Everyone's always complaining like, "oh, men only write women as shallow damsels in distress" and "oh, women only write men as personality-less wish fulfillment"

So I thought I'd point out two of my favorite examples where this is not the case.

Full Metal Alchemist and Spy x Family

I like them because Arakawa write male characters like this

And Endo writes female characters like this

And I think its neat

Uhhhh uhfhfhfufj I have no excuse for this😭😭

tickle tango concept with them

yall ever just project so hard on a comfort character ship you go "yeah theyre t4t now"

yeah.. good times

anyways gohan and videl are t4t and in this essay i will

No like seriously ARE we ready to talk about the misogyny in fandom spaces

I've just finished Gotham Knights and I get that people aren't happy with the fucked ass haircuts but like, I do believe this is the most progressive and well written Jason Todd we've ever gotten in recent times. Even in recent comics. Like damn, bro goes to therapy, picked up his interests and hobbies again (e.g. the cooking and the reading and the shit talking) from his "Robin makes me Magic" days. Like yeah, he's still edgy, but he was murdered by a fucking Clown, he's allowed to be edgy. We got a Jason Todd that isn't diluted to "the angry black sheep character" archetype. He's healing, working on himself, his relationship with his family, and he's fighting his way (brutal and all strength and tact) to do what he stands for and what he believes is right. And his heart is just so big and full of compassion, but it doesnt blind him and make him wishful or naive. He's so well balanced in Gotham Knights. I hope this version of his character is written in future comics. I'm sick of DC writers making him this angry anti-hero who's only reasoning and purpose in life is to get back at Batman for failing him and so many others. Jason is allowed to be more than his trauma. Thank you Gotham Knights for seeing that.

I'm glad you enjoyed the game anon. I personally am not a fan, not because of Jason but because of the game itself. The dialogues felt stale, more reminiscent of tumblr "incorrect Batfam quotes" than the source material, and the NPCs felt dull compared to how full of life they were in the Arkham series (so much so I would hide in random spots just to hear them talking about the current game events, especially in AK). The most unforgivable bit to me was Tim not having ever fought the rogues because he's "young" - I've never seen anything more insulting and infantilizing for a character which already heavily suffers for being treated as the useless one, never allowed to participate in the game changing dynamics or to have meaningful arcs, and is relegated to being the cute little bisexual twink.

That being said it's a matter of taste, and Gotham Knights is surely a good game for those who prefer a wholesome loving family approach to these characters. Jason working on himself and going to therapy and having a good relationship with his "family" is surely what lots of people (especially in here) want to see. Me, I don't think any amount of therapy would help since therapy is based on shared human experiences and repetition of patterns, and Jason died and dug himself out of his own grave. That's not a trauma any therapist would have the means to help with. They indeed "diluted" the event in the game, changed the fact that Jason dug himself out of his own grave and was functionally braindead and homeless for two years, and made it so UTRH never happened in order for therapy to make any sense, because there is no reconciliation possible with a parent that slit your neck to save the person who broke all your bones with a crowbar and then murdered you.

It's kinda like when Wally went to therapy (canonically) after Barry's death. The therapist was a good one and he tried! But ultimately he didn't manage to make a real difference because Wally is the Flash, a super-powered creature with time bending powers who does things on the scale of absurdity, and who also happens to have had an extremely traumatic childhood and to have just lost the only person who ever loved him unconditionally. His problems have roots in reality but are out of the scope of any therapy method currently known to man.

And Jason is more than his trauma, but pretending his trauma doesn't inform his actions and can be solved with him "working on himself" is not an approach I hope they take in comics. I'd rather they went back to Jason doing things his way and protecting the people of Gotham in the only manner he finds helpful, because he experienced on his own skin (twice!) that Batman's methods don't work. I'd rather they allowed him to stop clashing with Bruce as main theme of his stories, and have his own plotlines in which he's in between a vigilante and a mafia lord (which they were doing with Dick by the way, before chickening out and have Slade bomb Bludhaven) with Bruce only as a cameo sometimes.

We have a high number of morally irrepressible characters who always do the right thing more or less. I'd like Jason to be something different, something darker, because there is a dramatic lack of grey characters and anti-heroes which were sanded down to either 100% bad guys or 100% good guys. I hate that, why can't we have nuanced choices and people struggling with the darkness they carry, why does everyone need to be a perfect "unproblematic" paragon of goodness who would never do anything wrong. We have A LOT of characters like that and I love them, I really do! But if everyone and their families are like that then it's really frickin boring!

Plus, I'd like the characters to actually struggle with their past traumas in a meaningful way, otherwise why even giving them those traumas to begin with. Give me Tim still grappling with how he couldn't save his father, give me Dick haunted by all the times he slipped and let go of the no killing rule in a way or another, give me Jason haunted by the tragedy of being abandoned by every person who was supposed to protect him and working from there to being the protector of everyone else.

That's what I hope DC would pick up and write about. I was never much for fluff and wholesome things unless it's in small amounts, I always preferred strife and complexity. But hey, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, at least one of us did!

Team Explorers 💎

suptober day 15 - abstract ✨

okay but

Andrew doesn't trust Neil once Neil is back from Baltimore. How can he?

The guy lied to his face time and time again, even when accepting to say the truth.

And Andrew only finds out once all the lies Neil had kept came back to bite him in his ass.

After all the trust Andrew had given him with HIS OWN PERSONAL TRUTHS, Neil goes and breaks his trust over and over and over again.

How can Andrew trust him at first? How can Andrew not feel betrayed by that?

Just imagining Andrew discovering the first parts of Neil's lies (through another person, mind you) must have been like a punch in the guts.

Yet Andrew moves on quickly enough from the pain because there's a bigger issue and it's that Neil is missing and he's in danger and Andrew is once again not keeping his part of the promise even if it technically doesn't stand anymore. And he has priorities.

Sure enough, his priorities have nothing to do with how much he himself is hurting.

i love ki so bad

posting my favoruite characters being in love on the internet is such a good hobby ill draw fengqing do a little silly thing and u guys will be like (crowd cheers) like i am in a circus doing little tricks for ur enjoyment but actually its just me sketching

JUST DID ALL MY ORCHESTRA STUFF NOW IM HERE AT THE LIBRARY WEARINF ALL BLACK 🥶🥶😭😭

Decided to redesign Hollow's Angel form. the ponytail a bit longer and changed some of the colors around.

Again this was inspired by The Radiance for the face, Sky Cotl for the crown/wings, the Deltarune obvs, and my fav!!!! Lifeblood butterfly!!! Love those! They're so cool

Gonna draw them an Kris prolly.

Important lesson of the "egg day": do not mess with Foolish if Vegetta is around.

11:00

QUICK QUESTION.

Who would wanna hear bout my DSAF/OMORI AU since I'm insane?

the problem is that i would rather draw a little cartoon guy than do anything that matters in life and so i am in shambles but at least my Tumblr blog is thriving???