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herehaveafandom · 10 months

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For the choosing violence ask game, literally as many as you can for Star Wars

oh jesus ok

I've seen people talk about Satine who believe she was weak, that she betrayed what it means to be a Mandalorian, that she didn't deserve Obi-Wan, etc. While I don't idealistically with her views entirely, I sympathize with her point of view and I don't think she was at all weak. She was trying to do what she felt was best for her people based on her knowledge of history and the current political climate. Do what you have to, queen. Also, MACE WINDU. I'm sorry that the (stressed out, under immense pressure) leader of a massive order wasn't sweet as sunshine to the rule breaking Jedi master about the rule breaking kid he picked up who will grow up to be one of the world's most prolific war criminals and murders. I admit that I think the Jedi order had its faults but I am a Mace Windu stan 4ever

hey. hey. Look me in the eyes and tell me you think Rex bottoms. That man is a fucking Dom top who gets shit DONE. He has half of Torrent on their knees for him. The way he put his hand on Echo's chest? Shoots an eel in the eye and goes fucking "Call me sir?" He had them swooning I know it. His dick game is pristine. Side note but I feel like Bail Organa gets pegged on occasion (lovingly of course he and Breha are couple goals.

Uhhh. Hm. People who are generally mad abt Mando giving up the darksaber- I completely agree that it was right choice. For two seasons we all went "lol it's so funny how mando hates being the main character! He just wants to do side quests and raise his kid! Lol it's funny how he keeps being the most important person he hates it!" and then when Mando followed through on that character by giving up the darksaber people who got pissed "BUT HES THE MAIN CHARACTER". like tell me you don't understand the character without telling me that. Also people who Hate star wars but Keep Watching It and then come onto fandom side and insult it in every way - there's a difference between being critical of a thing (I am!) and just bringing the vibe down for everyone. Yes star wars and the fandom by extension have a lot of issues. Id also have to say the racist/homophobic/generally hateful takes. Also Reylos.

I've never actually blocked anyone!

I'm not on discord server lol

YOU KNOW. Like ok if you want to ship reylo FINE but don't come to me talking about how I'm misogynistic for not shipping it. I actually have taste thanks. I'm not the world's biggest fan of master/padawan ships - qui/obi or obikin - but at least those people are generally polite and I can just scroll past if I chose.

I don't know that this has happened? If anything hate for a character makes me more inclined to like them.

Gooooood where to begin. I am the only person who knows Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker. When people reduce Luke down to "dumb, naive, sunshine boy" it makes me mad. Yes, that is a big part of his character, and may even be most of his character in ANH, but you don't get Luke unless you understand his more mature and dangerous side. Yes, Luke is generally the optimist to Leia's realism, but I believe that is a choice Luke makes. Remember, Luke grew up on Tatooine, so he can't be entirely innocent. Luke knew how to take care of business with Jabba. If you reduce him down to dumb sunshine I feel you take away from the character.

The sequels. The sequels. The sequels. They massacred and disrespected so many characters. God. They were so wrong. Beyond that, the split canon of Legends vs Disney. I actually really like so much of the old Legends canon I'm mad it's not real anymore.

The infighting, and as said above, people who just seem to hate Star Wars harshing the vibes for the rest of us. I'm not talking about things like acknowledging the bias and bigotry in both canon and fandom, because that's important, but people who just seem to hate every piece of media put out regardless of content. why are you here. In actual fanon proper, I'm going to be honest, mischaracterization. I understand everyone interprets things differently but sometimes I'm like. Did we watch the same thing here bestie bc he would not fucking say that.

fun fact the only thing i have filtered on tumblr is overwatch. I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT I DON'T CARE

Oh easy Saw Gerrera. I understand why people don't like him - he's hard to watch - but I think he's an amazing example of the kind of leftist infighting we see in our politicial climate today. He's not my favorite character or anything, but I do look forward to it when he's on my screen.

Kylie Ron. Enough said.

Ok this is a weird one but in all the prequel/clone wars fics I read, why does everyone assume Jedi, especially Obi-Wan, have an aversion to seeing a medic?? Did I miss something? Like if it was established in canon at some point let me know bc why?? The medics are always chasing down the Jedi and threatening them until they come in to get healed...like why wouldn't they go anyway? What's up man?

well fanart is varied. I guess a lot of characters overshadowing one another.

I mean this in the nicest way possible: I don't really understand why people like Obikin. I completely agree that these men are Not Normal about each other, and they have a New Type of Relationship but...Obi-Wan has been raising Anakin since he was nine. It's not even the age gap, just...I don't get it. No shade or shame but like. Not for me. They can be strange about each other in a different way for me.

FUCK ME I LOVE A FIXIT. LOVE A TIME TRAVEL BETWEEN OT AND PT. LETS THROW CHARACTERS INTO SITUATIONS I LOVE IT. I've particularly been thinking abt Darth Vader interacting with Dooku. Idk but I think it'd be fun. ALSO I LOVE FICS EXPLORING THE VARIOUS CULTURES OF STAR WARS. Star Wars has million worlds for you to make up shit about and I love them all. YES TELL ME ABOUT JEDI HOLIDAYS OR TWI'LEK RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. Shoutout to @fialleril and their amazing series abt Darth Vader being a double agent, which really set the standard and created content that people still use today about Tatooinian Slave Culture.

CAN WE HEAR A LITTLE COMMOTION FOR REVA SEVANDER? ok so we didn't really SLEEP on her but now that Kenobi is over I dont see much stuff about her :( I love her she was amazing. Also let me shout out some favorite fics real quick - the above mentioned "Double Agent Vader", "Cosmic Oddities", a Mando/The Last of Us crossover, all of Blue_Sunshine's work but especially their series "The Desert Storm" and the follow up "Rise and Fall" about a time traveling Ben Kenobi, Deniigiq's series "center stage", Killbothtwins' series "the massive machinery of hope" (more time traveling with one of my favorite characterizations of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon). For the adults looking for something spicy (and by spicy I mean downright smut), Iridan's work "a simple thing" has not only set the standard for Bobadin works, but is one of the best fics I've read PERIOD. Booktok authors WISH they had this level of skill. It's amazing and should be turned into a novel. All of the above fics are on AO3, go check them out and show them some love!

Padme/Anakin. It is heterosexual nonsense and I love it.

Some sections of TCW. I'm not generally a military/war movie person in general, so those sections focusing on that can feel a little long to me. Generally star wars doesn't bore me though!

I'm going to be killed for this, but...Andor. I LIKED IT I DID I JUST. DIDNT LIKE IT AS MUCH AS KENOBI. Yes it was important and relevant and YES it was great. I just think maybe the tiniest bit overhyped. I STILL REALLY LIKE IT THO DONT KILL ME.

Now lets talk abtJaster Mereel can we talk abt jaster mereel ive been dying to talk abt Jaster Mereel

Din/Bo Katan. Before season 3 I would have said no but season 3 got me bitch I can't lie. It's about the fealty.

Star war's flaws. the racism and homophobia and misogyny. yikes!

I DONT CARE IF YOU HATE THE PREQUELS SHUT UP ABOUT IT

#anyway.#star wars

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asterekmess · 3 years

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Been seeing you getting hate mail and while I absolutely can't understand why anyone would go to all the trouble to make some one else feel bad... I also kinda really love the discourse on Scott? Like YOUR RANTS oh man. On point. Always. Tbh I tried giving Scott a chance... He is the main char after all... But I was like??? Wtf? That dude does nothing but refute others and does whatever he wants. And this was when I didn't particularly like Stiles either (first time watching Teen Wolf). But then I got to know more of him and like Tony he went asshole to lovable asshole—seriously, Stiles might not be the ‘nicest’ but he tries and his heart is in good place—while Scott is just... self-righteous. Someone pointed out that he sees people as possessions and that irks me too that I can actually see it being true. The dude has literally nothing going on except for being the one that gets bitten. And the Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance he has.

Okay, okay, where was I going with this?? Right. LOVE YOUR RANTS. People need to understand that Scott not being liked isn't because of his race or anything trivial like it—he just happens to be—but because of his actions. Or inactions, as it were. *remembers the pool scene and Scott saying he's busy and resists the urge to chuck a shoe at him*

Basically, love you, love your work, and love your words! ❤️

I've talked with some friends about it, and our number one issue sort of...boiled down to the hypocrisy of the show? I....sort of rant a lot here, and I would add a Read More, but I can't find the option anymore?? I fucking hate Tumblr. EDIT: I found a post that told me how to do it!

So, since he's the character I focus on the most, let's talk about Stiles' morality. Because, you're right. Stiles is an asshole. He does some fucking awful shit in the first season, and even if he had a Reason to do it, it was still bad. And I still don't like it. But I understand it.

Stiles' lack of shits about what is 'lawful' is literally established in the first ten seconds of the show. He's a sheriff's son who sneaks onto people's roofs in the middle of the night bc they aren't answering his calls, who listens in on his dad's work conversations and is willing to fuck up a crime scene because he's so excited about getting to see a dead body. He doesn't care about laws. He doesn't even care about most basic manners (invasion of privacy much, with having Scott sniff Lydia to see if she liked him?). He's a dickhead, even to the people he cares about sometimes. But personality and morality aren't the same. Stiles' entire actual morality system is based around whatever he needs to do to keep the people he loves safe and happy. Lying to his dad so he doesn't get murdered by hunters? Totally fine. Telling Scott that it was "Jackson's own fault" that Scott attacked him with superstrength and dislocated his shoulder, so Scott doesn't feel like an asshole? That's just best friend duties! He will lie, steal, cheat, and he will kill to keep his loved ones safe (let's not forget this boy threw molotovs at Peter, knowing damn well what they would do to him). We can headcanon all we want about all the different people who are in this group of loved ones, but the list is canonically very short: Scott, his dad, and Lydia. Later on, like, past s3B? It includes Derek. Canonically. Stiles puts his life and the lives of others he cares about on the line while he lies to the matriarch of the Calavera hunter clan, to save Derek Hale. Derek is just canonically a part of that group now, and he fucking knows it bc Stiles is his anchor (that's canon too bb). End of Story, Sterek or no Sterek. It's why we get that insane number of lookbacks when Derek is dying before his evolution. Because Stiles is being forced to choose between two people who are BOTH in his ride-or-die group. He Cannot Pick between Scott and Derek, until Derek begs him to leave.

SO, yes, Stiles does fuckface things, and I don't always agree with what he does, but it is ACCURATE TO HIS CHARACTER. He is morally grey. He NEVER CLAIMS to be pure or good or just or righteous. Stiles knows who he is, and he stays true to himself. And I love him for that.

The same goes for a bunch of other characters! For Peter, who is strikingly similar to Stiles, in that family goes above literally everything. Screw the idea that he was following Derek around waiting for the chance to steal back the Alpha spark. That man put his life on the line (his second life, no less) to get the shit beaten out of him until Derek let him help save Derek's life Again and Again. Family Comes First.

Scott's morality is...confusing as fuck. I thought at first he was similar to Stiles, in that family came first, but...while he's protective of his mother, he also does a lot of stuff that puts her at risk without seeming to care/worry (like leaving Peter alone with her once Stiles hits their car, so he can chase Jackson) (or asking her to come to the high school when he's convinced there's a bomber in it)? Seriously, he's more protective over Allison, than his mother. It's very black and white the rest of the time. Very "this bad" "this good." And if you do "bad" then you are bad forever, while if you do "good" you are only good until you do "bad." The Betas were "good" until they asked for the bite, and then they were "Bad." Derek was "bad" when Scott met him and scared him, so after that, no matter how much "good" he did, he remained "bad." But only when it suits him. Allison is good even when she does bad, because he wants her to be good. Chris is good even though he's done mountains of bad, because of the minuscule amount of good that Scott has seen him do, because Scott wants him to be good. Even DEUCALION is good, despite the crazy CRAZY amount of bad he's done and despite having seen him do NO GOOD, just because Scott wants him to be good. Lying to those closest to you is bad, unless Scott is doing it, and then it's good, because he knows HE is good. Killing people is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Letting villains go is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Biting people is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Protecting family is good even if it requires killing or lying, unless it's not Scott doing it. Revenge for past slights is good, unless it's not SCOTT doing it. And you try to understand it! You try to say, okay, then he's morally grey, got it. He plays with the rules to suit his own morality, whatever. Except that Scott, the other characters, and THE SHOW ITSELF, are all telling you otherwise! They all say that Scott is morally pure. That he is good and righteous and lawful. That he always does the "right" thing, and that when he does "bad" things, it's justified and he had to. THE HEAVENS THEMSELVES say Scott is somehow better or more righteous than the other characters by MAKING HIM AN ALPHA OUT OF NOWHERE. (I'm talking abt canon here, not going into deaton conspiracy theories) It's like....Like in the hate mail response I did, where I pointed out that Every Single Thing people get angry at Derek for doing, Scott did too. Lying, killing (or at least attempting it), attacking innocents, losing his temper, keeping secrets, refusing to work with someone who could help, etc etc etc. Everything Derek has done that is morally "wrong," Scott has also done. And that's okay! Doing a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person, and even if it did, Scott is ALLOWED to be bad! GO FOR IT.

Except that he is sinless. It isn't that he learns from the bad things he does, it's that they aren't treated like bad things in the first place. Because Scott did it, and Scott always does the right thing.

Derek's behavior is reprehensible at times, but the show ADMITS that and frames it as bad. Frames it as him doing a bad thing when he scares Isaac or throws Peter or tells Erica who to date. And that's fine, because Derek is established as not being morally pure.

But SCOTT IS. And because they were so desperate to make him continue being "Pure" they didn't frame the things he did as wrong, or if they did, they absolved him of it immediately, using the exact same reasoning that works for Derek's situations, but this time Actually Accepting it.

He scares Stiles, well it's because he's scared. He throws Isaac, it's because he's upset. He attacks Jackson well it's because Jackson was being a dick. He orders Allison to date Matt, well he had a goal to accomplish. Every reason is treated like a fucking doctor's note that erases the bad things he does.

Being scared, or angry, or retaliating to someone being an asshole, or trying to protect himself, was NEVER a good enough reason for Derek to do ANYTHING "Bad." It was never an acceptable excuse.

IF IT WERE: If the show were making a statement about how fallable people are, how they do bad things, but they do them for a REASON. How people will do wild and terrible things out of fear, and how that doesn't make it less bad, but it makes it understandable, so don't demonize them out of nowhere. If that were the case, I would HAVE BEEN FINE WITH IT.

Scott is held to COMPLETELY different standards than everyone else in the show! And I DON'T mean that people held him to higher ones. They dropped that bar so fucking low. Anything was allowed, and any excuse was good enough.

He made out with a girl who was dating someone else, who his best friend was in love with? It's just the full moon, he's angsty about losing Allison. He ducttapes Liam to a bathtub and starts throwing random phrases at him that he hated Derek for saying to him? He's freaked out! He doesn't know what to do with a bitten wolf! It was an accident! He works with a mass murderer behind people's backs without telling them the whole story? Am I talking about Gerard or Deucalion? Who fucking knows. Either way, it's okay, because he was protecting his family. He plots to murder a cancer patient slowly and painfully by replacing meds that likely included painkillers with mountain ash, and the uses someone else's body to deliver the killing blow, and it's okay because he was just being smart! He was just working ten steps ahead! He was saving his mom and the whole town! Who cares if it DIDN"T WORK?

He walks into his ex-girlfriend's hotel room and scares the SHIT out of her while she's naked and alone in the shower? It was the wolfsbane. It doesn't matter that no one else's impulses included HARASSING someone. He lies to his girlfriend's face about her own life because he doesn't think it's important enough for her to know (who am I talking about, come on, take a guess, which one is it? Allison or Kira? Trick question: it's both). He was just being kind! He didn't want to worry her! He didn't want to make her feel bad! She didn't need to know!

I'm so far off track it's not even funny. My point was that Everything the other characters in the show are demonized for or framed as evil or bad or wrong for doing, Scott is shown to do and it's treated like at minimum a comedy, if not a Perfect Brilliant Strategic Move.

God, fucking hell. I mean, the PARALLELS you see in this show, between Scott and others. The scene of Alexander Argent going to the hotel after being bit? That bit where he pulls his shirt up in the mirror? It's a near PERFECT replica of Scott looking at his bite at Deaton's. They paralleled SCOTT MCCALL with AN ARGENT. Deaton has this whole line in S2 where he's bitching at Derek about "the person you should trust the most doesn't trust you at all" And then seasons later, we have Scott look his best friend in the eye and refuse to trust him, only to get upset later because Stiles doesn't want to work with him anymore and he "lost them." Scott goes running into Derek's house in S1 to accuse him of killing the bus driver, and when he can't get a real response, he EGGS HIM ON by accusing him of Murdering his SISTER, just to get Derek to react. Which is the EXACT same thing Kate did when she showed up and wanted Derek to lose his temper. Scott is CONSTANTLY paralleled with villains and assholes, and constantly does the things that others are persecuted for. But instead of feeling regret or learning something from it, instead of growing AT ALL. Those actions are treated as good. We are told they are righteous. And clever. That they are what heroes do. AND YES: There are parallels between Derek and Stiles' behaviors and villains/morally grey characters! Of course there are!

BUT THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THE TRUE ALPHA MAIN CHARACTER. SCOTT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOOD GUY. HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MIMIC/EMULATE THE VILLAINS, AND HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REWARDED WHEN HE DOES IT ANYWAY.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I understand the urge to think that the Teen Wolf writers did all of this on purpose. That they built Scott up as an unreliable narrator, so that we're forced to come to terms with a protagonist who isn't good, and we watch them fall into a villainous role while thinking all the while they are a hero. That all these parallels are intentional and the writers just couldn't Tell us what was going on bc they didn't have enough power.

And sometimes I play into it. I will lie to myself about Scott being the 'narrator' of the entire show, and that we're seeing it all through his eyes so of course things are biased and conflicting, just so I can actually Enjoy watching it.

But I think it's absolute bullshit that this was done on purpose. It wasn't. The parallels appeared because they Wanted Scott to do the badass things that they had all the villains doing, throwing people and being sneaky and clever, and stopping the bad guy, and they didn't want to deal with the fact that they were having him do bad things. So they just pretended he wasn't and refused to acknowledge that they'd already punished other people for doing the same exact shit, but somehow Scott was getting rewarded. They wanted Scott to be the hero, so they made him the hero, and screw everybody else.

#personal #anti-Scott McCall #go for it #love mail #meta ramblings #rant #long post #WHERE IS THE READ MORE BUTTON HALP

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maulusque · 3 years

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Hey d'you know the origins of Quinlan Vos/Fox ship? I keep finding it and I'm curious if it's one of those Fan Things that took off or if they went on an adventure together at some point.

To my knowledge, they have literally never met or even been in close proximity in canon. I remember last, like, April or something @forestgreengirl went full Galaxy Brain and decided that Vox would be a thing and single-handedly paddled that canoe into fandom’s collective consciousness.

As for why they work so well together, I think it’s partially a matter of feasibility (Fox never leaves Coruscant, the only Jedi who seem to never leave Coruscant are like, really really old, but Quinlan could feasibly spend a lot of time there because he’s a Jedi Superspy and he doesn’t have his own battalion of clones (at least, not in current canon)). Quinlan shows up for his one (1) clone wars arc and seems imminently shippable, but the only clone he interacts with is Cody, and fandom has decided that Obi-Wan has near-exclusive Cody dibs (the other obvious choice is Fandom Bicycle Obi-Wan Kenobi, and there are a fair number of quinlan/obi fics). Most other clones tend to get paired off with their Jedi, but Fox doesn’t have one of those, so he’s single and ready to mingle, so to speak. So it’s partially a case of Pair the Spares.

Also it has to do with personality. Quinlan is, in disney canon, a relaxed, easy-going, hypercompetent, humorous guy who’s also kind of an asshole. Fox has absolutely no canon personality, BUT he certainly has a fandom-assigned personality. Fox’s fandom-personality has changed over time, which was kind of interesting to watch. A while back, Fox was characterized as proud, brash, in-your-face, kind of a slut, cocky, etc. Now, he’s uptight, repressed, extremely stressed and sleep-deprived, cares deeply for literally everyone even though he hides it, slow to trust, doesn’t open up easily, kind of acts like a dick, is really abrasive, and really, really needs a hug.

I think the change was due to some Fox Discourse that went down where some people reacted to people basically hating on Fox for arresting Ahsoka and wanting his men to shoot to kill when they hunted her down, killing Fives, and serving Darth Vader. There was kind of a tidal wave of posts defending Fox, and at first it was like “Fox was following orders, it wasn’t his fault, and of course he would have his troopers shoot to kill Ahsoka, he thought she was a murderer and he knew she was armed and dangerous, and he killed Fives because he was doing his job and he saw Fives reaching for a gun, that’s not unreasonable even though it is tragic” and then it quickly progressed to “Fox was probably mind-controlled by Palpatine when he killed Fives” and “Fox flinched when Anakin yelled at him to he’s probably used to people hurting him” and all of that resulted in the New Fox Personality, as well as several things that we have zero evidence for in canon but Fandom accepts as Fact:

-all the other clones hate/strongly dislike the Coruscant Guard

-Fox constantly has to forge the chancellor’s signature

-Fox is terrified of Palpatine, and he Knows that he’s Evil

-Palpatine is mind-controlling Fox and Fox has memory gaps where Palpatine takes over

-Fox is ridiculously stressed and sleep-deprived and constantly on the verge of a breakdown

-Fox is constantly abused/yelled at my senators and he hates every single one of them

-Fox tries to keep secret exactly how stressed and fucked up he is

-Fox has between 0 and 1 (one) friends

don’t get me wrong I FUCKING LOVE these Fox tropes it’s just kinda funny how we’ve built this whole narrative framework by wholesale pulling it out of our collective asses (fun fact: Old Fandom Fox had a lip ring, New Fandom Fox has graying hair).

anyway, laid-back, relaxed, funny guy and upright asshole who secretly needs a hug is like, one of the top three ship dynamics in existence so when people saw Quinlan Vos paired with New Personality Fox, they were like “oh that is some GOOD SHIT” and anyway that’s my thoughts on how Vox became a thing thank you for coming to my ted talk

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forgiveness-in-the-misery · 3 years

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Toki’s Psychological State Through the Seasons

Toki is by far for me personally the most interesting member of Dethklok; I know to some degree he’s deemed as a potentially over hyped character by fans and even the show itself, but there’s countless reasons why people cling onto that character, and they’re good reasons. Even if said reasons just come down to “I think he’s neat.” that’s valid.

For me I am so fascinated with his character development, personality, and the varied chunks of background information we get about him throughout the series. A big part of this character is that when you look at him in season one compared to season four he is very different or at least he appears to be much different. Season one does establish that Toki does have a childish personality, his bedroom looks more like a room for a kid than one for a guy in his 20s. Season one establishes those basic facts about him that do heavily carry out through the show, but also increase as the show goes on.

Toki goes from immature but not overly immature to....a complete fucking wreck by the finale of season four (before Doomstar) and the reason for it is simple; it’s trauma.

Toki starts to act differently in season one after the Dethfamily episode; he spends practically that entire episode in a catatonic state, his parents always looming nearby like figures of danger and doom. After this we do get to him being bitter about being seen as immature and seen as the kid of the band (despite the fact he was barely 16 when he joined Dethklok) and when a charity informs him that a dying girl wants to meet him he turns into a complete prick. He finally comes out of that when he sees a video the kid made of herself singing a song about death and hatred, with that scene we see a small flashback of Toki’s childhood; him about the little girl’s age standing out in the snow staring up at his parents looking confused and a moment later he’s being smacked across the face.

We could already gather beforehand when we found out he came from a very devout religious sect outside of Lillehammer that his childhood was sketchy, plus how he locked up when around his parents, but seeing the flashback of him being hit as a little boy.....Answers the obvious question of “did they beat him?”

Season one is the least eventful of the seasons. Season two is when shit begins changing drastically.

Season two Toki receives a call to inform him that his father has cancer and is on his death bed, the family and the church wants him to return to Norway to see his father. He acts completely fine about this initially, the phone conversation and the way he announces his father’s terminal illness to the band is as if somebody just asked to borrow his car. When it gets close to time to actually go and when they are in Norway it’s different though; he becomes anxious and clearly uncomfortable, in Norway he stays in town mostly, stalling around places he went to as a kid and a teenager before he ran off to America.

He does handle his father’s dying well once he finally convinces himself to go inside his house and see him then follow through with his father’s dying request to carry him up to his old childhood home (which goes wrong because his friend’s are dicks.)

I am not going to go into personal detail at all and my situation was nothing like Toki’s (it’s incredibly rare to hear situations like that anymore), but Toki handling his father’s passing freakishly well kind of was a red flag for me, because I know from my own experiences that when you find out something complicated like a terminal illness or the death of your abusive parent theres’ a chance you may respond way too calmly to it, and then later down the line days or months or years later something will trigger a big reaction to it. Which is what happens.

After handling his dad’s death well we get the most iconic scene involving Toki at that point and honestly still the most iconic; he beats a man to death with his bare hands. The thing that triggers this is a hallucinated image of a rabbit, an animal he associates both with his father and his childhood, the image of it triggers him to fly into an insanely feral blind rage taking it out on a guy who had been annoying him all night. Toki has always throughout the entire series shown signs of being a tad violent, but never THAT bad. Sure he shot down a plane and had accidentally caused a death or twenty (the whole band is, it’s part of the sacrifices to the Gods deal) but we had never seen him before or after that moment beat somebody to death. That is new and it came from a place of pent up....shit. Shit he never worked through and even after that continued to not work through.

Because after this we lead into him worsening further; he begins drinking. A lot. The band consist of dudes with addiction issues, mainly alcohol, but Toki never seemed to drink quite as much as them until after he went feral on that straight edge guy.

Toki deals with his childhood trauma in several ways:

He drinks. A lot.

He focuses on fantasy and daydreams to keep himself from focusing on his past.

He spends a lot of time with Dr. Rockso who takes advantage of his kindness often, he also spends gross amounts of money bailing his clown buddy out of jail. Constantly.

He occasionally gets violent, but never to the point of manslaughter.

Seasons three and four are when we get fully introduced to Toki acting like a kid more than a guy in his 20s and it makes sense. Toki didn’t have a childhood; we learn that his parents essentially made him into a slave at a young age having him do pointless “chores” like sweeping snow during a storm, carrying stacks of wood much too heavy for a small child, etc. and when he failed to work quickly enough or failed a task they punished him. They punished him by locking him in a shed, they punished him by chaining him up like an animal, they punished him by smacking him, by beating him with a bull whip, and worst of all (who knew it could get worse) they would force him to stay for long periods of times in a deep hole dug into the ground. A hole where he hid a clown doll made of twigs and straw, the only friend he had as a little kid.

From all that we can gather through the show he didn’t exactly have a social life of any kind until his teens, the older he became the braver I think he became, and that was responded to with worse violence from his parents. I think the statement in season one about a vision of father killing son wasn’t totally off, I think if Toki had never run away from Norway that his father would have murdered him. I think his parents knew somehow that he isn’t entirely human, they knew he was something else, and I do think his parents had plans to kill him before he could become “too powerful”.

That aside though.....Once we the audience as well as his friends find out far more details about his horrifying childhood Toki changes. A lot. He’d already been immature and a tad bit off but he regresses further after that, more prone to depression and outbursts, clinginess, and a need to feel like he’s loved by pretty much anybody.

This is a dude who is about my age that came to the horrid realization that any person or animal he loves will die because that’s his “gift”, the gift of death. He works his ass off to repress and rationalize a brutally nightmarish childhood, and the guys he’s in a band with who he loves and sees as his family....are dicks. We know that when he joined Dethklok before they got famous that they were all close, but when they began becoming popular and became immensely wealthy the others became more focused on self indulgence and power, less focused on this still a child who desperately just wanted a family.

I think a key factor with Toki being the way he is comes down to the band’s “no caring” rule. A rule that only existed because of Magnus. Toki is the baby in a group of people who have known each other for a good while, people who came to an agreement to not give a shit about each other for a reason they never explained to him because it’s too painful for them to think about. I think he always tried to live by that rule of not caring, he tried to bury all the shit wrong with himself the best that he could but he was never good at it. It’s also clear they all care about each other and they definitely care about Toki; Nathan and Skwisgaar often being the most protective of him.

In season four aka the season where the show becomes less of a comedy and more of a drama with stunning animation. Toki is immensely more immature and awkward, he’s clingy with the band especially where Skwisgaar is regarded. Near the end of season four he’s completely fucked up; he splits his time between Rockso (his comfort object) and Magnus (a father figure to replace Nathan) in the dinner episode which has so much going on in it. So much. Toki is at his lowest point in the series; he shows up late, drunk as fucking hell, shirtless, and covered in bruises and cuts. Rockso is with him and when Charles tries to tell him Rockso shouldn’t be there Toki goes into a full fucking anxiety attack until Charles tells him it’s fine to have the clown there. Toki’s heavily dependent on Rockso by that point; his found family is quickly falling to shit. God knows what kind of shit Magnus might have been feeding him about the band at that point.

Toki’s entire thing from day one/the pilot of the series is that he just wants a family. When he feels like he doesn’t belong in the one that he found and was taken in by he searches for family in other places, when he can’t handle the memories of his childhood he spirals hard. I understand that the guys didn’t really know how to handle it after they heard about Toki’s childhood so I can’t fault them completely for just.....shoving him off onto Rockso after that, but I still think they should have tried to be there for him more so, more directly. I think an outlet that isn’t a drug addled clown might have helped him in some way, I think if when he’d been a teenager if one of them had found out about his upbringing and just pointed out “that isn’t okay, at all.” then things might have panned out differently.

Mental regression isn’t uncommon when it comes down to victims of trauma caused by extreme abuse. Especially considering his trauma all occurred basically from the get go; he was a child slave, the closest I would guess he ever got to having a childhood when he was a kid was seeing other kids childhoods. Going into town and seeing kids playing, sneaking into birthday parties just to be around other kids his age, etc. and he definitely was childish as a teenager, but I think he tried to bury that side of himself when his bandmates started teasing him or pointing out how unmetal it all is.....But then a douche bag journalist brought his parents to America, a little girl died, his abusive father died horribly (as he should) in front of him, he beat a man to death (allegedly), etc.

He spent a lot of years away from all the trauma and the death and the bull shit then suddenly it started piling on top of him again and his escapism was fantasy, clinging onto a junkie clown, partaking in childish hobbies.....because why not?

Each member of the band suffered some messed up shit when they were kids and it shows in different ways, this is Toki’s way of dealing with it....or not. I’m not entirely sure what his psychological state would be post Doomstar; the way he bounces back from immense trauma makes me think that he would be okay given some time and that’s a safe assumption to make, especially now that his bandmates/family will be there for him the way he needs them to be.

I want to tag @theidiotwiththepaintedface who hopefully will enjoy this painfully long deep dive into a character’s psychology lol.

#metalocalypse #dethklok #toki wartooth #character analysis #tw: child abuse

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autisticcassandracain · 3 years

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🔥 kori

dickkory sucks but not for any of the reasons dickkory haters say it sucks. most dickkory hate is literally just ppl hating on kori disguised as a 'personal opinion' on ships and usually those opinions make it extremely obvious that they never bothered to like, actually read The New Teen Titans lmao. 'dickkory was mostly sexual' is especially a terrible take because not only is it blatantly untrue, it's also based in the slut-shaming Kori has received over the years for being sexually open, and the mischaracterization she's received bc people saw an opportunity to reduce a female character to a sex object with a thin veil of plausible deniability in the form of 'characterization' and took it.

Most arguments against dickkory I've seen focus on the idea that Kori didn't offer Dick much, which is HILARIOUS because you have a MUCH better argument for the reverse, which is exactly what I will now proceed to argue.

got long, is under the cut, you know the drill. TL;DR Kori and Dick's relationship was badly built up, Kori provides more emotional support for Dick than Dick provides for Kori, Kori was more important to Dick's development than Dick was to Kori, and I don't think it's ever even been stated why Kori likes Dick.

Also donnakory was built up way better than dickkory and I'd argue Donna has had more of an influence on Kori than Dick ever did. That last one isn't explained in-depth it's just important to me that you know this.

Dick and Kori barely interacted prior to getting together, and yet we were supposed to believe this narrative that Dick was definitely in love with Kori and just couldn't admit it. I literally did a double take the first time Kori mused to herself about being confused Dick 'wouldn't admit to being in love with her' like I'm sorry WHEN did that get established??? I'm too aro for 'love at first sight' bullshit you have to actually make them interact or I won't buy it. This lack of build-up was my first problem with dickkory, but I was willing to ignore it if the actual relationship appealed to me.

It didn't. Dick and Kori's relationship is marked by a pattern of what, to me, is incompatibility. Dick is the type of person who, when stresses, lashes out at others and pushes them away. He's seen doing this multiple times to Kori in The New Teen Titans, most notably shortly after they got together when he was stressed due to having too much on his plate, and in the Return to Tamaran/Karras/Marriage arc. Kori consistently reacts to this behavior by blaming herself for it. The first time, she comes to Donna to ask her if she's done anything wrong, after which Donna reassures her that Dick's just Like That, and Kori resolves to be as supportive as she can.

The second time bothers me much more; on Tamaran, Dick is so mean to her she ends up having a full-on breakdown, which she first seeks support for from Joey, but later, she just stays depressed until she can return to Earth. While Dick's behaviour was influenced by his brainwashing, we never get confirmation of how much of it was influenced, and on top of that, the comic repeatedly and consistently frames Kori as having 'hurt Dick' during this arc afterwards, making her say this repeatedly, while never refuting it or addressing the ways Dick has harmed Kori during this arc.

While Dick did man up and apologize in both circumstances (I think the second apology was lacking, but the first was quite good), it still established a pattern that I find uncomfortable. Dick is rude to Kori, Kori takes it personally and wonders what she's done wrong, Kori tries to talk it out with Dick, Dick snaps at her and pushes her away, but eventually realizes he's been mean and apologizes. What bothers me the most in this pattern is the part where Kori consistently blames herself for Dick's behaviour, and assumes she's done something wrong to make him behave this way. Every time this came up in the comics, it made me deeply uncomfortable, because I've seen enough real-life relationships with a very similar dynamic to this that were deeply unhealthy to make this set off all my alarm bells.

I want to stress that I don't think dickkory is actually unhealthy in canon, but it reminds me of enough unhealthy relationships I've known for me to be personally uncomfortable with it.

That's not the only part that reminds me of those relationships: I feel like Dick is getting way more out of this relationship than Kori. Kori is consistently shown to support Dick when he goes through tough situations, even when Dick responds by trying to push her away or being rude to her. Similarly, Dick has stated that Kori was the one who helped him open up about his emotions, and has had a tremendous positive effect on his character development as a result; he even goes so far as to name her one of the elements of his Nightwing identity. Kori pushes Dick to explore new areas of himself, and supports him when he has problems.

Dick, by contrast.... doesn't really do this with Kori. When Kori needed support, Dick was consistently either absent or actually rude to her. Again, this is most prominent during the Karras arc; during a time when Kori desperately needed someone to support her, Dick was only concerned with his own hurt feelings. And again, yes, he was brainwashed during this, but again, we never actually got confirmation on how much of this behaviour was due to brainwashing, and much of the writing afterwards framed Kori was the one in the wrong here, so my point stands. This was the singular most important moment Kori needed support, and Dick blew it, and the narrative basically let him off the hook for it.

The only time I can think of when Dick supported Kori in non-battle related situations was right after the Wildebeest arc in New Titans, but that was also the start of Kori's character massacre for the break up arc, so I don't exactly have fond memories of that. I'm sure there's been more minor moments where he's supported her that I'm forgetting, but I shouldn't have to have this much trouble coming up with times Dick has emotionally supported Kori.

Furthermore, Dick hasn't had a similar effect on Kori's character development to Kori's effect on Dick. While Kori did develop while she was with Dick, this wasn't really due to Dick. Her short-lived change of heart about the morality of murder was due to her personal experiences, and while Dick probably aided in this decision, so did Donna and even the rest of the Titans. It was not something that was uniquely Dick, the way Dick opening up about his emotions was uniquely Kori. Her distancing herself from Tamaran and embracing Earth was also not uniquely Dick, and was in fact a realization that mostly took place in his absence. Other parts of her character development follow this pattern.

I'm not saying Dick has had no effect on Kori's character progression, but he wasn't instrumental in it the way Kori was instrumental in his. Kori's character would've likely progressed in an extremely similar fashion even without him, and I can't say the same for Dick. If anyone influenced Kori's development in a similar way Dick influenced Kori's, it was Donna, who was the one to introduce her to Earth culture, supported her through various tough times and insecurities, helped her find a job (albeit it on accident) and frequently worked with her later, etc. etc. And even then, I don't think Donna's effect on Kori was quite as dramatic as Kori's effect on Dick.

The final nail in the coffin for any interest I may have had in dickkory is the fact that I, honest to god, have no idea why Kori likes Dick. I don't. Dick has several internal monologues about how much he loves Kori for her passion, her drive, her openness, and the way she pushes him to explore new parts of himself and open up, but Kori... doesn't really do the same for Dick. I can make guesses as to why I think Kori likes Dick, even fairly educated ones (I think Kori likes Dick at least in part because his intellectual approach to life is new and interesting to her, for example), but they've never stated it explicitly the way they've stated what Kori likes about Dick. And for a series that'll state practically everything explicitly if it can, up to and including what's happening on the panel right now, this is very weird to me.

Any of these problems, isolated, I could've gotten past; even a two of these problems I could've probably ignored. Three would've been pushing it, but all of them? No chance. Any good will I had towards the relationship was buried with the Karras arc, and then shot in the head for good measure when they continuously talked about it as if Kori was the one at fault there.

All of these problems combined make it very clear to me that Kori was not the primary concern in this relationship. Kori was invented as a love interest for Dick, and it shows. This entire relationship is about what it does for Dick, how it helps Dick. The only thing Kori gets out of it, at least to me, is the happiness she gets from being in love, and frankly, she could get that with literally any other character.

The fact that people keep reducing her character to this relationship also infuriates me and makes me even less inclined to like it, especially when they can't even bother to remember Kori was the one who broke up with Dick and instead treat Kori as the one who was left heartbroken and has never gotten over it, while Dick gets to move on with his life and other love interests.

I think this relationship had potential; I think their contrasting personalities could've made for an interesting relationship, and I've enjoyed some isolated moments and fandom portrayals of them before. But after reading The New Teen Titans, I just do not understand why so many Kori fans like this relationship so much. I went into the series neutral on the relationship but hopeful about being won over, to straight-up hating it.

Also that one time they used a relationship between a man who was about to shoot his wife for cheating on him as a direct and obvious parallel to dickkory was SO GODDAMN AWFUL. why the hell did they think that was a good idea. why.

#my posts #koriand'r #dick grayson #anti-dickkory

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nightwingmyboi · 4 years

Text

Bruce firing Dick vs. Dick firing Tim

Soooo, I have seen a lot of people comparing the way that Bruce replaced Dick with Jason versus the way that Dick replaced Tim with Damian. (This happened some on my Batfam Replacement Montage post [x], which is what first brought it to my attention.) For some reason, a lot of people come out of this comparison thinking that Dick was not only just as bad and insensitive as Bruce (if they even think Bruce was in the wrong at all that is) but even that Dick is somehow worse. This legitimately confused the heck out of me. I don’t know if people are reading the same comics as me (though honestly with all the retcons and nonsense going on maybe we aren’t reading the same comics), so I’m just going to break each replacement down for you here and maybe you’ll see where I’m coming from when I think that is completely out of left field.

Let’s start with Bruce. These panels have Dick (as Nightwing) recounting how things between him and Bruce went down (I’ve rewritten the text just below the image if it is blurry):

Batman #416

So while I was still laid up in bed, you dropped the bad news on me. No ifs, ands, or buts...I wasn’t to play Robin anymore. You couldn’t continue to assume the responsibility for a child fighting crime. For six years you trained me to be a crimefighter, then denied me that role. Of course, you assured me that it was for my own good. I lay there with a bandaged shoulder and my life in ruins. You smiled. Kicked a great big hole in my life, then walked out of the room.

Following an encounter with the Joker, Dick is shot in the shoulder and nearly dies. Instead of comforting Dick, Bruce decides to follow up this traumatic event by firing Dick from Robin immediately. Bruce calls Dick a child, disregarding all the time Dick spent training to become Robin and Dick’s own agency, and basically attempts to kick him out of crimefighting all together. This may not be clear because of the image quality, but Dick literally starts crying in that last panel. But it doesn’t stop there:

I don’t see what option I had, other than to split. Alfred tried to talk me out of it. It was Alfred who forced money on me so I’d have something to live on. You couldn’t even be bothered to say goodbye.

Despite his concern for Dick being the motivating factor behind the firing, Bruce doesn’t even seem to be aware that Dick is leaving, and so Alfred is the one that tries to convince Dick to stay in Bruce’s stead. And where is Bruce during all this you may ask??

Sorry, he was busy working on a case at the time. And people wonder why Dick didn’t realize Bruce was doing this out of concern rather than distrust of his capabilities. Anyway, Dick leaves, eventually joins the Titans, and becomes Nightwing. Eighteen whole months pass--a freaking year and a half--and not once does Bruce try to get in touch with Dick to sort things out. Then, Dick finds out about his replacement in the newspaper:

Bruce fired Dick because he didn’t want a child sidekick. Then he goes out and gets a freaking child sidekick, and, even better, makes him Robin. Robin isn’t just a costume to Dick. In many comics, Dick refers to the Robin role as meaning family, and that’s because Dick specifically crafted Robin as a way to remember his parents.

Robin Annual #4 and The Titans #16

It doesn’t get much more personal than using your dead mother’s nickname for you and your family’s colors (which across comics are pretty consistently some combo of yellow/green/red) as your hero persona. And Bruce, despite knowing the origins of the costume, felt like he could do whatever he wanted with it. And he didn’t even have the decency to be upfront about it. You can see why this drives me crazy. He spends the rest of the issue beating around the bush and not telling Dick why he adopted Jason and made him Robin, and, in the end, he once again kicks Dick out of the house. Nice parenting Bruce.

Now with Dick. I’ve seen some people accuse Dick of not talking to Tim and just pulling the Robin mantle right out from under him, but that isn’t really what the comics show us:

Red Robin #1

Dick tries to talk to Tim about it, and, unlike Bruce, he explicitly states his reasons for giving Damian Robin. He validates Tim, and tells him that they are equals. Even when Tim lashes out, Dick makes it clear that he still wants Tim around, even if it is not as Robin. And, once again unlike Bruce, Dick doesn’t proceed to just abandon Tim when things don’t go his way. He sends Tim’s friends his way and when that doesn’t work, Dick goes to find Tim and try to talk things out in person:

Red Robin #4

So why doesn’t Tim just tell Dick his theory? That’s because, as much as people apparently want to believe that Tim had the whole thing figured out and it was everyone else’s fault that no one was listening, Tim had no actual evidence whatsoever that Bruce was actually alive. He was kind of in denial about Bruce’s death and all he had was a weak hunch.

Tim rides off without giving any explanations, leaving Dick to deal with all the fallout of Bruce’s “death” by himself. Dick had to abandon everything that he built (Nightwing, his various superhero teams, etc.) in order to take up Bruce’s identity. He had to deal with being Batman, running Wayne Enterprises, and raising Damian (a murderous brat who spent literally all his time insulting and undermining him in those early days), all while managing his own grief. And he had no one but Alfred for support. So maybe he didn’t handle Tim as well as he could have (I don’t really know what he could have done differently but hey if you want to let me know feel free), but I honestly think that under the circumstances he tried his freaking best, which is more than Bruce did for him. And when Tim returns, he immediately expects Dick to put everything on hold to help him, once again without explanation, and what does Dick do?

Red Robin #11

He trusts Tim and puts everything on hold to help Tim out. Even though Tim pretty much left him high and dry when he needed help the most. So yeah, I don’t see where people are coming from when they act like Dick somehow singlehandedly destroyed his relationship with Tim. I don’t understand how Tim could possibly trust Jason (ie the person who very nearly murdered him) more than he trusts Dick (ie the person who mentored and acted as a confidant to him for literal years) in such a short span of time.

In my opinion, Bruce and Dick are not even remotely similar in their actions here. I don’t understand how people who can so readily excuse Bruce for his harsh treatment not be the least bit willing to give Dick some slack when his situation was sooo bad and he tried so hard.

#dick grayson #bruce wayne #tim drake #damian wayne #jason todd #Alfred Pennyworth #red robin #robin #batman #Dick!Batman #nightwing #long post #my analysis #my meta #the flying graysons #replacement debacle

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mxrekai · 4 years

Text

You see this tweet? This tweet right here?

It’s gross and I’ll tell you why, and I’ll break down the article as well because it makes me as angry as a bull.

You simply CAN NOT break these characters down to these (biased!) individual traits. And in Jason’s case, it’s not even a trait, it’s just damn slander with a photo of him dead attached to it, because DC still likes to push the narrative that it’s his fault he died. When in reality, he was a CHILD who was tricked and betrayed by his mother, and in the end still tried to save his mother who was responsible for his death. Joker and Sheila are responsible for this child’s death, NOT HIM.

These are all incredibly complex characters, with incredibly biased descriptions.

For Dick (the only one with his hero name for some reason), the oversexualized Robin by the fandom is more like it rather than ‘the cute Robin’. Which is kinda sad because he has a lot of depth that can be explored and stories that have been told that are really great (not Ric, screw that guy). Like his relationship with Bruce, his relationship with Damian, his relationship with his teams, his life outside of heroism, police life, dealing with his mental health, etc.

From what we’ve seen if I had to pick a single descriptor for him, I’d pick “The protective Robin” or “The first Robin”

Because he’s always willing to throw himself into harm's way to save others. Especially when it comes to his found family. Or the first Robin works well because he was the first. He started the whole Robin line.

For Tim, I’m sorry but I can’t really comment on Tim because I haven’t read his run yet, it’s on my to do list. But from what I have seen from other comics that include him, ‘the smart robin’ doesn’t fit very well because to be Robin they ALL had to be smart. And they all were smart Robins.

If I had to describe Tim, it would be “the detective Robin” because out of all of them, he is the best detective and is the most proficient at it.

For Damian... oh boy, I’m so sorry but he’s not my favorite Robin at all. But I know he’s complex and has depth. If anyone who reads this is a Damian stan, feel free to add onto this and tag me.

And last but definitely not least... Jason Todd.

This whole tweet and the article attached is Jason Todd slander (not what I pay for the DC Universe app for!) and a misrepresentation of his character.

“The Robin we’d like to smack some sense into.”

He👏was👏not👏a👏bad👏robin👏

He was a CHILD who just wanted to help and make a difference! He wanted to help the people in crime alley because he knew what it was like to be in that situation and he wanted to save people! When he first put on his Robin suit it gave him MAGIC. He had Robin magic but that Robin magic wasn’t enough to save him from getting beat to death by the joker.

Yes, sometimes he did not listen but that goes for EVERY robin, my girl Carrie Kelly included.

He had sense, he was also a child who made mistakes! Like all the other Robins!

Then he was brought back under the WORST possible circumstances, to come back and find out his death had little to no impact (unbeknownst to him of Bruce’s grief). Then go under some intense training, deal with pit madness, have his mind tainted with, then grow some problems with the man he loved who took care of him. His father.

If I had to pick a label for Jason? It’d be the discarded Robin. He was this boy who was thrown away by the fandom at the time by murder. Then like a broken toy, the writers proceeded to get a new Robin.

Or the redeemed Robin. When Jason was reborn as Red Hood, overtime he became a fan favorite in the DC community. Even won DC’s sexiest man. He was hated at first but is now loved by many.

Heck, maybe even that label because he’s grown from his first resurrection so much. Instead of being angry at the world, he’s now chosen to accept what happened to him and even reconcile his relationship with his family.

Or even the

Now onto the article...

Holy moly, this article sucked all the life out of me until I was left DCeased (get it?). It is way too obvious an angry stan wrote this.

Oh. My. God.

How is this in any way Jason’s fault? I don’t recall him having the ability to write his own comic book? This is the writers fault, not Jason’s.

Onto the second one.

Okay, sure it was rude to interrupt them, I’ll give them that one. But I’m also pretty sure Jason’s insert was for comedic effect. Tons of comic books have these moments.

I had to laugh at the “SO NATURALLY JASON TODD DID SOMETHING ANNOYING TO INTERRUPT IT” it’s just, damn. This article just reeks of bitterness.

This one confused me, so I went to go read the comic book that they were talking about. This, once again, was intended to be a comedic moment. Jason was simply expressing his excitement for going to go to the Gotham library so he blurts our “Holy Gutenberg!”. Bruce spins him around and tells him to never do that again. Even Jason’s confused on why he doesn’t like the reference. I think this is simply comedy, such as when he threatens to fire Carrie if she moved the batplane in the animated movie.

If a crowbar was right there Bruce NEVER would have grabbed it to hurt Jason over a REFERENCE. No sane person would.

Let’s look at the keywords here,

“Nightwing took a heavy dose of Scarecrow’s fear gas and had an extended nightmare about an alternate life.”

Once again, YOU WANT TO BEAT JASON UP FOR SOMETHING OUT OF HIS CONROL, AND NOT HIS FAULT? TO TOP IT OFF, NOT REAL?

Want someone to blame? Blame Scarecrow and the fear toxins for making Dick see all that. This was an alternate dream reality, no characters were in control or even there.

Yknow what, valid. Honestly, I’m pretty sure the heroes there have memorials elsewhere as well and Jason only got that robin suit on display (which was honestly more so to remind Bruce of his failure and make himself feel guilty), but fair.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this better have been some abstract marketing (which I hope it was) for the new Death in the Family movie coming out.

All in all, the Jason slander from DC was infuriating and frankly unnecessary. He deserves so much better because once again, he is a complex character who deserves a deep dive.

Please remember that this is just my two cents/opinion, and it is totally okay if you disagree with anything I said here.

Have a good day :)

#Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Red Hood #Red Robin #Carrie Kelly #I saw this tweet and got to WORK #this was longer than expected #that dive on the article was improvised #We don't stand for Jason Todd slander in this household #Or Dick or Tim slander

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do-not-careissa · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Interview

tagged by @koa-ia thanks for tagging me ❤️ I doubt you expected an essay length response but meh I'm wordy

Name(s): Do_not_careissa (ao3), do-not-careissa (Tumblr)

Fandoms: mostly stick to DC stuff, namely Red Hood, Green Lanterns, Batfam, that area

Where you post: fics go on ao3 with links here on Tumblr, though I do have a few small sections of fics or wips I've put here too

Most popular one shot (by kudos): From Tragedy Comes Happiness, all the other fics with higher kudos are all part of my Sapphire Jason series so I'm iffy on if they could be considered one shots anymore

Overall: Into the Violet Light

From this year: Into the Violet Light

Most popular multi-chap (also by kudos): Guy and the Outlaws

Favourite story you’ve written so far: sheesh that's a hard one because it's more so specific scenes or what went into making the fic that I enjoy more. So I'mma cheat and say a few. Into the Violet Light for kinda obvious reasons, it was the starting off point for my series, it let me start messing around with this idea I'd had for a few weeks/months by then, and it got me to really focus on "how can I show that he deserves receiving this ring when the audience doesn't even know it's gonna happen?" Next one chronologically would be Never Again, specifically the Dick and Joker scene. That was one of those weird cases where I got the idea like at least 2-3 months before I got around to writing it. So the beats of this scene just sat on my white board for weeks on end and I knew I needed to do it and make it good. And I really enjoyed how I got to play around with Dick's perception of the world when the ring took over. Last one I'm gonna add here is From Tragedy Comes Happiness cuz I just can't not add it as a fav because it absolutely is one of my favorites. I literally wrote it in 3 days I was that invested in this story, Google thought I was expecting a child, it was a thing. And it is 100% @kiseiakhun 's fault for mentioning Roy being dead

Fic you were nervous to post: Not Enough My abilities with smut are limited at best, so having a fic that's almost entirely smut, especially with a lesser known ship like GuyHal, is of course gonna leave me nervous if it's even worth posting. I also wrote it in pieces during my half hour metro commute so it's not like I even had an idea what I was doing either.

How do you choose your titles: It changes from story to story. Sometimes when I'm thinking of the direction I want the fic to go a title will come to me, other times while I'm writing or editing I'll think of something either theme or dialogue related. Other times, much like the summary, I just kinda force my way through different ideas and go with the one that works best.

Do you outline: Kind of, sort of? It's not like X is the inciting incident, Y is the climax, Zamaron is our subplot, type of thing, but I do a little bit of planning (usually, sometimes I just start writing and that's that). Usually I start off with figuring out what the end goal is for the fic, then I'll make a note of that, like "Dick becomes a RL, Bruce injured", "Jason has first mission, romantic/sexual tension between him and Kyle by end, Jason oblivious?" Then I'll do what I consider my first draft(some might consider a detailed outline) where I go through, figure out the scenes, rough beats, basically laying out what's gonna happen in each. Sometimes it really loose, sometimes it word for word dialogue and stuff I'll use in the final. So it's like an outline, sort of

Complete: 21

In progress: 1

Coming soon/not yet started: next part of the Sapphire Jason series, of course that GuyHal one set back in like part 3 of the series, need to edit and write some more for the Guy and the Outlaws fic. Other than that, I've also been tempted by the idea of writing a fic centered around that time Guy became a Red Lantern since Hal wanted someone on the inside, play around with the emotional toil there, the pain and heartbreak and of course the GuyHal there cuz I might have an obsession but whatever. I've had some other ideas (Jason got picked up by Amanda Waller instead of Talia and all the angsty stuff to go along with that and the suicide squad believing Bruce tried to murder his son, Jason getting swept up into some horrible thing and gets killed then comes back as the Spectre and absolutely wrecking everyone type of thing, that everyone goes missing and Jason has to step up to lead the few remaining heroes idea, etc) not sure if I'll ever actually write them or if they'll just stay as plot bunnies in my head.

Prompts: I'm down for some prompts or ideas, I just can't guarantee I'll be able to get to them all

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: it's definitely a tie between the two for the Sapphire series just because the one is a bit funny, and the ideas I've gotten so far for the other are much more ansgty, emotional type things and I love both of those things.

tagging @wellthatjusthappend @wajjs @kiseiakhun

#fic writer interview #this turned out way longer than it shouldve #but i have no chill #also #quarantine really came up in here #slapped me #and said congrats bitch youre a writer now

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ourcorny · 3 years

Text

charactersssss (a constant wip)

annie morris … twenty-five. currently haunted by her paintings and doodles. how embarrassing! waitress, artist, medicated for an illness she doesn’t has. is actually just from a bloodline of cursed female creative types. more info can be found @tghluck. (fc: mary elizabeth winstead)

edward ainsley … sixteen years old, is actually fifty-seven, vegan vampire. utterly disliked by his vampiric peers due to his being turned into a vampire in his youth, rendered sixteen years old for life. has a tendency towards alcoholism in order to silence his cravings for blood since he deems vampirism altogether unethical. more info found @pastytwat (fc: craig roberts)

robbie moore … fifty. always one of those too big for his own boots kinda guys – one of the ‘i’m jumping ship as soon as hit eighteen’ types. that’s what he did, and that’s when he absolutely fucked it. ran his mouth too loud for too long and ruined any chances he had anywhere he went. robbie is a writer but his unwillingness to compromise with his work leaves him unable to find any real place in the industry. an absolute self publishing expert. to pay the bills he’s an english teacher but there’s no real passion for it. he came back to his hometown after struggling his way around the country and settled down in a marriage with his high school sweetheart that turned sour quickly. the pair never had children and were heading to a painful divorce when his wife passed away suddenly. years down the line and he’s still trying to wrap his head around it. jesus fuck this guy. (fc: marc maron)

tara shaw … thirty-four. owner of SHAWSPB, an independent publishing company ran (run? past tense…? it’s confusing) by one tara shaw, someone who needs to work on her social skills. as it seems, you can actually only reject so many people so many times before it bites you in the ass. more specifically (and more accurately), you can only reject so many people so meanly after you fire the companies’ reader because they’ve let one too many trashy reads out of the slush pile and you have to start wading through the heaving thing yourself. opening manuscripts seemed well and good and safe enough because all you’d be facing is words that were crappy in a worst case scenario, until late one night, you stumble upon something that a sour faced rejectee (yes, one that landed themselves with a personalised handwritten and very specific rejection from the woman herself) gets their pages in the pile. tara opens it and finds that it’s no story at all. it’s a string of nonsense – words that don’t exist, script she’s not sure she’s ever seen before, but transfixed on the page, tara shaw reads the thing front to back and the second she puts the papers down is hurtled into the space time continuum, left to float around in there til something grounds her back into the real world, when or wherever that is. it’s an act of karma, or something, and whenever she lands she pukes her guts out because that’s what that kind of thing does to the human body apparently. (fc: natasha lyonne)

genevieve walsh … seventeen. was made fun of in year six for choosing to go to an all girl’s catholic secondary school, her classmates saying that she would end up a lesbian. she did, though it was unrelated to her formal teaching. very unrelated. she has too much going on and is too moody for her own good. extra info can be found @genegrieve.

morrigan kenny … age unknown. bringer of the apocalypse. wanders earth with her way too long hair (it collects twigs and mud) looking for someone to spend the rest of the end with.

alex … thirty-odd (undisclosed actual age) years old. she is yet to learn to do her taxes, and is for all intents and purposes: a con-woman. arguably not an ethical profession, charging the old and the gullible for exorcisms and that of a supernatural variety while having no knowledge of the subject. but a girl’s gotta make a living — volunteering yourself for stand up gigs at the same place night in night out with little to no compensation doesn’t provide much. she’s a kind person, if you ignore the conning, and is decent to talk to. will give away any information. whoops. (fc: jenny slate)

lou webster … seventeen. modern prophet. refuses touch with good reason (skin on skin means she see the other person’s skin melting off, right to the bone). regularly sees the end of the world and it gives her stomach aches. (fc: natalia dyer)

liv o'dell … twenty-nine. screaming messy would probably win the lottery (the luck of her) if she ever tried it, multiple time accidental murderer. makes no sense. is rude. is annoying. has a surprisingly sweet daughter (kitty). more info @heavyroads

betty cloverfield … a twenty one year old motormouth who can’t hold down a single thing she’s meant to. she happens to have recently induced some type of magenta sensitive dissonance in her sensory processing that she can’t shake. it’s speculated by many that she’s taken one too many poppers and it’s taken its toll. (fc: kat dennings)

aiden ryder … seventeen years old. the angstiest, quietest idiot with four fully charged portable chargers to hand at any moment you will ever know. heavily associated with @optimistsclub (fc: jack kilmer)

mert james ... 21. a children’s author, the writer and illustrator of the BEWARE GIANT CREATRUES series. he has many reasons to not want to leave his house and most surround the obvious images conjured in the phrase hatemyself1999 — hate myself (explanatory) and 1999 (dexter ‘mert’ james’ birth year. also self explanatory once you know this fact). all that said, he does in fact leave his house. teaches drums to kids. none of them practise and it makes him insane. in a running circuit of bands where none of the members are committed. that, or he’s misjudging their commitment and giving them nothing when they do in fact care and then he is the dick. music snob, deadpan snarker, karma houdini, middle child syndrome, world of cardboard, can’t get away with nuthin, i coulda been a contender!

lazyguts / victoria ... suicide/eating disorder mention. i’m writing her through ages 17-19 and here’s the brief overview/context: lazyguts lost all of her friends the year before she went off to university as a result of her total withdrawal [causes being a) her brother attempting to kill himself (he survived but it’s very confusing to grieve a hypothetical especially when you’re not supposed to talk about it) and then b) her already struggling with food issues getting worse worse worse. these two things alone are not the reasons as no one else explicitly knows about them, but the adverse effects of these things combined make her difficult to be around/hard to maintain a friendship with her. all very tragic, but still happens. uno].going to a uni where she doesn’t know anyone seems like the best move. she does. she makes friends with a girl called olivia and they become mad close very quickly. this lasts maybe two months until lazyguts starts locking herself away in uni room and doesn’t see much of anyone at all. she has to drop out on mental health reasons just before the end of her first year. she moves back home and lives miserably and very solitary. she and olivia have long lost touch by this point. a few months later she sees an in memoriam post up on olivia’s social media from some of olivia’s friends saying how tragic the loss is, etc/ olivia had killed herself. the post had said something about a project for the close friends of olivia and she tentatively sends a message despite having never really known the girl. anyway, after quite a few ‘exaggerations’ and then a few straight up lies, she ends up super into the friend group of olivia’s based on the lie of being a long-time friend of hers. she’s not sure why the lie comes out nor why she keeps it going. it’s something to cling onto so she does. best way to put it is she’s very dear evan hansen about it, lying lying lying lllyyyinng. eventually she’s caught out but we’re not there yet (fc: odessa a’zion)

dale knox ... 30ish. painter/decorator. info literally not ever written out before. he’s lovely and in a constant state of stress! affiliated with @fullyfungi (fc: aidan turner)

lenny gata ... 26. lonely funeral poet. followed by a select few of the unknown dead #irl after an accidental latin spell read out at a graveside (not her fault, literally not her fault - she read this out in good faith). caught ignoring them/walking them to their homes depending on the day. (fc: aubrey plaza)

millie matthews ... 17. half part antichrist. the other half is her twin sister (#MISSING). currently, unfortunately, sadly, disappointgly, worryingly, being tracked down.

more tbaaaaaaaa thank you thank you

#cast.#ignore the state of this blog #the STATEEE

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thorne93 · 4 years

Text

Inside the Criminal Mind (Part 28)

Prompt: You’re married to Dr. Spencer Reid of the BAU, and are a distinguished doctor yourself on the team. You’re sent down to Miami, Florida for teaching and as a side request from the FBI, to investigate a string of missing persons. When you think you’ve figured out who the unsub is, your life becomes more complicated than you ever could’ve imagined.

Word Count: 2382

Warnings: (throughout the fic –>) death, blood, gore, killings, language, disturbing mental notions, mentions of rapes/murder/etc (You know, Dexter and Criminal Minds related business)

Notes: Thank you so much to @arrow-guy, @carryonmyswansong, and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo - without each of you, I couldn’t have finished, written, or properly navigated this story. Each of you helped me fish out details that were incredibly important to me. Beta’d by @carryonmyswansong and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo… Aesthetic by @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo

This is a crossover of Criminal Minds x Dexter. First time writing Dexter.

Also, the timeline is after Season 1 of Dexter, but during season 14-ish of Criminal minds into Season 15. Enjoy!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was early morning, you and Spencer had just shown up at the precinct. Rossi came in maybe five minutes after you. He said he wanted the task force and the BAU members in the conference room.

LaGuerta said, “That sounds important.”

“We just had a break in the case,” Rossi explained.

“What break?” you wondered, panic flaring throughout you.

“Garcia just called. Patrol found a guy saying he escaped the Bay Harbor Butcher. He claimed he was captured two hours ago,” Rossi explained.

All of the BAU traded confused looks, and once again, you had to fight the urge to look back at Dexter. You two parted ways last night just as the sun had set. You had no idea where he went or what he was doing. He could’ve been killing, or with Rita, or his new fake sponsor. You weren’t sure.

The team members started to gather just as Rossi said, “Morgan.”

Debra looked up and said, “Yes?”

“No, the other Morgan,” he clarified. “I’d like you to join us. If you can spare him,” he reiterated as he turned back to LaGuerta.

Your eyes narrowed as your gaze met Dexter’s.

“That’s fine with me.”

“Is there blood?” he asked, and you began to wonder if he was just trying to keep up the act or if he honestly didn’t know.

“Not that we’re aware of, no,” Rossi explained.

“But what about Masuka?”

Rossi explained that he was needed at the lab more, and Rossi offered to buy him lunch after. Your blood began to feel very cold. Why was Rossi honing in on Dexter?

“I figured it was time to get a fresh perspective on the case. Rumor has it you have a knack for attracting serial killers,” Rossi divulged.

This wasn’t getting any better.

“I hear the same about you,” Dexter replied and you shot him a glare. He met your gaze for half a second before returning his attention to Rossi.

“Detective Batista and Luke, I’d like you to examine the site for clues. Reid and Detective Morgan, interview the victim, if you don’t mind. Dexter and Y/N gather forensic information.”

Everyone nodded and agreed and you got in the FBI assigned SUVs to head there. The Miami PD took their own cars. Dexter took his minivan. You were dying to call him or text him to know if this was one of his first, but you really needed to be alert and stop interacting with Dexter every time a new clue came up. Your leg was bouncing as you stared out the window. Rossi was driving, Luke in passenger, and Spence beside you in the back.

Spencer reached over and held your hand, making you feel a little bit calmer, but not much.

Once you got there, you immediately began to assess it from two different angles: Was this one of Dexter’s? If not, who did this?

The location itself was remote, but it was entirely too dirty. It was a shipyard it appeared, or a train yard. Full of abandoned compartments and train cars. Dexter was an absolute clean freak, except for his boat, clearly, but other than that, he only picked places that were relatively clean: homes, warehouses.

Spencer and Debra went to question the supposed victim and you glanced at him to see if he fit any part of the profile for Dexter. He looked grimey enough, like a douchebag but was he a murderer? Of course, if he was one of Dexter’s, as soon as Dexter came on the scene, he would flip out. Dexter would also tell you if he had a victim get away, right?

You immediately made your way to the train car where all the police tape was.

Batista greeted you. “So the victim says the Butcher held him in this train car. What do you make of all this? Seem like a place the Butcher--”

“Unsub,” you stressed. “It’s best that you use that. Giving him a name or identity only creates some kind of persona. He’s a killer, Detective, try to remember that.”

“Right,” he agreed, looking a little ashamed. “But do you see anything?”

“Well, first of all, it would be odd that he’d make a mistake now. Why have all these successful kills, only to slip up when we’re hunting him?” you wondered aloud as you strolled through the scene.

“Well take your time. We’ve never been this close to him,” Batista said as you stepped up into the empty train car.

You had to stifle a laugh. If only they knew.

Looking around the train car, this was evident it wasn’t Dexter. Location wise it was okay but, that was it. Two seconds later, Dexter was in the traincar with you.

“Why did your boss want me to be forensics on this?” he asked as soon as he got in. His tone was casual, almost as if he were talking to himself while he took pictures inside.

“I have no idea,” you admitted with a sigh. “This wasn’t the Bay Harbor Butcher, was it?” you confirmed, your tone heavy as you eyed him.

“Nope. Don’t think it was. He doesn’t let them get away.”

A few moments later, Spencer and Rossi joined you two.

Spencer began explaining the victim’s story. “So this guy was abducted and brought here, but the means are all over the place. They used rope.”

“The victim also said the guy had a hatchet. That’s pretty sloppy for our unsub,” Rossi noted. “He also hasn’t killed anyone, not directly anyway. None of this fits the profile.”

He went on to explain that the unsub uses duct tape and plastic wrap, to which Dexter asked how he knew this. They went back and forth for a bit before you finally realized what had happened.

“We have a copycat?” you clarified, your gaze narrowing.

“Looks like it,” Rossi confirmed and your stomach dropped. “Some vigilante was inspired by our unsub.”

Great. Just what you needed.

The CSI wrapped up and all of you went back to the station to begin looking into who may have wanted to hurt the guy from the yard today. You were only two hours in when everyone agreed it was time to go home.

You thought that you might swing by Dexter’s to discuss the copycat, but Spencer beat you to it, unfortunately.

“Hey, Morgan, do you care if we stop by your place?” Spencer asked as he gave Dexter a hard look. His tone and face were carefully sculpted that it seemed like an innocent, friendly request, but the coldness in his eyes gave away just how angry he was.

“Sure,” Dexter agreed, pretending to not notice the malice in Spencer’s demeanor.

You and Spencer drove in one car to Dexter’s place, following him. Spencer said nothing the entire time, and that worried you. When Spence was in a good mood, he couldn’t stop talking. When he was upset, he shut down verbally.

Dexter went inside first, and the two of you were only a few feet behind him. The door barely shut before Spencer laid into him.

“What the fuck do we do?” Spencer demanded. “Do you have a plan?” he asked of Dexter.

“No, Dr. Reid, I don’t, because I never planned on getting caught. I thought you were supposed to be the smartest person in the room?” The sarcasm was thick in his voice.

Spencer threw up his hands, mocking in his face and voice as he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were the meticulous, well thought out serial killer where nothing ever went wrong."

Dexter moved one foot to get closer to Spencer’s face and immediately your stomach grew a pit in it. Neither of these men were the fist fighting type, but then again, you’d never seen these men in the context of being challenged like this.

In a dark voice, Dexter warned, “Get off my ass. I didn't plan this. You think I wanted a copy cat? Now that’s one more thing I have to deal with."

“No, we, we have to deal with it,” Spencer reminded harshly, not backing down.

“I don’t see how this is my fault,” Dexter retorted.

At first you were scared when they started fighting like this, but now it was tiresome.

“Look, you two can measure sure your dicks later and compare. But right now we have way more important shit to deal with. So put them away, zip up, and let’s deal with this before any of us get caught.” You made a point to move between them and put your hands down, gesturing the fight was over.

The two men continued to glare at each other though.

“So what’s the plan? We have a copy cat, what do we do?” you calmly asked.

“Nothing, for now,” Dexter said before turning to his fridge and grabbing a beer.

“Nothing? You want to do nothing? That’s a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that?” Spencer said.

“What do we do if we don’t know who the fuck it is, doctor?” Dexter reminded with a hard look. “We can’t shut him down if we don’t know him. As soon as your team finds out who did this, I can take care of it.”

“You’re going to kill him?” Spencer accused.

“No. He can take the fall though. He did try to kill someone in my name.”

“You’re going to frame an innocent man?”

“He’s not exactly innocent. He tried to kill a guy.”

“Tried -- he didn’t actually do it, whereas you have.”

You sighed again.

“Spencer, he’s right. If there’s a vigilante out there, this is our best shot to get the heat off of us and onto him. I know it’s not the best, but this guy also isn’t innocent. We’re just lucky the victim got away. What if the next one doesn’t?”

To this Spencer went silent. He had to accept this. The BAU wouldn’t stop trying to find someone to put away for this crime, and pretty soon, the crumbs would lead back to Dexter, and possibly you. This was the only alternative that had the least casualties.

-----------------------------------

The following morning, news came in that people were posting ads for the Bay Harbor Butcher, requesting his services.

In a way, you wanted to laugh. Maybe this could be lucrative for Dexter.

But of course, you kept a straight face just before Batista came storming in with a suspect for the new copycat unsub. He explained how the victim, John Henry, from yesterday hurt this Ken Olsen’s mother in a home invasion. Rossi ordered Batista to leak it to the media to draw him out. Rossi then ordered everyone to try and find evidence on this Ken guy or to try and find him.

While you were elbow deep in work, trying to find this Olsen guy, Dexter went back to his lab. After what was just a few minutes, he stormed into LaGuerta’s office, then just moments later he was out, and in the elevator. You got a text from him.

“Come with me for lunch. Emergency.”

You frowned and read the message. Spencer glanced to you from across the table.

“I’m gonna go out for a second. Garcia sent Olsen’s address a few minutes ago, I’m gonna go check it out,” you lied as you started to get up.

“The police already checked his house, no sign of him,” Luke said with a frown. “We don’t have a warrant so--”

“Just want to see the neighborhood. Get an idea for the risk. See how lit it is, how nosy the neighbors are…”

Rossi and Luke nodded, appearing as if they bought it. Spencer didn’t buy it though, but he kept working. You dashed out of the station and down the elevator, where Dexter was leaning against the van, looking agitated.

“Get in,” he ordered.

You gave him a look before jumping inside and strapping in, just as he was doing the same.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong? Why do you need me--?”

“He listened to my tapes,” Dexter said as he gripped the wheel tightly.

“Who are we--?” you slowly asked, completely confused.

“Doakes!” he barked. “Doakes listened to the tapes Harry had made with my biological mother.”

“So? So he dug up some old tapes? They had an affair. Big deal. That isn’t going to lead him back to you or your brother or anything.”

“You’re being extremely naive and obtuse about this. It’s not that hard to figure it out. I tried to get him to back off, but he just kept pushing me. I went to LaGuerta to file a formal complaint, but she just told me to leave the station and cool off so here we are,” he said quickly, sighing in anger.

“And you dragged me out because…?” you questioned. “We’re trying to find more about Olson.”

“You can take a break,” he instructed. “I feel like if I’m alone right now I’ll do something reckless.”

You nodded. “Alright,” you said softly, understanding. “Well, lets actually get some lunch. Take me someplace a little out of the way, yeah?”

He nodded. You turned on the radio and he took you to a great Mexican restaurant about thirty minutes away from the station. You ate for a while then told Dexter to take you by Olsen’s place really fast so you could support your lie to the rest of the team. When you got back you were convincing.

This lying thing was getting easier… unfortunately.

------------------------------

Olson was brought in for questioning. Rossi and Batista tag teamed him, he was hostile, and you were pretty sure he did it, but he was defensive in all the right ways. You had to say you were a tad impressed.

Due to not having concrete evidence, other than your vague profile, Olson was let go.

You, Spencer, asked Dexter what the new plan was. If Olson was going to keep being a vigilante, something had to be done. Dexter said to give him some time to think, and he’d get back with you all.

So, when the next morning, there was news of a new dead body in the train car, and it was Ken Olson, you and Spencer gave each other a curious look.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tagging:

Forever Tag:

@essie1876

@magpiegirl80

@letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked

@iamwarrenspeace

@marvel-imagines-yes-please

@superwholocked527

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@rda1989

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#inside the criminal mind #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid fic #dexter #dexter morgan #dexter morgan fic #dexter fic

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bat-lings · 5 years

Note

Ugh you just reminded me how stupid it was that they had Tim narrating how he had more training and was smarter than him when Jason had more training than Tim. Honestly, I see a lot of fanon that tim admired Jason but from what i've seen canonically it seemed like he admired Dick and didn't have a high opinion of Jason but that was also due to the writer's view of Jason as well.

Oh I’m so gonna use that ask to do some more ranting against DC, thanks for that gratuitous occasion.

I think as Robin Tim did have some more training (what with Shiva etc, the writing insisted more on his formative days than with Dick or Jason) but saying, like was often the case, that Jason was thrown on the field before he was ready or that he was "the dumb brash Robin" is indeed part of the retcons that he suffered.

[Batman (1940) #411]

Jason was ready. Jason was an excellent Robin. And a very bright kid at that with an interest for detective work. None of that was ever put into question before Starlin waltzed in and casually retconned the character to fit his child-murder agenda. The mere idea that Bruce ‘I prepare for every contingency’ Wayne would’ve let an ill-prepared kid on the streets is one convenient overlook of his character.

Honestly out of all the legends that surround Tim, the one that has him idolizing Jason always confused me the most. Dick was indeed the one Tim idolized. And it’s not just that Tim didn’t admire Jason— he was more touched by the fact that Robin died, and he worried about the effect it had on Bruce. But Jason himself? Lmao no shit given. Tim only showed the slightest bit of respect for Jason once, in ‘Tec #618. Every other time he mentions Jason it’s more in that tone.

[Batman (1940) #455]

And there starts DC’s bullshit because not even considering that they conveniently kept Starlin’s "Jason’s default mode is anger", it’s Sheila who caused Jason’s death not his anger but look, looook how absolutely nothing is there to contradict Tim, if you read the full scene then not even Bruce tells him anything, no character ever puts Tim into question when he’s trashtalking Jason, Sheila will never ever be mentioned again in preboot and that’s not a frickin coincidence, I hate it

[Batman (1940) #469]

[Nightwing (1996) #25]

Even under Nicieza’s dodgy "partnership" the whole writing consists in making Jason incompetent af, insisting on how much Tim despises him, and emphasizing that he freed him of prison for Bruce & that he regrets it.

[Robin (1993) #183]

Part of Tim’s role as a character was to establish in the reader’s mind that he’s better than Jason, that Jason had some fatal flaw that caused his own death and wasn’t worthy for the Robin legacy (read: the child’s violent death is not DC’s or even Bruce’s fault) & that Tim wouldn’t repeat his mistakes. DC went as far as to instrumentalize other characters to drive that point through.

[Robin (1993) #0]

[Robin (1993) #10]

(I thought I remembered other similar mentions of Jason in Tim’s solo but I couldn’t find them. 183 issues man.)

Tim showed more respect to the memorial than to the person it was supposed to commemorate; he was introduced as worried that Robin would die permanently but not particularly touched that a child had died; he merely worried on the disastrous effect it’d have on Batman/Bruce. I think A Lonely Place of Dying made all of that pretty clear.

DC just couldn’t have Tim empathize with Jason, lest the readers themselves start empathizing with him too much which DC absolutely didn’t want. As a result Jason was used as a device to further prove Tim was dedicated and took Robin seriously (as if that wasn’t clear enough), and Tim came off as highly dismissive & disdainful of Jason on more than one occasion because it’s literally how DC wanted the reader to feel about Jason.

Tim was written in an era that constantly and viciously victim-blamed Jason. It impacted Tim’s portrayal and his view on Jason too. There are ways to exploit that— Tim was just a kid and never got to know Jason before his death, it’s not completely aberrant that he might’ve had misconceptions about him & I wouldn’t blame the character for it. But I blame DC a hell of a lot for framing Tim’s opinion as the absolute truth.

Tim idolizing Jason is a cute idea, really, and it’s a convenient place to get started if you want them to be pals in a fanfic. But as of post-crisis it’s completely fanon. It also pushes DC’s shittiness under the rug while they really don’t deserve their decades of ill-meaning and manipulative writing to be exonerated or simply forgotten.

And for all that I want Jason and Tim to get along (and Jason’s characterization is inconsistent enough that you can select the parts that’d make it work with Tim), I’m not a fan of how reboot went fanservice mode to make Tim & Jason best pals out of nowhere... especially at the cost of Tim’s and Dick’s dynamic.

Plus, how interesting would it be for Tim’s character growth to involve a change of mind about Jason? Tim’s usually pretty self-aware and knows to recognize his own inadequacies or faults. When the writer wants you to consider there’s no fault to speak of, though, it sure doesn’t help.

#jason todd #tim drake #batfam #meta #dick grayson #bruce wayne #dc comics #batman #nightwing #robin #red hood #batfamily #asks #zae chatters

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queenlua · 4 years

Text

salty hugo nominee 2020 reviews: short stories

under a cut because long, etc

ranked roughly from “shit that made me the most annoyed” to “shit that made me the least annoyed”:

A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde

God did this ever not work for me. It must’ve worked for someone, I guess? To be nominated? But, what?

Look, the story was already on thin fucking ice when I was halfway through and I noticed the narrative wasn’t going much of anywhere. Then the storms started getting names like A Leaving and A Grieving and A Loss That’s Probably Your Fault and I rolled my eyes so far back into my skull that I had to wait a while for them to re-correct themselves so I could finish reading the damn thing. AN OVERWROUGHT AND NOT-EVEN-THAT-EVOCATIVE METAPHOR IS NOT A STORY, I want to nail on the office door of A Certain Subset Of Acquisitions Editors.

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen

Sigh.

Look, I know why everyone wants metafiction to be good. I’m a sucker for the meta and the contrary and the self-referential and the circuitous. In college I convinced some poor sucker of a professor to let me submit some horrifying 80-page metafictional thing about Andrew Johnson being a piece of shit, told via (among other things) histograms, MSN Messenger group chats, excerpts from a 2100 reactionary Civil War novel that does not exist, strangely erotically-charged letters between Johnson and various southern governors, excerpts from an anthropology textbook published in 2400 that also does not exist, and so on and so forth. That shit was delightful to write, so I get it, I do.

But I also don’t ask anyone to read my 80-page metafictional thing (except that poor professor, bless their soul), because when I reread it later, it wasn’t a story. Parts of it were an excuse to show off my own cleverness. Parts of it were almost a story—but I either couldn’t be assed to fill the full thing out, or I didn’t quite know how to full the thing out, or I just didn’t have the ballsiness to do so. Alas.

So, okay. In waltzes this particular story, a metafictional thingy told via excerpts from various books and websites.

And while this one didn’t enrage me with its mediocrity the way, say, STET did last year (an angry Facebook post that was only barely pretending to be a story), it also just isn’t much of a story. Weird spooky cannibal shit happens. Feminists be fightin’ with each other about intersectionality. Sure. But I feel like that’s just Tuesday afternoon on my Tumblr feed, not a proper story.

(I would be delighted to read a metafiction-y story that does manage to work for me, by the way. Hit me up with your best quirky metafiction-y shit. But this one wasn’t it.)

And Now His Lordship is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas

It’s like, fine. The prose is good. The right motions are made, mechanics-wise. There’s just not that much to the story.

This is actually a problem with most of the stuff I’m reading in SF/F zines these days. The prose is good, the prose is always reasonably good, and sometimes it’s so good I’d chop off my left pinky to be able to write some of the phrases they do. But the story part, too often, ends up being a nothingburger with nothingsauce. It’s obvious from the start that the colonial government is going to be horrid; it’s obvious from the start that Apa’s going to use some trick to get her vengeance; the only question is how. And the how wasn’t especially evocative or thrilling, to me.

Blood is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon

Y’know, this one is weird. You get a lot of points for being weird. It’s not quite Philip K. Dick levels of weird, and it could’ve benefitted from that level of weird. Like, if Sully’s gonna give birth to a bunch of previously-dead folks, I’d expect them to do some kinda weird shit, rather than just some amicable homesteading and then some Sully-planned murder, right?

What’s here is reasonably fun but I ache thinking about how much weirder and cooler it could’ve been.

Do Not Look Back, My Lion by Alix. E Harrow

This one was actually pretty solid adventure fantasy. Actually, it sort of gets me in a mindset of wondering—do I ask too much of SF/F short fiction? Like, I look at the Hugo nominees each year, and I’m always hoping to have my mind blown, my world rocked, and so on. But I dunno, the English-speaking SF/F world is only so big, my mind can only be blown so many times, and maybe something can just be a good romp & that’s perfectly deserving of an award on its own.

It does some stuff with gender, sure, and that bit’s pretty fun, but mostly it’s a cool story. Recommended if you’re into warrior chicks and/or healer chicks and/or those dating each other.

(BCS, as a venue, seems to select for a lot of this sort of thing. It’s not always revolutionary but it’s also always a story and I appreciate the shit out of that.)

As the Last I May Know by S.L. Huang

So we have a blatant ethics-of-nuclear-war metaphor going on. Lil’ trite and/or unsexy now that the Cold War’s over, but, well, the horrible threat of nuclear war never really went away, right? We just decided to ignore it in favor of other looming apocalypses. So sure, let’s ride.

I liked Tej in this story; I liked Otto Han; I liked how full a sense of their characters was evoked in such a small space. Something about Nyma didn’t quite land for me, though, and I can’t put a finger on why. I get why she’s relatively non-agenic, I understand the concerns and fears that drive her, but I just wanted something... more?

I dunno. Maybe I’m nitpicking. It was alright; I wanted more than alright.

Also, an ending like this is like when pop songs do that radio-edit lazy-fade-into-silence ending. C’mon, commit! The only time you get to do an ~ambiguous~ ending like this is when you’re writing “The Lady or the Tiger” and you want some middle school English class and/or some book club to argue ferociously over it. But endings are what elevate things from thought experiments to real stories; it’s the moment you gotta say, yeah, this is a thing about the world that I know and believe to be true.

#book post #kinda

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ruffiorocks · 5 years

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Let's just block Trolls peeps!

Couple of hours after a few seconds of extra footage is dropped and trolls have decended into hating Lena, spouting Lena is a murderer (*cough Jonn "cough).

These very odd people must literally lie in wait for these trailers and then go through all social media, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram looking to attack anyone at all that wants to say Lena isnt bad, or Supercorp endgame or actually call Kara out in her hypocrisy where her secret is concerned. I'm all on board with the fact she doesn't owe it to anyone, but when she's telling every Tom, dick and Nia about it but not her best friend I'm no longer accepting that as an excuse. The whole "Lena should remember all the times Kara has helped her" actually goes both ways, Kara wouldn't even be alive if it wasn't for Lena. I'm still on board with Lena giving Kara a punch in the face tbh, attack me if you will but I won't back down on that. Not even for keeping the secret, but her duplicity. The final straw for me was her using James to spy on his girlfriend and her best friend who Kara knows struggles to trust people. Kara decided to just take that trust away because she thought she could and James would never tell. She then went to Lena as Kara after making it clear she thinks of her as a Luthor and listened to her say she could never trust Supergirl again.

Kara's new suit and adorable smile and excitement over pants isn't going to purge all that from mind. It doesn't mean I hate Kara, far from it but I'm not going to over look her faults either, because like Lena's they are there and very visible.

Anyway, a lot of these trolls (you know EXACTLY who I mean) have various accounts on different Social Media , you think you've blocked them only for them to pop up with a different name.

Here's the thing peeps, DONT engage with them, they feed off you interacting with them and the more you respond even sarcastically the more they reply. My guess is they have very little social lives. They can't be very outgoing if they spend their time combing through every post they can looking for a reason to be upset.

I'd even advice not to screen shot their nonsense bringing it even more into the spotlight. You're not going to change their behavior and you're giving them what they want.

It would be so nice if we could have a season where we don't have ship arguments or hate spewed at us. I know that's impossible, but we can make it a bit better by:

1. By scrolling past stuff we dont like

2. Deleting hate without responding, I don't dignify hate with a response

3. Not giving trolls what they crave, I swear it's how they get off.

4. Block, block, block.

I have an extensive block list on here, I only really see hate when it's sent to me or if it's on Twitter (Im rarely there) instage or YouTube.

Also, let's stop attacking people for still shipping Karamel. It may be gone but those seasons still exist and Karamel shippers are allowed to enjoy it just like how we are allowed to enjoy Supercorp etc. Same for Karamel shippers, I know some Supercorp shipper can be a**eholes, we acknowledge that (well I do), a lot of my block list are Supercorp shippers or man hating teenagers. Supercorp is valid, Karamel I'd valid. Heck we all know I hated GuardianCorp with an actual passion, but I won't attack those that like it.

Happy shipping and posting peeps ✌️

#supergirl #lena luthor #kara danvers #supercorp #alex danvers #anti james olsen #jonn jonzz #karamel #before anyone asks no i wont change my tags 😊

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murphystartedthefire · 5 years

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My Rant on that Murphy/Clarke Rant

(Okay this was the thing I put aside after typing up last night because I have more finals to prepare for, but I’m not gonna leave you in ~suspense.)

People may disagree but my biggest frustration with the long time coming Clarke/Murphy bitchfest in 6x02 is how I feel the show is still reeeally strawmanning a lot of issues in its framing to make it look like people are being “unreasonable” and petty in their anger at Clarke.

Murphy brings up four different things to her (five including her abandoning Bellamy) and all of them are *extremely valid* things for him to be harboring a grudge over. But at least two of them are expressed really weirdly?? So we’re not really meant to be on his side as much as we could be IMO, and it’s easy to say he’s just being an ~ungrateful dick for all the times she didn’t almost kill him.

Just to run down the specific callbacks he makes:

1 - The hanging. Right off the bat, I call absolute bullshit on him blaming her *more* than Bellamy suddenly. I believe that he *forgave* Bellamy a long time ago and has put it Extremely Behind Them, so obviously the anger is less fresh there. And I can believe he puts *some* of the blame (maybe even equal blame!) on Clarke for accusing him of killing Wells and turning the crowd against him. But Bellamy has always, always, been the person he held responsible for that, for failing him so horribly there. He hated Bellamy’s justification of “giving the people what they wanted”, he called him a coward and felt it as a massive and traumatic betrayal. Like, he *literally had an elaborate plan to revenge murder him for it* and didn’t have much interest in making Clarke pay the same way. It just feels dramatically OOC to me to hear him say now that Clarke “forced his hand.” She did no such thing!! And the show knows that!! And *Murphy* knows that!!

Like I said, it becomes a strawman argument that is easy for Clarke to get defensive about, even though at heart it’s something I do think he’s justified in being furious about after all this time. Any real weight to it is weakened by the tossed-off way it’s treated like he *doesn’t* care about Bellamy’s role at all anymore and he’s putting it 100% on her. It’s revisionist history, even if just irrationally For The Sake of This Argument about how she keeps ruining his life.

2 - Literally what is he saying about Lexa/Polis? No, this is a genuine question. Because he, uh, got “tied up” twice in quick succession around that time, and the first time was definitely not Clarke’s fault, and the second time definitely WAS. It’s like the scene walks right up to the edge of saying that she left him there after Lexa died, because she didn’t care what happened to him as much as he cared what happened to her, and then Ontari happened to him.

But the scene also... doesn’t explicitly say that, and kinda name-checks Lexa instead just because that’s a Thing We Say To Hurt Clarke’s Feelings, so instead it sounds like he’s just blaming her for Titus beating him up on one of the worst nights of her life that she had zero control over? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense as something Murphy would be mad at her for, the Ontari thing DOES make sense and fit the “disposable pawn” line, but it’s so incoherent what the writers were going for there that I have no idea.

JUST SAY ONTARI’S NAME ONCE and we can have an argument about whether it’s fair for him to blame Clarke or not! But if he’s just saying “it sucked that time we were both hostages and your girlfriend died” like I’m sure most of the general audience heard, that’s definitely unfair and just weird.

3 - God Complex. a.k.a. Emori and the rocket and the “little picture of it in your memory book.” I got nothing to say on this one, I agree completely, people thinking Emori and Murphy should have good feelings toward Clarke because she backed down at the literal last minute from doing something fully irredeemable = my villain origin story. IT’S TRUE AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT, MURPHY. Ahem.

I even love the callback to the drawing, because while I do think that was meant to be a manifestation of Clarke’s guilt, I kinda *love* that Murphy was offended by it? There is nothing cute or sentimental about this ordeal they went through and how vulnerable he was in front of her, because of her. Like, she might as well have drawn him in the tree and he would have the same reaction. So this isn’t a ranty part, that was the one solid point he made and I’ll die on that hill. :p

4 - Bellamy/Bullets/etc. And then he shifts into last season and the post-six-years-later stuff. He’s pissed about being shot, he’s *genuinely* pissed on behalf of Bellamy (who is less pissed on behalf of himself and mostly just wants out of this conversation), and how you feel about all that is however you feel about everyone’s anger at her about last season.

----

Basically, up until that last part, you have Murphy going off on this *really* interesting riff that was directly prompted by his discomfort at being tied up/in chains, and how much of that sense memory is linked to Clarke for him. She’s the one who put him and Emori on the ladder until he begged and cried and his wrists bled, she’s the one who abandoned him in that tower in Polis learning A Lot about kinky chains, and 130 years ago when they were 17 years old, one minute she was yelling at him for something he didn’t do and the next he had Neck Trauma Forever.

And yeah, most of that wasn’t malicious or even fully intentional on her part. But they’re high among the things that shaped him most in his fucked-up life, and Clarke apologizes lots but she never said she was sorry to him for any of it.

His dislike for her is valid and comes from genuine pain! I like that there was some cohesive attempt to put all of it out there. But I think part of what’s happening with those awkward (1) and (2) points is that the show keeps stacking the deck “against” Clarke in a way that’s completely unsatisfying whether you like or hate her -- piling blame on her for dumb or poorly-argued reasons while *not* effectively holding her accountable & letting her atone for legitimate stuff.

#the 100 meta #the 100 #john murphy #clarke griffin #clarke x murphy #meta #awkward slytherin brotp #that boy's a fighter

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frogmanwritings · 5 years

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Chapters: 5/? Fandom: Teen Titans (Animated Series) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Beast Boy/Starfire, Garfield Logan/Koriand'r Characters: Garfield Logan, Beast Boy, Starfire, Koriand'r (DCU), Slade, Slade Wilson, Deathstroke, Robin, Robin (DCU), Dick Grayson, Cyborg (Character), Victor Stone, Raven (DCU), Rachel Roth Garfield Wilson has lived with his adoptive father, Slade, since his parents died. Finally, after 5 years, Slade is sending him out to try and take down his rivals, the Teen Titans. How will a dark and mistreated Garfield react to them upon meeting them? How will he deal with their bright alien bringing a shine of positivity and joy to his life that he had hidden from him behind angst and abuse? Links: Archive of Our Own Fanfiction.net Wattpad

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Cyborg was in a good mood, whistling up a fancy tune while he carried his glowing blue and silver battery over his shoulder like an 80s high-schooler did with a boom-box, a nice bounce in his step as he went into the common room. While he had recently had to power-down and recharge after he dropped his precious metal power source, things weren't as dangerous as that seemed, and after an hour of rebooting, his power levels were returning to normal. And he estimated that he wouldn't need to carry around the recharger for any longer than a day now, which was a blessing.

While he had come to terms with his robotics a while ago, it was still tough, made even tougher by the fact that he had to heft around a goddamn battery just so he could be conscious. Malfunctions were annoying, but they never really restricted him like carrying a 30lb power source in his arm that had to stay attached to his chest. Not to mention the fact that he only had one arm to carry it around with, given how he had only just now developed an exoskeleton for his destroyed limb during that encounter with Garfield.

Speaking of whom, Victor had taken a bit of time researching the deadly disease that he detected on the villain, and so far, things were frustratingly, but understandingly slim on the Internet, and there were no medical records in the U.S. of 'Sakutia'. So he was simply going off of flimsy reports that he found via Google Search, and the only somewhat credible source he found was about the disappearance of two rangers that went by the names of Mark and Marie Logan. They had a son that had contracted the deadly disease, but.. that was all there was. A singular news article in a foreign language that described the boy with the disease. Nothing about him surviving or dying, nothing about how he got it, just "Son of rangers contracted Sakutia".

Raven herself was recovering nicely, her natural powers made her heal much faster than a normal human, and thus her nose was practically as good as new, while her ribs didn't do much more than ache than she put weight on them. She'd be good to go by tomorrow, and really the only reason she didn't go up with Robin and Starfire to check out the crime-scene of Professor Chang's murder was that she wanted to make sure she was at 100% in case of an emergency.

And it seemed that it was a good decision, as Cyborg's robotic eye and Raven's orbs on her gloves and belt went off not long after their leader and their leader's crush left. Victor figured he'd check just what the danger was, and a grim look crossed his face when he saw the location of the crime, a laboratory in the same block of the lab that Garfield robbed and... murdered a police officer.

He still felt terrible about it, reaching out to the family of the cop's and offering his deepest condolences and apologizes to them for not being able to save the husband and father. They were very forgiving and insisted it wasn't his fault, but the pain in their eyes, the distant cries of their daughter stuffed away in her bedroom... No one said that superhero life was easy, that you weren't going to be able to save everyone, and that there would be casualties, but...

"Cyborg, Raven! I require medical assistance!" The blaring voice of the resident alien broke up his thoughts, and he looked over towards the center entrance to the main-ops, his human eye widening at the sight. Starfire was levitating, her sunglasses and earplugs missing, but it seemed that she cared more for the bodies she was carrying over her shoulders. Not body, but bodies. Raven shot up from the couch she was sat at, zooming over to grab one of the bodies, their own leader's in Robin. His ankle was twisted at an odd angle, blood ran down his thigh and there were scratch marks on his face.

But there was another body, and Cyborg could barely believe it. Garfield Logan was over her right shoulder, and he wasn't in good shape. Both his arm and his side was pouring with scarlet red, and while Robin was stirring in Raven's hold and his domino mask was scrunched up in pain, the apprentice was completely limp, and the only sign that he was alive was the occasional heave in his stomach. But Victor was hesitant, why would he want to help a murderer? As much as he DID blame himself for the cop's unfortunate demise, the changeling was the one who pulled the trigger.

"Star, what about you, are you-" "I am fine! But Garfield is losing lots of blood very quickly and needs your help!" Starfire was many things. Assertive was certainly one of them, and Cyborg reluctantly nodded his head, following the Tamaranean as they headed to the medical bay, letting out a grunt as he thought of the implications of this. He was really going to nurse a villain, and a murderer at that, back to health. Curse Kori's heart.

"And Cyborg.. you mentioned that this Garfield has 'Sakutia', correct?" Her bright voice asked, and after the half-robot nodded, she had another question. "And this 'Sakutia' disease is spread through biting, yes?" And while a part of Cyborg wanted to break down fully the ways of contacting Sakutia, that it could be from biting to blood transfer to sometimes even being spat on, he just nodded his head once more to make things simple for his friend, who sometimes had trouble taking in Earthen things. Not to say that she was dumb, of course! But... he imagined it to be extremely difficult to have perfect knowledge of both Tamaran's AND Earth's cultures, traditions, languages, sayings, activities, etc. The fact that she knew so much already and picked up onto more each and every day was a sign of her great intelligence.

"Oh no... Garfield bit Robin in the leg during their fight, I wasn't-" Victor didn't wait for her to finish her statement, be it her blaming herself or voicing her condolences for Robin's safety, he wasn't about to jog while his leader had potentially contradicted one of the deadliest diseases in the world. He ran as fast as his battery could pump power into him, catching up to Raven in the process and snatching the squirming body of Robin in the process from her arms, ignoring her exasperated protest as he got the Boy Wonder to the med-bay as fast as possible.

Robin better be okay, for Garfield's sake..

Excruciating pain welcomed Garfield as his eyes shot open, reaching up to cup his head, only to meet cold metal resistance. Trying to raise his other hand, he only met the same result, which led to him glancing downward. The room he was in was rather dark, so his tired gaze could barely make out what sort of position he was in. He was laid down, neck and head propped up by a few pillows, while his wrists were strapped down onto two armrests by what seemed to be steel restraints. An idle beeping sound brought him to look at a white machine taped to his right index finger, running all the way to a heart monitor.

Wherever he was, it seemed to be some sort of medical-bay. Like a hospital. But what hospital would accept a green-skinned, murdering, diseased villain?

His wounds on his arm and his side were taped up, and while he remembered feeling far worse, his muscles were still somewhat sluggish and pain still raked at his torso. Getting stabbed will do that. "Hey!" Garfield called out, struggling a bit more against his metal straps, attempting to kick his legs up only to meet the same resistance as he did with his hands. The situation almost reminded him of a comment Professor Chang said, about strapping him down and experimenting on him. Of course, he was credited for the death of the Professor, even though it was his father who ended the elder's life. How he would've liked to be the one to be the one who put down the doctor.

Some worry crept on him as the thought crossed his mind, and the changeling once again called out, exerting as much force in his attempts to escape as he could, but it was all met with the same result of him being stuck in the hospital bed. Any transformation attempts were met with a simple prickle running through his spine and.. nothing. Wherever he was and whatever it is that his adversaries did to him, it left him without the ability to shift into any sort of animal forms, restraints or not.

Garfield's third attempt to call out was interrupted by a loud sliding sound, and glancing upward, even the darkest of rooms couldn't hide those shining emeralds for eyes that stared at him so curiously. And.. worriedly? He had a faint memory of her standing over him before he went out, but he couldn't make out her emotions there. Here? It was crystal clear that she looked at him with many emotions that led to him being even more confused than her.

"You are awake, are you alright?" Her soft voice questioned him, a finger sliding up to a switch right next to the door and a few ceiling lights turned on afterwards, annoying Garfield's dark-adjusted eyes for a few seconds before he was able to fully look at Starfire again. "Uh.. where am I?" The changeling answered her question with a question of his own, the layout of a medical room much clearer with the lights on, white tile and white-painted walls an eye-sore, along with a few other hospital beds and desks with many equipment on them.

"You are at Titans Tower. You were in very poor condition when I caught up to you after your fight." She began to explain, slowly floating over bedside to Garfield's bed, causing him to quickly gulp as those twinkling green eyes got ever so closer to him, peering at him and only him with such curiosity. And when he did gulp, he noticed how the saliva traveled much easier and quicker down his throat, but that wasn't much of a concern for him at the moment. "I.. would have felt very guilty leaving you there. You were bleeding heavily and you were unconscious before I could even think about assisting you."

So I HAVE been captured. Great. He growled in his head, only imagining how disappointed his father was going to be in him. "Speaking of which." An orange hand then reached out to his gut, causing him to flinch and suck in his stomach, trying to avoid her touch as much as he could. "Please don't worry, I am not going to hurt you. I merely wish to check on your wounds." Her voice was... actually very comforting, and a quick look upward into her eyes told him that she was telling the truth. Something so sincere and sweet like the shine in her orbs told him that she meant him no harm, and he slowly allowed exhaled.

Garfield's top, which had been cut up a bit, didn't require much tugging in order to expose his stomach, his toned abs covered up by several colorless bandages that wrapped all the way around his torso. Two long fingers pressed against his side, causing a small hiss to escape his clenched teeth, the pain aching as she poked at where he had been stabbed. "Ah, sorry. Is the pain.. um, sharp? Or blunt?" Starfire asked, once again pressing her fingers at the same spot, this time much gentler. Once again, the pain shot through his stomach, this time Garfield taking note of the pain being much more of an ache than a stabbing pain.

"Blunt? You mean.. dull?" The changeling questioned, letting out a small sigh as the fingers retreated back. "Yes, that is the word! I presume that is how the pain is like then?" She perked up, and while she was correct in her assumption, he was... confused. Why did she even care? She was nice, sure, but it was the dead of night, judging by his outlook of a nearby window. He did recall Slade pointing out her kindness could be exploited, and while it was odd.. he might as well try and use it to his advantage.

"Can I go now?" Garfield asked, putting on his best sad frown and even if it didn't work, it gave him an excuse to stare into her eyes, something he was avoiding for so long. But it seemed that while she was kind, she wasn't dumb, as she just shook her head without giving his eyes a single glance. "Unfortunately not. As much as I dislike the word, you are our prisoner." She solemnly stated, earning a grunt of disappointment from the changeling's throat.

"You have done... very bad things, Garfield. You should consider yourself lucky we are providing you shelter and medicine after all you've done." Starfire continued, floating over to a nearby table with a stack of papers on a clipboard, along with a pen placed down next to it. "Do you think your actions are justified? Using your extraordinary powers to steal, harm, even... kill?" Her words were firm and forward, though her tone hardly wavered as she picked up the pen, casually tested it for ink before beginning to scribble words down onto a paper.

Narrowing his eyes, Garfield felt.. attacked. He didn't take offense to the words she threw, in part of that having to do with her soft voice still possessing that caring nature that he had been able to recognize in the short periods of time when he heard her speak. But, it still felt like a bullet fired from a gun, only to intercepted by a bulletproof vest. She WAS attempting to guilt him, but he wasn't about to let that work, even if he was wondering about her other motives. "Why do you care?" Logan said in a monotone voice, careful to try and not let his curiosity be apparent.

The Tamaranean opened her mouth, seemingly to answer him, but nothing came out and soon she closed it after only uttering a sigh. "Get some sleep, Garfield. Robin and the others wish to speak to you in the morning, and it would be best if you were well rested for that." Her voice lost emotion as she gave him the small breakdown, not giving the changeling the chance to question what she had just told him before the lights were shut off and her tall frame disappeared behind a door.

Weirdo. He quietly huffed, figuring he might as well get some rest before he was interrogated by the Boy Wonder and the hospital bed was fairly comfortable. Still, his mind was racing with what had just transpired, with her checking on him carefully and showing interest into his motives. Those twinkling eyes never lost their shine, her voice only wavering at the end of their conversation.

God, what was wrong with him?

His slumber didn't last long however, with the feeling of metal pressing against his forehead causing him to shoot his eyes open, only to see the half-man known as Cyborg playfully poking his face. "Wake up, sleepyhead." He teased, giving the changeling's nose a 'boop' before walking away, just in time for his metallic finger to avoid an angry bite. "Let... me out!" Garfield growled, struggling against his restraints, using all the strength he could muster, but alas, it was no use.

"You're not going to break those, you know?" A calm, yet vindicating voice was the next to irritate the changeling, and Gar turned his head to look at the owner of that voice, recognizing it to belonging to the goth heroine of the team, Raven. "Those restraints are tight enough to trap Cyborg over there, and I sincerely doubt you are as strong as him. So save your energy." Her voice held quite obvious disdain for him, and it wasn't hard to tell why once his green eyes captured the bruise that was on the bridge of her nose.

A smirk crossed his face upon noticing it, knowing that it was from him, from when he wasn't restrained and she couldn't just taunt him like a coward. And it seemed she noticed his facial expression, to which he caught her frown only grow wider and her eyes darted away from him. Subtle black energy radiated from her fingers for a few brief moments before fading, and Garfield remembered that anger was considered both a strength and a weakness of hers. Get her angry enough, and she loses all restraint in her power and becomes a monster of rage. Good for strategy, but if that strategy failed, then she wouldn't hesitate to kill you.

He wasn't exactly in a position to abuse that, and he knew that he'd only get more frustrated trying to fire her up, since he was the one in restraints. So, the changeling just turned his attention back to the metal holding him in place, trying once more to break out of them.

"Really, not even a 'thank you.'? And here I thought we were doing you a huge favor here." Cyborg soon spoke, his mostly robotic face turning back to look at him, a slight chuckle escaping from his mouth when he noticed the resistance to his restraints. "First, we heal up your wounds, since while you do have enhanced healing thanks to your messed up DNA, you still wouldn't have lasted too long out there without medical attention due to all the bleeding you were doing. And really, I was fairly hesitant in closing up those wounds since well, I thought you got your dirty Sakutia disease in Robin from when you were fighting him."

Garfield raised a brow, not really wanting to listen to all to this speech, but the part about him dying did unfortunately catch his attention. As well as him potentially infecting Robin, which did make the corner of his lips raise a bit. "Oh, don't get your hopes up, green bean. Turns you can't actually spread Sakutia." Victor was quick to point out, which halted the apprentice's slow smile and brought it back down to a pout. "Yeah, that was a hassle though, cleaning up the injuries you put on my boy. But still, stitched up your stab wound, injected you with some fresh new blood and gave you oxygen. And even after doing all of that, we let you stay here instead of sending you off to prison. Bet that would've been a rude awakening for you."

"Are you trying to guilt me or something, you trash can? Your alien chick already tried that." The changeling growled, getting quite a bit annoyed of hearing a list of the things the Titans did for him, as if he personally asked for all of that. If he could've ran away from Starfire and not pass out, he would've. "Trash can, huh? Your words are like a knife to my heart, you know?" Cyborg chuckled, to which Garfield huffed: "If you even have a heart."

"Oh yeah, it's still in there. Got about 20 layers of machinery covering it, but it's there. But back to what I was saying..." But before the half robot could continue his ear-racking speech, the swishing sound of the med-bay door opening up interrupted him and a shudder went through Logan's body. Robin stared daggers at him, and with good reason, his leg wrapped up in bandages and he had a crutch pressed up against his armpit that he used to help him walk, and Starfire followed him through the door, meeting his gaze for a few brief moments before glancing away.

"Alright, let's skip to the chase, Garfield." The Boy Wonder said with a grunt, his green gloved hands pressing against the rail at the end of the bed, his domino mask bared right at him and a slight snarl on his face. "There's enough on you to put you away for life and more, and as much as you do deserve it, you and I both know that this... isn't entirely your fault." His grim voice practically growled at him, his head turning briefly over towards Cyborg and nodding, inviting him to speak.

"He's right. We know about your past, Garfield. Or at least, enough to know that this isn't what you were meant to be." The half robot then continued where his leader left off, opening up a small hatch on his arm, metallic fingers typing rapidly at the futuristic keyboard. Garfield pouted, his brows furrowing. What could they possibly know? His past..? It did take him a bit to catch on, and once he did, his eyes widened just a bit, not wanting to show much emotion to them, but his surprise was hard to contain.

"The reason you can't spread your Sakutia like animals infected with it is because you were given something that altered your DNA and made the disease apart of it. I can test your blood and detect you have Sakutia, but you can't actually spread it through typical means." Cyborg told him, bringing up a biological map of his body and blood from the computer in his metallic forearm, pointing out his blood cells flowing through his veins, each of them containing a small bit of the deadly disease.

Gar could only growl in response, not meeting Cyborg's face as he told him. However, a new face joined him next to his bed in the demon, Raven, her expression calmed, as well as her voice as she spoke. "Of course, this progression wasn't natural. You would've needed medical attention almost instantly after getting infected, and while Slade's smart, Sakutia is almost a complete unknown disease in western civilization."

"Don't talk like you know him, witch." Logan grunted, banging his wrists on his restraints, knowing where this was going and not wanting to hear it. "We don't need to know him, Garfield. Because we DO know who saved your life. Your real parents." Robin cut in, his hands gripping the bar of the hospital bed tight. "Mark and Marie Logan. Your father was a genius, he managed to save your life with a chemical that merged the Sakuta with your DNA, and even gave you your powers as a side effect."

"Shut up.." Garfield growled, the lower half of the bed rattling thanks to his attempted kicking, but alas, all it did was provide a minor annoyance. "You don't.. fucking know me." Memories of his past life were hitting him, being bit by that damn monkey, traveling from continent to continent, all to that forsaken boat trip. Oh, how he wanted to tear that blasted Boy Wonder to pieces for doing this to him. Tying him up like a damn dog, trying to act superior by talking about his life...

"We know enough to know you did not have a very good upbringing, at least, from when your K'Norfkas had passed and beyond." Starfire interjected, hovering over to the side of his bed, looking down at him with those wide eyes, sparkling with sympathy for him. Sympathy that he didn't ask for! He knew enough about their pasts too, and yet they didn't hear him serenade them about it! So what if his parents were dead? That didn't matter now, he was living the life he was given and he didn't need others to talk to him about it.

A sigh escaped Robin's mouth before he spoke once more, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Whatever happened, be it you went to him or Slade found you... you don't owe him a damn thing, Garfield. He's a monster, and he's trying to make you the same as him." The Boy Wonder paused, glancing off to his right for a few brief moments. "Or, more likely, he's using you because of your powers for his own personal gain. I know him, he tried to make me his apprentice. And he did nothing but use me and try and manipulate me."

Logan's arms jerked once more, his mind running wild. He tried once more to transform, this time into the form of a grizzly bear, raising his body up, only for nothing to happen as his body flopped back down onto the bed. "And you can't shift right now. We replaced that collar of yours on your neck with one that restrains your powers. Even then, it's still more humane than that strap Slade had on your neck, surprised you could breath with it on." Cyborg explained, his human eye glancing over to a faraway table, where the metal collar laid.

The changeling snarled upon seeing it. Some days, he hated the damn thing. The half-machine was right, sometimes it was hard to breath with it, and it being off explained why it was easier for him to swallow, but right now? He loved the damn thing. It was something made for him by his father. For him to wear. Plus, it was easy to hate the replacement when the replacement took away his powers.

"The point is, Garfield... you don't owe Slade a thing. He isn't your father, fathers don't treat their sons like he does to you." Robin continued, his knuckles squeezing down tighter on the bar, his knuckles sure to be pale white underneath his green gloves. And that's when Gar had it. His attempts to escape got the most vicious he had, his teeth were gritting, upper lip raised in a snarl. "How dare you? Without him, I'd be dead! He saved my life, gave me a home, food, training-" "That doesn't make him your father. With his intentions, it simply makes him a supplier. He rubs your back with shelter, and you rub his by doing his dirty work."

"Fucking poetic coming from you, Grayson! Can you tell me who your dad is?" The apprentice growled, his rage joined in by slight satisfaction upon seeing Robin's eyes widen beneath his mask, even it was for a few seconds and he adjusted himself.

"Gray... what now?" Raven asked out on confusion, one of her brows perking upward and glancing questionably at Robin, who didn't meet her gaze. His other teammates joined in at looking at him, wondering much the same. He didn't even tell them. Who is he to talk down to me?! Gar thought, happy to see the embarrassed tint on the cheeks of the leader.

"That.. isn't important right now." He shakily acknowledged his teammates, before turning back to the restrained apprentice. "Batman is a far different man than Slade. Batman never had his own personal gain in mind when he took me in. He is a selfless man. Slade is nothing but selfish." The Boy Wonder replied, his brows far more furrowed, a hard pout on his face while Logan could easily match the look.

"Then why'd you leave him?"

"To become my own man."

"Your own man surrounded by teammates to do your bidding?"

The beeping of the Titans' communicators then interrupted the conversation, Cyborg being the first to check his and pouting once he saw what came up on his screen. "Uh.. Robin. It's Slade... and he wants Garfield." Victor told his leader, who let out a puff of air through his nostrils at the word, shutting his eyes firmly behind his mask before responding. "Tell him he can't have him."

"Robin... he has a hostage. He's threatening to kill them within the next 10 minutes unless we come with Garfield."

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