DVD Commentary -- Spirits in the material world
Title: Spirits in the material world
So much of what we know about Gotham comes from the capes, it's almost like they're the ones who are most real. So I tugged this line from a song from The Police; Gotham's Batman's world, and Lily is a spirit there.
Except for how she's not.
Summary: There are things it isn't safe to do in Gotham City.
Author's Notes: No canon characters appear explicitly in this fanfiction; references to canon characters and the events of Batman 653, Green Arrow 61, No Man's Land, OMAC Project, and Infinite Crisis appear.
Inspired by a chat with chevauchee regarding civilians living in Gotham and how they might react to the various events in the city. Thanks to lord_dingsi for his help.
I wanted to make real sure people knew this wasn't about capes except peripherally; the *point* was the original characters. I still love that summary, though.
Lily Zito grew up in Gotham. She'd never been to Crime Alley and she'd never met the Batman -- or Robin -- but you couldn't live in a city like that and not hear things.
And I also wanted to press in how much Batman influences his city even with people he never met. I still don't know why I picked those names. Maybe I wanted an Italian who had nothing to do with any kind of mob.
She grew up knowing that if she ever saw a green-haired man in a purple suit or a slim, laughing girl in red and black, she was to run away. Fast. She didn't go to places with twos in their names or addresses on the second, the twelfth, or the twenty-second, especially not in February or December. The only time she'd ever seen a penguin in the zoo was when they had a class trip up to Bludhaven in fifth grade. There were stories whispered of what happened if you hurt a cat, so Gotham's pound for stray cats was the best in the state.
I am still in love with this paragraph. *So* in love.
Because, dear darling canon, you can't tell me that Gothamites know their freaks so well and know how afraid they should be and expect me *not* to go, "Okay. So what steps would be taken to protect themselves?"
Lily grew up and found out she liked boys. Lily grew up a little more and found out she liked girls, too.
Lily's best friend, Michel, had come up from New Orleans when he was thirteen with his parents. Michel's father used to work for Drake Industries. After the quake, Michel got a job helping to rebuild the city. He and Lily met when she was nineteen; Michel was seventeen. They hit it off well, occasionally indulging in friends-with-benefits sex when neither of them was dating someone else.
When Lily was twenty-two, she met Arrieta. Arrieta had moved to Gotham when she was eighteen to go to the university on a Wayne Corp. scholarship for computer science. Arrieta liked girls, too. It took them a couple months to find out they both liked each other, and it only took three weeks for them to decide to start dating.
Michel liked Arrieta. He liked that Lily liked her. Lily was not-very-quietly relieved that Arrieta and Michel got along; they both liked cheesy horror movies and gently mocking Lily's collection of Piers Anthony books. Arrieta hated Rocky Horror, so after the obligatory first time, Lily and Michel went to those without her.
This was trying to set up these people as *people*, not symbols or This Is What A Gothamite Is. Michel and Arietta are friends, they have things in common, just like Arietta and Lily and Michel and Lily.
Arrieta taught Lily the lyrics to Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin. Lily didn't let her sing it when they were walking in Gotham at night. They sang Blazing Saddles instead.
I put the Sir Robin mention in because of one of Mary's Jason icons. "He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways," brave, brave, brave, brave sir Robin. Textually, it's because you don't *mention* Robin in Gotham. That's just asking for trouble. Speak of the devil kinda thing.
When Wonder Woman killed Max Lord, and things started destroying Gotham -- Lily's next-door neighbor turned out to be a metahuman. He could get locks to open for him; he worked as a PI with the GCPD.
She didn't know that until one of the blue things dropped out of the sky and torched their apartment complex to get to him. Focused on how much it would cost to replace all the stuff in her cheap little suite to get over the fact that she'd seen a man die in front of her.
She and Arrieta had been out on a date. Michel came and got them at one in the morning and they stayed at his house for two months.
If I recall correctly, this bit is here because of Petra. I asked her for help in making the story seem real, and she hit me over the head with Show Don't Tell.
I don't think I did as well with that as she would have liked, but she definitely made it better.
But the blue things went away. Gotham kept going.
Batman left, too. So did Robin. Gotham still kept going.
Because Gotham isn't *just* Batman's City. Gotham is itself.
The city was safer, in some ways. The Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, even Poison Ivy... they hadn't shown up in a while.
Red Hood, though...
Lily and Arrieta decided they both wanted kids, while the big names were gone. Neither of them had enough money to afford something like in-vitro fertilization, and they didn't want to adopt.
Kidfic tends to bug me, because not everyone wants kids and I hate the assumption in a lot of places that if two people are in love, of *course* they'll want kids.
But I did it anyway. Because Lily *loves* Gotham, even as she fears it -- Arietta probably could have talked Lily into leaving eventually. But twins? In Gotham? Lily is so out of there. And I needed to have that happen for the story's sake.
They ganged up on Michel, and after a month and a half he agreed to be the father of Lily's kids, under the condition that he still got some say in what happened. Arrieta rolled her eyes at him and said of course he did.
After six tries, it worked. Lily was pregnant. A visit to the gynecologist showed she had twins.
When she was five months pregnant, Batman and Robin came back. A week later, so did Two-Face.
La la la, la la la, watch Kat's brain try and fail to deal with How People Must Deal In Gotham.
Two months after Lily heard that news, Arrieta had a job in the Star City branch of Queen Industries. Michel was working with one of the better construction companies to rebuild downtown Star City; after hearing he'd survived Gotham's No Man's Land, they promoted him. Lily took night classes in criminal justice, and every day she crossed off a space on the calendar for when she and Arrieta could go to City Hall.
*I* wanted them to go to Smallville, but nooooo. Lily heard about the marriage deal Star City was doing and -- well. Arietta doesn't argue with Lily any more than I do.
Every day she touched her stomach and felt two bodies moving, she didn't regret leaving Gotham. Lily Zito knew better than to invite trouble.
She doesn't regret. But she really misses home.
-- Finis
So much of what we know about Gotham comes from the capes, it's almost like they're the ones who are most real. So I tugged this line from a song from The Police; Gotham's Batman's world, and Lily is a spirit there.
Except for how she's not.
Summary: There are things it isn't safe to do in Gotham City.
Author's Notes: No canon characters appear explicitly in this fanfiction; references to canon characters and the events of Batman 653, Green Arrow 61, No Man's Land, OMAC Project, and Infinite Crisis appear.
Inspired by a chat with chevauchee regarding civilians living in Gotham and how they might react to the various events in the city. Thanks to lord_dingsi for his help.
I wanted to make real sure people knew this wasn't about capes except peripherally; the *point* was the original characters. I still love that summary, though.
Lily Zito grew up in Gotham. She'd never been to Crime Alley and she'd never met the Batman -- or Robin -- but you couldn't live in a city like that and not hear things.
And I also wanted to press in how much Batman influences his city even with people he never met. I still don't know why I picked those names. Maybe I wanted an Italian who had nothing to do with any kind of mob.
She grew up knowing that if she ever saw a green-haired man in a purple suit or a slim, laughing girl in red and black, she was to run away. Fast. She didn't go to places with twos in their names or addresses on the second, the twelfth, or the twenty-second, especially not in February or December. The only time she'd ever seen a penguin in the zoo was when they had a class trip up to Bludhaven in fifth grade. There were stories whispered of what happened if you hurt a cat, so Gotham's pound for stray cats was the best in the state.
I am still in love with this paragraph. *So* in love.
Because, dear darling canon, you can't tell me that Gothamites know their freaks so well and know how afraid they should be and expect me *not* to go, "Okay. So what steps would be taken to protect themselves?"
Lily grew up and found out she liked boys. Lily grew up a little more and found out she liked girls, too.
Lily's best friend, Michel, had come up from New Orleans when he was thirteen with his parents. Michel's father used to work for Drake Industries. After the quake, Michel got a job helping to rebuild the city. He and Lily met when she was nineteen; Michel was seventeen. They hit it off well, occasionally indulging in friends-with-benefits sex when neither of them was dating someone else.
When Lily was twenty-two, she met Arrieta. Arrieta had moved to Gotham when she was eighteen to go to the university on a Wayne Corp. scholarship for computer science. Arrieta liked girls, too. It took them a couple months to find out they both liked each other, and it only took three weeks for them to decide to start dating.
Michel liked Arrieta. He liked that Lily liked her. Lily was not-very-quietly relieved that Arrieta and Michel got along; they both liked cheesy horror movies and gently mocking Lily's collection of Piers Anthony books. Arrieta hated Rocky Horror, so after the obligatory first time, Lily and Michel went to those without her.
This was trying to set up these people as *people*, not symbols or This Is What A Gothamite Is. Michel and Arietta are friends, they have things in common, just like Arietta and Lily and Michel and Lily.
Arrieta taught Lily the lyrics to Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin. Lily didn't let her sing it when they were walking in Gotham at night. They sang Blazing Saddles instead.
I put the Sir Robin mention in because of one of Mary's Jason icons. "He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways," brave, brave, brave, brave sir Robin. Textually, it's because you don't *mention* Robin in Gotham. That's just asking for trouble. Speak of the devil kinda thing.
When Wonder Woman killed Max Lord, and things started destroying Gotham -- Lily's next-door neighbor turned out to be a metahuman. He could get locks to open for him; he worked as a PI with the GCPD.
She didn't know that until one of the blue things dropped out of the sky and torched their apartment complex to get to him. Focused on how much it would cost to replace all the stuff in her cheap little suite to get over the fact that she'd seen a man die in front of her.
She and Arrieta had been out on a date. Michel came and got them at one in the morning and they stayed at his house for two months.
If I recall correctly, this bit is here because of Petra. I asked her for help in making the story seem real, and she hit me over the head with Show Don't Tell.
I don't think I did as well with that as she would have liked, but she definitely made it better.
But the blue things went away. Gotham kept going.
Batman left, too. So did Robin. Gotham still kept going.
Because Gotham isn't *just* Batman's City. Gotham is itself.
The city was safer, in some ways. The Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, even Poison Ivy... they hadn't shown up in a while.
Red Hood, though...
Lily and Arrieta decided they both wanted kids, while the big names were gone. Neither of them had enough money to afford something like in-vitro fertilization, and they didn't want to adopt.
Kidfic tends to bug me, because not everyone wants kids and I hate the assumption in a lot of places that if two people are in love, of *course* they'll want kids.
But I did it anyway. Because Lily *loves* Gotham, even as she fears it -- Arietta probably could have talked Lily into leaving eventually. But twins? In Gotham? Lily is so out of there. And I needed to have that happen for the story's sake.
They ganged up on Michel, and after a month and a half he agreed to be the father of Lily's kids, under the condition that he still got some say in what happened. Arrieta rolled her eyes at him and said of course he did.
After six tries, it worked. Lily was pregnant. A visit to the gynecologist showed she had twins.
When she was five months pregnant, Batman and Robin came back. A week later, so did Two-Face.
La la la, la la la, watch Kat's brain try and fail to deal with How People Must Deal In Gotham.
Two months after Lily heard that news, Arrieta had a job in the Star City branch of Queen Industries. Michel was working with one of the better construction companies to rebuild downtown Star City; after hearing he'd survived Gotham's No Man's Land, they promoted him. Lily took night classes in criminal justice, and every day she crossed off a space on the calendar for when she and Arrieta could go to City Hall.
*I* wanted them to go to Smallville, but nooooo. Lily heard about the marriage deal Star City was doing and -- well. Arietta doesn't argue with Lily any more than I do.
Every day she touched her stomach and felt two bodies moving, she didn't regret leaving Gotham. Lily Zito knew better than to invite trouble.
She doesn't regret. But she really misses home.
-- Finis