. q: And I couldn't have pulled this off at all if you hadn't led by example and written Carrie yourself.

I wish I could've written you a *longer* story with her, but once I worked out what I needed to put in and then wrote the first draft, it had everything I needed to say and weighed in at a mere 253 words. Then, there didn't seem to be anything I could add that wouldn't just have diminished the impact of what was already there. So instead I trimmed out a bit of unnecessarily verbose phrasing to get it to 250, because somehow short-shorts seem more respectable when they have round-numbered word counts.

You're absolutely right about there being all sorts of *potential* in the way Carrie was introduced, potential that her creator never realised because he's apparently incapable of doing anything worthwhile or respectful with a Robin. It felt really good to have her moving to realise that potential.

you rock like a rocking thing full of rocks which is playing rock'n'roll.

Eeheeheehee, you're awfully cute. (: