Fanfic Writers' Director's Cut: Winter Quarters
Ages and ages ago, I stumbled on a short one-shot C/C fic, Feathered Friends. by Perpetual Motion. It’s an MCU/DC crossover that introduces Dick Grayson as an old friend of Dick’s from the circus days. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it at the time because I wasn’t into DC at all then, but it was C/C and by an author who had written other things I’d liked. I liked the fic, though, and always sort of remembered it vaguely. Some years later, I was needing a distraction from life (for reasons) when a writer I admire and follow cast about looking for a beta for a 60k Jay/Dick fic. For those of you who might not be aware, Jay/Dick is a significant pairing in the DCU (the tag has the most fic in the DCU and Batman fandoms ao3). Anyway, I spent a couple months with that fic and that got me interested in more Dick Grayson fic, in particular. And then one day, it hit me like a bolt of lightning: Dick and Clint both grew up in the circus and there’s so much potential there for crossover fic! I checked out the tag and there were only 8 fic with the pairing. Eight! A travesty! From there, I just started thinking about it, a lot. Like, really a lot.
I toyed with them at the same circus, but their respective circuses are so well entrenched in canon that I decided I didn’t want to do that. And for reasons I won’t get into, I was aware that circuses used to winter over in Florida, and I thought, oh, wow, wouldn’t that be great fodder for angst, to have them coming in and out of each others’ lives every year, have their relationship grow, but then have to LEAVE each other year after year. Mmm, yummy angst! 🤤 Thus Winter Quarters was born!
Mmm, what else… well, I think Clint and Dick work well together for the same reason that Clint and Phil work together: it’s the yin and yang. While they both grew up in the circus, Dick’s early life was vastly different from Clint’s. His family was loving and stable and his parents were kind and supportive and encouraging. Just the opposite of Clint’s. I enjoyed writing Dick’s slow realization that Clint’s life was nothing like his own. Dick’s life wasn’t sheltered, exactly (I mean, he did grow up in a traveling circus), but because his parents protected him, he never really faced head-on the kind of horror and trauma that Clint experienced regularly. Because he couldn’t recognize it for what it was, it takes him a long time to understand what’s going on with Clint.
And if Clint had anything to say about it, he never would have learned about it. I see them both as very protective of the other (which is why they both make excellent super heroes), with Dick, once he learns what Clint’s going through, he wants to save him from it. Whereas Clint sees Dick as this sort of, unmarred shining star, doesn’t ever want to expose Dick to the darkness in his life—from Clint’s perspective, he’s afraid he’s going to…sully Dick, and he doesn’t want to do that.
In truth, I wasn’t super well informed about Dick Grayson when I started writing this. I had to sheepishly ask a few people on tumblr if they could give me, like, Dick’s baseline personality traits. Those I asked were very kind and gave me enough to go on and pointed me toward a few essential Robin/Nightwing comics so I could get my start. One of them said something about Dick and his ‘dad jokes’ which is the entire reason I inserted all those dumb jokes in there. I spent a stupid amount of time googling ‘dad jokes’ and puns to try to find a handful that would fit into the story line. In the end though, I kind of liked how they worked into the narrative.
The hardest thing about this fic for me, I think, was writing with a young boy’s voice. I never was one, I never had bothers, and my kids are girls, so I was pretty insecure about how authentic they sounded. I still am, if I’m honest. But I suppose there’s a universalness to the teenage experience, regardless of what your gender is, so hopefully I wasn’t too far off the mark.
In all honesty, I didn’t think anyone would be interested in this crossover—it genuinely was one of those situations when they say you have to write for yourself and not other people—so the response the fic has gotten has 100% blown me away. But it makes me super happy and I hope it will inspire more people to write some Clint/Dick! In the meantime, I continue to think about Part 2 on a daily basis and I’ll get there eventually, if for no other reason then that I have already written the denouement and I really like it so I want to write everything that leads up to it so I can post it! 😅
Thanks for the ask, drgrlfriend!
Fanfic Writers' Director's Cut ask game.
