damian really said jason was the second best im crying it's his best compliment i think

spontaneous magic manifestation was NOT mentioned in the parenting handbook 😬

I know this isn’t how magic in dc works, but the fact that Damian’s ancestry includes some pretty powerful magic users is… INTERESTING 🤔? Drabble under the cut!

I wanna preface that I'M NOT SAYIN' that Damian should/does have magic powers, but there’s still so much unexplored potential with Damian's character, and the thought that he has a dormant adeptness in magic is somewhat compelling to me. Most importantly it would FREAK! BRUCE! OUT!!!!! What is this, magic puberty 😭??

By DC laws, anyone has the ability to learn magic, but it is also possible to be an innate ability. The Al Ghuls are no strangers to the occult-- Ra's has had increasingly been portrayed as a magic user, and the recent establishment of his mother being a sorceress/witch?? Even Talia dabbled in a bit of magic, I think. There is a catch that their power is suggested to be due to Lazarus exposure, but for arguments sake let's say the Al Ghul lineage is inherently proficient in magic (and Lazarus exposure simply enhances it).

I can't recall "magic" being a part of Damian's training/upbringing (I'm still slowly catching-up on Damian comics so apologies if I miss any canon examples of magic use). Not sure why Talia wouldn't want her little "heir to an ancient assassin empire baby" to learn magic, but it would at least give reason to Damian not knowing about his magic potential, or lack of interest in it.

Through the power of pseudo storytelling, what if Damian's encounter with Mother Soul could have triggered a manifestation of magic that was once dormant; like a pressure cooker waiting to explode with energy when it hasn't been given a safe outlet.

I've yet to read a satisfying arc where Damian truly gets to contemplate his Al Ghul roots outside of "dad is good guy, mum is bad guy". Damian's initial character growth stems from him running away from, and renouncing his association with the League (i.e. "I'm nothing like you, mother and grandfather!").

The most recent thing I've read was Robin (2021), and whilst Damian is much more cordial with his mother, there's still an emotional distance and sense of distrust/resentment (for good reason, even if the context was some cartoonishly evil writing). But there is a silver-lining that they still appear to be fond of each other, in a melancholy kind of way.

Realizing he's "genetically" primed for magic would be especially confronting to Damian. There's no denying his Al Ghul blood, forcing him to confront a facet of himself he can no longer ignore or reject. A family that he likely has to approach for help/guidance.

Damian is put in a position of acknowledging this power could be used for good, to be stronger, to fight crime, balancing it with the implication that what he possesses could be rooted in dark magic (Lazarus enchantment).

If he decides to embrace it, would that be too much of an endorsement of the Al Ghul's dark occultism? Can he separate the two ideas? What if he can't control it? What if he accidentally hurts someone? What if has the ability to save someone where his other skills fall short?

Ideally, I'd love for this hypothetical story to lead into Damian exploring his Al Ghul heritage more intimately, historically, and spiritually (à la RSoB: Year of Redemption adventures). Another little coming-of-age self discovery journey.

I have my own little personal thoughts on what Damian decides to do with his magic powers, but I'd like to leave that open to interpretation... By the end of it I hope that he will at least find some forgiveness over resentment, and a balance between accepting that side of his family a little easier. It is finally a sense of inner peace :)

Any thoughts? Did I get any characterisation wrong? Let's talk over on my DC blog @arkhamochi! I'm currently trying to read all Damian-centric comics until I catch up with the current run. I'm hungry for discussion and analysis!!!!!!

i love the idea of damian’s siblings loving him in different ways:

dick was the first one to care, the first one to be forced to care because damian had no one else. they were each other’s batman and robin, they were partners, they were the best [batman & robin 2009]

duke and damian immediately hit it off. duke understands him. duke gives the first olive branch to take damian out to the movies, completely unprompted, and jokes around with him like they’re already friends. and damian lets him! damian also first-names duke relatively often [robin war]

tim and damian have a shaky foundation, but they respect each other and have a certain admiration for what they can do. they are not above brutal name calling and assaults, however. [tim drake: robin]

jason and damian mostly knew each other from stories at first, and are known to bicker when they get together. but damian wasn’t lying when he told jason he was the emotional one and hugged him (even if it did end in getting tasered), and there’s some genuine love there — both from damian and from jason [robin 2021]

cass and damian are gremlin on gremlin crime and that’s a wonderful thing. attacks on each other for no reason and absolute sass between the two of them. unwarranted but very very funny. damian also first-names cass [detective comics #975 (?)]

1 min 30 sec of every Ghosts clapper board from the bloopers (in chronological order) Notes and observations:

I was able to tell the date from most boards, then sorted the rest by slate number (which was also how I knew the correct order of shots taken on the same day). The dates with question marks after them are best guesses, and just a question mark means the date cannot be made out at all. The series 3 blooper video was particularly poor quality, so that's why there are more question marks for that. Near the end of series 5 there were two angles of the same clapperboard, hence why I decided to stack the videos.

The more advanced artsy clapper boards seem to be reserved for slates that are even hundreds. I especially like the one from the second series where Robin has broken 3 light bulbs into the shape of 600. Another highlight is the Alison edition of Edvard Munch's The Scream (slate 1000 in series 5) which has entirely consumed the board part, forcing the actual shot information to migrate onto the clapper itself. Priorities, people!

For listeners of the Inside Ghosts podcast, you'll recognise the first episode shot in series 1 (and therefore ever) is episode 4, Free Pass, before they moved on to shooting the actual first episode of the show. Then in Woodworm Men, series 3, Alison, Cap, Pat, and Thomas setting up the tent and cooking dinner (Spaghetti Napolitana) was shot in sequence over the course of a single day (18 feb 2021) for the sake of capturing the progression of the natural light.

And as for Carpe Diem, if you remember Ben saying he was grateful the emotional scenes were shot in the morning followed by more physical stuff in the afternoon, with the latter he was referring to the scene where Cap broke in-tru-da-window (both shot on 27 feb 2023, and yes, I'll see myself out). Luckily for us, the former also coincided with slate 800, which is how we got the slate art of The Creation of Adam James.

Another more production-nerdy thing I noticed was for some shots in series 5 they used boards where the clapper part is not striped in black and white, but in the (digital) colour primaries, as well as including a greyscale. Maybe the purpose of this is to combine the functions of the ColorChecker and the clapper board, to expedite production? It still lacks most of the proper reference colours though, and the texture looks too glossy to make a good substitute. So maybe it's more of an additional crutch than a replacement?

Anyway, this was really interesting to compile, so I hope you enjoy it too!

Musing: Emotional connection

Recently a very close person to me suggested i binge watch "Angel Hare", before that day my only exposure to that project was a fan game that had a very funny punchline in lampooning the "cursed videogame" genre.

So i watched the whole thing and it was great.

This scene right here made me feel more feelings than most of the media i have watched/played/read in like the last 5 years or so.

So it made my mind wonder, like, "hold on, when was the last time i felt this strongly about a piece of entertainment?"

Sure, if you know me, i felt strongly about the ongoing plotline for Noelle on Deltarune, so one would think "2021 when chapter two came out", right? but no, i got very invested but it wasn't it.

The last time i felt so strongly about a piece of media was actually Deltarune's predecesor, Undertale in 2015.

I finished Undertale in tears, i got in a very bad funk when i found out about the genocide ending, it truly made me feel emotions.

So i began to ponder, just what really moves me?

Full disclosure: I don't cry at movies. This is not a "look at me i am a badass who is not beheld by feelings" statement, no, i kinda just dont connect emotionally with movies as easily as other people.

I have talked about this, many times actually, Toy Story 3 did not make me cry, it always bothers me how people at the time were like "if TS3 didn't make you cry, you have no soul" and shit like that, so let me repeat something i have said many times before:

Toy Story 3 was a movie i went to see the day doctors had informed me my mother had entered terminal phase of cancer.

My friends took me to see TS3 when i felt the greatest sadness i have ever felt in my entire life. And im glad TS3 was a pretty funny movie that managed to distract me from what i was going through. TS3 uplifted me when i had a very real reason to cry.

So what im getting at is, i rarely connect emotionally with what conventionally makes people emotionally connected, not that i havent felt strong emotions from movies, but as we'll get to later, it's just not the stuff you would expect, when we get back to movies you'll be thinking, "what the fuck, Toy story 3 did not make you emotional but THIS THING DID?!"

So, if traditional "emotional things" rarely have moved me i began to think to myself, "what are things that have made me feel this strongly?"

I realized it's the damn weirdest things.

I'll try to list things that i can remember making me feel this emotional.

Now i'll be upfront, im not a very cultured person, so you'll notice most of this is...not very high brow.

Also, obviously spoilers for all this stuff im about to talk about.

Before we begin: Honorable mention goes to me finding out i had repressed memories of being traumatized as a kid by being show an animated adaptation of "Pilgrim's progress" by an aunt, which disturbed me greatly towards the end as the main character dies and before it the souls of two people he met are condemned to eternal damnation from making MISTAKES, not sins, not evil, but THE FUCKING MISTAKE of exploring alternate routes before them.

-Yoshi's Island, 1994 When i was a wee one Yoshi was one of my fave videogame characters, so of course i was beyond hype when a game where you play as yoshi came out, the ending is one of the greatest moments in videogame history, the beautiful music, the journey of the stork, and finally the classic Mario fan fare playing as baby mario and baby luigi being held by their parents with the words "Heroes are born", it's such a powerful moment. To this day i still cannot listen to that credits music without tearing up.

Sequel? Retcon?! I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, SHUT UP, THIS IS THE PERFECT ENDING AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED AFTER IT!

-The bicentennial man, 1999 The bicentennial man is one of the biggest examples of a movie being fucking mischaracterized in the marketing, this movie is based on Isaac Asimov's short story and later novel, it stars Robin Williams, so all marketing was presenting the movie as Robin Williams comedy movie, IT. IS. NOT. The bicentennial man is a scifi drama about the existential search for meaning and the nature of what truly is to be alive. You get invested on the quest of this robot trying to find humanity for 200 years, and the punchline to this movie is, in his quest for humanity he forgoes the immortality being a machine provides him as he had developed the way to turn himself biological, still artificial but biological, and he dies peacefully on his sleep before he can be told that humanity had declared him, legally, a human being. To me it was such a powerful moment, he found true meaning to his life, became human, yet died before knowing so.

-Courage the cowardly dog, "The Mask", 2002 This is a legendary episode of an already great show that has a lot of very good emotional moments, some may cite episodes like "the giving tree" or "the last star maker", but for me it's this one. For those who have never experienced this episode, it revolves around a cat girl named Kitty who one day shows up at Courage's farm and she's wearing an upsetting mask, she abuses courage because she believes all dogs are bad. The mask serves 2 purposes, one is metaphorical, "her inability to face reality", the second is to hide her identity as she believes she is in danger. The thing is, she is on the run because her lover best friend Bunny is trapped in an abusive relationship with a gangster dog who threatened to kill her if she was seen near Bunny ever again, the episode coats the whole situation with a ton of goofiness, but it's actually very fucking dark: A young lesbian is trapped against her will on an abusive relationship with a toxic, violent man who threatened to kill her girlfriend if she refused to date him. Courage, being a good little dog ventures to save Bunny and have her reunite with Kitty because, despite how bad Kitty was to him, he recognizes that Kitty is a victim and she and Bunny deserve better, leading to Courage letting them escape away together, to live happy and free. I don't think it's just me, but the final image of Kitty and Bunny hugging as the train takes them to freedom felt so powerful to me.

-Twisted Metal Head-on, 2002 This is one of the weirdest things i have ever gotten emotionally invested, but honestly? i love when some shitposting franchise suddenly manages to pull this off, specially given the set up for this whole thing im going to describe starts in an early game as a fucking joke. So to contextualize this, the first two Twisted metal games were helmed by the og creators of the franchise, TM 3, 4 and small brawl were made by different developers when the creators lost the rights, but during the PS2 era when the og developers came back and created TM: Black, and TM: Head-on, Black was a reboot, Head-on was a retcon sequel to TM 2 that eliminated TM3 from the timeline, but not TM 4. Still with me? Okay so TM2 had this character, Krista Sparks, who was the revealed to be the daughter of the main antagonist of the game, Calypso, but hold on? wasn't Calypso's backstory that his family died in a tragic accident which lead him to become evil? So turns out, the FBI retrieved his daughter's corpse, turned it into a robot with a bomb with the intend to make her get close to Calypso and blow him up. The ending ends comically with a message reading "The FBI wishes to thank you for putting an end to Twisted metal". Stil Still with me?!?!?! ok! so Head on! In this game Krista is back, as a ghost, her ending consists on her confronting her dad, who has now brought up so much pain, misery and death to the world, Calypso tries to explain that the nature of his powers mean he has to do this otherwise he cannot use his powers, and his plan was for Krista to win so he could bring her back and her mom to life, but Krista is so horrified with what has happened that she refuses and blurts "I wish the accident that killed me and mom never happened" the intention being impeding Calypso from becoming this evil super natural villian, but as per all endings, it's always a monkey paw affair and Calypso knows it, looking saddened he grants the wish because he has no option, his powers force him to. Briefly Krista has a vision of her childhood with her dad before he became evil as they share a sweet moment playing on a swing set. HARD CUT TO A HOSPITAL, Krista is on a bed in coma, Calypso is there and whispers to her something along the lines of "Sleep tight my dear, may you finally find peace", as Calypso is leaving the hospital you can hear 2 doctors talking, mentioning that Krista had been in coma for more than a decade and apparently Calypso just had found out. Excuse me Twisted Metal, but WHAT THE FUCK? You are a dumb fucking edgy car combat game, how dare you make me feel these things?

-Mother 3, 2006 (translation on 2008) Mother 3 hopefully needs no introduction, or maybe it does, because many people have reduced it to a joke due to how nintendo stubbornly refuses to give us an official release, but also many of you must know this franchise is the spark that ignited the flame of the absolute Juggernaut Undertale would become, as well as many other games influenced by it. The Mother/Earthbound games were known for being quirky and deviating from the standard conventions of the game, notably for the modern day setting and unorthodox choices of how you deal with the villians, they were always billed as emotional, but i feel they did not live up to that...until 3. The general narrative to Mother 3 is about how greed is destroying the world, the main villian corrupting what we see of the world (a paradise little town where everybody is nice) by introducing luxury, money and status....and also stomping everything with his fascist army and cyborg mutants. Mother 3 is a game about how the worst traits of humanity are destroying the world and upsetting nature. Mother 3 is also the story of 2 twin brothers who suffer tragedy after tragedy after tragedy that ultimately pits them one against the other with the fate of the world at stake. Mother 3 punches you almost immediately by killing the mother character (which i might mention you're encouraged to name after your own mother) at the end of the first chapter and how this affects her surviving family. one of the Twins, Claus, is so disturbed that he decides to on on his own to try to kill the monster that took his mom, while the other, Lucas, was too afraid and weak to stop his brother, resulting on Claus dying as well...but the badguys take his corpse and reanimate it into a cold, emotionless cyborg who follow's the big bad's order and is using him to try to cause the end of the world. In the climax of the story Lucas is force to confront Claus, clause is a brain washed cyborg, his master is out of the picture and all he can do is fight, you can't reason with him...and then.... Lucas and Claus begin to hear a voice, a familiar voice, it's their mother, reaching for them from beyond the grave, pleading for them to stop fighting, suddenly Lucas and Claus both have a flash back to when they were babies, overhearing their parents talk about the hopes they have for them, the many things they will be able to achieve together, this makes Clause snap out of his brain washing, removing the helmet that had been hiding his face since he was resurrected, Lucas and him have a moment as they are finally reunited, Claus realizes all the bad things he has done while under control of the bad guy and realizes he must atone for his crimes, he prepares a lightning attack he knows cannot hurt Lucas and cause HIM to die. "Im sorry for all the problems i caused" he says as he is dying on his dad's arm, "I must go to where mom is now", as he passes away he can hear his mother calling for him, "You just be so tired" she says. Now i know it will sound insane for people to hear a videogame of all things can make one so emotional, but damn, just recollecting these scenes for this dumb post has made me start to cry, the emotional punch of this scene is very strong, it demolished me when i played the game back in the day, but now? After my own mother passed away? I have been scared of playing this game again. I mot sure if im emotionally prepare to go though that again, even 10+ years later. That's how powerful this scene was to me.

-Elite Beat Agents, 2007 If you have played this game, you know were im going, for those who dont, EBA is a silly rhythm game about secret agent cheer leaders that are dispatched around the world to help people in need by raising their spirit and allow them to overcome adversity, the game is insanely wacky and have scenarios like helping a ninja car salesman prevent a company from stealing his company's secrets, helping a washed up baseball star fight a lava spitting golem rampaging on an amusement park and traveling back in time to help davinci paint the mona lisa. EBA is also the second game in the Ouendan series, and there is something you need to know about this series: They all include tearjerker levels to contrast with all the goofiness. "A christmas Wish" is a christmas themed level set to Chicago's "You are the inspiration" and the story to this level is positively DEVASTATING: A few months before christmas a business man tells his daughter and wife he has to go on a business trip but he promises he'll be back just in time for christmas, the girl asks him to bring back a "girlfriend" for her teddy bear. The father dies on a plane crash. When the mother breaks the news to the little girl she gets angry, crying to the skies that her dad promised he would be back for christmas. The backdrop of the stage is set the girl and the mom doing things to remember the dad, like looking through a photo album and baking a cake for his birthday, it's very sweet, but...this is EBA, if you're doing poorly you see the "bad" versions of these scenes, and in this one, one is very devastating, the little girl is having a dream where she's chasing the spirit of her dad, if you're doing well she calls for him and for a brief moment the dad stops and starts turning towards her, if you're doing bad the spirit fades away and the girl wakes up in tears. Dear goodness. But of course, if you beat the level you get this sequence of the ghost of the dad showing up on chrismas morning to fullfil his promise, giving the little girl the teddy bear he promised and having the chance to say good bye to his family.

This punches you really fucking hard in the gut. I am incapable of doing this level without ending in tears. For a time i could not even listen to this song without tearing up until, i shit you now, the deadpool movie used it on a comedy scene.

-Punch out!!, 2009 This one is one i know got me because of personal nostalgia, when i was a wee one the og NES punch out was a big part of my childhood, Punch Out!! on the wii was a masterfully crafted tribute to the franchise. To not dwell too much time on this, this game has an interesting quirk, the ending is a downer ending and it's the only ending you can get. After you beat the last opponent there is a sequence where Mac and Doc seemingly are having a disagreement, where Mac seemingly has decided that if he loses 3 times, he'll retire from boxing completely. After this you face randomly opponents from the game, the first time you lose in this mode you lose your champion title, after three loses, it's game over and the story mode becomes locked for that save file. The final cutscene is Doc walking through what seems to be a gallery with boxing memorabilia, and untold number of years later, he is alone, he spots his old bike on this gallery and rings the bell, he looks up and speak to an absent Mac, "Good job son, good job", as he leaves the camera pans to reveal he was looking at a framed photo of him and Mac on one of their training sessions. The music on this sequence is so perfect, and it was aimed at people like me, people who grew up with the franchise, the idea was making it feel like Doc was reminiscing of YOUR time with punch out when you were a kid, and to make you think about how far YOU have come since the first time you played the games in an arcade, or your nes, or snes. It's actually pretty effective and it got me.

-Regular Show, "Trucker Hall of Fame", 2012 What makes this one different from others instances of me making me emotional, it's, much like the "Angel Hare" example at the top, this one is all about WARM HAPPY FEELINGS, so for those who did not watch this episode, let me summarize it for you: One day Muscleman gets word that his dad, who was his personal hero, has passed away, and he's tasked with carrying his final wish, spread his [hat's] ashes in a place called "Trucker hall of fame", you see, Muscleman was lead to believe his dad was a legendary trucker and that earned him his admiration, but during the episode Muscleman finds out he was lied to, his dad was a forklift driver that the truckers belittled, altho feeling cheated for having been lied to he carries on with his father's wishes. Now because this is regular show, when they arrive at the trucker's hall of fame they are immediately attacked by ghost trucker for "desecrating the hall of fame" as they spread the ashes something happens: The ghost of Muscleman's dad manifests himself and saves his son, taking the chance to apologize to his son and having the chance to say his final good bye personally. Despite the inherent silliness of the show's premise, i think this episode really did a good job on expressing that sense of catharsis of making peace with the passing of a love one.

-The Final Girls, 2015 A friend suggested we watched this movie, and much like Twisted metal up there, i absolutely did not expect for this incredibly stupid comedy horror movie to hit me with any sort of emotional connection, and yet... The Final Girls opens with the main character in a car with her mom, who is an struggling C-tier actress whose biggest achievement ever was appearing on a Friday the 13th knock off movie, during this sequence they get in an accident where the mom dies and even after it's been some time since the accident the main character has not properly moved on from the passing of her mom. Her friends and some people at the college she attends are preparing this horror movie festival where the main event is they are going to play the movies from the franchise her mom was on, and they suggest she should come. Then some bullshit happens and they all end up somehow trapped in the world of the movie. A quick rundown of the rules of horror movies is explained to them, the monster cannot be defeated by fighting it, it's only the final girl who can defeat the killer, and unfortunately for them they accidentally killed the character that, in the canon of the movie, is the final girl, so they believe one of them has to become the final girl and end the movie to hopefully get out of it. The problem is, the main character is experimenting shock from interacting with her mom's character, she is not taking well to seeing her mom on the flesh and she dedicates the entire movie to "save her mom", in the climax of the movie the mom character begins to understand that she is a fictional character and the nature of her attachment to the main character, understanding that they cannot be both the final girl and if then main character wants to make it back to the real world she has to learn "To let go", choosing to sacrifice herself so there is only one final girl. It's kinda weird, that of all possible premises, this managed to make a "You need to move on" message that somehow managed to resonate with me, you might have figured out by now a running theme here, but, i was really hard for me to deal with my mother's passing even if it's been years since it happened, so it's kinda funny for me to think these are the places i have found comfort from.

-Undertale, 2015 Okay this is tumblr, i already talked about Undertale on the prologue to, whatever the fuck im doing here, you know what undertale is, you know how effective it is, Undertale is really well designed for you to grow emotionally attached to these characters, so being able to see all these characters you know have grown attached to have their happy ending on the pacifist ending does fill one with a very satisfactory warm happy feeling that can move you to tears. ...Or you can be bummed out by being a little greedy gaming bitch and taking a look at the bad ending. Because you just couldn't help yourself, could you?

-Onward, 2020 This movie did not hit me as hard as the most emotional entries on this, but it still got me, because in the end of the day the main motivation of the characters on this movie is experiencing closure, catharsis over the death of their father, for Ian it's the fact that he died before he was born so he never met him and is driven by this desire to finally see the father who he shares such a connection with on the stories everybody who knew him in life have told him, and then there is Barley, the elder brother, who did know his dad in life, but is tortured by how, as a kid, he did not properly say good bye to him because he was terrified of death and avoided being there for him in his final days. The ending for this movie is very powerful, Ian choosing to sacrifice being able to meet his dad in the flesh, even for a few minutes, in order to give Barley the chance to being able to properly make peace with his dad and properly say good bye to him. Ian doesn't even get to SEE this, he does not get to see his dad even tho it was what he wanted most of all, but he understood bringing closure to Barley was more important than his selfish desire to see his dad, someone he never knew in life.

So what have i learned from whatever the hell this trainwreck of a post is...i guess that what really gets to me, what really moves me, is when a character, maybe not even someone i can realistically relate to, gets to experience closure, catharsis and be in peace with the people who are missing on their life. The majority of these things in here, even the Angel Hare example, relate to a character being able to experience catharsis by being able to properly make pace or otherwise contact someone they lost, or their ability to move on from this world, so to speak, knowing that their affairs and in order and that their loved ones will be okay.

Things can always look dark, the world may be trying to keep you down, maybe losing someone has been specially hard for you, but it's not the end of the world, you are loved and things can get better, it always hurts and we'll never stop missing what we have lost, but the memories of happier times are there to remind us, we can be happy again, and we can move on, use those memories as your motivation, you can lead yourself to a future filled with light.

BATMAN AND ROBIN 2023 #1 (Take 6 (yes))

(im not writing this as i go since ive already read the issue before. ill also be mentioning gotham war since this takes place during it (just a warning for spoilers!))

i just noticed the bat and robin on the cover! so cute

OH........(just noticed this too) that doesn't look good

look at them goofing off n having fun

this is cute but the way bruce acts here and in gotham war is so jarring its kinda funny

bruce in batman #137: can't stand my fake ass family

bruce in b&r: me and my son damian 🤗

bruce is in his "local dilf in the area" era rn

damian having talia's mannerism that bruce noticed is so <3

and here its confirmed that this takes place during gotham war. not sure how to feel about that

STILL INSANE OVER THIS baby first self insert fanfic

damian went from drawing hyper realistic gore vent art to anime eyes in the corner

i think it'd be fun if we see damian write more as the story goes on. like him daydreaming n doodling in class

wonder if theres any meaning with damian putting talia as a hero n bruce as a criminal here...or maybe its just a "totally original character do not steal" thing

you dont say bruce 🙄

"the last few years"?? pretty sure the events shown there all happened not even in 2 years since damian turned 14 around the start of the lazarus tournament

also why are alfred n talia not shown there? alfred's death has huge impact on damian (he literally hallucinated him) n talia was there as much as ra's

i dont like how damian looks here but that white connor should be a crime

"thats enough emotions for tonight father" [slams door]

i wonder why damian is staying with bruce tho (outside of making this book exist) didn't bruce n talia had a custody battle moment™ n damian's like "nah i have my own life (is literally 14)"

HELL YEAH MY BOY CAN COOK

he's quoting alfred ohhh im gonna sob

this is kinda embarrassing for bruce...like ur son is finally living with you again n he's the one up early cooking?? sir u better step up

aw he's making tea the way alfred did

*squints* did bruce get his hand back? thats a pretty normal looking hand to me

did damian's comment on it in batman #137 made bruce think "shit i cant give damian any ideas of getting a robot hand" n he just. magically grow it back

[GLASS SHATTERING SOUND]

gotham...heights? n. not gotham academy? no maps? no damian joining her dnd team?? no detective club finally hanging out with damian??

ik damian got expelled from gotham academy BUT. WHY

okay? whats the point if he's not going to the same school that his friend went to?

interesting how damian fantasize for a normal life in robin 2021 (with him liking the mundanity of shoujo manga) n now that bruce is offering him that he's rejecting it (or maybe he just rly don't like school which is. fair enough)

wellll just cuz we're not getting maps n the detective club doesn't mean damian's other friends arent showing up right? RIGHT? (maya plz come home)

THE ROBIN MOBILEEE it looks so ridiculous i love it

HOLD ON. DOES THIS CAR HAVE NO SEAT BELTS?? BRUCE UR LETTING THIS SLIDE?

ik that thing is rly loud too damian waking up the whole neighborhood here

not rumors abt the batfam fighting getting spread around?? this is so embarrassing omg

am i the only one getting gotham academy flashbacks here? with killer croc n the trio with the fox shark n bird masks

they're very comfortable with calling eachother father n son while in suits huh. ig everyone in gotham knows that batman is a dilf (who's beefing with his adult children) now

not much to say abt the rest: bruce got shot with something n now bats are attacking him

end thoughts: i hope with all the focus on animals here means that we're getting damian's pets back soon n that gotham war wont affect this book much since i rly want to see damian interact with his siblings again. also is it just me or does the day scenes looks very bright? saturated? it kinda hurts for me to read idk. the night scenes r pretty tho

next issue is damian's first day on his new school that is not gotham academy but im still excited for it! (coping)

bonus bestie corner

2 & 3 for any character of your choice

I’ll answer this with Damian!

2. favorite canon thing about this character?

Damian canonically reads manga. Specifically, shoujo, from the Robin 2021 series. Look, it’s not my fav solo of Damian, but just this little tidbit of reading shoujo and relating to the emotional toil of the characters is such a great addition to canon. For some Damian fans, I’m sure it might’ve been a weird inclusion, but personally bc I also grew up reading all kinds of manga and have related to them during struggle, it hits hard. It’s the process of seeing yourself and connecting to characters in black-&-white, who have exaggerated emotions and cathartic reactions to major events. Eventually I need to write a one-shot, or scene or something of Damian reading Chainsaw Man or Welcome to the Ballroom and getting introspective about it.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character.

He canonically went to hell. :/ Yeah, ok DC. Maybe there’s some merit there to exploring his trauma about going to hell and then getting out- but it never sat right with me. That the explicitly brown Robin was damned by the writers bc he’s the “mean one”. Objectively, he has killed people. Doesn’t make it right to write a child being tortured after an already gruesome death. It especially comes off weird if you know that Jason went to heaven when he died. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something to be said about a boy who went to heaven and actively chooses to damn himself vs a boy who went to hell and actively chooses to be good - but I’m not particularly religious and it’s just….eh.

writing pattern tag game!

post the first line of your last ten posted fics and see if there’s a pattern! thanks for the tag @ephhemeralite :)

i fucking love opening lines. easiest part by far ong. lets see how this goes

most recent chapter of gtau:

Tubbo has - a lot of shit he wants to do the second he’s well enough to stand on his own.

my superhero au where they’re all broke and transgender:

“Those are your pickles,” Mary tells Phil the moment they open the door that connects the stairwell to their floor.

the gtau interlude with the villain reveal:

While a realtor shows Phil around a dubiously haunted house, somewhere else, miles away, a man is about to die — but the man does not yet know this.

from last year’s exchange fic where las nevadas gains sentience:

The first emotion Las Nevadas feels is happiness.

one of my favorite short pieces i’ve ever written. eret and wilbur duke out their gender feelings at a piggly wiggly:

Eret drops a Monster energy drink, a lighter, a pack of bubblegum, and $8.50 in cash on the gas station counter.

tntduo horror one shot that DOES take up precious space in my brain constantly:

Here is a list of three important facts about the situation Wilbur Soot currently finds himself in, against his will and all his better judgement:

the funniest thing i’ve ever written, as voted unanimously by the people:

‘SMP High School Student Government Association Minutes’

gtau but the one where i finally give them a goddamn break:

Phil jolts awake, and the glowing numbers on the clock tell him it’s 2:35 in the morning.

and now we’re far enough back that it’s stuff from 2021, so i’m dangling lines from my wips tantalizingly over your head. fuck you, you can’t stop me, this is my blog and my rules.

i am not immune to the enemy to caretaker trope:

“Please,” he tries again. “I won’t fight back. Just - I’m ready, Jason, we can - we can switch places, one dead Robin for another, okay?” He can feel himself rambling, terrified and adrenaline-filled and tired. He’s so fucking tired.

different fic, same shtick:

He can’t breathe. The kid’s in a room with men who’ve, who’ve tortured him, and the thing he’s the most afraid of is - Hood. Is Jason.

thank you for ur attendance everyone i also nominate @b10000p bc fuck you tell me about your wips. update i actually just got an email so it’s probably you. good. omw to read that shit

No hate meant towards him at all, but ngl I really kinda didn’t think Tim and Bernard would make it this far as a couple or like, last this long? I’m not even sure Meghan Fitzmartin thought they would, because I remember an interview or something where she was asked why she chose Bernard and rather than it being something about his character or relationship with Tim, she said it was because he was from the time period in comics she wanted to evoke, iirc. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Ah yes, so first of all I do know exactly which interview you're talking about, I had gone and transcribed the section you're referencing myself a while back! I'm not gonna copy & paste all of that, but here is a link to the post where I did it so you can see her exact phrasing.

One thing I do want to note is that Bernard's relationship to Tim was at least kind of part of her reasoning—specifically that Bernard was a friend of Tim's who existed outside of the hero life: "[...] it really was important for it to be like, ya know, not in a superhero space but like in a- in a very Tim personal space. Like, this is who Tim Drake is and this is a person who knows Tim Drake."

Also, funnily enough your paraphrasing ("because he was from the time period in comics she wanted to evoke") actually kind of... sounds more like it's based on a line in the commentary I made where I was explaining how I interpreted what she said ("A seemingly big factor in why Bernard was chosen was to evoke feelings of that specific time") rather than her actual words ("I, um, I really sort of wanted to get back to that particular emotional space for Tim.") Maybe we just make similar word choices though lmao.

But anyways: I did specifically link the version of that post where I had made that additional commentary talking through my thoughts on the reasoning behind picking Bernard—tldr being that imo the story of Sum of Our Parts was about 'Tim figuring out his identity' above 'Tim finding the ultimate romance', so picking Bernard as a supporting character from Tim's old solo run to solidify and support the theme [rather than an extensive history with Tim being the deciding factor] made plenty of sense for the story being told and worked effectively.

Now, that post was written in 2021 so obviously things are in a different place now—but I do say something there that I wanna bring up, because I think it captures what my opinion on the future of the relationship had been back when it was new:

"From here on they could either further develop the relationship to be something with a lot of romance, or maybe Bernard just serves his purpose as the guy Tim realizes he likes guys with and they part ways to go on to date other people, either thing could work and make sense depending on what stories future writers (either Fitzmartin if she gets to continue with Tim after Urban Legends #10, or anyone else who picks him up for content focused on him in the future) are trying to tell."

I was always in a 'this could go several different ways' camp! Kept an open mind, lmao. And I do think that like, from the ending point of Sum of Our Parts, that was probably the intent—while having one bit to continue the story in Urban Legends #10 was obviously secured by the time of publication for #6, the vague end note of #10 (which just states the fact that Tim would get content in 2022, not specifying what) definitely implies that beyond that/at that point in time things were less certain about his upcoming direction. Having things end in an open enough way where if Meghan didn't get to continue with Tim there would be a complete story, but that if things did get to continue with her she'd have a plan/path to go down, yk?

And I think it's clear now that they did end up going down the 'further developing it' path since Meghan stayed on as Tim's writer for a while (between Tim Drake: Robin and Dark Crisis: Young Justice). And frankly, despite the reasoning behind Bernard being chosen seeming more theme-related than anything else, I think it's also clear Meghan just had a fondness for him/that timeframe he came from, hence why she took the opportunity to explore things further with them when she was given it. Like, idk maybe this is just based on Vibes™ but I feel like Meghan's intent was always to keep going with the Tim/Bernard thing as long as she was the one writing Tim.

I do feel like if anyone else had ended up as Tim's primary writer after the Urban Legends story, things may have turned out differently and the relationship may not have lasted the way it has—but it's hard to truly say since that's not what happened.

Now that she's not currently slated for anything upcoming with Tim (at least not that I'm aware of, frankly Tim doesn't have much coming up at all aside from a general 'he'll likely be showing up in some capacity in batbooks' sentiment) I think the future of the two of them is a bit less steady. Not that I think they're immediately doomed or anything, but just that next time Tim gets solo content it could easily be from someone who doesn't want to deal with a civilian boyfriend element, who knows. But now that they actually do have some content under their belt in Tim Drake: Robin, it could be something someone else wants to pick up and explore even more, too. It's simply... hard to say!

But basically: I definitely understand being surprised they've lasted this long, because a part of me is surprised about that too/didn't expect it to last this long—but another part of me is less surprised based on some factors of the situation (namely just: who has been doing the majority of writing of Tim).

Dark Crisis: Young Justice Thoughts

Y’know what I’m not waiting until after work, I’m getting mad over DC:YJ and some fans online are also just making me annoyed so I’m gonna break down all my thoughts on the comic. This will probably get rant-y so if you dont like that feel free to ignore. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.

So to start off, I decided to look into what the writer’s other DC projects, how much experience she had in writing, and what she’s prominently known for. As of right now, her most prominent works have been DC:YJ, Tim Drake: Robin, and the DC Pride special for Tim. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t been writing for DC for a while, her earliest work being in 2021 with Batman: Urban Legends. But what she is most known for seems to be writing for Supernatural, the last three seasons specifically. Which all this combined is not promising. Megfitz hasn’t been doing DC comics for that long and from what I can tell based on the writing, most of her info comes from fanon interpretation or summaries about Young Justice. If there is evidence she read the comics for the sake of DC:YJ, feel free to add on.

Now that that’s out of the way, holy shit this comic was so painful to read. In the beginning I thought it had potential to be good, I assumed it was going to be some kind of story about the characters avoiding their grief and living in the past instead of thinking about the future, but the moment the third or so issue came out I knew that this just wasn’t gonna be that. And dear god did it spiral out of control. To make this easier, I’ll just break this down into chunks so I can organize my thoughts. (DISCLAIMER: I will not be going into the art style of the comic because to me that doesn’t say anything about the quality of writing, look at the current Nightwing run for example: it looks great but its writing is holy wattpad batman. I’ve also read a good chunk of comics YJ ‘98, a good amount of comics about Kon-El and Tim Drake from the 90s into the 2000s, so I like to think I know what I’m talking about. If anyone comes into my comments or inbox being nasty, I’m gonna ignore you. I don’t have time for that shit.)

The Plot

To say this plot was really convoluted and non-existent wouldn’t be enough to describe how messy it all felt. The plot was pretty alright in the first and second issue but it very quickly started to make less sense and the characters started acting very strange just to get the plot along. In fact, I’d say the plot was moving forward and the characters were dragged along for the ride rather than it being the characters moving the plot forward. This was a simple premise and it became needlessly complicated, shit would just happen, the characters would react, and then another thing would happen; rinse and repeat. It felt incredibly rushed overall, and I’m aware it was only six issues but I’ve read miniseries that have done more in six issues than what happened in DC:YJ. After I finished reading it, it just felt like nothing happened at all and that’s weak storytelling if it left no impact on the audience or just made the audience mad.

Like what was the rising action, the climax, the falling action? Why was it full of the characters meandering around and not having agency in their own story?? How can you have a story last for six issues and still leave barely a dent in the grand scheme of things?? As I read this, I kept wondering if this was an early draft that wasn’t edited with how much of a skeleton the plot was.

The Dialogue 

This won’t be a big segment, but the dialogue felt unnatural to read. At best it was clunky, at worst it was uncanny. I’m sorry but people don’t talk like robots or say quippy shit all the time. The scene I have in mind is the one where Tim is telling Kon about how he and Cassie were torn apart when they thought he was dead, but it was written in such a jarring way that it just felt like someone pressed a button on a piece of cardboard and it started talking. This emotional scene felt so lifeless and that monologue had no impact. At other times it felt like the characters weren’t actually saying these lines and were only speaking because that’s what the plot dictates.

This brings me to a sub-section; the drama. My god the drama was so ham-stringed and confusing. A lot of the drama presented was drama that had already been settled or was shit that straight up didn’t fucking happen. Kon was already aware of Tim and Cassie getting together after he died and he understood why they did, Kon already knew that Tim was in a rough state after he died so the “reveal” left me thinking “...no fucking shit?? you guys had a whole heart to heart about this???”. The only explanation I have is that Megfitz couldn’t come up with anything new so instead fell back on old drama and hoped the fans would be like “haha I remember that!” but literally every YJ fan I’ve talked to just rolled their eyes. Congrats you remember basic shit, now can you prove you know how to write dialogue with their personalities still in tact. Jfc.

The Characters

GOD. GOD FUCKING. U G H H HH H HH H HH HH H 

This is the part where my theory that Megfitz did research through twitter a la Tom Taylor and this is also the part where I get angry because WHAT WAS THAT BULLSHIT CHARACTERIZATION I READ WITH MY OWN TWO EYES?? Not only did the characters feel lifeless, they also were just so so far from themselves that they felt like clones. Like I kid you not, I thought Cissie was a clone or an illusion early on and was very quickly disappointed when I realized that this was just shitty writing.

I went into this comic reading for Kon, from my pfp you can probably guess he’s one of my favorite comic characters period, and dear lord that writing for him was atrocious. Not only did you have him disregarding his friends, but there were a lot of instances where he brought up old drama (as I stated before) and was largely uncaring about how others felt. Which is so wrong on so many levels. Like how can he just yell at Bart and make him cry?? Kon-El?? Being a dick to his friends???? What the fuck was Megfitz even referencing for him?? Like yes he was a little shit of a teen and would make a habit of flirting with people, but at the end of the day he cared about his friends and never looked down on any of them. Especially Bart, Tim, and Cassie. He never saw Cassie as “small, meek, and helpless uwu” he was attracted to her almost instantly yes, but throughout YJ ‘98 and TT ‘03 it’s pretty obvious he respects her as a person and knows she’s strong and capable. In fact, it was Cassie who even broke off their relationship and he never held that against her and was happy to let their relationship go.

Which brings us to Cassie and Cissie....dear fucking god. For a comic that claims it’s speaking out against sexist writing from the 90s, the portrayals of their female characters sure felt really fucking sexist. Cassie only existed to have a very lazy “girl power” moment, Cissie was nothing more than a cardboard cut out who acted so OOC it took me out of the story, and literally no other afab YJ members were mentioned. Did Greta just stop existing in their minds? Anita became their friend, why was she listed under villains? The part that made my head turn the most with Cissie was when she claimed that she left bc she felt like it was all about “the boys” and was telling Cassie she should just stop looking for them essentially bc they were “holding her back” and I’m here thinking that Megfitz straight up didn’t read YJ if she forgot that Cissie leaving was because she wanted to live a normal life, not because of any resentment towards her friends. In fact she went and visited them frequently after leaving and every time they were all so happy to see her back. Ofc they wanted her back on the team, but they respected her decision and encouraged her to live the life she wants. To move on to Cassie, this portrayal made Geoff Johns’ writing for her seem amazing in comparison. She was the leader of YJ, she was respected by her friends, and they never left her out or made her a “third wheel” in their friendship. Yes, she wasn’t there from the get-go but once she, Cissie, and Greta were added it all became a mutual friendship between the six of them. Tim, Kon, and Bart didn’t look down on her just because she was a girl. That was how the fans treated her, which is the biggest reason why these characters are unrecognizable:

The fans are the ones who prioritized Tim and Kon and left out Bart and Cassie, not the comic. The fans are the ones who made Bart out to seem dumb, the fans are the ones who would make Cassie exist only as a love interest. These interpretations seeped into the comic and made it seem like it was this toxic friendship when it LITERALLY WASN’T. NONE OF THAT HAPPENED IN CANON. 

And this might be a hottake for some people, but I just don’t like how she’s writing Tim. Just looking at anything with him in it feels like it’s fanon Tim and not the same Tim who’s existed for well over thirty years. He just has no personality outside of “the smart Robin who is bi” which is basically how fandom sees him. And I’m a huge fan of Tim, he’s my favorite Robin out of all of them and I’ve been reading a bunch of comics with him and it’s just so annoying that people are just gonna assume DC:YJ Tim is all he is; bc in that case I don’t blame fans for thinking he’s boring after this. But that’s a whole other rant for a later date.

The Message

What even was it. Like literally what was the message or purpose behind this comic? Originally it seemed like the boys were avoiding their grief and then it became this whole thing about “ew 90s BAD and if you liked 90s comics you’re BAD” completely ignoring that a lot of iconic characters today were from the 90s. This felt like it was a slap in the face as someone who loves YJ ‘98 and all the characters, yes I know YJ was never perfect but I still overall loved it and I loved seeing them just being teenagers figuring out their place in the world. With any story, it needs to have a purpose and a message for the audience to take and think about; with this, I felt brain dead because of how plainly it was laid out for me. The audience couldn’t take anything else aside from the overwhelming message printed so plainly. Mickey was doing all of this because...he doesn’t like the current heroes and wants to see more of “his heroes”....way to jab at YJ fans who just want them to be back together dude. Way to make YJ fans seem irrational and hateful towards current heroes. This wasn’t a commentary on grief and filling the role of a predecessor who passed away, this was just telling people that 90s comics were bad and you shouldn’t have nostalgia or want to see more because then that means you hate the current characters. If this is a problem, then just WRITE THOSE STORIES. Don’t make some big meta commentary that spits in all our faces, just write these characters. 

Final Thoughts

This comic run was a mess. it had so much promise and potential to be good and it fell so fucking flat. I haven’t read a comic that disappointed me this much since Trial of Magneto, and for people who have followed me for a minute knows how I feel about that. Somehow DC:YJ makes Tom Taylor’s Nightwing run look eons better and that is saying A LOT. Overall this comic was a six issue waste of my time and I wish I did more with my money and my brain cells, but at the end of the day comics are just gonna be like that. Either they’re good or they’re a swing and a miss. Needless to say, this has turned me off from any further works Megfitz does and I will put YJ on the highest shelf until writers learn to actually write and understand these characters. After what happened with YJ 2019, I’m having less and less faith in that but idc.

Usually I don’t give number ratings for comics, but for this one I’m making an exception. I rate Dark Crisis: Young Justice a 3/10. Get better Megfitz.

The thing with Batman vs Robin is, I actually like stories in which Bruce frantically tries to rescue Damian (as long as Damian is still written as somewhat competent).

Bruce searching the whole city for Damian when he thought Damian left him to join Nobody? Again when the Arkham Knight had captured him? Or Bruce Chasing Ra's half around the globe when he stole Damian's remains? Fighting the forces of Apokalips to revive him after they took the body? I loved that! I'm here for a complex, overdramatic father-son-relationship that sometimes involves Bruce having to rescue Damian from a villain, I am!

But so far Batman vs Robin just isn't doing it for me.

The first issue was kinda mean-spirited towards Damian and Bruce came off as more annoyed and agressive than concerned. Instead the role of being concerned and protective over Damian was reserved for Alfred. But with Bruce being the one who is supposed to do the rescuing it would have been far more important to set up Bruce's emotional investment in this. Batman is a hero who is often written as wanting to save everyone so badly he will even rescue his greatest enemies, so if you want to make Bruce rescuing Damian seem special you have to do more.

The second issue did a better job creating a sense of urgency and showing Bruce's concern for his son, but ultimately the flashbacks to Damian's time on Lazarus Island aren't there to give Bruce a deeper understanding of his son, they exist to get Bruce and the readers who didn't read Robin (2021) up to speed on who Mother Soul is and how Nezha was freed.

Close to the end of the issue Nezha even openly admits that he thinks of Damian as the perfect tool for revenge against his jailer Batman (even though it should be Clark) simply because he is related to him. It's not about Damian's qualities. Bruce also acknowledges that it's about more than Damian and him. In fact I would say it's not about Damian and Bruce at all. It's about Bruce and Nezha. Nezha doesn't care if Bruce and Damian have beef or not. We see all the other robins fight Bruce in the third issue like Damian did in the first one and most of them are on good terms with Bruce right now.

The role Damian serves for the narrative is not as the second protagonist next to Bruce whose relationship the story revolves around, but as the one tying everything together through his prior history.

Damian killed the Lazarus Demon so Mother Soul (his great-grandmother) manipulates events to make Damian open the tomb to the new demon she wants to ally with. Nezha possesses Damian because he wants revenge against Batman. Batman would want to defeat Nezha one way or another, but Nezha having his son creates a personal stake and this way Nezha can keep Batman busy while he collects magical artefacts and magic users to absorb into the Helm of Fate. Both Waid bringing back Damian's desire to replace Batman is brought back from ages ago and writing Mother Soul giving Damian the Batman 666 suit is probably purely because Waid somehow wanted to tie the other Robins into this, so he made Damian into a Batman to command his predecessors against Bruce. It's about Damian's connections to other characters, but very little about him.

The only thing Damian as a character gets out of this so far is some praise for his competence in fighting his father. Even though he didn't manage to kill Bruce he managed to cut him off his resources in their first fight and Bruce came out of his fight with the robins with several injuries and an empty utility belt. But of course this isn't going to end with Damian defeating Batman (which would end up being held against him anyway in this context), so its not really enough to make me as a Damian fan think this is all worth it. The goal of the story isn't to show that Damian is a better Batman than Bruce. It's about Bruce showing how great he is even under dire circumstances.

Hello, im new to dc and i was reading some Robin backstory but there's something i want to ask if you don't mind. I don't understand why Jason and Damian are hated as Robin? From what i read people can't accept Jason as Robin due to him being different than Dick but what's wrong with Damian? I see Tim being accepted despite fans anger over Jason before and he's the second most popular Robin next to Dick. I thought they'll do the same with Damian but it seems not? I understand that it's probably due to racism but is there other reason for that?

ok so. theres honestly not a simple answer to this but here we go

the thing about comics is that in the 90s there was a whole push for people wanting comics to be a little more mature and not just for kids so that adults could still read and enjoy them. and so all these kids/teenagers in the 90s were able to continue reading their favs as they grew up which is nice BUT it meant that they got very attached to tim as robin since he was robin for like. their whole childhood

so tim had a solo with 100+ issues and people loved it. and he was in things like young justice and teen titans that people also liked. and ofc he showed up in a lot of the iconic batman stories in the 90s. so then once damian comes along and is robin instead people in 2006 get upset because tim was their robin for years and they loved tim and now from their perspective tim is "forced" out of a robin role to make way for damian, leading them to hate damian (which is kind of the same thing that happened to jason, since dick had been the only robin so people loved dick for 50+ years then jason comes along and people are mad that hes not dick)

and damian was written like a moody 10 year old, and people hate when kids show emotions, so it led to people not liking damian since he was more emotional than tim and isnt a cut and clean robin

anyways damian also had some of the issues that people had to a lesser degree with jason, because damian way murderous when he first appeared. and jason (thanks to starlin) was okay with people dying. so basically they were a lil too okay with murder, again making them not a cut and clean robin and led to people not liking them

and THEN of course. we get into the racism. everyone always talks about how tim is the "relatable robin" because hes an upper-middle class white man which. um. sure. idc i wont get into that. but damian despite being drawn very white was not. not to mention the mischaracterization of talia leading to people being like "ooo damian is evil and terrible!" and people wanting their straight (lol) white boy robin back.

but thats a lot of what happened in the mid 2000s to make people not like him SO why dont people like him today!! (spoiler: the reasons are terrible)

basically a lot of people that havent actually read the comics today will love tim a lot and see that damian was mean to tim (tried to kill him. lol!) and say "grrr damian tried to hurt my sweet little tim 😡" without actually knowing or caring about damian.

then theres also the shit that still happens in the comics with damian in canon constantly being pit against batman and still wanting to kill ? like in teen titans 2016 he ran a private prison or something. idk i havent even read it because the idea sounds so stupid and i cant stand it. then in robin 2021 he was still willing to kill and all and was like "omg i dont have to hold back anymore 😍" because dc uses the same character arcs over and over and over and will never let damian get past wanting to kill 15 years ago

and of course. still the racism of people wanting damian to be a stereotype then getting mad at the stereotype that THEY shoved him into. and the same stuff from before

also a writer made damian say some homophobic stuff in like 2009 so to this day people are still like "wow.... hes homophobic.... hes going to kill jon for being bi...." despite damian not even being a little homophobic recently (except for what devin grayson did but shes going to hell for that anyways)

in summary. people all have their little beefs with damian for various reasons. its all petty shit and some racist shit and him not being the Golden Robin so people dont like him

I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT SO MANY OF THESE.

um, more rancher/werewolf? is that what I think it is?

"racoon" is... very intriguing?!

BUT. you know I want to hear about Point/Counterpoint!!!

THANK YOU LOU I LOVE YOU!

MORE RANCHER/WEREWOLF! (omg wow my energy is off the charts tonight) Sequel to Giddup Partner, It's Time to Hide Ourselves a Werewolf. Since that fic is centered on a single moment of discovery, the sequel starts to delve into what it's like for Clint to have a werewolf on his ranch, one who happens to also be the Winter Soldier. It's fun and very, very cracky.

RACCOON oh my god so i actually read this super serious and beautifully written JayDick fic where Jason Todd is turned into a raccoon and was like: okay. But what if it was Bucky instead? Because, you know, the whole winter soldier makeup thing? So this fic features bed-stuy Avenger Clint and a racoonified winter soldier. And as cracky as it sounds, the premise allows for a lot of think-aloud verbal introspection, so I would dive into Clint's depressive, self-isolating tendencies and insecurities.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT!! See, Lou, I titled this wip in jan of 2021, long before we ever talked about amtsoyf; you and I were fated to be friends. UGH this is my like...white whale? I think of it every time I hear any Streetlight Manifesto song, I stare at my 15k of brainstorming and wip approx once a week. This is a Jason/Clint fic that features baby mercenary!Clint in gotham, hunting down the traces of his old Carson's crew, and a recently Red Hood-ified Jason, on his typical Joker revenge plot. There is identity porn! violence! collaboration! competence! emotions! UGH I love it so much.

snip:

Seriously, he was counting on being in Gotham for at least a month before running into one of the city’s notorious vigilantes. Maybe he should’ve taken those warnings from the guys at Carson’s a little more seriously, but as performers and conmen, he’d learned long ago to take everything they said as an exaggeration.

Well, he thought they had been exaggerating about leaving him for dead, and he had been wrong then, too. 

The Red Hood stalks to the edge of his shipping container, hands resting on the butts of his guns. His gaze swings down over the massacre site, clocking each of the bodies, and then he jumps into action, leaping off the container to the ground in a move that looks entirely too delicate for a man his size. 

He strides across the bay, unobservant, or perhaps just uncaring, of the way his heavy boots track through slick blood. He crouches low next to the leader of the prospective sellers, rifling through his coat pocket to pull out a small container. He pockets it, then begins to walk around the rest of the site, systematically checking each of the mens’ guns for ammo, which, when found, he empties into a bag that he takes off from under the rifle strapped across his back. 

Clint watches as he does a check of each of the cars on the scene. 

Red Hood is a unique vigilante, and not that Clint wants to get involved with any of them yet, but he’s pretty sure that Red Hood is the kind of vigilante you need to warm up to. Give Clint a Robin or a Batgirl for his first run in —  they’re the training wheels of vigilantes for new mercs like him. They’ve got clear cut morals and an obvious pattern for mercy. 

Interacting with Red Hood is more like jumping right into the deep end, trying to do a trick unicycle routine through a flaming hoop before you’ve even learned how to ride a bicycle. 

these wip titles are from this ask game!!

I posted 2,140 times in 2022

That's 560 more posts than 2021!

910 posts created (43%)

1,230 posts reblogged (57%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@brown-little-robin

@scarvenartist

@fictionadventurer

@isfjmel-phleg

@lady-merian

I tagged 2,133 of my posts in 2022

#random personal stuff - 585 posts

#the blackberry bushes - 169 posts

#asks - 166 posts

#scarvenartist - 117 posts

#fictionadventurer - 115 posts

#brown-little-robin - 109 posts

#thank you! - 90 posts

#lady-merian - 79 posts

#elystan liddick - 76 posts

#an illusion of wings - 76 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#relatively down-to-earth commoner child paired with and often annoyed by a royal child with a weird upbringing and overwhelming personality

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

So we're doing Bingo again?

63 notes - Posted November 26, 2022

#4

Not much of a one for gushing in general, but this is me politely banging pots and pans outside your door and informing you that you need to 

READ LEAVE IT TO PSMITH

READ IT

READITREADITEREADIT

It’s so good, it’s in public domain in the US, I promise you will enjoy it, what’s stopping you?

121 notes - Posted April 19, 2022

#3

(Young Justice 1998 #7 and #55)

Attitudes toward mortality at the beginning and end of the series.

154 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

#2

I finally put my finger on why a lot of adaptations and retellings of The Secret Garden feel thematically off to me.

So many of these interpret it as a story about healing from grief and loss. Which is very true of Mr. Craven’s subplot, but not for Mary and Colin.

It’s about healing from emotional neglect.

This is mirrored in the neglected garden and how the children’s restoring it--giving it the love and care and attention that they themselves have lacked--heals them in turn. Forming emotional connections is the first step in Mary’s recovery, and the Sowerbys are crucial to the plot because they’re the first people Mary has known who take an interest in her emotional well-being. Colin meanwhile has his turning point when Mary confronts the root of the emotions he’s never been able to address to anyone. These are very different issues from those surrounding loss of a loved one. In fact, these children are the way they are because they’ve never had loved ones.

So to rewrite the story as centrally a tale of overcoming grief recontextualizes everything about the protagonists, and the characterization either makes less sense or needs to be altered accordingly.

Nothing wrong with stories about overcoming grief, of course. That’s just not the story Burnett was telling, and I’m not sure where the shift in interpretation comes from, or why it’s so prevalent.

213 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

We’ve finally arrived at an infamous line from Dracula, and I’d like to share some thoughts before anyone (like many, many critics before them) reads too much into Lucy’s comment about her three suitors.

From what we’ve seen (and will continue to see...I’m going to refer to some things that haven’t happened yet), Lucy’s intelligence is primarily interpersonal. She reads others’ mental states well, she’s strongly empathetic, feels things more acutely than others, and speaks out against what she sees as insensitivity. She has an interesting blend of demonstrativeness and reticence. Although she expresses her emotions readily when writing to her friend and when turning down Seward’s and Morris’s proposals, the way she declares to Mina, “There, that does me good,” after confessing her love for Arthur and thanks Mina for allowing her to be “able to tell you and to have your sympathy” suggests relief at being able to express something held back. She admittedly tries to be “a tough nut to crack” in front of Seward and is reluctant to give even Mina the full details of Arthur’s proposal. As much relief as she finds in emotional openness, she also seems to need to self-censor.

The reason lies in the keynote of her character: her need to please other people. One literary critic I’ve encountered has criticized her for apparently having no life beyond her mother and suitors. Lucy’s suitors do indeed take up a lot of her letters’ content, but before these letters comes a request from Mina: “Tell me all of the news when you write. You have not told me anything for a long time. I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???” Lucy obligingly gives her friend the information she knows her to be most interested in hearing. As she tells Mina, “I have nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you” (emphasis added). What we know of Lucy so far is only what she believes is relevant to Mina’s interests.

While she does love Arthur greatly, it's telling that the first thing she tells Mina about him is “he and mamma get on very well together; they have so many things to talk about in common.” Presumably he and Lucy relate to each other too, but her primary concern is her mother’s approval of her love interest. Once engaged to Arthur, she is careful to tailor herself to his preferences.  Likewise, she filters her emotions through the need to please; she admits she’s “very, very happy” at her engagement but considers herself undeserving and vows to “try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful.” Even while struggling with some incredibly traumatizing things herself, she shows concern for Mina’s anxieties about Jonathan and tries to console her. Later, we’ll see that her letters to Mina and her personal diary present very different pictures of her state; she glosses over her own pain to keep her friend from worrying. She similarly tries to “cheer up” to keep Arthur from being “miserable to see me so” and downplays her problems for the sake of her ailing mother. Even her private diary’s last entry ends not with a comment for her own benefit but an address to others: “Thank everybody for being so good to me! Thank God! Good-night, Arthur” It is as if she struggles to conceive of an identity for herself beyond her relation to others.

Given Lucy’s family situation, it makes sense that she would grow up with this mindset. As the only daughter of a widow, she is her mother’s only immediate family, and pressure seems to be placed on her in this relationship. Her mother expects her to marry, and Lucy does so, with attention to which suitor her mother gets along with. Her mother’s will even leaves “the whole estate, real and personal” to Arthur, requiring that Lucy marry him if she is to have any inheritance. Lucy seems reluctant to be open with her mother, judging from her relief at being able to confide in Mina, and her insistence on concealing her increasing struggles from her mother. Although the delicate state of Mrs. Westenra’s health is ostensibly kept from Lucy, she is implied to be aware that her mother is not well and feels responsible for her health and well-being.

This quality places Lucy’s conduct toward her suitors in a new light. Her remark “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” is commonly interpreted by critics as voracious desire for as many men as possible. Lucy’s rhetorical question is indeed unorthodox, as she acknowledges, and viewed in isolation, it does appear to support a reading of an over-sexualized Lucy. However, placed back into context, it becomes more consistent with her desire to please than any unusual lust. 

Lucy begins her account to Mina of the proposals with mixed feelings: “Just fancy! THREE proposals in one day! Isn’t it awful! I feel sorry, really and truly sorry for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. And three proposals!” She is clearly flattered by the validation of attracting three men, but her happiness, as indicated later in the letter, refers to her engagement to Arthur more than to exultation at multiple conquests.

Her intermixed sorrow is not on her own account but on the behalf of the men she must reject. She shows no self-pity. Her empathetic nature takes on the emotions of her suitors in addition to her own; as she tells Mina, “it isn’t a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life.” So she feels “so miserable, though […] so happy.” After Quincey Morris’s proposal, she is overwhelmed with guilt for “almost making fun of this great-hearted, true gentleman” as she turns him down. This deep regret at having to disappoint another good, worthy person leads her to bring up marrying multiple men as a means to “save all this trouble” of the rejected ones’ pain and her own sorrow at not being about to please everyone.

Therefore, the emphasis in Lucy’s infamous line is not lust but her own sensitivity to others’ emotional pain. Once she is engaged to Arthur, she shows no sign of wanting the other two back or seeking them out in any way. This is not the behavior of a woman driven by desire for multiple partners. Choosing Arthur pleases her mother and herself, but for someone as committed to taking responsibility for everyone’s happiness as Lucy, a solution that does not satisfy all parties can be difficult to take.

For more on this reading of Lucy, I highly recommend Leah Davydov’s article “Why Can’t They Let a Girl Marry One Man?: The Origins of Lucy Westenra’s Suitors” (Journal of Dracula Studies, vol. 18, 2016, pp. 5-29).

777 notes - Posted May 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Hi,

I started this blog, because I feel like I'm depressed.

That is "unhappy and without hope" as Cambrige Dictionary puts it.

The state of sadness is definetely longer than 2 weeks, I'd say.

If I'm not mistaken, it's been over 5 years (plus a few weeks).

I may return to this and explain the thing I believe to be the cause of my emotional state. Of course there was a break more or less through the year 2021, because I just read books all the time in hope to escape reality and finally acomplish something. And I did. But 2022 came with new disappointments, lost "friend(s)?" and not enogh will to read so many books again.

I would like to add a few words about myself as an introduction, but I don't think I know mysef well enough to be able to do it this instant.

So I'll just write down some things that I like in no particular order: - cold (it's been way too hot recently) - tea (I'm going to take a sip right now) - jigsaw puzzles (today I started doing one I wanted to for a few years now, but the last time I gave up after putting only a little bit together) - books (their smell, feeling them in my hands, flipping through the pages and sometimes reading) -cocoa (recently mainly because of The Amelia Project; you MUST check it out or I'm going to throw USB sticks with it at you and run away) - podcasts (I know it's pretty unexpected; yesterday I discovered I Am In Eskew and I love the vibes; the depressed and ominous vibes that is) - music (at the moment I'm listening to Dr. Sunshine Is Dead; as I said, the depressed vibes; recently I also listen a lot to AlicebanD) (sip) - idk, not sweating? it's way too hot for this time of day - old Hitchcock movies ( so far I've seen in this particular order: 1. Strangers On A Train (1951) (yes, because of The Amelia Project) 2. Rope (1948) (it's great; to sum up: be gay do crime) 3. Rear Window (1954) ( I really like the way it's filmed, I almost felt like I was one of the tennants of the building)

and after I'm finished with this I'm going to finish watching "Dial M for Murder (1954)" ( I started yesterday and stopped at Intermission; I wonder how he's going to frame his wife, I'm not smart enough to figure it out only from what I've seen so far)

It's funny that all the Hitchcocks films I've seen so far can be connected by starring actors/actress: 1&2 Farley Granger 2&3 James Stewart 3&4 Grace Kelly - Dirt Poor Robins (great band, and Queen Of The Night is increadible, I'm just listening to Komm Jesu rembering what happens in the movie)

- you made it so far?

♠♣♦Congratulations♦♣♠

Anyway, I think that's it for now. I'm going to watch "Dial M..." after tagging this post.

Ciao

PS: Yes, the blog's name comes from that The Guess Who song in case you were wondering.

Red I wanna hear your rant about Damian having more rizz than anyone in DC. I need to hear it for science please! ❤️

Welp, here it goes

(CW: discussing Ace!/Aro! Damian)

Damian was introduced as a preteen in the comics and even the movies. He had no need to be forming romantic connects at that age and he had no interest in it.

Which brings me to the main contender for this rant:

Damian has no interest in romantic connects right now because of how he was raised.

That and he's fucking 12, 14 at best. He doesn't need a relationship right now. What he needs is to find himself first. If he can't figure out who he is, how can have an emotional connection to someone?

The entire Robin (2021) run was centered around Damian struggling to figure out who he is aside from his father and grandfather. If he's not a demon or a detective then who tf is he?? He's being told everything he knew growing up was wrong or mean so he's having to completely rewire his brain to fit into the new standard with the Batfam.

This is definitely not the time for relationships.

He has platonic connects with people who help him step into who he is because those friends are there as a solid ground for him to lean on as he's evolving and growing.

Preteens and teens go through so many transformations during their formative years and Damian has all of this on top of that? I'm surprised he isn't imploding with how much the world around him has shifted on its axis.

So when fanon comes in and puts Damian into romantic relationships it feels clunky and under developed because Damian still doesn't know who he is. That's why fanon works where Damian is properly aged up and found himself work the best with romantic interests, that why I write the fics that I do.

Because Damian cannot and will not develop romantic attraction until he unlearns all the toxicity Ra's imposed onto him.

Damian was raised to view vulnerability and emotions as a weakness, so of fucking course he's gonna struggle romantically. But once he unlearns all of that??? He'll grow into the charisma he's learned from those around him and pursue romantic interest when the time comes.

This is also why Ace! or Aro! Damian Headcanons are so interesting to me. Because they're not wrong and they have plenty of evidence to back it up. I'm just curious as to why we give Damian of all people that label.

He's a preteen. Barely a teenager. He's incredibly traumatized and views no need for romantic partnerships because of imposed beliefs and a lack of stable sense of self. He's also never been in a position to properly develop attraction of any capacity because of his childhood.

And again, he's a minor, he shouldn't be in a position where sex is a thing anyway. But when people label him it makes it seem like all Aces have to be traumatized into their label or feel absolutely nothing towards emotional connections when that's not true at all. Aces can also be in romantic relationships, they can enjoy romantic relationships.

They can partake in sex and enjoy sex. My issue with labeling Damian as AroAce is because fanon likes to believe Aces only come in one flavor: sex repulsed and no attraction.

When that's not the case??? At all???

If Damian is aged up and still falls into the Ace category I fucking love that shit because it's developed and nuanced. But because he's a minor, there's a huge gray area because duh, he shouldn't be having sex anyway and duh, he's so busy figuring himself out that he doesn't have time for romance.

But once he's grown? And matured? Then we can start to deep dive into the Ace Headcanons properly. And then we can start to see where he falls on the spectrum---and sometimes where he falls can change and shift! Because people's labels aren't constant.

Id like to see more content like that in fanon instead of taking the one Minor and dubbing him Ace. I'd like to see a sex-favorable Dick Grayson because I've talked about that on my blog. Even Jason.

But since I only ever see it with Damian, it leaves me curious as to why.